DISTURBING THE SOLEMNITY

Somehow or other there were many more queer things happening in church in the olden time than occur in these sober and decorous days. In old St. Paul’s, Newburyport, for example, some very amusing things are recorded to have happened during the hours of service. Uncle Nat Bailey was the sexton, and it was his duty to attend to the new stove which had just been put in. But one Sunday morning Uncle Nat was engaged in ringing the bell, and the last comers were hurrying in, and the clerk, Harvey, perceived that the stove needed attention. Taking the sexton’s duty, he poked the fire, chucked in more wood, shut the door and returned to his place at his desk. Unfortunately he had got his hand all black with soot, and unwittingly he had smeared the soot all over his face. The congregation broadly smiled a few minutes later when he solemnly rose at his desk and gave out the first hymn, “Behold the beauties of my face.”

Lighting as well as heating gave trouble in those days. Candles guttered, or went out, and kept the attentive sextons busy tiptoeing about, snuffing or relighting them. Sexton Currier—pronounced in country speech “Kiah”—of Parson Milton’s church in the same old town, once neglected this duty during an evening service.

Parson Milton, from his tremendous, booming voice nicknamed “Thundering Milton,” was an excellent pastor, but very singular and abrupt in his ways. Observing the condition of the lights, he quite upset the congregation by proclaiming at the top of his voice, without the slightest break between the sentences:

“The Lord said unto Moses, Kiah, snuff the candles.”

He it was, too, who, when a worthy parishioner whose Christian name was Mark once dropped off into a doze in his pew, recalled him to his duty in a marvelous fashion. Leaning forward in the middle of the sermon, and apparently addressing himself directly to the offender, he exclaimed in quick, sharp tones, “Mark!”

At the sound of his name, the man opened his eyes and sat hastily erect, while the preacher, resuming his normal voice, concluded the sentence—“the perfect man, and behold the upright.”

On a very cold day, when the church was inadequately warmed, another minister preached from a very hot text. At the conclusion of the service he leaned over the pulpit and said, in a tone audible to all the congregation:

“Deacon Craig, do, I pray you, see to it that this church is properly warmed this afternoon. What’s the use of my preaching to a parcel of sinners about the danger of hell-fire when the church is as cold as a barn?”