families were divided, men and women sitting apart on their respective sides of the house, while boys had a place separate from both, with a tithing-man to keep them in order. The men, or such portion of them as was from time to time thought sufficient, were required to come to their worship completely armed. On each Sunday,or Sabbath, as, adopting a designation which had fully won its way into use among the Puritans, they called the day of Christian worship, - two services were held, both by daylight. The service consisted of extemporaneous prayers; of the singing of the Psalms in a metrical version, without instrumental accompaniment; and of 'The ruling elders had a seat immediately below the pulpit. On a plane further down sat the deacons, also facing the congregation. In the body of the house seats were permanently assigned with reference to the dignity of the occupants. After a meeting-house was built, the first proceeding towards its use was the intrusting of the delicate arrangement of seating to a committee of the church. For a list of Mr. Davenport's hearers at New Haven, in 1646, arranged in their allotted seats, see Bacon's Historical Discourses, 310. See, e. g., Brigham's Charter, &c., 115; Mass. Rec., I. 190. The version of the Psalter which the Colonists brought over, and used at first in their worship, was that made by Henry Ainsworth of Amsterdam. It continued to guide the devotions of Plymouth for seventy years, and those of Salem for forty. The version of Sternhold and Hopkins, however, appears to have been the book first used in Ipswich (Felt, History of Ipswich, &c., 212), and perhaps in some other places. In most of the churches both were superseded in 1640 by the "Bay Psalm-Book," so called, prepared by some New-England divines, of whom three were Welde and Eliot, of Roxbury, and Mather, of Dorchester. It was issued from the press at Cambridge in that year, the second book printed in British America, and was as well received as any ever published there, for, sooner and later, it went through seventy editions. It also came into extensive use in Great Britain, especially in Scotland (Thomas, History of Printing, I. 233), and was not entirely disused there till after 1750. A couple of stanzas of the nineteenth Psalm, which is rendered by Addison in that beautiful lyric, "The spacious firmament on high," &c., will afford a specimen of this version: "The heavens do declare Also, the firmament shows forth For eighty or ninety years, it is said, not more than ten different tunes, if so many, were used in public worship. Few congregations could sing more than the five tunes now known by the names of York, Hackney, Windsor, St. Mary's, and Martyrs. (Coffin, History of Newbury, 185, 186.) Instrumen a sermon, of which the approved length was an hour, measured by an hour-glass which stood upon the pulpit. "Preaching with notes," or reading sermons, "was very little practised" in the first century. Sometimes the officers invited private members, or strangers who might be present, to prophesy, or exhort; and, under this practice, the occasional preaching of one minister in another's pulpit was justified. The reading of the Bible in the public worship, without exposition, was generally disapproved, being regarded as an improper conformity to the hierarchical service, and qualified by the opprobrious name of dumb reading. Children were baptized in the meeting-house, generally on the next Sunday after their birth; sometimes on the day of their birth, if it took place on a Sunday. Communicants sat while receiving the consecrated elements. For this practice two reasons were given; one, that the sitting posture corresponded to that of the disciples at the original institution; the other, that the practice of kneeling, significant of adoration, grew out of, and expressed, the Romish superstition of the Real Presence of the body and blood of God.* Marriage, which in the mother Church was elevated into a sacrament, was here a mere civil contract, en tal music was absolutely proscribed. It was thought to be condemned by the text (Amos v. 23), "I will not hear the melody of thy viols;" and was disparagingly compared to Nebuchadnezzar's idolatrous concert of the cornet, flute, dulcimer, sackbut, psaltery, and all kinds of music." 1 Mather, Ratio Disciplinæ, 61; Lechford, 75.Mather (Magnalia, Book III. Chap. XVIII.) supposes that Warham, of Dorchester, afterwards of Windsor, was the first person who read sermons in New England. Warham was a melancholy man, and could not always summon his powers. Hanbury, II. 156; Cotton, True Constitution, &c., 6.-"When a minister preacheth abroad, in another congregation, the ruling elder of the place, after the psalm sung, saying, 'If this present brother hath any word of exhortation for the people at this time, in the name of God let him say on,' this is held prophesying." (Lechford, 15.) 3 Cotton, Way of the Churches, 67. The curious reader will find in Lechford (Plaine Dealing, 16–22) a minute account of the way of conducting public worship in Boston in 1640. Comp. Cotton, Way, &c., 66 – 70; Welde, Briefe Narration, &c., 7. tered into before a magistrate.1 The dead, elsewhere Disuse of of devotion. interred, with pious or superstitious awe, under the floor or the shadow of sacred edifices, in some forms what was called consecrated ground and with solemn ritual observance, were buried here, without so much as prayer, in some convenient enclosure by the road-side. Religious services on these occasions were shunned, as having a connection with prelatical practices and doctrines, and an influence to conduct the mind back to them.2 Of regularly recurring holy days, none was recognized but the first day of the week, the day of the Redeemer's resurrection. In opposition to the judgment of Luther3 and of Calvin, as much as to the rubrics of Rome and England, Sunday was nearly identified with the Sabbath "The first marriage in this place, which, according to the laudable custom of the Low Countries, in which they had lived, was thought most requisite to be performed by the magistrate, as being a civil thing, . . . . . and nowhere found in the Gospel to be laid on the ministers as a part of their office; . . . . . and this practice hath continued amongst not only them, but hath been followed by all the famous churches of Christ in these parts to this time, anno 1646." (Bradford, 101; comp. 330.) "There was a great marriage to be solemnized at Boston. bridegroom, being of Hingham, Mr. Hubbard's church, he was procured to preach, and came to Boston to that end. But the magistrates, hearing of it, sent to him to forbear. We were not willing to bring in the English custom of ministers' performing the solemnity of marriage, which sermons at such times might induce; but if any minister were present, and would bestow a word of exhortation, &c., it was permitted." (Winthrop, II. 382.) — The "For many years after the first settlement of these Colonies, a marriage was ever celebrated by the civil magistrate, who not only gave the covenant unto the parties, but also made the prayers proper for the occasion." (Mather, Ratio Disciplinæ, 111; comp. Lechford, 39.) — After a while, commissioners were specially appointed to solemnize marriages in Massachusetts towns, where there was no magistrate. (Mass. Rec., III. 31, 109.) But I think no such appointments were made quite as early as the time now under consideration. 2 "At burials nothing is read, nor any funeral sermon made; but all the neighborhood, or a good company of them, come together by the tolling of the bell, and carry the dead solemnly to his grave, and there stand by him while he is buried. The ministers are most commonly present." (Lechford, 39; comp. Ratio Disciplinæ, 117.) 3 Comment. ad Galat. iv. 8-11, in Opp., V. 383–386. Instit., II. Cap. VIII. §§ 28-34. of the Law of Moses; and every kind of recreation on that day was forbidden, as well as every kind of labor. Regular week-day lectures were preached in some principal places, and the Thursday forenoon lecture at Boston, instituted by Cotton, has, with one or two short interruptions, been kept up to the present day. The periodical fast-days and feast-days, sanctified by the ancient reverence of the Church, were scrupulously disregarded and discountenanced in New England.1 But, for special occasions, fasts and thanksgivings were frequently observed by the whole community, or by single churches; and after a time, in the place of Good Friday and of Christmas, a Fast-Day was regularly kept at the season of annual planting, and a feast-day (Thanksgiving) at the time of the ingathering of the harvest. A kindred scrupulosity led to an avoidance of the word Saint even in connection with the names of Apostles and Evangelists, and to a designation of the months, and the days of the week, by numbers. It was early a question whether the Sabbath should be held to begin at sunset, or at midnight, of Saturday. The former computation was favored in Connecticut. The latter was approved by Massachusetts law.3 March by the names of the first, second, and so forth to the twelfth, which is February; because they would avoid all memory of heathenish and idols' names." (Lechford, 21.) Winthrop (I. 153) first uses this new designation of the months in 1635; but he often afterwards recurs to the old method. The records of the Massachusetts Colony (I. 173) take up the fashion a year later; but neither do they, at first, adhere to it uniformly. The practice did not establish itself in the other Colonies, to judge from their records. 3 Mass. Rec., III. 317. Learning, after religion and social order, was the object nearest to the hearts of the New-England fathers. Rather, it should be said, they were persuaded that social order and a religious character could not subsist in the absence of mental culture. for learning. Among a people, a large portion of whom were well informed, several were learned, and some were rich, there could not have been a dearth of books. Brew- Provisions ster left a library of two hundred and seventyfive substantial volumes; Harvard, of three hundred and twenty. Hooker's was appraised at three hundred pounds; Davenport's, at two hundred and thirty-three pounds; Stone's, at one hundred and twenty-seven pounds. In the ninth year of the charter government, a 1639. printing-press was established at Cambridge, 1 the first set up in British America. Joseph Glover gave to the College a "font of printing-letters," and "some gentlemen of Amsterdam" gave "forty-nine pounds and something more towards furnishing of a printing-press with letters." Glover died on his voyage to Massachusetts, and the College placed their press under the management of Stephen Daye, who superintended it for ten years. "The first thing which was printed was the Freeman's Oath; the next was an Almanac made for New England by Mr. William Pierce, Mariner; the next was the Psalms newly turned into metre." 2 It may be presumed that in the earliest time there was little instruction of children except what was imparted in private families. In the third year after the debarkation at Plymouth, the colonists were informed of its having been asserted in London, that their "chil- 1623. dren were not catechized nor taught to read." Feb. 25. 1 Records of Harvard College, as quoted in Quincy's History, I. 187. In England, there was no printingpress at Exeter till thirty years after this time, at Manchester till nearly a hundred years, or at Liverpool till a |