Sabbath in Puritan New England Part 3

The most grotesque, the most extraordinary, the most highly colored figure in the dull New England church-life was the t.i.thingman. This fairly burlesque creature impresses me always with a sense of unreality, of incongruity, of strange happening, like a jesting clown in a procession of monks, like a strain of low comedy in the sober religious drama of early New England Puritan life; so out of place, so unreal is this fussy, pompous, restless t.i.thingman, with his fantastic wand of office fringed with dangling foxtails,--creaking, bustling, strutting, peering around the quiet meeting-house, prodding and rapping the restless boys, waking the drowsy sleepers; for they slept in country churches in the seventeenth century, notwithstanding dread of fierce correction, just as they nod and doze and softly puff, unawakened and unrebuked, in village churches throughout New England in the nineteenth century.

This absurd and distorted type of the English church beadle, this colonial sleep banisher, was equipped with a long staff, heavily k.n.o.bbed at one end, with which he severely and pitilessly rapped the heads of the too sleepy men, and the too wide-awake boys. From the other end of this wand of office depended a long foxtail, or a hare's-foot, which he softly thrust in the faces of the sleeping Priscillas, Charitys, and Hopestills, and which gently brushed and tickled them into reverent but startled wakefulness.

One zealous but too impetuous t.i.thingman in his pious ardor of office inadvertently applied the wrong end, the end with the heavy k.n.o.b, the masculine end, to a drowsy matron's head; and for this severely ungallant mistake he was cautioned by the ruling elders to thereafter use "more discresing and less heist."

Another over-watchful Newbury "awakener" rapped on the head a nodding man who protested indignantly that he was wide-awake, and was only bowing in solemn a.s.sent and approval of the minister's arguments. Roger Scott, of Lynn, in 1643 struck the t.i.thingman who thus roughly and suddenly wakened him; and poor sleepy and bewildered Roger, who is branded through all time as "a common sleeper at the publick exercise," was, for this most naturally resentful act, but also most shockingly grave offence, soundly whipped, as a warning both to keep awake and not to strike back in meeting.

Obadiah Turner, of Lynn, gives in his Journal a sad, sad disclosure of total depravity which was exposed by one of these sudden church-awakenings, and the story is best told in the journalist's own vivid words:--

"June 3, 1616.--Allen Bridges hath bin chose to wake ye sleepers in meeting. And being much proude of his place, must needs have a fox taile fixed to ye ende of a long staff wherewith he may brush ye faces of them yt will have napps in time of discourse, likewise a sharpe thorne whereby he may p.r.i.c.ke such as be most sound. On ye last Lord his day, as hee strutted about ye meeting-house, he did spy Mr. Tomlins sleeping with much comfort, hys head kept steadie by being in ye corner, and his hand grasping ye rail.

And soe spying, Allen did quickly thrust his staff behind Dame Ballard and give him a grievous p.r.i.c.k upon ye hand. Whereupon Mr. Tomlins did spring vpp mch above ye floore, and with terrible force strike hys hand against ye wall; and also, to ye great wonder of all, prophanlie exclaim in a loud voice, curse ye wood-chuck, he dreaming so it seemed yt a wood-chuck had seized and bit his hand. But on coming to know where he was, and ye greate scandall he had committed, he seemed much abashed, but did not speak. And I think he will not soon again goe to sleepe in meeting."

How clear the picture! Can you not see it?--the warm June sunlight streaming in through the narrow, dusty windows of the old meeting-house; the armed watcher at the door; the Puritan men and women in their sad-colored mantles seated sternly upright on the hard narrow benches; the black-gowned minister, the droning murmur of whose sleepy voice mingles with the out-door sounds of the rustle of leafy branches, the song of summer birds, the hum of buzzing insects, and the m.u.f.fled stamping of horses' feet; the restless boys on the pulpit-stairs; the tired, sleeping Puritan with his head thrown back in the corner of the pew; the vain, strutting, t.i.thingman with his fantastic and thorned staff of office; and then--the sudden, electric wakening, and the consternation of the whole staid and pious congregation at such terrible profanity in the house of G.o.d. Ah!--it was not two hundred and forty years ago; when I read the quaint words my Puritan blood stirs my drowsy brain, and I remember it all well, just as I saw it last summer in June.

Another catastrophe from too fierce zeal on the part of the t.i.thingman is recorded. An old farmer, worn out with a hard Sat.u.r.day's work at sheep-was.h.i.+ng, fell asleep ere the hour-gla.s.s had once been turned. Though he was a man of dignity, for he sat in his own pew, he could not escape the rod of the pragmatical t.i.thingman. Being rudely disturbed, but not wholly wakened, the bewildered sheep-farmer sprung to his feet, seized his astonished and mortified wife by the shoulders and shook her violently, shouting at the top of his voice, "Haw back! haw back! Stand still, will ye?" Poor goodman and goodwife! many years elapsed ere they recovered from that keen disgrace.

The ministers encouraged and urged the t.i.thingmen to faithfully perform their allotted work. One early minister "did not love sleepers in ye meeting-house, and would stop short in ye exercise and call pleasantlie to wake ye sleepers, and once of a warm Summer afternoon he did take hys hat off from ye pegg in ye beam, and put it on, saying he would go home and feed his fowles and come back again, and maybe their sleepe would be ended, and they readie to hear ye remainder of hys discourse." Another time he suggested that they might like better the Church of England service of sitting down and standing up, and we can be sure that this "was competent to keepe their eyes open for a twelvemonth."

All this was in the church of Mr. Whiting, of Lynn, a somewhat jocose Puritan,--if jocularity in a Puritan is not too anomalous an attribute to have ever existed. We can be sure that there was neither sleeping nor jesting allusion to such an irreverence in Mr. Mather's, Mr. Welde's, or Mr. Cotton's meetings. In many rigidly severe towns, as in Portsmouth in 1662 and in Boston in 1667, it was ordered by the selectmen as a proper means of punishment that a "cage be made or some other means invented for such as sleepe on the Lord's Daie." Perhaps they woke the offender up and rudely and summarily dragged him out and caged him at once and kept him thus prisoned throughout the nooning,--a veritable jail-bird.

A rather unconventional and eccentric preacher in Newbury awoke one sleeper in a most novel manner. The first name of the sleeping man was Mark, and the preacher in his sermon made use of these Biblical words: "I say unto you, mark the perfect man and behold the upright." But in the midst of his low, monotonous sermon-voice he roared out the word "mark" in a loud shout that brought the dozing Mark to his feet, bewildered but wide awake.

Mr. Moody, of York, Maine, employed a similar device to awaken and mortify the sleepers in meeting. He shouted "Fire, fire, fire!" and when the startled and blinking men jumped up, calling out "Where?" he roared back in turn, "In h.e.l.l, for sleeping sinners." Rev. Mr. Phillips, of Andover, in 1755, openly rebuked his congregation for "sleeping away a great part of the sermon;" and on the Sunday following an earthquake shock which was felt throughout New England, he said he hoped the "Glorious Lord of the Sabbath had given them such a shaking as would keep them awake through one sermon-time." Other and more autocratic parsons did not hesitate to call out their sleeping paris.h.i.+oners plainly by name, sternly telling them also to "Wake up!" A minister in Brunswick, Maine, thus pointedly wakened one of his sweet-sleeping church-attendants, a man of some dignity and standing in the community, and received the shocking and tautological answer, "Mind your own business, and go on with your sermon."

The women would sometimes nap a little without being discovered. "Ye women may sometimes sleepe and none know by reason of their enormous bonnets. Mr.

Whiting doth pleasantlie say from ye pulpit hee doth seeme to be preaching to stacks of straw with men among them."

From this seventeenth-century comment upon the size of the women's bonnets, it may be seen that objections to women's overwhelming and obscuring headgear in public a.s.semblies are not entirely complaining protests of modern growth. Other records refer to the annoyance from the exaggerated size of bonnets. In 1769 the church in Andover openly "put to vote whether the parish Disapprove of the Female s.e.x sitting with their Hats on in the Meeting-house in time of Divine Service as being Indecent." The parish did Disapprove, with a capital D, for the vote pa.s.sed in the affirmative. There is no record, however, to tell whether the Indecent fas.h.i.+on was abandoned, but I warrant no t.i.thingman was powerful enough to make Andover women take off their proudly worn Sunday bonnets if they did not want to. Another town voted that it was the "Town's Mind" that the women should take off their bonnets and "hang them on the peggs," as did the men their headgear. But the Town's Mind was not a Woman's Mind; and the big-bonnet wearers, vain though they were Puritans, did as they pleased with their own bonnets.

And indeed, in spite of votes and in spite of expostulations, the female descendants of the Puritans, through constantly recurring waves of fas.h.i.+on, have ever since been indecently wearing great obscuring hats and bonnets in public a.s.semblies, even up to the present day.

The t.i.thingman had other duties than awakening the sleepers and looking after "the boyes that playes and rapping those boyes,"--in short, seeing that every one was attentive in meeting except himself,--and the duties and powers of the office varied in different communities. Several of these officers were appointed in each parish. In Newbury, in 1688, there were twenty t.i.thingmen, and in Salem twenty-five. They were men of authority, not only on Sunday, but throughout the entire week. Each had several neighboring families (usually ten, as the word "t.i.thing" would signify) under his charge to watch during the week, to enforce the learning of the catechism at home, especially by the children, and sometimes he heard them "Say their Chatachize." These families he also watched specially on the Sabbath, and reported whether all the members thereof attended public wors.h.i.+p. Not content with mounting guard over the boys on Sundays, he also watched on weekdays to keep boys and "all persons from swimming in the water." Do you think his duties were light in July and August, when school was out, to watch the boys of ten families? One man watching one family cannot prevent such "violations of the peace" in country towns now-a-days.

He sometimes inspected the "ordinaries" and made complaint of any disorders which he there discovered, and gave in the names of "idle tiplers and gamers," and he could warn the tavern-keeper to sell no more liquor to any toper whom he knew or fancied was drinking too heavily. Josselyn complained bitterly that during his visit to New England in 1663 at "houses of entertainment called ordinaries into which a stranger went, he was presently followed by one appointed to that office who would thrust himself into his company uninvited, and if he called for more drink than the officer thought in his judgment he could soberly bear away, he would presently countermand it, and appoint the proportion beyond which he could not get one drop." The t.i.thingman had a "spetial eye-out" on all bachelors, who were also carefully spied upon by the constables, deacons, elders, and heads of families in general. He might, perhaps, help to collect the ministerial rate, though his princ.i.p.al duty was by no means the collecting of t.i.thes. He "worned peple out of ye towne." This warning was not at all because the new-comers were objectionable or undesired, but was simply a legal form of precaution, so that the parish would never be liable for the keeping of the "worned" ones in case they thereafter became paupers. He administered the "oath of fidelity" to new inhabitants. The t.i.thingman also watched to see that "no young people walked abroad on the eve of the Sabbath,"--that is, on a Sat.u.r.day night. He also marked and reported all those "who lye at home," and others who "prophanely behaved, lingered without dores at meeting time on the Lordes Daie," all the "sons of Belial strutting about, setting on fences, and otherwise desecrating the day." These last two cla.s.ses of offenders were first admonished by the t.i.thingman, then "Sett in stocks," and then cited before the Court. They were also confined in the cage on the meeting-house green, with the Lord's Day sleepers. The t.i.thingman could arrest any who walked or rode at too fast a pace to and from meeting, and he could arrest any who "walked or rode unnecessarily on the Sabath." Great and small alike were under his control, as this notice from the "Columbian Centinel" of December, 1789, abundantly proves. It is ent.i.tled "The President and the Tything man:"--

"The President, on his return to New York from his late tour through Connecticut, having missed his way on Sat.u.r.day, was obliged to ride a few miles on Sunday morning in order to gain the town at which he had previously proposed to have attended divine service. Before he arrived however he was met by a Tything man, who commanding him to stop, demanded the occasion of his riding; and it was not until the President had informed him of every circ.u.mstance and promised to go no further than the town intended that the Tything man would permit him to proceed on his journey."

Various were the subterfuges to outwit the t.i.thingman and elude his vigilance on the Sabbath. We all remember the amusing incident in "Oldtown Folks." A similar one really happened. Two gay young sparks driving through the town on the Sabbath were stopped by the t.i.thingman; one offender said mournfully in excuse of his Sabbath travel, "My grandmother is lying dead in the next town." Being allowed to drive on, he stood up in his wagon when at a safe distance and impudently shouted back, "And she's been lying dead in the graveyard there for thirty years."

Thus it may be seen that the ancient t.i.thingman was pre-eminently a general _snook_, to use an old and expressive word,--an informer, both in and out of meeting,--a very necessary, but somewhat odious, and certainly at times very absurd officer. He was in a degree a constable, a selectman, a teacher, a tax-collector, an inspector, a s.e.xton, a home-watcher, and above all, a Puritan b.u.mble, whose motto was _Hie et ubique_. He was, in fact, a general law-enforcer and order-keeper, whose various duties, wherever still necessary and still performed, are now apportioned to several individuals. The ecclesiastical functions and authority of the t.i.thingman lingered long after the civil powers had been removed or had gradually pa.s.sed away from his office. Persons are now living who in their early and unruly youth were rapped at and pointed at by a New England t.i.thingman when they laughed or were noisy in meeting.

VII.

The Length of the Service.

Watches were unknown in the early colonial days of New England, and for a long time after their introduction both watches and clocks were costly and rare. John Davenport of New Haven, who died in 1670, left a clock to his heirs; and E. Needham, who died in 1677, left a "Striking clock, a watch, and a Larum that dus not Strike," worth 5; these are perhaps the first records of the owners.h.i.+p of clocks and watches in New England. The time of the day was indicated to our forefathers in their homes by "noon marks" on the floor or window-seats, and by picturesque sundials; and in the civil and religious meetings the pa.s.sage of time was marked by a strong bra.s.s-bound hour-gla.s.s, which stood on a desk below or beside the pulpit, or which was raised on a slender iron rod and standard, so that all the members of the congregation could easily watch "the sands that ran i' the clock's behalf." By the side of the desk sat, on the Sabbath, a s.e.xton, clerk, or t.i.thingman, whose duty it was to turn the hour-gla.s.s as often as the sands ran out. This was a very ostentatious way of reminding the clergyman how long he had preached; but if it were a hint to bring the discourse to an end, it was never heeded; for contemporary historical registers tell of most painfully long sermons, reaching up through long sub-divisions and heads to "twenty-seventhly" and "twenty-eighthly."

At the planting of the first church in Woburn, Ma.s.sachusetts, the Rev.

Mr. Symmes showed his G.o.dliness and endurance (and proved that of his paris.h.i.+oners also) by preaching between four and five hours. Sermons which occupied two or three hours were customary enough. One old Scotch clergyman in Vermont, in the early years of this century, bitterly and fiercely resented the "popish innovation and Sabbath profanation" of a Sunday-school for the children, which some daring and progressive paris.h.i.+oners proposed to hold at the "nooning." This canny Parson Whiteinch very craftily and somewhat maliciously prolonged his morning sermons until they each occupied three hours; thus he shortened the time between the two services to about half an hour, and victoriously crowded out the Sunday-school innovators, who had barely time to eat their cold lunch and care for their waiting horses, ere it was time for the afternoon service to begin. But one man cannot stop the tide, though he may keep it for a short time from one guarded and sheltered spot; and the rebellious Vermont congregation, after two or three years of tedious three-hour sermons, arose in a body and crowded out the purposely prolix preacher, and established the wished-for Sunday-school. The vanquished parson thereafter sullenly spent the noonings in the horse-shed, to which he ostentatiously carried the big church-Bible in order that it might not be at the service of the profaning teachers.

An irreverent caricature of the colonial days represents a phenomenally long-preaching clergyman as turning the hour-gla.s.s by the side of his pulpit and addressing his congregation thus, "Come! you are all good fellows, we'll take another gla.s.s together!" It is recorded of Rev. Urian Oakes that often the hour-gla.s.s was turned four times during one of his sermons. The warning legend, "Be Short," which Cotton Mather inscribed over his study door was not written over his pulpit; for he wrote in his diary that at his own ordination he prayed for an hour and a quarter, and preached for an hour and three quarters. Added to the other ordination exercises these long Mather addresses must have been tiresome enough.

Nathaniel Ward deplored at that time, "Wee have a strong weakness in New England that when wee are speaking, wee know not how to conclude: wee make many ends before wee make an end."

Dr. Lord of Norwich always made a prayer which was one hour long; and an early Dutch traveller who visited New England a.s.serted that he had heard there on Fast Day a prayer which was two hours long. These long prayers were universal and most highly esteemed,--a "poor gift in prayer" being a most deplored and even despised clerical short-coming. Had not the Puritans left the Church of England to escape "stinted prayers"? Whitefield prayed openly for Parson Barrett of Hopkinton, who could pray neither freely, nor well, that "G.o.d would open this dumb dog's mouth;" and everywhere in the Puritan Church, precatory eloquence as evinced in long prayers was felt to be the greatest glory of the minister, and the highest tribute to G.o.d.

In nearly all the churches the a.s.sembled people stood during prayer-time (since kneeling and bowing the head savored of Romish idolatry) and in the middle of his pet.i.tion the minister usually made a long pause in order that any who were infirm or ill might let down their slamming pew-seats and sit down; those who were merely weary stood patiently to the long and painfully deferred end. This custom of standing during prayer-time prevailed in the Congregational churches in New England until quite a recent date, and is not yet obsolete in isolated communities and in solitary cases. I have seen within a few years, in a country church, a feeble, white-haired old deacon rise tremblingly at the preacher's solemn words "Let us unite in prayer,"

and stand with bowed head throughout the long prayer; thus pathetically clinging to the reverent custom of the olden time, he rendered tender tribute to vanished youth, gave equal tribute to eternal hope and faith, and formed a beautiful emblem of patient readiness for the last solemn summons.

Sometimes tedious expounding of the Scriptures and long "prophesying"

lengthened out the already too long service. Judge Sewall recorded that once when he addressed or expounded at the Plymouth Church, "being afraid to look at the gla.s.s, ignorantly and unwittingly I stood two hours and a half," which was doing pretty well for a layman.

The members of the early churches did not dislike these long preachings and prophesyings; they would have regarded a short sermon as irreligious, and lacking in reverence, and besides, would have felt that they had not received in it their full due, their full money's worth. They often fell asleep and were fiercely awakened by the t.i.thingman, and often they could not have understood the verbose and grandiose language of the preacher.

They were in an icy-cold atmosphere in winter, and in glaring, unshaded heat in summer, and upon most uncomfortable, narrow, uncus.h.i.+oned seats at all seasons; but in every record and journal which I have read, throughout which ministers and laymen recorded all the annoyances and opposition which the preachers encountered, I have never seen one entry of any complaint or ill-criticism of too long praying or preaching. Indeed, when Rev. Samuel Torrey, of Weymouth, Ma.s.sachusetts, prayed two hours without stopping, upon a public Fast Day in 1696, it is recorded that his audience only wished that the prayer had been much longer.

When we consider the training and exercise in prayer that the New England parsons had in their pulpits on Sundays, in their own homes on Sat.u.r.day nights, on Lecture Days and Fast Days and Training Days, and indeed upon all times and occasions, can we wonder at Parson Boardman's prowess in New Milford in 1735? He visited a "praying" Indian's home wherein lay a sick papoose over whom a "pow-wow" was being held by a medicine-man at the request of the squaw-mother, who was still a heathen. The Christian warrior determined to fight the Indian witch-doctor on his own grounds, and while the medicine-man was screaming and yelling and dancing in order to cast the devil out ol the child, the parson began to pray with equal vigor and power of lungs to cast out the devil of a medicine-man. As the prayer and pow-wow proceeded the neighboring Indians gathered around, and soon became seriously alarmed for the success of their prophet. The battle raged for three hours, when the pow-wow ended, and the disgusted and exhausted Indian ran out of the wigwam and jumped into the Housatonic River to cool his heated blood, leaving the Puritan minister triumphant in the belief, and indeed with positive proof, that he could pray down any man or devil.

The colonists could not leave the meeting-house before the long sen ices were ended, even had they wished, for the t.i.thingman allowed no deserters.

In Salem, in 1676, it was "ordered by ye Selectmen yt the three Constables doe attend att ye three greate doores of ye meeting-house every Lordes Day att ye end of ye sermon, both forenoone and afternoone, and to keep ye doores fast and suffer none to goe out before ye whole exercises bee ended." Thus Salem people had to listen to no end of praying and prophesying from their ministers and elders for they "couldn't get out."

As the years pa.s.sed on, the church attendants became less referential and much more impatient and fearless, and soon after the Revolutionary War one man in Medford made a bargain with his minister--Rev. Dr. Osgood--that he would attend regularly the church services every Sunday morning, provided he could always leave at twelve o'clock. On each Sabbath thereafter, as the obstinate preacher would not end his sermon one minute sooner than his habitual time, which was long after twelve, the equally stubborn limited-time wors.h.i.+pper arose at noon, as he had stipulated, and stalked noisily out of meeting.

A minister about to preach in a neighboring parish was told of a custom which prevailed there of persons who lived at a distance rising and leaving the house ere the sermon was ended. He determined to teach them a lesson, and announced that he would preach the first part of his sermon to the sinners, and the latter part to the saints, and that the sinners would of course all leave as soon as their portion had been delivered. Every soul remained until the end of the service.

At last, when other means of entertainment and recreation than church-going became common, and other forms of public addresses than sermons were frequently given, New England church-goers became so restless and rebellious under the regime of hour-long prayers and indefinitely protracted sermons that the long services were gradually condensed and curtailed, to the relief of both preacher and hearers.

VIII.

The Icy Temperature of the Meeting-House.

In colonial days in New England the long and tedious services must have been hard to endure in the unheated churches in bitter winter weather, so bitter that, as Judge Sewall pathetically recorded, "The communion bread was frozen pretty hard and rattled sadly into the plates." Sadly down through the centuries is ringing in our ears the gloomy rattle of that frozen sacramental bread on the Church plate, telling to us the solemn story of the austere and comfortless church-life of our ancestors. Would that the sound could bring to our chilled hearts the same steadfast and pure Christian faith that made their gloomy, freezing services warm with G.o.d's loving presence!

Again Judge Sewall wrote: "Extraordinary Cold Storm of Wind and Snow. Blows much more as coming home at Noon, and so holds on. Bread was frozen at Lord's Table. Though 't was so cold John Tuckerman was baptized. At six o'clock my ink freezes, so that I can hardly write by a good fire in my Wives chamber. Yet was very Comfortable at Meeting." In the penultimate sentence of this quotation may be found the clue and explanation of the seemingly incredible a.s.sertion in the last sentence. The reason why he was comfortable in church was that he was accustomed to sit in cold rooms; even with the great open-mouthed and open-chimneyed fireplaces full of blazing logs, so little heat entered the rooms of colonial dwelling-houses that one could not be warm unless fairly within the chimney-place; and thus, even while sitting by the fire, his ink froze. Another entry of Judge Sewall's tells of an exceeding cold day when there was "Great Coughing" in meeting, and yet a new-born baby was brought into the icy church to be baptized.

Children were always carried to the meeting-house for baptism the first Sunday after birth, even in the most bitter weather. There are no entries in Judge Sewall's diary which exhibit him in so lovable and gentle a light as the records of the baptism of his fourteen children,--his pride when the child did not cry out or shrink from the water in the freezing winter weather, thus early showing true Puritan fort.i.tude; and also his n.o.ble resolves and hopes for their future. On this especially cold day when a baby was baptized, the minister prayed for a mitigation of the weather, and on the same day in another town "Rev. Mr. Wigglesworth preached on the text, Who can stand before His Cold? Then by his own and people's sickness three Sabbaths pa.s.sed without public Wors.h.i.+p." February 20 he preached from these words: "He sends forth his word and thaws them." And the very next day a thaw set in which was regarded as a direct answer to his prayer and sermon. Sceptics now-a-days would suggest that he chose well the time to pray for milder weather.

Many persons now living can remember the universal and noisy turning up of great-coat collars, the swinging of arms, and knocking together of the heavy-booted feet of the listeners towards the end of a long winter sermon.

Dr. Hopkins used to say, when the noisy tintamarre began, "My hearers, have a little patience, and I will soon close."

Another clergyman was irritated beyond endurance by the stamping, clattering feet, a _supplosio pedis_ that he regarded as an irreverent protest and complaint against the severity of the weather, rather than as a hint to him to conclude his long sermon. He suddenly and noisily closed his sermon-book, leaned forward out of his high pulpit, and thundered out these Biblical words of rebuke at his freezing congregation, whose startled faces stared up at him through dense clouds of vapor. "Out of whose womb came the ice? And the h.o.a.ry frost of heaven, who hath gendered it? The waters are hid as with a stone, and the face of the deep is frozen. Knowest thou the ordinance of heaven? Canst thou set the dominion thereof on the earth?

Great things doth G.o.d which we cannot comprehend. He saith to the snow, Be thou on the earth. By the breath of G.o.d frost is given. He causeth it to come, whether for correction, or for his land, or for mercy. Hearken unto this. _Stand still_, and consider the wondrous works of G.o.d." We can believe that he roared out the words "stand still," and that there was no more noise in that meeting-house on cold Sundays during the remainder of that winter.