Creative Books

Roll aside the panorama of the three-hours' Sunday service of two
centuries ago, lest that which was not called wearisome in the passing
prove wearisome in the delineation now. It needed all this accumulation
of small details to show how widely the externals of New-England
church-going have changed since those early days. But what must have
been the daily life of that Puritan minister for whom this exhausting
service was but one portion of the task of life! Truly, they were "pious
and painful preachers" then, as I have read upon a stone in the old
Watertown graveyard;--"princely preachers" Cotton Mather calls them. He
relates that Mr. Cotton, in addition to preaching on Sunday and holding
his ordinary lecture every Thursday, preached thrice a week besides, on
Wednesday and Thursday early in the morning, and on Saturday afternoon.
He also held a daily lecture in his house, which was at last abandoned
as being too much thronged, and frequent occasional days occurred, when
he would spend six hours "in the word and in prayer.


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