n man--the poor man--could own such a vehicle of
speed and ease, or the fact that America--such a short time ago a
wilderness--could produce, not as the finest flower on its tree of
evolution, but certainly as its most exotic, the plutocrat who lives in
a palace with fifty servants to do his bidding, and the fine lady whose
sole exercise of her mental and physical functions consists in allowing
her maid to dress her. Yes, New England has changed amazingly in the
revolutions of three centuries, and here, under the shadow of this
square plain building--Hingham's Old Ship Church--while we pause to
watch the Sunday pageant of 1920, we can most easily call back the
Sabbath rites, and the ideals which created those rites, three centuries
ago.

[Illustration]

It is the year of 1681. This wooden meeting-house, with the truncated
pyramidal roof and belfry (to serve as a lookout station), has just been
built. A stage ahead, architecturally, of the log meeting-house with
clay-filled chinks, thatched roof, oiled-paper windows, earthen floor,
and a stage behind the charming steeple style made popular by Sir
Christopher Wren, and now multiplied in countless graceful examples all
over New England, the Old Ship is entirely unconscious of the
distinction which is awaiting it--the distinction of being the oldest
house for public worship in the United States which still stands on its
original site, and which is still used for its original purpose. In the
year 1681 it is merely the new meeting-house of the little hamlet of
Hingham. The people are very proud of their new building. The timbers
have been hewn with the broad-axe out of solid white pine (the marks are
still visible, particularly in those rafters of the roof open to the
attic). The belfry is precisely in the center of the four-sided pitched
roof. To be sure this necessitates ringing the bell from one of the
pews, but a little later the bellringer will stand above, and through a
pane of glass let into the ceiling he will be able to see when the
minister enters the pulpit. The original backless benches were replaced
by box pews with narrow seats like shelves, hung on hinges around three
sides, but part of the original pulpit remains and a few of the box
pews. In 1681 the interior, like the exterior, is sternly bare. No
paint, no decorations, no colored windows, no organ, or anything which
could even remotely suggest the color, the beauty, the formalism of the
churches of Englan