em, very uncertainly
and very incorrectly. This performance alone sometimes takes an hour, as
there is no organ, nor notes, and only a few copies of the Bay Psalm
Book, of which, by the way, a copy now would be worth many times its
weight in gold.

After the morning service there is a noon intermission, in which the
half-frozen congregation stirs around, eats cold luncheons brought in
baskets, and then returns to the next session. One must not for an
instant, however, consider these noon hours as recreational. There is no
idle talk or play. The sermon is discussed and the children forbidden to
romp or laugh. One sometimes wonders how the little things had any
impulse to laugh in such an abysmal atmosphere, but apparently the
Puritan boys and girls were entirely normal and even wholesomely
mischievous--as proved by the constantly required services of the
tithing-man.

These external trappings of the service sound depressing enough, but if
the message received within these chilly walls is cheering, maybe we
can forget or ignore the physical discomforts. But is the message
cheering? Hell, damnation, eternal tortures, painful theological
hair-splittings, harrowing self-examinations, and humiliating public
confessions--this is what they gather on the narrow wooden benches to
listen to hour after hour, searching their souls for sin with an almost
frenzied eagerness. And yet, forlorn and tedious as the bleak service
appears to us, there is no doubt that these stern-faced men and women
wrenched an almost mystical inspiration from it; that a weird
fascination emanated from this morbid dwelling on sin and punishment,
appealing to the emotions quite as vividly--although through a different
channel--as the most elaborate ceremonial. When the soul is wrought to a
certain pitch each hardship is merely an added opportunity to prove its
faith. It was this high pitch, attained and sustained by our Puritan
fathers, which produced a dramatic and sometimes terrible blend of
personality.

It has become the modern fashion somewhat to belittle Puritanism. It is
easy to emphasize its absurdities, to ridicule the almost fanatical
fervor which goaded men to harshness and inconsistency. The fact remains
that a tremendous selective force was needed to tear the Puritans away
from the mother church and the mother country and fortify them in their
struggle in a new land. It was religious zeal which furnished this
motive power. Different implement