,
and decides differences between individuals. Matters of a general nature
are submitted to a meeting of the whole community, consisting either of
all male members of age, or of an intermediate body elected by them.
Public meetings are held every evening in the week. Some of these are
devoted to the reading of the Scriptures, others to the communication of
accounts from the missionary stations, and others to the singing of hymns
or selected verses. On Sunday mornings, the church litany is publicly
read, and sermons are delivered to the congregation, which, in many
places, is the case likewise in the afternoon. In the evening, discourses
are delivered, in which the texts for that day are explained and brought
home to the particular circumstances of the community. Besides these
regular means of edification, the festival days of the Christian church,
such as Easter, Pentecost, Christmas, &c., are commemorated in a special
manner, as well as some days of peculiar interest in the history of the
society. A solemn church music constitutes a prominent feature of their
means of edification, music in general being a favorite employment of the
leisure of many. On particular occasions, and before the congregation
meets to partake of the Lord's supper, they assemble expressly to listen
to instrumental and vocal music, interspersed with hymns, in which the
whole congregation joins, while they partake together of a cup of coffee,
tea, or chocolate, and light cakes, in token of fellowship and brotherly
union. This solemnity is called a _love-feast_, and is in imitation of the
custom of the agapae in the primitive Christian churches. The Lord's supper
is celebrated at stated intervals, generally by all communicant members
together, under very solemn but simple rites.

Easter morning is devoted to a solemnity of a peculiar kind. At sunrise,
the congregation assembles in the graveyard; a service, accompanied by
music, is celebrated, expressive of the joyful hopes of immortality and
resurrection, and a solemn commemoration is made of all who have, in the
course of the last year, departed this life from among them, and "gone
home to the Lord"--an expression they often use to designate death.

Considering the termination of the present life no evil, but the entrance
upon an eternal state of bliss to the sincere disciples of Christ, they
desire to divest this event of all its terrors. The decease of every
individual is announced to the commun