The Prayers of Our Old Puritans

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB.

READERS of the published Diary of Chief Justice Samuel Sewall meet frequent entries, in connection with his attendance on “ the solemn Assembly,” for worship in the meeting-house, of his and of his fellow-worshipers, on occasions special to them, “ putting up a Bill.” Another mode of expressing the same thing, which came into later use, was “ sending up a Note.” The reference is to a custom of general observance in the early Puritan churches of New England, of which only so faint a vestige remains that some readers of to-day may be glad to be informed, not, perhaps, as to the significance of the usage in its simple form, but of parts of the details and conditions connected with it in the olden time.

This subject, together with the method and matter of the prayers offered at a later period by ministers when officiating at funerals in private houses, offers us many striking illustrations of the gradual but marked changes which time and the modifications of personal and social relations between the members and neighbors of our communities have introduced.

We have just spoken of prayers at funerals in private houses as coming in at a later period than that of the usage referred to by Sewall. In his time there was no religious service at private houses, with the family and friends gathered, at a funeral. To explain this disuse by the Puritans of a custom which their descendants soon came to regard, as do their present posterity, as one of a most tender and appropriate observance, we have to look back to and allow for the circumstances under which the first Puritans espoused their distinctive principles and ways of worship. Under the mellowing influences of time, tolerance, and largeness of view, many of these distinctive principles and usages of Puritanism have come to look to us like crotchets, perversities, narrow and obstinate prejudices of self-will and antagonism. But the Puritans were wont to have and to give reasons satisfactory to themselves, and even to some large and fair-minded men among them, for their intense desire and resolve to renounce many formalities in the old religious observances which had become odious to them as errors and superstitions. In the old Roman communion, prayers or masses at funerals were prayers for the dead, intercessions for the repose of their souls. The Puritans would have none of these. So, in silent and solemn procession, they conveyed their dead from their homes and committed them to the earth. The Puritans would not repeat the Lord’s Prayer by rote, in their public devotions. The reason — of force to them — was that that beautiful and comprehensive form of petition had been turned into a sort of charm or talisman by the Roman Church, by requiring penitents, as an act of penance, to say over, in swift repetition, twenty, thirty, or even fifty Paternosters. It is not true, as has often been asserted, that the Puritans objected to the reading of the Scriptures in their public worship. They always read a portion of them, but never without comments or exposition in their reading, verse by verse ; thus emphasizing their objection to the “ dumb reading,” as a form, of an appointed and selected lesson.

To go back to the usage indicated above by Sewall. It suggests to us a time, and circumstances of relations between members of a community, neighbors, friends, intimate acquaintances, united by many strong and tender interests and sympathies which they brought with them to their common worship. In these days, the occupants of adjoining pews or dwellings may not know each other by name, or have any personal relations of sympathy or interest. It was quite otherwise in the times now recalled. Though many bodies of Christians, distinct from the New England Puritans of the period under notice, may have had a more or less similar usage, and though a faint trace of that usage, greatly modified, is still recognized in many religious communions, yet it was peculiarly in the New England Puritan churches that the custom originated, and was fully and minutely regarded, of the offering of special individual petitions, with mention of names and circumstances, in the public prayers of a congregation. The gathering of such a congregation implied close and hearty intimacies, much more than mere acquaintance, among its members. Their covenants avowed and bound them to interest, intercourse, and mutual oversight. In the small country villages, all the inhabitants were brought together in the closest intimacy, personal and neighborly, in their several homes and in the meeting-house. They knew each other’s most private affairs and experiences, — the birth of a child, espousals, sickness, absence from home, and death. Whatever social or class distinctions existed in any place, — and there were such, for the “ seating ” of each congregation was a method of “ dignifying superiors,” — the humblest family and individual in the precinct could introduce their wants and woes in the public prayers. So the minister, as he mounted the pulpit, had in his hand one or many “ bills ” or “ notes " offered by individuals or families by name, stating the occasion or circumstances, specifically, under which the sympathizing prayers of the whole congregation were desired. Instances were not unusual in which, if there were many such papers, the minister, after reading them aloud, would pin them to the pulpit cushion, and, opening his eyes for an instant, would refresh his thought of them, one by one, and then frame a fitting intercession or petition. A purposed journey or a return, the experience of a misfortune or disaster, the birth of a child, serious or protracted illness, bereavement, and the various dispensations of Providence, devoutly regarded, would be the burden of these petitions. There certainly was something helpful and touching in these usages in close communities, in which no one was a stranger in life or fortune to all the rest. Of course much, very much, if not all, of the fitness and grace of such intercessions depended upon the gifts of the minister, his choice of words and phrases, his delicacy, unction, refinement, and dignity of manner and speech, his saying just enough, and at times his reserve in utterance. There were possibilities of infelicity and blundering, and of a large range in failures of taste and sentiment. The risk was of formality, repetition of phrase, and sameness of language. The minister might fall short of the definiteness, the individuality, of specific references in such cases, disappointing the listening petitioners for whom he was a proxy. There were in the ministry, occasionally, and not infrequently, men of eccentric ways, of quaint speech, sometimes very literal and overfrank and plain, whose expressions might include or suggest judgments, opinions, on matters to be borne up in prayer. Such a case comes authenticated to us, in which a husband sought relief from the trial and exhaustion of tending an invalid wife in a protracted and hopeless malady by sending up a “bill” on several successive Sundays. Perhaps the minister also shared in the weariness of these repeated calls on his intercession, well knowing the certainty of the impending issue. So he framed his petition, “ that the Lord, if it seemed good to him, would raise her up, or that she might be speedily and gently removed.”

A large part of the more serious, interesting, and important concerns in a rural community would find their way into the prayers of the sanctuary. Sometimes the minister, bent on some public or private rebuke or censure, would dare the venture of insinuating it in his prayer rather than in his sermon. One of the members of the distinguished Washburn family gave the writer the following anecdote of his boyhood memory. The town where he resided, in Maine, near the seacoast, was one of many communities inhabited by men of a cross between farmers and skippers, therefore not fully proficient in either calling. Their land, naturally of thin soil, was also neglected. The minister of a neighboring town, coming to exchange with the pastor, was joined by one of the deacons on his walk to the meeting-house, and, as there was something of a drought, was asked by the deacon to pray for rain. At the fitting place in his service the minister uttered himself as follows : “ O Lord, thy servant is asked by this people to pray for rain, and he does so. But Thou knowest, O Lord, that what this soil needs is dressin’.”

Among the multitude of memories and traditions of local currency concerning the frankness and literalness indulged in by country ministers in their public devotions is one accredited to a parson of the last century in Bridgewater. The most prominent member of his flock for thrift and personal consequence in the community was well known for his pretentious and overbearing assumptions, for putting on airs, and for conceited pomposity and swaggering ways. Under the distress and fright of dangerous illness, he had put up “ notes ” on the Sundays of his confinement. On his recovery, according to the usage, he offered a note, to be read by the minister, expressive of his thanks. The minister was somewhat “ large " in this part of his prayer; recalling the danger and the previous petitions of the “squire,” and returning his grateful acknowledgments, with the prayer that the experience be blessed to the spiritual welfare of the restored man, he closed with these words : “ And we pray, O Lord, that thy servant be cured of that ungodly strut, so offensive in the sanctuary.”

After the passage of two or three generations there came in a race or class of country ministers who, removed from the associations and usages of old English ways, had acquired many distinctive and strongly marked professional characteristics. Rejecting all priestly pretensions, they substituted some clerical assumptions, which were tolerated, if not acquiesced in. Various dates and instances have been assigned by our local annalists as the first in which, On the passing away of the early Puritan objection to religious exercises at funerals, the custom of observing them came into use. But its adoption was at once universally accepted, and soon a method and tone for the conducting of funerals in private houses were established, the slighting of which would have called out remark and censure. The officiating minister, being, with rare exceptions, the village pastor, — in case a stranger was to do the service, he would be duly informed and instructed, — knew, of course, all the circumstances of each case, character, incidents, relations, and family connections. All and each of these he was expected to refer to specially and by distinct mention in the prayer. This he did at length, and with conscientious minuteness. A failure on his part to indicate any relation in a second, or even a third degree would have caused offense.

After the funeral came another ordeal for the minister and the people. On the Sunday following it the bereaved family would offer up a note, to be read by the minister, asking that their affliction might be sanctified to them. The minister, in his exercise, would repeat briefly his previous dealing with the case. The critical and the plain speaking of the parsons occasionally made the pulpit a bench of judgment. One of these, a man of local dignity and boldness of speech and frankness in censure, was Dr. Barnes, of Scituate, who began in 1754 a ministry, with papal prerogatives, of fiftyseven years. In his flock had been a prominent member, well to do, the richest in lands, cattle, and worldly goods, but hard, grasping, penurious, and never in harmony or accord with his neighbors. At his funeral the minister had dealt with him in no gentle phrase. His widow, a mild, patient, enduring woman, thought at first to avert a renewal of her trial by omitting to put up the usual note on Sunday. Reflecting, however, that such omission would provoke offensive comment, she determined to write the paper, and to stop at the parsonage, to suggest, as her own petition to the parson, that, as he had already given her husband such a raking at the funeral, he might be quietly passed over in the prayer. She added that her husband had always been kind and good to her and to his family. The aged and venerated pastor took the note, replying, “ Well, well, we ’ll see.” His curt relief of himself in his prayer was this: “Thou knowest, O Lord, that thy departed servant was a good provider for his family ; but, beyond that, his friends think, and we think, the less said the better.”

It would be wrong to omit the recognition that the public devotions of the old Puritans had in them elements of tender and fervent unction, earnest and strengthening and edifying sentiment, fond aspiration, and submissive trust. Beginning with conscientious scruples and strong antipathies against a form of printed devotion, as cold, mechanical, repressive, and merely functional, they allowed themselves the largest freedom in prayer, meeting its ventures and risks. They fostered an expectation of details and individual personalities. Judge Sewall, with a reference to whose journal we began, enters in it an expression of his grievance that when his young son Joseph, then a candidate, afterwards minister of the South Church, was to preach there in the afternoon, the pastor had not alluded to the expectation in his morning prayer.

From the familiarities, formalities, and specialties of the Puritan devotions many of their descendants have found welcome relief, particularly at funerals, in liturgical services. But not all of them are of that mind, as they prefer a middle way between the two contrasted usages, — the formal and the spontaneous.