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There are several free sittings in front of the pulpit good seats for hearing, but rather too conspicuous; just within each entrance on the ground floor there are more free sittings; and all the pews in the galleries except the two bottom rows let at a low figure are, we believe, also free. Altogether there are about 400 seats free and tolerably easy in the building.
But the parish register carried the date only to the beginning of this century. He wore a silken gown in summer, and a woolen gown in winter, and black worsted gloves, always with the middle finger of the right-hand glove slit, that he might more conveniently turn the leaves of the Bible, and the hymn-book, and his own sermons. The pews of the old meeting-house were high, and many of them square.
He seemed to be more intimate with God than the others, who were mostly old men and prayed with long, rolling, solemn sentences that put the whole community down into the dust and ashes before their Creator. Marcia rather enjoyed the hour spent in the sombreness of the church, with the flickering candle light making grotesque forms of shadows on the wall and among the tall pews.
It is true the people showed an extraordinary zeal in these religious exercises, and as the church-doors were always open, people would go in single at all times, whether the minister was officiating or no, and locking themselves into separate pews, would be praying to God with great fervency and devotion.
If the Nancy Jane fetches me a London bonnet and a wide, wide petticoat such as the Princess Augusta wears, so that I can brush against the pews on both sides with my silk frock when I go down the aisle, my folks will already begin to think that Sanford Browne is somebody," and she made little motions of vanity as she fancied her entrance into Duck Creek parish church on the Sunday after the arrival of the tobacco ship, arrayed in imitation of the Princess of Wales, the news of whose recent widowhood had not yet reached Judy Browne.
Next in turn to the re-designing of old buildings and parts of them comes the devastation caused by letting restorations by contract, with a clause in the specification requesting the builder to give a price for 'old materials, such as the lead of the roofs, to be replaced by tiles or slates, and the oak of the pews, pulpit, altar-rails, etc., to be replaced by deal.
They sit in our legislature, in our councils, in our pews; we meet them day after day: they give little or no sign of their discipleship: the most large-hearted friend would be surprised to hear that they were Christians. But they are Christ's. Christ knows and owns them. But if they are secret disciples now, they will not be secret disciples always.
He could never look on the thronging multitudes that crowded its pews and aisles or knelt bare-headed on its steps, without a longing to get in among them and go down on his knees and enjoy that luxury of devotional contact which makes a worshipping throng as different from the same numbers praying apart as a bed of coals is from a trail of scattered cinders.
Faultlessly in their usual current ran the services until the time for the anthem by the choir, and then the people settled themselves comfortably in their pews with expectant faces and ears slightly turned to catch every strain from the well-trained voices in the gallery behind.
Then Carmichael threw back his hair with the air of one taking off his coat, and plunged the congregation into the midst of the battle, describing Elijah's forgetfulness of self, profound conviction of righteousness, high purpose for his nation and devotion to the cause of Jehovah, till Burnbrae and the Free Kirkmen straightened themselves visibly in their pews, and touching so skilfully on the Tyrian princess in her beauty, her culture, her bigotry, her wiles, her masterfulness, that several women greatly delighting in the exposure of such a "trimmie" nodded approval.
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