Visit to Pollick Church.—Its dilapidated Condition.—Worship there.—Rev. Mason L. Weems.—Washington's Pew.
spend the Sabbath there. Informed that the roads between Occoquan and Fredericksburg were worse than those I had traversed the day before, I concluded to return to Alexandria, and go down the Potomac to Aquia Creek on Monday.
I left Occoquan after a late breakfast, and rode as far as Pohick Church, on the road to Alexandria, where I understood a Methodist meeting was to be held that day. No person had yet arrived, but the broad doors of the church stood wide open, inviting ingress. Within that venerated fane I awaited the slow-gathering auditory for more than an hour. When they were all assembled, men and women, white and black, the whole congregation, including the writer, amounted to only twenty-one persons. What a contrast with former days, when some of the noblest of the Virginia aristocracy filled those now deserted and dilapidated pews, while Massey or Weems performed the solemn and impressive ritual of the Church of England! No choir, with the majestic organ, chanted the Te Deum or the Gloria in Excelsis; the Decalogue was not read, nor did solemn, audible responses, as in other days, go up from the lips of the people.
Yet the glorious hymn, beginning "Come, holy Spirit, heavenly Dove!" was sung with fervor; and, standing behind the ancient communion-table, a young preacher in homely garb, with the eloquence of true piety, proclaimed the pure Gospel of love, and warmed the hearts of all present with emotions of Christian charity, the burden of his discourse.