"Satterday, Augt. 15. Hambleton and my Sister Watch (his eldest daughter was ill). I get up before 2 in the Morning of the L(ecture) Day, and hearing an earnest expostulation of my daughter, I went down and finding her restless, call'd up my wife.... I put up this Note at the Old (First Church) and South, 'Prayers are desired for Hanah Sewall as drawing Near her end.'"[196]
And when his wife was ill, he wrote: "Oct. 17, 1717. Thursday, I asked my wife whether 'twere best for me to go to Lecture: She said, I can't tell: so I staid at home. Put up a Note.... It being my Son's Lecture, and I absent, twas taken much notice of."[197]
As the editor of the famous Diary comments: "Judge Sewall very seldom allowed any private trouble or sorrow, and he never allowed any matter of private business, to prevent his attendance upon 'Meeting,' either on the Lord's Day, or the Thursday Lecture. On this day, on account of the alarming illness of his wife—which proved to be fatal—he remains with her, furnishing his son, who was to preach, with a 'Note' to be 'put up,' asking the sympathetic prayers of the congregation in behalf of the family. He is touched and gratified on learning how much feeling was manifested on the occasion. The incident is suggestive of one of the beautiful customs once recognized in all the New England churches, in town and country, where all the members of a congregation, knit together by ties and sympathies of a common interest, had a share in each other's private and domestic experiences of joy and sorrow."
Such customs added to the social solidarity of the people, and gave each New England community a neighborliness not excelled in the far more vari-colored life of the South. Fast days and days of prayer, observed for thanks, for deliverance from some danger or affliction, petitions for aid in an hour of impending disaster, or even simply as a means of bringing the soul nearer to God, were also agencies in the social welfare of the early colonists and did much to keep alive community spirit and co-operation. Turning again to Sewall, we find him recording a number of such special days:
"Wednesday, Oct. 3rd, 1688. Have a day of Prayer at our House; One principal reason as to particular, about my going for England. Mr. Willard pray'd and preach'd excellently.... Intermission. Mr. Allen pray'd, and then Mr. Moodey, both very well, then 3d-7th verses of the 86th Ps., sung Cambridge Short Tune, which I set...."[198]
"Febr. 12. I pray'd God to accept me in keeping a privat day of Prayer with Fasting for That and other Important Matters: ... Perfect what is lacking in my Faith, and in the faith of my dear Yokefellow. Convert my children; especially Samuel and Hanah; Provide Rest and Settlement for Hanah; Recover Mary, Save Judity, Elisabeth and Joseph: Requite the Labour of Love of my Kinswoman, Jane Tappin, Give her health, find out Rest for her. Make David a man after thy own heart, Let Susan live and be baptised with the Holy Ghost, and with fire...."[199]
"Third-day, Augt. 13, 1695. We have a Fast kept in our new Chamber...."[200]
In New England Thanksgiving and Christmas were observed at first only to a very slight extent, and not at all with the regularity and ceremony common to-day. In the South, Christmas was celebrated without fail with much the same customs as those known in "Merrie Old England"; but among the earlier Puritans a large number frowned upon such special days as inclining toward Episcopal and Popish ceremonials, and many a Christmas passed with scarcely a notice. Bradford in his so-called Log-Book gives us this description of such lack of observance of the day:
"The day called Christmas Day ye Govr cal'd them out to worke (as was used) but ye moste of this new company excused themselves, and said yt went against their consciences to work on yt day. So ye Govr tould them that if they made it mater of conscience, he would spare them till they were better informed. So he led away ye rest and left them; but when they came home at noon from their work he found them in ye street at play openly, some pitching ye bar, and some at stool-ball and such like sports. So he went to them and took away their implements and tould them it was against his conscience that they should play and others work."
And Sewall doubtless would have agreed with "ye Govr"; for he notes: