Farmington

by Clarence Darrow

The church stood out in plain view from every portion of the town; and for a long distance up and down the valley road, and over beyond the creek on the farther hill it loomed majestic and white,—a constant reminder to the people who lived round about that, however important the other affairs of life, their church and their religion were more vital still.

I never heard when the church was built. As well might we have asked when the town was settled, or when the country road came winding down, or even when the river began flowing between the high green hills. If any one object more than another was Farmington, surely it was the great white church.

I am certain that the people of the town, and, in fact, of all the country round, had no thought that religion was anything more or less, or anything whatever, than communion with the church.

High up in the belfry swung a monstrous bell. None of us had seen it, but we knew it was there, for every Sunday its deep religious tones floated over the valley and up the hills, breaking the stillness of the Sabbath day. Sometimes, when we were a little early at church, at the ringing of the bell we would look up to the tower and fancy that through the open slats of the belfry we could see some great object swinging back and forth; and then, too, all of us had seen the end of a rope in a little room back of the organ on the second floor, and we had been told that the other end was fastened to the great bell away up in the high tower, and we used to wonder and speculate as to how strong the sexton must be to pull the rope that swung the mighty bell.

Every Sabbath morning the procession of farmers’ wagons drove by our home on their way to church, and we learned to know the color of the horses, the size of the wagons and carriages, and the number of members in each family, in this weekly throng; we even knew what time to expect the several devotees, and who came first and who came last, and we assumed that those who passed earliest were the most religious and devout. These Sabbath pilgrims were dressed in their best clothes, and looked serious and sad, as became communicants of the church. The pace at which they drove, their manner of dress, cast of countenance, and silent and stolid demeanor were in marked contrast to their appearance on any other days.

The Sabbath, the church, and religion were serious and solemn matters to the band of pilgrims who every Sunday drove up the hill. All our neighbors and acquaintances were members of the United Presbyterian church, and to them their religion seemed a very gloomy thing. Their Sabbath began at sun-down on Saturday and lasted until Monday morning, and the gloom seemed to grow and deepen on their faces as the light faded into twilight and the darkness of the evening came.

My parents were not members of the church; in fact, they had little belief in some of its chief articles of faith. In his youth my father was ambitious to be a minister, for all his life he was bent on doing good and helping his fellowman; but he passed so rapidly through all the phases of religious faith, from Methodism through Congregationalism and Universalism to Unitarianism and beyond, that he never had time to stop long enough at any one resting spot to get ordained to preach.

My father seldom went to church on Sunday. He was almost the only man in town who stayed away, excepting a very few who were considered worthless and who managed to steal off with dog and gun to the woods and hills. But Sunday was a precious day to my father. Even if the little creek had been swollen by recent rains, and the water ran wastefully over the big dam and off on its long journey through the hills, still my father never ran his mill on Sunday. I fancy that if he had wished to do so the people would not have permitted him to save the wasted power. But all through the week my father must have looked forward to Sunday, for on that day he was not obliged to work, and was free to revel in his books. As soon as breakfast was over he went to his little room, and was soon lost to the living world. I have always been thankful that the religion and customs of the community rescued this one day from the tiresome monotony of his life. All day Sunday, and far into the night, he lived with those rare souls who had left the records of their lives and spirits for the endless procession of men and women who come and go upon the earth.

Both my father and my mother thought it best that we children go to church. So, however much we protested (as natural children always protest), we were obliged to go up the hill with the moving throng to the great white church.

In another part of the town, in an out-of-the-way place, was the unpretentious little Methodist church. It stood at the edge of the woods, almost lost in their shadow, and seemed to shrink from sight, as if it had no right to stand in the presence of the mighty building on the hill. We never went to this church, except to revivals, and we never understood how it was kept up, as its members were very poor. The shoemaker and a few other rather unimportant people seemed to be its only devotees. The Methodist preacher did not live in Farmington when I first knew the town, but used to drive in from an adjoining village in the afternoon, and preach the same sermon he had delivered in his home town in the morning, and then go on to the next village and preach it once more in the evening. Some years later, after a wonderful revival in which almost all outsiders except our family were converted to Methodism, this church became so strong that it was able to buy a piece of ground in the village and put up a new building with a high steeple, though it was nothing like as grand as the old white church on the hill. After this the Methodist preacher came to Farmington to live.