To mourn her frailty—still is frail.”
Endeavour always to be in your pew before the service commences, and do not hurry out of it, hastily, the moment the benediction is finished; or begin visibly to prepare for departure as soon as it commences. Stay quietly till the mass of the crowd has gone.
If you go into a strange church, or rather into a church where you are a stranger, wait in the vestibule till you see the sexton; and then request him to show you to a vacant seat, or rather to one which he believes will be that day unoccupied—for instance, if the family owning it is out of town. This is far better than to wander about the aisles alone, or to intrude yourself into a pew where you may cause inconvenience to its owners. If you see that a pew is full, you know, of course, that you cannot obtain a seat in it without dislodging somebody.
Yet we have seen many a lady, on entering a church in which she was a stranger, walk boldly up the middle aisle to one of the best pews near the pulpit, and pertinaciously stand there, looking steadfastly at its rightful occupants, till one of them quitted his own seat, and gave it up to her, seeking for himself another place wherever he could find one. Those who go to strange churches should be contented with seats near the door; or at the lower end of the side-aisles; or up in the gallery.
If a family invites you to go to church with them, or to come thither, and have a seat in their pew, do not take the liberty of asking a friend of your own to accompany you; and above all, do not bring a child with you.
Should you (having a pew of your own) ask another lady to go with you, call for her in due time; and she ought to be quite ready. Place her in a corner-seat, (it being the most comfortable,) and see that she is accommodated with a footstool; and be assiduous in finding the places for her in the prayer-book, or hymn-book.
In American churches there is much civility to strangers. We have often seen, when a person of respectable appearance was in quest of a seat, the doors of half a dozen pews kindly opened to admit him, and, as soon as he entered, a prayer-book offered to him open at the proper place.
No good can result from taking children to church when they are too young to read, or to understand. They are always eager to go, because they like to go everywhere; but when once seated in the pew, they soon become tired and restless; and frequently there is no way to keep them quiet, but to let them go to sleep in the lap of the mother or elder sister. And then they are apt to cry whenever they waken. If there are two little boys, they are prone to get to playing, or what is far worse, quarrelling. And then if they make a noise, some elder member of the family is subjected to the mortification of conveying them out of church—perhaps by desire of the minister audibly expressed from the pulpit. We know clergymen who do not permit their children to be taken to church till they can read—convinced that if their first recollections of a place of worship are rather painful than pleasant, they are the less likely to grow up with a due regard for religion—that is, for religion of the heart—the spirit, and not merely the letter.
We are sorry to see young ladies, on their way to church, laughing and talking loudly, and flirting with the beaux that are gallanting them thither. It is too probable that these beaux will occupy a large share of their thoughts during the hours of worship. Nay, there are some so irreverent, and so regardless of the sanctity of the place, as to indulge in frequent whispers to those near them, or to their friends in the adjoining pews.
A lady of high fashion and fortune, formerly a resident of Philadelphia, was noted for the scandalous lightness and levity of her behaviour in church—laughing and talking, in more than whispers, nearly all the time, to the idle young men whom she always brought with her, and who, to do them justice, sometimes seemed rather ashamed of her conduct. Her pew was directly in front of the pulpit. One Sunday morning, Bishop White gave her a severe and merited rebuke, by stopping in his sermon, fixing his eyes sadly upon her, and bowing to her, as an intimation that till she had ceased he could not go on. We are sorry to add that the reproof had no other effect than to excite her anger, and caused her immediately to go out of church, highly exasperated. That lady went to live in Europe, and has not yet become a good woman, but greatly the contrary.