Home as Found / Sequel to "Homeward Bound"

by James Fenimore Cooper

It was music to Eve's ears, to hear Paul Powis speak of his pious ancestors, as being American, and to find him so thoroughly identifying himself with her own native land; for, while condemning so many of its practices, and so much alive to its absurdities and contradictions, our heroine had seen too much of other countries, not to take an honest pride in the real excellencies of her own. There was, also, a soothing pleasure in hearing him openly own that he belonged to the same church as herself.

"And what is there ridiculous in Philadelphia, in particular, and in connection with our own church?" she asked. "I am not so easily disposed to find fault where the venerable church is concerned."

"You know that the Protestants, in their horror of idolatry, discontinued, in a great degree, the use of the cross, as an outward religious symbol; and that there was probably a time when there was not a single cross to be seen in the whole of a country that was settled by those who made a profession of love for Christ, and a dependence on his expiation, the great business of their lives?"

"Certainly. We all know our predecessors were a little over-rigid and scrupulous on all the points connected with outward appearances."

"They certainly contrived to render the religious rites as little pleasing to the senses as possible, by aiming at a sublimation that peculiarly favours spiritual pride and a pious conceit. I do not know whether travelling has had the same effect on you, as it has produced on me; but I find all my inherited antipathies to the mere visible representation of the cross, superseded by a sort of solemn affection for it, as a symbol, when it is plain, and unaccompanied by any of those bloody and minute accessories that are so often seen around it in Catholic countries. The German Protestants, who usually ornament the altar with a cross, first cured me of the disrelish I imbibed, on this subject, in childhood."

"We, also, I think, cousin John, were agreeably struck with the same usage in Germany. From feeling a species of nervousness at the sight of a cross, I came to love to see it; and I think you must have undergone a similar change; for I have discovered no less than three among the ornaments of the great window of the entrance tower, at the Wigwam."

"You might have discovered one, also, in every door of the building, whether great or small, young lady. Our pious ancestors, as Powis calls them, much of whose piety, by the way, was any thing but meliorated with spiritual humility or Christian charity, were such ignoramuses as to set up crosses in every door they built, even while they veiled their eyes in holy horror whenever the sacred symbol was seen in a church."

"Every door!" exclaimed the Protestants of the party.

"Yes, literally every door, I might almost say certainly every panelled door that was constructed twenty years since. I first discovered the secret of our blunder, when visiting a castle in France, that dated back from the time of the crusade. It was a château of the Montmorencies, that had passed into the hands of the Condé family by marriage; and the courtly old domestic, who showed me the curiosities, pointed out to me the stone croix in the windows, which has caused the latter to be called croisées, as a pious usage of the crusaders. Turning to a door, I saw the same crosses in the wooden stiles; and if you cast an eye on the first humble door that you may pass in this village, you will detect the same symbol staring you boldly in the face, in the very heart of a population that would almost expire at the thoughts of placing such a sign of the beast on their very thresholds."

The whole party expressed their surprise; but the first door they passed corroborated this account, and proved the accuracy of John Effingham's statements. Catholic zeal and ingenuity could not have wrought more accurate symbols of this peculiar sign of the sect; and yet, here they stood, staring every passenger in the face, as if mocking the ignorant and exaggerated pretension which would lay undue stress on the minor points of a religion, the essence of which was faith and humility.