The Landlord’s Visit, p. [314]
EVENING XXVI.
DIFFERENCE AND AGREEMENT OR, SUNDAY MORNING.
It was Sunday morning. All the bells were ringing for church, and the streets were filled with people moving in all directions.
Here, numbers of well-dressed persons, and a long train of charity children, were thronging in at the wide doors of a large handsome church. There, a smaller number, almost equally gay in dress, were entering an elegant meetinghouse. Up one alley, a Roman Catholic congregation was turning into their retired chapel, every one crossing himself with a finger dipped in holy water as he went in. The opposite side of the street was covered with a train of Quakers, distinguished by their plain and neat attire and sedate aspect, who walked without ceremony into a room as plain as themselves, and took their seats, the men on one side, and the women on the other, in silence. A spacious building was filled with an overflowing crowd of Methodists, most of them meanly habited, but decent and serious in demeanour; while a small society of Baptists in the neighbourhood quietly occupied their humble place of assembly.
Presently, the different services began. The church resounded with the solemn organ, and with the indistinct murmurs of a large body of people following the minister in responsive prayers. From the meeting were heard the low psalm, and the single voice of the leader of their devotions. The Roman Catholic chapel was enlivened by strains of music, the tinkling of a small bell, and a perpetual change of service and ceremonial. A profound silence and unvarying look and posture announced the self-recollection and mental devotion of the Quakers.
Mr. Ambrose led his son Edwin round all these different assemblies as a spectator. Edwin viewed everything with great attention, and was often impatient to inquire of his father the meaning of what he saw; but Mr. Ambrose would not suffer him to disturb any of the congregation even by a whisper. When they had gone through the whole, Edwin found a greater number of questions to put to his father, who explained everything put to him in the best manner he could. At length says Edwin:—
“But why cannot all these people agree to go to the same place, and worship God the same way?”
“And why should they agree?” replied his father. “Don’t you see that people differ in a hundred other things? Do they all dress alike, and eat and drink alike, and keep the same hours, and use the same diversions?”
“Ay—but those are things in which they have a right to do as they please.”
“And they have a right, too, to worship God as they please. It is their own business, and concerns none but themselves.”