public challenge. The old First Parish Church was very white and held
aloft an imposing steeple, and strangers were always commiserated if
they had to leave town without the opportunity of seeing its front by
moonlight. Behind this, and beyond a green which had been the
playground of many generations of boys and girls, was a long row of
horse-sheds, where the farmers' horses enjoyed such part of their
Sunday rest as was permitted them after bringing heavy loads of rural
parishioners to their public devotions. The Sunday church-going was by
no means so carefully observed in these days as in former ones, when
disinclination was anything but a received excuse. In Parson
Leslie's--the doctor's grandfather's--day, it would have condemned a
man or woman to the well-merited reproof of their acquaintances. And
indeed most parishioners felt deprived of a great pleasure when, after
a week of separation from society, of a routine of prosaic farm-work,
they were prevented from seeing their friends parade into church, from
hearing the psalm-singing and the sermon, and listening to the news
afterward. It was like going to mass and going to the theatre and the
opera, and making a round of short calls, and having an outing in
one's own best clothes to see other people's, all rolled into one;
beside which, there was (and is) a superstitious expectation of good
luck in the coming week if the religious obligations were carefully
fulfilled. So many of the old ideas of the efficacy of ecclesiasticism
still linger, most of them by no means unlawfully. The elder people of
New England are as glad to have their clergyman visit them in their
last days as if he granted them absolution and extreme unction. The
old traditions survive in our instincts, although our present opinions
have long since ticketed many thoughts and desires and customs as out
of date and quite exploded.

We go so far in our vigorous observance of the first commandment, and