Equity that even strangers stopping at the hotel found themselves the
object of a sort of hospitable competition with the members of the
different denominations, who took it for granted that they would wish to
go somewhere, and only suffered them a choice between sects. There was no
intolerance in their offer of pews, but merely a profound expectation, and
one might continue to choose his place of worship Sabbath after Sabbath
without offence. This was Bartley's custom, and it had worked to his favor
rather than his disadvantage: for in the rather chaotic liberality into
which religious sentiment had fallen in Equity, it was tacitly conceded
that the editor of a paper devoted to the interests of the whole town ought
not to be of fixed theological opinions.

Religion there had largely ceased to be a fact of spiritual experience,
and the visible church flourished on condition of providing for the social
needs of the community. It was practically held that the salvation of
one's soul must not be made too depressing, or the young people would have
nothing to do with it. Professors of the sternest creeds temporized with
sinners, and did what might be done to win them to heaven by helping them
to have a good time here. The church embraced and included the world. It no
longer frowned even upon social dancing,--a transgression once so heinous
in its eyes; it opened its doors to popular lectures, and encouraged
secular music in its basements, where, during the winter, oyster suppers
were given in aid of good objects. The Sunday school was made particularly
attractive, both to the children and the young men and girls who taught
them. Not only at Thanksgiving, but at Christmas, and latterly even at
Easter, there were special observances, which the enterprising spirits
having the welfare of the church at heart tried to make significant and
agreeable to all, and promotive of good feeling. Christenings and marriages
in the church were encouraged, and elaborately celebrated; death alone,
though treated with cut-flowers in emblematic devices, refused to lend