The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-06-18

damned in hell do endure for sin, and thy heart will shake and quake at 1t. The least sin that thou ever didst com ] mt, though thou makest light mat ter of 1t, is a greater evil than the pains Of the damned in hell, setting aside their sins. All the torments in hell are not so great an evil as the least sin is: men begin to shrink at this, and loathe to go down to hell and be in endless ] torment"
 The only test which they were taught to apply to ascertain whether they were predestined to suffer or escape this fearful doom, was in their ability and willingness to conform their wills to the will of God as revealed in the Bible. Accordingly as they succeeded in this, they had reasonable assurance as to their fate, though no vile of the devil was more frequent than to falsely per- suade men that their prospects were favorable. To study the Scriptures day and night to ascertain the will of God, and to struggle without ceasing to con- form their wills to his as therein re- vealed was therefore the great object of existence for them, not that they | could thereby alter in the least their future state, but that they might, if possible, find out what 1t was likely l to be.
 Should this recital of their beliefs provoke smile, our amusement will soon be checked by the thought of the little progress which has been made in the last two hundred years towards solving the same problems. The origin of evil, the ineradicable tendency of the human heart to sin and do evil, the mournful spectacle of ruin and desola- tion in the moral world, and the future 1 life are the same inscrutable mysteries I to us as to them. If we have construct ed or adopted more comfortable the ology, 1t Is probably because we are less logical than they. It is perhaps be- cause we have forgotten or refused to look at some things at which they did not blink.
 Then, too, the Lord was abroad in those days. Their thoughts were deeply tinged by the semi-pagan views lwith which the authors of both the Old and New Testaments were inbued. When the thunder crashed, 1t was the Evoice of an angry God that spoke. When the lightning flashed, it was the gieam of His angry eye. Benjamin Franklin was then but a year old, and electricity had not become the pack horse of the world. The smiles and lfrowns of nature in all her varying moods through all the days and seasons (which we ascribe to the operations of law, were to them the visible tokens of the wrath or favor of the Almighty. lon December II, 1T19, for the first time in the history of the Colony, the northern lights were seen here. They Eshone with the greatest brilliancy. The transformation they caused was fearful. The people had never heard of such a phenomenon. They considered 1t the Eopening scene of the day of judgment. All amusement was given up. all busi- mess was forsaken and sleep itself was Interrupted for days Again, on the 29th of October, 1727, a mighty earth Iquake occurred, which shook with tre- Imendous violence the whole Atlantic seaboard The people here believed that the Lord was about to swallow them up In His fierce anger The women throughout New England im- mediateIy discontinued the wearing of hoop skirts then recently come into fashion, believing that the earthquake was the sign of the Lords displeasure at the sinful innovation.
 Hardly had the first settlers here be- lgun to build permanent homes for the living, when they were called upon to provide resting places for the dead. The first person to be buried in you- der burying ground was child, girl, Mary, the daughter of Benjamin Bost- wick The next was John Noble. the first settler, and the first town clerk. He died August r, TIA. The town formally laid out the burying ground in 171S. Within fifty years 300 had gone to rest there.
 There were no religious exercises at the funerals, neither singing. praying, preaching, or reading of the scriptures. | HIS NdG Dy w dy Ol iNNOil HUH AOlin- Ter superstitious practices. The friends Igathered, condoled with the afflicted ones, sat around a while and then the corpse was taken to the burying ground After that the party return- ed to the house of the deceased, where much eating and drinking was in- dulged in, and if the weather permit ted, outdoor games and horse races were in order. The next Sabbath an Inappropriate funeral sermon was preached. A bereaved husband or wife usually soon married again.
 The meeting house was never heated but the people, summoned by drum beat, attended it every Sabbath. morn- ing and afternoon, even in the severest weather. although no Sabbath day house was erected here until 1745.
 The sacramental bread often froze upon the communion plate, as did the