Kings Port holds many sacred nooks, many corners, many vistas, that
should deeply stir the spirit and the heart of all Americans who know
and love their country. The passing traveller may gaze up at certain
windows there, and see History herself looking out at him, even as she
looks out of the windows of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. There are
also other ancient buildings in Kings Port, where History is shut up, as
in a strong-box,--such as that stubborn old octagon, the powder-magazine
of Revolutionary times, which is a chest holding proud memories of blood
and war. And then there are the three churches. Not strong-boxes, these,
but shrines, where burn the venerable lamps of faith. And of these three
houses of God, that one holds the most precious flame, the purest
light, which treasures the holy fire that came from France. The English
colonists, who sat in the other two congregations, came to Carolina’s
soil to better their estate; but it was for liberty of soul, to lift
their ardent and exalted prayer to God as their own conscience bade
them, and not as any man dictated, that those French colonists sought
the New World. No Puritan splendor of independence and indomitable
courage outshines theirs. They preached a word as burning as any that
Plymouth or Salem ever heard. They were but a handful, yet so fecund
was their marvelous zeal that they became the spiritual leaven of their
whole community. They are less known than Plymouth and Salem, because
men of action, rather than men of letters, have sprung from the loins
of the South; but there they stand, a beautiful beacon, shining upon the
coasts of our early history. Into their church, then, into the shrine
where their small lamp still burns, their devout descendant, Mrs.
Weguelin St. Michael led our party, because in her eyes Kings Port could
show nothing more precious and significant. There had been nothing to
warn her that Bohm and Charley were Americans who neither knew nor loved
their country, but merely Americans who knew their country’s wealth and
loved to acquire every penny of it that they could.
And so, following the steps of our delicate and courteous guide, we
entered into the dimness of the little building; and Mrs. Weguelin’s
voice, lowered to suit the sanctity which the place had for her, began
to tell us very quietly and clearly the story of its early days.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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