Sketches in Canada, and rambles among the red menJameson, Mrs. (Anna)
History
Sketches in Canada, and rambles among the red men
Jameson, Mrs. (Anna)
Indians of North America -- Canada; Ontario -- Description and travel
I then went into the Baptist church, on the opposite side of the road.
It is one of the largest in the town, plain in appearance, but the
interior handsome, and in good taste. The congregation was not crowded,
but composed of most respectable, serious, well-dressed people. As I
entered, the preacher was holding forth on the unpardonable sin, very
incoherently and unintelligibly, but, on closing his sermon, he
commenced a prayer; and I have seldom listened to one more eloquently
fervent. Both the sermon and prayer were extemporaneous. He prayed for
all people, nations, orders and conditions of men throughout the world,
including the king of Great Britain: but the prayer for the president of
the United States seemed to me a little original, and admirably
calculated to suit the two parties who are at present divided on the
merits of that gentleman. The suppliant besought the Almighty, that "if
Mr. Van Buren were a good man, he might be made better; and if a bad
man, he might be speedily regenerated."
I was still in time for the Episcopal church, a very spacious and
handsome building, though "somewhat Gothic." On entering, I perceived at
one glance that the Episcopal church is here, as at New York, the
_fashionable_ church of the place. It was crowded in every part: the
women well dressed--but, as at New York, too much dressed, too fine for
good taste and real fashion. I was handed immediately to the "strangers'
pew," a book put into my hand, and it was whispered to me that the
bishop would preach. Our English idea of the exterior of a bishop is an
old gentleman in a wig and lawn sleeves, both equally _de rigueur_; I
was therefore childishly surprised to find in the Bishop of Michigan a
young man of very elegant appearance, wearing his own fine hair, and in
a plain black silk gown. The sermon was on the well-worn subject of
charity as it consists in _giving_--the least and lowest it may be of
all the branches of charity, though indeed that depends on what we give,
and how we give it. We may give our heart, our soul, our time, our
health, our life, as well as our money; and the greatest of these, as
well as the least, is still but charity. At home I have often thought
that when people gave money they gave counters; here, when people give
money they are really charitable--they give a portion of their time and
their existence, both of which are devoted to money-making.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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