File:Our first century (1905) (14780544261).jpg

Identifier: ourfirstcentury00eggl (find matches)
Title: Our first century
Year: 1905 (1900s)
Authors: Eggleston, George Cary, 1839-1911
Subjects: United States -- Social life and customs To 1775
Publisher: New York, A.S. Barnes & Company
Contributing Library: New York Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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living. The parsons and the magistrates regulated con-duct much more directly than by sermonizing. Theyhad the law for their weapon in such matters. It is easy to suppose that the sturdy, healthy NewEngland boys and girls were the greatest sufferers fromthe religious intolerance and the all-embracing religiousinterference of the time. Their sports and pastimes wererelentlessly kept within narrow bounds by an authoritythat had no hesitation in invading the home itself andprescribing rules for every act of life—rules chiefly de-signed to prohibit the indulgence of natural instincts andto forbid enjoyment. The Puritan boys and girls mustall go to church, where they were herded together underthe eyes of the stern tithing man, and compelled, not onlyto sit out the two or three hour long sermons, but tokeep awake under all that soporific infliction. Worse still their young souls were tortured almostfrom infancy by concern for salvation and fear of damna- EDUCATION, RELIGION, MARRIAGES 199
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John Eliot. (By permission from a portrait in the possession of thefamily of the late William AVhiting, Esq.) 200 OUR FIRST CENTURY tion. Unhappily for them, they beheved in the gloomyCalvinistic doctrines preached to them from the pulpitand taught to them in their homes. Their minds wereconstantly directed to the fact that they were in immi-nent danger of dying and going to hell. They weretaught that some are born to be saved and some are bornto be dammed, both by eternal decrees, made *beforeever the foundations of the world were laid, and thatthe number of those born to the one fate or the other^ is so fixed and limited that it can neither be added tonor taken from. Old records and diaries show us that even in tenderinfancy, little children of three or four years of age weretaught these doctrines in ways that might well havedriven them into convulsions or made raving maniacs ofthem. Judge Sewell, whose diary is perhaps the bestmirror of that time, tells us how he used to laborwith

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