The settee madness diminisheth not. . . nay, it even increases ) :
shelomit reblogged
Also just read the injunction "the cullering of the body of our meeting house shall be like Pomfret, and the Roff shall be cullered Read," confusedly Google Imaged pomfrets, and found them, as I had recollected them, to be a two-toned fish to neither of whose tones I could hope to give an identifiable name. Then I finally remembered that there's such a place as Pomfret, Connecticut. O for a historical preservation society bold enough to paint an eighteenth-century meetinghouse red again! Or pumpkin, which I see in records quite a bit.
@tzintzuntzan2 said: What does cullered mean here? I assume you work with 17th century texts
"Colored," as in "painted." I'm actually a nineteenth-centuryist, but this particular quotation was from church minutes from the 1760s.
Buddy, I'll die before I spell 'exegetical' correctly on the first try.
Also just read the injunction "the cullering of the body of our meeting house shall be like Pomfret, and the Roff shall be cullered Read," confusedly Google Imaged pomfrets, and found them, as I had recollected them, to be a two-toned fish to neither of whose tones I could hope to give an identifiable name. Then I finally remembered that there's such a place as Pomfret, Connecticut. O for a historical preservation society bold enough to paint an eighteenth-century meetinghouse red again! Or pumpkin, which I see in records quite a bit.
MS Paint, don't fail me now!
It's been a scandalous couple of weeks over in the hymnology mines! After two bigamists and a murder-suicide, learning that Rev. Thomas J. Shelton (1849-1929) had shipped his second wife off to Detroit to give birth before she technically got around to being his second wife seemed like small potatoes. Nonetheless, I salute this census-taker's commitment to preserving the goss. @elucubrare, comment?
'Whereas, our brother David Pond, as several of our brethren [. . .] struck into a pitch of the tune on Feb. 18 [1739], in public worship on the forenoon raised above what was set, after most of the Congregation as is thought, kept the pitch for three lines and after our Pastor had desired them that raised it to fall to the pitch that was set to be suitable, decent, or to that purpose: The question was put, whether the church apprehends this our brother David Pond's so doing to be disorderly, and it passed in the affirmative and David Pond is suspended until satisfaction is given.' Pond afterwards applied to the Church of Christ, in Medway, for admission. Letters, which well illustrate the characteristics of the times, were exchanged by the two churches in regard to the case of Mr. Pond. It was suggested that because of his uncommon height and muscular strength he pitched the tune too high. Whether this, or because of his willfulness, others must determine; at any rate he was excommunicated from the church.
E. O. Jameson, The History of Medway, Mass., 1713 to 1885 [Medway, Mass.]: published by the Town, 1886), 107.
After the utterance of many earnest but futile prayers against dancing, card-playing, church fairs, and kindred entertainments in which his congregation had engaged in order to attract crowds to the church, the Rev. Barton W. Perry, has resigned his pastorate of the Grace Presbyterian Church on Lyell avenue, [Rochester, N.Y.]. Mr. Perry said that the question of entertainments was the only one that had ever come between him and his flock. "The dog shows," said he, "which it has been the custom to hold every week or so in my church, worked in direct opposition to the highest aims of Christianity. I could not labor harmoniously in such surroundings, and I shall accept a charge either in Caledonia or the church in Kansas City."
Our Church Paper (New Market, Va.), 22 Feb. 1893.
TERRIBLE(!)?--The Methodist Parsonage of this city was entered on Friday night last, in the absence of the good parson and his wife, by a whole company of people, about 50 strong, who, without fear of law, judge or jury, took possession thereof and quietly waited the return of the occupants. As soon as they appeared, Mr. Abbott, the pastor, was seized by the outer guard and hurried before the assembled company, who demanded of him what he had to say. Modest young man, what could he say? His tongue refused to utter what his heart felt. The company were of his own flock and were only showing their love for him. Suffice to say, his larder has been heavily re-inforced, and other testimonials of love and goodwill shown.
Brunswick Advertiser (Brunswick, Ga.) for April 25, 1877.
At another time I was riding from Charlestown to Marlow to preach, when, coming to a corner of the roads, one leading to where I lived then, my kind and beautiful horse refused to go toward Marlow. This astonished me much, for he was one of the gentlest of animals. I gave him a cut of my whip; he stood and trembled, and still refused to go toward my meeting. I sat on his back, and prayed for guidance in managing that singular freak of my horse. I immediately felt that I must go home, but could not tell why; I turned him toward home, and as my chidlren saw me in the distance they ran and met me, informing me that their mother had fallen and broken her arm. My presence was never more needed at home than at that time. This only instance in which my horse refused to carry me where I directed him seemed a mystery, but the sequel to me explained it all. "The Secret of the Lord is with them that fear him."
A.D. Merrill, "Reminiscences of Father Merrill: Singular Incidents on Unity Circuit," Zion's Herald and Wesleyan Journal 30, 9 (Mar. 2, 1859): 1. @minipliny, I have found the most Methodist Horse!
Deeply disappointed that, of the two MEC antislavery bodies with which I have to document Abraham Dow Merrill's affiliations, the New England Wesleyan Anti-Slavery Society (abbreviation: NEWASS) is chronologically the earlier.
The other top comedic moment in The Experience, Christian and Ministerial, of Mr. Reuben Peaslee (1816) is when he's been dragged very reluctantly into preaching his second-ever public sermon, gets about twenty minutes in, three people suddenly fall senseless to the ground, some of the audience start freaking out and running out of doors, one lady objects to all this houdekai by reminding folks that "God is a God of order"* (go off, sis!) and a second lady shouts her down saying, "Glory to God: this is the kind of order that he likes."
*Invoking I Corinthians 14:33??? Peaslee is understandably more occupied with folks getting slain in the spirit than these two women having an essentially unrelated theological argument in the middle of his sermon, but it fascinates me.
One day three men came into my store, and one of them began to curse and swear: I said, 'What makes you swear so?' He looked at me and said, 'You are a free-willer, or a methodist.' I told him, 'I professed to be a follower of Christ, and to stand as a witness for Him, and that he must give an account to God for every idle word.' He replied, 'When you get to heaven and I to hell, you will laugh at me, won[']t you?' I answered, 'If you go to hell, THE DEVIL will laugh at you for having been such a fool as to mind him up here.'
The Experience, Christian and Ministerial, of Mr. Reuben Peaslee (Haverhill, [Mass.]: printed by Burrill and Tileston, 1816), 19.
Isaac Watts Merrill (1803-1879) holding a hymnal of Isaac Watts (1674-1748), painted by Samuel Jordan, Haverhill, MA, 1831. This image has been sitting in my downloads folder labeled "Wattception" for months and it took me an embarrassing amount of time to reconstruct why.
At the raising of the present church in 1820, a Mr. Newell was killed and there being no minister in town a Mr. Aiken, a Baptist from Hardwick, was sent for to preach the funeral sermon. His text was, "if a beam fall upon a man and kill him, the Lord hath sent it." The suitability of the text aroused the wonder of the good deacons, who immediately began a search and not finding it visited Mr. Aiken and asked where the text was. He said, "I do not remember, gentlemen, but it is somewhere in Josephus."
Horace F. Graham, Historical Address Delivered at Craftsbury Common at the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of Craftsbury, Vt., July 4th, 1889 (n.p., [1889]), 12-13.
You-all couldn't be bothered to fix the fence before the photographer turned up?