Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 85.djvu/8

2 tist, to which, it seems, John Maxson belonged. It was not a new invention of the colonists, but had existed in England since the days of early dissent, and it is possible that John Maxson had brought the doctrine with him from England. Adhering to the practice of baptism by immersion, the sect also maintained the immutable obligation of the Seventh-Day Sabbath of the ten commandments, the Jewish day of rest.

The grave disabilities imposed upon them in Massachusetts by the obligatory abstention from labor on two days—on one day by conscience, and the other by the rigorous laws of the Puritans—made Roger William's little state the paradise of the Sabbatarians, and the sect flourished greatly in it, while the social isolation consequent on the practice of contracting marriages only within their church membership (made imperative if family dissensions were to be avoided on a question of primary importance to that community, which had sacrificed all worldly advantages to what it believed to be obedience to the Word of God) at once knit together their church in closer relations, and drew to it others from the outside, attracted by the magnetism of a more ascetic faith.

Amongst the emigrants from England on the Restoration were a family by the name of Stillman, who having become involved with the Regicides went into what was then the most obscure and remote part of New England, and settled at Wethersfield in Connecticut. One of the brothers, George, hearing of this strange doctrine denying the sanctity of the "Lord's Day," came to Newport to convert the erring brothers; but, convinced by them, remained in the colony, where he became a shining light. Thus it happened that both lines of my ancestry became involved in the mystic bonds of a faith which shut them off in a particular manner from all around them. The consequent isolation, I fear, made much for self-righteousness. In their eyes it was the observance which maintained continuity between the Christian church and the institutions imposed in Paradise, and therefore made them peculiarly the people of God. This amiable fanaticism, fervent without being uncharitable, interfered in nowise the widest exercise of Christian sympathy with other sects, the observance of the Seventh-Day Sabbath not being held as an essential to godliness, or to Christian fellowship, the nonobservance being possibly only due to ignorance, so that the relations of the historic First Seventh-Day Baptist Church at Newport with the churches observing the Lord's-day" Sabbath were always most kindly. The meeting house occupied by the Sabbatarians on the seventh day was occupied by one of the Sunday-observing sects on the first, and the preachers of one often officiated for the other. But the worldly advantage enjoyed by the Sunday keeper was so considerable that all who did not hold to the finest scruple of conscience in their conduct passed over to the majority and were excluded from the communion, as a precaution against the Sunday keepers becoming a majority in the church and taking it away from the Sabbath keepers, as did actually occur with one of their congregations in Vermont. In our community generally there was a most scrupulous avoidance of any occupation on Sunday which might annoy these who held it as Sabbath, and though in the state of New York the laws were extremely liberal in this respect, my father in my boyhood always made it a point not to allow in his workshop any work which would be heard by the neighbors. It can be readily understood that this continual selection of the most scrupulous consciences, the closest thinkers and the least worldly characters, in the church of my ancestors, must have developed a singularity fine and cutting-edge temper in its adherents; and the succession of generations of men and women who had graduated in the school