Page:The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson (1924).pdf/122

90 that died hard, and there was smiling among the youngsters the first Sunday it was tried, when one lone spinster spunkily preserved the honored custom.

But it was the supplanting of the bass viol by the organ that was most sternly resented and deplored. "It was a step toward Romanism." It was "a wicked outlay of money." Deacon Leland, although of musical repute, objected stoutly on the ground that it made his wife's head ache. And worse still the organist was a young and handsome girl. There was endless opposition to the new and heavenly aid to worship. Deacon Leland, Deacon Sweetser, and Deacon Mack, who did not dare be good and graceful too, preserved their John Calvin sternness until even their ice cracked under the new force.

There were sermons of mighty power preached from that tall pulpit, a memorable one by Dr. Swift, of South Hadley, "I heard Thy voice in the garden and was afraid," typical of the prevailing mood. His pronouncedly spiritual physique and solemn manner added to the supernatural awe of the text. Adam's apology, not then influenced or dissected by a short process of reductio ad absurdum, or minute German scholarship, became a shrinking experience of every listening soul from the white, ineffable, eternal God. At the close there was left only a wide cold planetary space, void of all save sin and its consequence. The stillness and sobs must have been proof of the power and excitement of his impassioned picture.

What the shy young heart of Emily Dickinson felt—whether she steeled herself not to think or no—no modern mind can safely conjecture. That she had a terror of God on the Sabbath, and loved his creatures