Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/169

Rh slept, at Paxil's long sermon, and fell out of thb window, and "was taken up dead." Sleeping was "adding something of our own to the worship of God;" "when Nadab and Abihu did so, there went out fire from the Lord and consumed them in death." "The holy God hath not been a little displeased for this sin." "It is not punished by men, but therefore the Lord himself will visit for it. "Tears of blood will trickle down thy dry and damned cheeks for ever and ever, because thou mayest not be so happy as to hear one sermon, or to have one offer of grace more throughout the never-ending days of eternity." Other men denounced their "Woe to sleepy sinners," and issued their "Proposals for the revival of dying religion."

Dr. Mather thought there was " a deluge of prophaneness," and bid men "be much in mourning and humiliation, that God's bottle may bo filled with tears." He thought piety was going out because surplices were coming in; it was wicked to "consecrate a church;" keeping Christmas was "like the idolatry of the calf." The common-prayer, an organ, a musical instrument in a church, was "not of God." Such things were to our worthy fathers in the ministry what temperance and anti-Slavery societies are to many of their sons—an "abomination," "unchristian and atheistic! "The introduction of "regular singing" was an indication to some that "all religion is to cease;" "we might as well go over to Popery at once." Inoculation for the small-pox was as vehemently and ably opposed as the modern at tempt to abolish the gallows; it was "a trusting more to the machinations of men than to the all- wise providence of God."

"When the enchantments of this world," says the ecclesiastical historian, "caused the rising generation more sensibly to neglect the primitive designs and interests of religion propounded by their fathers, a change ia the ten our of the Divine dispensation towards this country was quickly the matter of every one's observation." "Our wheat and our peas fell under an unaccountable blast." "We were visited with multiplied shipwrecks;" "pestilential sicknesses did sometimes become epidemic among us." "Indians cruelly butchered many hundreds of our inhabitants, and scattered whole towns with miserable