Felt, in his "Annals of Salem," asserts that the First Church of
Boston was the first New England congregation to have a stove for heating
the meeting-house at the time of public worship; this was in 1773. This
statement is incorrect. Mr. Judd says the Hadley church had an iron stove
in their meeting-house as early as 1734--the Hadley people were such
sybarites and novelty-lovers in those early days! The Old South Church of
Boston followed in the luxurious fashion in 1783, and the "Evening Post"
of January 25, 1783, contained a poem of which these four lines show the
criticising and deprecating spirit:--
"Extinct the sacred fire of love,
Our zeal grown cold and dead,
In the house of God we fix a stove
To warm us in their stead."
Other New England congregations piously froze during service-time well into
this century. The Longmeadow church, early in the field, had a stove in
1810; the Salem people in 1815; and the Medford meeting in 1820. The church
in Brimfield in 1819 refused to pay for a stove, but ordered as some
sacrifice to the desire for comfort, two extra doors placed on the
gallery-stairs to keep out draughts; but when in that town, a few years
later, a subscription was made to buy a church stove, one old member
refused to contribute, saying "good preaching kept him hot enough without
stoves."
As all the church edifices were built without any thought of the
possibility of such comfortable furniture, they had to be adapted as best
they might to the ungainly and unsightly great stoves which were usually
placed in the central aisle of the building.
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