"
In Andover, Judge Phillips left in his will a silver flagon to the church
as an expression of interest and hope that the "laudable practice of
reading between services may be continued so long as even a small number
shall be disposed to attend the exercise." Mr. Abbott left another silver
flagon to the Andover Church to encourage reading between services; though
how this piece of plate encouraged personally, since neither the deacons
nor the boys got it as a prize, cannot be precisely understood. The
noon-house in Andover was a large building with a great chimney and open
fireplace at either end. It has always seemed to me a piece of gratuitous
posthumous cruelty in Judge Phillips and Mr. Abbott to try to cheat those
Andover boys of their noon-time rest and relaxation, and to expect them,
wriggling and twisting with repressed vitality, to listen to a long extra
sermon, read perhaps by some unskilled reader, or explained by some
incapable expounder. The Sabbath-school did not then exist, and was not in
general favor until the noon-houses had begun to disappear. The Reverend
Jedediah Morse, father of the inventor of the electric telegraph, was
almost the first New England clergyman who approved of Sabbath-schools and
established them in his parish. In Salem they were opened in 1808, and the
scholars came at half-past six on Sunday mornings.
Pages:
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116