The kirk, which stands near the water, and at a distance shows a pretty wooden spire, is after the pattern of a New England meeting-house.When I reached it, the house was full and the service had begun.There was something familiar in the bareness and uncompromising plainness and ugliness of the interior.The pews had high backs, with narrow, uncushioned seats.The pulpit was high,--a sort of theological fortification,--approached by wide, curving flights of stairs on either side.Those who occupied the near seats to the right and left of the pulpit had in front of them a blank board partition, and could not by any possibility see the minister, though they broke their necks backwards over their high coat-collars.
The congregation had a striking resemblance to a country New England congregation of say twenty years ago.The clothes they wore had been Sunday clothes for at least that length of time.
Such clothes have a look of I know not what devout and painful respectability, that is in keeping with the worldly notion of rigid Scotch Presbyterianism.One saw with pleasure the fresh and rosy-cheeked children of this strict generation, but the women of the audience were not in appearance different from newly arrived and respectable Irish immigrants.They wore a white cap with long frills over the forehead, and a black handkerchief thrown over it and hanging down the neck,--a quaint and not unpleasing disguise.
The house, as I said, was crowded.It is the custom in this region to go to church,--for whole families to go, even the smallest children; and they not unfrequently walk six or seven miles to attend the service.There is a kind of merit in this act that makes up for the lack of certain other Christian virtues that are practiced elsewhere.The service was worth coming seven miles to participate in!--it was about two hours long, and one might well feel as if he had performed a work of long-suffering to sit through it.The singing was strictly congregational.Congregational singing is good (for those who like it) when the congregation can sing.This congregation could not sing, but it could grind the Psalms of David powerfully.They sing nothing else but the old Scotch version of the Psalms, in a patient and faithful long meter.And this is regarded, and with considerable plausibility, as an act of worship.It certainly has small element of pleasure in it.Here is a stanza from Psalm xlv., which the congregation, without any instrumental nonsense, went through in a dragging, drawling manner, and with perfect individual independence as to time:
"Thine arrows sharply pierce the heart of th' enemies of the king, And under thy sub-jec-shi-on the people down do bring."The sermon was extempore, and in English with Scotch pronunciation;and it filled a solid hour of time.I am not a good judge of ser-mons, and this one was mere chips to me; but my companion, who knows a sermon when he hears it, said that this was strictly theological, and Scotch theology at that, and not at all expository.It was doubtless my fault that I got no idea whatever from it.But the adults of the congregation appeared to be perfectly satisfied with it; at least they sat bolt upright and nodded assent continually.
The children all went to sleep under it, without any hypocritical show of attention.To be sure, the day was warm and the house was unventilated.If the windows had been opened so as to admit the fresh air from the Bras d'Or, I presume the hard-working farmers and their wives would have resented such an interference with their ordained Sunday naps, and the preacher's sermon would have seemed more musty than it appeared to be in that congenial and drowsy air.
Considering that only half of the congregation could understand the preacher, its behavior was exemplary.
After the sermon, a collection was taken up for the minister; and Inoticed that nothing but pennies rattled into the boxes,--a melancholy sound for the pastor.This might appear niggardly on the part of these Scotch Presbyterians, but it is on principle that they put only a penny into the box; they say that they want a free gospel, and so far as they are concerned they have it.Although the farmers about the Bras d'Or are well-to-do they do not give their minister enough to keep his soul in his Gaelic body, and his poor support is eked out by the contributions of a missionary society.It was gratifying to learn that this was not from stinginess on the part of the people, but was due to their religious principle.It seemed to us that everybody ought to be good in a country where it costs next to nothing.
When the service was over, about half of the people departed; the rest remained in their seats and prepared to enter upon their Sabbath exercises.These latter were all Gaelic people, who had understood little or nothing of the English service.The minister turned himself at once into a Gaelic preacher and repeated in that language the long exercises of the morning.The sermon and perhaps the prayers were quite as enjoyable in Gaelic as in English, and the singing was a great improvement.It was of the same Psalms, but the congregation chanted them in a wild and weird tone and manner, as wailing and barbarous to modern ears as any Highland devotional outburst of two centuries ago.This service also lasted about two hours; and as soon as it was over the faithful minister, without any rest or refreshment, organized the Sunday-school, and it must have been half past three o'clock before that was over.And this is considered a day of rest.