516 RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT-I 



of Canterbury; have been present at high mass per 

 formed by the Archbishop of Athens under the shadow 

 of Mars Hill and the Parthenon ; and, though I am sin 

 gularly susceptible to the influence of such pageants, 

 especially if they are accompanied by noble music, no one 

 of these has ever made so great an impression upon me 

 as that simple Anglo-American service performed by a 

 surpliced clergyman with a country choir and devout as 

 semblage in this little village church. Curiously enough, 

 one custom, which high-churchmen long ago discarded as 

 beneath the proper dignity of the service, was perhaps 

 the thing which impressed me most, and I have since 

 learned that it generally thus impressed new-comers to 

 the Episcopal Church: this was the retirement of the 

 clergyman, at the close of the regular morning prayer, 

 to the vestry, where he left his surplice, and whence he 

 emerged in a black Geneva gown, in which he then 

 preached the sermon. This simple feature in the cere 

 monial greatly impressed me, and led me to ask the rea 

 son for it : at which answer was made that the clergyman 

 wore his white surplice as long as he was using God s 

 words, but that he wore his black gown whenever he used 

 his own. 



Though comparatively little was said by Episcopalians 

 regarding religious experiences or pious states of mind, 

 there was an atmosphere of orderly decency during the 

 whole service which could hardly fail to make an im 

 pression on all thinking children brought into it. I re 

 member that when, on one or two occasions, I was taken 

 to the Congregational church by my grandmother, I was 

 much shocked at what seemed to me the unfit dress and 

 conduct of the clergyman, in a cutaway coat, lounging 

 upon a sofa, and at the irreverent ways of the sturdy 

 farmers, who made ready to leave the church during the 

 final prayer, and even while they should have been re 

 ceiving the benediction. 



I thus became a devotee. Of the sermons I retained 

 little, except a few striking assertions or large words; 



