RELUJIOUS PROc;RESS AM) CHRISTIAN CULTURE. 37 



even called by opprobrious names. We are certainly nearer to the age of 

 gold to-day. Tliis century is not so theological as the last, but it is more 

 religious. iNIen have learned to allow each other the same liberty in re- 

 ligious theory and modes ot worship as in politics and methods of farming. 

 They have learned that neither a neighbor's judgment nor piety is to be 

 impugned because he sees certain facts at a different angle from their own 

 and draws his inferences accordingly. To no part of our land probably, 

 has greater blessing come from th^ great Wesleyan movement than to Suf- 

 folk county. Seen in advance, it was looked upon wjth apprehension as a 

 division, and consequently a weakening of the fagot. It was really a pro- 

 cess of multiplication and enlargement. It gave us two regiments for one 

 in every town; not cros>ing each others line of march, but enlisted in the 

 same cau^e and fighting the same enemy. They came into the field — these 

 Methodists — light- \rmed, with lively music, making ra|)id charges, going 

 where the old-tashioned heavy artillery could not, and with their swift and 

 rattling fire doing no slight execution. How much have they done to break 

 up a fatalism, which was almost Alahommedan in its grasp upon the hearts 

 of good men, and which often furnished laz;r and batl men their best e.xcuse 

 for continuing in th^ir ways of sin and listlessness. 



I have not been able to learn that any Sunday school was stirted in 

 this county earlier than that which was instituted in Southampton by Rev. 

 Peter H. Shaw, in 1821. It seems strange to us now that such a move- 

 ment should ever hiv.j been regarded as an innovatiim of verv dmbtful ex- 

 pediency. And yet goo.l people opposeJ it on various grounds The\- 

 said that it was a novelty. They and their fathers had got ah^ag well 

 enough without it. It was enough if the district school-teacher on ever\- 

 Saturday morning made his scholars say the catechism. A school, too, on 

 Sunday was an infriiigement on the sanctity of the Sabbath. It was the en- 

 tering wedge. It required the performance of labor which would soon ob- 

 literate all distinction between common and holy dme. As if children 

 were not to be lifted out of the pit of ignorance, or it were not lawful to do 

 good even on the Sabbath day! But how has wisdom been justified of her 

 children ! The church has learned the lesson how much better it is to go 

 tpiietly into the orchard and gather the delicate fruit by hand than it is to 

 wait for some gale to come and shake it bruised and broken to the ground. 



Suffolk county has had an honorable part in the institution of great re- 

 forms. No man probably had more to do with the incepdon of the tem- 

 perance movement throughout the land than Dr. Lyman Beecher. And it 

 was during his East-Hampton pastorate that the fire was kindled which in 

 a few years swept through the county and burnt the wretched side-board 

 social tippling habit out of multitudes of Christian households. Ministers 

 and people had been pretty much alike. The jug and the decanter held a 

 place almost as respectable and were regarded about as indispensable as the 

 Bible and the catechism. It is quite customary now to have a calendar of 

 Scr'pture that sliall furnish a text for every day in the year. It was far more 

 common at the beginning of this century to fortify against every dav's de- 

 mands by a morning dram. "My spirit was greatly stirred," says Dr. 

 Bjecher, "at the treatment of the Inilians by unprincipled persons who 

 sold them rum. One man would go down with his barrel of whiskey in a 

 wagon to the Indians and get them tip.sy and bring them in debt. He 

 would get all their corn and bring it back in his wagon. In fact he 

 stripped them, Then in winter they must come up twenty miles, buy their 



