LUTHER BURBANK 



Little did the good people who so sedulously 

 led their flocks to church and subjected them to 

 the bombardment of repeated sermons, suspect 

 that they were cultivating an attitude of mind that 

 would insure that the churches of succeeding dec- 

 ades should be nearly vacant. Indeed, they would 

 have been horrified had they been told such a 

 thing; yet I think we need not doubt that on the 

 whole such was the influence of their well meant 

 efforts. 



It adds to our understanding of the curiously 

 archaic relation of the church to the community, 

 even in that comparatively recent period, to reflect 

 that it was obligatory in Lancaster a short time 

 before for each family to contribute to the support 

 of the Unitarian Church. 



My father was not a Unitarian regarding that 

 sect rather as heretical yet he supplied sundry 

 loads of bricks without charge for the building of 

 a new Unitarian Church. 



In subsequent years the law that made the 

 Church practically a part of the civic organism 

 had been repealed, and thenceforward people 

 were allowed to follow their own inclinations in 

 the matter of church contributions. But this sev- 

 erance of church and state, so to speak, did not so 

 much represent a reaction against the doctrines 

 of a particular church, as a general reaction 



[30] 



