10 RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



it is inevitable that the church should stand as the most im- 

 portant and the unifying factor of their lives. 



On Sundays nearly every one went to meeting and stayed all 

 day. No one cooked on Sunday, and all the food for that day 

 was cold. The women were expected to go to church all day, as 

 well as the men, so that the Saturday baking, which tradition 

 still holds many a modern household to regard, was then a mat- 

 ter of urgent need as well as a matter of conscience. The man 

 who had relatives living near the church, or who lived near by, 

 was indeed lucky, because a warm fire at noon might then be his. 

 Otherwise the dinner was carried and eaten in the church in 

 winter, or outside in summer. How many of us would submit 

 to the discomfort of sitting all day in an unheated building, 

 regaling ourselves at noon with cold food, with the thermometer 

 many times in the neighborhood of zero? Yet duty led them 

 and personal comfort did not enter into their consideration. 

 We may hope that the dish of gossip, taken with their dinner, 

 compensated for much which might otherwise have been unbear- 

 able. Perhaps this human companionship softened the denun- 

 ciations and threats of the two sermons. The church, aside from 

 its spiritual teachings, furnished a place in which all the town 

 met once a week. It was more or less political in a broader sense, 

 for there matters of national politics, state politics, and even 

 those of local importance were discussed by the minister. As 

 he was the best educated man, his opinion and its expression very 

 often formed that of the majority of those of the other men in 

 town. 



In the church, also, were held the town meetings, with their 

 serious and sometimes humorous debates, which furnished a 

 means of growth and expression to others. It was this training 

 which enabled the colonies to withstand the mother country. 

 Men had learned to think in a logical way, and to express their 

 thoughts. They were keen to find the weak places in an argu- 

 ment and to search out sophistries. When England attempted 

 to cheat their sense of justice, she found a community made up 

 of citizens, not of peasants. 



The town was divided into districts: the center of each was 

 the school. Each district met and decided its own educational 

 problems as best suited it; each engaged its own teachers, and 



