A COUNTRY CHURCH. 85 



be not enough to make people love one another, I am 

 afraid that an eternity in the same heaven would not suf- 

 fice. 



Blessings on the warm country heart. There were tears 

 shed that morning in the old church that honored the eyes 

 that shed them ; and the pastor himself spoke with broken 

 voice and imperfect utterance when he told them that on 

 Tuesday afternoon the old man would be brought once 

 again, and for the last time, into the church, and then car- 

 ried out to sleep with the dead of the country in the old 

 hill-side grave-yard. 



The service was simple and beautiful. The first prayer 

 was but an invocation of blessing, and after it followed 

 the stampede into the galleries and side aisles of the men 

 and boys who had congregated at the door. 



Then followed a psalm. If you have read "The Old 

 House by the River," you will understand me when I 

 speak of the emotion which I feel in a country church on 

 a calm Sabbath morning. The sound of that psalm going 

 up peacefully to God from the little church ; the voices of 

 the old men, broken but pleasant, joining in the song of 

 praise ; the pleasant voices (out of time and out of tune, 

 but in unison of heart) of the old ladies, here and there 

 about the church; the occasional high note of an unprac- 

 ticed child ; the clear, rich melody of a bird-like voice that 

 is always heard somewhere in every country congregation 

 — all these sounds are so familiar and so holy to us, that 

 there are few places on earth so near to heaven as a seat 

 in a country church on such a morning. 



They sang rudely the psalms of the Scottish Church, 

 but, rude though they are and rudely sung, they neverthe- 

 less have about them forever the sanctity which the lips 

 of martyrs gave them. They were sung when the foam 



