Chapter 27

"Sleep, thou hast been a grandsire, and begot
A father to me: and thou hast created
A mother and two brothers."

Cymbeline

The short twilight was already passed, when old Mark Heathcote ended the
evening prayer. The mixed character of the remarkable events of that day
had given birth to a feeling, which could find no other relief than that
which flowed from the usual zealous, confiding, and exalted outpouring of
the spirit. On the present occasion, he had even resorted to an
extraordinary, and, what one less devout might be tempted to think, a
supererogatory offering of thanksgiving and praise. After dismissing the
dependants of the establishment, supported by the arm of his son, he had
withdrawn into an inner apartment, and there, surrounded only by those who
had the nearest claims on his affections, the old man again raised his
voice to laud the Being, who, in the midst of so much general grief, had
deigned to look upon his particular race with the eyes of remembrance and
of favor. He spoke of his recovered grand-child by name, and he dealt with
the whole subject of her captivity among the heathen, and her restoration
to the foot of the altar, with the fervor of one who saw the wise decrees
of Providence in the event, and with a tenderness of sentiment that age
was far from having extinguished. It was at the close of this private and
peculiar worship, that we return into the presence of the family.

The spirit of reform had driven those, who so violently felt its
influence, into many usages that, to say the least, were quite as
ungracious to the imagination, as the customs they termed idolatrous were
obnoxious to the attacks of their own unaccommodating theories. The first
Protestants had expelled so much from the service of the altar, that
little was left for the Puritan to destroy, without incurring the risk of
leaving it naked of its loveliness. By a strange substitution of subtlety
for humility, it was thought pharisaical to bend the knee in public, lest
the great essential of spiritual worship might be supplanted by the more
attainable merit of formula; and while rigid aspects, and prescribed
deportments of a new character, were observed with all the zeal of
converts, ancient and even natural practices were condemned, chiefly, we
believe, from that necessity of innovation which appears to be an
unavoidable attendant of all plans of improvement, whether they are
successful or the reverse. But though the Puritans refused to bow their
stubborn limbs when the eye of man was on them, even while asking boons
suited to their own sublimated opinions, it was permitted to assume in
private an attitude which was thought to admit of so gross an abuse,
inasmuch as it infers a claim to a