CHAPTER VI.
A Disorderly Scene in Church.
If anything were needed to add to the excitement which the condition ofthe "afflicted children," as they were generally termed, naturallyproduced in Salem village and the adjoining neighborhood, it was a scenein the village church one Sunday morning.
The church was a low, small structure, with rough, unplastered roof andwalls, and wooden benches instead of pews. The sexes were divided, themen sitting on one side and the women on the other, but each person inhis or her regular and appointed seat.
It was the custom at that time to select a seating committee ofjudicious and careful men, whose very important duty it was to seat thecongregation. In doing this they proceeded on certain well-definedprinciples.
The front seats were to be filled with the older members of thecongregation, a due reverence for age, as well as for the fact thatthese were more apt to be weak of sight and infirm of hearing,necessitated this. Then came the elders and deacons of the church; thenthe wealthier citizens of the parish; then the younger people and thechildren.
The Puritan fathers had their faults; but they never would havetolerated the fashionable custom of these days, whereby the wealthy,without regard to their age, occupy the front pews; and the poorermembers, no matter how aged, or infirm of sight or hearing are oftenforced back where they can neither see the minister nor hear the sermon.And one can imagine in what forcible terms they would have denouncedsome city meeting-houses of the present era where the church is regardedsomewhat in the light of an opera house, and the doors of the pews keptlocked and closed until those who have purchased the right to reservedseats shall have had the first chance to enter.
The Reverend Master Lawson, a visiting elder, was the officiatingminister on the Sunday to which we have referred. The psalm had beensung after the opening prayer and the minister was about to come forwardto give his sermon, when, before he could rise from his seat, AbigailWilliams, the niece of the Reverend Master Parris, only twelve yearsold, and one of the "circle" cried out loudly:--"Now stand up and nameyour text!"
When he had read the text, she exclaimed insolently, "It's a long text."And then when he was referring to his doctrine, she said:--"I know nodoctrine you mentioned. If you named any, I have forgotten it."
And then when he had concluded, she cried out, "Look! there sits GoodyOsburn upon the beam, suckling her yellow-bird betwixt her fingers."
Then Ann Putnam, that other child of twelve, joined in; "There flies theyellow-bird to the minister's hat, hanging on the pin in the pulpit."
Of course such disorderly proceedings produced a great excitement in thecongregation; but the two children do not appear to have been rebuked byeither of the ministers, or by any of the officers of the church; itseeming to have been the general conclusion that they were notresponsible for what they said, but were constrained by an irresistibleand diabolical influence. In truth, the children were regarded with aweand pity instead of reproof and blame, and therefore naturally feltencouraged to further efforts in the same direction.
I have said that this was the general feeling, but that feeling was notuniversal. Several of the members, notably young Joseph Putnam, FrancisNurse and Peter Cloyse were very much displeased at the toleration shownto such disorderly doings, and began to absent themselves from publicworship, with the result of incurring the anger of the children, whowere rapidly assuming the role of destroying angels to the people ofSalem village and its vicinity.
As fasting and prayer were the usual resources of our Puritan fathers indifficulties, these were naturally resorted to at once upon thisoccasion. The families to which the "afflicted children" belongedassembled the neighbors--who had also fasted--and, under the guidance ofthe Reverend Master Parris, besought the Lord to deliver them from thepower of the Evil One. These were exciting occasions, for, wheneverthere was a pause in the proceedings, such of the "afflicted" as werepresent would break out into demoniac howlings, followed by contortionsand rigid trances, which, in the words of our manuscript, were "enoughto make the devil himself weep."
These village prayers, however, seeming to be insufficient, MasterParris called a meeting of the neighboring ministers; but the prayers ofthese also had no effect. The "children" even surpassed themselves onthis occasion. The ministers could not doubt the evidence of their ownreverend eyes and ears, and united in the declaration of their beliefthat Satan had been let loose in this little Massachusetts village, toconfound and annoy the godly, to a greater extent than they had everbefore known or heard of. And now that the ministers had spoken, it wasalmost irreligious and atheistical for others to express any doubt. Forif the ministers could not speak with authority in a case of this kind,which seemed to be within their peculiar field and province, what wastheir judgment worth upon any matter?