cture in Christendom, is
at this moment to be found in the country towns and villages of the
United States." And speaking of the influence of what our churches
should be, in the beauty of their proportions, and in the expression of
the sacred purposes which they embody, and the feelings of reverence and
harmony with God and man which they suggest, he fitly says--"We fear
there are very few country churches in our land that exert this kind of
spell,--a spell which grows out of making stone, and brick, and timber,
obey the will of the living soul, and express a religious sentiment.
Most persons, most committees, select men, vestrymen, and congregations,
who have to do with the building of churches, appear indeed wholly to
ignore the fact, that the form and feature of a building may be made to
express religious, civil, domestic, or a dozen other feelings, as
distinctly as the form and features of the human face:--and yet this is
a fact as well known by all true architects, as that joy and sorrow,
pleasure and pain, are capable of irradiating or darkening the
countenance. Yes, and we do not say too much, when we add, that right
expression in a building for religious purposes, has as much to do with
awakening devotional feelings, and begetting an attachment in the heart,
as the unmistakable signs of virtue and benevolence in our
fellow-creatures have in awakening kindred feelings in our own breasts.

[Illustration: FIG. 33.--_Floor Plan._]

"We do not, of course, mean to say that a beautiful rural church will
make all the population about it devotional, any more than that sunshine
will banish gloom; but it is one of the influences that prepare the way
for religious feeling, and which we are as unwise to neglect, as we
should be to abjure the world and bury ourselves, like the ancient
troglodytes, in caves and caverns."

Happily we are coming to appreciate these truths, not only in our
cities, but in the country, and the ugly, unsightly, and unseemly
structures which have so long deformed the land are giving place to
edifices in which the true ideas of harmony, grace, proportion, symmetry
and expression, which make what we call Beauty, are brought out in due
proportion.

The church we present is designed to be of wood, the country about the
site affording an abundance of that material, at the lowest cost. An
inspection of the design will show that the principal timbers of the
frame are intended to be visible externally,--