ence was far less marked than that existing between the new and
old buildings of the Old South society, which the modern tourist may
compare at his leisure in the Boston of to-day. Even the Episcopalians
shared, or deferred to, the prevailing spirit of the time: they put no
cross upon their Christ Church in Cambridge, nearly a hundred and thirty
years after the settlement of the place, lest they should offend the
tastes of their neighbors. The Methodists, the "Christians," the
Swedenborgians, the Unitarians and the Universalists were not yet, and
the Moravians were a small and little-understood body in Eastern
Pennsylvania.

[Illustration: KING'S CHAPEL BOSTON, IN 1872.]

Nearly all the colonists, of whatever name, brought from Europe a
conscientious love of religious simplicity and unpretentiousness: for
the most part, the English-speaking settlers were dissenters from the
Church which owned all the splendid architectural monuments of the
country whence they came; and it was not strange that out of their
religious thought grew churches that symbolized the sturdy qualities of
a faith which, right or wrong, had to endure exile and poverty and
privation--privation not only from social wealth, but from the rich
store of ecclesiastical traditions which had accumulated for centuries
in cathedral choirs and abbey cloisters.

[Illustration: CHRIST CHURCH, BOSTON.]

Therefore, the typical New England meeting-house of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries may perhaps be taken as the best original example
of what America has to show in the way of church-building. To be sure,
its cost was modest, its material was perishable wood, its architectural
design was often a curious medley of old ideas and new uses, and even
its few ornaments were likely to be devoid of the beauty their designers
fancied that they possessed. But it was, at any rate, an honest
embodiment of a sincere idea--the idea of "freedom to worship God;" and
it was adapted to the uses which it was designed to serve. It stood upon
a hill, a square box with square windows cut in its sides--grim without
and grim within, save as the mellowing seasons toned down its ruder
aspects, and green grass and waving boughs framed it as if it were a
picture. Within, the high pulpit, surmounted by a sounding-board,
towered over the square-backed pews, facing a congregation kept orderly
by stern tithing-man and sterner tradition. There was at first neither
organ nor stove nor c