_that_ convenience. I
had therefore to go with my hat and top-coat, covered with snow, right
into the pulpit. This church outside is a noble-looking building, with
massive pillars in front, and a bell-tower containing a town-clock; but
the interior seemed comparatively small. It had a gallery at one end,
which held only the singers and the organ. The seats below were not
more than one-third full. Dr. Beecher ministered in this place for
about ten years. It was now without a pastor, but was temporarily
supplied by Professor Allen. The congregation was far more decorous and
attentive than those in New Orleans. After the introductory service,
and while the hymn before sermon was being sung, a man came trudging
down the aisle, bearing an immense scuttle full of coals to supply the
stoves. How easy it would have been before service to place a box of
fuel in the vicinity of each stove, and thereby avoid this unseemly
bustle! But in the singing of the hymn, I found something to surprise
and offend me even more than the coal-scuttle. The hymn was--

"O'er the gloomy hills of darkness," &c.

I had selected it myself; but when I got to the second verse, where I
had expected to find

"Let the Indian, let the negro,
Let the rude barbarian see," &c.,

lo! "the Indian." and "the negro" had vanished, and

"Let the dark benighted pagan"

was substituted. A wretched alteration,--as feeble and tautological in
effect as it is suspicious in design. The altered reading, I learned,
prevails universally in America, except in the _original_ version used
by the Welsh congregations. Slave-holders, and the abettors of that
horrid system which makes it a crime to teach a negro to read the Word
of God, felt perhaps that they could not devoutly and consistently sing

"Let the Indian, let the negro," &c.

This church, I heard, was more polluted with a pro-slavery feeling than
any other in Cincinnati of the same denomination,--a circumstance
which, I believe, had something to do with Dr. Beecher's resignation of
the pastorate.

At the close of the sermon, having pronounced the benediction, I
engaged, according to our English custom, in a short act of private
devotion. When I raised my head and opened my eyes, the very last man
of the congregation was actually making his exit through the doorway;
and it was quite as much as I could manage to put on my top-coat and
gloves and reach the door before the sexton closed it. This rushing