CHAPTER XIII

RELIGIOUS BOOKS

Lisping new syllables, we scramble next Through moral narrative, or sacred text, And learn with wonder how this world began; Who made, who marred, and who has ransomed man.

--Tyrocinium. William Cowper, 1784.

It was inevitable, since the colonization of America was in the day of Puritanism, that the first modern literature known by American children should be the distinctive literature of that sect and period. These were religious emblems, controversial treatises, records of martyrdoms, catechismic dialogues, and a few accounts of precociously pious infants who had died. Thomas White, a Puritan minister, wrote thus:--

"When thou canst read, read no ballads and romances and foolish books, but the Bible and the Plaine Man's Pathway to Heaven, a very plaine holy book for you. Get the Practice of Piety, Mr. Baxter's call to the Unconverted, Allen's Alarm to the Unconverted, The Book of Martyrs."

The two books which he named after the Bible had the distinction of being the only ones owned by the wife of John Bunyan. The confiding Puritan child who read _The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven_, under the promise that it was a "plaine and perfite" book, must have been sorely disappointed. But if it wasn't plain it was popular. The twelfth edition is dated 1733. Foxe's _Book of Martyrs_ was found in many colonial homes, and was eagerly read by many children. Neither this nor any of the books on the Rev. Mr. White's list were properly children's books.

A special book for children was written by a Puritan preacher whose sayings were very dull in prose, and I am sure must have been more so in verse. It was called, _Old Mr. Dod's Sayings; composed in Verse, for the better Help of Memory; and the Delightfulness of Children reading them, and learning them, whereby they may be the better ingrafted in their memories and Understanding_. Cotton Mather also wrote _Good Lessons for Children, in Verse_.

Doubtless the most popular and most widely read of all children's books in New England was one whose title-page runs thus: _A Token for Children, being an Exact Account of the Conversion, Holy and Exemplary Lives and Joyful Deaths of Several Young Children, by James Janeway. To which is added A Token for the Children of New England or Some Examples of Children in whom the Fear of God was remarkably Budding before they died; in several Parts of New England. Preserved and Published for the Encouragement of Piety in other Children._

The first portion of this book was written by an English minister and was as popular in England as in America. The entire book with the title as given went through many editions both in England and America, even being reprinted in this century. In spite of its absolute trustfulness and simplicity of belief, it is a sad commentary on the spiritual conditions of the times. I will not give any of the accounts in full, for the expression of religious thought shown therein is so contrary to the sentiment of to-day that it would not be pleasing to modern readers. The New England portion was written by Cotton Mather, and out-Janeways Janeway. Young babes chide their parents for too infrequent praying, and have ecstasies of delight when they can pray _ad infinitum_. One child two years old was able "savingly to understand the mysteries of Redemption"; another of the same age was "a dear lover of faithful ministers." One poor little creature had "such extraordinary meltings that his eyes were red and sore from weeping on his sins." Anne Greenwich, who died when five years old, "discoursed most astonishingly of great mysteries"; Daniel Bradley, who had an "Impression and inquisitiveness of the State of Souls after Death," when three years old; Elizabeth Butcher, who, "when two and a half years old, as she lay in the Cradle would ask her self the Question What is my corrupt Nature? and would answer herself It is empty of Grace, bent unto Sin, and only to Sin, and that Continually," were among the distressing examples.

Jonathan Edwards' _Narratives of Conversions_ contained similar records of religious precocity. There is a curious double light in all these narratives: the premature sadness of the children, who seem as old as original sin, is equalled by the absolute childishness of the reverend gentlemen, Mr. Janeway, Mr. Mather, Mr. Edwards, who tell the tales. There were other similar collections of examples,--one of children in Siberia, others in Silesia, and another of _Pious Motions and Devout Exercises of Jewish Children in Berlin_. Siberia was apparently as remote and inaccessible to Boston in those days as the moon, and the incredulous mind cannot help wondering who sent and how were sent these accounts to those trusting Boston ministers.

Another child's book, by James Janeway, was _The Looking Glass for Children_. There had been a previous book with nearly the same title. Janeway's book was certainly popular, perhaps because it was in verse, and children's poetry was very scanty and rare in those days. It was reprinted many times, and parts appeared in selections and compilations until this century. A few lines run thus:--

"When by Spectators I behold What Beauty doth adorn me Or in a glass when I behold How sweetly God did form me, Hath God such comeliness bestowed And on me made to dwell What pity such a pretty maid As I should go to Hell."

A book of similar title was _Divine Blossoms, a Prospect or Looking Glass for Youth_.

The lack of poetry may also account in some degree for the astonishing popularity of a poem which appeared in 1662, written by a Puritan preacher named Michael Wigglesworth, and entitled, _The Day of Doom; or a Poetical description of the Great and Last Judgement_. This "epic of hell-fire and damnation" was reprinted again and again, and was sold in such large numbers that it is safe to assert that every New England household, whose members could read, was familiar with it. It was printed as a broadside, and children committed it to memory; teachers extolled it; ministers quoted it. Its horrible descriptions of hell and the sufferings of the damned are weakened to the modern mind by the thought of the presumptuous complacence of the author who would dare to give page after page of what he conceived the great Judge would say on the Day of Judgment. But of course no child, certainly no child of Puritan training, would note either absurdity or impropriety in assigning such words, and it is sad to think what must have been the climax of horror with which a sensitive child read God's answer to the plea for salvation made by "reprobate infants"; the terrible words running on through many stanzas, and ending thus:--

"Will you demand Grace at my hand, and challenge what is mine? Will you teach me whom to set free and thus my Grace confine? You sinners are, and such a share as sinners may expect; Such you shall have; for I do save none but my own Elect.

"Yet to compare your sin with their's who liv'd a longer time, I do confess yours is much less, though every sin's a crime. A Crime it is, therefore in bliss you may not hope to dwell; But unto you I shall allow the easiest room in Hell."

Thomas White wrote a book for children which certainly comes under the head of religious books, though its pages held also those frivolous lines "A was an archer who shot at a frog," etc. This dreary volume was entitled a _Little Book for Little Children_. It contained accounts of short-lived and morbid young Christians, much like those of James Janeway's book. One child of eight wept bitter and inconsolable tears for his sins. One wicked deed was lying. His mother asked him whether he were cold. He answered "Yes" instead of "Forsooth," and afterward doubted whether he really was cold or not. Another sin was whetting his knife on the Sabbath day. Poor Nathaniel Mather whittled on the Lord's day--and hid behind the door while thus sinning. A boy's jack-knife was a powerful force then as now. This book also had accounts of the Christian martyrs and their tortures. This was an English book, first reprinted in Boston in 1702. An edition of _Pilgrim's Progress_ was printed in Boston in 1681, another in 1706, and an illustrated edition in 1744, but I doubt that these were the complete book. Many shortened copies and imitations appeared. One was called _The Christian's Metamorphosis Unfolded_. Another _The Christian Pilgrim_. Dr. Neale edited it for children, making, says a modern critic, "a most impudent book." Bunyan also wrote _Divine Emblems_, which the young were enjoined to read, and he also "bowed his pen to children" and wrote _Country Rhimes for Children_. For many years no copy of this was known to exist, but one was found in America in recent years, and is now in the British Museum. It is an uncouth mixture of religious phrases and similes and very crude natural history.

_Pilgrim's Progress_ was the first light reading of Benjamin Franklin. Other books of his boyhood were Plutarch's _Lives_, Defoe's _Essays upon Projects_, Cotton Mather's _Essays to do Good_, and Burton's _Historical Collections_. Another patriot, at a later day--Abraham Lincoln--learning little but the primer at school, read slowly and absorbed into his brain, his heart, and his everyday speech the Bible, _Pilgrim's Progress_, Æsop's _Fables_ and Plutarch's _Lives_,--a good education,--to which a _Life of Washington_ added details of local patriotism.

Another book for young people--which might be termed a story-book, though its lesson was deemed deeply religious--was called, _A Small Book in Easy Verse Very Suitable for Children, entitled The Prodigal Daughter or the Disobedient Lady Reclaimed_. It was a poem of about a hundred stanzas, relating the story of a very wilful young woman who, on being locked up in her room by her father to check her extravagance, made a league with the Devil, attempted to poison her father and mother, dropped dead apparently on her wickedness being discovered, was carried to the grave, but revived just as the sexton was about to lower her coffin in the ground. She recovered, repented, related her experiences with unction, and lived ever after happy. The title-page bears a picture of the devil as a fine gentleman wearing his tail as a sword, and having one high-topped cloven-footed boot. This book enjoyed unbounded popularity even during the early years of this century.

It was similar in teaching to a chap-book which was entitled _The Afflicted Parents, or the Undutiful Child Punished_. In this tale the daughter gave some very priggish advice to her wicked brother, who promptly knocks her down and kills her. He is captured, tried, condemned, sentenced, and at last executed by two pardoned highwaymen. But upon being cut down he comes to life, pompously discourses at much length, and then is executed a second time, as a warning to all disobedient children.

Death-bed scenes continued to be full of living interest. _The Good Child's Little Hymnbook_ represents the taste of the times. One poem is on the death and burial of twins, and thus is doubly interesting. Another is on "Dying." The child asks whether he is going to die and "look white and awful and be put in the pithole with other dead people." And yet the preface runs:--

"Mamma See what a Pretty Book At Day's Pappa has bought, That I may at the pictures look And by the words be taught."

After a time some attempts were made to render the Bible in a form specially for children's reading. There was a rhymed adaptation called the _Bible in Verse._ This was not the Bible versification of Samuel Wesley, printed in 1717, of which he says condescendingly, "Some passages here represented are so barren of Circumstances that it was not easy to make them shine in Verse." Older hands had essayed to rhyme the Bible; one was called _A Briefe Somme of the Bible_.

These Bible abridgments were literally little books, usually three or four inches long, covered with brown or mottled paper. One tiny, well-worn book of Bible stories was but two inches long and an inch wide. It had two hundred and fifty pages, each of about twenty words.

There was also the famous _Thumb Bible_ printed by the Boston book printers, Mein and Fleming. A copy of this may be seen at the Lenox Library in New York City. _The Hieroglyphick Bible with Emblematick Figures_ was illustrated with five hundred tiny pictures set with the print, which helped to tell the story after the manner of an illustrated rebus. Bewick made the cuts for the English edition. Tiny catechisms were widely printed and sought after, and used as gifts to good and godly children. There were also dull little books of parables, modelled on the parables of the Bible. Those were profoundly religious, but were so darkly and figuratively expressed as to be frequently entirely incomprehensible; and they fully realized the definition of a parable given by a child I know--"a heavenly story with no earthly meaning."

An extremely curious and antiquated religious panada was entitled the _History of the Holy Jesus_. The seventh edition was printed in New London in 1754. The illustrations in this stupid little book were more surprising than the miserable text. No attempt was made to represent Oriental scenery. The picture of an earthquake showed a group of toy houses and a substantial church of the type of the Old South in perfect condition, tipped over and leaning solidly on each other. The Prodigal Son returned to an English manor-house with latticed windows, and the women wore high commodes and hoop-skirts. In the cut intended to represent to the inquiring young Christian in New England the Adoration of the Magi, the wise men of the East appear in the guise of prosperous British merchants; in cocked hats, knee breeches, and full-skirted coats with great flapped pockets, they look wisely at the star-spotted heavens, and a mammoth and extremely conventionalized comet through British telescopes mounted on tripods. The Slaughter of the Innocents must have seemed painfully close at hand when Yankee children looked at the trim military platoons of English-clad infants, each waving an English flag; while Herod, in a modern uniform, on a horse with modern trappings, charged upon them. Perhaps some of the fathers and mothers born in England and in the Church of England had a still more vivid realization of Herod's crime, for it was the custom in some English parishes at one time to whip all the children on Holy Innocent's Day. As Gregory said:--

"It hath been a custom to whip up the children upon Innocent's Day morning, that the memorie of this murther might stick the closer; and in a moderate proportion to act over the crueltie again in kind."

The book was in rhyme. Here are a few of the verses:--

"The Wise Men from the East do come Led by a Shining Star. And offer to the new born King Frankincense, Gold and Myrrh. Which Herod hears & wrathful Grows And now by Heavn's Decree Joseph and Mary and her Son Do into Ægypt flee. The Bloody Wretch enrag'd to think Christ's Death he could not gain, Commands that Infants all about Bethlehem should be slain. But O! to hear the awful cries Of Mothers in Distress, And Rachel mourns for her first-born Snatch'd from her tender Breast."

_The History of the Holy Jesus_ was told by Rev. Mr. Instructwell to Master Learnwell. The book contained also the _Child's Body of Divinity_, and some of Dr. Watts' hymns. These _Divine Songs for Children_ appear in many forms. The _Cradle Hymn_ is the one most frequently seen, and I recently have heard it extolled as "a perfect lullaby for a child." A curious study it is, showing how absolutely traditional religious conception could usurp the mind and obscure the impulses of the heart. Its sweet and tender lines, which begin--

"Hush my dear, lie still and slumber. Holy angels guard thy bed,"

are soon contrasted with the vehement words which tell of the lot of the infant Jesus; and at the mother's passionate expressions of "brutal creatures," "cursed sinners," that "affront their Lord," the child apparently cries, for the mother sings:--

"Soft, my child, I did not chide thee, Though my song may sound too hard."

In the next stanza, however, theological venom again finds vent to the poor wondering baby:--

"Yet to read the shameful story How the Jews abused their King-- How they served the Lord of Glory, Makes me angry while I sing."

This certainly seems an ill-phrased and exciting lullaby, but is perhaps what might be expected as the notion of a soothing cradle hymn from a bigoted old bachelor.