In the dimness we could
have only a conjecture of the church's outward beauty, and of the
grandeur of the tower climbing into the evening, where it has
hailed so many myriads of moving ships, and beckoned them to
safety. But within, where it was already night, the church was
cheerfully luminous with Welsbach lights, which showed it all
wreathed and garlanded for a harvest festival, began the day
before, and to be concluded now with some fit religious
observance. The blossoms and leaves were a little wilted and
withered, but the fruits and vegetables were there in sturdy
endurance, and together they swathed the pulpit from which John
Cotton used to preach, and all but hid its structure from view,
like flowers of rhetoric softening some hard doctrine.
Apparently, however, Cotton's doctrine was not anywise too hard,
or even hard enough, for such "a factious people, who were imbued
with the Puritan spirit," as he found in Boston, when he was
first elected vicar of St. Botolph's; and it was not till
Archbishop Laud's ecclesiastical tyrannies began that he came to
see "the Sin of Conformity" and to preach resistance.
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