But we must give our attention to the sermon.  It is what the congregation will pronounce “a large, nervous, and golden discourse,” a Scriptural discourse,—­like the skeleton of the sea-serpent, all backbone and a great deal of that.  It may be some very special and famous effort.  Perhaps Increase Mather is preaching on “The Morning Star,” or on “Snow,” or on “The Voice of God in Stormy Winds”; or it may be his sermon entitled “Burnings Bewailed,” to improve the lesson of some great conflagration, which he attributes partly to Sabbath-breaking and partly to the new fashion of monstrous periwigs.  Or it may be Cotton Mather, his son, rolling forth his resounding discourse during a thunder-storm, entitled “Brantologia Sacra,”—­consisting of seven separate divisions or thunderbolts, and filled with sharp lightning from Scripture and the Rabbinical lore, and Cartesian natural philosophy.  Just as he has proclaimed, “In the thunder there is the voice of the glorious God,” a messenger comes hastening in, as in the Book of Job, to tell him that his own house has just been struck, and though no person is hurt, yet the house hath been much torn and filled with the lightnings.  With what joy and power he instantly wields above his audience this providential surplus of excitement, reminding one irresistibly of some scientific lecturer who has nearly blown himself up by his own experiments, and proceeds beaming with fresh confidence, the full power of his compound being incontestably shown.  Rising with the emergency, he tells them grandly, that, as he once had in his house a magnet which the thunder changed instantly from north to south, so it were well if the next bolt could change their stubborn souls from Satan to God.  But afterward he is compelled to own that Satan also is sometimes permitted to have a hand in the thunder, which is the reason why it breaks oftener on churches than on any other buildings; and again he admits, pensively, at last, that churches and ministers’ houses have undoubtedly the larger share.

The sermon is over.  The more demoralized among the little boys, whose sleepy eyes have been more than once admonished by the hare’s-foot wand of the constables,—­the sharp paw is used for the boys, the soft fur is kept for the smooth foreheads of drowsy maidens,—­look up thoroughly awakened now.  Bright eyes glance from beneath silk or tiffany hoods, for a little interlude is coming.  Many things may happen in this pause after the sermon.  Questions may be asked of the elders now, which the elders may answer,—­if they can.  Some lay brother may “exercise” on a text of Scripture,—­rather severe exercise, it sometimes turns out.  Candidates for the church may be proposed.  A baptism may take place.  If it be the proper month, the laws against profaning the Sabbath may be read.  The last town-regulations may be read; or, far more exciting, a new marriage may be published.  Or a darker scene may follow, and some offending magistrate may be required to stand upon a bench, in his worst garments, with a foul linen cap drawn close to his eyes, and acknowledge his sins before the pious people, who reverenced him so lately.