ORANGE CONG. CHURCH
members to be admitted into the church, or any to be propounded for admission, or if there were cases of offense and discipline to be acted upon by the church, such things were attended to ; and then another psalm was sung, if the day was not too far spent." As in all the history of Puritanism, the sermon was the chief thing in the long order of services. It was indeed the chief event of the week in many a New England town, even down to the time of the Revolution. As a general thing, preaching ("prophesying" it was frequently called) was left to the regular ministry ; but not always. Prophesying, says Lechford is "when a brother exerciseth in his own congregation, taking a text of Scripture, and handling the same according to his ability. Notwithstanding, it is generally held in the Bay, by some of the most grave and learned men among them, that none should undertake to prophesy in public unless he intend the work of the ministry." Indeed, when the time of the primitive simplicity had passed away (and it did not last long), it required a thorough scholar, skillful in the analytical method of sermonizing, to satisfy the demand of the ordinary New England congregation. If you will turn to the outline, published in Charles W. Elliott's "New England History" of a Fast-day sermon preached by Increase Mather in 1682, you will find a good illustration of the minute and painful elaborateness of the old-time discourses. I have in my possesion [i.e., possession] a manuscript notebook, used by one of my Waterbury predecessors, the Rev. John Southmayd, while he was a student in Harvard college, which affords additional illustration of the same fact. It is filled with notes of sermons listened to by him in 1693 and 1694. Several prominent ministers of the period are represented, and they all seem to have followed the one model. The discourses are highly analytical, being divided and subdivided into "doctrines," propositions, inferences and applications ; so that to the multitudes of the present day, to whom the great test of a sermon is not what it contains but how brief it can be made, they would have seemed monotonous and interminable. But the forefathers not