For Faith and Freedom

Excerpt from For Faith and Freedom: A Novel At eight O'clock in the morning, the sexton, an ancient man and rheumatic, hobbled slowly through the village, key in hand, and opened the Church-door. Then he went into the tower and rang the first bell. I suppose this bell is designed to hurry housewives with their morning work, and to admonish the men that they incline their hearts to a Spiritual disposition. This done, the sexton set Open the doors of the pews, swept out the squire's and the rector's in the chancel, dusted the cushions of the pulpit (the reading-desk at this time was not used), Opened the Clasps of the great Bible, and swept down the aisle: as he had done Sunday after Sunday for fifty years. When he had thus made the church ready for the day's service, he went into the vestry, which had only been used Since the establishment of the Commonwealth for the registers Of birth, death, and marriage. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.