Church-reform, by a churchman [E. Berens]. - Tapa blanda

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1828 Excerpt: ... CHAP. IX. CHURCH EDIFICES. Parish churches--The reparation of them often neglected, or conducted in a mistaken manner--Church Building Acts--Parsonage houses--Additions of glebe--Dilapidations. UNDER the head of Church Edifices I shall offer a few remarks upon parish churches, and upon parsonage houses. Both to persons of religious feeling and principle, and to those of cultivated taste, our parish churches are objects of no little interest. In every considerable assemblage of rustic dwellings the eye looks round for the ancient tower, or the heaven-directed spire, as a sort of resting-place, as the feature which gives character and consequence to the surrounding scenery. That connexion with ancient times, however, which gives to our parish churches much of their interest both in a moral and a picturesque point of view, occasions in the natural course of M things the necessity of reparation. In many churches, while the main walls stand firm as a rock, the timbers gradually become wormeaten, the roofing slates slip from their hold and admit the wet, and the carved stonework of the windows moulders away. The direction of such repairs, as they become necessary, devolves upon the Churchwardens; but it certainly is not desirable that the conducting of church reparations should be left entirely to the judgment and discretion of the Churchwardens alone, without the superintendence of men of more cultivated minds. I do not mean to say a syllable in disparagement of the class of men from which, in the generality of country villages, the Churchwardens are chosen. They are generally of that class by which, as the son of Sirach says, "the state of the world is "maintained." They are, doubtless, most respectable and valuable men in their peculiar line; but neither their...