of the congregation to a friend in London, tells of the intensity of grief and the depth of feeling manifested in the service held by order of the government when news reached America that Parliament had passed the "Stamp Act." The church, it was said, would not begin to hold the people who thronged to attend the service. These people loved old England, and were bound to her by material interests and by ties of blood. They wanted to continue to honor and obey the civil authority, and to pray for their King, and they thronged to these services in old Bruton to express their faith and devotion and the passionate longing of their lives for justice, liberty, and peace, and to-day the old church is hallowed by the memory of these prayers which arose from bleeding hearts to our Fathers' God and our God, through the Liturgy which we use and love the more for these associations by which it is hallowed and enriched. In the eventide, when the parting glory of the day falls like a benediction and lingers in the old church, the old scenes come like a vision before the illumined imagination. Upon bended knee we seem to behold that noble band of patriot legislators—Nelson, Wythe, Harrison, Braxton, the Lees, Cabell, Cary, Carr, Carrington, Carter, Nicholas, Norvell, Richard Bland, George Mason, Edmund Pendleton, Peyton Randolph, Patrick Henry, George Washington and the rest, and the walls seem again to echo back their supplication to the King of Kings: "We beseech thee to hear us good Lord."
Historic Memorials
The old Prayer Book, which bears the inscription "Bruton Parish, 1752." bears witness, through erasures and marginal insertions, to answered prayers. The Prayer for the President is pasted over the Prayer for King George III., while the prejudice engendered by the passions of men is evidenced by a line run through the words "King of Kings," and the marginal insertion, "Ruler of the Universe." The Bible of this period is also preserved, together with the old
