Crossword-Solution: CONGREGATION 12 letters, 38 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 16

ALL SAINTS’ AND ALL SOULS’ On a week-day morning a small congregation, consisting mainly of women and girls, rose from its knees in the mouldy nave of All Saints’ church, Melchester, at the end of a service without a sermon.

What think ye, gossips? If the hussy stood up for judgment before us five, that are now here in a knot together, would she come off with such a sentence as the worshipful magistrates have awarded? Marry, I trow not.” “People say,” said another, “that the Reverend Master Dimmesdale, her godly pastor, takes it very grievously to heart that such a scandal should have come upon his congregation.” “The magistrates are God-fearing gentlemen, but merciful overmuch—that is a truth,” added a third autumnal matron.

Certain it is, his voice resounded far above all the rest of the congregation; and there are peculiar quavers still to be heard in that church, and which may even be heard half a mile off, quite to the opposite side of the millpond, on a still Sunday morning, which are said to be legitimately descended from the nose of Ichabod Crane.

The young and energetic members of the congregation came only once or twice a year, “to keep people from talking.” The usual Wednesday night gathering was made up of old women, with perhaps six or eight old men, and a few sickly girls who had not much interest in life; two of them, indeed, were already preparing to die.

For example, a sermon preached in a church would be intelligible probably to the whole of the congregation.