90 DUTCH AND ENGLISH ON THE HUDSON

maintained, therefore our sacred duty impera-
tively requires us to prosecute you in a court of jus-
tice." The quarrel was never fought to a finish
but was allowed to die out, and the episode ended
without credit to either party.

Like everything else in the colony of New Nether-
land, the original meeting-places for worship were
of the simplest type. Domine Megapolensis held
services in his own house, and Bogardus conducted
worship in the upper part of the horse-mill at Fort
Amsterdam, where before his arrival Sebastian
Jansen Krol and Jan Huyck had read from the
Scriptures on Sunday. These men had been ap-
pointed ziekentroosters or krankenbesoeckers (i.e.,
consolers of the sick), whose business it was, in
addition to their consolatory functions, to hold
Sunday services in the absence of a regularly
ordained clergyman. In time these rude gathering-
places gave way to buildings of wood or stone,
modeled, as one would expect, on similar buildings
in the old country, with a pulpit built high above
the congregation, perhaps with intent to empha-
size the authority of the church.

The clerk, or voorleser, standing in the baptis-
tery below the pulpit, opened the services by read-
ing from the Bible and leading in the singing of