PURITAN SETTLEMENT - ORIGINATES IN RELIGIOUS MOTIVES - PREVIOUS AGES PREPARATORY - PILGRIMS EMIGRATE TO HOLLAND - MOTIVES FOR LEAVING ENGLAND - WEBSTER'S VIEW OF THE EMBARKATION - SOJOURN IN HOLLAND - EMIGRATION TO THE NEW WORLD - FAREWELL SCENES - ROBINSON, THE PASTOR - HIS FAREWELL WORDS - ARRIVAL AT PLYMOUTH ROCK - CHRISTIAN CONSECRATION OF THE CONTINENT - MRS. SOGOURNEY'S POETRY ON THE PILGRIMS - MACAULAY'S VIEW OF THE CHRISTIAN CHARACTER OF THE PILGRIMS - THEIR OWN DECLARATIONS - WEBSTER'S REMARK.
The Puritan settlement on the American continent, around which cluster the grandest associations and results, dates from the 22d of December, 1620, one hundred and twenty-eight years after a Christian navigator had greeted the New World with a song of praise, and consecrated it to Christ in prayer. The motives that began this memorable era in American history were intensely religious. It opened a new chapter in the progress of events and in the history of colonizing countries. Hitherto, conquest, ambition, worldly glory, had often marked the settlement of newly discovered territory. God now changes the scene, and, for the first time in the history of the world, the colonization of a new and great continent begins from the purest and profoundest religious convictions and principles.
Previous ages had been preparatory to this new and important Christian era. Europe had been shaken and sifted by the conflicts of the Reformation. In England, Christian ideas and the principles of a purer and freer Christianity had, through Wickliffe's translation of the Bible, been generally diffused, and that book was the forerunner of coming revolutions. There was, in the providence of God, a peculiar fitness in the times to train and prepare Christian men for the great work of laying the foundation of a Christian empire in a new continent. They lived in an age of superior light, in which literature, philosophy, and the arts and sciences had enlightened and elevated the English nation; they were educated in schools of learning where the word of God had enthroned its power and diffused its light, and which created in their souls a longing desire for the simple forms of worship; their Christian faith was tried and strengthened in the furnace of persecution, in which it grew bolder for truth and freedom. Under such influences were the Puritan men educated and prepared for their Christian mission on the American continent. Their labors, as future ages showed, received the crowning and abundant blessing of God.
Under the convictions of a strong Christian faith, the Puritans, in 1608, bade farewell to England, where they had been persecuted for their pure faith and simple forms of Christian worship, and emigrated to Holland, where they hoped to find a permanent asylum. The love of country, the ties of home and kindred, the prospect of suffering, trials, and unnumbered privations, did not deter them from this Christian enterprise; - "For their desires were set on the ways of God, and to enjoy his ordinances. But they rested on his providence, and knew whom they had believed."
"The embarkation of the Pilgrims for Holland," says Webster, "is deeply interesting from its circumstances, and also as a mark of the character of the times, independently of its connection with names now incorporated with the history of empires. Theirs was not the flight of guilt, but virtue. It was an humble and peaceable religion flying from causeless oppression. It was conscience attempting to escape from the arbitrary rule of the Stuarts. It was Robinson and Brewster loading off their little band from their native spoil, at first to find a shelter on the shores of a neighboring continent, but ultimately to come hither, and, having surmounted all difficulties and braved a thousand dangers, to find here a place of refuge and rest. Thanks be to God that this spot was honored as the asylum of religious liberty! May its standard, reared here, remain forever! May it rise as high as heaven, till its banner shall fan the air of both continents, and waves as a glorious ensign of peace and prosperity to the nations!"
After remaining in Holland twelve years, the Puritans resolved to seek rest and enlargement, and fulfil their Christian mission, by emigrating to the North American continent.
They had, as they affirmed, "a great hope and inward zeal of laying some good foundation, or at least to make some way thereunto, for the propagating and advancing of the kingdom of Christ unto those remote parts of the world; yea, though they should be but as stepping-stones unto others for performing so great a work."
The farewell scenes are described by Governor Bradford, of the colony, as follows:--"So, being ready to depart, they had a day of solemn humiliation with their pastor,--taking his text from Ezra the 8th, 21, 'I poclaimed a fast there, at the river Ahava, that we might afflict ourselves before God, and seek of him a right way for our little ones and our substance;' upon which he spent a part of the day profitably, and very suitably to their present occasion. The rest of the time was spend in pouring out their prayers to the Lord with great fervency, mixed with abundance of tears. And the time being come when they must depart, they were accompanied with most of their brethren out of the city unto a town sundry miles off, called Delft Haven, where the ship lay ready to receive them. So they left that good and pleasant city, which had been their resting-place near twelve years. But they knew they were ILGRIMS, and looked not much on those things, but lifted up their eyes to heaven, their dearest country, and so quited their spirits. When they came to the ship, and all things ready, and such of their friends as could not come with them followed after them, and sundry also came from Amsterdam to see them shipped and to take their leave of them.
"Little sleep was there to most of them that night. Friendly entertainment, Christian discourse, and expressions of deep affection in parting," held their eyes waking. "Never," says Winslow, "I persuade myself, never people on earth lived more lovingly together, and parted more sweetly, than we, the church of Leyden," "seeking not rashly, but deliberately, the mind of God in prayer, and finding his grcious presence with us, and his blessing upon us."
The next day,--July 22, 1620,--the wind being fair, they went on board, and their friends with them; "when truly doleful was the sight of that sad and mournful parting; to see what sighs, and sobs, and prayers, did sound amongst them; what tears did gush from every eye, and pithy speeches pierced each other's heart;--that sundry of the Dutch strangers that stood on the quay as spectators could not refrain from tears. Yet comfortable and sweet it was to see such lively and true expressions of dear and unfeigned love. But the tide, which stays for no man, calling them away which were loth to depart, their reverend pastor, falling down upon his knees, and they all with him, with watered cheeks commended them with most fervent prayers to the Lord and his blessing; and then, with mutual embraces and many tears, they took leave of one another, which proved their last leave to many of them."
Before they sailed, on the deck of the ship, their pastor--JOHN ROBINSON--gave them the following farewell charge:-- "Brethren, we are now quickly to part from one another; and whether I ever live to see your faces on earth any more, the God of heaven only knows; but whether the Lord has appointed that or no, I charge you, before God and his blessed angels, that you follow me no further than you have seen me follow the Lord Jesus Christ. If God reveals anything to you by any other instrument of his, be as ready to receive it as ever you were to receive any truth by my ministry, for I am verily persuaded the Lord has more truth yet to break forth from his Holy Word. I charge you to take heed what you receive as truth; examine it, consider it, and compare it with the scripture of truth before you receive it."
The farewell scenes closed, they set sail for the shores of the New World. "That embarcation," says Choate,[?] "speaks to the nation as with the voices and melodies of an immortal hymn, which dilates and becomes actualized into the auspicious going forth of a colony whose planting has changed the history of the world, - a noble colony of devoted Christians,- educated, firm men, valiant soldiers, and honorable women, - a colony on the commencement of whose heroic enterprise the selectest influences of religion seemed to be descending visibly, and beyond whose perilous path was hung the rainbow and the western star of empire."
"The Mayflower sought our shores," says Webster, "under no high-wrought spirit of commercial adventure, no love of gold, no mixture of purpose warlike or hostile to any human being. Like the dove from the ark, she had put forth only to find rest. Solemn supplications on the shore of the sea in Holland had invoked for her, at her departure, the blessings of Providence. The stars which guided her were the unobscured constellations of civil and religious liberty. Her deck was the altar of the living God. Fervent prayers on bended knees mingled morning and evening with the voices of the ocean and the sighing of the winds in her shrouds. Every prosperous breeze, which, gently filling her sails, helped the Pilgrims onward in their course, awoke new anthems of praise; and when the elements were wrought into fury, neither the tempest, tossing their fragile bark like a feather, nor the darkness and howling of the midnight storm, ever disturbed, in man or woman, the firm and settled purpose of their souls to undergo all and to do all that the meekest patience, the boldest resolution, and the highest trust in Grod could enable human beings to endure or to perform.
"That Mayflower was a flower destined to be of perpetual bloom! Its verdure will stand the sultry blasts of sunmier and the chilling winds of autumn. It will defy winter; it will defy all climate, and all time, and will continue to spread its petals to the world, and to exhale an ever-living odor and fragrance to the last syllable of recorded time."
On the 16th of September, 1620, they set sail from Souths ampton, and, after a stormy and perilous voyage, they fell in with land on the American coast on the 9th of November, "the which being made and certainly known to be it, they were not a little joyfuL On their voyage they would set apart whole days of fasting and prayer, to obtain from heaven a good success in their voyage, especially when the weather was much against them, whereunto they had remarkable answers; so much so that the sailors were astonished, and said they were the first sea-fasts ever held in the world."
On the 22d of December, 1620, the Puritans, one hundred and one in number, landed from the Mayflower, and planted their feet on the Rock of Plymouth, and began a new era in the history of the world. The day and the rock became canonized in American history, and emblems of the grandest Christian ideas and associations. The first act of the Puritans, after landing, was to kneel down and offer their thanksgiving to God, and by a solemn act of prayer, and in the name and for the sake of Christ, to take possession of the continent. They thus repeated the Christian consecration which Columbus, more than a century before, had given to the New World, and so twice in the most formal and solemn manner was it devoted to Christ and Christian civilization. The seed thus planted bore an abundant harvest of Christian fruits, which have blessed the nation and enriched the world. How significant and sublime the lessons that gather round and flow from Plymouth Rock! How does it speak for God and of God! How grandly does it proclaim the Christian faith and fruits of those great and good men who, in prayer and faith, planted a Christian empire in the New World, and started a Christian nation on a noble career of progress and greatness!
"And can ye deem it strange
That from their planting such a branch should bloom
As nations envy ? Should a germ embalm'd
With prayer's pure tear-drops strike no deeper root
Than that which mad Ambition's hand doth strew
Upon the winds to reap the winds again ?
Hid by its veil of waters from the hand
Of greedy Europe, their bold vine spread forth
In giant strength."Its early clusters, crushed
In England's wine-press, gave the tyrant host
A draught of deadly wine. O ye who boast
In your free veins the blood of sires like these,
Lose not their lineaments. Should Mammon cling
Too close around your heart,--or wealth beget
That bloated luxury which eats the core
From manly virtue,--or the tempting world
Make faint the Christian purpose in your soul,--
Turn ye to Plymouth's beach; and, on that rock.
Kneel in their footprints, and renew the vow
They breathed to God." MRS. SIGOURNEY.4
The Christian life and character of the Puritans have the following description from the pen of England's historian, Macaulay:--
"The Puritans were men whose minds derived a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests. Not content with acknowledging in general terms an overruling Providence, they habitually ascribed every event to that great Being for whose power nothing was too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too minute. To know him, to serve him, to enjoy him, was with them the great end of existence. They rejected with contempt the ceremonious homage which other sects substituted for the worship of the soul. Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the Deity through an obscuring veil, they aspired to gaze full on the intolerable brightness, and to commune with him face to face. Hence originated their contempt for terrestrial distinctions. The difference between the greatest and meanest of mankind seemed to vanish when compared with the boundless interval which separated the whole race from Him on whom their own eyes were constantly fixed.
"They recognized no title to superiority but God's favor; and, confident of that favor, they despised all the accomplishments and all the dignities of the world. If they were unacquainted with the works of philosophers and poets, they were deeply read in the oracles of God. If their names were not found in the registers of heralds, they felt assured that they were recorded in the book of life. Their palaces were houses not made with hands; their diadems, crowns of glory which should not fade away. On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and priests, they looked down with (comparative) contempt; for they esteemed themselves rich in more precious treasures, and eloquent in a more sublime language; nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand. The very meanest of them was a being to whose fate a mysterious and terrible importance belonged,--on whose slightest action the spirits of light and darkness looked with anxious interest,--who had been destined, before heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a felicity when heaven and earth should pass away. For his sake the Almighty had proclaimed his will by the pen of the evangelist and the harp of the prophet. He had been rescued by no common deliverer from the grasp of no common foe. He had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony, by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was for him the sun had been darkened, that the rocks had been rent, that the dead had arisen, that all nature had shuddered at the sufferings of an expiring God.
"Thus the Puritan was made of two different men: the one all self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion; the other, stern, calm, inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust before his Maker, but set his foot on the neck of his king. In his devotional retirement, he prayed with groans and tears; but when he took his seat in the council, or girt on his sword for war, these workings of the soul had left no perceptible trace behind them. The intensity of their feelings on one subject made them tranquil on all others."
This description, in substance, corresponds with what the New England Puritans say of themselves. "We give ourselves," say they, "to the Lord Jesus Christ, and the word of his grace, for the teaching, ruling, and sanctifying of us, in matters of worship and conversation; resolving to cleave unto him alone for life and glory, and to reject all contrary ways, canons, and constitutions of men in his worship."
"Our fathers," says Webster, "had that religious sentiment, that trust in Providence, that determination to do right, and to seek, through every degree of toil and suffering, the honor of God, and the preservation of their liberties, which we shall do well to cherish, to imitate, to equal, to the utmost of our ability."