XII.

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THE PILGRIMS AT PLYMOUTH.

Apparent designs of Providence. Contrast between Popery in South
America and Protestantism in the North.
New England. Sufferings of the Pilgrims.
Thanksgiving. New settlers. Famine.
Plenty.

The fruits of Puritanism in
The first harvest. The first
Day of Fasting. Return of

LET us now go back to the 10th day of November, A. D. 1620,
when the Mayflower, hardly escaping from the shoals and breakers
in her attempted passage to the Hudson, turns her course, and bears
up once more for the northern extremity of the cape. An eloquent
orator has thus drawn the picture.* Let us go up in imagina-
tion to yonder hill, and look out upon the November scene.
That single dark speck just discernible through the perspective
glass on the waste of water, is the fated vessel. The storm moans
through her tattered canvass, as she creeps, almost sinking, to her
anchorage in Provincetown harbor; and there she lies with all
her treasures, not of silver and gold (for of these she had none),
but of courage, of patience, of zeal, of high spiritual daring. So
often as I dwell in imagination on this scene; when I consider
the condition of the Mayflower, utterly incapable as she was of
living through another gale; when I survey the terrible front pre-
sented by our coast to the navigator, who, unacquainted with its
channels and roadsteads, should approach it in the stormy season,
I dare not call it a piece of good fortune that the general north
and south wall of the shore of New England should be broken
by this extraordinary projection of a cape, running out into the
ocean a hundred miles, as if on purpose to receive and encircle
the precious vessel. As I now see her freighted with the desti-
nies of a continent, barely escaped from the perils of the deep,
approaching the shore precisely where the broad sweep of this
most remarkable headland presents almost the only point, where,
for hundreds of miles, she could with any ease have made a har-
bor, and this, perhaps, the very best on the seaboard, I feel my
spirit raised above the sphere of mere natural agencies. I see the

* Hon. Edward Everett, at the Cape Cod Centennial Celebration, 1839.

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mountains of New England rising from their rocky thrones. They rush forward into the ocean, settling down as they advance; and there they range themselves, a mighty bulwark around the heaven-directed vessel. Yes, the everlasting God himself stretches out the arm of his mercy and his power, in substantial manifestation, and gathers the meek company of his worshippers as in the hollow of his hand."

Their course was indeed heaven-directed. Had they gone to the vicinity of the Hudson, they must have been involved in difficulties with the settlers owing allegiance to another nation, or perhaps have been reduced under their power.

These were the men, of all time, the best fitted by peculiar discipline for just the work which the Providence of God led them to accomplish. They had been taught the great principles of evangelical truth and of religious freedom, by just such conflicts as are necessary to separate the truth from old systems of abuse and error. By long continued sufferings, they had learned to prize these principles as dearer than their pleasant homes in England, and dearer even than life. For the truth, for freedom, for their posterity, for God, they had come with their wives and little ones to a wilderness. Far from all human aid, with all their resources in themselves and God, they had come to plant themselves on the borders of that interminable forest, whose only sounds were the deep moaning of the winds through the branches that cast their unbroken shadows over a continent; save as at times the howlings of wild beasts, and the yells of savage men gave to this awful loneliness a variety of terror. After a long night of a thousand years brooding over the whole world, the Lord had effectually brought to light once more the fundamental principles of his Holy Word. When lordly prelates joined with the civil power to impose ceremonials and forms unfriendly to the truth and inconsistent with purity of worship, then the Lord led his people to make further discoveries of the principles of religious freedom. He suffered those in spiritual lordships to harden their hearts, till by grievous persecutions they had driven the subjects of their tyranny to a clear discernment of the corruptions and usurpations, wrought into the very frame-work of the Church organizations and civil institutions of the old world. As there was no place on the Eastern continent where these great principles might develope themselves, and show their beauty, and mature their fruits, the Lord brought this people, so prepared, into a new world. He guided them to an accessible haven. He brought them into a void space, from which his Providence had just swept off the original inhabitants by a desolating pestilence; thus furnishing fields already prepared, and removing all enemies from their immediate borders. By bringing the adventur

ers into a rough land of rocks and hills, requiring toil and frugality, and securing vigor and sagacity to its cultivators, the Lord provided for the future sending off of hardy and well trained colonists, to the wide plains and the fertile banks of the magnificent rivers of the west; of adventurers to trade in every mart of commerce throughout the land; and of mariners to spread their sails on every sea, and to visit every portion of the globe. Thus was provision made for spreading the principles of the Pilgrims throughout the land, and for extending their influence over the world. Can any one fail to recognize in all this the finger of God? Here is indeed no pillar of cloud or of fire. Yet in all these events, connected with their great results, the Providence of God declares itself as if in broad and legible lines; calling upon us to recognize His hand; and encouraging the hope-if we forsake not the God of our fathers-that He has yet greater designs to accomplish, and yet more signal mercies to bestow upon mankind, as the ultimate result of that series of providences, which planted the Pilgrims in this American land.

O what emotions often fill my soul, when, on the very soil on which the early fathers of New England trod, and looking abroad over the hills and waters on which they once looked, and while walking amid their graves, I think of the hand of God so clearly revealed; and on his great designs in bringing such a race of men to people the shores of this great continent! What other people on earth can point to such an ancestry as the people of New England? Who else are under such obligations to truth, to freedom, and to God? I avow it-my soul pities those who for light reasons, and for the most part without examination, have thrown the principles of such fathers away; and who, on the principles to which they are now schooled to submit, must count those fathers fanatics, misguided, ignorant, and turbulent men, rushing into a sinful schism from unworthy motives, and for an unworthy cause! I envy not those who must now blot out these fair lines of God's good providence; who must regard the reasons which led the Pilgrims to brave the ocean and the wilderness, as unwarrantable; their landing on the rock of Plymouth an ill-omened event; and who can behold nothing in all the fruits of their labors, save the results of an unhappy and wicked revolt from the rich blessings and lawful rule of a righteous ecclesiastical dominion! Sure I am, that those Pilgrims were well informed and godly men. Sure I am, that they examined these principles with a patience and research to which the present age is well nigh a stranger. Were Robinson and his compeers alive; were Cotton, and Shepard, and Elliot, and multitudes of the first ministers of New England now alive, and in our midst, there are no ministers of religion/in this country

or in the world, who, for learning, eloquence, character, or anything that adorns humanity-could pretend to be their superiors. The results of their labors are manifest to all the world. The prelatic system, the antagonist to theirs, has continued to reign in the old world, as it had already reigned for a thousand years. The Puritan principles came with a small band of outcasts into a desolate wilderness. Only two centuries are elapsed; but take the history of those two hundred years, and tell me: Which of these two systems has most signalized itself by results of freedom and intelligence? Which has done most for the advancement of right principles? Which has done most to exalt and bless the people who have embraced it? Nay, take the map of the whole world; open the history of all time, and lay your finger on the spot of earth exhibiting the greatest comparative amount of comfort, of enterprise, of piety, and of every thing that conduces to the exaltation or happiness of man. Can you hesitate?

Who is there that will not instantly point to the rocks and hills of New England; whose whole surface was, two hundred years ago, one unbroken forest? Under every earthly disadvantage, with incredible toil, in the midst of appalling dangers, obstructed by the jealousy of the mother country, and at last compelled to encounter her in arms, in two centuries the people, rich in nothing save the principles of the Pilgrims, have turned this wilderness into a fruitful field; and made it the moral garden of the whole world. An intelligent Englishman,* famed for his researches in science, a member of the established Church, and one who by his extensive travels and personal inspection is qualified to form an intelligent judgment, on his return from a recent tour in this country, spoke earnestly of New England, as the spot "where two millions of freemen are enjoying a higher degree of intelligence, morality, and substantial comfort and prosperity, than any other equal number of people on the face of the earth." To what is this owing? To fairer beginnings? To exemption from dangers and burdens? To more fertile fields, and fairer skies? Alas, no! Never was prosperity achieved under greater hardships. The sunny plains which Sir Walter Raleigh described as a second Paradise, were given to the disciples of the Pope. The regions of eternal spring and summer were given as a field for other principles to show their power. As if to render the contrast more striking, there were added mines of gold and silver enough to enrich a world. What are those fields now? God stripped the Pilgrims of everything save their principles and their life; he sent them in the depth of winter into a bleak and desolate land. He surrounded them

* Lyell.

with dangers. At every breath they were made to tremble for their freedom to worship God; and lo, what hath been wrought? To the principles of the Pilgrims, under God, New England owes all she is.

*

The Pilgrims could not foresee these splendid results of their labors. What thoughts came rushing upon their minds as they crowded the deck, and gazed upon the shores of the New World! Weary and worn, many of them enfeebled by sickness-a howling wilderness is before them, and the rough ocean behind. "For the season," says Bradford, "it was winter; and they that know the winters of that country, know them to be sharp and violent, and subject to violent storms, dangerous to travel to known places, much more to search out unknown coasts." "All things stand for them to look upon with a weather-beaten face; and the whole country being full of thickets presented a wild and savage hue." The captain of the ship urged them to seek out a place for settlement with the shallop; for he durst not stir with the ship from its first position in Cape Cod harbor, till another safe harbor should be found. Again and again the explorers went forth, and returned without success, after nearly perishing in their open shallop, from storms and cold. The captain reminded them that "victuals consumed apace; and that he must and would keep sufficient for himself and company on their return." It was rumored by the ship's company, that if the Pilgrims got not a place in time, they would turn them ashore and leave them. But at length the good hand of the Lord directed them to Plymouth, and after many trials and hardships they were at last, with their effects, on the shore.

A dreary winter is before them. Three had died in Cape Cod harbor. Mrs. Bradford, the wife of the future governor, had fallen overboard and was drowned. Two more died before the landing at Plymouth. Eight died in the month of January; seventeen more in the month of February; thirteen in the month of March. In three months half their company were dead: "the greatest part," says Bradford, "in the depth of winter; wanting houses and other comforts, being infected with the scurvy and other diseases which their long voyage and unaccommodate condition brought upon them." "Of a hundred, scarce fifty remain; the living scarce able to bury the dead." "In the time of the greatest distress, in the depth of winter, and in want of all resources, there were not more than six or seven who were able to tend the sick." But as the spring opened the mortality abated; the sick recovered; and hope and courage once more returned to the suffering Pilgrims.

On the fifth of April, the Mayflower sailed for England; and it is remarkable that after the experience of so dreadful a winter,