e, duly to scatter round that each might have his
appropriate portion, the crumbs of salvation he dispensed, and "gave
out" an appropriate hymn, in which the Supreme Being was acknowledged
as the Ruler of the Seasons. This was sung, it must be confessed, by a
sadly shrunken choir, stoutly supported, however, by the congregation
in the body of the meeting-house, without the sound of tabret, or
harp, or other musical instruments; for in those days not even the
flute or grave bass-viol, those pioneers of the organ, were permitted
in the Sanctuary. To the hymn succeeded a long and fervent prayer, in
which Mr. Robinson, the minister (the term Reverend had then a slight
papistical twang), after bewailing with ingenious particularity the
sins and back-slidings of himself and people, and the ingratitude
of the whole land, and recounting the innumerable blessings that had
crowned their basket and their store, entreated that notwithstanding
their manifold sins, iniquities and transgressions, the divine favor
might not be withdrawn from a land where the Lord had planted his own
vine, and where the precious seeds of heavenly grace deposited in
the soil and nurtured and cultured by men "of whom the world was not
worthy," had sprung up and borne the inestimable fruit of civil and
religious freedom. Upon the conclusion of the prayer followed another
hymn, and after these "exercises," the sermon.

The text was the ninth verse of the twenty-sixth chapter of
Deuteronomy, "And He hath brought us into this place and hath given
us this land, even a land that floweth with milk and honey." The
Thanksgiving sermon was formerly one on which more than common labor
was expended, and was intended to be a celebrity of the year. On this
occasion the preacher laid out a wide field for his eloquence. He
commenced by comparing the condition of the first colonists to that
of the children of Israel when they fled from the house of bondage. He
painted the Pilgrim fathers landing on Plymouth Rock, snow, and ice,
and desolation around, but the fire of faith in their hearts. He
contrasted the feebleness of the beginning with the grandeur of the
result, whence he deduced the inference that the Lord had led his
people with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; he alluded to the
changed appearance of the country, converted from a heathen wilderness
into a Christian garden, whence the perfume of Christian devotion
perpetually arose; he portrayed the horrors of