them on the floor.

Then like a vision of the morn, with eyes of heaven's own blue,
She slowly oped the outer door and gently glided through.
Hours after, when Wilhelmj woke he gazed in mute surprise
Upon those buds and blossoms fair, with softened, tender eyes.

They took him back long years agone, when, as a happy child,
He wandered, too, amid the woods, on summer mornings mild;
Aye, back to his home and mother; back to his old home nest,
To the blessed scenes of childhood; back into peace and rest.

And when he heard the story,--how the child had come and fled,--
"This is my greatest triumph" (with tears the maestro said),
"For no gift of king or princes, no praise could please me more.
Than this living mat of flowers a child laid at my door."

* * * * *

THE FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH IN MASSACHUSETTS.

By Thomas W. Bicknell, LL.D.

The act of banishment which severed Roger Williams from the
Massachusetts Colony, in 1635, was the means of _advancing_, rather
than _hindering_, the spread of the so-called _heresies_ which
he so bravely advocated. As the persecutions which drove the disciples
of Christ from Jerusalem were the means of extending the cause of
Christianity, so the principles of toleration and of soul-liberty were
strengthened by opposition, in the mind of this apostle of freedom of
conscience in the New World. His Welsh birth and Puritan education made
him a bold and earnest advocate of whatever truth his conscience
approved, and he went everywhere "preaching the word" of individual
freedom. The sentence of exile could not silence his tongue, nor destroy
his influence. "The divers new and dangerous opinions" which he had
"broached and divulged," though hostile to the notions of the clergy and
the authorities of Massachusetts Bay, were at the same time quite
acceptable to a few brave souls, who, like himself, dared the censures,
and even the persecutions, of their brethren, for the sake of liberty of
conscience.

The dwellers in old Rehoboth were the nearest white neighbors of Roger
Williams and his band at Providence. The Reverend Samuel Newman was the
pastor of the church in this ancient town, having removed with the first
settlers from Weymouth in 1643. Learned, godly, and hospitable, as he
was, he had not reached the "height of that great argument" concerning
human freedom; and while he cherished kindly feelings toward the
dwellers at P