the Dutch ministers were most active in hindering the work of
others, there were only four of themselves in a vast territory with a
rapidly increasing population. The clearest sign of spiritual life in
the first generation of the colony is to be found in the righteous
quarrel of Domine Bogardus with the malignant Kieft, and the large
Christian brotherly kindness, the laborious mission work among the
Indians, and the long-sustained pastoral faithfulness of Domine
Megapolensis.

Doubtless there is a record in heaven of faithful living and serving of
many true disciples among this people, whose names are unknown on earth;
but in writing history it is only with earthly memorials that we have to
do. The records of the Dutch regime present few indications of such
religious activity on the part of the colonists as would show that they
regarded religion otherwise than as something to be imported from
Holland at the expense of the Company.

A studious and elegant writer, Mr. Douglas Campbell, has presented in
two ample and interesting volumes[74:1] the evidence in favor of his
thesis that the characteristic institutions established by the Puritans
in New England were derived, directly or indirectly, not from England,
but from Holland. One of the gravest answers to an argument which
contains so much to command respect is found in the history of the New
Netherlands. In the early records of no one of the American colonies is
there less manifestation of the Puritan characteristics than in the
records of the colony that was absolutely and exclusively under Dutch
control and made up chiefly of Dutch settlers. Nineteen years from the
beginning of the colony there was only one church in the whole extent of
it; at the end of thirty years there were only two churches. After ten
years of settlement the first schoolmaster arrived; and after thirty-six
years a Latin school was begun, for want of which up to that time young
men seeking a classical education had had to go to Boston for it. In no
colony does there appear less of local self-government or of central
representative government, less of civil liberty, or even of the
aspiration for it. The contrast between the character of this colony and
the heroic antecedents of the Dutch in Holland is astonishing and
inexplicable. The sordid government of a trading corporation doubtless
tended to depress the moral tone of the community, but this was an evil
common to many of the colonies. Ordinan