World of North
America for civil and religious liberty and the Reformed faith. A look
at their breadth of plan must be a benefit to us and a praise to those
who planned so large things for the glory of God. That they acted
independently of each other shows how wide-spread this thirst for
liberty and this love for the kingdom of God. I know few things that
stir me more. Swedish Lutherans settled New Sweden; the Dutch Walloons
settled New Holland; the Baptists, Rhode Island; the Quakers,
Pennsylvania; the Huguenots, the Carolinas; the Puritans, New England.
The Anglican Church only incidentally, and not of intention, settled
Virginia. Catholicism seized and holds South America, Central America,
and Mexico, but in the United States was represented only by the colony
of Maryland, planted by Lord Baltimore, and bears mark of his religious
faith in naming his plantation after Mary, the Catholic queen, his own
name appearing in the name of its present metropolis, Baltimore. In
days when in England the Catholic was under ban, he founded this colony
as a Canaan for Roman Catholics. Spanish Catholics worked their way
along the Pacific Coast, and French Catholicism sailed up the St.
Lawrence and down the Mississippi, though the latter territory now
belongs to the Protestant faith. Admiral Coligny, an illustrious son
of France, attempted planting the Huguenots in America, though this
colonizing experiment has left scant memorial of Huguenot occupancy,
because the destruction of this colony by Spanish Catholics was so
sudden and so utter; yet the Carolinas are witness to this hazard and
hope, bearing the name of the infamous King Charles IX. How terrible
is the irony when we recall how this same ruler, after whom Coligny
named his land of refuge for persecuted Protestants, was author of the
most malignant religious massacre on record--the Massacre of St.
Bartholomew! In Beaufort and Carteret may be discovered reminiscences
of an expedition whose close was disastrous, yet heroic.

Everybody has contributed to giving names to the States; therefore
attention to them as a class is fitting. England gave name to
Maryland, as suggested in another paragraph; to New York, named in
honor of the Duke of York, afterward known as James II, of evil memory;
Virginia, so styled by Sir Walter Raleigh, that pattern of chivalry, in
honor of his queen, Elizabeth; New Jersey, after Jersey, the island;
Rhode Island, after the Island of Rhodes;