n for the visit of the Mayflower pilgrims to Leyden or
Delfthaven. Their eyes resting upon its pages, Selden and Pym were to
go to prison, while Grotius dreamed of the rights of man in peace and
war, and Guido and Rubens were painting the joys of the manger or the
sorrows of Calvary. His hand resting upon this book, Oliver Cromwell
would consolidate the hopes and convictions of Puritanism into a sword
which should conquer at Nasby, Marston Moor and Dunbar, leave to the
throne of Charles I, a headless corpse, and create, if only for an
hour's prophecy, a commonwealth of unbending righteousness. With that
volume in their homes, the Swede and the Huguenot, the Scotch-Irishman
and the Quaker, the Dutchman and the freedom-loving cavalier, were to
plan pilgrimages to the West, and establish new homes in America. With
that book in the cabin of the _Mayflower_, venerated and obeyed by
sea-tossed exiles, was to be born a compact from which should spring
a constitution and a government for the life of which all these
nationalities should willingly bleed and struggle, under a conqueror
who should rise from the soil of the cavaliers, and unsheath his sword
in the colony of the Puritans.

Out of that Bible were to come the "Petition of Right," the national
anthem of 1628, the "Grand Remonstrance," and "Paradise Lost." With
it, Blake and Pascal should voyage heroically in diverse seas. In its
influence Jeremy Taylor should write his "Liberty of Prophesying,"
Sir Matthew Hale his fearless replies, while Rembrandt was placing on
canvas little Dutch children, with wooden shoes, crowding to the feet
of a Jewish Messiah.

Its lines, breathing life, order, and freedom, would inspire
John Bunyan's dream, Algernon Sidney's fatal republicanism, and
Puffendorf's judicature. With them, William Penn would meet the
Indian of the forest, and Fenelon, the philosopher, in his meditative
solitude. Locke and Newton and Leibnitz would carry it with them in
pathless fields of speculation, while Peter the Great was smiting
an arrogant priest in Russia, and William was ascending the English
throne. From its poetry Cowper, Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning
would catch the divine afflatus; from its statesmanship Burke,
Romilly, and Bright would learn how to create and redeem institutions;
from its melodies Handel, Bach, Mendelssohn, and Beethoven would write
oratorios, masses, and symphonies; from its declaration of divine
sympathy Wilberforce, Howard, a