their Soul's
Nourishment." We call New England character hardy, stern, and stalwart.
Well it might be, by having the teachings of this Primer enforced in
men's lives and labors. We may not admire some of the doctrines, but for
the times they made the noblest and strongest of men. A trite statement
of the late Dr. Leonard Bacon was: "In determining what kind of men our
fathers were, we are to compare their laws not with ours, but with the
laws which they renounced." So with their theological opinions. Compared
with the doctrines they renounced, and not with those of our own era, we
recognize in them a strength and vigor of thought and character which
will stand the severest test and scrutiny. Steel well heated and
hammered is most valuable. But steel can be overheated and overhammered;
then it becomes almost useless. The strong doctrines of the earlier New
England were too closely enforced, and there came a day--a part of which
we live in--which repelled them. The old-time teaching has passed, and a
fresher and more potent teaching is supplanting it.

There is something grand in the social life of the good old days. In
knowing of it, we better appreciate the blessings of to-day. The
ordinary life of the people has in it a fascination which a general
knowledge fails to impart. The greatness of New England, however, is not
all in the past. New England has given excellent life to the great West,
and the far-reaching isles. Its line has gone out through all the earth.
The descendants of New England are drawing riches from the prairies, the
mines of the mountains, and are creating business thrift in all the
rising towns. In all the world, in every commercial centre, in the
vessels upon the sea, in every mechanical industry at home and abroad,
are those whose keenness and brightness of mind, whose sharpness of
ingenuity, and whose warmth of heart are to be traced to the natural
blood and descent from those we ever delight to honor.

The social life of to-day is not as it has been. The oneness of the
early times is disintegrating. The people seem almost mad in their rush
after clubs and societies. The ninety per cent of English descent at the
beginning of the Revolution is giving way before the incoming of
emigrants from every other nation. The rapid reading, thinking, and
living has long since passed the life of former generations. But in this
new social order is there nothing rich and abiding? Most truly there is.
The mille