ched by the corruptions of a spotted world, seeking with
humility the will of God and submitting with all the pride of conscious
merit to law.

As the middle-class experience implied the Protestant theory of
religion, it implied the Puritan conception of morals and conduct.
Puritanism originated in the towns for the same reason that it lingers
in the country; it was formerly the townsman rather than the countryman
whose ideas and manner of living stamped him as peculiar. The spiritual
and social isolation of the townsman is therefore the source of the
outward impassiveness of the Puritan, as well as of the intensity of
his inner experience: the continued impact of noble or priestly contempt
had crusted his nature with a manner that was rigid and resistant and
undemonstrative, beneath which smouldered the explosive forces of
thwarted ambition and the sense of unrecognized intellectual and moral
excellence. Conscious of a worth which society ignored, he transformed
his qualities into virtues, and erected his virtues into social
standards of value. Prudence and economy, restraint of manner, denial of
the sensuous and the sensual appeal, reserve of soul, the unmoved
endurance of the pricks of fortune--these became the virtues of the
Puritan because they were not the virtues of the world which despised
him: by these self-erected standards he justified himself and passed
judgment on the society in which he felt himself an alien and a
stranger.

Opposition was therefore but fuel to the Puritan flame. Every
persecution of society or obstacle of nature encountered in the endeavor
to withdraw from the world was a confirmation of its corruption, a
device of the devil to tempt him astray, or God's wise method of testing
his faith. To persevere was the very proof of his election, the sure
evidence of right thinking. The doctrine of eternal torment in hell,
said Jonathan Edwards, used to appear "like a horrible doctrine to me. I
remember very well when I seemed convinced, and fully satisfied, but
never could give an account how, or by what means I was thus convinced."
The very painfulness of the idea was doubtless what induced him to
accept it. It was not the truth of the doctrine convincing his
intellect, but the discipline of the will involved in vanquishing the
horror of it, that gave him peace; so that in the end it seemed to him,
not so much true, but "exceeding pleasant, bright, and sweet." St.
Augustine furnished us one of t