a brave and remarkable man; but still more important as
Chief Priest and Founder, which one may consider him to be, of the Faith
that became Scotland's, New England's, Oliver Cromwell's. History will
have something to say about this, for some time to come!

We may censure Puritanism as we please; and no one of us, I suppose,
but would find it a very rough defective thing. But we, and all men, may
understand that it was a genuine thing; for Nature has adopted it,
and it has grown, and grows. I say sometimes, that all goes by
wager-of-battle in this world; that _strength_, well understood, is
the measure of all worth. Give a thing time; if it can succeed, it is a
right thing. Look now at American Saxondom; and at that little Fact of
the sailing of the Mayflower, two hundred years ago, from Delft Haven in
Holland! Were we of open sense as the Greeks were, we had found a Poem
here; one of Nature's own Poems, such as she writes in broad facts over
great continents. For it was properly the beginning of America: there
were straggling settlers in America before, some material as of a body
was there; but the soul of it was first this. These poor men, driven
out of their own country, not able well to live in Holland, determine
on settling in the New World. Black untamed forests are there, and wild
savage creatures; but not so cruel as Star-chamber hangmen. They
thought the Earth would yield them food, if they tilled honestly; the
everlasting heaven would stretch, there too, overhead; they should be
left in peace, to prepare for Eternity by living well in this world of
Time; worshipping in what they thought the true, not the idolatrous way.
They clubbed their small means together; hired a ship, the little ship
Mayflower, and made ready to set sail.

In Neal's _History of the Puritans_ [Neal (London, 1755), i. 490] is an
account of the ceremony of their departure: solemnity, we might call it
rather, for it was a real act of worship. Their minister went down with
them to the beach, and their brethren whom they were to leave behind;
all joined in solemn prayer, That God would have pity on His poor
children, and go with them into that waste wilderness, for He also had
made that, He was there also as well as here.--Hah! These men, I think,
had a work! The weak thing, weaker than a child, becomes strong one day,
if it be a true thing. Puritanism was only despicable, laughable then;
but nobody can manage to laugh at it now. Puritanism h