coes, pulling down the altars, smashing the precious statues. Let us confess that they were men with faults, many and great. To minimize their errors or magnify their excellences would be alike unworthy of their memory and our inheritance. Their theology was narrow, and has in part ceased to satisfy thinking men. Their stern thought toward the Hester Prynne of the "Scarlet Letter" has been succeeded by a certain tender, gentle, throbbing sympathy. To the rocklike sternness of virtue, we have added charities and sweet philanthropies, that embody God's tenderness toward each "bruised reed." But, faulty as they were, be it remembered that there is some spot on every shaft of marble, some flaw in every pearl and diamond, some disproportioned feature even in the loveliest face.

PURITAN AND CAVALIER.

For criticise him as we may, we must go back to the Puritan for the foundation of our social happiness and peace. If these men of granite were cold, be it remembered that the mountain peaks that are crowned with white snow are not low browed. If the Puritans were simple folk and without the graces of the modern drawing-room, be it not forgotten that Doric temples have their beauty through a column that represents a single shaft of white marble. Our heroic fathers doubtless were different from their children. But what if the generation of Bradford and Brewster differs from ours, as warships differ from pleasure yachts, as great organs differ from harps and music-boxes, as the oak and pine differ from the vines that cover them? For if the Pilgrim fathers were not ideal men, neither can their children lay claim to that high honor. Nor will the ideal man ever come until one rises up who, to the stern virtues of the Puritan, adds the grace and sweetness of modern life, carrying his strength up to beauty, inflecting sternness toward sympathy, clothed with

integrity that is spotless indeed, but having also sweet allurement. Happy indeed the man who, to the rocklike qualities of law and justice without, conceals the amethystine qualities of affection and sympathy in the heart within. Not until Puritan and cavalier unite in one man, who bends for coronation before Christ, his divine Master, will the perfect man appear.

In his eulogy upon John Brown, Wendell Phillips said Lord Bacon, as he marches down the centuries, may put one hand on the telegraph and another on the steam-engine and say, "These are mine, for I taught you to invent." Could we assemble in one room earth's greatest sons, who have achieved much for liberty and progress, and could the Puritan spirit pass from one son of goodness and genius to another, few would be found in that goodly company who did not belong to the group called Puritan. For long before Puritanism became an outer cult it was an inner spirit and a potent influence. It was the Puritan instinct in Moses that led him to resign the splendors of the palace in Egypt, choosing rather the rigors of a life in the desert. It was the Puritan spirit stirring in Daniel that led him to stand forth alone, braving a throne and its decrees, that he might worship God after the manner of his fathers. Paul showed the Puritan spirit when, fettered and a prisoner before Felix, he lifted his chains and boldly indicted the King upon the throne and brought the tyrant to his trial. Socrates had the Puritan spirit when he braved the Athenian jury and said, "It is better to die than to refuse to obey the voice within." Galileo was not a Puritan in the hour when he recanted, but a spark at least of the fathers' faith showed in him when he muttered under his breath, "Nevertheless the earth does move." Savonarola, too, had the Puritan valor. When the Pope tried to buy him off with an offer of the cardinal's hat, he replied that rather than sin against his convictions he would receive the red hat of

martyrdom. Luther had a like intrepid temper when he said that he would go to Worms and front the Emperor though there were as many "devils in the streets as tiles on the roofs." Cromwell was a Puritan when he went forth to destroy that citadel of iniquity called the divine right of kings, and razed to the ground the ancient castles of England that long had been the strongholds of feudalism. The Puritan temper also dominated Milton when he wrote the noblest plea that was ever made for the freedom of the press. Robinson was a Puritan in the hour when he foreshadowed our toleration, in the words, "There is more light yet to break forth from God's word." It was the Puritan spirit also that spoke in Garrison, "I am earnest; I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard." It was the Puritan spirit that lent power to the polished shafts of Wendell Phillips; that lent a deep moral purpose and passion to the orations of Lincoln and Beecher and Sumner and Curtis; when Gladstone also stood forth to plead the cause of Ireland's poor against England's power and wealth, it was the old heroic faith of the fathers that flamed forth in the famous son. It is not too much to say that the history of modern liberty is the history of Puritanism.

FAITH IN GOD.

If now we analyze the qualities that lent the Puritan his power and influence, we shall find that his crowning characteristic was his faith in the unseen God. In words that have the roll of thunder, Macaulay, in the most eloquent page he ever wrote, has portrayed the vision of God as the hidings of the Puritan's power. "The Puritans," said the essayist, "were men whose minds had derived a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of eternal interests. Not content with acknowledging, in general terms, an over

ruling Providence, they habitually ascribed every event to the will of the Great Being, for whose power nothing was too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too minute. To know him, to serve him, to enjoy him, was with them the great end of existence. ... They recognized no title to superiority but his favor; and, confident of that favor, they despised all the accomplishments and all the dignities of the world. If they were unacquainted with the work of philosophers and poets, they were deeply read in the oracles. of God. If their names were not found in the registers of heralds, they were recorded in the Book of Life. If their steps were not accompanied by a splendid train of menials, legions of ministering angels had charge over them. Their palaces were houses not made with hands; their diadems crowns of glory which should never fade away. On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and priests, they looked down with contempt; for they esteemed themselves rich in a more precious treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime language; nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand." So death lost its terrors and pleasure its charms. Enthusiasm made them stoics and raised them above danger and corruption. "They went through the world like Sir Artegal's iron man Talus with his flail, crushing and trampling down oppressors, mingling with human beings, but having neither part nor lot in human infirmities; insensible to fatigue, to pleasure, and to pain; not to be pierced by any weapon; not to be withstood by any barrier." Happythrice happy-our generation, could we exchange some of our tools, our knowledge of bugs and beetles, our outer embellishments, for the temper and spirit of the fathers. Because they worked under their Taskmaster's eye they needed no paid overseer to see that they slighted no task; no timekeeper to see that they came not late nor went early; no lynx-eyed reformers to search out their accounts

for sinful entries. They lived in God's presence, as the flowers live and unfold in the soft enfolding sunshine, as birds sing when the morning rolls in warm billows over them. "The times that have ceased to believe in God and immortality," said Mazzini, "may continue illogically to utter the holy words, 'progress and duty,' but they have deprived the first of its basis and robbed the second of its sanction." And when our fathers' faith in God shall go, when we become materialistic and bow down to a mud god, and live by ethics of pleasure, not duty, then justice will forsake the laws our fathers left us; liberty will fade from our institutions; the glory will depart from library and chapel; our music will lose its sweetness, and our canvas its lustrous color; peace also will pass forever from the American home. For the loss of faith in our fathers' God would be the most disastrous loss that ever befell the young republic; just as the victory of our fathers' faith is soon to be the sublimest history in the annals of time.

PURITANS' LOVE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS.

To the vision of God that, like a pillar of cloud by day. and a pillar of fire by night, led the Puritan forward, let us add the emphasis of civic righteousness and the recognition of conscience and duty rather than pleasure and selfish gain. Though the cavalier called him a dreamer and an idealist, the Puritan held firmly to his faith that the ideal republic would come when the law of Sinai and the sermon on the mount were organized into the laws of the market-place and city hall. Not Plato in his "Atlantis," not Thomas More in his "Utopia," not the modern dreamers of ideal cities have dreamed so noble a dream of the ideal commonwealth as these Puritans who labored to set up the kingdom of God upon earth. These grim, stern men have been praised for their valor, kneeling down to