ing all the crosses and losses otherwise I sustained. Alas! you would fain have had him with you, and he would as fain have come to you." His spirit was evidently saddened ever after the departure of the Pilgrims, whom he longed to follow. There is an expression of this sadness in his beautiful letter, written to the Church in Plymouth, after their severe experience of the first winter, when death had been so busy among them. A tone of still deeper dejection marks his later correspondence, although he felt, after that first winter, that God had given them the victory. Such a letter as the following, which we copy as it stands in the fragment preserved of Governor Bradford's letter-book, must have had a powerful and lasting effect upon the dear Christian friends to whom he was writing. "To the Church of God at Plymouth, in New England. Much beloved brethren: Neither the distance of place, nor distinction of body, can at all either dissolve or weaken that bond of true Christian affection, in which the Lord by his spirit hath tied us together. My continual prayers are to the Lord for you; my most earnest desire is unto you; from whom I will not longer keep, if God will, than means can be procured to bring with me the wives and children of divers of you, and the rest of your brethren, whom I could not leave behind me without great injury both to you and them, and offence to God and all men. The death of so many of our dear friends and brethren, oh how grievous hath it been to you to bear, and to us to take knowledge of; which, if it could be mended with lamenting, could not sufficiently be bewailed; but we must go unto them, and they shall not return unto us; and how many, even of us, God hath taken away here and in England since your departure, you may elsewhere take knowledge. But the same God has tempered judgment with mercy, as otherwise, so in sparing the rest; especially those, by whose godly and wise government you may be, and I know, are, so much helped. In a battle it is not looked for but that divers should die; it is thought well for a side if it get the victory, though with the loss of divers, if no too many or too great. God, I hope, hath given you the victory, after many difficulties, for yourselves and others; though I doubt not but many do and will remain for you and us all to strive with. Brethren, I hope I need not exhort you to obedience unto those whom God hath set over you, in Church and Commonwealth, and to the Lord in them. It is a Christian's honor to give honor according to men's places; and his liberty, to serve God in Faith, and his brethren in Love, orderly, and with a willing and free heart. God forbid I should need to exhort you to peace, which is the bond of perfection, and by which all good is tied together, and without which it is scattered. Have peace with God first, by faith in his promises, good conscience kept in all things, and oft renewed by repentance; and so one with another for His sake, which is, though three, one; and for Christ's sake, who is one, and as you are called by one spirit to one hope. And the God of peace and grace, and all good men, be with you, in all the fruits thereof, plenteously upon your heads, now and for ever. All your brethren here remember you with great love, a general token whereof they have sent you. Yours ever in the Lord. Leyden, Holland, June 30, Anno 1621. JOHN ROBINSON. The most interesting and valuable of all that remains in Plymouth, illustrative of the first generation of its pilgrim inhabitants, is the volume of Old Colony and Church Records, kept among the registries of the town and county. It is with singular interest that the visitor turns over these antique leaves, among which it is pleasant to meet the following poem on the Death of Robinson, found in a page of the Church Records as early as the date of the year 1626. The lines are at least as good as some of Roger Ascham's, and in the firm handwriting in the original MS. may remind one of the verses which John Bunyan used to write in his old copy of Fox's Book of the Martyrs. Governor Bradford was the only one of the Pilgrims, so far as we know, that ever made any attempts at versifica tion; perhaps the authorship of the following stanzas is his. MADE BY A FRIEND, ON THE DEPLORED DEATH OF MR. JOHN ROBINSON, THE WORTHY PASTOUR OF THE CHURCH OF LEYDEN, AS FOLLOWETH: 1 Blessed Robinson hath run his race from earth to heaven is Gone, to be with Christ in heavenly place, 2 A burning and a shining light, 3 What tho hees dead, his workes alive the comfort of them pleasant is 4 Oh blessed holy Saviour, the fountain of all grace, from whom such blessed instruments are sent and Run their Race, 5 To lead us to and guide us in the way to happiness that soe oh Lord we may alwaies 6 That whosoever Gospel preacher be or waterer of the same, wee may always most constantly There is in these lines, which beyond doubt are the expression of the feelings of the whole church, a very different sentiment from that sometimes ascribed to the colony. It has been intimated that the brethren were so fond of their own prophesyings, and so gifted in the same, that their pastors in after years found themselves depreciated, discouraged, and disesteemed thereby. It is very certain. that God saw fit to discipline the colony with some very disastrous experiences in the endurance of men, who proved hypocrites in the ministry or incapacitated for it. It was God's own providence, not their choice, that threw them upon the exercise of their own gifts so long and so habitually. And there could not have been much irregularity, or disesteem of the ministry, in a church educated under Robinson's guidance, while such men as Brewster, Bradford, and Edward Winslow, were their elders and "prophets." The jealousy of prophesyings among the brethren savors a little of that spirit of the Establishment, which afterwards threw Winslow himself into prison in England, on the charge of having publicly exercised his gifts for the edification of the Church, when they wanted a minister. The last stanza in this simple poem on the death of Robinson conveys without doubt the sentiment of the whole church in regard to such preachers of the gospel as the Lord might be pleased to grant them for the guidance of his flock. That whoso gospel preacher be, Or waterer of the same, CHAPTER VII. THE FIRST NEW ENGLAND CHURCH AND THEIR ELDER, WILLIAM BREWSTER. THE VINE BROUGHT OUT AND PLANTED. THE first New England Church was composed of the Pilgrims in the May Flower. Its organization must be regarded as having taken place before they left Leyden, even on that important day of fasting and prayer, early in the year 1620, when, having received accounts of the completion of arrangements in England for their departure, they gathered together to ask counsel of the Lord. That day they heard a sermon from their pastor, Robinson, on the appropriate text in First Samuel xxiii. 4. "And David's men said unto him, Behold we be afraid here in Judah: how much more then if we come to Keilah against the armies of the Philistines? Then David inquired of the Lord yet again. And the Lord answered him and said, Arise, go down to Keilah; for I will deliver the Philistines into thine hand." What a treasure would it have been, could that sermon have been preserved to us! We have no record of it whatever, save in two lines from Governor Bradford, where he says that Mr. Robinson preached that day from that text, "strengthening them against their fears, and encouraging them in their resolutions." It could not but have been one of Robinson's wisest, most affectionate, most fervent and animating sermons; for he was full of a devout fire himself in this great Pilgrim and Missionary enter |