into a church-state, to walk in all his ways, according to their best endeavours, whatever it cost them."

Aye! Whatever it cost them! A great sentence is that. They knew almost as little, then, what it would reveal, as the gates of hell knew of their whole movement. And how wonderfully, from step to step, they were led on! It might be said, with reference to the great enterprise, then wholly unknown, undreamed of, to which God would prepare and bring them, "I girded thee, though thou hast not known me." They knew God, but what God was going to do with them they knew not, nor what their first step would cost them. It was by the providential discipline of God, with the intolerable severities of the Establishment as its instruments, that they came to the discovery of the great truth, that as Christ's disciples they were really the Lord's free people, who might, if they pleased, join themselves by covenant into a church state, who had that liberty from Christ, though neither asking leave of any Established Church, nor constituted by any king or bishop. Why! this was one of the greatest lessons ever taught by Divine Providence, ever learned from his word through suffering. The whole world was against it. If that question had been brought before any set of men then in existence, had it even been carried to Geneva, and laid before the church of Calvin there, had it been carried to Germany, and proposed to a Lutheran synod there, in its bare simplicity, as taught of God, it would have been negatived. The question, can we, "several religious people," we, "two or three gathered together," constitute a church? Can we constitute ourselves into a church, and be regarded as a church, and lawfully choose our own minister, under Christ only ?—this question would in most quarters have been answered by pursuivants and bailiffs, in prisons and Courts of High Commission. In the opinion of the rulers of the Church then in England it was a mortal sin "for a man that had been at church twice on

the Lord's Day to repeat the heads of the sermons to his family in the evening; a crime that deserved fines, imprisonment, and the forfeiture of all that was dear to a man in the world." "If any will not be quiet, and shew his obedience, the church," said King James, "were better without him, and he were worthy to be hanged." And Archbishop Whitgift said that his Majesty spake by the special assistance of the Holy Ghost.*

Long and arduously did the persecuting rulers of the Church labor at their work of smelting out this precious ore of truth, this doctrine of Christian liberty. Busily were they running to and fro, conveying the metal from one forge and furnace to another, sweating at their fires and anvils, with the great trip-hammers of Church and State despotism at command, thinking, forsooth, that they were burning and beating down, out of existence, all idea, all thought, all dream of freedom, when they were merely God's instruments to discipline and beat the consciences of our fathers, out of their remaining bondage and darkness into liberty and light. This great act of joining themselves by covenant into a church-state was one, into which the providence of God did, as it were, compel the Pilgrims, anxious and doubtful at first, but at length free, without the least mixture of fear or superstition. After that step, great and rapid was the increase of their light and liberty, and God's discipline, in preparation for the removal of the vine out of Egypt, was immediate.

* Prince 10, 11.-Neal's History of the Puritans. -Fuller's Church History.

CHAPTER V.

COMPARISON

OF GOD'S PREPARATORY PROVIDENCES. THE
SAVAGES.-SQUANTO, AND THE PIL-

PLAGUE AMONG THE

GRIMS' WELCOME.

THAT We may watch and compare God's marvellous providences in this thing, the date is to be marked, 1602. This was the time when God took from a persecuting ChurchEstablishment the seed-corn which he was to prepare for the planting of his church in New England, for an entirely new dispensation of his grace in our world.

In that same year, 1602, the same Divine Providence carried Bartholomew Gosnold to the discovery of Cape Cod, where God would soon carry the seed he was thus gathering and preparing. The coincidence of these dates is remarkable. It is also remarkable that both in this expedition of Gosnold, in 1602, and in that of our Pilgrim Fathers in 1620, God's providence disappointed man's will, preventing entirely the first intended settlement, and turning the last from its intended place to a spot not even within the limits of the charter. Gosnold's expedition was directed to Virginia, a general and most indefinite designation at that time, comprising almost the whole present seacoast of the United States. Intending a shorter cut than had before been attempted by the more southerly adventurers, Gosnold steered more directly across the ocean, and at length brought up at Cape Cod, where he probably cast the first lines ever thrown for a fish which was to be

come as solid, fundamental, and useful a staple of the New England seas, as the granite should be of the New England continent. An honest, hearty, homely, enduring fish, susceptible of much salt, and the better for keeping. The Cod and the Granite are no ignoble symbols of New England wealth and character.

"Therefore honorable and worthy countrymen," said Captain Smith to the people of England, at the close of one of his relations of his voyages, "let not the meanness of the word fish distaste you; for it will afford as good gold as the mines of Guiana or Potassie, with less hazard and charge, and more certainty and facility." By the discipline of industry and piety God would make the rocky coasts and harbors of New England a Potosi of riches, such as all the mountain mines of silver and gold in the world could not create. But of this, either Bart. Gosnold or Captain Smith thought little. And what mind at that period could have been sagacious enough to cast even a guess over the future of the two centuries?

Cape Cod contains now about 32,000 inhabitants. Here and at Nantucket and New Bedford, as well as around Cape Ann, are the cradles of our seamen; yea, the Capes themselves, far stretching into the Atlantic, are almost rocked by its magnificent tempests. As long as the English language lasts, the enthusiastic eulogy will never be forgotten, passed by the great mind of Edmund Burke, upon the seamen of the coasts of New England, near a hundred years ago, while dwelling upon the wealth which the colonies had drawn from the sea by their fisheries. He told the British Government that if their envy was excited by those great acquisitions, yet the spirit with which that enterprising employment had been exercised, ought rather to have raised their esteem and admiration; for what in the world was equal to it? "Neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous and

fine sagacity of English enterprise ever carried this most

perilous mode of hard industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this recent people; a people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood. Through a wise and salutary neglect, a generous nature has been suffered to take her own way to perfection. The colonies have not been

squeezed into their happy form by the constraints of watchful and suspicious government." The moment those constraints began to be applied, then the generous nature that had grown up without them, spurned them, and England lost her whole colonial possessions south of Canada, by attempting despotically to do what she pleased with them.

When our fathers first landed at Cape Cod, there seem to have been plenty of whales and seals, as well as codfish, in those seas. They found the Grampus so abundant, that at one place they were minded, on that account, to call the harbor Grampus Bay. Sometimes they had a shot at a whale, but never enjoyed the sport of catching one: "when the whale saw her time," says their quaint description," she gave a snuff and away."

Out of Gosnold's discovery grew an incorporated trading company for North Virginia in 1606, but no settlement. In 1608 came the attempted settlement and failure on the banks of the Sagadahock, under Popham and Gilbert. In 1614, Captain John Smith made his survey of the country and presented a plan of it to King Charles, then the Prince Royal, who gave it the name of New England; well baptized for the Pilgrims, but a miserable godfather. From its very first discovery, every attempt to colonize or settle this country for mere purposes of gain or trade, failed, and at length all thoughts of it seemed to be abandoned, except as far as concerned the keeping of small summer stations by private adventurers for traffic with the Indians. And so it went on, till the year 1620, when God had brought his own vine out of Egypt, and was ready to plant it in the region which he and not man had chosen for it.