in prayer; and, therefore, it is not so embalmed in our history as that of some other men not at all superior to him either by nature or grace, or in the honor of original obscurity and humility. He was a remarkable man. Had he come to this country, what between the love of faithful souls, the strength of a great mind, a sacred superiority of trial and suffering, and the weakness of his flock, his own power might have been too great, might have been laid up to accumulate, and might have grown into worms, like Israel's manna, kept for future use, and not received from God and Providence, according to occasions of want. There was a wonderful guardianship from God against this evil, an evil which lay in man's nature, and not in mere circumstances, not only in the case of Robinson, but of some other dear and necessary men, dangerous by their very dearness. It was a wonderful providence which sent this vine to take root in New England, not only a Church without a Bishop, but without even the simple New Testament Bishop, the ascension gift of Christ, the beloved, legitimate, unusurping pastor. The Church was to be thrown in its simplest original elements as a band of Christians, in its barest independence of any earthly power, and its most entire dependence upon Christ, into a state of isolation, unrivalled, unequalled, since the formation of the Church at Antioch. There was in all this an evident return of Christ's Church to those original sources of power which it possessed, disconnected from any earthly organization in existence, at the day of Pentecost. There was in this kind of original plantation in New England one of the greatest exercises of God's superintending wisdom ever manifested in the history of mortals. It seemed as if man was to do nothing, God everything, in this new reformation and creation of the Church.

Its foundations were sunk deep down in an abyss of trial, in faith, in self-denial, in love, in God. There was hardly ever in the world a more complete cutting off from all human dependence, no, not even when the Israelites, just escaped from Egypt, with the chariots of Pharaoh rattling behind them, stood at the Red Sea. And, indeed, the miracle in such a case is a lower kind of training of the soul to faith, than the deliverance by the pressure of God's gradual providence, when the sense can see nothing but nature, and the soul must be armed with grace, must see God by faith, or see him not at all. The miracle is but the bud of greater dealings, of a more refined and exquisite spiritual training; the miracle is good for babes, the great things of God's ordinary providence for men; the discipline of the soul for a life of faith, and for the daily sight of God in daily trials, is the most costly and the greatest thing. The old miraculous dispensation was comparatively crude, but this is more perfect; that was of sense, but this is of the Spirit.

Mr. Robinson was a remarkable man, placed in circumstances very like those of the original founders of Christianity, and with a simplicity, honesty, and freedom of spirit, singularly similar to theirs. As Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, he was called by some the author of Independency; but Mr. Cotton of New England afterwards wisely replied, that "the New Testament was the author of it, and that it was received in the times of purest primitive antiquity, many hundred years before Mr. Robinson was born." Besides this, the Church, and not the pastor, were appointed to plant it, and under God did plant it, in New England. Unto principalities and powers in heavenly places, as well as to the gazing monarchies on earth, and angry counsellings together of kings and rulers, has been made known by the Church, as of old, the manifold wisdom of God.

There was at this time a degree of religious liberty in Holland, such as was not to be found anywhere else in the world. It was brought about by the fierceness of the persecutions of Philip the Second, through the exercise of God's great prerogative of bringing good out of evil, and causing the wrath of man to praise him. The Romish Church, in the persons of Philip and the Duke of Alva, put up a gallows in the Netherlands to hang the Reformation, but hung their own cause upon it. To this place of liberty Robinson and the Pilgrims with much difficulty escaped in 1607. It was a night of many nights in one, when they made their Exodus out of Egypt. Not in one body, but separately, individually, and with many tears, harassments, and persecutions, did they effect their escape. And when this was accomplished, they dwelt many years as strangers on the Egyptian side of the Red Sea, before they crossed the ocean to come to that Canaan, which God had chosen and prepared for them.

They removed from Rameses and pitched in Succoth; and they departed from Succoth and pitched in Etham. They seemed all the while to hear as of old the voice of Jehovah, "I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God: and ye shall know that I am the Lord your God, which bringeth you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. And I will bring you in unto the land, concerning the which I did swear to give it to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob: and I will give it to you for an heritage." God, who was with them, made them feel that it was not for a lasting encampment in Amsterdam or Leyden that he had brought them out, nor for themselves alone, nor for their own enjoyment, that he was leading them. God awoke within them the great purpose of crossing the ocean, and incited them to it by many inducements, providences, and trials, inward and external. Above all, God caused to grow up in their hearts, in the language of Gov. Bradford, "a great hope and inward zeaĺ of laying some good foundation, or at least to make some way

thereunto, for the propagating and advancing the gospel of the kingdom of Christ in these remote parts of the world; yea, though they should be as stepping stones unto others for performing of so great a work." Their first motive in getting out of Egypt had been, as it were, simply a three days' journey into the wilderness to sacrifice freely unto their God. They do not seem to have dreamed, while in England, of the great conception of founding a colony of God in the New World. But this was what God had for them to do, and in due time he told them of it, made them sensible of their mission, woke up in their hearts a desire for it, broke up their encampment in Etham, and caused them to enter the sea.

The day before their embarkation in 1620, their beloved and venerated pastor preached from the text in Ezra 8:28, "And there at the river Ahava I proclaimed a fast, that we might humble ourselves before our God, and seek of him a right way for us, and for our children, and for all our substance." So," says the Pilgrim Bradford, "they left that goodly and pleasant city, which had been their resting-place near twelve years. But they knew that they were PILGRIMS, and looked not so much on those things, but lifted up their eyes to heaven, their dearest country, and quieted their spirits." It was a great day in the history of the world, this fast day by the sea. It was a remarkable discourse in which the Pastor poured into the minds of these framers of a new world in Christ the last instructions he was ever to give to his flock this side the grave. What would we not give for the whole of what he uttered that day! Mr. Winslow, who was present, has reported part of it, a prophetic part, of almost inspired wisdom. "I charge you," said he, "before God and his blessed angels, to follow me no further than I follow Christ; and if God should reveal anything to you by any other instrument of his, be as ready to receive it, as you ever were to receive any truth by my ministry; for I am very confident the Lord hath more truth and light yet to break forth out of his holy Word."

This address of Robinson to the Pilgrims was something entirely out of the ordinary course of human affairs. It was like a message from some old prophet of God. It has the character of something supernatural, as if the speaker were rapt into a vision of the future, and were under an impulse, not of his own spirit, but carried, as it were, in an inspiration out of himself. You seem to see a prophet, a lawgiver, lifted as on a mount of vision, from which he bends forward, addressing, across the ocean, the future millions of the Western world.

The next day, the Pilgrims proceeded down to the port at Delft Haven, a few miles from Leyden, and the wind being fair, went at once on board ship. On the deck of the vessel, Robin son kneeled down in the midst of them, and in the presence of

many spectators on the quay, commended them and their enterprise to God. How sacred and solemn was that hour of supplication! In all history there is no finer subject for a great painter, than the moment of this parting prayer of Robinson's on the ship's deck.

No eye but God's followed the Pilgrims across the wintry ocean. Little have they said of their sufferings in that long and dangerous passage, but have spoken of God's providence and mercy. With a simplicity, that in itself is sublime, they narrate the perils of their landing, and first surveys, on an icebound, untried coast, in freezing weather, which was death's icy arrow to many a precious frame. They tell of God's good providence in the discovery of hidden corn, beneath ground so covered with snow and so hard frozen, that we were fain, say they, with our curtleaxes and short swords, to hew and cut the ground a foot deep, and then wrest it up with levers. They tell of the delight with which they found fresh springs, and sat down and drank their first New England water-emblem of that sacred stream God was opening, through them, for future generations, to supply the city of our God. They tell of their first perilous encounter with the Indians, whom it pleased God to vanquish; and how, after giving God thanks for this deliverance, they went on, amidst snow and rain and bad weather, and imminent danger of shipwreck to their little shallop. The labor of their discovery and landing at Plymouth was amidst watchings all night in the rain; the wind northwest and freezing hard, with great difficulty to kindle a fire for the wet, cold, and feeble. The pleasure of the Divine Providence is hailed by them. "But it was very cold," say they, "for the water froze on our clothes, and made them many times like coats of iron." They recount their first Sabbath of rest at Plymouth; but what a rest! amidst hunger and peril, houseless, in the open bitter elements! And meantime God was. preparing severer trials than any of these; for when the little worn and wearied party returned to the ship to comfort the hearts of their brethren with news of their discovery and landing, they had to learn that the dear wife of William Bradford had fallen from the ship and was drowned. By what a baptism of hardships and suffering did it please God that our Pilgrim fathers should lay the foundations of his Church in our beloved country! yet with what patience, what calm simplicity of resolution and trust in God, what undying hope, and unrepining endurance! Indeed, they died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and Pilgrims on the earth.

And these were the men. by whom God was opening and demonstrating to the world the discoveries of truth essential to the

world's peace, on which only the world's welfare could rest, by the working of which alone individual kingdoms could be conducted to the enjoyment of an indestructible liberty, and all the world's empires could be bound in mutual harmony and love. The opening of these discoveries was to be from point to point, not all at once, as a flood of supernatural light, but disciplinary, providential, by more truth and light breaking forth out of God's word, as Mr. Robinson prophesied, as they were able to bear it; truth and light received by those whom God had placed in such circumstances as made them willing to receive it, those from whom he had, even by inimical and violent hands, removed the films of prejudice, those from before whose minds he had broken down the darkening piles of State despotism at the door of the Church, and whom he had removed, by themselves, into the wilderness, in order to let the light of the Scriptures shine. And the demonstration of these discoveries was to be as gradual as the growth of a vigorous, free, Christian State, in perfect religious liberty, beneath their light and influence. As a child passes from discipline to discipline, from school to school, from lower to higher masters, so from step to step God led our Fathers, so naturally, that at the time they could no more see the great end to which he was bringing them, or the intended and expected consummation of light, than a being ignorant of the material processes of our world, who should be placed for the first time where he could watch the dawning of the day, could measure the stealthy imperceptible steps of the morning, or predict the glorious appearance of the sun. Indeed, at the time, they were often so overwhelmed with difficulties, and absorbed in the questions of this day's and the morrow's preservation, that as to God's providence and intentions, or their own discoveries of his future will, they were like men lost in catacombs, and feeling their way in almost total darkness.

And yet they were coming to discoveries, which were to renew the face of the earth; they were working out problems by the solution of which the world was to be brought from its abode. with the dead into the light of the living. They were discoveries grander than that of a new world, and to be gained through infinitely greater toil than that of Columbus. They were problems, indeed, upon the solution of which they could merely enter, merely take the first steps, while other generations would be requisite to complete them; but the right entrance was essential, and had not the first setps been steps in God, the after progress would have been from intricacy to intricacy, instead of opening into perfect day. The corn of wheat mist fall into the ground and die, or it would have remained alone, & ad nothing would have grown from it. There must of. necessit be this death to self, and then the seed was to ripen into a glorious harvest.