founded, with no more mere ecclesiastico-political societies under the name of National Churches, combining together, like so many national menageries, bears, and calves, and sheep, and wild bulls of Bashan, and presenting a mere caricature of the prophetic reign of peace and righteousness on earth; the wolf and the lamb, the leopard and the kid, the cow and the bear, the calf, and the young lion, and the fatling together, and a little child leading them. This beautiful prediction in Isaiah was certainly never intended to be accomplished by driving together with fines and penalties the religious and the irreligious, the converted and the unconverted, to the Lord's Table, in the Lord's House, and proclaiming by law, The Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord are these!

But how obscurely does God often begin the greatest of his revealing dispensations! An old, old man, with a long white beard, takes a little child in his arms in the Jewish temple, and exclaims, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation!" It is the fulfilment of predictions, for which the great globe itself has been kept in its orbit for centuries. It is the beginning of a new creation of God. The personages disappear from the eye of sense, and the ages silently roll on, but the dispensation then begun, enlarges, till the whole world is filled with it.

So, down among the obscurities of Lincolnshire, where no creature in the world knew what was going on, the lost old primitive model of the Christian Church was begun again under Christ, the Shepherd and Bishop of Souls. If it had been known what great things were to spring from that covenant, all other interests at the gates of hell would have been left unguarded, to crush and annihilate that little despised band of worshippers. But yet in what utter obscurity the effort begins! We love to dwell upon the scene, and upon Gov. Bradford's simple language, "Several did, as the Lord's free people, join themselves by covenant

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 great-. est 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

PLAGUE AMONG THE SAVAGES.—SQUANTO, AND THE PILGRIMS' 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