rule of the Stuarts. It was Robinson and Brewster leading off their little band from their native soil, at first to find a shelter on the shores of a neighboring continent, but ultimately to come hither, and, having surmounted all difficulties and braved a thousand dangers, to find here a place of refuge and rest. Thanks be to God that this spot was honored as the asylum of religious liberty! May its standard, reared here, remain forever! May it rise as high as heaven, till its banner shall fan the air of both continents, and wave as a glorious ensign of peace and prosperity to the nations!" After remaining in Holland twelve years, the Puritans resolved to seek rest and enlargement, and fulfil their Christian mission, by emigrating to the North American continent. They had, as they affirmed, “a great hope and inward zeal of laying some good foundation, or at least to make some way thereunto, for the propagating and advancing of the kingdom of Christ unto those remote parts of the world; yea, though they should be but as stepping-stones unto others for performing so great a work." The farewell scenes are described by Governor Bradford, of the colony, as follows:-"So, being ready to depart, they had a day of solemn humiliation with their pastor,-taking his text from Ezra the 8th, 21, I proclaimed a fast there, at the river Ahava, that we might afflict ourselves before God, and seek of him a right way for our little ones and our substance;' upon which he spent a part of the day profitably, and very suitably to their present occasion. The rest of the time was spent in pouring out their prayers to the Lord with great ferveney, mixed with abundance of tears. And the time being come when they must depart, they were accompanied with most of their brethren out of the city unto a town sundry miles off, called Delft Haven, where the ship lay ready to receive them. So they left that good and pleasant city, which had been their resting-place near twelve years. But they know they were PILGRIMS, and looked not much on those things, but lifted up their eyes to heaven, their dearest country, and so quieted their spirits. When they camo to the ship, and all things ready, and such of their friends as could not come with them followed after them, and sundry also came from Amsterdam to seo them shipped and to take their leave of them. "Little aloop was there to most of them that night. Friendly entertainment, Christian discourse, and expressions of deep affection in parting," held their eyes waking. "Never," says Winslow, "I persuade myself, never people on earth lived more lovingly together, and parted more sweetly, than we, the church of Leyden," "seeking, not rashly, but deliberately, the mind of God in prayer, and finding his gracious presence with us, and his blessing upon us." The next day,-July 22, 1620,-the wind being fair, they went on board, and their friends with them; "when truly doleful was the sight of that sad and mournful parting; to see what sighs, and sobs, and prayers, did sound amongst them; what tears did gush from every eye, and pithy speeches pierced each other's heart; that sundry of the Dutch strangers that stood on the quay as spectators could not refrain from tears. Yet comfortable and sweet it was to see such lively and true expressions of dear and unfeigned love. But the tide, which stays for no man, calling them away that were thus loth to depart, their reverend pastor, falling down upon his knees, and they all with him, with watered cheeks commended them with most fervent prayers to the Lord and his blessing; and then, with mutual embraces and many tears, they took leave of one another, which proved their last leave to many of them." Before they sailed, on the deck of the ship, their pastorJOHN ROBINSON-gave them the following farewell charge:"Brethren, we are now quickly to part from one another; and whether I ever live to see your faces on earth any more, the God of heaven only knows; but whether the Lord has appointed that or no, I charge you, before God and his blessed angels, that you follow me no further than you have seen me follow the Lord Jesus Christ. If God reveals any thing to you by any other instrument of his, be as ready to receive it as ever you were to receive any truth by my ministry, for I am verily persuaded the Lord has more truth yet to break forth from his Holy Word. I charge you to take heed what you receive as truth; examine it, consider it, and compare it with the scriptures of truth before you receive it." The farewell scenes closed, they set sail for the shores of the New World. "That embarkation," says Choate, "speaks to the nation as with the voices and melodies of an immortal hymn, which dilates and becomes actualized into the auspicious going forth of a colony whose planting has changed the history of the world, a noble colony of devoted Christians,-educated, firm men, valiant soldiers, and honorable women,-a colony on the commencement of whose heroic enterprise the selectest influences of religion seemed to be descending visibly, and beyond whose perilous path was hung the rainbow and the western star of empire." "The Mayflower sought our shores," says Webster, “under no high-wrought spirit of commercial adventure, no love of gold, no mixture of purpose warlike or hostile to any human being. Like the dove from the ark, she had put forth only to find rest. Solemn supplications on the shore of the sea in Holland had invoked for her, at her departure, the blessings of Providence. The stars which guided her were the unobscured constellations of civil and religious liberty. Her deck was the altar of the living God. Fervent prayers on bended knees mingled morning and evening with the voices of the ocean and the sighing of the winds in her shrouds. Every prosperous breeze, which, gently filling her sails, helped the Pilgrims onward in their course, awoke new anthems of praise; and when the elements were wrought into fury, neither the tempest, tossing their fragile bark like a feather, nor the darkness and howling of the midnight storm, ever disturbed, in man or woman, the firm and settled purpose of their souls to undergo all and to do all that the meekest patience, the boldest resolution, and the highest trust in God could enable human beings to endure or to perform. "That Mayflower was a flower destined to be of perpetual bloom! Its verdure will stand the sultry blasts of summer and the chilling winds of autumn. It will defy winter; it will defy all climate, and all time, and will continue to spread its petals to the world, and to exhale an ever-living odor and fragrance to the last syllable of recorded time." On the 16th of September, 1620, they set sail from Southampton, and, after a stormy and perilous voyage, they fell in with land on the American coast on the 9th of November, "the which being made and certainly known to be it, they were not a little joyful. On their voyage they would set apart whole days of fasting and prayer, to obtain from heaven a good success in their voyage, especially when the weather was much against them, whereunto they had remarkable answers; so much so that the sailors were astonished, and said they were the first sea-fasts ever held in the world." On the 22d of December, 1620, the Puritans, one hundred and one in number, landed from the Mayflower, and planted their feet on the Rock of Plymouth, and began a new era in the history of the world. The day and the rock became canonized in American history, and emblems of the grandest Christian ideas and associations. The first act of the Puritans, after landing, was to kneel down and offer their thanksgiving to God, and by a solemn act of prayer, and in the name and for the sake of Christ, to take possession of the continent. They thus repeated the Christian consecration which Columbus, more than a century before, had given to the New World, and so twice in the most formal and solemn manner was it devoted to Christ and Christian civilization. The seed thus planted bore an abundant harvest of Christian fruits, which have blessed the nation and enriched the world. How significant and sublime the lessons that gather round and flow from Plymouth Rock! How does it speak for God and of God! How grandly does it proclaim the Christian faith and fruits of those great and good men who, in prayer and faith, planted a Christian empire in the New World, and started a Christian nation on a noble career of progress and greatness! "And can ye deem it strange That from their planting such a branch should bloom With prayer's pure tear-drops strike no deeper root Than that which mad Ambition's hand doth strew Upon the winds to reap the winds again? Hid by its veil of waters from the hand Of greedy Europe, their bold vine spread forth "Its early clusters, crush'd That bloated luxury which eats the core MRS. SIGOURney. The Christian life and character of the Puritans have the following description from the pen of England's historian, MACAULAY:— "The Puritans were men whose minds derived a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests. Not content with acknowledging in general terms an overruling Providence, they habitually ascribed every event to that 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 rejected with contempt the ceremonious homage which other sects substituted for the worship of the soul. Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the Deity through an obscuring veil, they aspired to gaze full on the intolerable brightness, and to commune with him face to face. Hence originated their contempt for terrestrial distinctions. The difference between the greatest and meanest of mankind seemed to vanish when compared with the boundless interval which separated the whole race from Him on whom their own eyes were constantly fixed. "They recognized no title to superiority but God's favor; and, confident of that favor, they despised all the accomplishments and all the dignities of the world. If they were unacquainted with the works 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 felt assured that they were recorded in the book of life. Their palaces were houses not made with hands; their diadems, crowns of glory which should not fade away. On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and priests, they looked down with (comparative) contempt; for they esteemed themselves rich in more precious treasures, and eloquent in a more sublime language; nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand. The very meanest of them was a being to whose fate a mysterious and terrible importance belonged,-on whose slightest action the spirits of light and darkness looked with anxious interest,-who had been destined, before heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a felicity when heaven and earth should pass away. For his sake the Almighty had proclaimed his will by the pen of the evangelist and the harp of the prophet. He had been rescued by no common deliverer from the grasp of no common |