Let those who despair of the institutions of their fathers, learn anew the first principle of the wisdom of those whose name and works they despise,—that man cannot be mended by forms of government or forms of religion, and that if untaught the fear of God, he mars the best institutions. Let them give their lives to the one great purpose of rearing men, who shall be fit to live under institutions that are free, and they will learn to be thankful that our institutions are free enough to give them leave thus to labor. The ancient public spirit, even a tithe of it, will give our social bodies all the unity and order which they need or ought to possess. The ancient reverence for God and the law, will make them stable. The ancient love of knowledge and its fervent piety, the patrons of genuine taste, will beautify their structure with becoming ornaments.

Give us the spirit of our fathers, and we fear not for their institutions. They cannot but live. We ask not for their manners, for they have gone by with the age which produced them. We ask not for all their opinions, for the original devotion to truth as supreme, has led their sons, as it would have led the fathers, had they lived in their day, to cast off that which was false, and easily put on, that which has been shown to be true. But we ask for their spirit, that spirit which we this day delight to honor, and whose presence, we trust will ever bless these hills and valleys. That spirit is recognized in every page of New England's history. The beginnings of its wisdom are “the fear of the Lord." Its out-goings, are restraint in the family, and law in the state, simple manners, frugal expenditures, stern self-respect, the subjection of the private opinion and the private will to the greater good of the whole, and a fervid and disinterested zeal for the school and the church of God.

To sustain this spirit we must have these institutions. In no other than the free and bracing air of our hills and

mountains, does the body attain its highest vigor and its most active energy, and under no other social forms in church and state, is there gained that strength and energy of soul, which their very freedom chastens and subdues, by an awful sense of the responsibility of the individual

man.

We have another and a nobler hope. The God of our fathers still lives. It was the opening of a new act in the drama of his Providence, when he prepared the way for our fathers across the deep, and led them by his own hand as they were thrust out from their native shores; not for their sakes but for the sake of the institutions which were enshrined in their hearts, and were ready to be formed by their hands, the instant they landed upon these shores. As we look back along the dim path-way of their darkness and danger in the past, we behold the bright token of his presence and care, in the words which the three vines planted on the Connecticut, delighted to bear aloft upon their banner; "Qui transtulit sustinet." As we look forward to the days that are to come, we behold them as they brighten in the distance, splendid in their tokens of future promise.

Yes, he who brought them over, will still uphold; not them, for they are dead, and so are their sons, and their sons' sons; but their principles, their spirit and their honored names.

NOTES.

NOTE A. p. 7.

"POLITICS OF THE PURITANS."

An article thus entitled appeared in the New York Review for January, 1840, in which a singular use is made of the statement, that the Puritans constituted a religious and political party. In that article there occur the following extraordinary propositions: "We intend to assert the plain and simple proposition, that the REAL contest between Churchmen and Puritans was for THE POLITICAL ASCENDANCY: Churchmen desiring to continue prelacy as the religion of the state, while the Puritans were striving to elevate presbyterianism to the same post, both parties the mean while, professing to be influenced solely by a regaid for religion, and having its best interests deeply at heart." p. 53. Hence, when the Puritans left England, they did it, not because they could not "worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences," but because they could not obtain the political ascendancy which they sought." p. 61. To the latter of these statements the following facts may not be inappropriate. The original planters of New England consisted of two classes, "those of the separation," and the nonconforming members of the church of England. The few original planters of the Plymouth Colony were of the former class, who fled from England to Holland, and emigrated from thence to New England. They were Congregationalists in their views of church government, and deemed it right to separate from the church of England, and to form themselves into a distinct religious communion. These men certainly never sought "to gain the political ascendancy” in England. They were known in that country only as a handful of despised fanatics. They fled from their native country simply and solely because they could not "worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences." The great majority of the early settlers had never separated from the church in England, and deemed it wrong to do so. When they landed upon these shores, they landed as members of the church of England, who knew no form of church order and discipline, except the order and discipline of that church. "With the exception of the Plymouth colonists" says Hubbard, "none of the rest of the planters came over in any settled order of government, only resolving when they came hither to carry on those affairs as near as they could, exactly according to the rule and pattern laid before them in the word of God, &c." When

they landed in a distant country, they considered themselves as loosed from their scruples against separation, and as bound to organize themselves into churches, according to the primitive and apostolical pattern, as they should be guided by the word of God open before them.

Is it asked why then did they leave their country at all? The answer is this. They could not comply with usages enjoined by ecclesiastical authority, without violence to their sacred convictions and conscientious scruples. The only reply which they received was, you must conform or suffer the penalty. When, too, they attempted to worship God, and assembled in secret to hear his word as dispensed by their valued ministers, they assembled not as members of a separate communion, but as members of the church of England, who yet deemed it right thus to meet to hear the word from its authorized expounders. For this offence they were fined and imprisoned. It would be difficult to know in what situation men must be placed, not to be permitted "to worship God according to their consciences," if these men were not in this situation.

It deserves to be noted also, that previous to the planting of New England by this class of men, nearly sixty years had elapsed after Cartwright had published the doctrine, that the Presbyterian form of church government was apostolic and divine, and nearly fifty years after the first Presbytery had been organized in England. During this interval these views had been advanced and defended with a zeal sufficiently active, and yet those who planted the colonies of Massachusetts and Connecticut, had never deemed it right to separate from the church in which they were born. It does not appear that the Episcopacy of the church was a feature to which they could not conscientiously have submitted, but its offensive requisitions; though it was doubtless true that the most of them would have preferred that the power of the bishops should be greatly abridged. It is not true "that the real contest between churchmen and the planters of New England was for the political ascendancy," for it is most obvious that had the scruples of the non-conformists been allowed in regard to usages complained of, and had their efforts for the promotion of piety been countenanced, they would never have dreamed of leaving England, because they could not gain the ascendancy for Presbyterianism. Indeed one need to be very little acquainted with their history to know, that Presbyterianism was not the form of church government which they established in this country.

It may not be amiss to add a word or two in relation to the history of the Puritans as a political party.

During the reign of Elizabeth, those members of "the Commons" who were displeased with the abuses in the church, and wished them to be remedied, forasmuch as the church was a part of the commonwealth, and under the care of the Parliament, strove as far as they were able, to effect a reform of these abuses. In most of the Parliaments during the reign of Elizabeth, a considerable number of the house of commons favored motions for this object. This they had a right to do. This they were bound to do. Less than this, they ought not to have done, as the constituted guardians of the church. All this while, a party purely civil and political, was rapidly growing in strength; the party of the people in opposition to the party of the court; a party, which was called into being by the