tent, that, within twenty-five years from the first settlement of New-England, vessels of 400 tons were constructed there. Several kinds of manufactures, even, gan to take root in the colonies. and other virtues made them increase in wealth, and transformed their hills and valleys into a delightful land. Their combe-merce soon showed itself in all seas; their manufactures gradually gained ground, notwithstanding the obstacles created by the jealousy of England, and, with the increase of their population, they overspread a large extent of the space included in their charters. It is calculated that 21,200 emigrants had arrived in New-England alone before the Long Parliament met. "One hundred and ninety-eight ships had borne them across the Atlantic, and the whole cost of the plantations had been 1,000,000 of dollars; a great expenditure and a great emigration for that age; yet, in 1832, more than 50,000 persons arrived at the single port of Quebec in one summer, bringing with them a capital exceeding 3,000,000 of dollars."* A great change, in this respect, took place during the next twenty years, embracing the period of the civil war, and the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell and his son. Not only were there few arrivals of emigrants during that interval, but some fiery 'spirits in the colonies returned to the mother-country, eager to take part in the contest waging there. This, indeed, some of the leading men in New-England were earnestly pressed to do by letters from both houses of Parliament, but they were unwilling to abandon the duties of the posts they occupied in the New World. Upon the whole, from 1640 to 1660 the population of New-England rather diminised than augmented. But while such, during the early years of their existence, was the temporal prosperity of these colonies, not less was their spiritual. In 1647, New-England had forty-three churches united in one communion; in 1650, the number of churches was fifty-eight, that of communicants 7750; and in 1674, there were more than eighty English churches of Christ, composed of known pious and faithful professors only, dispersed through the wilderness. Of these, twelve or thirteen were in Plymouth colony, forty-seven in Massachusetts and the province of New-Hampshire, nineteen in Connecticut, three in Long Island, and one in Martha's Vineyard. Well might one of her pious historians say, "It concerneth New-England always to remember that she is a religious plantation, and not a plantation of trade. The profession of purity of doctrine, worship, and discipline, is written upon her forehead." The New-England colonists may have been "the poorest of the people of God in the whole world," and they settled in a rugged country, the poorest, in fact, in natural resources of all the United States' territories; nevertheless, their industry Many, indeed, affect to sneer at the founders of New-England; but the sneers of ignorance and prejudice cannot detract from their real merits. Not that we would claim the praise of absolute wisdom for all that was done by the "New-England Fathers." Some of their penal laws were unreasonably and unjustly severe, some were frivolous; some were even ridiculous.* Some of their usages were dictated by false views of propriety. Nor can it be denied that they were intolerant to those who differed from them in religion; that they persecuted Quakers and Baptists, and abhorred Roman Catholics. But all this grew out of the erroneous views which they, in common with almost all the world at that time, entertained on the rights of human conscience and the duties of civil government, in cases where those rights are concerned. We shall see, likewise, that they committed some most serious mistakes, resulting from the same erroneous views, in the civil establishments of religion adopted in most of the colonies. Notwithstanding all this, they will be found to have been far in advance of other nations of their day. With respect to their treatment of the native tribes, they were led into measures which appear harsh and unjust by the fact of their laws being modelled upon those of the Jews. Such, for example, was their making slaves of those Indians whom they made prisoners in war. There were cases, also, of individual wrong done to the Indians. Yet never, I believe, since the world began, have colonies from civilized nations been planted among barbarous tribes with so little injustice being perpe trated upon the whole. The land, in almost all cases where tribes remained to dispose of it, was taken only on indemnification being given, as they fully recognised the right of the natives to the soil. The only exceptions, and these were but * A great deal of misrepresentation and falsehood has been published by ignorant and prejudiced persons at the expense of the New-England Puritans. ed "the Blue Laws of Connecticut" have appeared in For example, pretended specimens of what are callthe journals of certain European travellers, and have been received by credulous transatlantic readers as perfectly authentic. Yet the greater part of these so-called "laws" are the sheerest fabrications ever palmed upon the world, as is shown by Professor Kingsley in a note appended to his Centennial Discourse, delivered at New-Haven a few years ago. few, were the cases in which the hazards | living for God and promoting his kingdom of war put them in possession of some in the world. They felt that Christianity Indian territory. Nor were they indiffer- was the greatest boon that mankind can ent to the spiritual interests of those poor possess; a blessing which they were bound people. We shall yet see that for these to do their utmost to secure to their posthey did far more than was done by any terity. In going to a new continent they other colonies on the whole American con- were influenced by a double hope, the entinent, and I shall explain why they did largement of Christ's kingdom by the connot do more. version of heathen tribes, and the founding of an empire for their own children, in which His religion should gloriously prevail. Their eyes seemed to catch some glimpses of Messiah's universal reign, when "all nations shall be blessed in him, and call him blessed." Let us now, in conclusion, contemplate for a moment the great features that mark the religious character of the founders of New-England, leaving our remarks on their religious economy to be introduced at another place. First, then, theirs was a religion that Fourth. Their religion prompted to great made much of the BIBLE; I should rather examples of self-denial. Filled with the say, that to them the Bible was every- idea of an empire in which true religion thing. They not only drew their religious might live and flourish, and satisfied from principles from it, but according to it, in a what they had seen of the Old World that great degree, they fashioned their civil the Truth was in bondage there, they sighlaws. They were disposed to refer every-ed for a land in which they might serve thing "to the Law and to the Testimony." And although they did not always interpret the Scriptures aright, yet no people ever revered them more, or studied them more carefully. With them the famous motto of Chillingworth had a real meaning and application: The Bible is the RELIGION OF PROTESTANTS. Second. The religion of the founders of New-England was friendly to the diffusion of knowledge, and set a high value on learning. Many of their pastors, especially, were men of great attainments. Not a few of them had been educated at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, in England, and some, had brought with them a European reputation. John Cotton, John Wilson, Thomas Hooker, Dunster, and Chauncey, which last two were Presidents of the University at Cambridge, Thomas Thatcher, Samuel Whiting, John Sherman, John Elliot, and several more of the early ministers, were men of great learning. All were well instructed in theology, and thoroughly versed in Hebrew, as well as in Greek and Latin. Some, too, such as Sherman, of Watertown, were fine mathematical scholars. They were the friends and correspondents of Baxter, and Howe, and Selden, and Milton, and other luminaries among the Puritans of England. Their regard for useful learning they amply proved, by the establishment of schools and academies for all the youth of the colonies, as well as for their own children. Only eight years after the first settlement of Massachusetts colony, they founded, at a great expense for men in their circumstances, the University of Harvard, at Cambridge, near Boston, an institution at which, for a period of more than sixty years, the most distinguished men of New-England received their academical education. Third. Their religion was eminently fitted to enlarge men's views of the duty of God according to his blessed Word. To secure such a privilege to themselves and their children, they were willing to go into a wilderness, and to toil and die. This was something worth making sacrifices for, and much did they sacrifice to obtain it. Though poor in comparison with many others, still they belonged to good families, and might have lived very comfortably in England; but they preferred exile and hardship, in the hope of securing spiritual advantages to themselves and their posterity. Fifth. There was a noble patriotism in their religion. Some of them had long been exiled from England; others had found their mother-country a very unkindly home, and yet England was still dear to them. With them it was not " Farewell, Babylon! farewell, Rome!" but, "Farewell, dear England!"* Though contemptuously treated by James I. and Charles I., yet they spoke of being desirous of "enlarging his majesty's dominions." The Plymouth settlers did not wish to remain in Holland, because "their posterity would in a few generations become Dutch, and lose their interest in the English nation; they being desirous to enlarge his majesty's dominions, and to live under their natural prince." And much as they had suffered from the prelacy of the Established Church, unnatural stepmother as she had been to them, nothing could extinguish the love that they felt for her, and for the many dear children of God whom she retained in her communion. Sixth, and last. Their religion was favourable to liberty of conscience. Not that they were all sufficiently enlightened to bring their laws and institutions into perfect accordance with that principle at the outset; but even then they were, in this respect, in advance of the age in which * See Mather's Magnalia, b. iii., c. i., s. 12. they lived, and the spirit of that religion | elegance of manners. Nor has time yet which had made them and their fathers, in effaced this original diversity. On the conEngland, the defenders of the rights of the trary, it has been increased and confirmed people, and their tribunes, as it were, by the continuance of slavery in the South, against the domination of the throne and which never prevailed much at any time the altar, caused them, at last, to admit the in the North, but has immensely influenced claims of conscience in their full extent. the tone of feeling and the customs of the Southern States. The Fathers of New-England were no mean men, whether we look to themselves or to those with whom they were associated in England-the Lightfoots, the Gales, the Seldens, the Miltons, the Bunyans, the Baxters, the Bates, the Howes, the Charnocks, the Flavels, and others of scarcely inferior standing among the two thousand who had laboured in the pulpits of the Established Church, but whom the Restoration cast out. If the New-England colonies are chargeable with having allowed their feelings to become alienated from a throne from which they had often been contemptuously spurned, with equal truth might those of the South be accused of going to the opposite extreme, in their attachment to a line of monarchs alike undeserving of their love, and incapable of appreciating their generous loyalty. We might carry the contrast still farther. If New-England was the favourite asylum of the Puritan Roundhead, the South became, in its turn, the retreat of the “ Cavalier,” upon the joint subversion of the altar and the throne in his native land. And if the religion of the one was strict, serious, in the regard of its enemies unfriendly to innocent amusements, and even morose, the other was the religion of the court, and of fashionable life, and did not require so uncompromising a resistance "to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.” Such were the men who founded the New-England colonies, and their spirit still survives, in a good measure, in their descendants after six generations. With the exception of a few thousands of recentlyarrived Irish and Germans in Boston, and other towns on the seaboard, and of the descendants of those of the Huguenots who settled in New-England, that country is wholly occupied by the progeny of the English Puritans who first colonized it. But these are not the whole of their descendants in America; for besides the 2,234,202 souls forming the population of the six New-England States in 1840, it is supposed that an equal, if not a still greater number, have emigrated to New-York, the northern parts of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and into all parts of Michigan and Wisconsin, carrying with them, in a large measure, the spirit and the institutions of their glorious ancestors. Descendants of the Puritans are also to be found scattered over all parts of the United States, and many of them prove a great blessing to the neighbourhoods in which they reside. How wonderful, then, was the mission-the mother, in some sense, of the rest, of the founders of New-England! How gloriously accomplished! How rich in its results! CHAPTER V. Not that from this parallelism, which is necessarily general, the reader is to infer that the Northern colonies had exclusive claims to be considered as possessing a truly religious character. All that is meant is to give a general idea of the different aspects which religion bore in the one and the other. Virginia was the first in point of date, as we have already stated, of all the colonies. Among its neighbours in the South it was what Massachusetts was in the North and the dominant colony. Not that the others were planted chiefly from it, but because, from the prominence of its position, the amount of its population, and their intelligence and wealth, it acquired from the first a preponderating influence which it retains as a state to this day. The records of Virginia furnish indubita RELIGIOUS CHARACTER OF THE EARLY COL-ble evidence that it was meant to be a ONISTS. FOUNDERS OF THE SOUTHERN Christian colony. The charter enjoined that the mode of worship should conform WIDELY different in character, I have al- to that of the Established Church of Engready remarked, were the early colonists land. In 1619, for the first time, Virginia of the Southern from those of the Northern had a Legislature chosen by the people; States. If New-England may be regarded and by an act of that body, the Episcopal as colonized by the Anglo-Saxon race, Church was, properly speaking, establishwith its simpler manners, its equal insti-ed. In the following year the number of tutions, and its love of liberty, the South may be said to have been colonized by men very much Norman in blood, aristocractic in feeling and spirit, and pretending to superior dignity of demeanour and boroughs erected into parishes was eleven, and the number of pastors five, the population at the time being considerably under 3000. In 1621-22, it was enacted that the clergy should receive from their parishion ers 1500 pounds of tobacco and sixteen at the instance of their treasurer, Sir Edbarrels of corn each as their yearly salary, win Sandys, the Company granted 10,000 estimated to be worth, in all, £200. Every acres to be laid off for the new "Univermale colonist of the age of sixteen or up- sity of Henrico;" the original design being ward was required to pay ten pounds of at the same time extended, by its being retobacco and one bushel of corn. solved that the institution should be for the The Company under whose auspices Vir- education of the English as well as the ginia was colonized seems to have been Indians. Much interest was felt throughinfluenced by a sincere desire to make the out England in the success of this underplantation a means of propagating the taking. The Bishop of London gave £1000 knowledge of the Gospel among the Indi- towards its accomplishment, and an anonans. A few years after the first settlement ymous contributor £500 exclusively for was made, in the body of their instructions the education of the Indian youth. It had they particularly urged upon the governor warm friends in Virginia also. The minand Assembly "the using of all probable ister of Henrico, the Rev. Mr. Bargave, means of bringing over the natives to a gave his library, and the inhabitants of the love of civilization, and to the love of God place subscribed £1500 to build a hosteland his true religion." They recommend- ry for the entertainment of strangers and ed the colonists to hire the natives as la- visiters.* Preparatory to the college or bourers, with the view of familiarizing them university, it was proposed that a school to civilized life, and thus to bring them should be established at St. Charles's City, gradually to the knowledge of Christianity, to be called the East India School, from that they might be employed as instruments "in the general conversion of their countrymen, so much desired." It was likewise recommended "that each town, borough, and hundred should procure, by just means, a certain number of Indian children, to be brought up in the first elements of literature; that the most towardly of these should be fitted for the college, in building of which they purposed to proceed as soon as any profit arose from the estate appropriated to that use; and they earnestly required their earnest help and furtherance in that pious and important work, not doubting the particular blessing of God upon the colony, and being assured of the love of all good men upon that ac count. Even the first charter assigns as one of the reasons for the grant, that the contemplated undertaking was "a work which may, by the providence of Almighty God, hereafter tend to the glory of His Divine Majesty, in the propagating of the Christian religion to such people as yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and worship of God."+ The Company seem early to have felt the importance of promoting education in the colony. Probably at their solicitation, the king issued letters to the bishops throughout England, directing collections to be made for building a college in Virginia. The object was at first stated to be the training up and educating infidel (heathen) children in the true knowledge of God." Nearly £1500 had already been collected, and Henrico had been selected as the best situation for the building, when, * Burk's "History of Virginia," p. 225, 226. + 1 Charter.-1. Hazzard's State Papers, 51. This work of the late Mr. H. contains all the charters granted by the sovereigns of England for promoting colonization in America. + Stith's "History of Virginia," p. 162, 163. the first donation towards its endowment having been contributed by the master and crew of an East Indiaman on its return to England. But the whole project received its deathblow by the frightful massacre perpetrated by the Indians on the 22d of March, 1622, when, in one hour, 347 men, women, and children were slaughtered, without distinction of sex or age, and at a time, too, when the Indians professed perfect friendship. For four years, nevertheless, they had been maturing their plan, had enlisted thirty tribes in a plot to extirpate the English, and might have succeeded in doing so but for the fidelity of a converted Indian named Chanco. The minds of the colonists were still farther estranged from the idea of providing a college for the Indian youth by the long and disastrous war that followed. At a much later date a college for the education of the colonial youth was established at Williamsburg, which was for a long time the capital of the colony.† * Holmes's Annals, p. 173. This was the College of William and Mary, established in 1693, and, in the order of time, the second that was founded in the colonies. It owed its existence, under God, to the great and long-continued exertions of the Rev. Dr. Blair. It ought to be mentioned, that in the former part of the last century a number of Indian youths were educated at it. The celebrated Robert Boyle presented it with a sum of money to be applied to the education of the Indian tribes. At first, efforts were made to procure war by some victorious tribe; but during the adminfor this purpose children who had been taken in istration of Sir Alexander Spottswood, which commenced in 1710, that plan was relinquished for a far better. The governor went in person to the tribes to the school, and had the gratification of seeing in the interior to engage them to send their children some arrive from a distance of four hundred miles in compliance with his request. He also, at his own expense, established and supported a preparatory school on the frontiers, at which Indian lads might be prepared for the college without being too far removed from their parents.-See Beverly's "History of Virginia." In proportion as the population began worship was at one time required under to spread along the large and beautiful severe penalties; nay, even the sacrament streams that flow from the Alleghany al services of the Church were rendered Mountains into the Chesapeake Bay, more obligatory by law. Dissenters, Quakers, parishes were legally constituted, so that and Roman Catholics were prohibited in 1722 there were fifty-four, some very from settling in the province. People of large, others of moderate extent, in the every name entering the colony, without twenty-nine counties of the colony. Their having been Christians in the countries> size depended much on the number of they came from, were condemned to slatitheable inhabitants within a certain dis- very. Shocking barbarity! the reader will trict. Each parish had a convenient justly exclaim; yet these very laws prove church built of stone, brick, or wood, and how deep and strong, though turbid and many of the larger ones had also chapels dark, ran the tide of religious feeling among of ease, so that the places of public wor- the people. As has been justly remarked, ship were not less than seventy in all. To" If they were not wise Christians, they each parish church there was a parsonage attached, and likewise, in almost all cases, I have said enough to show that, in the a glebe of 250 acres and a small stock of colonization of Virginia, religion was far cattle. But not more than about half, from being considered as a matter of no probably, of these established churches importance; its influence, on the contrary, were provided with ministers; in the rest was deemed essential to national as well the services were conducted by lay read-as individual prosperity and happiness. ers, or occasionally by neighbouring clergymen. When the war of the Revolution commenced there were ninety-five parishes, and at least a hundred clergymen of the Established Church. were at least strenuous religionists.' Maryland, we have seen, though originally a part of Virginia, was planted by Lord Baltimore, as a refuge for persecuted Roman Catholics. When the first of its colonists landed in 1634, under the guidance of Leonard Calvert, son of that nobleman, on an island in the Potomac, they took possession of the province "for their Saviour," as well as for "their lord the king." They planted their colony on the broad basis of toleration for all Christian We shall yet have occasion to speak of the Church establishment in Virginia, and its influence upon the interests of religion, as well as of the character of the clergy there during the colonial period. I cannot, however, forbear saying, that although the greater number of the estab-sects, and in this noble spirit the governlished ministers seem, at that epoch, to ment was conducted for fifty years. Think have been very poorly qualified for their what we may of their creed, and very difgreat work, others were an ornament to ferent as was this policy from what Rotheir calling. I may mention as belong-manism elsewhere might have led us to ing to early times the names of the Rev. expect, we cannot refuse to Lord BaltiRobert Hunt and the Rev. Alexander Whit-more's colony the praise of having estabaker. The former of these accompanied lished the first government in modern the first settlers, preached the first Eng-times, in which entire toleration was lish sermon ever heard on the American granted to all denominations of Chriscontinent, and by his calm and judicious tians; this too, at a time when the Newcounsels, his exemplary conduct, and his England Puritans could hardly bear with faithful ministrations, rendered most im- one another, much less with "papists;" portant services to the infant colony. The when the zealots of Virginia held both latter was justly styled "the Apostle of "papists” and “Dissenters" in nearly equal Virginia." At a later period, we find, abhorrence; and when, in fact, toleration among other worthies, the Rev. James was not considered in any part of the ProtBlair, whose indefatigable exertions in the estant world to be due to Roman Catholics.. cause of religion and education rank him After being thus avowed at the outset, tolamong the greatest benefactors of Ameri-eration was renewed in 1649, when, by the ca. Nor were there laymen wanting death of Charles I., the government in. among those who had the cause of God at England was about to pass into the hands heart. Morgan Morgan, in particular, was of the extreme opponents of the Roman greatly blessed in his endeavours to sus- Catholics. "And whereas the enforcing tain the spirit of piety, by founding church- of the conscience in matters of religion," es and otherwise, more especially in the such is the language of their statute, northern part of the Great Valley. In la- "hath frequently fallen out to be of danter times Virginia has produced many illus-gerous consequence in those common- . trious men, not only in the Episcopal, but in almost every other denomination of Christians. In point of intolerance, the Legislature of Virginia equalled, if it did not exceed, that of Massachusetts. Attendance at parish wealths where it has been practised, and.... for the more quiet and peaceable government of this province, and the better to preserve mutual love and amity among the inhabitants, no person within this province professing to believe in Jesus Christ shall |