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of Christianity regard as mere superstition that divine intervention in human affairs which the very heathen have universally admitted!"

That great scholar and Christian philosopher of Germany, the Chevalier Bunsen, says, in his "Philosophy of Human History," ""The noblest nations have ever believed in an immutable moral order of the world, constituted by divine wisdom and regulating the destinies of mankind. The truly philosophical historian must believe that there is an eternal order in the government of the world, to which all might and power are to become and do become subservient; that truth, justice, wisdom, and moderation are sure to triumph; and that when the contrary appears to be the case, the fault lies in our mistaking the middle for the end. There must be a solution for every complication, as certainly as a dissonance cannot form the conclusion of a musical composition. In other words," says Bunsen, "the philosopher who will understand and interpret history must believe that God, not accident, governs the world."

"The principles that govern human affairs," says Bancroft, extending like a path of light from century to century, become the highest demonstration of the superintending providence of God. Universal history does but seek to relate the sum of all God's works of providence. The wheels of providence are not. turned about by blind chance, but they are full of eyes round about, and they are all guided by the Spirit of God." "Providence is the light of history, and the soul of the world. God is in history, and all history has a unity because God is in it."

No era in human history is more signally and sublimely marked with the manifest providence and presence of God than that of the discovery and Christian colonization of the North American continent.

In 1492, Columbus hailed the opening of the New World with a song of praise, and by a solemn act of prayer consecrated it to God. In 1498, six years later, Cabot, an English navigator, discovered Newfoundland, and sailed along the coasts of the American continent. Columbus and Cabot were both Roman Catholics, and made their discoveries under the auspices of Ferdinand of Spain and Henry VIII. of England, who were Roman Catholic sovereigns. It was more than a hundred years subsequent that any serious attempts were made to colonize the countries discovered by the Spanish and English navigators.

"The intervening century," says a writer, "was in many respects the most important period of the world; certainly the most important in modern times. More marked and decided changes, affecting science, religion, and liberty, occurred in that period than had occurred in centuries before; and all these changes were just such as to determine the Christian character of this country.

Meantime, God held this vast land in reserve, as the great field on which the experiment was to be made in favor of civil and religious liberty. He suffered not the foot of Spaniard, or Portuguese, or Frenchman, or Englishman, to come upon it, until the changes had been wrought in Europe which would make it certain that it would always be a land of religious freedom. The changes then wrought, the advances then made, related to science and the arts, to religion, to the principles of liberty. The whole of the sixteenth century was a period of active preparation for future times, and all that is great in modern science and art may be said to have received its foundation in the agitations that grew out of that period of the world. The twelve decades, from 1480 to 1600, form one of the grandest and richest eras in the history of humanity. It was in that period that the foundation of our liberty was laid,-in that period that it became sure that this would be a land of civil and religious freedom. England during all that time was a great laboratory in which these principles were brought out; and from the views which prevailed at the time of Henry VII., and which had prevailed for ages, it required one whole century to advance the world to that position which was maintained by Pym and Hampden and Milton, and was seen in the principles of Winthrop, and Robinson, and Brewster, of George Calvert, of Roger Williams, and of William Penn. Scarcely any thing has occurred in history which is more remarkable or which has been more certainly indicative of the designs of Providence."

"Columbus came," says Irving, "as a religious man, an admiral of Christ, to find the continent, not for its material treasures, but because it held souls which he wished to bring as a trophy to the feet of Christ."

"A deep religious feeling mingled with his meditations and gave them at times a tinge of superstition, but it was of a sublime and lofty kind. He looked upon himself as being in

the hand of Heaven, chosen from among men for the accomplishment of its high purpose; he read, as he supposed, his contemplated discoveries foretold in the mystic revelations of the prophets. The ends of the earth were to be brought together, and all nations and tongues and languages united under the banner of the Redeemer. This was to be the triumphant consummation of his enterprise, bringing the unknown regions of the earth into communion with Christian Europe,-carrying the light of the true faith into benighted and pagan lands, and gathering their countless nations under the holy dominion of the Church. One of his principal objects was undoubtedly the propagation of the Christian faith. Columbus now considered himself about to effect this great work,-to spread the light of revelation to the very ends of the earth, and thus to be the instrument of accomplishing one of the sublime predictions of Holy Writ.

"Whenever he made any great discovery, he celebrated it by solemn thanks to God. The voice of prayer and melody of praise rose from his ship when they first beheld the New World, and his first act on landing was to prostrate himself upon the earth and return thanksgiving. All his great enterprises were undertaken in the name of the Holy Trinity, and he partook of the communion before his embarkation. His conduct was characterized by the grandeur of his views and the magnanimity of his spirit. Instead of scouring the newly-found countries, like a grasping adventurer, eager only for immediate gain, as was too general with contemporaneous discoverers, he sought to ascertain their soil and productions, their rivers and harbors: he was desirous of colonizing and cultivating them, conciliating and civilizing the natives, introducing the useful arts, subjecting every thing to the control of law, order, and religion, and thus of founding regular and prosperous empires." In his will Columbus enjoins on his son Diego, or whoever might inherit after him, "to spare no pains in having and maintaining in the island of Hispaniola four good professors of theology, to the end and aim of their studying and laboring to convert to our holy faith the inhabitants of the Indias; and, in proportion as by God's will the revenue of the estate shall increase, in the same degree shall the number of teachers and devout persons increase, who are to strive to make Christians of the natives."

"The great epitaph," said Webster, "commemorative of the character and the worth, the discoveries and the glory, of Columbus, was that he had given a new world to the crowns of Castile and Aragon. This is a great mistake. It does not come up to all the great merits of Columbus. He gave the territory of the Southern hemisphere to the crowns of Castile and Aragon; but, as a place for the plantation of colonies, as a place for the habitation of men, a place to which laws and religion, and manners and science, were to be transferred, as a place where the creatures of God should multiply and fill the earth under friendly skies and with religious hearts, he gave it to the whole world, he gave it to universal man! From this seminal principle, and from a handful, a hundred saints, blessed of God and ever honored of men, landed on the shores of Plymouth and elsewhere along the coast, united with the settlement of Jamestown, has sprung this great people."

CHAPTER III.

PURITAN SETTLEMENT-ORIGINATES IN

RELIGIOUS

MOTIVES-PREVIOUS AGES

PREPARATORY-PILGRIMS EMIGRATE ΤΟ HOLLAND-MOTIVES FOR LEAVING ENGLAND-WEBSTER'S VIEW OF THE EMBARKATION-SOJOURN IN HOLLAND— EMIGRATION TO THE NEW WORLD-FAREWELL SCENES-ROBINSON, THE PASTOR -HIS FAREWELL WORDS-ARRIVAL AT PLYMOUTH ROCK-CHRISTIAN CONSECRATION OF THE CONTINENT-MRS. SIGOURNEY'S POETRY ON THE PILGRIMSMACAULAY'S VIEW OF THE CHRISTIAN CHARACTER OF THE PILGRIMS-THEIR OWN DECLARATIONS-WEBSTER'S REMARK.

THE Puritan settlement on the American continent, around which cluster the grandest associations and results, dates from the 22d of December, 1620, one hundred and twenty-eight years after a Christian navigator had greeted the New World with a song of praise, and consecrated it to Christ in prayer. The motives that began this memorable era in American history were intensely religious. It opened a new chapter in the progress of events and in the history of colonizing countries. Hitherto, conquest, ambition, worldly glory, had often marked the settlement of newly discovered territory. God now

changes the scene, and, for the first time in the history of the world, the colonization of a new and great continent begins from the purest and profoundest religious convictions and principles.

Previous ages had been preparatory to this new and important Christian era. Europe had been shaken and sifted by the conflicts of the Reformation. In England, Christian ideas and the principles of a purer and freer Christianity had, through Wickliffe's translation of the Bible, been generally diffused, and that book was the forerunner of coming revolutions. There was, in the providence of God, a peculiar fitness in the times to train and prepare Christian men for the great work of laying the foundation of a Christian empire in a new continent. They lived in an age of superior light, in which literature, philosophy, and the arts and sciences had enlightened and elevated the English nation; they were educated in schools of learning where the word of God had enthroned its power and diffused its light, and which created in their souls a longing desire for the simple forms of worship; their Christian faith was tried and strengthened in the furnace of persecution, in which it grew bolder for truth and freedom. Under such influences were the Puritan men educated and prepared for their Christian mission on the American continent. Their labors, as future ages showed, received the crowning and abundant blessing of God.

Under the convictions of a strong Christian faith, the Puritans, in 1608, bade farewell to England, where they had been persecuted for their pure faith and simple forms of Christian worship, and emigrated to Holland, where they hoped to find a permanent asylum. The love of country, the ties of home and kindred, the prospect of suffering, trials, and unnumbered privations, did not deter them from this Christian enterprise;"For their desires were set on the ways of God, and to enjoy his ordinances. But they rested on his providence, and knew whom they had believed."

"The embarkation of the Pilgrims for Holland," says Webster, "is deeply interesting from its circumstances, and also as a mark of the character of the times, independently of its connection with names now incorporated with the history of empires. Theirs was not the flight of guilt, but virtue. It was an humble and peaceable religion flying from causeless oppression. It was conscience attempting to escape from the arbitrary

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