The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1897-12-23
NEW EkGLANDERS dine


lish freedom; who found the English
House of Commons the feeble and tlnlo
instrument of despotism, little more than
the register of the kings command, and
left it the main depository of the national
dignity and the national will--the strong
est, freest, most venerable legislative
body the world had ever seen; who
brought to the bar and the block king
and minister, and prelate who stood in
their way; who in one crowded half CEN
fury founded New England in one hemis-
phere, and made the great name of Old
Englandkterrible by sea and land in the
other.
BUT we are thinking tonight of the
Fllgrlm, the consummate flower, the
sweet and gentle and fragrant Mayfiower
OF history. He is as different from the
puritan as Hebrew prophet from St.
John. 1t is not unnatural or uncommon
10 md such Universities among men Of the
same nation, or of the same generation,
or of the same faith. Indeed, we do not
always remember now many men, near
Kindred in spirit to our Pilgrim Fathers,
even in that generation of bigotry and
persecution, they left behind them in the
Church of England. The difference be-
teen John Endicott and Nathaniel Ward
and Cotton Mather, on one side, and Will
liam Bradford and John Robinson or
greater than that which separates Lsud
and Bancroft and Bonner from Jeremy
Taylor and Henry Vaughn and George
Herbert and his friends whose lives Isaac
Walton wrote, where
with moistened eye
We read of Faith and purest Charity,
In statesman, priest, and humble citizen.
These men were kept in the Church of
England by the venerable traditions in
which they had been bred, as well as by
their love of order, of art, and architec
ture and music, sentiments to which she
has always SO we'll known how to minis
ter. 1t is not strange. John Winthrop
has left on record, in that cry of the
heart, the farewell letter to the Massachu-
setts Company, how terrible even to him
ana his stern companions was the part
ing from THAT dear mother, the Church
OF England, from whence we rise, even
acknowledging that such hope and part
as we have obtained in the common sal
walton we have received in her bosom and
sucked it from her breast" There were
many men of that time, whom our Pill
grim Fathers left behind in the Church
OF England, whom that church today re-
veres as her saints and lights, who were
of the near spiritual kindred of John
Robinson and William Bradford George
Herbert was born in 1888, when Peter
y
lished the Temple. with the lines that SO
much disturbed the censor
Religion stands at iptoe in our land,
Ready to pass to the American strand
In 1858, the very year Peter Buckley was
silenced by Laud for nen-conformity,
and was gathering his settlers for the
founding of Concord two years later. 1t
seems almost as if Herbert were yearning
for their company. The year after, the
year of he.four dingssof Harvard, Jeremy
Taylor won his fellowship at Oxford.
The children of the Pilgrims still obey
the farewell counselsof John Robinson as
reported by Winslow. 1t is the Pilgrim s
declaration, and, if we read the world 8
history Alright the worlds declaration of
religious independence
''We arey ere long, to part asunder. and
the Lord knoweth whether he should live
to see oul faces again. But whether the
Lord had appointed it OF not, he charged
us as before God and His blessed angels,
to follow him no further than he followed
Christ; and if God shouldsreveal anything
to us by any other instrument of His, to
be as ready to receive 1t as we were to re-
ceiye any truth by his ministry; for he
was very confident the Lord had more
truth and light yet to break forth out of
His Holy Word.
But If there be anything in religious
literature to match it, it is to be found
in the Liberty of Prophesying of jeremy
Taylor, composed, doubtless, about the
same time, and given to tho world in
1647. Jeremy Taylor's Holy Living is
the very portraiture of the Plymouth Pill
grim. Indeed, when [ behold his sublime
Inconsistencies, and remember that it
was $50 years before any Pilgrim or son
of a Pilgrim uttered any word of praise
OR boasting of what they had done, I al
ways think of the motto on the title-page
of the first edition of the Holy Living:
Non magma loquimur
Sed vivimus.
I wish, in these days of national brag-
ging and boasting, that motto of the
Shakespeare of the Divines might be pre-
fixed to Fourth of July orations. might
be inscribed on the walls of the banquet
halls, and even of Senate chambers.
am, Mr.. President, if not Puritan
of the Puritans, at any rate hereto Of
the heretics. After the way that they
call heresy, SO worship the God of my
fathers. Yet am glad to bear my testi-
mony that in what you have called sfthe
gracious return of the Bradford manu-
script" these two illustrious prelates have
been 10 encouragers of heresy or sehism,
but have acted in accordance with the
best teaching and tradition of their
church.
Mr.. President, the giving back to US
these precious pages where the Father
and Eoupdo- Of Nav ENGLAND has writ