Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1899-01-09
TooNr1NUED FROM SECOND PAGE.l

the commonwealth, which Guizot sums up
in these words ''the downfall of absolute
monarchy, the assured preponderance OF
h commons, and the permanence of re-
y Iigious freedom these lasted as the trini-
ty of English liberties. The seed had
been cast into the soil.
''Puritanism,' Carlyle said, els the last
of all our heroisms." But there is a vast
deal of -~antipathy expressed against the
Puritans. Noble and sacred as is the story
of our forefathers, brave as were they Who
feIIed the ancient forests in sacrifice to a
great ideal and planted on the rough
shore of New England that banner OF free
religion which is now the proud emblem
of a hundred cities and which tonight
floats in che breezes of both worlds, never
theless. to be sP~uritanicaI" is to bring the
sIur and the sneer. The slur is a slander!
The sneer is sickening. Degenerate sons
of the Puritans sheer at the hardwood OF
their forefathers. An age without a con-
science disbelieves in the existence OF con-
science in its ancestors. The splendid
work of the Pilgrim and the Puritan can
not be written down.. The man who sneers
at Puritanism is usually in the mood of
the man WHO WAS OuAAo PCNAOAHS
carcass of a woodchuck. A passer-by said
to him, ''That woodchuck was dead long
ago. What's the use of hammerlng that
thing?n 81 know well enough he is dead"
was the reply, "but I want to meller him."
So these people want to ''meller" the doc
trine of election or reprobation, or the
Puritan sabbath or the idea that hell is
paved with infants skulls. They know
that these are dead carcasses, but the eNer-
else of "mellering'' gives them something
to do. Mr.. IngersOn has been "meller-
ing dead woodchucks for twenty years. 1t
is easy to tell when an idea is getting OBJ
solete. for then men begin vigorously to
maui it. The Puritan is called a fanatic,
but fanaticism is simply a mighty grip
upon a great idea. "Chivalry taught a man
to die for a lady's glove, a stolen KISS, a
fancied slight; Puritanism taught a man
to die for human rights, for justice, Tor
freedom, for truth" Young men who
spend all their time in the sublime con-
temptation of the height of their collar
and the point of their shoe will never be
fanatics. 1t was the fanatlc1sm OF Column
bus that discovered America. 1t was the
fanaticism of Luther that gave the world
the Reformation. We cannot sheer the
Puritan down. Macaulay says: mo one
sneered at the Puritan who had met him
in the halls of debate, or crossed swords
with him upon the embattled field" The
Puritans are often laughed at as those
who delighted to sing psalms through their
noses. This was the old fling at CromwelIs
Lonsides. Well, the Ironsides used to go
into battle singing psalms through their
noses: but they sang through their noses
to some purpose, for their enemies sang on
the other side of their mouth. Well did
George William Curtis, whose silver speech
is now, aIasI forever silenced, say of them,
sIf they snuf1ed in prayer, they smote in
the fight; if they sang through their noses,
the hymn they chanted was liberty" Ii
other hosts can sing through their noses
with such tremendous effect, I for one lad
wise their singing. Their footballs carried
tremendous courage and conscience. The
story of the battles of this troop of men is
the romance Iof history. 'The cause of
equal rights, the doctrine of liberty and
zeal, found it avatar in the Ironsides. Up
from Lincoln and Norfolk and Essex and
Kent swarmed the men whose sires Wy
cIiffe had emancipated, and who had stood
to their pixies in the Low Country against
the Myrmidons of Alva. They were not
humorists: life had been to them too stern
and strenuous; but they had been sehooled
on the terse directness of the English
Bible, and uplifted by its motive, its ap-
peal, its ~boundless scope. They did not
lack imagination nor hope. Easily they
adopted the figures and terms of that 'Peo-
ple's Book" They too were confronting
PhiIistia and Babylon. They made their
own the war words of Joshua and Jehosa-
plat, and the exultant peans of Miriam
and Deboroh." Like sparks from a sur
charged cloud when the lightning is fierc-
est, SO flew the flashes from their swords
when they crossed them with the cavalier,
and their ringing sabre-strokes still echo
down the long corridors of history. "Quit
you like men" they said, as they grlpped
their stout tools at Naseby and at Prerton.
s'Bind their kings with chains, and their
mobiles with letters of IRON" From the
hills they marched onward toward the sea
raising to heaven their high psalm, "Arise.
o God, and let thine enemies be scattered!"
With such high confidence as this they
met the enemy and wrenched victory from
them at Dunbar and Naseby.
If hatred of wrong is the first manifesto
ton of love of right, then the Puritans
loved right with the whole allegiance of
their hearts. They were the bulwarks of
Professionalism, of that spirit which had
been nurtured amidst the civil upheavals
and the ecclesiastical changes of medieval
Europe. They wanted that intimate COM
munion with God which requires neither
the sounding antiphonies of the cathe-