Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1901-12-27


and beautiful. But the tentative venture
of certain little company lighting upon
an inhospitable shore they never meant
to touch, has corrected the dead-reckon-
ing of history, even as it enables US 10
reckon with the time and place. we call
these people Pilgrims; they called them
selves "the Lords Free People" and 1t IS
of them we must think today; of their
kindred and antecedents only as access
sorry to them.
"There are few events, think, more
familiar than that of the migration OF
these empire builders, to Holland ana
thence to America.
"But there is, Notwithstanding, a GER
tain confusion of mind concerning the
Puritan and the Pilgrim. ASK your
neighbor the difference between the two
and the chances are you will get no very
definite answer. In their own day they
were all Jumped together. Their agree
ments were more regarded than tlelr
differences. But there was difference
wide enough for better discrimination.
The Pilgrims were of the Puritan stock,
but they differed more from the Puritans
at large than the Puritans differed from
those with whom they commended, and
from whom they wrested, for time, The
throne and sceptre of merry England
''If we must consider the Pilgrim as a
species of Puritan, we should NOT for that
reason lose sight of the prophetic yarla-
tion which made the new species deter
mine the line of later evolution. The
Puritan was conservative, at his best;
the Pilgrim was radical. lie was the
liberal Of his age. | know the word
"liberal'' is "soiled by all ignoble use,
but it has a good meaning. and the Pil-
grim is lis best exponent In all history.
The Puritan stood for the ancient land
marks; his character was the CONCESSION
of Stephen, or Henry or John; his rights
the mmemOrial rights of an Englishman.
The Pilgrim sought new inheritance,
his charter was the indefeasible privilege
of man; and his rights were the in-
alienable rights of servant of the Lord.
When the second Of the Stuarts, the un-
happy Charles |, through the person of
the plant speaker of the House, forbade
any discussion which should lay an
aspersion ,on the Kings ministers, he
meant to protect his favorite Bucking-
ham; he did give the signal for the
revolution. But when at that outrage
those stern men wept like children,
rising, like Ppm himself, only to sit down
choked by tears, it was for the breach of
established privilege they wept and for
the woe it embodied to the chartered
freedom of Englishmen. Hampden, Pym,
Eliot, these men were Puritans, but they
were loyal adherents to the Church of
England. Not one of the leaders of the
Long Parliament was even Presbyter-
ian. They were all Episcopalians. The
political contest, involved as it was with
religious issues, in the outcome enthroned
the Puritan, but the best he could do
with the protectOrate was to build new
tyranny on the ruins of the Old. Crom-
well in 1868 dissolved Parliament as
arbitrarily, as UNANIMOUSLY, as did
Charles in 1929. Then Puritanism in
England was dying, smtten with the
recoll of its own extravaganza.
say L vi hllicII III lug ihANs hAl
the Puritan in America had by that time
found the clue his kindred IN England
could rot catch. Bet tween 1880 and 1910
tw enty thousand Englishmen had sailed
for the new England to become citizens
of a commOnW ealth more enduring than
that Of Cromwell. These men were uri-
tans, not the Pilgrims, but they came to
a new atmosphere, and in its sweeter
breath they drew the new spirit, the spirit
of the Pilgrim. If the later tate we're
mainly of their building, the soul of the
state lived already, animating the smaller
fellowship of the Lords Free People,
Who were they
Continuing in his remark. the speaker
referred TO the direct causes that brought
the Puritan TO the shores of America, to
his prosecutions, citing bits of history to
show the ban they were under in the
mother country.
Much of his data was culled from
Governor Bradford's History Of the Ply
mouth Plantation, which shows the hard
ships endured by the Puritans Of America
and gives us much of the later day history
of our hardy ancestor, he. of 1.-THE Lords
free people, who laid the corner stone,
on the wind swept sands of Plymouth,
PSI years ago, of the nation which
respects all-but bows to nOne-the
United States of America, the home OF
the Pilgrim.
Much of President Murkland's address
was given to the history of the puritan
Immediately preceding his migration TO
this country. In closing the speaker
said:
"Forefathers of the republic, yes; Pil-
grim fathers, whose sons by blrth or
adoption cannot render them 100 high
honor; yes, but best Of all they were
what Bradford called them, tine Loros
free people" For the land they maze
their own and left for us.there can DE no
better wish, no more fitting prayer, than
that the sons may not forget the virtues
OF their fathers, nor the land they learned
10 love by any spirit less noble 'han tha'
which animated them-tbe spirit vi oe-
votion and of service to truth, to MANHOOD
and to God"
! Tho cnaal.or 4 ro,,. ~ , strictpSf attention |