Year: 1875

FOREFATHERS DAY.


The tendency of tradition ia toward an empty
and meaningless repetition, just as children
say over and over memOrized texts of Scrip
ture with no conception of their inexpresslble
Importance. So we babble of the deeds OF the
Pilgrim Fathers, saying or singing of them
always the same things, painting the
Same pictures, and droning one perpetual
strain of unmitigated eulOgy. The speeches
at the dinners eaten in honor of the day are
all alike. We show our sense of the great
ness of our fathers by making pictures, by
erecting monuments, by writing verses and
novels, by spreading ceremonious banquets
and by pronouncing long orations. The most
popular poem ever written upon this Land
ing, the production of an English woman,
is in ten stanzas. OF these nine are
merely pictures, drama, tableaus; while in
one 1t is asserted that the Pilgrims
left unstained what there they found-Free-
" dom to worship God" What is meant pre-
cisely by "unstained Freedom" We do not
know How far the Pilgrim was the champion
of Religious Liberty in our modern sense of
the phrase, we shall not provoke discussion by
undertaking to determine. We prefer to re-
gard him as the asserter of his own personal
and individual right to think, to preach. and
to pray he pleased.


But even here we encounter organization
and association xand cOrpOration-not even the
Pilgrim dreamed of personal independence OF his
church. or of a political status apart from the
religious That church within itself was demo-
cratic, and became more and more so; but
here it seems to us the claim of religious tOler-
alton for the Pilgrim must stop. Yet even
this degree of liberahty is so honorable
that the waymest admirers of these sturdy ma
lures may be content with its concession. The
Pilgrim idea of Church is so simple and yet
so grand it divests ecclesiastical arrange
ments of 80 much surplusage, and 80 plants
itself upOn undying essentials ; it sweeps away
with such infinite scorn all forms and shows,
and vain ceremonial and, panOplied in the
almost naked simplicity of its creed
it trusts itself so confidently to the
inyincible force of truth that we are i'll
danger Of forgetting how many extraneOus
helps the weakness Of human nature may need
in its struggle with the world, the flesh, and
the devil A few men of muscular religious
nature win always suffice for small
society. They support, encourage, and in
spire those who are weaker. They are Ma
ture's hierarchy, and the obedience which they
involuntarily win Is spontaneous and joyful.
Tie Pilgrims left behind them archbishops
and bishops, but to more than one bishop of
souls, oyerseers in the simplest sense, ordained
by the possession of living spirit and full of
the courage of real belief, they conceded an
authority which was sanctioned by heart and
head and conscience.


To us il seems to be of little consequence
how far the Pilgrims regard for Religious Lib
erty was a complete, rounded, and consistent
one Doubtless he builded better than he knew ;
but he had mastered the first principle OF prog
ress in thinking for himself. In these times of
slender ties, in which ecclesiastical fctters are
almost unknown, and the power of hardly any
church extends beyond its temporalities,
these too growing smaller and smaller
we can but inadequately comprehend
what disscDtttwo centuries ago actually meant
the scatold the whip, the rack; imprisonment,
confscation, and social disqualification. To-
day we are at liberty to believe what we
please we pay for no preaching to which we
do not listen, and we listen to no preaching
against cur Will we are taxed to support no
faith which we do not receive, and we make
no profession for the sake of personal
safety of what we do not believe. Cathedral,
church, synagogue, meeting-hOusc, upper hall
we choose which place of assembly we pre-
fer or we absent ourselves from all, should
that satisfy lis better. How different this was
in the days of the Pilgrims is proved by the
fact that they were Pilgrims ut all. 1t seldom
happened then that no moral courage accom-
panied any kind of dissent from any estab-
hshed opinion; but of them almost its extreme
was demanded. All honor to them, If only for
their bravery. Perpetual be their fragrant
memory, if only for their persistence.


We have said that the Pilgrims builded bet
ter than they knew; and SO do all sincere
votaries of truth, no matter with how much
error their opinions may be mixed. 1t was
indeed the steadfastDess of the men of
Plymouth which gave us the opportunity of
surprising them. Theirs was the fundamental
idea of civil and religious liberty. We can cling
to it no more devotedly than they did, but oursare
greater opportunities. The independence OF
the individual is natural sequence of the in
dependence of the Church, just as our per-
sonal liberty is the fruit of political freedom /;
but i'm the abstract idea of a free faith we
have not taken one step beyond the vOyagers
from Delft Haven.