Part 11 (2/2)
All this introspective fervor merged into a public enterprise,--the transplanting of a church and colony to Ma.s.sachusetts Bay. The last half of his life was spent in the most a.s.siduous, minute, exacting labors.
The self-watchful diary gives place to a public chronicle, prosaic as a s.h.i.+p's log-book--and, like the log-book, the shorthand record of adventures, heroisms, and sublimities.
In the Puritan of Winthrop's type the flame of spiritual emotion was harnessed and made to serve. The drudgery of founding New England was done by men whose hearts were touched with fire,--men such as Lowell sings of:--
”Who, dowered with every gift of pa.s.sion, In that fierce flame can forge and fas.h.i.+on Of self and sin the anchor strong; Can thence compel the driving force Of daily life's mechanic course.”
Winthrop set out with a great ideal--shown with statesmanlike breadth in the ”Considerations,” and with apostolic fervor in the ”Model of Christian Charity.” His conception was cramped into conformity with the far narrower views of the ministers who were the leaders in the colony.
Yet it was his ideal and his personality which gave most to success.
The letters between Winthrop and his wife are an example of human love perfected by a higher love. He writes to her: ”Neither can the sea drown thy husband, nor enemies destroy, nor any adversity deprive thee of thy husband.” Shakspere has no note like that. Margaret writes from her country home to her husband in London: ”My good husband, cheer up thy heart in the expectation of G.o.d's goodness to us, and let nothing dismay or discourage thee; if the Lord be with us, who can be against us? My grief is the fear of staying behind thee, but I must leave all to the good providence of G.o.d.” She was obliged to stay behind in England, awaiting the birth of a child. On the eve of sailing he writes her: ”I purpose, if G.o.d will, to be with thee upon Thursday come sen'night, and then I must take my leave of thee for a summer's day and a winter's day.
The Lord our good G.o.d will (I hope) send us a happy meeting again in his good time. Amen! Being now ready to send away my letters, I received thine; the reading of it has dissolved my head into tears. Can write no more. If I live, I will see thee ere I go. I shall part from thee with sorrow enough; be comfortable, my most sweet wife, our G.o.d will be with thee. Farewell.”
A few months later, across the pages of the Journal, full of the cares and anxieties of the struggling colony, s.h.i.+nes a ray of pure joy.
Margaret has come! And the whole community rejoices and makes cheer, with homely and hearty feasting, for the happiness of their good governor.
The actual conditions nourished homely virtues,--industry, thrift, self-reliance, family affection, civic responsibility. The greatness of early New England is partly measured by the fact that there were comparatively no dregs, no ma.s.s of ignorance and vice. It was not the individuals who rise into sight at this distance who were superior to the prominent men of England or France,--it was the lower stratum which was above that elsewhere. Two prime causes worked to this elevation,--the spiritual estimate of man and the economic conditions which offered independence to every one on the condition ”work and save.” The social and political conditions were largely shaped by these underlying facts.
The wrestle for a livelihood under stern material conditions was a prime factor in the making of New England. Whatever the creed might say, in practice Work was the equal partner of Faith in building manhood and the state. The soil was to their bodies what Calvinism was to their souls,--yielding nourishment, but only through a hard struggle. Its sterility drove them to the sea for a livelihood; they became fishermen; then, carrying their fish and lumber abroad, they grew into commerce.
They traded along the coast, to the West Indies, to Europe, and so into their little province came the winds of the larger world. They learned the sailor's virtues,--his courage, his mingled awe and mastery of elemental forces, his sense of lands beyond the horizon. Well might Winthrop name the first s.h.i.+p he launched ”The Blessing of the Bay.”
The austere land had small room for slaves, dependent and incapable. One of the first large companies included some scores of bondmen; they landed to face a fierce and hungry winter, and straightway the bondmen were set free,--as slaves they would be an inc.u.mbrance; as freemen they could get their own living. The thrifty colonists of a later generation did a driving business in African slaves for their southern neighbors, but they had small use for them at home.
Winthrop's constant effort, as shown in his Journal, is for reason and right. It is the arguments for and against any course that he elaborates. Scarce a word of their sufferings or of his own feelings--but to know and do the right was all-important. The greatness of his own ideal is shown when he draws with a free hand, in the ”Conclusions” or the ”Model.” In the Journal, he is laboring toward this under the iron conditions of actualities. He and his a.s.sociates had to be strong-willed and stern; they were warring against tremendous difficulties--more tremendous to them because interpreted as the work of Satan, while even their G.o.d was an awful being.
Superst.i.tion throws a dark shadow over the chronicle. Even Winthrop was deeply infected by it. Disasters small and great were interpreted, on the Old Testament idea, as divine judgments. A boy seven years old fell through the ice and was drowned while his parents were at lecture, and his sister was drowned in trying to save him. ”The parents had no more sons, and confessed they had been too indulgent towards him, and had set their hearts overmuch on him.” A man working on a milldam kept on for an hour after nightfall on Sat.u.r.day to finish it, and next day his child fell into a well and was drowned. The father confessed it as a judgment of G.o.d for his Sabbath-breaking.
There is not unfrequent mention of some woman driven by religious brooding to frenzy, sometimes to murder. The awful possibilities of h.e.l.l for herself and her children wrought the mother-heart to madness. The religious guides of the people used unsparingly the appeal to fear. The belief in witchcraft, which long had scourged Europe, broke out in a panic of fear and cruelty. It was a tragic culmination of the worst elements,--superst.i.tion, malignity, ministerial tyranny. Then came the reaction, and with it a triumph of the wiser sense, the cooler temper, the layman's moderation, which thenceforth were to guide the commonwealth on a humbler but safer road.
In a dramatic sense the turning-point of the story--and the revelation of the saving power at the heart of this grim people--was when, after the witchcraft frenzy had subsided, Samuel Sewall, the chief justice of the colony, rose in his place in the meeting-house and humbly confessed before G.o.d and man that he had erred and shed innocent blood.
In the more prosaic temper of the next stage, a st.u.r.dy manhood sometimes flashes into poetry. So John Wise, a minister but the leader of the popular party in church government, strikes the high note of courage: ”If men are trusted with duty, they must trust that, and not events. If men are placed at the helm to steer in all weather that blows, they must not be afraid of the waves or a wet coat.”
In personal religion there was from the outset the intense struggle for an inward peace and joy, with tears and groanings,--the victory sometimes found, sometimes missed. There was a resolute facing of what was held as truth. The ministers and laymen battled with the problems of the infinite. The issue after two centuries was an open break from Calvinism in Channing, and the glad vision of Emerson.
A feature in the story is the New Englander's relation with Nature as he found her,--first like a terrible power of destruction, by cold and hunger; this he conquers by endurance. Then for generations he wrings a hard livelihood out of her. Then by his wits he makes her serve him more completely. At last her beauty is disclosed to him,--a beauty which has its roots in the very struggles he has had, and the contrasts they afford,--no child of the tropics loves Nature as he does.
So of the sea: first he dares it as explorer and voyager; then he makes it his feeding-ground--catches the cod and chases the whale; in his s.h.i.+ps he does battle against pirate and public foe; he makes the deep the highway of his commerce; and at last he feels its grandeur, into which enters the reminiscence of all his combats.
Elements which Puritanism had renounced came in later from other sources.
The fresh contact with truth and reality was given by Franklin. The free joy of religion, its aggressive love, came in Methodism. Beautiful ritual returned in Episcopacy. The frank enjoyment of life developed in the South, transmitted from the country life of the English squire and mellowed on American soil.
At the outset of the story of America stands the Puritan, his heart set on subduing the infernal element and winning the celestial; regarding this life as a stern warfare, but the possible pathway to an infinite happiness beyond; fierce to beat down the emissaries of evil,--heretic, witch, or devil; yet tender at inmost heart, and valiant for the truth as he sees it. After a century, behold the Yankee,--the shrewd, toilful, thrifty occupant of the homely earth; one side of his brain speculating on the eternities, and the other side devising wealth, comfort, personal and social good. And to-day, successor of Puritan and Yankee, Cavalier and Quaker, stands the American, composite of a thousand elements, with a destiny which seems to hover between heights and abysses, but amid all whose vicissitudes and faults we still see faith and courage and manly purpose working toward a kingdom of G.o.d on earth and in heaven.
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