The New England colonist came to America because of religious feeling. His
religion was to him a matter of eternal life or eternal death. From the
modern point of view, this religion may seem too inflexibly stern, too
little illumined by the spirit of love, too much darkened by the shadow of
eternal punishment, but unless that religion had communicated something of
its own dominating inflexibility to the colonist, he would never have
braved the ocean, the wilderness, the Indians; he would never have flung
the gauntlet down to tyranny at Lexington and Concord.
The greatest lesson taught by colonial literature, by men like Bradford,
Winthrop, Edwards, and the New England clergy in general, is moral heroism,
the determination to follow the shining path of the Eternal over the wave
and through the forest to a new temple of human liberty. Their aspiration,
endeavor, suffering, accomplishment, should strengthen our faith in the
worth of those spiritual realities which are not quoted in the markets of
the world, but which alone possess imperishable value.
REFERENCES FOR FURTHER STUDY
HISTORICAL
ENGLISH HISTORY.--In either Gardiner's _Students' History of England_,
Walker's _Essentials in English History_, Andrews's _History of England_,
or Cheney's _Short History of England_, read the chapters dealing with the
time of Elizabeth, James I.
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