IX

THE PURITAN SPIRIT

MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:

WHEN I rashly yielded to the request of your Com. mittee, and promised to deliver an address before the Congregational Club on this occasion, I expected it to be that comparatively simple and informal thing which one styles familiarly an Address; delivered before a company of a few hundred persons, many of them, doubtless, my personal friends. I did not anticipate that in the air of Boston, a sup of which the early immigrants declared equal to a draught of English ale, and in the exuberant fancy of the Committee, what I had proposed might

suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange,

and be set forth to the public as an Oration, gathering this vast assembly by which I am partly animated but chiefly appalled. However, you will not forget, I am sure, my modest promise; and if I cannot conduct you, as I cannot, through any House Beautiful, such as Boston Orations are known and are expected to be, you will let me introduce you to an unobtrusive and commonplace structure of thought, such as may reasonably bear upon its low and unadorned lintel the name "Address."

It is often said by those who desire the highest welfare of the nation, and who feel that to such welfare right moral and spiritual forces are first of all needful, that what this country chiefly needs, to maintain and exalt its place in the world, is a larger measure of the Puritan spirit, in energetic development and in wide distribution.

Fundamentally, the vast effort, pursued now for a hundred years, to plant churches at the West, with schools, colleges, seminaries of whatever class, to inspire and mould instruction there, has had in this feeling its impulse and motive; and its value has been estimated, by those who have made it, by its success in this direction. The same thing is substantially true of the similar efforts now being made, with unsurpassed patience and energy, at the South and in the New West. The effort is to practically New-Englandize the continent; and however it has changed in our time, in its special forms of manifestation, the Puritan spirit is that which has given to New England its characteristic place and power in the vastly enlarged national organism. The many institutions, of rising rank and growing power, all over the vast area of the country, show the energy of this impulse, with its partial and perhaps its prophetic success.

On the other hand, however, hardly any proposal meets fiercer opposition in many quarters than does this very one. "It is precisely this Puritan spirit," multitudes say, "which we do not want. It would be well if it could be practically extirpated in New England itself. To carry it through the country would be to fetter and pervert the whole development of the nation, and to embarrass or thwart its career. It may

easily bring about a popular revolution. We need to move, distinctly and purposely, in the opposite direction; to break away from restraints, to emerge finally from the earlier glooms, and to secure on all sides ampler tolerance, larger freedom of opinion and custom. The contrary effort will be vain and may be destructive, forcing a fierce, if not a fatal, explosion.”

ume.

Probably this feeling was never wider or more energetic than it is at this hour. The incessant inrush of immigration from abroad adds constantly to its volThe expansion of population over wider spaces increases its extensiveness, if not its intensity. As secular interests become more prominent, and the towers of exchanges, newspaper offices, insurance and telegraph buildings, surpass and dwarf the spires of churches, it naturally increases; and as men depart further from the inherited faith of their fathers, either in the direction of Vaticanism on the one hand, or of agnosticism on the other, this feeling becomes more keen and controlling. In regard to no one subject, therefore, affecting our national development and career, is the contest fiercer than in regard to this; and few signs appear that it is to subside, for years to come, in any general harmony of judgment.

It may be worth while, then, to consider particularly what it is which really constitutes and effectively differentiates the Puritan spirit; and to look at this as it has widely appeared in the world, not merely or mainly in this province of New England. New England is an important district, though it may not appear as vast as it once did, when one has lived for forty-odd years outside its bounds. But it is certainly by no means considerable, as territorially related to

the surface of the earth, or even of the continent. Two hundred and seventy years are a considerable period of time, but they dwindle to insignificance before the recorded centuries of history.

Perhaps enough has been said of the Puritan spirit as it has appeared in these immediate delightful surroundings. It has been sketched in poetry, and in picturesque prose, in philosophical discussion, and with elaborate eloquence, with witty jest and in fascinating fiction; sometimes, perhaps, with extravagant eulogy, and sometimes, we know, with extraordinary force of hatred and derision. There are those around me, on this platform, who have contributed memorably to this discussion, with ample learning, in admirable utterance, with a just enthusiasm for those whose blood they have inherited, and whose names they have nobly adorned. It is not necessary, and it is not at all my present purpose, to add to this special profuse discussion. Let us look, rather, at the Puritan spirit as it has asserted itself at large, on an ampler area, in the broader ranges of general history. We may there see it more clearly, perhaps; as one sees a mountain, in its majestic and harmonious outlines, most distinctly from a distance, not from its base, or from the sides or shoulders of it;-the Oberland group, from the terrace at Berne; the Graian or the Pennine Alps, from the streets of Turin or from the cathedral roof at Milan.

Our first question must naturally be: What are the elements vitally involved in the distinctive Puritan spirit, as that has hitherto and in general experience appeared in the world? Let us disengage these, as far as we may, from individual traits, which are as

various as the millionfold crinkles along a coast, and survey them impersonally, before we regard them in particular examples.

The spirit, as such, is not to be identified, of course, with any specific form either of doctrine or of worship, since it has appeared in connection with many, and has continued positive and permanent, while they have been widely and variously changed. The elements involved in it are essentially moral, and earnestly practical, not theoretical; and they are not difficult to ascertain and exhibit.

The first is, I think we all shall agree, an intense conviction of that which is apprehended as truth, with a consequent desire to maintain and extend it, and to bring all others, if possible, to affirm it.

It by no means follows, you observe, that what is thus apprehended is truth, or is truth in harmonious and complete exhibition. No man, or body of men, according to our conception of things, is infallible on all subjects, or even on any, history being witness ; and very different forms of thought have at different times drawn to themselves the intense conviction of human minds. It is the vigor, the moral energy of the conviction, which belongs to and which characterizes the Puritan spirit.

Usually, this concerns supremely moral or religious propositions, rather than those which are political or philosophical; though the latter may no doubt take occasional supremacy, as being involved in the others, or closely associated with them. Usually, too, it is founded, you will notice, on personal inquiry, individual reflection, not on traditional impressions or external instruction; while, very largely, it takes its ag