They established universal suffrage (for men) and each brother had a vote, including Brother Standish, who could not belong to the meetings but could hold his life cheap to defend it. Yes, and I notice they could hold their hearts open to the sweet scents and sounds of the woods. and meadows when the sun came back, and the little touches they have sent down to us of their joy read like Chaucer as he sings of the time "When April with his showers sate, The drought of March has pierced to the rate, And the small fowls maken melody That sleeps all night long with open e'e." So they are Puritans, stanch and stern if you will, but there was a sunny and gentle heart under the russet and the steel which could sing to its fellows of good cheer after the use and wont of old England. They could croon over old rhymes about cradles with half a sense that they had better say a psalm. They could fall in love as Priscilla did and John, and manage to have their own way about it against the stout old captain. And then they could die, but they could not turn back on their election as the first handful of selected and sifted seed sown by the hand of the Eternal God. It is a truth we may well lay to heart also, that these Pilgrims did not start out to make money as the great end of their life, but to serve God, to live as free Christian men and women and "join them selves into a church in the fellowship of the gospel, to walk in the ways God had made known or should make known so that their covenant easily covers us also, and will as easily cover those we shall unchurch when we become the dominant power. were It is very touching to hear John Robinson tell them before they start that they are well weaned from the delicate milk of the mother land - he might have said sour milk in their case already inured to the difficulties of a strange country, and were not as men small things can discourage. They may have had their faults and failings, but these words must stand. The Pilgrims sought first to make the dream come true of a commonwealth of English-speaking folk who still loved England, whose grand idea should be holiness to the Lord, and they were so true to this and so right in it that a writer who lived twelve years among them and notes with a pardonable little frisk that he is held to be a very sociable man, says that in all this time he did not hear one oath, see one man drunk, or hear of more than three who had been guilty of gross sins. This was what came at once of their simple Godlike purpose, of the prayers and tears, of the living word and of their perpetual return to heaven for direction. The whole body of them fall on their knees on the frozen ground to ask God for direction before they can feel sure that this was the site of the town they were to build in His name, yes, and I warrant you not one of them was looking out of the corner of his eye to see where he should select his corner lot. And now this noble tongue they loved is spoken from ocean to ocean, while a larger religious freedom, and a sunnier and sweeter thought of God than they could have endured, is winning its way in the hearts and minds of their children; and the children who inherit our estate as we inherit theirs will see more and be more than we are by the measure of our time with theirs as they stood on that wild shore, if we are as faithful as they were to God and to our trust, for, "The word of the Lord by night "God said, I am tired of kings, Up to my ear the morning brings "I will have never a noble, No lineage counted great; Fishers and choppers and ploughmen "Call the people together, "And here in a pine state-house In church and state and school. 66 "I break your bonds and masterships, And I unchain the slave: Free be his heart and hand henceforth 66 So the word of the Lord by night And filled their hearts with flame." THE HUMAN GEORGE WASHINGTON I SUPPOSE the most of you have noticed that the drift of our time is away from Washington the man toward Washington the myth, so that the real man as he lived has begun to grow dim to us, and a wonderful presence is taking his place, which only resembles Washington, as marble resembles flesh and blood. And I think this is a great pity, because a good man is always more of a satisfaction to us than his ghost, though the ghost be ever so stately. We like the hand that will grasp ours as if it meant something, the sound of a foot which comes down strong and true, and a laugh which moves to laughter, but we miss all this in the Washington of our era, and are gradually forgetting it was ever there. And so I want to touch the human heart and life of him to-night in some poor fashion, and shall speak, I. Of his family, II. Of his early life, III. Of his manhood, and IV. Of his later age and end. I. It is said of some families that they are like a hill of potatoes, the best of them is underground, but the Washington family grows as the oak grows, an acorn first and then a sapling, |