"if any out of weakness have abused at any time their liberty, it is their personal faulting, as sometimes weak ministers may their office, and yet the ordinance good and lawful."

Robinson was of opinion that, "it comes within the province of but few of a multitude, haply two or three in a church, to prophesy publicly; and touching prophecy, we think, in all churches, whether but springing up or grown to some ripeness, let the order of prophecy be observed according to Paul's institution. Into the fellowship of this work are to be admitted, not only the ministers, but the teachers too, yea, also of the elders and deacons, yea, even of the multitude, which are willing to confer their gift received of God to the common utility of the church; but so as they first be allowed by the judgment of the ministers and others."

Now, if these opinions and rules, which Robinson adopts from the Synod of Embden in 1571, were observed by the Plymouth Church in Governor Bradford's time, it is rather difficult to see how there can be much truth in the report which Cotton Mather admits into the Magnalia, that about the time of Bradford's death "religion itself had like to have died out of the colony, through the strange disposition to discountenance the gospel ministry, by setting up the gifts of private brethren in opposition thereunto." There must be great exaggeration in this report, or we should have learned something of it from Governor Bradford himself. Cotton Mather says that the good people were in extreme distress from the prospect which this matter gave them, and cured the evil by the election of Mr. Prince to the place of Governor, from which time the adverse party sank into confusion. But nothing of this seems to have troubled the serene and prosperous course of the closing years of Gov. Bradford's life.

It is truly and beautifully said by Cotton Mather, that the crown of all excellences in this admirable man was

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his holy, prayerful, watchful, and fruitful walk with God. His death was just such, in heavenly joy and triumph, as his life of grace, hid with Christ in God, had predicted. He had been declining through the winter of 1657, yet not in what he counted sickness, until just three days before God took him to his everlasting rest. The first of those days the Angel of the Covenant seemed to give him warning that his hour was near; and that night, "the God of Heaven so filled his mind with ineffable consolations, that he seemed little short of Paul, wrapt up into the unutterable entertainments of Paradise." His joy must have been great, yea, ravishing, for he said to his dear friends in the morning, that the good Spirit of the Lord had given him a pledge of his happiness in another world, and the first fruits of his eternal glory. That night's blissful experience alone was to him worth all the years of toil and pain he had endured in the great work his Lord had permitted him to accomplish. For, what were all the days and nights, the weeks and months of cold and hunger, of peril, anxiety, pain, and famine, passed through in the early years of that great service, compared with the celestial revelations and assurances of that one night! He died, May 9, 1657, in the 69th year of his age.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE FIRST NEW ENGLAND SABBATH.

FROM the highest point amidst the scenery that over looks the Rock of our Forefathers' first permanent landing, and includes so many points now of the deepest interest, we have looked abroad over the Harbor, the Islands, and the Sea. By the providence of God these Pilgrims stopped at Plymouth. This rock, then washed by the flowing tide, and surmounted above by the primitive forest, was their first landing place. Their first landing place, indeed, for the purpose of a habitation and a grave, upon this rockbound coast, but not the first spot hallowed by the freedom and the sacredness of their religious worship. No! There is a spot here, within the sweep of your eye in this beautiful scene, more sacred than this. As you follow the horizon, you see there, towards the north-east, where the land breaks the sea view, and where the central peninsula in the harbor almost seems to join the main land on the other side, a green and partly wooded island. It seems to you, perhaps, to be the continent, but it is an island. It is the spot of all places in North or South America to my mind. the most hallowed. It is the island where the fatigued, desolate, almost perishing Pilgrims spent their first Sabbath. Yes! there they stopped and rested the seventh day, and hallowed it, because they would not desecrate it, even in

seeking rest. O noble commencement of the foundations of an enterprise, like which the world never saw, nor probably will again see, ever! Within half an hour's sail of the coast, nay, within ten minutes' sail, if the wind and tide favored, of the place where they were to abide all the rest of their pilgrimage, they moored at the island, and would not again set a sail that day, or take an oar in hand, or do aught of worldly work, because it was the Lord's Day. And there, upon that desolate island, frost-bound, habitationless, beneath a snowy sky, or, what was worse, a freezing sleet, they dedicated the hours of the Sabbath to the worship of God! There is no spot in all this scene, on which the vision rests with so solemn and thrilling an interest as that.

And what a remarkable manifestation of character it was, what a proof of supreme regard to God, and belief in his word, and obedience to it? Might they not have reasoned that the work of seeking shelter, in which they were then engaged, was a work of necessity and mercy, that the season of winter was already far advancing, that every day was precious, and that one day's delay might be productive of great evil? Might they not have argued that here, where none but God beheld them, God who knew their hearts, and knew that they were laboring for him, and who had said that the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath, they might relax for once their strictness, and continue their course, more especially as there were none to be affected by their example? How many a descendant of the Pilgrims, under the pressure of a much less necessity, has put the claims of conscience beneath those of expediency, and made the demands of God's institution to wait upon man's convenience! None to be affected by their example? And what one movement or act of those Pilgrims, or sentiment, or opinion, or coloring of life, that will not exert an influence to the latest generation? It might be said that the guardian genius of the after age was

watching them; and in acting conscientiously and faithfully towards God, they acted safely, wisely, righteously towards man. They so acted in this matter of keeping the Sabbath, that a world might imitate them. That day, kept for God on that island, has sent down a blessing for all the posterity of the Pilgrims-those costly prayers and praises-a preserving, sustaining influence throughout New England, to make the descendants of the Pilgrims a Sabbath-keeping people; and none but a Sabbath-keeping people can be truly free.

There was a time when these men on that desolate island, had they stayed in Europe, and attempted to keep such a Sabbath in the country of their birth, would perhaps have been thrown into prison for not observing the rubrics of the Book of Sports, for not giving to the service of Satan. the time which God claimed for his service. This Sabbath was the beginning of their perfect freedom from bondage. How beautiful the island looks this day, in this warm light, beneath an atmosphere of such enchanting clearness, rising so green in the mantle of August from the sea! It was a different sight and a different abode to them, in the month of December, wet, cold, icy, and shelterless. Yet there they stood; there they praised God; there arose to heaven from New England's soil the first Sabbath hymn of praise and the first united prayer of faith, from child-like, patient, submissive hearts, from men in resolution and endurance, children in faith and obedience.

Amidst the storm they sang,

And the stars heard, and the sea!

And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang
To the anthem of the free!

This beautiful painting is not that of mere imagination. The place of that first religious meeting on New England soil looks now entirely destitute of trees, but the Pilgrims' Journal tells us that then this Island was thickly covered,

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