Chapter XV: Conclusion

OLIVE'S MEDITATIONS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SEA.

_New Netherby_, 1691.--New always to us, but already to many grown into "the old house at home."

Again I am alone in the house, as on the day when the quiet rustling of the summer air among the long grasses, and the shining of the smooth water, and the smell of the hay from the hay-stack, carried me back to the old house on the borders of the Fen country, in the days of my childhood.

The crimson and gold of a richer-coloured autumn than that at home glows in the forests and in the still creek below, over which the great trees bend, And autumn is also on our lives; its fading leaves, and also, I trust, its harvests and its calms.

At many intervals, these recollections of my life have been gathered together out of the old yellow leaves in the oaken chest.

The past has lived again to me through them. But not through these pages alone. The past lives not only in the dried herbs and grasses, in memories and monuments, but in every blade of grass and ear of corn of the present; in our new houses and our old home customs, our new laws, our new conflicts, our victories and our hopes.

Old England lives and breathes in every breath of this our New England. Sometimes from what we have heard during the dreary years of oppression, we have thought she lived more truly here than in the England we have left.

The household is away, and the pleasant cheery house is silent. It is not the harvesting that has emptied the house and the village to-day. It is the thanksgiving for the harvest: the one festival which the first settlers in the wilderness appointed, in the first year of their exile, when the land was indeed a wilderness and an exile, and the next harvest a precarious blessing. More than half a century this festival has been kept. A venerable antiquity for New England.

And now our hearts are rich with tenfold offerings of praise.

For at last we believe the harvest of the seed sown in the wars and suffering of early days has been brought in!

The great Englishman who, as we believe, served England so well, has still no monument in our country nor even a grave.

But a true Prince of a race of princely deliverers, a race whose deeds fulfil more than their words promise, the grandson of William the Silent, the Liberator of Holland--is on the throne of England.

Once more, on the last days of January, forty years after the death of Charles the First, the throne was vacant. For King James had fled.

The link with the past, so sacred in England, which failed Oliver, places William of Orange on the throne.

"Yet," saith Roger, "but for Oliver, King James had never fled, nor William of Orange never reigned. The throne of the one hero is the best monument of the other."

Heavier and heavier the tidings came to us from across the seas year after year; until the climax seemed to us to be reached, when in one year one gentlewoman was beheaded at Winchester for giving refuge to two fugitives of Monmouth's Rebellion, and another was burnt at Tyburn for a similar act of mercy.

The free Puritan spirit seemed to us often extinct during those years of corruption and wrong. Hope of deliverance for the nation seemed to have expired in men's hearts. The best men seemed to gather up all their courage to suffer cheerfully. Christianity appeared no more with the sword of the warrior, keen to redress wrong, or the sword of justice, heavy to suppress it, but with meek folded hands as the martyr to endure it.

Yet we know all through the darkness the old fires were burning still, though they burned now in the still fires of devotion, patience, and meditation, rather than in the flames which consume fetters or which evangelize the world.

Beautiful words came to us from across the sea; high words of highest hope when lower hopes were quenched; of largest tolerance of difference of thought, blended with a truthfulness ready for any sacrifice rather than darken the soul with the least shadow of falsehood.

The very names of the books written then, with the circumstances under which they were written, sounded to us like a psalm.

From imprisoned Bunyan, a "Pilgrim's Progress from this world to a better," written in Bedford gaol.

From blind Milton, barely suffered to live, "The Paradise Lost and Regained" sung in the darkness which he felt to be "the shadow of celestial wings," in that lost England he never lived to see restored.

From silenced Owen, "The Glory of the Person of Christ," "The Mortification of Sin in Believers."

From silenced Howe, "The Living Temple,'" "The Blessedness of the Righteous," "On Delighting in God," "The Redeemer's Dominion over Hades."

It was of little avail to the kingdom of darkness the silencing of such as these. It was silencing their thoughts from "a life," to "an immortality." It was giving them a planet to preach from instead of a pulpit.

It was of little avail to crush with a weight of oppression hearts such as these. All the oppressions pressed out of them--no moans, but only immortal songs.

And dear to us as any were the wise and mellowed words of Richard Baxter, especially his declaration of the "_things in which he himself had changed_," as he learned, by the slow teaching of life.

In our hearts they were written in letters of gold, the autumnal gold of harvests.

"Among all parties," he wrote, "I found some that were naturally of mild, and calm, and gentle dispositions; some of sour, froward, peevish natures. Some were raw, inexperienced, and harsh, like a young fruit. And some I found to be like ripe fruit, mellow and sweet, first pure, then peaceable, easy to be entreated.

"But the difference between the godly and ungodly was here the most considerable of all.

"In my youth I was quickly past my fundamentals, and was running up into a multitude of controversies; but the older I grew the smaller stress I laid on these controversies and curiosities (though still my intellect abhorreth confusion), as finding greater uncertainties in them than I at first discerned; and finding less usefulness even where there is the greatest certainty. _The Creed, the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments, are now to me as my daily bread and drink_; and as I can speak and write over them again and again, so I had rather read and hear of them than of any of the school niceties. And this I observed with Bishop Hooker also, and with many other men.

"Heretofore I placed much of my religion in tenderness of heart and grieving for sin, and penitential tears, and less of it in the love of God, and studying His love and goodness, than now I do. Now my conscience looketh at love and delight in God, and praising Him, as the top of all my religious duties, for which it is that I value and use all the rest.

"I was once wont to meditate most on my own heart, and to dwell all at home, and look little higher; I was still poring either on my sins or wants; but now, though I am greatly convinced of the need of heart-acquaintance and employment, yet I see more need of a higher work. At home I find distempers to trouble me, and some evidences of grace; but it is above that I must find matters of delight and joy, and love and praise itself. Therefore I would have one thought at home upon myself and my sins, and many thoughts upon Christ, and God, and heaven.

"Heretofore, I knew much less than now; and yet was not half so much acquainted with my ignorance; but now I find far greater darkness upon all things, and perceive, how very little it is that we know in comparison with that we are ignorant of.

"I see more good and more evil in all men than heretofore I did; I see that good men are not so good as I once thought they were, but have more imperfections. And I find few are so bad as either their malicious enemies, or censorious separating professors do imagine. Even in the wicked generally, there is more for grace to make advantage of, and more to testify for God and holiness than I once believed there had been.

"I less admire gifts of utterance, and bare profession of religion than I once did, and have much more charity for those who by the want of gifts do make an obscurer profession; for I have met with divers obscure persons, not noted for any extraordinary profession or forwardness in religion, but only to live a quiet blameless life, whom I have after found to have long lived, as far as I could discern, a truly godly and sanctified life. Yet he that on this pretence would confound the godly and the ungodly, may as well go about to bring heaven and hell together.

"I am not so narrow in my special love, nor in my principles of church communion as heretofore.

"My soul is much more affected with the thoughts of the miserable world, and more drawn out in desire of their conversion than heretofore. Could we but go among Tartarians, Turks, and heathens, and speak their language, I should be little troubled for the silencing of eighteen hundred ministers at once in England, nor for all the rest that were cast out here, and in Scotland and Ireland; there being no employment in the world so desirable in my eyes as to labour for the winning of such miserable souls, which maketh me greatly honour Mr. John Eliot, the Apostle of the Indians in New England, and whoever else have laboured in this work.

"Yet am I not so much inclined to pass a peremptory sentence of denunciation upon all that have never heard of Christ, having some more reason than I had before to think that God's dealing with such is much unknown to us.

"I am farther than ever from hopes of a golden age here, and more apprehensive that suffering must be the Church's ordinary lot, and that Christians must indeed be cross-bearers. And though God would have vicissitudes of summer and winter, day and night, that the Church may grow _extensively_ in the summer of prosperity, and _intensively_ and radicately in the winter of adversity, yet usually their night is longer than their day, and that day itself hath its storms and tempests. The Church will be still imperfect and sinful, and will have those diseases which need the bitter remedy.

"My censures of the Papists do much differ from what they were at first. I then thought that their errors in doctrine were their most dangerous mistakes, as to the points of merit, justification by works, assurance of salvation, the nature of faith. But now I am assured that their mis-expressions and misunderstanding, with our mistakings of them, and inconvenient expressing our own opinions, hath made the differences in these points to appear much greater than they are; and that in some of them it is next to none at all.

"But the great and irreconcilable differences lie in their Church tyranny and usurpations, and in their great corruptions and abasements of God's worship, with their befriending of ignorance and vice. I doubt not but that God hath many sanctified ones among them, who have received the doctrine of Christianity so practically, that their contradictory errors prevail not against them to hinder their love of God and their salvation, but that their errors are like a conquerable dose of poison which nature doth overcome. And I can never believe that a man may not be saved by that religion which doth but bring him to the true love of God, and a heavenly mind and life; nor that God will ever cast a soul into hell that truly loveth Him.

"I cannot be so narrow in my principles of Church communion as many are. Many are so much for a liturgy or so much against it, so much for ceremonies or so much against them, that they can hold communion with no Church that is not of their mind and way.

"I am much less regardful of the approbation of man, and set much lighter by contempt or applause than I did long ago; all worldly things appear most unsatisfactory where we have tried them most; yet, as far as I can perceive, the knowledge of man's nothingness and God's transcendent greatness, with whom it is that I have most to do, and the sense of the brevity of human things and the nearness of eternity, are the principal causes of this effect.

"I am much more apprehensive than long ago of the odiousness and danger of the sin of pride, especially in matters spiritual and ecclesiastical. I think so far as any man is proud he is given to the Devil, and entirely a stranger to God and himself. It's a wonder that it should be a possible sin, to men that still carry about with them, in soul and body, such humbling matter as we all do.

"I am much more sensible than heretofore of the breadth, length, and depth of the radical, universal, odious sin of selfishness; and of the excellency and necessity of self-denial, and of a public mind, and of loving our neighbour as ourselves.

"I am more and more sensible that most controversies have more need of right stating than of debating; and if my skill be increased in anything it is in that; narrowing controversies by explication and separating the real from the verbal, and proving to many contenders that they differ less than they think they do.

"I am more solicitous than I have been about my duty to God, and less about His dealings with me; as being assured that He will do all things well, and as knowing there is no rest but in the will and goodness of God.

"I must mention it by way of penitent confession that I am too much inclined to such words in controversial writings which are too keen, and apt to provoke the person I write against. I have a strong natural inclination to call a spade a spade. I confess it is faulty, because it is a hindrance to the usefulness of what I write; and especially because though I feel no anger, yet (which is worse) I know there is some want of honour and love and tenderness to others, and therefore I repent of it, and wish all over-sharp passages were expunged from my writings, and desire forgiveness of God and man. And yet I must say that I am often afraid of the contrary extreme, lest when I speak against great and dangerous errors and sins, I should encourage men to them by speaking too easily of them, as Eli did to his sons.

"I mention these distempers that my faults may be a warning to others to take heed, as they call on myself for repentance and watchfulness. O Lord, for the merits and sacrifice and intercession of Christ, be merciful to me a sinner, and forgive my known and unknown sins."

These words are as familiar to us as a liturgy, so often used Aunt Dorothy to ask them to be read over to her; although to the last the part she oftenest asked me to read was that about the danger of the "contrary extreme of speaking too easily of dangerous errors and sins," to which she always gave her most emphatic Amen.

She forgave Mr. Baxter, however, for his marriage, on consideration of his young wife's generous assistance of destitute ministers, of her own and her mother's "manly patience" in adversities, and of the faithful affection with which she shared and cheered her husband's imprisonment.

And dear to Aunt Dorothy beyond all other uninspired writings was Mr. Baxter's, prison-hymn

"THE RESOLUTION.

"Must I be driven from my books,
From house, and goods, and dearest friends?
One of Thy sweet and gracious looks
For more than this will make amends.
The world's Thy book: there I can read
Thy power, wisdom, and Thy love;
And thence ascend by faith, and feed
Upon the better things above.

"I'll read Thy works of providence:
Thy Spirit, conscience, and Thy rod
Can teach without these all the sense
To know the world, myself, and God,
Few books will serve when Thou wilt teach,
Many have stolen my precious time;
I'll leave my books to hear Thee preach,
Church-work is best when Thou dost chime,

"As for my home it was my tent,
While there I waited on Thy flock;
That work is done, that time is spent,
There neither was my home nor stock.
Would I in all my journey have
Still the same sun and furniture?
Or ease and pleasant dwellings crave,
Forgetting what Thy saints endure?

"My Lord hath taught me how to want
A place wherein to put my head;
While He is mine, I'll be content
To beg or lack my daily bread.
Heaven is my roof, earth is my floor;
Thy love can keep me dry and warm;
Christ and Thy bounty are my store;
Thy angels guard me from all harm.

"As for my friends, they are not lost;
The several vessels of Thy fleet,
Though parted now, by tempest tost,
Shall safely in the haven meet.
Still we are centred all in Thee;
Members, thought distant, of one Head;
In the same family we be,
By the same faith and Spirit led.

"Before Thy throne we daily meet,
As joint petitioners to Thee;
In spirit we each other greet,
And shall again each other see.
The heavenly hosts, world without end,
Shall be my company above;
And Thou my best and surest Friend--
Who shall divide me from Thy love?

"Must I forsake the soil and air
Where first I drew my vital breath?
That way may be as near and fair,
Thence I may come to Thee by death.
All countries are my Father's lands;
Thy sun, Thy love doth shine on all;
We may in all lift up pure hands,
And with acceptance on Thee call.

"What if in prison I must dwell,
May I not there converse with Thee!
Save me from sin, Thy wrath, and hell,
Call me Thy child, and I am free.
No walls or bars can keep Thee out;
None can confine a holy soul,
The streets of heaven it walks about;
None can its liberty control.

"Must I feel sicknesses and smart
And spend my days and nights in pale
Yet if Thy love refresh my heart,
I need not overmuch complain.
This flesh has drawn my soul to sin,
If it must smart, Thy will be done.
Oh, fill me with Thy joys within,
And then I'll let it grieve alone!

"I know my flesh must turn to dust,
My parted soul must come to Thee,
And undergo Thy judgments just,
And in the endless world must be.
In this there's most of fear and joy,
Because there's most of sin and grace;
Sin will this mortal frame destroy,
But Christ will bring me to Thy face.

"Shall I draw back, and fear the end
Of all my sorrows, fears, and pain,
To which my life and labours tend,
Without which all had been in vain?
Can I for ever be content
Without true happiness and rest?
Is earth become so excellent
That I should take it for my best?

"Or can I think of finding here
That which my soul so long has sought?
Should I refuse those joys, through fear,
Which bounteous love so dear has bought?
All that does taste of heaven is good;
When heavenly light does me inform,
When heavenly life stirrs in my blood,
When heavenly love my heart doth warm.

"Though all the reasons I can see,
Why should I willingly submit,
And comfortably come to Thee--
My God, Thou must accomplish it.
The love which filled up all my days
Will not forsake me to the end;
This broken body Thou wilt raise,
My spirit I to Thee commend."

Such was the kind of whine or moan which persecution drew from the true Puritans! Such was the music oppression drew by its strain from strings not otherwise deemed musical. It is the solitary spontaneous songs of those whose natural speech is a quiet prose, which, more than anything, make me comprehend what is meant by the New Song.

We sang that hymn by Aunt Dorothy's grave, on the hill-side, under the old oak-tree where she loved to sit on summer evenings. She used to say the sound of the wind in the leaves took her back to old Netherby; and from its shade she could catch a gleam of the sea, on the other side of which is England.

We had not expected, and we did not find New England to be an Eden, where the conflict would be over. It has been possible, however, to wage "the good fight" here, not only for our own souls, but "in those public services for which a man is born." For that end we took refuge here; and we are content. Yet of some wars we have, I trust, seen the victorious end. Since the "being" of the plantations seems secure, men have more leisure to seek their "well-being." Since law has grown to have firmer roots, the lawgivers have grown more merciful. Magistrates and ministers have ceased to persecute, and Quakers have ceased to provoke. Which was the cause and which the effect, will perhaps long remain a subject of debate.

Just now, however, there are terrible rumours of witches, which recall the old witch-drowning and rescue of Gammer Grindle on Netherby Mere in my early days. Wretched old women are said to be accusing themselves of riding through the air on sticks, and of having evil spirits in the form of cats to wait on them, knowing that if convicted they will be hung. My husband thinks that, by-and-by, when the magistrates cease to excite diseased fancies by threats of the gallows, and thus the stimulus of danger is withdrawn, the witches will cease to believe they deserved a terrible punishment by having committed impossible crimes.*

* "When the persecution of the witches ceased, the Lord chained up Satan, that the afflicted grew presently well."--P. COTTON MATHER.

Meantime John Eliot has been fighting the devil in more undeniable forms by preaching the gospel to the Indians. He reduced the language to writing, and translated the Bible into it. At first the Pauwaws, their magicians or "clergymen," were furious, and threatened his life. But he went fearlessly, alone, among them. "I am about the work of the great God," he said. "God is with me. Touch me if you dare." Now there are six churches of baptized praying Indians, and eighteen assemblies of catechumens.

Yet when he was passing away, he said there was a dark cloud on the work among the Indians. The nation itself seems to fade before us. The praying Indians perish like caged deer in their Christian villages.

Now the life of love which has been shining among them and us so many years, has at last faded from our vision.

The firm, gentle hand which "rang the curfew for contentions" is still; the voice and the life which preached among us so constantly "_bear, forbear, forgive_," are silenced. The eyes which flashed so indignantly against wrongs to the weak and helpless, and which glanced so tenderly on the little children, are closed. The "lambs which Christ is not willing to lose" will watch for John Eliot's smile and kindly word henceforth in vain.

Whenever bad news came from England (and it came so often!), he would say, "These are some of the clouds in which the Son of man will come."

And now the better tidings have come, he has passed to better still. The Son of man has come for him, not in a cloud of darkness but of light.

When he was too feeble to labour longer among his Indians, he said, "I wonder for what my Lord keeps me longer here." And then he turned to such sufferers as his labours could yet reach. His last efforts were to gather the negro servants of the settlers and teach them. His last scholar was a blind boy whom he took to be with him in his house.

His last words to us still in the battle-field were "Pray, pray, pray."

His first words to the victors he has joined were, "Welcome, joy."

And soon after this our "Apostle of the Indians" died. Mr. Baxter wrote:--

"There was no man on earth whom I honoured above him. It is his evangelical work that is the Apostolical Succession I plead for. I am now dying, I hope, as he did. It pleased me to read from him my case ('my understanding faileth, my memory faileth, my tongue faileth, but my charity faileth not'). That word much comforted me. God preserve you and New England."

Thus New England has already her apostolic fathers and her sacred graves.

A few months passed, and then we heard how Richard Baxter had followed Eliot home.

"I have pain," he said; "there is no arguing against sense. But I have peace--_I have peace_." And when asked during his mortal sickness how he did, his reply was "_almost well_."

So the day he looked for as his Sabbath and "high day" came to him, and he is gone to the great company of those he justly honoured, and some whom he never learned to honour here, in the "many mansions" of that "all-reconciling world."

But alas, when shall we say "_almost well_" for, what he called, "this distracted world?"

In England the better days seem dawning, and here in New England.

But from France Lettice's old servant Barbe, who has taken refuge here with her family, brings tidings too sad to think of.

Port Royal is extinguished as a source of light; the schools suppressed; the nuns prisoners in their own convent or elsewhere; the recluses silenced and scattered. Hundreds of the best men and women in France, as Madame la Mothe deemed them, thus rendered powerless for good.

But the sufferers of whom Barbe speaks count by hundreds of thousands. "One soweth and another reapeth." Who will reap the harvest of this sowing?

Of these hundred thousand good Protestant men and women scattered, killed, tortured, at the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and through all the persecutions before and after it, of whom Barbe tells us stories of horror such as England never knew, those other good men and women, Fort Royal, on earth, knew nothing!

Oh, joyful revelations of that "all reconciling world!" Next to the joy of seeing Him in whom God reconciles us all to Himself and to each other will be the joy of seeing the wonder on the countenances of saint after saint as they unlearn their wrong judgments of one another.

The joy of the unlearning.

Yes! this joy of unlearning is one we shall certainly none of us miss! As John Robinson said, on the other side of the sea at Delft Haven, to the fathers of our New England when they were departing, "If God reveal anything to you by any other instrument, be very willing to receive it as from me. Lutherans go not beyond Luther; Calvinists beyond Calvin; yet though burning and shining lights in their time, they penetrated not into the whole course of God. But were they now living, they would be as willing to receive further light as that which they first received from the Word of God."

They _are_ living, living and learning, and ever "receiving further light" from the Eternal Light (oh, how willingly!), on the other side of that Great Sea which we must all so soon pass over, to learn together, with ever deepening love and joy, how wide His dominion is "of whose Diocese we are" "On Both Sides of the Sea."

THE END.