LETTICE'S DIARY.
"Broad Oak, _February_, 1666.--For a brief season we are in this
haven, driven into rest by many storms.
"The Plague has left London. The Court has returned to it unchanged,
to pursue its revelries. The ejected ministers who preached to the
dying city are once more silenced and driven from their pulpits, and
not only driven from their pulpits but from the city, by the Five
Mile Act, which prohibits any ejected minister, on severe penalties,
from approaching within five miles of the church where he was wont to
preach.
"Roger deemed his work in London for the present done.
"When we left, the streets were fragrant with the smoke of sweet
woods, burned in the houses, and curling through the open windows day
and night. The air was laden with strange Oriental odours of
incense, of aromatic gums and perfumes, floating the spirit on their
dream-like fragrance (as perfumes only can), within the spells of
Enchanted ground.
"Yet the change is pleasant, to this wholesome country air, fresh
with the smell of the new-ploughed earth, of the young mosses and
grasses shooting out everywhere bright tiny spikes or stars of
jewel-like green, of the breath of cows, of gummy swelling leaf-buds,
and fir-stems warmed into pungent fragrance by the sun, of early
peeping snow-drops and rare violets, of sedges moistened by the
prattling brooks, of free winds coming and going we know not whence
or whither--from the mountains, from the sea, or from the forests of
the American wilderness. It is invigorating to body and soul to
change those costly foreign manufactured perfumes for all these
countless, changing, blending, breathing fragrances, which make what
I suppose is meant by 'the smell of a field which the Lord hath
blessed.'
"It is a wonderful relief to be here, after what we have gone
through; free to go where we will, living with open doors, neighbours
freely coming and going, guests, unsuspected, dropping in at the
hospitable door from the highway.
"It is not so much like coming in a ship out of the storm into the
haven, as like being quietly laid on a friendly sunny shore, after
buffeting with panting chest and weary arms through the waves which
have made the ship a wreck.
"Something of this calm, indeed, began to come even before we left
London.
"It is a thing never to forget, the change that came over people's
countenances on the first morning late in September, when the number
of the dead was in the week declared to have diminished instead of
increasing; the tears that those first gleams of hope brought to eyes
long dry in despair; the re-awaking of neighbourly sympathy, as each
house ceased to be either a refuge against infection, or a pest-house
from which it issued; windows opened fearlessly, once more, to hear
good news. The reserve which, like a fortress, rampart with rampart,
guards the deepest feelings of our people, broken down by the common
deliverance; strangers grasping each others' hands in the streets,
merely for the joy of telling the good news, weeping aloud for
gladness, or uttering the brief fervent thanksgiving--''_Tis all
wonderful; 'tis all a dream? Blessed be God, 'tis all His own doing.
Human help and skill were at an end. Let us give thanks to Him_.'
"This melting together of men's hearts in the rapture of a common
deliverance, struck me more than all. It made me think how the best
balsam to heal the wounds of Christendom would be for Christianity to
be once more understood as the Gospel of Great Joy which it assuredly
is. There would be little room for controversy, I thought, and none
for isolation and exclusion, if every heart could only be penetrated
with the joy of the forgiven Prodigal, and of the Angels' Christmas
hymn.
"Some people in their eagerness to purify their houses burned them
down. Wild despair was succeeded on every side by hopes as wild.
Those who had suspected every one, and crept along the streets,
fearing to touch each other's garments, grew so bold that they no
longer feared even the poor ghastly scarce-recovered victims of the
Plague, who began to limp about the streets with the bandages of the
dreaded sores and swellings still around their heads and limbs.
"If even the reckless Court itself had lived through that peril and
that rescue, I think it would never have affronted Heaven and this
city of mourners again with its profligate revelries. The City,
indeed, was well fumigated from infection with perfumes, and with
brimstone, to make it a safe dwelling for the Court. But what
incense, what fires, can purify England from the infection of the
Court itself?
"We should have gone to Netherby, but that is scarce a safe home just
now for Roger. A vexatious suit has been instituted against him, on
the ground of his aiding or abetting in some 'disloyal' attempt of
which he knew nothing. But we know it is his work during the
Commonwealth that is the true ground of prosecution. Sir Launcelot
Trevor will never pardon Roger's detecting him in one of the plots
for assassinating Cromwell. It is not the hard laws themselves,
severe as their restrictions and penalties are, that cause the most
suffering. It is the power they give to bad men to annoy the good.
"Already much of the Drayton property has been sacrificed through
vexatious exactions. But now it is more than property that is
threatened. And so this pleasant home of Broad Oak, which is a house
of mercy to so many, has now become a refuge for us. We are, in
fact, here as in a hiding-place, until this tyranny be overpast, or
we can find some other refuge.
"Our host, Mr. Philip Henry's courtly deference of manners, his
listening to every one as if he had something to learn from each, has
more charm for me than I like to confess to myself. It recalls the
stately courtesy of my brother Harry and of the Cavaliers who were
his contemporaries.
"The Puritan manners are severer and less chivalrous than those of
our old Cavaliers, though with more of true knightly honour to women
in them than the courtiers of this New Court are capable of
comprehending.
"We read together often, Roger and I, these old records of the early
settlers in the American wildernesses. We are beginning now to glean
more particular tidings concerning the various village communities
into which the settlers have now organized themselves. For more and
more we begin to speak of a 'New Netherby' rising beside some inland
mere or pleasant creek of the forest in New England.
"'Not that I despair for a moment of England,' Roger says. 'But we
have but one life, and its years are few and precious; and if the
good fight is going on victoriously elsewhere, it seems scarce a
man's place to stay where the best he can do is to keep quiet and
hide for his life.'
"_February_, 1666, Broad Oak.--There is a serenity and sunshine about
this house which makes it like an island of fair weather in the midst
of the turbulent world. Continually it recalls to me Port Royal.
And even more by resemblance than by Contrast.
"It seems to me as fully as Port Royal a temple or house of God. (In
one sense I, as a Protestant, should believe more, since the church,
not the convent, is God's sacred Order.) Every morning and evening
all the inmates and family assemble for _prayer_ and _reading of the
Bible_. 'As the priests in the tabernacle,' Mr. Henry says, 'used
daily to _burn_ the _incense_, and to _light the lamps_.' All pray
kneeling; for Mr. Henry 'has high thoughts of the body as God's
workmanship, and desires that it should share in the homage offered
to Him.'
"Mr. Henry never makes this service long, so as to be a weariness; he
calls it the 'hem to keep the rest of the day from ravelling.' In
the evening he gathers his household, servants, workmen, day
labourers, and sojourners, early, that the youngest, or those who
have done a good day's work, may not be sleepy. 'Better one absent
than all sleepy,' he says.
"He explains the Bible as he reads it, not merely '_mincing it
small_, but by _easy unforced distribution_.' Above all, he seeks to
lift up before the heart '_Christ, the Treasure in the field of the
Bible_.' 'Every word of God is good,' he says, 'but especially God
the Word.' He closes with a psalm; sometimes many verses, but sung
quickly, every one having a book, so that there is no interruption to
the singing.
"Afterwards his two little boys kneel with folded hands before their
father and mother, and ask their blessing, while he pronounces the
benediction over them, saying, 'The Lord bless thee.' On Thursday he
catechizes the servants on some simple subject.
"On Sunday, 'the pearl of the week, the queen of days,' the perpetual
Easter-day on which we sing, 'The Lord is risen indeed,' the whole
house seems so full of tranquil light, all sounds and signs of
needless labour banished, all the sweet sounds of nature, birds and
bees and running brooks, heard with a new music in the hush of human
rest, the men and maids in their sober holiday attire, that it is
difficult to believe there is not an audible, visible increase of
light and music in the external world, that the fields, and woods,
and skies, have not also donned a festive attire, that the sun is not
shining with a new radiance, like the ancient Lamp of the sanctuary,
fresh filled and trimmed for the Sabbath. It shines on the heart
with a quiet radiance, like the last chapters of the Gospels; the
resurrection chapters. The household, since Mr. Henry has been
silenced, attend the Church service in the little neighbouring
parish-church of Whitechurch, always going early, before the service
begins. The walks through the field to and from the church are a
sacred service in themselves, by virtue of Mr. Henry's discourse. In
truth, there is no silencing the music of such a piety as his, unless
you could make it cease to flow.
"This temple also has its shrines and inner sanctuary. Mrs. Henry
pointed out to me the little chamber where her husband prays alone;
when he changed it he consecrated the new one with a special prayer.
I remember Roger's father used to call the direction, '_When thou
enterest into thy closet shut thy door_,' 'the one unquestionably
divine rubric of the New Testament.' And it seems to me beautiful
that the inmost sanctuary of our houses, as of our hearts, should be
that which it consecrated by solitude with God.
"Then, like Port Royal, this is a house of mercy. Standing near the
way-side, it is seldom that the hospitable board has none but inmates
round it. And Mr. Henry's simple, fervent thanksgiving at the table
must, I think, go along with the traveller on his further journey,
like the echo of a hymn.
"The order of the convent, moreover, can scarcely be more thorough
than that of this home, save that it is broken, like the order of
nature, by the sweet irregularities and varieties which always come
to stir all Divine order out of monotony. The Hand which can make
Life the mainspring of its machinery may dare irregularities.
"Port Royal was especially recalled to my mind by a letter I received
last November from Madame la Mothe, in which she speaks of the return
of the nuns to Port Royal des Champs. Four years ago they were
dispersed into imprisonment in various convents, in the hope that the
courage of each alone might fail, so that in isolation, moved by the
most plausible persuasions and the severest threats, the community
might separately sign the condemnation of Jansenism, which they had
refused to sign together. It was a simple question of fact. They
were required to declare that the five condemned propositions were in
Jansenius' books; thus asserting what they believed false to be true.
But out of the ninety-six nuns thus dispersed eighty-four returned
unshaken. Madame la Mothe writes:
"'Such a welcome and restoration home as the holy sisters had was
worth sore suffering to win, as the various carriages met, bringing
the Mother Angélique and her scattered daughters once more together.
The church bells pealed joyous greetings, and the peasants shouted or
wept their welcomes, flocking by the roadside, along the steep
descent into the valley, in holiday dresses; gray-haired tottering
men, little toddling children, mothers and babes in arms--not a
creature that could stir left behind to miss the joy of welcoming
their benefactresses back. And so the long procession of nuns, in
their white robes, with scarlet crosses, disappeared under the great
Gothic gates, into the sacred enclosure. It was a sight
indescribably beautiful to the eye, but who can say what it was to
the heart?'
"Martyrs not so much to truth as to truthfulness, they would not
recognize the distinction between consenting to what they deemed a
lie and telling it.
"Should not their enemies concede at least this merit to the two
thousand ejected ministers? They may be over nice, as I think they
are, in some of their scruples. But why cannot people, who see a
noble heroism in eighty nuns suffering ejection and dispersion rather
than declare that false which they believe to be true--rather than
bring on their souls the degradation of a lie--see something of the
same heroism in two thousand English clergymen with their families
suffering ejection, calumny, and peril of starvation rather than
solemnly declare they believe things true which they believe false?
The families who have to share the misery whether they will or no, do
not make the sacrifice easier.
"Yet many a tender-hearted lady of our acquaintance, of the old
Cavalier stock, whose face has glowed with interest when I have told
her of the sufferings and constancy of the Mère Angélique and her
nuns, and who has rejoiced with me when I read the story of their
restoration, can see nothing but vulgar perversity and obstinacy in
the conduct of these ejected ministers.
"Why cannot these also be honoured as martyrs, if not to truth, at
least to truthfulness?
"Can it be that the white dresses and red crosses, and the grand
arched entrance gates make the difference?
"Or is it merely that the one took place in France and the other at
home?
"Building the sepulchres of the prophets is such easy and graceful
feminine work! As easy as tapestry work, especially when the
sepulchres are reared in the imagination, and the prophets prophesied
to other people's forefathers.
"But it seems as if, in heaven, not the slightest value was attached
to those elegant little erections.
"The one thing regarded there seems to be whether we help and honour
those who are contending or suffering for truth and right now. And
this is not always so easy.
"For, on the other hand, Aunt Dorothy was not a little incensed when
I once told her (intending to be conciliatory) that I thought the
Nonconformist ministers quite as much to be honoured as the Mère
Angélique and her nuns.
"'To compare Mr. Baxter and two thousand of the most enlightened
ministers in England to a set of poor benighted papists!' said she.
"And she was only to be mollified by the consideration of the
deficiency in my own religious training.
"Perhaps for us women the safest course is to render as wide a
succour as we can to all who suffer. Because then if we make any
mistakes as to truth, in the great account they may be
counterbalanced by the entries on the side of love; which, on the
whole, seems to overrule the final judgment.
"_March_, 1666.--We are to leave this friendly holy roof for another
shelter.
"Many a sharp-cut diamond of Mr. Henry's good sayings I shall carry
away with me.
"'_Repentance is not a sudden land-flood, but the flowing of a
perennial spring; an abiding habit_.'
"'_Peace is joy in the bloom; joy is peace in the fruit_.'
"But more than all such sayings, I bear away with me the memory of a
sanctity as fresh and fragrant as any I ever hope to see, fragrant
not as with the odours of manufactured perfumes, but with the
countless fragrances of a field which the Lord has blessed.
"An Endurance of affliction made all the lovelier by the capacity for
the happiness it foregoes,--by the belief that every creature of God
is good and to be enjoyed with thanksgiving which prevents its being
stiffened into austerity; a submissive Loyalty ennobled by the higher
loyalty which prevents its becoming servile; an open-handed charity
sustained by busy-handed industry, by the thrift which deems waste a
sin, and the justice which deems debt a degradation; a Devotion whose
chief delight is to soar and sing, and which sings never the less
when it stoops to serve; a Religion as free from fanaticism,
worldliness, or austerity as any the world can see.
"A piety which would have been my mother's element; worthy it seems
to me of the sober joyful liturgy she loved so dearly, yet to which
Mr. Henry cannot entirely conform. Yes; it seems to me a piety more
unlike that of the Puritans of our early days than unlike that of
George Herbert or of Port Royal. A lovely, patient, quiet, meek-eyed
piety! It recalls to me the group of St. Paul's gentle graces,
'love, joy, peace,' and the rest, which I used to think pictured my
mother's religion, far more than St. Peter's belligerent virtues,
godliness, faith, courage, which seemed to me to stand forth in sword
and breastplate like the religion of Roger and the Ironsides.
"'If the old Cavaliers, alas, are gone,' I said to Roger to-day, 'it
seems to me the old Puritans are gone as well. Mr. Philip Henry is
far less like you Ironsides than like my mother. This is a piety, as
I deem, which would have suffered in prisons and pillories to any
extent, but would scarcely have lifted its voice in the Parliament
with Mr. Hampden and Mr. Pym, and would certainly not have raised the
standard at Edgehill or Worcester. Where are the old Puritans gone?'
"'Where we may follow them, sweet heart,' said he; 'to fight the
wolves and conquer the wildernesses of the West.'
"'Then,' said I, 'are the wrestling manlike Christian virtues to
migrate to New England to subdue the New World; whilst the feminine
Christian graces are to stay at home to endure the pillory and the
prison? That were a strange division. Meseems, what with
prohibitions to speak, and imprisonment, and the banishment of the
fighting men, this patient, passive nonconformity can never spread.
Rather, perhaps, in a generation or two it will die out.'
"'Scarcely, I think,' he said. 'The old country is patient and dumb,
and sometimes takes a long sleep but I believe she will wake one day,
and break the nets they have entangled her in, and scatter those who
twisted them, simply by rising and shaking herself. Only her sleep
may be too long for us to wait to the end of it.'
"'But who is to wake her?' I said. 'A piety this of Mr. Henry's,
like that of Mr. Herbert, beautiful and pure enough to convert the
world, if some louder voice could only rouse the world to look at it.
But whence is this voice to come? For it seems to me our liturgy,
though the purest music of devotion that can rise to heaven if once
people are awake to hear it and to sing it, has scarcely the kind of
fiery force in it to arouse the slumbering world. And if the Puritan
religion becomes alike meek and soft-spoken, whence is this
enkindling fire to come?
"You might as well have asked our ancestor Cassibelawn where the fire
was to come from when the forests were cut down,' he said. 'While
the forests give fuel enough, who can foresee the coal-pits?
"'Perhaps,' he added after a pause, as in a muse, 'when the spring
comes and the ice melts and the music of the living waters breaks on
England again, as it must and will, the new streams will find new
channels.'
"Our discourse was broken at this point by the arrival of two
horsemen who dismounted at the door. The hospitable board was spread
for the midday meal, and as we went down to take our places at it,
Mr. Henry introduced us to these new guests as friends of his.
"They were Dr. Annesly and Dr. Wesley,* two of the nonconformist
ministers."
* Maternal and paternal grandfather of the Wesleys.
OLIVE'S RECOLLECTIONS.
Troubles came, as troubles are wont to come, in troops, sweeping down
on us thick and fast in the year which followed the plague, 1666.
Through the whole year Roger was in concealment with Lettice and
their boy. Lands and houses are no safeguards in a persecution where
so much lies at the mercy of informers. And Roger--and Lettice
also--had an implacable enemy in Sir Launcelot Trevor, the profligacy
of whose early years had, at its second fermentation, soured into
malignity against those who had reproved or thwarted him. It was Sir
Launcelot, indeed, who hunted us hither. In his youth he had made
some careless studies in the law, and now he was appointed one of the
judges. Vexations which render life impossible for all the best ends
of living are terribly easy to inflict when bad laws are executed by
worse men. And it was this which made the misery of those times.
The laws were indeed (as we believe) harsh and unjust; but it was the
authorities who made them and the judges who administered them, it
was the _spirit_ in which the _letter_ was carried out that made them
(at last) unsupportable.
About the spring of this year the pressure of the times fell hard on
cousin Placidia.
Her son Isaac was arrested for attending a forbidden meeting near
Bedford, and was thrown into the old jail on Bedford Bridge, where
John Bunyan (though loyal as Mr. Baxter), had already been
incarcerated for six years.
Thence, Isaac wrote as if imprisonment in such company were not to be
imprisoned but emparadised. "Such heavenly discourse as John Bunyan
makes here," said he, "would make a dungeon a palace." He gave hints
also of a wonderful story, or allegory, which the tinker was penning
in the jail, and which (said Isaac) would make as much music in the
world, when it came forth, as Mr. Milton's poems. We smiled at the
lad's enthusiasm, for it was not to be thought that a poor tinker,
however godly, could write anything beyond edifying sheets suited to
paste on the walls of poor folks like himself. Indeed, we had seen
some verses of his, which, though full of piety and patience, were
scarce to be called poetry.
And that very year Mr. Thomas Ellwood, a Quaker (and a friend of
Annis Nye's), who had once been reader to Mr. Milton in his
blindness, brought us marvellous accounts of a manuscript Mr. Milton
had given him to read at a "pretty box" Mr. Ellwood had taken for
him, during the Plague, at Giles Chalfont. It contained the Epic
Poem called "Paradise Lost." Thomas Ellwood said to him, "Thou hast
said much here of Paradise lost, but what hast thou to say of
Paradise found?" Some time afterwards, Mr. Milton showed him another
poem called Paradise Regained, saying, in a pleasant tone, "This is
owing to you; for you put it into my head by the question you put to
me at Chalfont, which before I had not thought of."
So that, seeing, besides all he had already done to the marvel of
Europe, Mr. Milton had these wonderful epics in store, it naturally
amused us not a little that Isaac should compare this good tinker
with him. Nevertheless, we honoured the lad's heartiness, and
rejoiced that in his doleful condition he had such pious company to
comfort him withal.
Not so, however, his mother. Her distress knew no bounds. This
affliction tore her heart in twain; setting what was highest in her
in fierce civil war with what was lowest. For, in spite of all her
protestations of poverty, rumour had rather magnified than diminished
the amount of cousin Placidia's hoards. The more she sought to keep
them unknown, the more magnificent they grew in the busy imaginations
of her neighbours. And coffer after coffer of her painfully hoarded
stores had to be confessed and emptied as she sought to bribe one
exacting officer after another to release her son; until, the more
she gave, the more they believed she could be tortured into giving,
the more the ingenuity of informers and the greed of jailers
increased, and the more distant grew the prospects of poor Isaac's
liberation.
My heart ached for the torture she went through as, bit by bit, she
had to offer up the money which was dear to her as life, for the
child who was dearer.
"It was worse than the boot or the thumb-screw with which they are
torturing the poor Covenanters in Scotland," I said one day to Job
Foster, when we were staying at Netherby; "screwed tighter and
tighter till it crushes the bone."
"Never heed, Mistress Olive," said Job. "Thank the Lord it isn't in
your hands but in His, who loves Mistress Nicholls a sight better
than you. It isn't her _heart_ that screw is crushing, it's the
_worm in her heart_ which is eating it out."
"Thou art somewhat hard on Mistress Nicholls," said Rachel, "to my
mind; after all, she had saved it all for the lad."
"Women's hearts are tender," said Job, giving an emphatic hammer to
the spade he was repairing, "and thine tenderer than any. But
there's a love tenderer than thine. Glory to His holy name, He did
not put away the sorrowing cup for all His own pains. And He will
not put aside the healing cup for all our crying. In His warfare it
isn't once setting us on Burford church roofs, nor twice, that keeps
us steady to the Captain's lead."
This trouble of Isaac's meantime wrought much on Maidie, who had
always repaid Isaac's devoted homage loftily, and not always
graciously, since the early days when he overwhelmed her with the
unwelcome offering of his best hen. Sharp-sighted as these children
are (flatter ourselves as we may) to spy out our failings, and
intolerant of them as youth with its high standards will be, Maidie
had been wont to hear cousin Placidia's moans of poverty with
ill-disguised incredulity, and to call her economies by very
unsparing scriptural names. But now Isaac's imprisonment seemed at
once to exalt him in the perverse maiden's imagination from a boy to
a hero. She wrote to him; and what was more, Dolly treacherously
reported that she wept nights long about him; and (which was the
greatest triumph of all), she began to love his mother for his sake.
"It was plain," she said, "how unjust she had been to cousin
Placidia; it was plain that it was only for Isaac's sake she had
pinched herself, and sometimes also other folk. Otherwise, would she
be ready to part with everything for his sake now? It was noble for
a mother to deny herself for her son," pronounced Maidie; "and if
this denying extended to others sometimes, it must be excused. It
was but the exuberance of a virtue; and she, for her part, was
ashamed of having ever spoken hardly of cousin Placidia, and would
never do so again."
So a close bond grew up between these two; and it became clear to me
I should have to spare a portion of my daughter's love to soften with
its free sunshine, and quicken with its own generous youth, this
heart that had grown so old and shrivelled with self-imposed cares.
And it was also plain what would come of this when Isaac, always so
faithful to her, came out of prison, at once exalted into manhood and
smitten into knighthood in Maidie's eyes--by persecution, and found
Maidie already ministering to his mother as a daughter. Indeed, the
betrothal was already accomplished in all its essentials. And it
seemed to me that, so beggared and so enriched, cousin Placidia would
have at last no alternative but to throw aside the self-deceiving and
self-tormenting which had made her youth old age and her wealth
poverty, and in her old age and destitution for the first time to
grow rich and young.
As the year went on, more and more our thoughts turned to the New
World on the other side of the sea. Roger's mind had been turned
thither ever since the Lord Protector's death, as the only place
where in his lifetime it was probable he would be able to render
England those "public services for which a man is born."
Loyalty he believed England had refused to the prince God sent her,
and was suffering for it. Liberty was a word which would scarcely
come forth again as a watchword of noble warfare with the men of this
bewildered and subdued generation.
On the other hand, my husband, while the prisons were fuller than
ever of sufferers for conscience, found it more difficult than ever
to obtain access to them or to give them succour.
Cousin Placidia, on her part, was ready for any refuge which would
keep Isaac out of the way of John Bunyan and the informers. Job and
Rachel Forster still hesitated. They could not "get light upon it."
They doubted whether it would not be deserting the post they had been
set to keep; and more especially whether it would be safe to take
Annis Nye, who had gone to live with them, to New England. I think
also they were more moved by sympathy with Annis Nye's beliefs than
they quite knew themselves. Rachel thought the Quakers had been set
to give a wonderful testimony for peace and patience in an age when
there was too much fighting; and for silence in an age when there was
too much talking. And Job said, "We have done fighting and talking
enough in our day, in my belief, to last some time; and now the Lord
seems to be saying to us, '_Study to be quiet and to do your own
business_,' and, '_Where two or three are gathered together, there am
I in the midst of them_.' That's about where the lessons for the day
seem to me to be just now. And I've a mind we'd better be in no
hurry, but sit still and learn them."
Aunt Dorothy was prepared at any moment to shake off the dust from
her feet against the profligate Court which encouraged
Sabbath-breaking, theatres, and bear-baitings, and banished five
miles from its suburbs the loyal and godly ministers who had laboured
so faithfully to bring it back; and against the infatuated country
which could pay servile adulation to such a Court.
She was also a little troubled at Mr. Baxter's marrying so young a
wife, and winced a little when Lettice defended him and declared that
at heart Aunt Dorothy's place, after all, was beside the holy maids
and recluses of Port Royal.
Still we lingered. It was not so easy to despair of the re-awaking
of an England in which John Milton was still living and thinking, and
John Bunyan, and John Howe, and Dr. Owen, and Richard Baxter, and
through which thirty thousand of Cromwell's soldiers were still
scattered, working at their farms and forges throughout the land.
Nor was it easy to leave such an England, so few years before a Queen
of Nations, as long as she would but give us a little space to work
for her, and a little reason to hope.
But slowly the necessities which pressed us from her shores gathered
closer and closer around us, until we could linger no more.
The great Fire of London brought my husband to a decision.
Our own house escaped; but many houses in the city, in which much of
his property consisted, were burnt. And the misery of so many
thousands, whom our losses deprived us of the power to relieve, made
us at last resolve to make the voyage, while we had the means yet
left to pay the ship-master and purchase such goods as we should need
in beginning life again in the wilderness.
At ten o'clock on the 2nd of September, 1660, the flames of that
terrible Fire burst forth. By midnight they raged. In three days
the whole city was a heap of smoking smouldering ruins.
To us who lived at Westminster, it seemed as if the fierce eastern
wind was driving the flames towards that guilty roof at Whitehall,
which scarce a righteous man in the nation but deemed to be itself
the plague spot and the Gehenna which was bringing desolation by
plague and fire on the whole land.
All the night the sky was fiery, "like the top of a burning oven."
In the day the air was so thick with the coiling columns of smoke,
that "the sun shone through it with a colour like blood." Those who
ventured near said that the pavements glowed a fiery red, so that no
horse or man could tread them, and the melting lead from the burning
churches ran down the streets in a stream. Now and then the dense
masses of smoke were broken by the stones of St. Paul's flying like
grenadoes, or by a sudden burst of vivid flame making the smoke
visible even in the daylight, as some of the coal and wood wharves
and stores of oil and resin along the river side were seized by the
fire. And the steady roar of the flames was only broken now and then
by explosions, as vast powder-stores split asunder, or by the
wailings and cries of the ruined people running to and fro in
helpless consternation, not even attempting to save their goods.
Still, day and night, the east wind, so steady in its fierceness,
drove on the flames and smoke _towards us--toward the Court_; till,
on the third day, they crossed towards Whitehall itself. Fearful, it
was said, was the confusion in the houses of revelry. Good men could
think of nothing that ever could be like it but the universal
conflagration of the world. But again, as in the Plague, the Court
escaped. The neighbouring houses were blown up, so as to kill the
flames by starvation; and at last their impetuous onset was stayed,
and Whitehall was left without one of its gaming-tables or chambers
of revelry being touched.
Streets in the west, which were nests of unblushing wickedness,
escaped; whilst the city, of which Mr. Baxter said "there was not
such another in the world for piety, sobriety, and temperance," was
burnt to ashes.
Aunt Dorothy took this much to heart; and from that time I scarcely
remember her attempting any more to interpret the Divine judgments,
which had once seemed to her so easy to translate.
After the horror came the misery and the desolation. It is when the
ashes of the fires which desolate our lives are cold that we first
understand our loss. And it was many days before the ashes of the
great Fire of London were cold enough for men to tread them safely
and learn the extent of the ruin; to see the fountains dried up, the
stones calcined white as snow.
Two hundred thousand homeless men, and women, and little children
were scattered in the fields and on the hill-sides, chiefly on the
north, as far as Highgate, by the wretched remnants of their
household stuff. They were ready to perish of hunger;--yet my
husband said they did not beg a penny as he passed from group to
group. Some of them had been rich and delicately lodged and clothed
three days before, and had not learned the art of craving alms.
Others were, it seemed, too stupified. His Majesty did his utmost to
make provision for their relief (said the admiring courtiers) by
"proclamation for the country to come in and refresh them with
provisions;" which, moved by the proclamation of the king (or by
another proclamation issued sixteen hundred years before by One who
spake with authority), the country people did, to the glory of the
king and the admiration of the courtiers.
It was not the easiest thing in the world as we looked from one side
of our house over the blackened heaps of cinders, where three days
before had stood the City of London, and on the other towards
Whitehall, standing unscathed; when we thought of two thousand
faithful servants of God forbidden to speak for Him; of ten thousand
houses, from not a few of which had gone up day and night true prayer
and praise, made desolate; of a hundred thousand, not a few of them
good men and true, swept away by the Plague the year before; and then
of all the riotous voices in the palace not silenced, but permitted
to speak their worst for the devil; it was not always easy to keep
firm hold of the truth that "all power is given in heaven and earth"
not to the accuser and the enemy, but to "Jesus Christ the
righteous." It was not easy. We had to endure in those days "as
seeing Him who is invisible."
My husband said, indeed, that the fire might prove to be God's
fumigation against the pestilence; and that the pestilence itself was
but (as it were) "the ships to take us to the other side, being sent
in a fleet instead of one by one."
But in the pestilence which is inwardly and eternally pestilential,
the pestilence of vice and selfishness, which was corrupting the
inner life of England, the raging fire of sin which consumes not the
disease but the soul,--who could see any good?
Roger's and my old puzzle of the apple tree yawned beneath and around
us, a great gulf, dark and unfathomable as of old.
If our hearts were less tossed about on the surging waves of this
abyss than of old, it was not that the waves were quieter or less
unfathomed. We knew them to be deeper than we had dreamed. For we
had tried line after line and touched no bottom. We felt them to be
more unquiet, for the times were stormier, and we were no longer on
the edge but launched on the sea. It was simply that, falling at the
feet of Him who stood at the helm, we could worship Him with a deeper
adoration, and trust Him with more confiding simplicity. "Thou
knowest the other side," we could say. "Thou art there. Thou art
taking us thither. Thou knowest the depths. Thou alone. Thou hast
risen thence, Thou knowest God. We see Him manifested in Thee. And
Thou hast said, good and not evil is the heart and the crown of all.
And we are satisfied."
So, after a heavy winter on the edge of that desolation which we
could do so little to restore, we left our old house in London in
March, and went in the spring for a few weeks to the old home at
Netherby, before it was broken up and passed out of our hands for
ever.
Many of the old fields--we had roamed over every one of them--had
already been sold to meet the expenses thrown on Roger by the
lawsuit. And now the old house itself was to be sold. Oliver's
Parliament had not altogether reformed the Law. And I suppose no
reformation of laws avails very much when the men who administer them
are corrupt. Besides, unsuccessful revolution must be dealt with as
rebellious; those who fail must expect to suffer. Roger and most of
us had made our account for that, and it was not of that we
complained.
It was not safe for Roger and Lettice to be with us at Netherby.
Of this I was almost glad. The more the old home was like itself,
the harder it would be to leave. There were enough voices silent for
ever, making every chamber, and every nook of garden and pleasance
sacred by their echoes, to make the parting such a wrench as scarcely
leaves us the same ever after.
All Aunt Dorothy's Puritan training had not swept the heathen
idolatry out of my heart. For what else was it to feel as if all the
dumb and lifeless things had voices calling me and pleading "for sake
us not, forsake us not, have we served you so ill?" and arms
stretched out to cling to us and draw us back.
The store-room over the porch, where Roger and I had held our Sunday
conversations; the chamber where my father's books and mathematical
instruments still were, where he had taken me on his knee and said,
"Before the great mysteries, I can only wonder and wait and say like
thee, '_Father, how can I understand, a little child like me?_'"--the
wainscoted parlour where "Mr. Cromwell of Ely" had talked to us of
"his little wenches," and looked at Roger with softened eyes,
thinking, perchance, of that death of his first-born which "went as a
sword to his heart, indeed it did;" where John Milton (not blind
then) had played on the organ, and discoursed with Dr. Jeremy
Taylor;--how dared I have tears to spare for leaving such as these,
or even the graves of our fathers in the old church they had helped
to build, and the pews where we and ours had knelt for generations,
when England had lost Liberty and the strenuous heart to strive for
it, and it seemed almost the heart to weep for it now it was gone,
and could not afford her noblest even a grave?
But there were other partings which went far deeper into the heart,
on which even now it is best not to dwell much, partings from those
whom it was no idolatry to feel it very sore to leave, old faithful
friends--our father's friends; (and every familiar face in the
village, as it came to see us go, was as the face of a friend to us,
going we knew not whither, among we knew not whom.)
We could never have left them had it been possible to us to befriend
and succour them longer at home. As many as could leave went with us.
And hardest of all it was to pass the old forge, and see no friendly
faces there, and know that Job and Rachel were praying for us in the
old cottage within not daring to see us go.
Cousin Placidia was away making the last effort to release her son.
So we went at the beginning of April to Southampton, where the ship
was. We had to wait some days there for her sailing. Dreary, blank
days, we thought they must be, suspended between the old life and the
new. But two surprises made them bright to us as a beginning, rather
an end.
Two days before we started, Isaac appeared, with his mother. He
looked very much as if the prison had indeed been a Paradise to him;
and her face sharp and worn as it was, seemed to me stamped with the
cares which enrich, instead of impoverishing, the cares of love
instead of the cares of covetousness. There was a glow and a rest in
her eyes, as she looked on Isaac and Maidie, which I had never seen
there before. And as to Isaac and Maidie, I believe distinctions of
time and place were just then so dim to them, that if you had asked
them where those days were spent, they would have been clear but on
one point, and that was that it was most surely not in the Old World,
but in a world altogether and for ever New.
Thus, as so often in the music of this changing life, the "dying
falls" were interlinked with the swell of the opening chords. And
so, with nothing to mark it as the last, the last evening came.
So the last evening came. Roger and Lettice, with their little Harry
Davenant, were already safe on board. We were to join them at the
dawn. And when we climbed up into the ship, very strange it was to
find my hand in the welcoming grasp of a strong hand, certainly not
that of a strange sailor's, and looking up, to see Job Forster, with
Rachel and Annis Nye behind him.
"There was no help for it. That wilful maid would come," he said,
apologizing to himself for doing what he liked. "She had the
'concern' at last I have been afraid of all along. She was set on
going into the lion's den; so, of course, there was nothing for it
but for Rachel and me to come and take care of her."
So we sailed down Southampton water, by the shores the _Mayflower_
had left nearly a half a century before. There were clouds over the
wooded slopes of the dear old country as we looked our last at her,
which broke ere we had been long on board, blending earth and sky in
a wild storm of rain. But before we lost sight of the shore, the
clouds were spanned by the rare glory of a perfect rainbow, bridging
the storm with hope.
Then, as we sailed on, the clouds rose slowly and majestically,
detaching themselves from earth in grand sculptured masses, like
couchant lions guarding the land; until at sunset they had soared far
up the quiet heavens, and hovered like angels with folded wings over
a land at rest.
And as we looked, Lettice said to Roger,--
"See, is it not a promise of the better sunshine hereafter to come?"
"It is a witness of the sunshine now behind," he said; "of the
unquenchable sun which shines on both the Old England and the New."
And he added in a low voice, in the words of Oliver Cromwell,
"'_Jesus Christ, of whose diocese we are_,' on Both Sides of the Sea."
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.