30 RELIGIOUS PROGRESS AND CHRISTIAN CULTURE. 



Two hundred years! As one stands under the shadow of the pyramids 

 which looked down upon the exodus of Israel, or even under the English 

 Cathedral roofs which sheltered the followers of the Conqueror, two hun- 

 dred years seem but a little time; as yesterday when it is passed. But in 

 a country like ours, where everything is new, this story of the exodus of 

 our fathers is a venerable and sacred possession. And we do well to 

 cherish it, not only because it is the most venerable possession we have, 

 but because in its principle and its motive, it appeals to that which is best 

 and truest, and most permanent in the universal human heart. It was from 

 no impulse of momentary pique, or of disappointed selfishness, nor from 

 any greed of gain, or passion of adventure, or ambition of discovery, that 

 these men left the old for the new, the known for the unknown. There 

 was in truth a divine call, pressing its authority upon them, summoning 

 them, as ingenuous and true men have been called in 'every age — as Abra- 

 ham himself was called — to go out not knowing whither they went, relin- 

 quishing country, and kindred, and father's house, the graves of their sires, 

 and the precious traditions of many generations. They felt the weight of 

 human tyranny; there was doubtless in many a heart the spring and im- 

 pulse of repressed indignation. But after all, they felt like one of old who 

 could look up and say: 



'' When men of spite against me join 

 I'hey are the sword, the hand is Thine." 



They felt the sword, but they recognized more the hand that was behind 

 it. It was for God that they came. A deep reverence for religion, and a 

 desire to divorce it from all accretions of superstition and to cleanse it from 

 all the profanations of licentiousness, a profound regard for public morals, 

 a love for the Sabbath, the sanctuary, the family, and a determination to 

 uphold the authority and the sanctity of each by safeguards of just law, 

 and pure government, these motives overtopped the feeling of indignation 

 and the sense of injuries received at the hands of any human authority. 



In one of the public squares of Boston there stands a statue, recently 

 erected to the memory of John Winthrop. It represents the old first Gov- 

 ernor of Massachusetts as stepping from a gang-plank to the shore, hold- 

 ing in one hand the charter of the newly formed colony, and pressing to 

 his heart with the other the Word of God; the latter copied carefully from 

 the old family Bible, which the Governor himself brought over with the 

 charter, and which is now in the possession of his honored descendant, 

 the Hon. Robert C. Winthrop. The sentiment of the statue is true to fact. 

 With all respect for human laws the fathers loved the divine. They would 

 have faith with freedom, religion with liberty; a liberty as Governor Win- 

 throp himself defined it, " to do that only which is good and just and 

 honest. 



The founders of our religious institutions in Suffolk County were of 

 these New England puritans. There are no honors belonging to Massa- 

 chusetts or Connecticut which we may not equally claim for our own an- 

 cestors. North Sea was another Shawmut, Southold a repetition of Quin- 

 nipiac. Even when in 1664, Charles II., by letters patent to the Duke of 

 York, cut off these eastern towns from their political connection with New 

 England, the ties of religious and ecclesiastical sympathy refused to be 

 severed. Their brethren were on the northern main. To them they looked 

 for counsel, and when they needed it for material help, and did not look 

 in vain. And to this day Long Island is essentially a part of New En- 



