This extract taken at random, fairly establishes the survival of certain forms of superstition in the second generation of colonists. The first, as has been said already, brought all of its old superstitions with it. In short, every form of belief in the supernatural, for which the fathers of New England have been so roundly abused or ridiculed, may be distinctly traced back to the old country.
Very much of the belief in the baleful influence of so-called prodigies, with the possible exception of that ascribed to comets, or “blazing stars,” as they were called, has fortunately subsided in a measure, for we shudder to think of a state of things so thoroughly calculated to keep society continually on the rack. But in those earlier times life and death had about equal terrors. Sin and sinners were punished both here and hereafter; and, really, if we may credit such writers as the Rev. William Hubbard and the Mather family, poor New England was quite ripe, in their time, for the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah.
As regards comets, we risk little in saying that a great many very sensible people still view their periodical appearance with fear and trembling, and their departure with a feeling of unfeigned relief. It is our unwilling tribute to the unfathomable and the unknown. And, disguise it as we may, we breathe more freely when the dread visitant has faded from our sight. In the language of Macbeth after seeing Banquo’s ghost,—
“Why, so: being gone, I am a man again.”
In truth, we know comets as yet only as the accredited agents of destruction. It seems a natural question to ask, If order is nature’s first law, why are all these departures from it? Can they be without fixed end, aim, or purpose? Why should the solid earth quake, the sea overwhelm the land, mountains vomit forth flames, the tempest scatter death and destruction abroad, the heavens suspend a winged and flaming monster over us,—
“So horribly to shake our disposition,
With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls”?
There was still another form of belief, differing from the first in ascribing supernatural functions to great natural phenomena. In this sense, the storm did not descend in the majesty of its mighty wrath to punish man’s wickedness, but, like the roar of artillery which announces the death of the monarch to his mourning people, was coincident, in its coming, with the death of some great personage, which it proclaimed with salvos of Olympus. Indeed, poets and philosophers of keen insight have frequently recognized this sort of curious sympathy in nature with most momentous movements in human life. We are told that the dying hours of Cromwell and Napoleon were signalized by storms of terrific violence, and Shakespeare describes the earth and air as filled with omens before the murders of Julius Cæsar and of King Duncan.
“As busy as the devil in a gale of wind,” emphasizes by a robust, sea-seasoned saying the notion current among sailors of how storms arise.
It was just now said that the belief in direct manifestations of the divine wrath, through the medium of such calamitous visitations as great droughts, earthquakes, eclipses, tidal waves, fatal epidemics, and the like, had, in a measure, subsided. The statement should be made, however, with certain qualification; for it is well remembered that during a season of unexampled drought, in the far West, the people were called together in their churches, and on a week-day, too, to pray for rain, just as we are told that the Pilgrim Fathers did, on a like occasion, two hundred and fifty odd years before. Prayers were kept up without intermission during the day. And it is a further coincidence that copious showers did set in within twenty-four hours or so. Even the most sceptical took refuge in silence.