America was discovered by Columbus in 1492; Spain planted colonies on its shores in the 16th Century; English trading settlements were established in Virginia and elsewhere in the latter half of the same century. It is no mere claim of priority that lends historic importance to the foundation by the Pilgrim Fathers of the English colony at New Plymouth. The materialization of their objects was accomplished by the same means as formed the basis of the earlier colonies: a trading enterprise supported by merchants in the home country.
What, then, gives this particular project a prominence and significance which so utterly dwarfs its predecessors? It was the motive of its Founders. And what was that motive? Freedom of religious thought and practice, in the first place; of civil rights, in the second. It was the sublime ideal of this little band of Englishmen which gave to the New Plymouth colony (the nucleus of the other New England colonies) the honour and glory of setting its characteristic impress upon the greatest of the new nations of the world—the United States of America.
The ideal aimed at we have probably grasped from our preliminary sketch of the general movement of western civilization out of the shackles of feudalism towards religious and civil freedom. But the sacrifice involved in its consummation,—do we realize its significance? Let us try to think what it means.
Picture to yourself a group of citizens and their families, of good standing and of average education. In defiance of established law and order, and of the accepted, orthodox view of it, this little body of people pursues an ideal, vital to the peace of their souls, with a tenacity which implies certain loss of personal freedom and confiscation of property, with risk of death. Rather than be compelled to abandon the pursuit of their ideal, these people voluntarily exile themselves from England, thereby depriving themselves of loved homes and dear friends and worldly possessions. After a few years of severe hardships in Holland, their newly adopted country, the seed they are nurturing is threatened once again. It must be preserved at all costs. They gather it up and bear it across the seas—fearful seas—and plant it once more, forming a little settlement in the savage, distant land of North America. For years they defend their treasure there against every conceivable attack by Nature and by man, encouraged solely by the consciousness that the plant they are tending is God’s Truth—Freedom for each man to honour and worship God as he sees Him.
First picture this to yourself as if it were an incident of modern occurrence, and try to realize what would be its significance. Then turn your eyes upon our Pilgrims, and watch them through their persecution in mediæval England; their flight to Holland; their hard sojourn there; their voyage across the wide seas of those days, and their settlement at New Plymouth—“in a country devoid of all civilized inhabitants, given over only to savage and brutish men, who range up and down, little differing from the wild beasts themselves.... What, then, could now sustain them but the spirit of God, and His grace? Ought not the children of their fathers rightly to say: Our fathers were Englishmen who came over the great ocean, and were ready to perish in this wilderness; but they cried unto the Lord, and He heard their voice, and looked on their adversity.... Let them therefore praise the Lord, because He is good, and His mercies endure forever. Yea, let them that have been redeemed of the Lord, show how He hath delivered them from the hand of the oppressor. When they wandered forth into the desert-wilderness, out of the way, and found no city to dwell in, both hungry and thirsty, their soul was overwhelmed in them. Let them confess before the Lord His loving kindness, and His wonderful works before the sons of men.”
As we read this pæan of praise, penned by Bradford some ten or twelve years after their arrival, the reality of a sublime human sacrifice begins to shape itself in the mind, and our wonder rests upon the spiritual grandeur of the offering, rather than upon its world-wide consequences—of which the tale is not yet told.
It was from such a body of Englishmen, with their burning ideals and consuming purpose, that a new national ideal emanated, and a new nation ultimately sprang, since typically identified with their devotion to Freedom. The eyes of liberal Europe were upon this little handful of unconscious heroes and saints, taking courage from them, step by step. The same ideals of Freedom burned so clear and strong in future generations of these English colonists that they outpaced the march of the parent nation towards the same goal—and so, the episode we have just been contemplating resulted in due course in the birth of the United States of America; in the triumph of democracy in England over the vain autocracy of a foreign-born king and his corrupt government; and, above all, in the firm establishment of the humanitarian ideals for which the English-speaking races have been the historic champions, and for which the Pilgrims offered their sacrifice upon the altar of the Sonship of Man.
In the words of Governor Wolcott, at the ceremony of the gift of the manuscript of Bradford’s History, by England to America: “They stablished what they planned. Their feeble plantation became the birthplace of religious liberty, the cradle of a free Commonwealth. To them a mighty nation owns its debt. Nay, they have made the civilized world their debtor. In the varied tapestry which pictures our national life, the richest spots are those where gleam the golden threads of conscience, courage, and faith, set in the web by that little band. May God in his mercy grant that the moral impulse which founded this nation may never cease to control its destiny; that no act of any future generation may put in peril the fundamental principles on which it is based—of equal rights in a free state, equal privileges in a free church, and equal opportunities in a free school.”
For some years many have trembled for the fruits of the Pilgrims’ sacrifice. It seemed that the press of the children’s hurrying feet had raised such a dust as to obscure from them their forefather’s glorious visions and ideals. A striking absence of spiritual aspiration and a dire trend towards gross materialism seemed, for a time, all too characteristic of America. But to such as doubted or feared have come, recently, a wonderful reassurance and a renewed faith in the eternal efficacy of so sublime an offering. It is the sons of those men—their spiritual offspring—who have arisen in their millions,—here in America, there in old England,—to defend the World’s freedom. The Dean of Westminster voiced England’s feeling, and that of the world, when in the Memorial Service at Westminster Abbey for the Officers and Men of the United States Army and Navy who fell in the War, he gave thanks to God in the following words:
Their deaths have sealed the unwritten but inviolable Covenant of our common Brotherhood. Their deaths have laid the enduring foundations of the world’s hope for future peace. For their sakes we raise this day our proud thanksgiving in the great Abbey which enshrines the illustrious dust of the makers of the English-speaking peoples. Let us render our humble and joyful praise to Almighty God that in their response to the clarion call of freedom and of justice the two Commonwealths have not been divided.