of God, than would an unadorned stone on yonder Clark s
island, with the simple inscription, " 20 Dec. 1620 On the
Sabbath day we rested." There is none to which I would my-
110 TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY
self more eagerly contribute. 1 But it should be paid for by the
penny contributions of the Sabbath-school children of all denom
inations throughout the land, among whom that beautiful Jubi
lee Medal has just been distributed.
And what added interest is given to that record, what added
force to that example, by the immediate sequel ! The record
of the very next day runs, " On Monday we sounded the
harbour and found it a very good harbour for our shipping ;
we marched also into the land, and found divers corn-fields and
little running brooks, a place very good for situation ; so we
returned to our ship again with good news to the rest of our
people, which did much comfort their hearts."
That was the day, my friends, which we are here to commem
orate. On that Monday, the 21st of December, 1620, from a
single shallop, those " ten of our men," with " two of our sea
men," and with six of the ship s company, landed upon this
shore. The names of almost all of them are given, and should
not fail of audible mention on an occasion like this. Miles
Standish heads the roll. John Carver comes second. Then
follow William Bradford, Edward Winslow, John Tilley, Ed
ward Tilley, John Rowland, Richard Warren, Steven Hopkins,
and Edward Dotey. The " two of our seamen " were John
Alderton and Thomas English ; and the two of the ship s com
pany whose names are recorded were Master Copin and Master
Clarke, from the latter of whom the Sabbath island was called.
They have landed. They have landed at last, after sixty-six
days of weary and perilous navigation since bidding a final fare
well to the receding shores of their dear native country. They
have landed at last ; and when the sun of that day went down,
after the briefest circuit of the year, New England had a place
and a name a permanent place, a never to be obliterated
name in the history, as well as in the geography, of civilized
Christian man.
1 The inscription has since been made on the very rock, on Clark s Island, under
the shadow of which they rested. I was privileged to select the place, in company
with the Hon. E. S. Tobey, President of the Pilgrim Society, and the Hon. Thomas
Russell, now United States Minister to Venezuela, having gone down to the island
for the purpose, in the United States Revenue Cutter "Mahoning," on the 9th of
August, 1871.
OF THE LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS. Ill
" They whom once the desert beach
Pent within its bleak domain,
Soon their ample sway shall stretch
O er the plenty of the plain ! "*
I will not say that the corner-stone of New England had
quite yet been laid. But its symbol and perpetual synonyme
had certainly been found. That one grand Rock. even then
without its fellow along the shore, and destined to be without
its fellow on any shore throughout the world, Nature had
laid it, The Architect of the Universe had laid it, " when
the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted
for joy." There it had reposed, unseen of human eye, the
storms and floods of centuries beating and breaking upon it.
There it had reposed, awaiting the slow-coming feet, which,
guided and guarded by no mere human power, were now to
make it famous for ever. The Pilgrims trod it, as it would
seem, unconsciously, and left nothing but authentic tradition to
identify it. " Their rock was not as our rock." Their thoughts
at that hour were upon no stone of earthly mould. If they
observed at all what was beneath their feet, it may indeed have
helped them still more fervently to lift their eyes to Him who
had been predicted and promised " as the shadow of a great
rock in a weary land; " and may have given renewed emphasis
to the psalm which perchance they may have recalled, " From
the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is over
whelmed : lead me to the rock that is higher than I." Their
trust was only on the Rock of Ages !
We have had many glowing descriptions and not a few elabo
rate pictures of this day s doings; and it has sometimes been a
matter of contention whether Mary Chilton or John Alden first
leapt upon the shore, a question which the late Judge Davis
proposed to settle by humorously suggesting that the friends of
John Alden should give place to the lady, as a matter of gal
lantry. But the Mayflower, with John Alden, and Mary Chil
ton, and all the rest of her sex, and all the children, was still
in the harbor of Cape Cod. The aged Brewster, also, was on
board the Mayflower with them ; and sorely needed must his
1 Gray s " Fatal Sisters."
112 TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY
presence and consolation have been, as poor Bradford returned
to the ship, after a week s absence, to find that his wife had
fallen overboard and was drowned, the very day after his de
parture.
I may not dwell on these or any other details, except to re
call the fact that on Friday, the 25th, they weighed anchor,
it was Christmas day, though they did not recognize it, as so
many of us are just preparing to recognize it, as the brightest
and best of all the days of the year ; that on Saturday, the
26th, the Mayflower, " came safely into a safe harbour ; " and
that on Monday, the 28th, the landing was completed. Not
only was the time come and the place found, but the whole
company of those who were for ever to be associated with that
time and that place were gathered at last where we are now
gathered to do homage to their memory.
I make no apology, sons and daughters of New England, for
having kept always in the foreground of the picture I have
attempted to draw, the religious aspects and incidents of the
event we have come to commemorate. Whatever civil or politi
cal accompaniments or consequences that event may have had,
it was in its rise and progress, in its inception and completion,
eminently and exclusively a religious movement. The Pilgrims
left Scrooby as a Church. They settled in Amsterdam and in
Leyden as a Church. They embarked in the Mayflower as a
Church. They came to New England as a Church ; and Morton,
at the close of the introduction to Bradford s History, as
given by Dr. Young in his Chronicles, entitles it " The Church
of Christ at Plymouth in New England, first begun in Old
England, and carried on in Holland and Plymouth afore
said." They had no license, indeed, from either Pope or Pri
mate. It was a Church not only without a bishop, but without
even a pastor ; with only a layman to lead their devotions and
administer their discipline. A grand layman he was, Elder
Brewster: it would be well for the world if there were more
laymen like him, at home and abroad. In yonder Bay, it is
true, before setting foot on Cape Cod, they entered into a com
pact of civil government ; but the reason expressly assigned for
so doing was, that " some of the strangers amongst them (i.e.,
OF THE LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS. 113
not Leyden men, but adventurers who joined them in England)
had let fall in the ship that when they came ashore they would
use their own liberty, for none had power to command them,"
or, as elsewhere stated, because they had observed " some not
well affected to unity and concord, but gave some appearance
of faction." They came as a Church : all else was incidental,
the result of circumstances, a protection against outsiders. They
came to secure a place to worship God according to the dictates
of their own consciences, free from the molestations and perse
cutions which they had encountered in England ; and free, too,
from the uncongenial surroundings, the irregular habits of life,
the strange and uncouth language, the licentiousness of youth,
the manifold temptations, and " the neglect of observation of the
Lord s day as a Sabbath," which they had so lamented in
Holland.
We cannot be too often reminded that it was religion which
effected the first permanent settlement in New England. All
other motives had failed. Commerce, the fisheries, the hope of
discovering mines, the ambition of founding Colonies, all had
been tried, and all had failed. But the Pilgrims asked of God ;
and " He gave them the heathen for their inheritance, and the
uttermost parts of the earth for their possession." Religious
faith and fear, religious hope and trust, the fear of God, the
love of Christ, an assured faith in the Holy Scriptures, and an
assured hope of a life of bliss and blessedness to come, these,
and these alone, proved sufficient to animate and strengthen
them for the endurance of all the toils and trials which such an
enterprise involved. Let it never be forgotten that if the cor
ner-stone of New England was indeed laid by the Pilgrim
Fathers, two centuries and a half ago to-day, it was in the cause
of religion they laid it ; and whatever others may have built
upon it since, or may build upon it hereafter, " gold, silver,
precious stones, wood, hay, stubble," God forbid that on this
Anniversary the foundation should be ignored or repudiated !
As we look back ever so cursorily on the great procession of
American History as it starts from yonder Rock, and winds on
and on and on to the present hour, we may descry many other
8
114 TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY
scenes, many other actors, remote and recent, in other parts of
the Union as well as in our own, of the highest interest and im
portance. There are Conant and Endicott with their little rudi-
mental plantations at Cape Ann and at Salem. There is the
elder Winthrop, with the Massachusetts Charter, at Boston, of
whom the latest and best of New England Historians, Dr. Pal
frey, has said " that it was his policy, more than any other
man s, that organized into shape, animated with practical vigor,
and prepared for permanency, those primeval sentiments and
institutions that have directed the course of thought and action
in New England in later times." There is the younger Wiri-
throp, not far behind, with the Charter of Connecticut, of whose
separate Colonies Hooker and Haynes and Hopkins and Eaton
and Davenport and Ludlow had laid the foundations. There is
Roger Williams, " the Apostle of soul freedom," as he has
been called, with the Charter of Rhode Island. There is the
brave and generous Stuyvesant of the New Netherlands. There
are the Catholic Cal verts, and the noble Quaker Penn, building
up Maryland and Pennsylvania alike, upon principles of tolera
tion and philanthropy. There is the benevolent and chivalrous
Oglethorpe, assisted by Whitefield and the sainted Wesleys,
planting his Moravian Colony in Georgia. There is Franklin, with
his first proposal of a Continental Union, and with his countless
inventions in political as well as physical science. There is
James Otis with his great argument against Writs of Assist
ance, and Samuel Adams with his inexorable demand for the re
moval of the British regiments from Boston. There are Quincy
with his grand remonstrance against the Port Bill, and Warren,
offering himself as the Proto-martyr on Bunker Hill. There is
Jefferson with the Declaration of Independence fresh from his
own pen. with John Adams close at his side, as its " Colossus
on the floor of Congress." There are Hamilton and Madison
and Jay bringing forward the Constitution in their united arms ;
and there, leaning on their shoulders, and on that Constitution,
but towering above them all, is WASHINGTON, the consummate
commander, the incomparable President, the world-honored
Patriot. There are Marshall and Story as the expounders of
the Constitution, arid Webster as its defender. There is John
OP THE LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS. 115
Quincy Adams with his powerful and persistent plea for the
sacred Right of Petition. There is Jackson with his Proclama
tion against Nullification. There is Lincoln with his ever mem
orable Proclamation of Emancipation. And there, closing for
the moment that procession of the dead, for I presume not to
marshal the living, is George Peabody, with his world- wide
munificence and his countless benefactions. Other figures may
present themselves to other eyes as that grand Panorama is un
rolled. Other figures will come into view as that great proces
sion advances. But be it prolonged, as we pray God it may be,
even " to the crack of doom," first and foremost, as it moves on
and on in radiant files, "searing the eyeballs " of oppressors
and tyrants, but rejoicing the hearts of the lovers of freedom
throughout the world, will ever be seen and recognized the
men whom we commemorate to-day, the Pilgrim Fathers of
New England. No herald announces their approach. No pomp
or parade attends their advent. " Shielded and helmed and
weapon d with the truth," no visible guards are around them,
either for honor or defence. Bravely but humbly, and almost
unconsciously, they assume their perilous posts, as pioneers of
an advance which is to know no backward steps, until, through
out this Western hemisphere, it shall have prepared the way of
the Lord and of liberty. They come with no charter of human
inspiration. They come with nothing but the open Bible in
their hands, leading a march of civilization and human freedom,
which shall go on until time shall be no more, if only that
Bible shall remain open, and shall be accepted and reverenced,
by their descendants as it was by themselves, as the Word of
God!
It is a striking coincidence that while they were just taking
the first steps in the movement which terminated at Plymouth
Rock, that great clerical Commission was appointed by King
James, which prepared what has everywhere been received as
the standard English version of the Holy Scriptures ; and which,
though they continued to use the Geneva Bible themselves, has
secured to their children and posterity a translation which is
the choicest treasure of literature as well as of religion. Nor
can I fail to remember, with the warmest interest, that, at this
116 TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY
moment, while we are engaged in this Fifth Jubilee Commemo
ration, a similar Commission is employed, for the first time, in
subjecting that translation to the most critical revision ; not
with a view, certainly, to attempt any change or improvement
of its incomparable style and language, but only to purge the
sacred volume from every human interpolation or error.
No more beautiful scene has been witnessed in our day and
generation, nor one more auspicious of that Christian unity
which another world shall witness, if not this, than the scene
presented in Westminster Abbey, in the exquisite chapel of
Henry VII., by that Revision Commission, in immediate prepa
ration for entering on their great task, on the morning of the
22d of June last; " such a scene," as the accomplished Dean
Alford has well said, " as has not been enacted since the name
of Christ was first named in Britain." I can use no other words
than his, in describing it : " Between the latticed shrine of
King Henry VII. and the flat pavement tomb of Edward VI.
was spread God s board/ and round that pavement tomb knelt,
shoulder to shoulder, bishops and dignitaries of the Church of
England, professors of her Universities, divines of the Scottish
Presbyterian and Free Churches, and of the Independent, Bap
tist, Wesleyan, Unitarian Churches in England, a represen
tative assembly, such as our Church has never before gathered
under her wing, of the Catholic Church by her own definition,
of all who profess and call themselves Chris-tians. It was
a scene to give character to an age ; and should the commission
produce no other valuable fruit, that opening Communion will
make it memorable to the end of time.
Yes, the open Bible was the one and all-sufficient support
and reliance of the Pilgrim Fathers. They looked, indeed, for
other and greater reformations in religion than any which Luther
or Calvin had accomplished or advocated ; but they looked for
them to come from a better understanding and a more careful
study of the Holy Scriptures, and not from any vainglorious
human wisdom or scientific investigations. As their pastor
Robinson said, in his farewell discourse, " He was confident the
Lord had more truth and light yet to break forth out of his
Holy Word."
OF THE LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS. 117
Let me not seem, my friends, to exaggerate the importance
to our country of the event which we this day celebrate. The
Pilgrims of the Mayflower did not establish the earliest perma
nent English settlement within the territories which now con
stitute our beloved country. I would by no means overlook or
disparage the prior settlement at Jamestown, in Virginia. The
Old Dominion, with all its direct and indirect associations with
Sir Walter Raleigh, and with Shakspeare s accomplished patron
and friend, the Earl of Southampton, with Pocahontas, too,
and Captain John Smith, must always be remembered by the
old Colony with the respect and affection due to an elder sister.
" 1 said an elder, not a better." Yet we may well envy some
of her claims to distinction. More than ten years before an
English foot had planted itself on the soil of New England, that
Virginia Colony had effected a settlement; and more than a
year before the landing of the Pilgrims, on the 30th of July,
1619, the first Representative Legislative Assembly ever
held within the limits of the United States was convened at
Jamestown. That Assembly passed a significant Act against
drunkenness ; and an Act somewhat quaint in its terms and
provisions, but whose influence might not be unwholesome at this
day, against "excessive apparel," providing that every man
should be assessed in the church for all public contributions,
" if he be unmarried, according to his own apparel ; if he be
married, according to his own and his wife s, or either of their
apparel." Such a statute would have been called puritanical,
if it had emanated from a New England Legislature. It might
even now, however, do something to diminish the dimensions,
and simplify the material, and abate the luxurious extravagance,
of modern dress. But that first Jamestown Assembly passed
another most noble Act, for the conversion of the Indians and
the education of their children, which entitles Virginia to claim
pre-eminence, or certainly priority, in that great work of Chris
tian philanthropy, for which our Fathers, with glorious John
Eliot at their head, did so much, and for which their sons, alas I
have accomplished so little, unless, perhaps, under the new
and noble Indian policy of the last twelve months. The politi-
118 TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY
cal organization of Virginia was almost mature, while that of
New England was still in embryo.
Again, I do not forget that the Pilgrims of the Mayflower
built up no great City or Commonwealth. Within the first
three months after their landing, one-half of their number had
fallen victims to the rigors of the climate and the hardships of
their condition ; and at the end of ten years the whole popula
tion of the Colony men, women, and children did not ex
ceed three hundred. They were but as a voice in the desert ;
but it was a glorious voice, and one which was destined to
reverberate around the world, and ring along the ages with
still increasing emphasis. Other Colonies, by the inspiration
and encouragement of their example, soon succeeded them, and
did the substantial work for which they only prepared the way ;
for which they, as they said themselves, were but " stepping-
stones." The great "Suffolk Emigration" of 1630, "The
Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay," coming
over in eleven ships, with the whole government and its Char
ter, were the main founders and builders of the grand old
Commonwealth, of which the Plymouth Colony, sixty years
afterwards, became an honored part.
It is pleasant to remember how harmoniously and lovingly
the two Colonies lived together. It is pleasant to remember
that parting charge of John Cotton to the Massachusetts Com
pany, at Southampton, " that they should take advice of them
at Plymouth, and do nothing to offend them." I cannot forget,
either, the cordial visit of Governor Bradford to Governor Win-
throp in 1631 ; nor that Winthrop soon afterwards subjected
himself to reproach for supplying the Pilgrims with powder, at
his personal cost, in a moment of their urgent danger and dis
tress. Still less can I forget that October day in 1632, when
Governor Winthrop returned Bradford s visit, coming a large
part of the way here on foot, and crossing the river on the back
of his guide ; and when Bradford and Brewster and Roger Wil
liams and Winthrop, with John Wilson, the first pastor of Bos
ton, were together on this spot, engaging in religious discourse,
and partaking of the Sacrament together. That most impres
sive and memorable Communion was at once the harbinger and
OF THE LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS. 119
the pledge, the prediction and the assurance, of the peace and
harmony, the co-operation and concord, which were long to pre
vail between the infant Colonies of New England.
True, there were some shades of difference in the religious
sentiment and in the civil administration of the various planta
tions, as they were successively developed. The charges of
intolerance, bigotry, superstition, and persecution, which there
seems to have been a special delight, in some quarters, of late
years, in arraying against our New England Fathers and found
ers, apply without doubt more directly to other Colonies, than
to that whose landing we this day commemorate. The Pil
grims in their narrow retreat of rock and sand were but little
disturbed by " intruders and dissentients," as my friend Dr.
Ellis has so well classified them, and could afford to be less
rigid in their admissions and exclusions. Their leaders, too,
were perhaps of a somewhat more lenient and liberal temper
than those who settled elsewhere. Let them have all the honor
which belongs to them ; and let censure and condemnation fall
wherever it is deserved ! I am not here to justify or excuse all
the extravagances, superstitions, or persecutions of the Puritan
Colonists. But still less am I here to pander to the prurient
malignity of those who are never weary of prying into the petty
faults and follies of our Fathers, and who seem to gloat and
exult in holding them up to the ridicule and reproach of their
children. As if those great hearts, whether of 1620 or 1630,
had fled into the wilderness to assert and vindicate a broad,
abstract, unqualified doctrine of religious liberty, or even of
religious toleration, to which they had afterwards proved recre
ant themselves ! As if the precarious circumstances of their
condition with savage foes watching to extirpate them, with
famine ever staring them in the face, with disease and death
menacing them in every shape and at every turn did not con
strain and compel them, in the earlier stages of their career, to
adopt the principle of excluding from their community any and
all who were bent upon introducing contention and discord, and
of enforcing among themselves something of that stern martial
rule which belongs to a besieged camp ! Why, even Roger
Williams himself was forced to introduce a right of exclusion,
120 TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY
or non-admission, into his original articles of settlement at
Providence !
We can never too often recall the language of the late
venerable Josiah Quincy, the last man of our day and gen
eration I had almost said of any day and generation to
palliate real bigotry or wanton intolerance, when he said, in
his masterly Discourse on the Second Centennial Anniversary
of the Settlement of Boston in 1630 : " Had our early ancestors
adopted the course we at this day are apt to deem so easy and
obvious, "and placed their government on the basis of liberty for
all sorts of consciences, it would have been, in that age, a cer
tain introduction of anarchy. . . . The non-toleration which
characterized our early ancestors, from whatever source it may
have originated, had undoubtedly the effect they intended and
wished. It excluded from influence, in their infant settlement,
all the friends and adherents of the ancient monarchy and hie
rarchy ; all who, from any motive, ecclesiastical or civil, were
disposed to disturb their peace or their churches. They con
sidered it a measure of self-defence. And it is unquestion
able that it was chiefly instrumental in forming the homogeneous
and exclusively republican character for which the people of
New England have, iii all times, been distinguished ; and, above