UNDER DISPUTE

BY AGNES REPPLIER, Litt.D. AUTHOR OF “POINTS OF FRICTION,” “COMPROMISES,” “COUNTER-CURRENTS,” ETC.

BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge 1924

COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY AGNES REPPLIER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

Note

Five of the twelve essays in this volume, “To Counsel the Doubtful,” “The Happiness of Writing an Autobiography,” “The Divineness of Discontent,” “Strayed Sympathies,” and “The Battlefield of Education,” are reprinted through the courtesy of The Atlantic Monthly; four of them, “The Masterful Puritan,” “Are Americans a Timid People?” “Allies,” and “The American Laughs,” through the courtesy of The Yale Review; “The Preacher at Large,” through the courtesy of The Century Magazine; “They Had Their Day,” through the courtesy of Harper’s Magazine; “The Idolatrous Dog,” through the courtesy of The Forum.

The Masterful Puritan

When William Chillingworth, preaching at Oxford in the first year of England’s Civil War, defined the Cavaliers as publicans and sinners, and the Puritans as Scribes and Pharisees, he expressed the reasonable irritation of a scholar who had no taste or aptitude for polemics, yet who had been blown about all his life by every wind of doctrine. Those were uneasy years for men who loved moderation in everything, and who found it in nothing. It is not from such that we can hope for insight into emotions from which they were exempt, and purposes to which they held no clue.

In our day it is generously conceded[Pg 2] that the Puritans made admirable ancestors. We pay them this handsome compliment in after-dinner speeches at all commemorative meetings. Just what they would have thought of their descendants is an unprofitable speculation. Three hundred years divide us from those stern enthusiasts who, coveting lofty things, found no price too high to pay for them. “It is not with us as with men whom small matters can discourage, or small discontentments cause to wish themselves at home again,” wrote William Brewster, when one half of the Mayflower Pilgrims had died in the first terrible year, and no gleam of hope shone on the survivors. To perish of hunger and cold is not what we should now call a “small discontentment.” To most of us it would seem a good and sufficient reason for abandoning any enterprise whatsoever. Perhaps if we would fix our attention upon a single detail—the fact that for four[Pg 3] years the Plymouth colonists did not own a cow—we should better understand what life was like in that harsh

wilderness, where children who could not get along without milk had but one other alternative—to die.

Men as strong as were the Puritan pioneers ask for no apologies at our hands. Their conduct was shaped by principles and convictions which would be insupportable to us, but which are none the less worthy of regard. Matthew Arnold summed up our modern disparagement of their standards when he pictured Virgil and Shakespeare crossing on the Mayflower, and finding the Pilgrim fathers “intolerable company.” I am not sure that this would have been the case. Neither Virgil nor Shakespeare could have survived Plymouth. That much is plain. But three months on the Mayflower might not have been so “intolerable” as Mr. Arnold fancied. The Roman and the[Pg 4] Elizabethan were strong-stomached observers of humanity. They knew a man when they saw one, and they measured his qualities largely.

Even if we make haste to admit that two great humanizers of society, art and letters, played but a sorry part in the Puritan colonies, we know they were less missed than if these colonies had been worldly ventures, established solely in the interest of agriculture or of trade. Sir Andrew Macphail tersely reminds us that the colonists possessed ideals of their own, “which so far transcended the things of this world that art and literature were not worth bothering about in comparison with them.” Men who believe that, through some exceptional grace or good fortune, they have found God, feel little need of culture. If they believe that they share God with all races, all nations, and all ages, culture comes in the wake of religion. But the Puritan’s God was a[Pg 5] somewhat exclusive possession. “Christ died for a select company that was known to Him, by name, from eternity,” wrote the Reverend Samuel Willard, pastor of the South Church, Boston, and author of that famous theological folio, “A Compleat Body of Divinity.” “The bulk of mankind is

reserved for burning,” said Jonathan Edwards genially; and his Northampton congregation took his word for it. That these gentlemen knew no more about Hell and its inmates than did Dante is a circumstance which does not seem to have occurred to any one. A preacher has some advantages over a poet.

If the Puritans never succeeded in welding together Church and State, which was the desire of their hearts, they had human nature to thank for their failure. There is nothing so abhorrent—or so perilous—to the soul of man as to be ruled in temporal things[Pg 6] by clerical authority. Yet inasmuch as the colony of Massachusetts Bay had for its purpose the establishment of a state in which all citizens should be of the same faith, and church membership should be essential to freemen, it was inevitable that the preacher and the elder should for a time dominate public counsels. “Are you, sir, the person who serves here?” asked a stranger of a minister whom he met in the streets of Rowley. “I am, sir, the person who rules here,” was the swift and apt response.

Men whose position was thus firmly established resented the unauthorized intrusion of malcontents. Being reformers themselves, they naturally did not want to be reformed. Alone among New England colonists, the Pilgrims of Plymouth, who were Separatists or Independents, mistrusted the blending of civil and religious functions, and this mistrust had deepened during the sojourn[Pg 7] of their leaders in Holland. Moreover, unlike their Boston neighbours, the Pilgrims were plain, simple people; “not acquainted,” wrote Governor Bradford, “with trades nor traffique, but used to a countrie life, and the innocente trade of husbandry.” They even tried the experiment of farming their land on a communal system, and, as a result, came perilously close to starvation. Only when each man cultivated his own lot, that is, when individualism supplanted socialism, did they wring from the reluctant soil food enough to keep them alive.

To the courage and intelligence of the Pilgrim and Puritan leaders, Governor Bradford and Governor Winthrop, the settlers owed their safety and survival. The instinct of self-government was strong in these men, their measures were practical measures, their wisdom the wisdom of the world. If Bradford had not made friends with the great[Pg 8] sachem, Massasoit, and clinched the friendship by sending Edward Winslow to doctor him with “a confection of many comfortable conserves” when he was ill, the Plymouth colonists would have lost the trade with the Indians which tided them over the first crucial years. If Winthrop had not by force of argument and persuasion obtained the lifting of duties from goods sent to England, and induced the British creditors to grant favourable terms, the Boston colony would have been bankrupt. The keen desire of both Plymouth and Boston to pay their debts is pleasant to record, and contrasts curiously with the reluctance of wealthy States to accept the Constitution in 1789, lest it should involve a similar course of integrity.

It is hardly worth while to censure communities which were establishing, or seeking to establish, “a strong religious state” because they were intolerant.[Pg 9] Tolerance is not, and never has been, compatible with strong religious states. The Puritans of New England did not endeavour to force their convictions upon unwilling Christendom. They asked only to be left in peaceful possession of a singularly unprolific corner of the earth, which they were civilizing after a formula of their own. Settlers to whom this formula was antipathetic were asked to go elsewhere. If they did not go, they were sent, and sometimes whipped into the bargain—which was harsh, but not unreasonable.

Moreover, the “persecution” of Quakers and Antinomians was not primarily religious. Few persecutions recorded in history have been. For most of them theology has merely afforded a pious excuse. Whatever motives may have underlain the persistent persecution of the Jews, hostility to their ancient creed has had little or[Pg 10] nothing to do with it. To us it seems well-nigh incredible that Puritan Boston should have vexed its soul because Anne Hutchinson maintained that those who were in the covenant of grace were freed from the covenant of works—which sounds like a cinch. But when we remember that she preached against the preachers, affirming on her own authority that they had not the “seal of the Spirit”; and that she “gave vent to revelations,” prophesying evil for the harassed and anxious colonists, we can understand their eagerness to be rid of her. She was an able and intelligent woman, and her opponents were not always able and intelligent men. When the turmoil which followed in her wake destroyed the peace of the community, Governor

Winthrop banished her from Boston. “It was,” says John Fiske, “an odious act of persecution.”

A vast deal of sympathy has been[Pg 11] lavished upon the Puritan settlers because of the rigours of their religion, the austerity of their lives, their lack of intellectual stimulus, the comprehensive absence of anything like amusement. It has been even said that their sexual infirmities were due to the dearth of pastimes; a point of view which is in entire accord with modern sentiment, even if it falls short of the facts. Impartial historians might be disposed to think that the vices of the Puritans are apparent to us because they were so industriously dragged to light. When all moral offences are civil offences, and when every man is under the close scrutiny of his neighbours, the “find” in sin is bound to be heavy. Captain Kemble, a Boston citizen of some weight and fortune, sat two hours in the stocks on a wintry afternoon, 1656, doing penance for “lewd and unseemly behaviour”; which behaviour consisted in kissing his wife “publiquely” at his[Pg 12] own front door on the Lord’s day. The fact that he had just returned from a long voyage, and was moved to the

deed by some excess of emotion, failed to win him pardon. Neighbours were not lightly flouted in a virtuous community.

That there were souls unfit to bear the weight of Puritanism, and unable to escape from it, is a tragic truth. People have been born out of time and out of place since the Garden of Eden ceased to be a human habitation. When Judge Sewall read to his household a sermon on the text, “Ye shall seek me and shall not find me,” the household doubtless protected itself by inattention, that refuge from admonition which is Nature’s kindliest gift. But there was one listener, a terrified child of ten, who had no such bulwark, and who brooded over her unforgiven sins until her heart was bursting. Then suddenly, when the rest of the family[Pg 13] had forgotten all about the sermon, she broke into “an amazing cry,” sobbing out her agonized dread of Hell. And the pitiful part of the tale is that neither father nor mother could comfort her, having themselves no assurance of her safety. “I answered her Fears as well as I could,” wrote Judge Sewall in his diary, “and prayed with many Tears on either part. Hope God heard us.”

The incident was not altogether uncommon. A woman of Boston, driven to desperation by the uncertainty of salvation, settled the point for herself by drowning her baby in a well, thus ensuring damnation, and freeing her mind of doubts. Methodism, though gentler than Calvinism, accomplished similar results. In Wesley’s journal there is an account of William Taverner, a boy of fourteen, who was a fellow passenger on the voyage to Georgia; and who, between heavy weather and[Pg 14] continuous exhortation, went mad with fear, and saw an indescribable horror at the foot of his bed, “which looked at him all the time unless he was saying his prayers.”

Our sympathy for a suffering minority need not, however, blind us to the fact that the vast majority of men hold on to a creed because it suits them, and because their souls are strengthened by its ministrations. “It is sweet to believe even in Hell,” says that archmocker, Anatole France; and to no article of faith have believers clung more tenaciously. Frederick Locker tells us the engaging story of a dignitary of the Greek Church who ventured, in the early years of faith, to question this popular tenet; whereupon “his congregation, justly incensed, tore their bishop to pieces.”

No Puritan divine stood in danger of suffering this particular form of martyrdom. The religion preached[Pg 15] in New England was a cruel religion, from which the figure of Christ, living mercifully with men, was eliminated. John Evelyn noted down in his diary that he heard the Puritan magistrates of London “speak spiteful things of our Lord’s Nativity.” William Brewster was proud to record that in Plymouth “no man rested” on the first Christmas day. As with Bethlehem, so with Calvary. Governor Endicott slashed with his sword the red cross of Saint George from the banner of England. The emblem of Christianity was anathema to these Christians, as was the Mother who bore Christ, and who saw Him die. The children whom He blessed became to Jonathan Edwards “young vipers, and infinitely more hateful than vipers.” The sweetness of religion, which had solaced a suffering world, was wiped out. “The Puritans,” wrote Henry Adams pithily, “abandoned the New Testament and the Virgin in order to[Pg 16] go back to the beginning, and renew the quarrel with Eve.”

It took strong men to live and thrive under such a ministration, wrestling with a sullen earth for subsistence, and with an angry Heaven for salvation. Braced to endurance by the long frozen winters, plainly fed and plainly clad, in peril, like Saint Paul, of sea and wilderness, narrow of vision but steadfast to principles, they fronted life resolutely, honouring and illustrating the supreme worth of freedom.

That they had compensations, other than religious, is apparent to all but the most superficial observer. The languid indifference to our neighbour’s moral and spiritual welfare, which we dignify by the name of tolerance, has curtailed our interest in life. There must have been something invigorating in the iron determination that neighbours should walk a straight path, that they should be watched at every step, and punished[Pg 17] for every fall. The Puritan who said, “I will not. Thou shalt not!” enjoyed his authority to the uttermost. The prohibitionist who repeats his words to-day is probably the only man who is having a thoroughly good time in our fretful land and century. It is hard, I know, to reconcile “I will not. Thou shalt not!” with freedom. But the early settlers of New England were controlled by the weight of popular opinion. A strong majority forced a wavering minority along the road of rectitude. Standards were then as clearly defined as were boundaries, and the uncompromising individualism of the day permitted no juggling with responsibility.

It is not possible to read the second chapter of “The Scarlet Letter,” and fail to perceive one animating principle of the Puritan’s life. The townspeople who watch Hester Prynne stand in the pillory are moved by no common emotions.[Pg 18] They savour the spectacle, as church-goers of an earlier age savoured the spectacle of a penitent in sackcloth at the portal; but they have also a sense of personal participation in the dragging of frailty to light. Hawthorne endeavours to make this clear, when, in answer to Roger Chillingworth’s questions, a bystander congratulates him upon the timeliness of his arrival on the scene. “It must gladden your heart, after your troubles and sojourn in the wilderness, to find yourself at length in a land where iniquity is searched out, and punished in the sight of rulers and people.” An unfortunate speech to make to the husband of the culprit (Hawthorne is seldom so ironic), but a cordial admission of content.

There was a picturesque quality about the laws of New England, and a nicety of administration, which made them a source of genuine pleasure to all[Pg 19] who were not being judged. A lie, like an oath, was an offense to be punished; but all lies were not equally punishable. Alice Morse Earle quotes three penalties, imposed for three falsehoods, which show how much pains a magistrate took to discriminate. George Crispe’s wife who “told a lie, not a pernicious lie, but unadvisedly,” was simply admonished. Will Randall who told a “plain lie” was fined ten shillings. Ralph Smith who “lied about seeing a whale,” was fined twenty shillings and excommunicated—which must have rejoiced his suffering neighbours’ souls.

The rank of a gentleman, being a recognized attribute in those days, was liable to be forfeited for a disgraceful deed. In 1631, Josias Plastowe of Boston was fined five pounds for stealing corn from the Indians; and it was likewise ordered by the Court that he should be called in the future plain Josias, and not Mr. Plastowe as formerly.[Pg 20] Here was a chance for the community to take a hand in punishing a somewhat contemptible malefactor. It would have been more or less than human if it had not enjoyed the privilege.

By far the neatest instance of making the punishment fit the crime is recorded in Governor Bradford’s “Diary of Occurrences.” The carpenter employed to construct the stocks for the Plymouth colonists thought fit to charge an excessive rate for the job; whereupon he was speedily clapped into his own instrument, “being the first to suffer this penalty.” And we profess to pity the Puritans for the hardness and dulness of their lives! Why, if we could but see a single profiteer sitting in the stocks, one man out of the thousands who impudently oppress the public punished in this admirable and satisfactory manner, we should be willing to listen to sermons[Pg 21] two hours long for the rest of our earthly days.

And the Puritans relished their sermons, which were masterful like themselves. Dogma and denunciation were dear to their souls, and they could bear an intolerable deal of both. An hour-glass stood on the preacher’s desk, and youthful eyes strayed wistfully to the slender thread of sand. But if the discourse continued after the last grain had run out, a tithingman who sat by the desk turned the glass, and the congregation settled down for a fresh hearing. A three-hour sermon was a possibility in those iron days, while an eloquent parson, like Samuel Torrey of Weymouth, could and did pray for two hours at a stretch. The Reverend John Cotton, grandfather of the redoubtable Cotton Mather, and the only minister in Boston who was acknowledged by Anne Hutchinson to possess the mysterious “seal of the Spirit,” had a[Pg 22] reprehensible habit of preaching for two hours on Sunday in the meeting-house (his family and servants of course attending), and at night, after supper, repeating this sermon to the sleepy household who had heard it in the morning.