matters religious is not the ruling of any church nor the letter of any printed book, however sacred, but the conscience of the individual under the guidance of the Spirit of God. Toleration has been very variously discussed and practiced. On the part of men who have no faith or principle, toleration is the cheapest of all virtues. They are tolerant, of course, requiring a certain breadth for the exercise of their own practices. Yet, on the other hand, there is a toleration which is the result and not the lack of strong faith and sound character. After all, the intolerant are those who are afraid for the truth and who exaggerate their own importance by taking it into their domineering control. The Pilgrim Fathers, whatever may be said against their conception of tolerance and their practice with those who differed from the details of their faith, at least must be acknowledged to stand these primal tests. They were great believers, men of strong faith and unquestioned principle, and it would be difficult to find a firmer and more enduring foundation on which to build a nation's life. From religious liberty there sprang the conception of political liberty. Once when a peril touched the days Of freedom in our English ways And none renowned in government Was equal found, Came to the steadfast heart of one Who watched in lonely Huntingdon, A summons, and he went, And tyranny was bound, And Cromwell was the Lord of his event. And in that land where voyaging The Pilgrim Mayflower came to rest, And then from fifty fameless years In quiet Illinois was sent A word that still the Atlantic hears And Lincoln was the Lord of his event. These men represent the true spirit and genius of the founders in the reverent and indeed religious view of politics which they always cherished. And in the hearts of the Pilgrim Fathers religious conviction was the deep well from which the waters of political freedom were drawn. There was among them an experiment in communism and it has been a peculiarly valuable piece of American history. No circumstances could have been more ideal for the trial of communism than theirs, nor could there be imagined a community more free from those temptations to selfishness which make communistic experiments so difficult and hopeless in complicated societies. Yet this experiment failed. The young men who did most of the work repined against the older and weaker brethren receiving an equal share of the fruits of labor, and Bradford in memorable sentences records his judgment of their repining. "Let none object that this is man's corruption, and nothing to the course itself. I answer, seeing all men have this corruption in them, God in His Wisdom saw another course fitted for them." So they pass on through land tenure to representative government. It was not the first time that this had been tried upon American soil, for there had been previous experiments in Virginia; yet it is unquestionable that the written constitution drawn up in the cabin of the Mayflower was the main source from which was derived the plan of self-government of which the United States are so justly proud. That plan in later days was happy to have found its epigram, invented by Theodore Parker and made immortal by Abraham Lincoln. It ran, "Government of the people, for the people, by the people." That the Pilgrim Fathers have had their detractors need cause us no surprise. It is true that most of the faults loosely attributed to them are matters that concern their successors rather than themselves. And yet it would be no great honor to these Pilgrim Fathers if one were able to say of them, after so long a time, that they had left no enemies. So far from being an honorable epitaph in troublous and violent times it would seem that to leave no enemies is to be one of those who are not fit for the Kingdom of Heaven. The character and quality of a man's enemies are perhaps the best criteria of his human value. Judged by this criterion the Pilgrim Fathers are happy indeed. On the one hand they had for enemies those who represented the tyrannical spirit of their generation. On the other hand, as Dr. Cadman has said: "Every charlatan, every mocker, every profane person, every puppet of a rollicking Bohemia, would incite you to rebel against it. 'Eat and drink,' says the worldling, 'for to-morrow you die.' 'Rise upon your feet, gird on the armor of God, and go forth to your duty,' says the Puritan." Besides the professed enemies of that for which they stood, there have been many not altogether unfriendly critics who have had things to say about them, and they have been accused of severity, narrowness and bigotry. But perhaps their worst enemies have been those who have idealized them as the one and only type of Christian thought and living. In reply to this apotheosis of Puritanism, Matthew Arnold has said in one of his greatest sentences that "The human spirit is greater than even the most priceless of the forces which bear it onwards." That is a golden sentence and one well worthy to be remembered. These men were undoubtedly one-sided. They had not thought out the question of religious toleration. They had no general idea of liberty, and they carried with them the intolerance of their times. It must be confessed that the representatives of full toleration whom they drove out were very unfor tunate persons to represent it. But it is also true that the Puritans of New England happened to be the under dog, and the under dog as well as his tormentor can bite, and even upon occasion can go mad. The aftermath of great crises is always dangerous. We have had bitter experience of this in the aftermath of the Great War. Every great historical event has an aftermath, and we need not be surprised to find that this was the case with the adventure of the Pilgrim Fathers. We see it on the one hand in the violent and intolerant reactions which deal out to others a similar treatment to that from which they themselves had suffered. On the other hand we see it in those obsolete testimonies which outlive their usefulness and make the way more difficult for their times both in faith and politics. We hear from time to time the well-intentioned demand that we shall go back to the old-time faith and manners, and those who feel and who proclaim the impossibility of such a return are apt to be misunderstood. For us to adopt in its detail the way of the Pilgrim Fathers is a thing which cannot be done and which ought not to be done even if it could. It is by other ways, less simple indeed, but infinitely wiser, that we are called to follow in their footsteps. Matthew Arnold, speaking to Americans, has said: "You have also had more entirely and more exclusively than we, the Puritan discipline. Certainly I am not blind to the faults of that discipline. Certainly I do not wish it to remain in the possession of the field forever or too long But as a stage and a discipline, and as a means for enabling that poor inattentive and immoral creature man, to live and appropriate and make part of his being, divine ideas on which he could not otherwise have laid hold or kept hold, the discipline of Puritanism has been invaluable. For this contribution alone we owe them an eternal debt. They set our affections still, after three centuries, upon whatsoever things are elevated, whatsoever things are nobly serious, and they keep our reluctant consciences within call of these." How then may we best pay that debt to those whose graves are now covered with ancient moss? Not certainly by appropriating their detailed faith or imitating their detailed practice, but by carrying over their dauntless and indefatigable spirit to deal with problems which never confronted them. It is the spirit that lives on forever, the letter and the detail pass and change. Nor yet can we pay that debt by further separations of unnecessary protest. We have passed from the age of separation to that which longs for union and a larger comprehensiveness. In their day the world had fallen hopelessly asunder, and the task that was set to men was to defend and find refuge for its separate elements of good. In our day the task is to gather up the wreckage of many generations and to reunify the world in justice and in love. ROBERT JUDSON KENWORTHY FREEMASONRY AND CITIZENSHIP Address, in part, of Robert Judson Kenworthy, Grand Master of American Free Masons, 1910 to 1912, taken from his Address to the Craft in 1911. We are in an age of progress. The word has its serious application to the affairs of the day. It also has its reference, facetiously, perhaps, to the politics of the time. But progress is a definite term. It means advancement, not retrogression; it means improvement, not decay; it means accomplishment, not failure; it means onward and forward, not a looking backward or dismal retreat. Is our Masonry progressive, or are we making it a factor only inside of the Lodge room? Are we content to remain intrenched in mysticism, to confer degrees, to make Masons and then forget them, excepting, perhaps, as their names are added to our roll-leaving them muzzled as to its secrets, but bewildered and lamentably untaught of those deep underlying truths inculcated in the days when quality and not quantity was the watchword of the Craft? If our drift is away from and not toward its highest ideals and traditions, slowly but surely the vitality which sustains it will slip away, and I say, without hesitation, our Fraternity will cease to appeal to intelligent men. It will become nothing but a mummery, a jargon of signs and baubles, titles and platitudes-for we will be following the shadow and not the substance. I might well hesitate to charge this great gathering of thoughtful men as to its duty, for I realize there are Brethren present who have served our Craft conspicuously long before I was admitted to its ranks. Their lives are our example, their deeds our admiration, their work our standard; but we are apace with conditions not heretofore confronting us, forces not |