VIII. THE COVENANTER IN EARLY AMERICAN HISTORY.

It was not an accident that made John Cabot the discoverer of the Continent of North America rather than Christopher Columbus. He, whom "the winds and the sea obey," had decreed that the first ship to touch the solid. shores of this continent should be one that bore at its masthead the flag of what was soon to become Protestant England, rather than that of Roman Catholic Spain. He saw from the very beginning the end, which we discover only in the accomplished fact. That end was, that the colonization of North America should be a Protestant colonization.

Spain, then among the first, if not the very foremost nation in Europe, had determined that America should be another Roman Catholic Empire, the adjective being descriptive not of imperial glory, but rather of ecclesiastical control-in short, the equivalent of Papal. God's purpose was different. Hence Cabot and not Columbus. As the just and natural sequel of this first historic fact we have to-day American freedom, and the more than forty Commonwealths united under the Stars and Stripes, the symbol and pledge, the world 'round, of civil and religious liberty. For it is but to repeat the veriest commonplace of recent modern history, to say that America, with her republican institutions is the legitimate outcome of the Reformation. Given Luther, Washington was a necessity. If the oft-repeated proverb that, by his scholarly editing of the Greek New Testament, "Erasmus laid the egg, which Luther hatched," it is no undue stretching the figure to add, that from the brood thus originated sprang, as one of its most illustrious descendants, the Chanticleer that at Yorktown sounded out the clarion of victorious independence. In

1754, David Hume wrote in regard to these early discoverers of the New World: "Speculative reasoners during that age raised many objections to the planting of these remote regions, and foretold, that after draining their mother country of inhabitants, they would soon shake off her yoke and erect an independent government in America. But time," he goes on to remark, "has shown that the views entertained by those who encouraged such generous undertakings were more just and solid." But how much more "just and solid," now that we have advanced a century and a half beyond Hume, does the judgment appear of those "speculative reasoners," who prophesied a century and a half before he wrote! Hume lacked the spiritual insight to perceive the mighty working of those moral forces, which the reformation of Luther had unloosed. The defender of the Stuarts could not understand the principles that controlled the men who would mould a "government of the people, by the people and for the people."

But to say, that America is the outgrowth of the Reformation of the sixteenth century is to tell one-half the truth. That was a broad channel of far-reaching influence. But its deepest, mightiest current was that which flowed past the schools of Geneva. John Calvin -not a man, but the principles and truths of which his name is a compendious description-was the real founder of republican, free institutions in America. To present in full the historic demonstration of this statement would be to rewrite the history of Western Europe during its two most eventful centuries, the 17th and the 18th. It would require the telling afresh of that most thrilling story of modern times, the struggle of the Netherlands for the rights of man, a declaration of rights indelibly traced in the blood of heroes, both princely and peasant, than which none ever written was more sublimely glorious. It would march in review before us the armies of a Conde and a Gustavus; would open our ears to the

dying testimonies of countless martyrs; would repeat the trials and triumphs of generation after generation of Puritans, who being dead will yet continue to tell to coming ages the wonderful works of God. We should need to listen to the echoes of the teachings of Knox, as they come to us from Scottish glens, mingled with the tramp of the dragonades. Londonderry and the Boyne would have to tell again in our ears the story of their almost superhuman fortitude and valor. To glance even most superficially at this magnificent panorama-a pageant whose brilliant glories might well dazzle the eyes of angels-is, of course, far beyond the ability of the present writer and the patience of his readers. We can stay only to present the testimony-capable of very large increase-of a few of the leading historians who have written the wonderful story.

Hallam (Vol. 3: p. 427) tells us: "It was a struggle of the Scotch for the liberty of their Church, which was the means of preserving the liberties of England." And none in our day need to be reminded of the close and causal connection between English and American ideas of freedom. Macaulay (England, Vol 1: p. 73), speaking of the same era, makes the statement: "To this step" (forcing the "service book" upon Scotland) "our country owes its liberty." Lecky, tracing the influence of the Covenanters, declares: "The Kirk was by its very constitution republican," and, in the same line, Froude points out the fact, that "their" (the Kirk's) "religion taught them the equality of man." "It is," says Buckle (Civilization, Vol. 1: 811) “an interesting fact, that the doctrines, which in England are called Calvinistic, have been always connected with a democratic spirit. In the republics of Switzerland, North America and of Holland, Calvinism was always the popular creed. In the sharp retribution which followed the death of Elizabeth, the Puritans and Independents, by whom the punishment was inflicted, were, with scarcely an exception,

Calvinists." Again he says (Vol. 2: p. 185): "It was the Presbyterian clergy, who in their pulpits, their Presbyteries and their General Assemblies encouraged that democratic and insubordinate spirit, which eventually produced the happiest results by keeping alive the spirit of liberty." Referring to a little later period, Charles Hodge (Hist. Pur. Ch., Vol. 1: p. 59), speaking of the early inhabitants of America, says: "The English Puritans were all rigid Calvinists, and many of them Presbyterians. The Dutch were Calvinists and Presbyterians. A moiety of the Germans were of the same class. All the French Protestants were Calvinists and Presbyterians, and so, of course, were the Scotch and Scotch-Irish." Cotton Mather informs us: "That a gentleman in New England having published a book, in which he attempted to prove, that Christ bore not our sins by God's imputation, and therefore, also, did not bear the curse of the law for them, the General Court of Massachusetts (the then supreme civil authority) afraid lest the Church of God abroad should suspect that New England allowed such exhorbitant aberrations, ordered an answer to be prepared, in which it is stated, that the Lord Jesus Christ, as God-man and mediator, according to the will of God and of his own voluntary consent, fully obeyed the law, doing the command in the way of works and suffering the essential punishment of the curse in the way of satisfaction unto Divine Justice; and that they, who deny these, do take away both the matter and form of our justification, which is the very life of our souls." And Dr. Lyman Beecher writes (quoting Hodge, Vol. 1: p. 6): "Our Puritan fathers adhered to the doctrine of original sin as consisting in the imputation of Adam's sin and in a hereditary depravity." "The rigid Puritans," Mr. Bancroft affirms, "proved in America the supporters of religious freedom." And William Reed of Pennsylvania remarks: "The debt of gratitude, which Independent America owes to the dissenting clergy can never be paid." Froude gives to the

Covenanters the credit of having won independence for America and goes so far as to suggest that even Bunker Hill was borrowed from Ireland. Motley says: "Holland, England and America owe their liberties to Calvinists." And Ranke affirms, that "Calvin was the true founder of the American government."

But, weighty as are these authorities, there is still a more potent argument. The principles which inhere in that system of associated truths called Calvinism, contain at once the germ and the norm of freedom, both religious and civil. They have become, because they could not help but become, the greatest educating forces for the masses of men that the world has ever known. Their substance and their logical relations necessitate thinking, deep and strong thinking. They demand investigation into those questions which are essentially and everlastingly human. They display the logical consistency of the parts as a confirmation. of their several and joint truthfulness. And let it be borne in mind, that logic is not arbitrary, but necessary. Logic is simply the scientific arrangement of the laws of thinking, not that of the philosopher alone, but of the universal mind The humblest intellect, therefore, that accepts the teachings of this system, is thereby lifted into the sphere of the premise and the syllogism, though he may never have heard the names, and be wholly ignorant of their meaning. Awakened thought, quickened intellect, the outreach for larger knowledge; these, which are the very fountains of education, must ever be profoundly stirred in the mind of him who has learned the fundamentals of the Calvinistic system, viz.: God supremely sovereign and man lost, sinful, spiritually dead and helpless. It was, therefore, no freak of destiny, but the most natural development of principles, that Geneva should become the originator of public schools. Bancroft says: "The public school system was derived from Geneva, the work of John Calvin; introduced by Luther into Germany, by John Knox