plicity of their trust and the purity of their devout affection, saw God in the tempest, and to him they cried. They saw him in the calm; and he "filled their afflicted minds with such comforts as every one can not understand." No scientist of to-day believes in the immutability of natural law and the conservation of force more firmly than they believed in the immutability of the divine purposes. In their theory of the universe, the storm and the hush, the billows and the ship that rode upon their surges, the peril and the deliverance, were equally determined from eternity. They did not expect that their words, thrown out upon the wind, would change God's purpose; yet they prayed, for, to their thought, the prayer was itself included in the decree of the Ineffable Love that had loved them from before the foundation of the world. Scientists may perplex themselves about what prayer has to do with events, for science knows only what is limited by time and space; but faith, taking hold of the infinite, and recognizing in events the evolution of an eternal thought and purpose, walks with God, speaks to him, listens for his voice, accepts his determinations, and sees him even in "the stormy wind fulfilling his word."

Baffled in two attempts, the members of the Scrooby church seem to have abandoned their plan of emigrating in a body, as Israel went out of Egypt. Some of their most active men having been, by the last disaster, carried into Holland, were able to serve as pioneers for the company, and to make such arrangements for them as were possible after their losses. Amsterdam was the rendezvous of the fugitives as they made their escape out of England, one by one, or in families. "In the end, they all got over, some at one time and some at another, and met together again with no small rejoicing." Meanwhile, by the troubles they had suffered," their cause became famous." Their Christian behavior under persecution "left a deep impression on the minds of many." In many a thoughtful mind the inquiry was raised, "Who and what are these men? What evil have they done? What

is it for which they suffer so meekly, and yet so perseveringly ?"

Who and what were they? Whatever ecclesiastical or political prejudice against them may linger in some quarters, no intelligent reader of history can think of them as frantic enthusiasts, as dupes of knavish leaders, or as in any way dangerous members of society. Some of them were men trained at the English universities, and skilled in the learning and the controversies of their time. Some were not without experience of life in the great world, and in connection with public affairs; others were plain people of the old English yeomanry, who had lived on their hereditary acres― the type and original of our New England farmers. All had gained the intelligence that comes from the diligent study of the Bible, and all were honest and earnest believers in the Christ of the New Testament. Such were the men and the women who were thus driven out of their native England, yet hunted and intercepted in their flight, as if they were criminals escaping from justice. Why did they suffer the spoiling of their goods, arrest, imprisonment, exile? Their only crime was that, while they rendered to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, they would not render to Cæsar the things that are God's. They had caught from the Bible the idea of a church independent alike of the pope and the queen, independent of Parliament as well as of prelates, and dependent only on Christ. It was their mission to work out and organize that idea; and, in so doing, they wrought and suffered for their posterity in all ages and for the world.

CHAPTER XI.

THE SEPARATISTS IN AMSTERDAM.

THE Separatists of Scrooby, having made their escape from their native country, had become literally "strangers and pilgrims on the earth." Holland was to them only "a strange country," not the land of promise. In Bradford's report of the impressions which that country made upon them when they saw it, there is a picturesque effect which shows how he felt as one of them. He was at that time a youth of not more than twenty years. a plain northcountry Englishman, whose knowledge of the world beyond the seas was only so much as he had been able to gain from vague report with the aid of a few books, and who had probably never seen any larger town than Boston, in Lincolnshire, and Hull, in Yorkshire. His own words, for himself and his fellow-exiles, are the best in which to tell the story:

"Being now come into the Low Countries, they saw many goodly and fortified cities, strongly walled, and guarded with troops of armed men. Also they heard a strange and uncouth language, and beheld the different manners and customs of the people, with their strange fashions and attires; all so far differing from that of their plain country villages, wherein they were bred and had so long lived, as it seemed they were come into a new world. But these were not the things they much looked on, or which long took up their thoughts; for they had other work in hand, and another kind of war to wage and maintain. For though they saw fair and beautiful cities flowing with abundance of all sorts of wealth and riches, it was not long before they saw the grim and grisly face of poverty coming upon them like an

armed man, with whom they must buckle and encounter, and from whom they could not fly. But they were armed with faith and patience against him; and though they were sometimes foiled, yet, by God's assistance, they prevailed and got the victory."

They were not entirely without friends in Amsterdam, the place of their first residence after their migration. Others of their countrymen, exiles like them, were there before them. Besides the recognized congregations of English subjects, which had been established in various cities, and which purporting to be of the Church of England, though generally served by Puritan ministers1- were under the protection of a treaty, there was at Amsterdam (as formerly, under Robert Browne, there had been at Middleburg) an organized congregation of English Separatists. In that more ancient church, the exiles from Scrooby found some of their former friends. They also found in Amsterdam their old neighbor John Smyth, and many who had been members of the church under his guidance at Gainsborough, and who, with him, had escaped from England a year or two earlier than they. It was natural for them to sit down, at first, among their countrymen and friends in that great commercial city, till they could intelligently form their plans for a more permanent residence.

They soon discovered that, among the English Separatists at Amsterdam, there were elements of discord, tending to dissolution. Already there had been a painful agitation in the church under the pastoral care of Francis Johnson; and it had resulted in the excommunication of two conspicuous members. The story is worth telling, not only because it gives us a glimpse into the interior of a Separatist church in those days, but also because there is something of a moral in it. It began with a complaint against the pastor's wife.

1 Such was the position of Francis Johnson when he was "preacher to the Company of English of the Staple at Middleburg." Ante, p. 129.

When the Scrooby exiles knew her, she was, as they testify, a grave matron, modest in dress and demeanor, ready to all good works in her place, especially helpful to the poor, and an ornament to her husband's pastoral office. In her youth she had been a merchant's wife and widow; and she was still young when Johnson married her "a godly woman" with " a good estate." But she was blamed by some "because she wore such apparel as she had been formerly used to," which certainly was not very extravagant. They found fault with "her wearing of some whalebone in the bodice and sleeves of her gown," also with her corked shoes, and "other such like things as citizens of her rank used to wear. The pastor and his wife, in deference to such scruples, were willing to reform the objectionable conformity to fashion, "so far as might be without spoiling of their garments;" but the fault-finders would accept no compromise. Pitiful it seems to us that the peace of a church should be disturbed by a conflict of opinions about the whalebone in a lady's bodice and the cork in the heels of her shoes. Pitiful it seemed to those who under the teaching of Clyfton and Robinson had added to their faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge; but "such," said they," was the strictness of some in those times," who could tolerate no Christian brother unless he " came full up to their size."

The chief complainants against the "outward adorning " of the pastor's wife were the pastor's father and brother. Probably some domestic feud was the cause of the church difficulty. The good sense of the majority is shown in the fact that the pastor was not dismissed, nor his wife put under censure; while the fidelity of the church appears in the fact that the two leading agitators, “after long patience toward them and much pains taken with them," were excluded from communion "for their unreasonable and endless opposition, and such things as did accompany the same." 1 The scars

'Bradford's "Dialogue," in Young's "Chronicles of the Pilgrims," p. 446.