One loves to see in "The Tempest" the crowning utterance of his maturity.
How wise, how n.o.ble it is, and the wisdom and n.o.bility set forth in what exquisite play of fancy and wealth of humor! As in Hamlet we seem to see Shakspere in his mid-life storm and stress, so in Prospero we think we recognize the ideal of his ripeness. There is the wise man torn from books and reverie, and rudely thrust upon treachery and the stormy sea; there is control gained over airy powers and ethereal beauties; struggle with b.e.s.t.i.a.l evil; forgiveness of the wrong-doer; happiness in the happiness of his child, and willing surrender of her to her lover; the admonition that love perfect itself by the mastery of pa.s.sion. So wise, so beneficent, so lofty is Shakspere"s latest creation. A shadow flits across, in the thought of mortal transiency:--
"We are such stuff As dreams are made of, and our little life Is rounded by a sleep."
Yet instantly Prospero marks this as the utterance of a disturbed moment: "Bear with my weakness, my old brain is troubled;" the coming encounter with Caliban has shaken him. Most Shaksperean, too, is this: alternating impulses of trust and doubt; now a sense of being led "by Providence divine;" an instinct of a "divinity that shapes our ends;" and again, the mood that sees beyond the present scene only blankness and the end.
Those elements which in Shakspere are absent or dim,--the belief in a divine rule and celestial destiny, and a high and fixed moral purpose,--these appear in full strength in men of Shakspere"s time, the men of religion; but in their minds inextricably blent with a scheme of the universe which it is plain was to Shakspere as unreal as the mythology of the Greeks, and which he treats in much the same way, merely borrowing it for a dramatic purpose. The men of religion had no such consummate expression in literature as Shakspere, though they had their Taylor and Herbert and Milton; but to appreciate them we must look at them in action, and we may take the Puritan as their type.
But first let us note that in Catholicism as early as in Protestantism appeared the sharp rift between intellect and belief. Montaigne, a man of the world, is outwardly a conformist, but a real skeptic. A nominal Catholic, he corresponds to Shakspere, a nominal Protestant. Montaigne reveals the world of one personality as, frankly as Shakspere pictures a world of humanity, and in each the purely religious element is almost totally absent.
Shakspere shows the widest reach of the mind apart from a definite religious purpose or a strong religious faith. In contrast with him is the Puritan effort to apprehend and follow a divine rule and achieve a divine destiny. The typical Puritan addressed himself to man"s foes,--all griefs and sufferings culminating in Death; all wrong-doing, as Sin; and the retribution and woe hereafter, as h.e.l.l. To escape from these was his supreme object, and to win what he as firmly believed in--Holiness, Life, and Heaven.
The creed was accepted as the form of this truth, but the earnest men sought to know its truths experimentally,--to take home the full sense of them. This was found in the consciousness of man"s supreme need; and, responding to that, a divine command, an invitation, and a threat. The result of this was to set man upon a struggle so intense that it was indeed a warfare,--first, against his own l.u.s.ts, then against the evils in the world around him. These evils were to him embodied--in the Pope, the head of a false religion, the oppressor of G.o.d"s people; in the imitation and approach to Popery in the church of England; in all false belief and error, all wrong-doers, and Satan himself.
The Puritan believed that the sublimest possibility was open to man, and purposed at every cost to achieve it. "Man"s chief end is to glorify G.o.d and enjoy him forever." There was also the most dreadful possibility to be shunned. All earthly pleasure he held in suspicion, as a bait of the great adversary of souls.
The belief of serious men in the seventeenth century was that theology was the guide to heaven. They believed this as modern men believe that science is the guide to human life. Hence, an infinite diversity of sects, and hence the attempts to enforce each by authority.
The Bible fed the deeper substratum of the Puritan life. It touched and fired the imagination of the common people. The dominant idea on which the English Puritan laid hold was the Old Testament idea of G.o.d"s chosen people,--separate from the rest of the world, given a code of written laws, led by a divinely appointed priesthood and prophets, disciplined by a constant intervention of rewards and punishments. This conception they transferred to the faithful of their own time; and against them was Antichrist, in the Roman church, to which the English prelates seemed traitorously to incline. They proposed to purify and maintain the church in England, or, failing there, to transplant it to America.
The typical Puritan character, as most fully worked out in Scotland and New England, was a mixture of intense idealism and sternest practicality.
The idealism aimed to control every action of life, and to base itself on the ultimate reality. It renounced the aid of art and embodied imagination; it renounced human authority; it had no aid from material beauty, none from knowledge of nature.
This religion had an appalling side. Foremost among its teachings was man"s depravity and the terrible wrath of G.o.d. The worst cruelty of the Iroquois was mercy compared to G.o.d"s dealing with sinners. This was an inheritance from an older religion. But the condition of salvation in the Catholic church--and in all high church religion--was practically obedience to the church. But the Puritan required a conscious change of heart, which to many was impossible. The utmost pains were taken that the most laborious right-doing should count for nothing, unless accompanied by this mystic experience.
Catholicism put man under guardianship through the hierarchy, the confessional, the whole church system. Calvinism threw him on his own resources,--set him face to face with G.o.d. It, too, set a church to help him, but even the minister of the church exhorted him to make his own peace with G.o.d. This responsibility weighted men heavily, and made them sombre. It crushed the feeble, but made strong men stronger.
The first half of the seventeenth century was full of religious enthusiasms, which carried high expectations. Milton looked for a wonderful advance in truth. The Puritan sought to build a church simple in forms, austere in morals and manners, exacting personal holiness of its members, and subjecting the unG.o.dly to a rule of the saints. Charles the First and Archbishop Laud believed in a religious monarchy; that the king should be chief in church and state; that beauty of ritual should go along with the encouragement of festivity and joyousness; and that the ultimate aim was a reunited Christendom.
The wave pa.s.sed, and these expectations had failed. But the force of the Puritan movement had accomplished certain things. It had turned the tide of the English civil war, it had leavened the more serious portion of the nation, and it had planted the New England colonies.
In England the Puritan zeal gave force to overthrow despotism, but it then plunged the nation into chaos; it could not rule or harmonize the composite forces of national life; const.i.tutional monarchy was established at last under William of Orange, by men of less fervent and lofty temper than the Puritans, but better conversant with the wants and possibilities of the actual world.
Milton was a man of heroic mould. He governed himself by a deliberate and lofty moral purpose. The thirst for "moral perfection" inspired and ruled his life. He was far from the narrowness of the typical Puritan.
He was open on all sides to the n.o.blest influences. The heroic antique temper, the beauty and richness of the Greek, the religious seriousness of the Puritan, the English love of freedom, all met in him. He was at heart a poet and scholar, but he threw himself into the active life of his time.
Yet his genius was cramped by his theology. He could not fuse the conflicting elements of thought,--just as the heroes of the Revolution, Pym and Hampden and Cromwell and Falkland, could not blend the elements of English political society. He is like his own lion "struggling to get free." His epic is a story of disaster. His deity is undivine. There is more that touches sympathy and admiration in his Satan than in his Jehovah or Adam.
The best thing he gives us is his own n.o.ble personality, imbuing the majestic rhythm with a kind of moral power. Servant and friend of Cromwell, sacrificing all scholarly delight to his country"s need, champion of freedom, worshiper of truth, building in neglected solitude his epic,--his works are less than Shakspere"s, but _he_ is greater than the imaginary Hamlet, Oth.e.l.lo, or Brutus.
Cromwell is in action the counterpart of Milton in thought,--a heroic nature struggling with irreconcilable elements. Each is confronted by a situation as difficult as Hamlet"s; but though they cannot fully master it, they deal with it like men.
Here is the true advantage of the men of religion over Shakspere and his creations,--here is the greater world than Shakspere saw,--men grappling with their fate and in the struggle working out heroic lives.
The finest type of the New England colonists is seen in the Winthrops, father and son. When the migration is determined on, the son writes: "For myself, I have seen so much of the variety of the world that I esteem no more of the diversities of countries than as so many inns, whereof the traveler that hath lodged in the best or the worst findeth no difference when he cometh to his journey"s end; and I shall call that my country where I may most glorify G.o.d and enjoy the presence of my dearest friends. Therefore herein I submit myself to G.o.d"s will and yours, and, with your leave, do dedicate myself (laying by all desire of other employments whatsoever) to the service of G.o.d and the company herein, with the whole endeavors both of body and mind."
The elder Winthrop is shown to us in the Journal or chronicle of the Ma.s.sachusetts colony, a sombre record of seemingly petty events; in his religious diary of an earlier period; and in his domestic letters, which are full of manly strength and sweetness. He combined some of the chief elements of greatness,--loftiness of aim; a character disinterested, patient, modest, brave; deep religious experience; and personal tenderness.
To a man like Winthrop, the heart of his creed was that man"s true aim is moral perfection and a living relation with a Divine Lover. The sense of a Divine Presence--inspiring, ruling, gladdening--is what his religion means to him. In this quiet country gentleman, portrayed in his private diary, is an intense play of feeling and imagination, concentrated on the attainment of a personal and social ideal.
All this introspective fervor merged into a public enterprise,--the transplanting of a church and colony to Ma.s.sachusetts Bay. The last half of his life was spent in the most a.s.siduous, minute, exacting labors.
The self-watchful diary gives place to a public chronicle, prosaic as a ship"s log-book--and, like the log-book, the shorthand record of adventures, heroisms, and sublimities.
In the Puritan of Winthrop"s type the flame of spiritual emotion was harnessed and made to serve. The drudgery of founding New England was done by men whose hearts were touched with fire,--men such as Lowell sings of:--
"Who, dowered with every gift of pa.s.sion, In that fierce flame can forge and fashion Of self and sin the anchor strong; Can thence compel the driving force Of daily life"s mechanic course."
Winthrop set out with a great ideal--shown with statesmanlike breadth in the "Considerations," and with apostolic fervor in the "Model of Christian Charity." His conception was cramped into conformity with the far narrower views of the ministers who were the leaders in the colony.
Yet it was his ideal and his personality which gave most to success.
The letters between Winthrop and his wife are an example of human love perfected by a higher love. He writes to her: "Neither can the sea drown thy husband, nor enemies destroy, nor any adversity deprive thee of thy husband." Shakspere has no note like that. Margaret writes from her country home to her husband in London: "My good husband, cheer up thy heart in the expectation of G.o.d"s goodness to us, and let nothing dismay or discourage thee; if the Lord be with us, who can be against us? My grief is the fear of staying behind thee, but I must leave all to the good providence of G.o.d." She was obliged to stay behind in England, awaiting the birth of a child. On the eve of sailing he writes her: "I purpose, if G.o.d will, to be with thee upon Thursday come sen"night, and then I must take my leave of thee for a summer"s day and a winter"s day.
The Lord our good G.o.d will (I hope) send us a happy meeting again in his good time. Amen! Being now ready to send away my letters, I received thine; the reading of it has dissolved my head into tears. Can write no more. If I live, I will see thee ere I go. I shall part from thee with sorrow enough; be comfortable, my most sweet wife, our G.o.d will be with thee. Farewell."
A few months later, across the pages of the Journal, full of the cares and anxieties of the struggling colony, shines a ray of pure joy.
Margaret has come! And the whole community rejoices and makes cheer, with homely and hearty feasting, for the happiness of their good governor.
The actual conditions nourished homely virtues,--industry, thrift, self-reliance, family affection, civic responsibility. The greatness of early New England is partly measured by the fact that there were comparatively no dregs, no ma.s.s of ignorance and vice. It was not the individuals who rise into sight at this distance who were superior to the prominent men of England or France,--it was the lower stratum which was above that elsewhere. Two prime causes worked to this elevation,--the spiritual estimate of man and the economic conditions which offered independence to every one on the condition "work and save." The social and political conditions were largely shaped by these underlying facts.
The wrestle for a livelihood under stern material conditions was a prime factor in the making of New England. Whatever the creed might say, in practice Work was the equal partner of Faith in building manhood and the state. The soil was to their bodies what Calvinism was to their souls,--yielding nourishment, but only through a hard struggle. Its sterility drove them to the sea for a livelihood; they became fishermen; then, carrying their fish and lumber abroad, they grew into commerce.
They traded along the coast, to the West Indies, to Europe, and so into their little province came the winds of the larger world. They learned the sailor"s virtues,--his courage, his mingled awe and mastery of elemental forces, his sense of lands beyond the horizon. Well might Winthrop name the first ship he launched "The Blessing of the Bay."
The austere land had small room for slaves, dependent and incapable. One of the first large companies included some scores of bondmen; they landed to face a fierce and hungry winter, and straightway the bondmen were set free,--as slaves they would be an inc.u.mbrance; as freemen they could get their own living. The thrifty colonists of a later generation did a driving business in African slaves for their southern neighbors, but they had small use for them at home.
Winthrop"s constant effort, as shown in his Journal, is for reason and right. It is the arguments for and against any course that he elaborates. Scarce a word of their sufferings or of his own feelings--but to know and do the right was all-important. The greatness of his own ideal is shown when he draws with a free hand, in the "Conclusions" or the "Model." In the Journal, he is laboring toward this under the iron conditions of actualities. He and his a.s.sociates had to be strong-willed and stern; they were warring against tremendous difficulties--more tremendous to them because interpreted as the work of Satan, while even their G.o.d was an awful being.
Superst.i.tion throws a dark shadow over the chronicle. Even Winthrop was deeply infected by it. Disasters small and great were interpreted, on the Old Testament idea, as divine judgments. A boy seven years old fell through the ice and was drowned while his parents were at lecture, and his sister was drowned in trying to save him. "The parents had no more sons, and confessed they had been too indulgent towards him, and had set their hearts overmuch on him." A man working on a milldam kept on for an hour after nightfall on Sat.u.r.day to finish it, and next day his child fell into a well and was drowned. The father confessed it as a judgment of G.o.d for his Sabbath-breaking.
There is not unfrequent mention of some woman driven by religious brooding to frenzy, sometimes to murder. The awful possibilities of h.e.l.l for herself and her children wrought the mother-heart to madness. The religious guides of the people used unsparingly the appeal to fear. The belief in witchcraft, which long had scourged Europe, broke out in a panic of fear and cruelty. It was a tragic culmination of the worst elements,--superst.i.tion, malignity, ministerial tyranny. Then came the reaction, and with it a triumph of the wiser sense, the cooler temper, the layman"s moderation, which thenceforth were to guide the commonwealth on a humbler but safer road.
In a dramatic sense the turning-point of the story--and the revelation of the saving power at the heart of this grim people--was when, after the witchcraft frenzy had subsided, Samuel Sewall, the chief justice of the colony, rose in his place in the meeting-house and humbly confessed before G.o.d and man that he had erred and shed innocent blood.
In the more prosaic temper of the next stage, a st.u.r.dy manhood sometimes flashes into poetry. So John Wise, a minister but the leader of the popular party in church government, strikes the high note of courage: "If men are trusted with duty, they must trust that, and not events. If men are placed at the helm to steer in all weather that blows, they must not be afraid of the waves or a wet coat."
In personal religion there was from the outset the intense struggle for an inward peace and joy, with tears and groanings,--the victory sometimes found, sometimes missed. There was a resolute facing of what was held as truth. The ministers and laymen battled with the problems of the infinite. The issue after two centuries was an open break from Calvinism in Channing, and the glad vision of Emerson.
A feature in the story is the New Englander"s relation with Nature as he found her,--first like a terrible power of destruction, by cold and hunger; this he conquers by endurance. Then for generations he wrings a hard livelihood out of her. Then by his wits he makes her serve him more completely. At last her beauty is disclosed to him,--a beauty which has its roots in the very struggles he has had, and the contrasts they afford,--no child of the tropics loves Nature as he does.
So of the sea: first he dares it as explorer and voyager; then he makes it his feeding-ground--catches the cod and chases the whale; in his ships he does battle against pirate and public foe; he makes the deep the highway of his commerce; and at last he feels its grandeur, into which enters the reminiscence of all his combats.
Elements which Puritanism had renounced came in later from other sources.
The fresh contact with truth and reality was given by Franklin. The free joy of religion, its aggressive love, came in Methodism. Beautiful ritual returned in Episcopacy. The frank enjoyment of life developed in the South, transmitted from the country life of the English squire and mellowed on American soil.
At the outset of the story of America stands the Puritan, his heart set on subduing the infernal element and winning the celestial; regarding this life as a stern warfare, but the possible pathway to an infinite happiness beyond; fierce to beat down the emissaries of evil,--heretic, witch, or devil; yet tender at inmost heart, and valiant for the truth as he sees it. After a century, behold the Yankee,--the shrewd, toilful, thrifty occupant of the homely earth; one side of his brain speculating on the eternities, and the other side devising wealth, comfort, personal and social good. And to-day, successor of Puritan and Yankee, Cavalier and Quaker, stands the American, composite of a thousand elements, with a destiny which seems to hover between heights and abysses, but amid all whose vicissitudes and faults we still see faith and courage and manly purpose working toward a kingdom of G.o.d on earth and in heaven.