Ours was a different destiny. I do not mean to say that the whole Colonial Age was a scene of universal and constant suffering and labor, and that there was no repose; of peril pressing at every turn, and every moment, on everybody. But in its general course it was a time of suffering and of privation, of poverty or mediocrity of fortune, of sleepless nights, grave duties, serious aims; and I say it was a trial better fitted to train up a nation “in true wisdom, virtue, magnanimity, and the likeness of God,”—better fitted to form temperate habits, strong character, resolute spirits, and all the radiant train of public and private virtues which stand before the stars of the throne of liberty,—than any similar period in the history of any nation, or of any but one, that ever existed. Some seasons there were of sufferings so sharp and strange, that they might seem designed to test the energy of Puritan principles. Such was the summer and winter after Governor Winthrop’s arrival in New England, 1670-1671. Such the winter and spring after the arrival of the Puritans at Plymouth, 1620-1621. They wasted away—young and old of the little flock—of consumption and fever of lungs; the living scarcely able to bury the dead; the well not enough to tend the sick; men who landed a few weeks before in full strength, their bones moistened with marrow, were seen to stagger and fall from faintness for want of food. In a country abounding in secret springs, they perished for want of a draught of good water. Childhood drooped and died away, like a field-flower turned up by the ploughshare. Old age was glad to gather himself to his last sleep. Some sank down, broken-hearted, by the graves of beloved wives and sons. Of the whole one hundred and one who landed at Plymouth, there were once only seven able to render assistance to the dying and the sick. A brilliant English writer, speaking of the Jews, exclaims, with surprise and indignation, that even a desert did not make them wise. Our fathers, let me say, not vaingloriously, were readier learned of wisdom. Their sufferings chastened, purified, and elevated them; and led them to repose their weary and stricken spirits upon the strength which upholds the world. Thus to be afflicted, thus to profit by affliction, is good for a nation as it is good for a man. To neither is it 16
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