age of great plans and high endeavors for the promotion of human happiness; and therefore it is an age in which daring but ill balanced minds are moved to attempt impracticable things, or to aim at practicable ends by impracticable measures. If we could exorcise the spirit that moves men to do good by associated effort on the grandest scale, perhaps we might be rid of some few ill concerted enterprises that importune us for coöperation. If we had war instead of peace, and robbery instead of commerce, we should soon be rid of the evils attendant on national prosperity and this vast accumulation of the outward means of human happiness. If our liberty were abolished, our free schools, our equal rights, our elective government, we should be rid of the perils of this constant political agitation. If the universal circulation of books and newspapers were taken away, and the waking up of mind in all directions were quieted, if all religious worship and instruction were regulated by the sovereign and made to conform to one standard, if intellectual culture and general knowledge could be confined to the "better classes," and they would be content to take every thing by tradition; we might have a very tranquil state of things,-all calm as the sea of Sodom. But so long as we have liberty, civil, intellectual, and religious; so long as we have enterprise and prosperity; so long as the public heart is warm with solicitude for human happiness; so long we must make up our minds to encounter something of error and extravagance ; and our duty is not to complain or despair, but to be thankful that we live in times so auspicious, and to do what we can in patience and love, to guide the erring and check the extravagant. When the car rushes with swift motion, he who looks only downward upon the track, to catch if he can some glimpses of the glowing wheel, or to watch the rocks by the wayside, that seem whirling from their places, soon grows sick and faint. Look up, man! Look abroad! The earth is not dissolved, not yet dissolving. Look on the tranquil heavens, and the blue mountains. Look on all that fills the range of vision, the bright, glad river, the smooth meadow, the village spire with the clustering homes around it, and yonder lonely, quiet farmhouse, far up among the hills. You are safe; all is safe; and the power that carries you is neither earthquake nor tempest, but a power than which the gentlest palfrey that ever bore a timid maiden, is not more obedient to the will that guides it. terror. What age since the country was planted, has been more favorable to happiness or to virtue than the present? Would you rather have lived in the age of the revolution? If in this age you are frightened, in that age you would have died with Would you rather have lived in the age of the old French wars, when religious enthusiasm and religious contention ran so high, that ruin seemed impending? How would your sensibilities have been tortured in such an age! Would you rather have lived in those earlier times, when the savage still built his wigwam in the woody valleys, and the wolf prowled on our hills? Those days, so Arcadian to your fancy, were days of darkness and tribulation. The "temptations in the wilderness" were as real and as terrible as any which your virtue is called to encounter. The scheme of Divine Providence is one, from the beginning to the end, and is ever in progressive development. Every succeeding age helps to unfold the mighty plan. There are indeed times of darkness; but even then it is light to faith, and lighter to the eye of God; and even then there is progress, though to sense and fear all motion seems retrograde. To despond now, is not cowardice merely, but atheism; for now, as the world in its swift progress brings us nearer and nearer to the latter day, faith, instructed by the signs of the times, and looking up in devotion, sees on the blushing sky the promise of the morning. APPENDIX. No. I. DAVENPORT'S A DISCOURSE about civil government in a new plantation whose design is religion. Written many years since by that Reverend and worthy minister of the gospel, John Cotton, B. D. And now published by some undertakers of a new plantation, for general direction and information. Cambridge, printed by Samuel Green and Marmaduke Johnson. 1673." This is the title of a tract of twenty four pages, small quarto, in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Cotton Mather in his Life of Davenport, (Magn. III, 56,) says that in this title page, "the name of Mr. Cotton is by a mistake put for that of Mr. Davenport." The testimony of Mather is perhaps sufficient in itself to decide the authorship, inasmuch as his father, who was the son-inlaw of Cotton, and particularly acquainted with Davenport, may be presumed to have authorized the statement. The internal evidence however seems to me to demonstrate not only the author of the 'Discourse," but the occasion on which it was written. 1. The tract was written in New England. "We in this new plantation." p. 10. "These very Indians that worship the Devil, will not be under the government of any Sagamores but such as join with them in observance of their pawawes and idolatries." p. 24. 2. It was written probably by a man who had been in Holland,certainly by one familiarly acquainted with that country. "In Holland, when the Arminian party had many Burgomasters on their side, Grave Maurice came into divers of their cities with troops of soldiers, by order from the States General, and put those Arminian magistrates out of office, and caused them to choose only such as were of the Dutch Churches. And in Rotterdam (and I think it is so in other towns) the Vrentscap, (who are all of them of the Dutch Church and free burgers,) do out of their own company choose the Burgomaster and other magistrates and officers." pp. 23, 24. Cotton never was in Holland. Davenport resided in that country about three years, and his "Apologetical Reply" was published at Rot terdam. 3. It was written before the reign of the long parliament. "In our native country, none are entrusted with the management of public affairs but members of the Church of England, as they call them." p. 23. There is a peculiar tone in this language which no New England Puritan would have used while the parliament was reforming the Church of England. It could not have been written after the restoration, for in 1673, it was written many years since." 4. It was written not for publication, but in the way of private and amicable discussion with a friend,-a "Reverend" friend,with whom the writer had opportunities of personal conference. It is in the form of an epistle, commencing thus:-" Reverend Sir, The Sparrow being now gone, and one day's respite from public labors on the Lord's day falling to me in course, I have sought out your writing, and have reviewed it, and find (as I formerly expressed to yourself) that the question is mis-stated by you." p. 3. So at the conclusion," If you remain unsatisfied, I shall desire that you will plainly, and lovingly, and impartially weigh the ground of my judgment, and communicate yours, if any remain against it, in writing. For though much writing be wearisome unto me, yet I find it the safer way for me." p. 24. 5. It does not appear to have been written with any purpose of vindicating a constitution already established, but rather with reference to a question of practical moment not then decided. The manifest design of the whole composition is inquiry and discussion, rather than the vindication of something already determined. "The true state of the question" is declared thus:-" Whether a new plantation, where all, or the most considerable part of the free planters profess their purpose and desire of securing to themselves and to their posterity the pure and peaceable enjoyment of Christ's ordinances, whether, I say, such planters are bound, in laying the foundations of Church and civil State, to take order that all the free burgesses be such as are in fellowship of the Church or Churches which are or may be gathered according to Christ; and that those free burgesses have the only power of choosing from among themselves civil magistrates, and men to be entrusted with transacting all public affairs of importance according to the rules and directions of Scripture?" The writer proceeds, "I hold the affirmative part of this question, upon this ground, that this course will most conduce to the good of both states; and by consequence to the common welfare of all, whereunto all men are bound principally to attend in laying the foundations of a commonwealth, lest posterity rue the first miscarriages when it will be too late to redress them," &c. "The Lord awaken us to look to it in time, and send us his light and truth to lead us into the safest way in these beginnings." p. 14. So in another place, "We plead for this order to be set in civil affairs, that such a course may be taken as may best secure to ourselves and our posterities the faithful managing of civil government for the common welfare of all." p. 12. Now the principle for which this discourse contends, was settled in Massachusetts before Mr. Cotton came to New England, and I believe was never afterwards, in his life-time, made the subject of such questionings as would lead to the writing of such an epistle. From these various indications it seems altogether probable, not only that this tract was written, as Mather affirms, by Davenport; but also that it was written at Quinnipiack sometime between April 15th, 1638, and June 4th, 1639, while the constitution of New Haven was not yet formed. It seems probable also, that the letter was addressed to Samuel Eaton, who during that period was Davenport's assistant in the work of the ministry, and who, as Mather says, dissented from his colleague "about the narrow terms and forms of civil government" adopted in this colony. Nor will it be thought fanciful to suppose that this letter was one of "the former passages between them two," of which Mr. Davenport gave a short relation" at the meeting in Mr. Newman's barn "on the fourth day of the fourth month, called June, 1639," when one man whose name is not recorded, objected to the principle, that "free burgesses should be chosen out of the church members." Another inquiry suggests itself. The tract was written when the departure of "the Sparrow" concurring with one Sabbath's respite from preaching, gave the author time for such a study. Are there any traces elsewhere of "the Sparrow?" In 1622, a ship of that name appears in the history of Plymouth. She was sent over by Mr. Thomas Weston of London, and having been employed on a fishing voyage at the east, was retained at Weston's ill-starred plantation of Wessagussett. (Davis's Morton, 78. Baylies' Memoir of Plymouth, 92, 95.) That the same Sparrow was afloat, and on the New England coast as late as 1638, let others affirm or deny. But what had the author of this tract to do with the Sparrow? If it be sup |