What Sets Us Apart

What Sets Us Apart

I NEVER view the thriving villages of New England, which speak so forcibly to the heart, of happiness and prosperity, without feeling a glow of national pride, as I say, "this is my own, my native land." A long train of associations are connected with her picturesque rivers, as they repose in their peaceful loveliness, the broad and sparkling mirror of the heavens, -- and with the cultivated environs of her busy cities, which seem every where blushing into a perfect Eden of fruit and flowers. The remembrance of what we have been, comes rushing on the heart in powerful and happy contrast.

In most nations the path of antiquity is shrouded in darkness, rendered more visible by the wild, fantastic light of fable; but with us, the vista of time is luminous to its remotest point. Each succeeding year has left its footsteps distinct upon the soil, and the cold dew of our chilling dawn is still visible beneath the mid-day sun. Two centuries only have elapsed, since our most beautiful villages reposed in the undisturbed grandeur of nature; -- when the scenes now rendered classic by literary associations, or resounding with the din of commerce, echoed nought but the song of the hunter, or the fleet tread of the wild deer.

God was here in his holy temple, and the whole earth kept silence before him! But the voice of prayer was soon to be heard in the desert. The sun, which for ages beyond the memory of man had gazed on the strange, fearful worship of the Great Spirit of the wilderness, was soon to shed its splendor upon the altars of the living God. That light, which had arisen amid the darkness of Europe, stretched its long, luminous track across the Atlantic, till the summits of the western world became tinged with its brightness. During many long, long ages of gloom and corruption, it seemed as if the pure flame of religion was every where quenched in blood; -- but the watchful vestal had kept the sacred flame still burning deeply and fervently. Men, stern and unyielding, brought it hither in their own bosom, and amid desolation and poverty they kindled it on the shrine of Jevovah.

In this enlightened and liberal age, it is perhaps too fashionable to look back upon those early sufferers in the cause of the Reformation, as a band of dark, discontented bigots. Without doubt, there were many broad, deep shadows in their characters, but there was likewise bold and powerful light. The peculiarities of their situation occasioned most of their faults, and atoned for them. They were struck off from a learned, opulent, and powerful nation, under circumstances which goaded and lacerated them almost to ferocity; -- and it is no wonder that men who fled from oppression in their own country, to all the hardships of a remote and dreary province, should have exhibited a deep mixture of exclusive, bitter, and morose ...