In that tremendous drama Massachusetts has played her part; it may be said
to have made her intellectual life; and it is the passion of the combat
which gives an interest at once so sombre and so romantic to her story.
In the tempest of the Reformation a handful of the sternest rebels were
cast upon the bleak New England coast, and the fervor of that devotion
which led them into the wilderness inspired them with the dream of
reproducing the institutions of God's chosen people, a picture of which
they believed was divinely preserved for their guidance in the Bible. What
they did in reality was to surrender their new commonwealth to their
priests. Yet they were a race in whose bone and blood the spirit of free
thought was bred; the impulse which had goaded them to reject the Roman
dogmas was quick within them still, and revolt against the ecclesiastical
yoke was certain. The clergy upon their side trod their appointed path
with the precision of machines, and, constrained by an inexorable destiny,
they took that position of antagonism to liberal thought which has become
typical of their order. And the struggles and the agony by which this poor
and isolated community freed itself from its gloomy bondage, the means by
which it secularized its education and its government, won for itself the
blessing of free thought and speech, and matured a system of
constitutional liberty which has been the foundation of the American
Union, rise in dignity to one of the supreme efforts of mankind.
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