7. Cotton Mather, 1663–1728. Even if almost all the colonial books were written for the grown folk, the children and their future were not forgotten. How to make sure of educated ministers for them and for their children's children was the question. It was settled by the founding of Harvard College in 1636, only sixteen years after the little band of Pilgrims landed at Plymouth. One of its most famous graduates during the colonial days was the Reverend Cotton Mather. He took his degree at fifteen, and three years later he was already so famous for his learning that he received an urgent call to become a pastor in far-away New Haven. He refused, became his father's assistant at the North Church in Boston; and at the North Church he remained for more than forty years. Preaching, however, was but a small part of his work. He had the largest library in the colonies, and he knew it thoroughly. He could write in seven languages; he was deeply interested in science; he kept fasts and vigils innumerable. He was grave and somewhat stern in manner, and people were seldom quite at ease with him; but he had a tender spot in his heart for boys and girls, and whenever he passed through a village, he used to beg a holiday for the children of the place. He was horrified at the severity shown in the schools of the day; and among his own flock of fifteen there was rarely any punishment more severe than to be forbidden to enter his presence.

One

of his sons wrote that their father never rose from the table without first telling them some entertaining story, and that when a child had done some little deed that he knew would please the stately minister, he would run to him, and say, "Now, father, tell me some curious thing."

With all his other occupations, he did an immense amount of writing. Nearly four hundred books and pam

Magnalia

1702.

phlets have been published, and there are still thousands of pages in manuscript. His best-known book is his Magnalia Christi Americana, or The Ecclesiastical History of New England. Like Bede's Christi, Ecclesiastical History, it is much more entertaining than one would think from its ponderous title. Cotton Mather's aim was to record the dealings of God with his chosen people, and the character of those people. He followed the fashion of dropping in bits of Latin and Greek, and making intricate contrasts and comparisons that sometimes remind the reader of John Donne without Donne's genius. He begins the book with an imitation of the Æneid, which he and his early readers probably thought extremely effective. But there is much besides a Virgilian preface in his work. There are enthusiastic descriptions of the men whom he admired, written with many a touch of beauty and sincere tenderness. Then, too, the book is a perfect storehouse of all sorts of wonder-tales: the story of the "ship in the air" which Longfellow made into a rhyme, using often the very words of the old chronicler; that of the twoheaded snake of Newbury, of which Whittier wrote; and many others. Among the pages that bristle with august phrases from the dead languages, we find here and there some simple story like the following, which is told of Winthrop, and which makes us feel that Mather in his wig and bands and Winthrop in his exasperatingly untumbled ruff are not so unlike men of to-day, and would be exceedingly interesting people to know:

In a hard and long Winter, when Wood was very scarce at Boston, a Man gave him a private Information, that a needy Person in his Neighbourhood stole Wood sometimes from his Pile; whereupon the Governour in a seeming Anger did reply, Does he so? I'll take a Course with him; go, call that Man to me, I'll warrant

you I'll cure him of stealing! When the Man came, the Governour considering that if he had Stoln, it was more out of Necessity than Disposition, said unto him, Friend, It is a severe Winter, and I doubt you are but meanly provided for Wood; wherefore I would have you supply yourself at my Wood-Pile till this cold Season be over. And he then Merrily asked his Friends, Whether he had not effectually cured this Man of Stealing his Wood?

8. Samuel Sewall, 1652-1730. During the greater part of Cotton Mather's life an interesting diary was being written by Judge Samuel Sewall. He tells of being comfortable in the stoveless meeting-house, though his ink froze by a good fire at home; of whipping his little Joseph "pretty smartly" for "playing at Prayer-time and eating when Returne Thanks;" of the lady who cruelly refused to bestow her hand upon the eager widower, even though wooed with prodigal munificence by the gift of "one-half pound of sugar almonds, cost three shillings per pound." Though the writings of the honest old Judge cannot strictly be called literature, their frank revelation of everyday life presents too excellent a background for the writings of others to be entirely forgotten.

9. Jonathan Edwards, 1703-1758. In 1730 Judge Sewall died. In that year a young man of twenty-seven was preaching in Northampton who was to become famous for his original, clear, and logical thought and his power to move an audience. He had been a wonder all the days of his life. When he ought to have been playing marbles, he was reading Greek and Latin and Hebrew. He was deeply interested in natural philosophy, and even more deeply in theology. When he was fourteen, he read Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, and declared that it inexpressibly entertained and pleased him.

Such was Jonathan Edwards. He was the greatest clergyman of the first half of the eighteenth century, and some have not feared to call him the "most original and acute thinker yet pro

duced in America." He was quite different from the earlier colonial pastors like Cotton Mather, men who were gazed upon by their flocks with wonder and humble reverence as recognized leaders in religion, learning, and politics. His time was devoted to theology. After twenty-four years in Northampton he went to the little village of Stockbridge and became a missionary to the Indians.

JONATHAN EDWARDS

1703-1758

Then there was such poverty in the Edwards family that fresh, whole sheets of paper were a rare luxury, and the thoughts of the keenest mind in the land were jotted down on the backs of letters or the margins of pamphlets. By and by these thoughts were published in book form. This book was The In

The Inquiry into the Freedom of

the Will, 1754.

quiry into the Freedom of the Will. Then the modest missionary to the Indians became famous among metaphysicians the world over, for in acute, powerful reasoning he had no superior. It is small wonder that Princeton hastened to send a messenger to the little village in the wilderness to offer him the presidency of the college. He accepted the offer, but died after only one month's service.

Unfortunately, the passage of Edwards's writings that is oftenest quoted is from his sermon on "Sinners in the hands of an angry God," wherein even his clearsightedness confuses God's pitying love for the sinner with his hatred of sin. More in harmony with Edwards's natural disposition is his simple, frank description of his boyhood happiness when after many struggles he first began to realize the love of God. He wrote:

The appearance of everything was altered; there seemed to be, as it were, a calm, sweet cast or appearance of divine glory in almost everything. God's excellency, his wisdom, his purity and love, seemed to appear in everything: in the sun, moon, and stars; in the clouds and blue sky; in the grass, flowers, trees; in the water and all nature; which used greatly to fix my mind. I often used to sit and view the moon for a long time; and in the day spent much time in viewing the clouds and sky, to behold the sweet glory of God in these things: in the mean time, singing forth, with a low voice, my contemplations of the Creator and Redeemer. And scarce anything, among all the works of nature, was so sweet to me as thunder and lightning; formerly nothing had been so terrible to me. Before, I used to be uncommonly terrified with thunder, and to be struck with terror when I saw a thunder-storm rising; but now, on the contrary, it rejoiced me. I felt God, if I may so speak, at the first appearance of a thunder-storm; and used to take the opportunity, at such times, to fix myself in order to view the clouds, and see the lightnings play, and hear the majestic and awful voice of God's thunder.

10. Minor writers. Such was the literature of our colonial days. Few names can be mentioned, but there were scores of minor writers. There was Roger Williams, that lover of peace and arouser of contention; John Eliot, one of the three manufacturers of the Bay Psalm Book, whose Indian Bible is a part of literature, if not of American literature. There was the witty grumbler, Nathaniel Ward, the "Simple Cobler of Agawam;" William Byrd, who described so graphically the dangers