"Therefore sprang there, even of one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as the sand which is by the seashore, innumerable." The unfashionable thinker of to-day sets the fashion for the age which is to come. Let every lonely, conscientious, God-seeking soul remember this and take courage. The Pilgrim Fathers were unfashionable people in their time. They were Protestants of the Protestants, regarded as ultraists, outsiders, and fanatics, by all the respectable people. Nothing suited them. They wished for perfect independence in the Church and State, perfect freedom of thought and life. They could find this nowhere in Europe, so they came to look for it in America. They took their wives and little ones, and came to live among the wolves and Indians rather than obey the bishops, or submit to creeds they did not believe. Half of them died the first winter. But they had faith in God. Like Abraham, they went out, not knowing whither they went, and sojourning in the land of promise as in a strange country. They were poor, hungry, and cold; they had little for the comfort of their wives and children; but they were free. They were able to worship God as they would, and to teach their children what they believed the truth. So from that little seed has come a great tree, whose branches reach to the river and its roots to the sea. From their unfashionable puritanic conscience has come this great Union with its republican institutions; its free press, free schools, free churches, free speech; the war of independence; the war for union and freedom. All of these lay hidden in that small seed, fidelity to truth, as the vast elm whose branches shade an acre of ground, and wave in the sunlight in grace and beauty for a hundred years, once lay in a little, delicate, winged seed, which the summer's air carried on its lightest breath. The great American Union "enthroned between its subject seas," the pillar of modern democracy, lay rooted in that little unpopular, unfashionable colony which landed on Plymouth Rock two hundred and fifty years. ago, "Ready to faint, but bearing on The ark of freedom, and of God." One of the finest figures in the "Paradise Lost" is that of Abdiel, the one angel who was not carried away in the great rebellion against God which Satan originated and organized : "Among innumerable false, unmoved, Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified, His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal ; Nor number, nor example, with him wrought To swerve from truth, nor change his constant mind Abdiel, this "dreadless angel," was a Puritan, who could not be moved by numerical majorities. He was of those who say, "One man, with truth on his side, is a majority." Of this class of men - the seed of the Puritans New England has never been destitute. She has always had those who were willing to stand up against majorities in behalf of justice, truth, and freedom. Boston, our mother city, has never been without these independent, uncompromising men. After the massacre on the 5th of March, Josiah Quincy, Jr., the Revolutionary patriot, that soul of flame, who had been the life of the opposition to England, was asked to defend the British soldiers, and did so. That was a very unfashionable and unpopular act, and even his own father remonstrated with him for doing it; but he said, "It is my duty to defend those who come to me for counsel and aid." His son, the next Josiah Quincy, inherited his father's spirit. As Representative from Boston in Congress, he opposed the slaveholding South and their allies at the North, and moved the impeachment of Thomas Jefferson, voting alone for his own motion. John Quincy Adams did not represent Boston in Congress, but he was a Puritan of the Puritans. He had in him a piece of Plymouth Rock. After occupying the Presidential chair, he went back to Congress, and there stood for years defending Northern rights against Southern aggression. It was very unfashionable in those days to oppose the slave holders. On one memorable occasion John Quincy Adams stood alone three days, the object of abuse, and exposed to the attacks of the whole body of Southern Representatives. - "Let the single man plant himself on his instincts," says Emerson, "and the huge world will come round to him." The early Antislavery men planted themselves on their instinct of justice. They had everything else against them, both the great political parties, both houses of Congress, the Presidents for many terms, the Supreme Court, the newspapers, the commercial community, all fashionable society, and the mob. They had nothing on their side but God and the truth; but, in the brief life of one generation they have seen all come round to them, both political parties, President, Congress, Supreme Court. It is difficult not to go with the multitude to do evil. It is hard for a young man to stand firm against the temptations which beset him, leading him into wrong, hard to resist the allurements of pleasure, and to stand firm on principle. A boy learns to smoke, to drink, to swear, not because he likes any of these habits, but because it is the fashion, because it is thought manly, because his companions do so. Honor to the boy brave enough to resist such allurements ! The young man with a modest salary dresses expensively, drives fast horses, gambles, because it is the fashion; and, in order to meet these expenses, robs his employer, and perhaps goes to prison or runs away. It is not because he really enjoys this fast life, but because his companions are doing these things. It is the fashion. But remember that eccentricity is not necessarily independence. An eccentric man wastes his strength in opposing superficial fashions, matters of no consequence. Some reformers make a great point of arguing against fashions of dress, of food, and the like, and think to save the world by eating a particular kind of bread, or by adopting some very ugly costume. There are others who attack the most firmly rooted customs of society, - directing their assaults against property, the home, marriage, wages, interest, which is very much like Don Quixote's charge against the windmill. The great arins of the mill, going steadily round and round, threw the poor knight one way and his horse the other, and continued to revolve, quite unconscious of the assault. Such has been the result of the attacks by communists and socialists on property, marriage, and religion. These institutions are not fashions which pass away, but the gradual outcome of human nature after long centuries of development. Therefore remember that eccentricity is not always independence. The eccentric man goes out of his way in the love of singularity. He is unfashionable in things of no consequence; he is a protestant about trifles. It seems to me unwise to lay stress on ritual and ceremony, on crosses and candles, and little boys in white gowns chanting |