thorne and Whittier
and Longfellow--all of them sound antiquarians, though none of them in
sympathy with the theology of Puritanism--have described in fit terms
the bareness of the New England meeting-house. What intellectual
severity and strain was there; what prodigality of learning; what
blazing intensity of devotion; what pathos of women's patience, and of
children, prematurely old, stretched upon the rack of insoluble
problems! What dramas of the soul were played through to the end in
those barn-like buildings, where the musket, perhaps, stood in the
corner of the pew! "How aweful is this place!" must have been murmured
by the lips of all; though there were many who have added, "This is the
gate of Heaven."

The gentler side of colonial religion is winningly portrayed in
Whittier's _Pennsylvania Pilgrim_ and in his imaginary journal of
Margaret Smith. There were sunnier slopes, warmer exposures for the
ripening of the human spirit, in the Southern colonies. Even in New
England there was sporadic revolt from the beginning. The number of
non-church-members increased rapidly after 1700; Franklin as a youth in
Boston admired Cotton Mather's ability, but he did not go to church,
"Sunday being my studying day." Doubtless there were always humorous
sceptics like Mrs. Stowe's delightful Sam Lawson in _Oldtown Folks_.
Lawson's comment on Parson Simpson's service epitomizes two centuries
of New England thinking. "Wal," said Sam, "Parson Simpson's a smart
man; but I tell ye, it's kind o' discouragin'. Why, he said our state
and condition by natur was just like this. We was clear down in a well
fifty feet deep, and the sides all round nothin' but glare ice; but we
was under immediate obligations to get out, 'cause we was free,
voluntary agents. But nobody ever had got out, and nobody would, unless
the Lord reached down and took 'em. And whether he would or not nobody
could tell; it was all sovereignty. He said there wan't one in a
hundred, not one in a thousand,--not one in ten thousand,--that would
be saved. Lordy massy, says I to myself, ef that's so they're any of
'em welcome to my chance. _And so I kind o' ris up and come out._"

Mrs. Stowe's novel is fairly representative of a great mass of
derivative literature which draws its materials from the meeting-house
period of American history. But the direct literature of that period
has passed almost wholly into oblivion. Jonathan Edwards had one of the
finest minds of his c