paigns to be fought out against the ferocity and craft of savage
enemies wielded by the strategy of Christian neighbors; but the severest
stress of the Indian wars was passed. In different degrees and according
to curiously diverse types, the institutions of a Christian civilization
were becoming settled.

In the course of this hundred years the political organization of these
various colonies had been drawn into an approach to uniformity. In every
one of them, excepting Connecticut and Rhode Island, the royal or
proprietary government was represented by a governor and his staff,
appointed from England, and furnishing a point of contact which was in
every case and all the time a point of friction and irritation between
the colony and the mother country. The reckless laxity of the early
Stuart charters, which permitted the creation of practically independent
democratic republics with churches free from the English hierarchy, was
succeeded, under the House of Orange, by something that looked like a
statesmanlike care for the prerogatives of the crown and the privileges
of the English church. Throughout the colonies, at every viceregal
residence, it was understood that this church, even where it was not
established by law, was the favored official and court church. But
inasmuch as the royal governors were officially odious to the people,
and at the same time in many cases men of despicable personal character,
their influence did little more than create a little "sect of the
Herodians" within the range of their patronage. But though it gave no
real advantage to the preferred church, it was effective (as in
Massachusetts) in breaking down the exclusive pretensions of other
organizations.

The Massachusetts theocracy, so called, fell with the revocation of the
charter by James II. It had stood for nearly fifty years--long enough to
accomplish the main end of that Nationalist principle which the
Puritans, notwithstanding their fraternizing with the Pilgrim
Separatists, had never let go. The organization of the church throughout
New England, excepting Rhode Island, had gone forward in even step with
the advance of population. Two rules had with these colonists the force
of axioms: first, that it was the duty of every town, as a Christian
community, to sustain the town church; secondly, that it was the duty of
every citizen of the town to contribute to this end according to his
ability. The breaking up of the town church by sch