and women of the Mayflower. It is not of them that I, a descendant
of the "sect called Quakers," have reason to complain in the matter of
persecution. A generation which came after them, with less piety and
more bigotry, is especially responsible for the little unpleasantness
referred to; and the sufferers from it scarcely need any present
championship. They certainly did not wait altogether for the revenges of
posterity. If they lost their ears, it is satisfactory to remember that
they made those of their mutilators tingle with a rhetoric more sharp
than polite.

A worthy New England deacon once described a brother in the church as a
very good man Godward, but rather hard man-ward. It cannot be denied
that some very satisfactory steps have been taken in the latter
direction, at least, since the days of the Pilgrims. Our age is tolerant
of creed and dogma, broader in its sympathies, more keenly sensitive to
temporal need, and, practically recognizing the brotherhood of the race,
wherever a cry of suffering is heard its response is quick and generous.
It has abolished slavery, and is lifting woman from world-old degradation
to equality with man before the law. Our criminal codes no longer embody
the maxim of barbarism, "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," but
have regard not only for the safety of the community, but to the reform
and well-being of the criminal. All the more, however, for this amiable
tenderness do we need the counterpoise of a strong sense of justice.
With our sympathy for the wrong-doer we need the old Puritan and Quaker
hatred of wrongdoing; with our just tolerance of men and opinions a
righteous abhorrence of sin. All the more for the sweet humanities and
Christian liberalism which, in drawing men nearer to each other, are
increasing the sum of social influences for good or evil, we need the
bracing atmosphere, healthful, if austere, of the old moralities.
Individual and social duties are quite as imperative now as when they
were minutely specified in statute-books and enforced by penalties no
longer admissible. It is well that stocks, whipping-post, and ducking-
stool are now only matters of tradition; but the honest reprobation of
vice and crime which they symbolized should by no means perish with them.
The true life of a nation is in its personal morality, and no excellence
of constitution and laws can avail much if the people lack purity and
integrity. Culture, art, refinement,