The _Day of Doom_ is, in the main, its author's vision of judgment day,

and, whatever artistic or theological defects it may have, it undeniably
possesses realism. For instance, several stanzas deal with one of the
most dreadful doctrines of the Puritan faith, that all infants who died
unbaptized entered into eternal torment--a theory that must have
influenced profoundly the happiness and woe of colonial women. The poem
describes for us what was then believed should be the scene on that
final day when young and old, heathen and Christian, saint and sinner,
are called before their God to answer for their conduct in the flesh.
Hear the plea of the infants, who dying, at birth before baptism could
be administered, asked to be relieved from punishment on the grounds
that they have committed no sin.

"If for our own transgression,
or disobedience,
We here did stand at thy left hand,
just were the Recompense;
But Adam's guilt our souls hath spilt,
his fault is charg'd upon us;
And that alone hath overthrown and utterly
undone us."

Pointing out that it was Adam who ate of the tree and that they were
innocent, they ask:

"O great Creator, why was our nature
depraved and forlorn?
Why so defil'd, and made so vil'd,
whilst we were yet unborn?
If it be just, and needs we must
transgressors reckon'd be,
Thy mercy, Lord, to us afford,
which sinners hath set free."

But the Creator answers:

"God doth such doom forbid,
That men should die eternally
for what they never did.
But what you call old Adam's fall,
and only his trespass,
You call amiss to call it his,
both his and yours it was."

The Judge then inquires why, since they would have received the
pleasures and joys which Adam could have given them, the rewards and
blessings, should they hesitate to share his "treason."

"Since then to share in his welfare,
you could have been content,
You may with reason share in his treason,
and in the punishment,
Hence you were born in state forlorn,
with natures so depraved
Death was your due because that you
had thus yourselves behaved.

*       *       *       *       *

"Had you been made in Adam's stead,
you would like things have wrought,
And so into the self-same woe
yourselves and yours have brought."

Then follows a reprimand upon the part of the judge because they should
presume to question His judgments, and to ask for mercy:

"Will you demand grace at my hand,
and challenge what is mine?
Will you teach me whom to set free,
and thus my grace confine.

"You sinners are, and such a share
as sinners may expect;
Such you shall have, for I do save
none but mine own Elect.

"Yet to compare your sin with theirs
who liv'd a longer time,
I do confess yours is much less
though every sin's a crime.

"A crime it is, therefore in bliss
you may not hope to dwell;
But unto you I shall allow
the easiest room in Hell."

Would not this cause anguish to the heart of any mother? Indeed, we
shall never know what intense anxiety the Puritan woman may have
suffered during the few days intervening between the hour of the birth
and the date of the baptism of her infant. It is not surprising,
therefore, that an exceedingly brief period was allowed to elapse before
the babe was taken from its mother's arms and carried through snow and
wind to the desolate church. Judge Sewall, whose _Diary_ covers most of
the years from 1686 to 1725, and who records every petty incident from
the cutting of his finger to the blowing off of the Governor's hat, has
left us these notes on the baptism of some of his fourteen children:

"April 8, 1677. Elizabeth Weeden, the Midwife, brought the infant to
the third Church when Sermon was about half done in the afternoon ...
I named him John." (Five days after birth.)[3] "Sabbath-day, December
13th 1685. Mr. Willard baptizeth my Son lately born, whom I named
Henry." (Four days after birth.)[4] "February 6, 1686-7. Between 3 and
4 P.M. Mr. Willard baptized my Son, whom I named Stephen." (Five days
after birth.)[5]

Little wonder that infant mortality was exceedingly high, especially
when the baptismal service took place on a day as cold as this one
mentioned by Sewall: "Sabbath, Janr. 24 ... This day so cold that the
Sacramental Bread is frozen pretty hard, and rattles sadly as broken
into the Plates."[6] We may take it for granted that the water in the
font was rapidly freezing, if not entirely frozen, and doubtless the
babe, shrinking under the icy touch, felt inclined to give up the
struggle for existence, and decline a further reception into so cold
and forbidding a world. Once more hear a description by the kindly,
but abnormally orthodox old Judge: "Lord's Day, Jany 15, 1715-16. An
extraordinary Cold Storm of Wind and Snow.... Bread was frozen at the
Lord's Table: Though 'twas so Cold, yet John Tuckerman was baptised.
At six a-clock my ink freezes so that I can hardly write by a good
fire in my Wive's Chamber. Yet was very Comfortable at Meeting. Laus
Deo."[7]

But let us pass to other phases of this theology under which the Puritan
woman lived. The God pictured in the _Day of Doom_ not only was of a
cruel and angry nature but was arbitrary beyond modern belief. His wrath
fell according to his caprice upon sinner or saint. We are tempted to
inquire as to the strange mental process that could have led any human
being to believe in such a Creator. Regardless of doctrine, creed, or
theology, we cannot totally dissociate our earthly mental condition from
that in the future state; we cannot refuse to believe that we shall have
the same intelligent mind, and the same ability to understand, perceive,
and love. Apparently, however, the Puritan found no difficulty in
believing that the future existence entailed an entire change in the
principles of love and in the emotions of sympathy and pity.

"He that was erst a husband pierc'd
with sense of wife's distress,
Whose tender heart did bear a part
of all her grievances.
Shall mourn no more as heretofore,
because of her ill plight,
Although he see her now to be
a damn'd forsaken wight.

"The tender mother will own no other
of all her num'rous brood
But such as stand at Christ's right hand,
acquitted through his Blood.
The pious father had now much rather
his graceless son should lie
In hell with devils, for all his evils,
burning eternally."

(_Day of Doom._)

But we do not have to trust to Michael Wigglesworth's poem alone for a
realistic conception of the God and the religion of the Puritans. It is
in the sermons of the day that we discover a still more unbending,
harsh, and hideous view of the Creator and his characteristics. In the
thunderings of Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards, we, like the colonial
women who sat so meekly in the high, hard benches, may fairly smell the
brimstone of the Nether World. Why, exclaims Jonathan Edwards in his
sermon, _The Eternity of Hell Torments_:

"Do but consider what it is to suffer extreme torment forever and ever;
to suffer it day and night, from one day to another, from one year to
another, from one age to another, from one thousand ages to another, and
so, adding age to age, and thousands to thousands, in pain, in wailing
and lamenting, groaning and shrieking, and gnashing your teeth; with
your souls full of dreadful grief and amazement, with your bodies and
every member full of racking torture, without any possibility of
getting ease; without any possibility of moving God to pity by your
cries; without any possibility of hiding yourselves from him.... How
dismal will it be, when you are under these racking torments, to know
assuredly that you never, never shall be delivered from them; to have no
hope; when you shall wish that you might but be turned into nothing, but
shall have no hope of it; when you shall wish that you might be turned
into a toad or a serpent, but shall have no hope of it; when you would
rejoice, if you might but have any relief, after you shall have endured
these torments millions of ages, but shall have no hope of it; when
after you shall have worn out the age of the sun, moon, and stars, in
your dolorous groans and lamentations, without any rest day or night,
when after you shall have worn out a thousand more such ages, yet you
shall have no hope, but shall know that you are not one whit nearer to
the end of your torments; but that still there are the same groans, the
same shrieks, the same doleful cries, incessantly to be made by you, and
that the smoke of your torment shall still ascend up, forever and ever;
and that your souls, which shall have been agitated with the wrath of
God all this while, yet will still exist to bear more wrath; your
bodies, which shall have been burning and roasting all this while in
these glowing flames, yet shall not have been consumed, but will remain
to roast through an eternity yet, which will not have been at all
shortened by what shall have been past."

When we remember that to the Puritan man, woman, or child the message of
the preacher meant the message of God, we may imagine what effect such
words had on a colonial congregation. To the overwrought nerves of many
a Puritan woman, taught to believe meekly the doctrines of her father,
and weakened in body by ceaseless childbearing and unending toil, such a
picture must indeed have been terrifying. And the God that she and her
husband heard described Sabbath after Sabbath was not only heartily
willing to condemn man to eternal torment but capable of enjoying the
tortures of the damned, and gloating in strange joy over the writhings
of the condemned. Is it any wonder that in the midst of Jonathan
Edward's sermon, _Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God_, men and women
sprang to their feet and shrieked in anguish, "What shall we do to be
saved?"

"The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a
spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you and is
dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks
upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire; he is
of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten
thousand times as abominable in his eyes, as the most hateful and
venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than
ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand
that holds you from falling into the fire every moment; it is ascribed
to nothing else that you did not go to hell the last night; that you was
suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to
sleep; and there is no other reason to be given why you have not dropped
into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God's hand has held
you up; there is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to
hell, since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure
eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship: yea,
there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not
this very moment drop down into hell."

Under such teachings the girl of colonial New England grew into
womanhood; with such thoughts in mind she saw her children go down into
the grave; with such forebodings she herself passed out into an
uncertain Hereafter. Nor was there any escape from such sermons; for
church attendance was for many years compulsory, and even when not
compulsory, was essential for those who did not wish to be politically
and socially ostracized. The preachers were not, of course, required to
give proof for their declarations; they might well have announced, "Thus
saith the Lord," but they preferred to enter into disquisitions
bristling with arguments and so-called logical deductions. For instance,
note in Edwards' sermon, _Why Saints in Glory will Rejoice to see the
Torments of the Damned_, the chain of reasoning leading to the
conclusion that those enthroned in heaven shall find joy in the unending
torture of their less fortunate neighbors:

"They will rejoice in seeing the _justice_ of God glorified in the
sufferings of the damned. The misery of the damned, dreadful as it is,
is but what justice requires. They in heaven will see and know it much
more clearly than any of us do here. They will see how perfectly just
and righteous their punishment is and therefore how properly inflicted
by the supreme Governor of the world.... They will rejoice when they see
him who is their Father and eternal portion so glorious in his justice.
The sight of this strict and immutable justice of God will render him
amiable and adorable in their eyes. It will occasion rejoicing in them,
as they will have the greater sense of _their own happiness_, by seeing
the contrary misery. It is the nature of pleasure and pain, of happiness
and misery, greatly to heighten the sense of each other.... When they
shall see how miserable others of their fellow-creatures are, who were
naturally in the same circumstances with themselves; when they shall see
the smoke of their torment, and the raging of the flames of their
burning, and hear their dolorous shrieks and cries, and consider that
they in the meantime are in the most blissful state, and shall surely be
in it to all eternity; how will they rejoice!... When they shall see the
dreadful miseries of the damned, and consider that they deserved the
same misery, and that it was sovereign grace, and nothing else, which
made them so much to differ from the damned, that if it had not been for
that, they would have been in the same condition; but that God from all
eternity was pleased to set his love upon them, that Christ hath laid
down his life for them, and hath made them thus gloriously happy
forever, O how will they adore that dying love of Christ, which has
redeemed them from so great a misery, and purchased for them so great
happiness, and has so distinguished them from others of their
fellow-creatures!"

It was a strange creed that led men to teach such theories. And when we
learn that Jonathan Edwards was a man of singular gentleness and
kind-heartedness, we realize that it must have tortured him to preach
such doctrines, but that he believed it his sacred duty to do so.

The religion, however, that the Puritan woman imbibed from girlhood to
old age went further than this; it taught the theory of a personal
devil. To the New England colonists Satan was a very real individual
capable of taking to himself a physical form with the proverbial tail,
horns, and hoofs. Hear what Cotton Mather, one of the most eminent
divines of early Massachusetts, has to say in his _Memorable
Providences_ about this highly personal Satan: "There is both a God and
a Devil and Witchcraft: That there is no out-ward Affliction, but what
God may (and sometimes doth) permit Satan to trouble his people withal:
That the Malice of Satan and his Instruments, is very great against the
Children of God: That the clearest Gospel-Light shining in a place, will
not keep some from entering hellish Contracts with infernal Spirits:
That Prayer is a powerful and effectual Remedy against the malicious
practices of Devils and those in Covenant with them."[8]

And His Satanic Majesty had legions of followers, equally insistent on
tormenting humanity. In _The Wonders of the Invisible World_, published
in 1692, Mather proves that there is a devil and that the being has
specific attributes, powers, and limitations:

"A devil is a fallen angel, an angel fallen from the fear and
love of God, and from all celestial glories; but fallen to all
manner of wretchedness and cursedness.... There are multitudes,
multitudes, in the valley of destruction, where the devils are!
When we speak of the devil, 'tis a name of multitude.... The
devils they swarm about us, like the frogs of Egypt, in the most
retired of our chambers. Are we at our boards? beds? There will
be devils to tempt us into carnality. Are we in our shops? There
will be devils to tempt us into dishonesty. Yea, though we get
into the church of God, there will be devils to haunt us in the
very temple itself, and there tempt us to manifold misbehaviors.
I am verily persuaded that there are very few human affairs
whereinto some devils are not insinuated. There is not so much as
a journey intended, but Satan will have an hand in hindering or
furthering of it."

"...'Tis to be supposed, that there is a sort of arbitrary, even
military government, among the devils.... These devils have a
prince over them, who is king over the children of pride. 'Tis
probable that the devil, who was the ringleader of that mutinous
and rebellious crew which first shook off the authority of God,
is now the general of those hellish armies; our Lord that
conquered him has told us the name of him; 'tis Belzebub; 'tis he
that is the devil and the rest are his angels, or his
soldiers.... 'Tis to be supposed that some devils are more
peculiarly commission'd, and perhaps qualify'd, for some
countries, while others are for others.... It is not likely that
every devil does know every language; or that every devil can do
every mischief. 'Tis possible that the experience, or, if I may
call it so, the education of all devils is not alike, and that
there may be some difference in their abilities...."

What was naturally the effect of such a faith upon the sensitive nerves
of the women of those days? Viewed in its larger aspects this was an
objective, not a subjective religion. It could but make the sensitive
soul super-sensitive, introspective, morbidly alive to uncanny and weird
suggestions, and strangely afraid of the temptation of enjoying earthly
pleasures. Its followers dared not allow themselves to become deeply
attached to anything temporal; for such an emotion was the device of the
devil, and God would surely remove the object of such affection. Whether
through anger or jealousy or kindness, the Creator did this, the Puritan
woman seems not to have stopped to consider; her belief was sufficient
that earthly desires and even natural love must be repressed. Winthrop,
a staunch supporter of colonial New England creeds as well as of
independence, gives us an example of God's actions in such a matter: "A
godly woman of the church of Boston, dwelling sometime in London,
brought with her a parcel of very fine linen of great value, which she
set her heart too much upon, and had been at charge to have it all newly
washed, and curiously folded and pressed, and so left it in press in her
parlor over night." Through the carelessness of a servant, the package
caught on fire and was totally destroyed. "But it pleased God that the
loss of this linen did her much good, both in taking off her heart from
worldly comforts, and in preparing her for a far greater affliction by
the untimely death of her husband...."[9]

Especially did this doctrine apply to the love of human beings. How
often must it have grieved the Puritan mother to realize that she must
exercise unceasing care lest she love her children too intensely! For
the passionate love of a mother for her babe was but a rash temptation
to an ever-watchful and ever-jealous God to snatch the little one away.
Preachers declared it in the pulpit, and writers emphasized it in their
books; the trusting and faithful woman dared not believe otherwise.
Once more we may turn to Winthrop for proof of this terrifying doctrine:

"God will be sanctified in them that come near him. Two others were the
children of one of the Church of Boston. While their parents were at the
lecture, the boy (being about seven years of age), having a small staff
in his hand, ran down upon the ice towards a boat he saw, and the ice
breaking, he fell in, but his staff kept him up, till his sister, about
fourteen years old, ran down to save her brother (though there were four
men at hand, and called to her not to go, being themselves hasting to
save him) and so drowned herself and him also, being past recovery ere
the men could come at them, and could easily reach ground with their
feet. The parents had no more sons, and confessed they had been too
indulgent towards him, and had set their hearts overmuch upon him."[10]

And again, what mother could be certain that punishment for her own
petty errors might not be wreaked upon her innocent child? For the faith
of the day did not demand that the sinner receive upon himself the
recompense for his deeds; the mighty Ruler above could and would
arbitrarily choose as the victim the offspring of an erring parent. Says
Winthrop in the _History of New England_, mentioned above:

"This puts me in mind of another child very strangely drowned a little
before winter. The parents were also members of the church of Boston.
The father had undertaken to maintain the mill-dam, and being at work
upon it (with some help he had hired), in the afternoon of the last day
of the week, night came upon them before they had finished what they
intended, and his conscience began to put him in mind of the Lord's day,
and he was troubled, yet went on and wrought an hour within night. The
next day, after evening exercise, and after they had supped, the mother
put two children to bed in the room where themselves did lie, and they
went out to visit a neighbor. When they returned, they continued about
an hour in the room, and missed not the child, but then the mother going
to the bed, and not finding her youngest child (a daughter about five
years of age), after much search she found it drowned in a well in her
cellar; which was very observable, as by a special hand of God, that the
child should go out of that room into another in the dark, and then fall
down at a trap-door, or go down the stairs, and so into the well in the
farther end of the cellar, the top of the well and the water being even
with the ground. But the father, freely in the open congregation, did
acknowledge it the righteous hand of God for his profaning his holy day
against the checks of his own conscience."

There was a certain amount of pitiable egotism in all this. Seemingly
God had very little to do except watch the Puritans. It reminds one of
the two resolutions tradition says that some Puritan leader suggested:
Resolved, firstly, that the saints shall inherit the earth; resolved,
secondly, that we are the saints. A supernatural or divine explanation
seems to have been sought for all events; natural causes were too
frequently ignored. The super-sensitive almost morbid nature resulting
from such an attitude caused far-fetched hypotheses; God was in every
incident and every act or accident. We may turn again to Winthrop's
_History_ for an illustration:

"1648. The synod met at Cambridge. Mr. Allen preached. It fell out,
about the midst of his sermon, there came a snake into the seat where
many elders sate behind the preacher. Divers elders shifted from it, but
Mr. Thomson, one of the elders of Braintree, (a man of much faith) trod
upon the head of it, until it was killed. This being so remarkable, and
nothing falling out but by divine providence, it is out of doubt, the
Lord discovered somewhat of his mind in it. The serpent is the devil;
the synod, the representative of the churches of Christ in New England.
The devil had formerly and lately attempted their disturbance and
dissolution; but their faith in the seed of the woman overcame him and
crushed his head."

There was a further belief that God in hasty anger often wreaked instant
vengeance upon those who displeased Him, and this doctrine doubtless
kept many a Puritan in constant dread lest the hour of retribution
should come upon him without warning. How often the mother of those days
must have admonished in all sincerity her child not to do this or that
lest God strike the sudden blow of death in retribution. Numerous indeed
are the examples presented of sinners who paid thus abruptly the penalty
for transgression. Let Increase Mather speak through his _Essay for the
Recording of Illustrious Providences_:

"The hand of God was very remarkable in that which came to pass in the
Narragansett country in New England, not many weeks since; for I have
good information, that on August 28, 1683, a man there (viz. Samuel
Wilson) having caused his dog to mischief his neighbor's cattle was
blamed for his so doing. He denied the fact with imprecations, wishing
that he might never stir from that place if he had so done. His neighbor
being troubled at his denying the truth, reproved him, and told him he
did very ill to deny what his conscience knew to be truth. The atheist
thereupon used the name of God in his imprecations, saying, 'He wished
to God he might never stir out of that place, if he had done that which
he was charged with.' The words were scarce out of his mouth before he
sunk down dead, and never stirred more; a son-in-law of his standing by
and catching him as he fell to the ground."

And if further proof of the swiftness with which God may act is desired,
Increase Mather's _Illustrious Providences_ may again be cited: "A thing
not unlike this happened (though not in New England yet) in America,
about a year ago; for in September, 1682, a man at the Isle of
Providence, belonging to a vessel, whereof one Wollery was master, being
charged with some deceit in a matter that had been committed to him, in
order to his own vindication, horridly wished 'that the devil might put
out his eyes if he had done as was suspected concerning him.' That very
night a rheum fell into his eyes so that within a few days he became
stark blind. His company being astonished at the Divine hand which thus
conspicuously and signally appeared, put him ashore at Providence, and
left him there. A physician being desired to undertake his cure, hearing
how he came to lose his sight, refused to meddle with him. This account
I lately received from credible persons, who knew and have often seen
the man whom the devil (according to his own wicked wish) made blind,
through the dreadful and righteous judgment of God."


_III. Inherited Nervousness_

In all ages it would seem that woman has more readily accepted the
teachings of her elders and has taken to heart more earnestly the
doctrines of new religions, however strange or novel, than has man. It
was so in the days of Christ; it is true in our own era of Christian
Science, Theosophy, and New Thought. The message that fell from the lips
of the fanatically zealous preachers of colonial times sank deep into
the hearts of New England women. Its impression was sharp and abiding,
and the sensitive mother transmitted her fears and dread to her child.
Timid girls, inheriting a super-conscious realization of human defects,
and hearing from babyhood the terrifying doctrines, grew also into a
womanhood noticeable for overwrought nerves and depressed spirits.
Timid, shrinking Betty Sewall, daughter of Judge Sewall, was troubled
all the days of her life with qualms about the state of her soul, was
hysterical as a child, wretched in her mature years, and depressed in
soul at the hour of her departure. In his famous diary her father makes
this note about her when she was about five years of age: "It falls to
my daughter Elizabeth's Share to read the 24 of Isaiah which she doth
with many Tears not being very well, and the Contents of the Chapter and
Sympathy with her draw Tears from me also."

A writer of our own day, Alice Morse Earle, has well expressed our
opinion when she says in her _Child Life in Colonial Days_: "The
terrible verses telling of God's judgment on the land, of fear of the
pit, of the snare, of emptiness and waste, of destruction and
desolation, must have sunk deep into the heart of the sick child, and
produced the condition shown by this entry when she was a few years
older: 'When I came in, past 7 at night, my wife met me in the Entry and
told me Betty had surprised them. I was surprised with the Abruptness of
the Relation. It seems Betty Sewall had given some signs of dejection
and sorrow; but a little while after dinner she burst into an amazing
cry which caus'd all the family to cry too. Her mother ask'd the Reason,
she gave none; at last said she was afraid she should go to Hell, her
Sins were not pardon'd. She was first wounded by my reading a Sermon of
Mr. Norton's; Text, Ye shall seek me and shall not find me. And these
words in the Sermon, Ye shall seek me and die in your Sins, ran in her
Mind and terrified her greatly. And staying at home, she read out of Mr.
Cotton Mather--Why hath Satan filled thy Heart? which increas'd her
Fear. Her Mother asked her whether she pray'd. She answered Yes, but
fear'd her prayers were not heard, because her sins were not
pardoned.'"[11]

We may well imagine the anguish of Betty Sewall's mother. And yet
neither that mother, whose life had been gloomy enough under the same
religion, nor the father who had led his child into distress by holding
before her her sinful condition, could offer any genuine comfort. Miss
Earle has summarized with briefness and force the results of such
training: "A frightened child, a retiring girl, a vacillating
sweetheart, an unwilling bride, she became the mother of eight children;
but always suffered from morbid introspection, and overwhelming fear of
death and the future life, until at the age of thirty-five her father
sadly wrote, 'God has delivered her now from all her fears.'"[12]

According to our modern conception of what child life should consist of,
the existence of the Puritan girl must have been darkened from early
infancy by such a creed. Only the indomitable desire of the human being
to survive, and the capacity of the human spirit under the pressure of
daily duties to thrust back into the subconscious mind its dread or
terror, could enable man or woman to withstand the physical and mental
strain of the theories hurled down so sternly and so confidently from
the colonial pulpit. Cotton Mather in his _Diary_ records this incident
when his daughter was but four years old: "I took my little daughter
Katy into my Study and then I told my child I am to dye Shortly and she
must, when I am Dead, remember Everything I now said unto her. I sett
before her the sinful Condition of her Nature, and I charged her to pray
in Secret Places every Day. That God for the sake of Jesus Christ would
give her a New Heart. I gave her to understand that when I am taken from
her she must look to meet with more humbling Afflictions than she does
now she has a Tender Father to provide for her."

Infinite pity we may well have for those stern parents who, faithful to
what they considered their duty, missed so much of the sanity, sweetness
and joy of life, and thrust upon their babes, whose days should have
been filled with love and light and play, the dread of death and hell
and eternal damnation. It is with a touch of irony that we read that
Mather survived by thirty years this child whose infant mind was
tortured with visions of the grave. Yet a strange sort of pride seems to
have been taken in the capacity of children to imbibe such gloomy
theological theories and in the ability to repeat, parrotlike, the
oft-repeated doctrines of inherent sinfulness. One babe, two years old,
was able "savingly to understand the Mysteries of Redemption"; another
of the same age was "a dear lover of faithful ministers"; Anne
Greenwich, who, we are not surprised to discover, died at the age of
five, "discoursed most astonishingly of great mysteries"; Daniel
Bradley, when three years old, had an "impression and inquisition of the
state of souls after death"; Elizabeth Butcher, when only two and a half
years old, would ask herself as she lay in her cradle, "What is my
corrupt nature?" and would answer herself with the quotation, "It is
empty of grace, bent unto sin, and only to sin, and that continually."
With such spiritual food were our ancestors fed--sometimes to the
eternal undoing of their posterity's physical and mental welfare.


_IV. Woman's Day of Rest_

It is possible that the Puritan woman gained one very material blessing
from the religion of her day; she was relieved of practically all work
on Sunday. The colonial Sabbath was indeed strictly observed; there was
little visiting, no picnicking, no heavy meals, no week-end parties,
none of the entertainments so prevalent in our own day. The wife and
mother was therefore spared the heavy tasks of Sunday so commonly
expected of the typical twentieth-century housewife. But it is doubtful
whether the alternative--attendance at church almost the entire
day--would appear one whit more desirable to the modern woman. The
Sabbath of those times was verily a period of religious worship. No one
must leave town, and no one must travel to town save for the church
service. There must be no work on the farm or in the city. Boats must
not be used except when necessary to transport people to divine service.
Fishing, hunting, and dancing were absolutely forbidden. No one must use
a horse, ox, or wagon if the church were within reasonable walking
distance, and "reasonable" was a most expansive word. Tobacco was not to
be smoked or chewed near any meeting-house. The odor of cooking food on
Sunday was an abomination in the nostrils of the Most High. And we
should bear in mind that these rules were enforced from sunset on
Saturday to sunset on Sunday--the twenty-four hours of the Puritan
Sabbath. The Holy Day, as spent by the preacher, John Cotton, may be
taken as typical of the strenuous hours of the Sabbath as observed by
many a New England pastor:

"He began the Sabbath at evening, therefore then performed family duty
after supper, being longer than ordinary in exposition. After which he
catechized his children and servants, and then returned to his study.
The morning following, family worship being ended, he retired into his
study until the bell called him away. Upon his return from meeting
(where he had preached and prayed some hours), he returned again into
his study (the place of his labor and prayer), unto his favorite
devotion; where having a small repast carried him up for his dinner, he
continued until the tolling of the bell. The public service of the
afternoon being over, he withdrew for a space to his pre-mentioned
oratory for his sacred addresses to God, as in the forenoon, then came
down, repeated the sermon in the family, prayed, after supper sang a
Psalm, and toward bedtime betaking himself again to his study he closed
the day with prayer."

To many a modern reader such a method of spending Sunday for either
preacher or laymen would seem not only irksome but positively
detrimental to physical and mental health; but we should bear in mind
that the opportunity to sit still and listen after six days of strenuous
muscular toil was probably welcomed by the colonist, and, further, that
in the absence of newspapers and magazines and other intellectual
stimuli the oratory of the clergy, stern as it may have been, was
possibly an equal relief. Especially were such "recreations" welcomed by
the women; for their toil was as arduous as that of the men; while their
round of life and their means of receiving the stimulus of public
movements were even more restricted.


_V. Religion and Woman's Foibles_

The repressive characteristics of the creed of the hour were felt more
keenly by those women than probably any man of the period ever dreamed.
For woman seems to possess an innate love of the dainty and the
beautiful, and beauty was the work of Satan. Nothing was too small or
insignificant for this religion to examine and control. It even
regulated that most difficult of all matters to govern--feminine dress.
As Fisher says in his _Men, Women and Manners in Colonial Times_:

"At every opportunity they raised some question of religion and
discussed it threadbare, and the more fine-spun and subtle it was
the more it delighted them. Governor Winthrop's Journal is full
of such questions as whether there could be an indwelling of the
Holy Ghost in a believer without a personal union; whether it was
lawful even to associate or have dealings with idolaters like the
French; whether women should wear veils. On the question of
veils, Roger Williams was in favor of them; but John Cotton one
morning argued so powerfully on the other side that in the
afternoon the women all came to church without them."

"There were orders of the General Court forbidding 'short sleeves
whereby the nakedness of the arms may be discovered.' Women's
sleeves were not to be more than half an ell wide. There were to
be no 'immoderate great sleeves, immoderate ... knots of ryban,
broad shoulder bands and rayles, silk ruses, double ruffles and
cuffs.' The women were complained of because of their 'wearing
borders of hair and their cutting, curling, and immodest laying
out of their hair.'"[13]

Petty details that would not receive a moment's consideration in our own
day aroused the theological scruples of those colonial pastors, and
moved them to interminable arguments which nicely balanced the pros and
cons as warranted by scripture. One of John Cotton's most famous sermons
dealt with the question as to whether women had a right to sing in
church, and after lengthy disquisition the preacher finally decided that
the Lord had no special objection to women's singing the Psalms, but
this conclusion was reached only after an unsparing battle of doubts and
logic. "Some," he declares, "that were altogether against singing of
Psalms at all with a lively voice, yet being convinced that it is a
moral worship of God warranted in Scripture, then if there must be a
Singing one alone must sing, not all (or if all) the Men only and not
the Women.... Some object, 'Because it is not permitted to speak in the
Church in two cases: 1. By way of teaching.... For this the Apostle
accounteth an act of authority which is unlawful for a woman to usurp
over the man, II, Tim. 2, 13. And besides the woman is more subject to
error than a man, ver. 14, and therefore might soon prove a seducer if
she became a teacher.... It is not permitted to a woman to speak in the
Church by way of propounding questions though under pretence of desire
to learn for her own satisfaction; but rather it is required she should
ask her husband at home."

Thus we might follow Cotton through many a page and hear his ingenious
application of Biblical verses, his carefully balanced arguments, his
earnest consideration of what seems to the modern reader a most trivial
question. To him, however, and probably to the women also it was a
weighty subject, more important by far than the cause of the high
mortality among both mothers and children of the day--a mortality
appallingly high. It would seem that the fevers, sore throats,
consumption, and small pox that destroyed women and babes in vast
numbers might have claimed some attention from the hair-splitting
clergyman and his congregation. We must not, however, judge the age too
harshly. It is utterly impossible for us of the twentieth century to
understand entirely the view point of the Puritans; for the remarkable
era of the nineteenth century intervenes, and freedom from superstition
and blind faith is a gift which came after that era and not before.

From time to time the colonists to the south may have sneered at or even
condemned the severity of New England life, but in the main the
merchants of New York and the planters of Virginia and Maryland realized
and respected the moral worth and earnest nature of the Massachusetts
settlers. For example, the versatile Virginia leader, William Byrd,
remarks sarcastically in his _History of the Dividing Line Run in the
Year 1728_: "Nor would I care, like a certain New England Magistrate to
order a Man to the Whipping Post for daring to ride for a midwife on the
Lord's Day"; but in the same manuscript he pays these people of rigid
rules the following tribute: "Tho' these People may be ridiculed for
some Pharisaical Particularitys in their Worship and Behaviour, yet they
were very useful Subjects, as being Frugal and Industrious, giving no
Scandal or Bad Example, at least by any Open and Public Vices. By which
excellent Qualities they had much the Advantage of the Southern Colony,
who thought their being Members of the Establish't Church sufficient to
Sanctifie very loose and Profligate Morals. For this reason New England
improved much faster than Virginia, and in Seven or Eight Years New
Plymouth, like Switzerland, seemd too narrow a Territory for its
Inhabitants."[14]

Those early New Englanders may have been frugal and industrious, giving
no scandal nor bad example; but the constant repression, the monotony,
the dreariness of the religion often wrought havoc with the sensitive
nerves of the women, and many of them needed, far more than prayers,
godly counsel and church trials, the skilled services of a physician.
Two incidents related by Winthrop should be sufficient to impress the
pathos or the down-right tragedy of the situation:

"A cooper's wife of Hingham, having been long in a sad melancholic
distemper near to phrensy, and having formerly attempted to drown her
child, but prevented by God's gracious providence, did now again take an
opportunity.... And threw it into the water and mud ... She carried the
child again, and threw it in so far as it could not get out; but then it
pleased God, that a young man, coming that way, saved it. She would give
no other reason for it, but that she did it to save it from misery, and
with that she was assured, she had sinned against the Holy Ghost, and
that she could not repent of any sin. Thus doth Satan work by the
advantage of our infirmities, which would stir us up to cleave the more
fast to Christ Jesus, and to walk the more humbly and watchfully in all
our conversation."

"Dorothy Talby was hanged at Boston for murdering her own daughter a
child of three years old. She had been a member of the church of Salem,
and of good esteem for goodliness, but, falling at difference with her
husband, through melancholy or spiritual delusions, she sometime
attempted to kill him, and her children, and herself, by refusing
meat.... After much patience, and divers admonitions not prevailing, the
church cast her out. Whereupon she grew worse; so as the magistrate
caused her to be whipped. Whereupon she was reformed for a time, and
carried herself more dutifully to her husband, but soon after she was so
possessed with Satan, that he persuaded her (by his delusions, which she
listened to as revelations from God) to break the neck of her own
child, that she might free it from future misery. This she confessed
upon her apprehension; yet, at her arraignment, she stood mute a good