Page:The Genius of America (1923).pdf/77

 truth is something growing, steadily revealing itself, breaking upon us like a dawn; and, not less significant, his recognition that true religion must be in harmony with reason and experience. 'Our Lord Christ,' he remarks—quietly yet memorably—'calls himself truth, ''not custom. ' ''

Cotton Mather, partly because of his connection with the witchcraft trials, has been so long a synonym for the unlovely features of the culture of his time and place, that even his biographer and the recent editors of his journal have quite failed to bring out the long stride that he made towards complete freedom of the mind. If the truth be told, Mather, like every Puritan of powerful original force, was something of a 'heretic.' For many years he followed a plainly mystical 'inner light.' His huge diary opens in 1681 with a statement that he has come to a direct agreement with the Lord Jesus Christ, and that no man or book, but the spirit of God, has shown him the way. He goes directly to the several persons of the Trinity, and transacts his business with them or with their ministering angels. There is an 'enthusiastic' element here; but one should observe that it is an emancipative element.

Experience, however, taught Mather a certain distrust of the mystical inner light. Ex-