Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/210

Rh either to return to the State Church, or imprisonment and death. This only strengthened the opposition; “For,” says Thomas Carlyle, otherwise tolerably bitter in his criticism on human nature, “people do human nature an injustice when they believe that the instigation to great actions is self-interest, worldly profit or pleasure. No, that which instigates to great undertakings, and produces great things, is the prospect of conflict, persecution, suffering, martyrdom, for the truth's sake.”

In one of the northern counties of England, a little company of men and women, inhabitants of small towns and villages, united in the resolve to risk all for the open acknowledgment of their pure faith, conformably with the teachings of which they determined to live. They were people of the lowest condition, principally artisans or tillers of the soil; men who lived by the hard labour of their hands, and who were accustomed to combat with the severe circumstances of life. Holland at this time offered to them, as it did to all the oppressed combatants for the truth, a place of refuge; and to Holland the little knot of Puritans resolved to flee. They escaped from their vigilant persecutors through great dangers, and Leyden in Holland became their city of refuge. But they did not prosper there; they felt that it was not the place for them; they knew that they were to be pilgrims on the earth seeking a father-land: and amid their struggles with the hard circumstances of daily life, the belief existed in their souls that they were called upon to accomplish a higher work for humanity than that which consisted with their present lot. “They felt themselves moved by zeal and by hope to make known the Gospel and extend the kingdom of Christ in the far-distant land of the New World; yes, if they even should be merely as stepping-stones for others to carry forth so great a work.”

They asked, and after great difficulty obtained, the consent of the English government to emigrate to North