Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/467

Rh with the light of Scripture, to decide, each man for himself, on his mode of faith and divine worship. It was also on the ground of the same doctrine that, still later, Anne Hutchinson and Henry Vane—in whom it was said that Calvinism went to seed—appealed from the dogmatic despotism of Calvinism to the judgment-seat of individual conscience, and the voice of God within it. God's light in the Scriptures, in connection with the revelation of God in the conscience of the searcher of the Scriptures, could and should alone decide. Persecution and banishment only served to strengthen the cry in the innermost of the soul.

Driven from home and country, deserted by all, accused by his friends, and reproached even by his wife, the gentle but stedfast Roger Williams was obliged to flee into the wilderness for the doctrines of the liberty of conscience. But God was with him, and there grew up around him the large city of Providence, and afterwards a state, that of Rhode Island, the home of religious toleration and human love.

The principle of freedom which the Pilgrims first planted in the soil of the New World, became more and more intrinsically inward, demanding for man that he should be left alone with God.

We know very well, my noble friend, to what dangers of self-delusion and arrogance the human mind is liable from this point of view. But—every point of view has its dangers when the eye is dark, and the human mind weak or inflated with pride; nevertheless there is no higher or more inward point of view than this—Man alone with God. God spoke in the times of old with the great law-givers, with Moses and the prophets. It is our Christian, our joy-giving belief, that God at this day speaks individually to all and each of his children, as He, through Christ, spoke to Peter and Mary; that all and each of us may, in our most sacred moments, perceive