Being short and fat,
and the mercury standing at eighty-five degrees, the doctor's physical
strength gave out, and he had to be hoisted up astride a cannon to ride to
the scene of conflict,--martial in spirit though weak in the legs.
But this association with the old book is comparatively of our own day; and
the most pleasing fancy which the "psalm-book of Ainsworth" brings to my
mind, the most sacred and reverenced thought, is of a far more remote, a
more peaceful and quiet scene; though men of warlike blood and fighting
stock were there present and took part therein. It is with that Sabbath Day
before the Landing at Plymouth which was spent by the Pilgrims, as Mather
says, "in the devout and pious exercises of a sacred rest." And though
Matthew Arnold thought that the Mayflower voyagers would have been
intolerable company for Shakespeare and Virgil, yet in that quiet day of
devout prayer and praise they show a calm religious peace and trust that
is, perhaps, the highest spiritual type of "sweetness and light." And from
this quaint old book their lips found words and music to express in song
their pure and holy faith.
XII.
The Bay Psalm-Book.
It seems most proper that the first book printed in New England should be
now its rarest one, and such is the case. It was also meet that the first
book published by the Puritan theocracy should be a psalm-book.
Pages:
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