The Emancipation of Massachusetts
I wrote this little volume more than thirty years ago, since when I have hardly opened it. Therefore I now read it almost as if it were written by another man, and I find to my relief that, on the whole, I think rather better of it than I did when I published it. Indeed, as a criticism of what were then the accepted views of Massachusetts history, as expounded by her most authoritative historians, I see nothing in it to retract or even to modify. I do, however, somewhat regret the rather acrimonious tone which I occasionally adopted when speaking of the more conservative section of the clergy. Not that I think that the Mathers, for example, and their like, did not deserve all, or, indeed, more than all I ever said or thought of them, but because I conceive that equally effective strictures might have been conveyed in urbaner language; and, as I age, I shrink from anything akin to invective, even in what amounts to controversy. Therefore I have now nothing to alter in the _Emancipation of Massachusetts_, viewed as history, though I might soften its asperities somewhat, here and there; but when I come to consider it as philosophy, I am startled to observe the gap which separates the present epoch from my early middle life. The last generation was strongly Darwinian in the sense that it accepted,
only worried because supper must be delayed an hour, and that delay
would also keep back the completion of that exquisite order in which it
was her habit to leave the house for the sabbath rest.
After some time had elapsed, she went upstairs, and began to lay out the
clean linen and the kirk clothes. Suddenly she noticed that it was
nearly dark; and, with a feeling of hurry and anxiety, she remembered
the delayed meal. Joanna was on the front-stoop watching for Batavius,
who was also unusually late; and, like many other loving women, she
could think of nothing good which might have detained him, but her heart
was full only of evil apprehensions.
"Where is Katherine?" That was the mother's first question, and she
called her through the house. From the closed best parlour, Katherine
came, white and weeping.
"What is the matter, then, that you are crying? And why into the dark
room go you?"
"Full of sorrow I am, mother, and I went to the room to pray to God; but
I cannot pray."
"'Full of sorrow.' Yes, for that Englishman you are full of sorrow. And
how can you pray when you are disobeying your good father? God will not
hear you."
I wrote this little volume more than thirty years ago, since when I have hardly opened it. Therefore I now read it almost as if it were written by another man, and I find to my relief that, on the whole, I think rather better of it than I did when I published it. Indeed, as a criticism of what were then the accepted views of Massachusetts history, as expounded by her most authoritative historians, I see nothing in it to retract or even to modify. I do, however, somewhat regret the rather acrimonious tone which I occasionally adopted when speaking of the more conservative section of the clergy. Not that I think that the Mathers, for example, and their like, did not deserve all, or, indeed, more than all I ever said or thought of them, but because I conceive that equally effective strictures might have been conveyed in urbaner language; and, as I age, I shrink from anything akin to invective, even in what amounts to controversy. Therefore I have now nothing to alter in the _Emancipation of Massachusetts_, viewed as history, though I might soften its asperities somewhat, here and there; but when I come to consider it as philosophy, I am startled to observe the gap which separates the present epoch from my early middle life. The last generation was strongly Darwinian in the sense that it accepted,