the comparative history of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, of New England and Pennsylvania. It is not a question that is answered at once by the mere statement of it. We do not need to be told that to the little Separatist settlement at Plymouth, still in the first decade of its feeble existence, the founding, within a day's journey, of this powerful colony, on ecclesiastical principles distinctly antagonistic to their own, was a momentous, even a formidable fact. Critical, nay, vital questions emerged at once, which the subtlest churchcraft might have despaired of answering. They were answered, solved, harmonized, by the spirit of Christian love. That great spiritual teacher, John Robinson, besides his more general exhortations to brotherly kindness and charity, had spoken, in the spirit of prophecy, some promises and assurances which came now to a divine fulfillment. Pondering "sundry weighty and solid reasons" in favor of removal from Holland, the pilgrims put on record that "their pastor would often say that many of those who both wrote and preached against them would practice as they did if they were in a place where they might have liberty and live conformably." One of the most affectionate of his disciples, Edward Winslow, wrote down some of the precious and memorable words which the pastor, who was to see their face no more, uttered through his tears as they were about to leave him. "'There will be no difference,' he said, 'between the unconformable ministers and you, when they come to the practice of the ordinances out of the kingdom.' And so he advised us to close with the godly party of the kingdom of England, and rather to study union than division, viz., how near we might possibly without sin close with them, rather than in the least measure to affect division or separation from them."