Early on Monday morning they landed, their faith fixed on the Rock of Ages, and crossed the rocky threshold of that great land which was to receive from them an imperishable impress. And long as America stands will its people regard the rock which then received their footsteps as the altar and bulwark of religion and liberty. Man is often unconscious of the sublimity of his actions; so was it now. God had guided the Pilgrims thither; their home was not to be in the milder climate of Virginia, where the affluent shores, laughing with the abundance of fruit and flowers, might welcome them in the glory of summer; they were carried northward, in the inclemency of winter, to an iron-bound coast; their landing was on a barren rock, and the very harvests of their future years were reaped from corn dug out of Indian graves. They were to be the forefathers of a race pure in life, steadfast in principle, sincere in religion; their human virtues were here called forth by their mutual sufferings; their courage and perseverance tested by the severest hardships; their faith in God assured by the overruling of his providence and the continuance of his mercies. Such and so high was the destination of the Pilgrims, who now marching inland, found divers corn-fields and running brooks, and who, eight days later, the Mayflower being safely harboured, still further examined the coast, again finding “neither wigwam, Indian, nor navigable river, but brooks of sweet, fresh water running into the sea, with choice land formerly possessed and planted.” On the 20th, after still further examination, they decided to settle “on the mainland on a high ground facing the bay, where corn had been planted three or four years before, a sweet brook running under the hill, with many delicate springs.” Here they commenced building, frequently interrupted by storms of wind and rain, many of them “ill of grievous colds and the great and many hardships they had endured, and amid death and terror of the Indians. And here on the last day of the year, being Lord’s-Day, the Sabbath was kept for the first time in the place of their building, and the name of Plymouth given to the settlement, in grateful memory of the Christian friends they found at Plymouth in England the last time they left their native land.”