Of course in the matter of the separation of church and state they were still in the bonds of ignorance. Though they had broken away from the persecuting hand of the mother land and “the mother church,” as they loved to call it, they had not broken away from the belief which was the source and instigator of the persecuting spirit. As Prof. John Winthrop Platner has said recently in his “King’s Chapel Lecture” on the Congregationalists, “The connection between church and state was also close, in spite of their theoretical separation, so close in fact that the government of Massachusetts Bay has often been described as a theocracy.... They believed that no human government could be firmly established, unless based upon the divine.... The mixture of law and religion of course gave rise to difficulties, and aroused criticism. It was the persistent exercise of jurisdiction over offenses “against the first table of the law” (i.e., against the first four commandments of the decalogue) that provoked the open hostility of Roger Williams against the authorities, and caused him to protest that the things of God and the things of Cæsar should not be confounded, a protest which brought him into trouble.” The Puritans had hardly reached the dawn of the glorious day which was to be distinguished by absolute religious liberty. Roger Williams was enveloped in its full noonday splendor. Hon. James Bryce denominates him “an orthodox Puritan.” True, if he means an intense, logically consistent, fully ripened, radical Puritan, a Pilgrim of the Pilgrims. In the memorable words of Judge Storey, “In the code of laws established by Williams and his companions we read for the first time, since Christianity ascended the throne of the Cæsars, the declaration that the conscience should be free, and that men should not be punished for worshiping God in the way they were persuaded He requires.” In similar language Professor Masson declares that Roger Williams organized “a community on the unheard-of principles of absolute religious liberty combined with perfect civil democracy.” Such is the unanimous testimony of historians as to the character and service of the founder of Rhode Island. Mr. Oscar Straus expresses the hope “that the time is not far distant when the civilized people in the remotest corners of the earth will recognize the truth and power of the principles which throw around the name of Roger Williams a halo of imperishable glory and fame.” May this new and popular biography, charming in style, appreciative in spirit and in harmony with the generally accepted facts of history, hasten the realization of this sublime hope. HENRY M. KING, _Pastor Emeritus of the First Baptist Church_ (_The Roger Williams Church_). PROVIDENCE, R. I. ROGER WILLIAMS