Truly the task which they had undertaken to subdue this wilderness, to plant here the civil, religious and educational institutions of Connecticut, and to prepare this beautiful heritage for their children and children's children, was no holiday pastime, no gainful speculation, no romantic adventure. It was grim, persistent, weary toil and danger, continued through many years, with the wolf at the door and the savage in the neighboring thicket. Beside the physical evils with which they were beset, they had spiritual troubles also. They fully believed in witchcraft as did all their contemporaries, in a personal devil who was busily plotting the ruin of their souls, in an everlasting hell of literal fire and brimstone, and in a Divine election, by which most of them had been irrevocably doomed from before the creation of the world to eternal perdition, from which nothing which they could do, or were willing to do, could help to rescue them. The great object of life to them, therefore, was to try to find out what their future state would be. Said one of their preachers, "It is tough work and a wonderful hard matter to be saved. 'Tis a thousand to one, if ever thou be one of that small number whom God hath picked out to escape this wrath to come." That we may get a touch of reality from those far off days, let me quote you a few lines from the saintly Thomas Hooker, the founder of Connecticut, and long the model for her preachers. "Suppose any soul here present were to behold the damned in hell, and if the Lord should give thee a peephole into hell, that thou didst see the horror of those damned souls, and thy heart begins to shake in consideration thereof; then propound this to thy own heart, what pains the damned in hell do endure for sin, and thy heart will shake and quake at it. The least sin that thou didst ever commit, though thou makest a light matter of it, is a greater evil than the pains of the damned in hell, setting aside their sins. All the torments in hell are not so great an evil as the least sin is; men begin to shrink at this, and loathe to go down to hell and be in endless torment." The only test they were taught to apply to ascertain whether they were predestined to suffer or escape this fearful doom, was in their ability and willingness to conform their wills to the will of God as revealed in the Bible. Accordingly as they had succeeded in this, they had a reasonable assurance as to their fate, although no wile of the devil was more frequent than to falsely persuade men that their prospects were favorable. To study the scriptures day and night to ascertain the will of God, and to struggle without ceasing to conform their wills to his as therein revealed, was therefore the great object of existence for them, not that they could thereby alter in the least their future state, but that they might, if possible, find out what it was likely to be.