Even if we make haste to admit that two great humanizers of society, art and letters, played but a sorry part in the Puritan colonies, we know they were less missed than if these colonies had been worldly ventures, established solely in the interest of agriculture or of trade. Sir Andrew Macphail tersely reminds us that the colonists possessed ideals of their own, “which so far transcended the things of this world that art and literature were not worth bothering about in comparison with them.” Men who believe that, through some exceptional grace or good fortune, they have found God, feel little need of culture. If they believe that they share God with all races, all nations, and all ages, culture comes in the wake of religion. But the Puritan’s God was a somewhat exclusive possession. “Christ died for a select company that was known to Him, by name, from eternity,” wrote the Reverend Samuel Willard, pastor of the South Church, Boston, and author of that famous theological folio, “A Compleat Body of Divinity.” “The bulk of mankind is reserved for burning,” said Jonathan Edwards genially; and his Northampton congregation took his word for it. That these gentlemen knew no more about Hell and its inmates than did Dante is a circumstance which does not seem to have occurred to any one. A preacher has some advantages over a poet. If the Puritans never succeeded in welding together Church and State, which was the desire of their hearts, they had human nature to thank for their failure. There is nothing so abhorrent--or so perilous--to the soul of man as to be ruled in temporal things by clerical authority. Yet inasmuch as the colony of Massachusetts Bay had for its purpose the establishment of a state in which all citizens should be of the same faith, and church membership should be essential to freemen, it was inevitable that the preacher and the elder should for a time dominate public counsels. “Are you, sir, the person who serves here?” asked a stranger of a minister whom he met in the streets of Rowley. “I am, sir, the person who rules here,” was the swift and apt response.