magnificâ Tiarâ obvolutum; in Humeris, Alas; Vestes deinceps candidas et splendidas, Togam nempe Talarem, et Zonam circa Lumbos, Orientalium cingulis non absimilem. Dixitque hic Angelus, a Domino Jesu se missum, ut Responsa cujusdam Juvenis precibus articulatim afferat referatque. Quamplurima retulit hic Angelus, quae hic scribere non fas est. Verum inter alia memoratu digna, futurum hujusce Juvenis Fatum optime posse exprimi asseruit in illis Vatis Ezekielis verbis: Ezek. 31: 3, 4, 5, 7, and 9. "Behold hee was a Cedar in Lebanon" [&c.]. Atque particulariter clausulas de Rationis ejus extendendis [sic] exposuit hic Angelus, de Libris ab hoc juvene componendis, et non tantum in Americâ, sed etiam in Europa, publicandis. Additque peculiares quasdam praedictiones, et pro tali ac tanto Peccatore valde mirabiles, de Operibus insignibus, quae pro Ecclesiâ Christi, in Revolutionibus jam appropinquantibus, hic Juvenis olim facturus est. Domine Jesu! Quid sibi vult haec res tam extraordinaria ? A Diabolicis Illusionibus, obsecro te, Servum tuum indignissimum ut liberes et defendas.'

Though this was not his only entertainment of a celestial visitor, it seems to have remained his most memorable; he refers to it specifically so long afterwards as March 14, 1712/3. In view of this, a note in his vast, unpublished 'Biblia Americana' appears like a record of personal observation. It is a comment on John i, 32: And John bare record, saying, I saw the Spirit descending from Heaven like a dove, and it abode upon Him.' This does not imply, Mather writes, that the Holy Ghost ever assumed the shape of a bird; it means that assuming a body of light, or surrounded with a Guard of Angels in Luminous Forms, . . . [He] came down from above, just as a Dove with spread wings uses to do.' On March 14, 1701/2, he had intended to set apart the day for prayer : 'But because I preached yesterday, and was afraid of overdoing, unto a Trespass against the sixth Commandment, I omitted it. However, in the Evening, I perceived I was able to have done more than I thought I was. Wherefore I called now to Mind, that the primitive Christians, in obedience to that Commandment of Watching unto Prayer, sometimes had their Vigils, which were of great use unto them in their Christianity. . . . They found God often rewarding the Devotions of such Vigils with a more than ordinary degree of heavenly Consolation. Accordingly, I resolved, that I would this Night, make some Essay towards a Vigil. I dismissed my

dear Consort unto her own Repose; and in the Dead of the Night, I retired into my Study; and there casting myself into the Dust, prostrate on my Study-floor before the Lord, I was rewarded with Communications from Heaven, that cannot be uttered. . . . If these be Vigils, I must (as far as the sixth Commandment will allow) have some more of them!'

Whenever he could find time and strength, he had them thenceforth. In April 1703 he managed to fast and pray for three days together. 'Astonishing Entertainments from Heaven,' he writes on the second day,' were granted me, in and from this Action. God opened Heaven to me, after a Manner, that I may not, and indeed cannot express in any writing.' The 15th of May in the same year

'was a Day full of astonishing Enjoyments; a Day filled with Resignations, and Satisfactions, and heavenly Astonishments. Heaven has been opened unto me. .. I was not able to bear the Extasies of the Divine Love, into which I was raptured; they exhausted my Spirits; they made me faint and sick; they were insupportable; I was forced, even to withdraw from them, lest I should have swoon'd away under the raptures.'

Passages like this form the substance of the whole diary. It is a record of God's dealings with a sinner to whom perhaps has been granted the unmerited grace of salvation to whom surely have been granted glimpses of what that salvation might be like, in its infinite, reconciled communion with divinity. To the generation of Puritans who preceded the Civil Wars in England, whose descendants persisted unchanged in New England long after their like had vanished in the mother-country, such glimpses were what made life worth living. They rarely recorded, in set terms, perceptions which must transcend the limitations of human expression. Like Cotton Mather, they recorded only that such perceptions had been the most wondrous incidents of their fervid lives.

In an old volume of the collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society lies forgotten a letter which more nearly sets forth what Mather perceived in his mystic raptures than any passage in his own writings. It was written from England on March 21, 1637/8, by Edward

* Series IV, vol. vi pp. 504, 505 (1863).

Howes, an accomplished Puritan who never fulfilled his purpose of crossing the Atlantic, to his intimate friend,. the younger John Winthrop, afterwards Governor of Connecticut. After touching on certain religious disputes in New England, Howes proceeds as follows:

'I wonder your people that pretend to know so much do not know that Love is the fulfilling of the Law, and that against Love there is no Law. But no marvel, when many have not the beginning of wisdom in them; and how can they that fear not God keep his commandments or fulfill them? . . . The terra incognita cognita est paucis, arcanum Jehovae adest reverentibus ipsum; to tell you my thoughts or knowledge of it, it's neither earth, water, air, nor fire, nor aether, so that it's beyond sense, or my expression; but to give you an intelligible taste, it's lesser than the least, it cannot be divided nor communicated, it's bigger than the biggest, for it's perfect, it's beyond the highest, and below the lowest, for thought cannot reach it; if you know it I need not tell you it, if I speak in an unknown tongue, I do but beat the air.'

This passage, more boldly attempting to express the inexpressible than any of Cotton Mather's own, throws light on some aspects of Mather's character and reputation. Human beings, confined within a circle of knowledge which may be tested by observation or experiment, feel as if they were surrounded with unknown regions accessible, if accessible at all, only to a kind of perception for which the everyday faculties of humanity are singularly unsuited. Whether these regions really exist is not to the point; they certainly seem to. Throughout human record, men have striven to penetrate these mysteries, and to utter and record concerning them truths less mutable than the truths of this passing world. Thus have arisen the various systems of religion. Now a remarkable fact about these systems is that none of enduring vigour has originated in Europe. In practical affairs and matters of human knowledge-in politics and law, in science and mundane philosophy, in literature and other fine art-Europe more than holds its own; in matters spiritual it must still, and probably always, sit at the feet of Asia. The true seers are Asiatic; the rigid formulas of European creeds are based on mystical perceptions inconceivable in Europe. So when Howes in Old England, and Cotton Mather in Boston, strove, like

the faithful Puritans they were, to penetrate the veil of eternity, they attempted a spiritual feat for which all their centuries of European ancestry had increasingly tended to make them unfit.

Of Howes little more is known; of Mather, it is sadly certain that his words and conduct, devout in persevering purpose throughout his life, impressed unsympathetic contemporaries, and have impressed unsympathetic tempers ever since, as wanting in candour, in trustworthiness, and even in honesty. The considerations now before us should help us to see why. From childhood to the verge of an old age which he was spared, he incessantly strove to see God, even as the Beatitude gives hopeful promise that He shall be seen by the pure of heart. Such strivings demand, for fulfilment, complete spiritual freedom. Any effort to make mystic perception conform to a preconceived system must probably distort it; any effort to combine mystic perception with the practical conduct of human affairs must bewilderingly confuse it with the phantasmagoric quiverings of earthly atmosphere. Yet Cotton Mather, Puritan of Puritans, would never suffer himself for an instant to admit any gleam of perception not completely harmonious with the dogmas of Calvin, nor yet tolerate the passing of a single day in which he had failed to do something tangible for the glory of God at Boston in Massachusetts. Had he relaxed either of these purposes, and thus soared into spiritual freedom, he would not have been what his diary proves him-magnificently faithful. Had his enmeshments with earth, as he aspired heavenward, failed to make those who have been blind to his spiritual life distrustful of his honesty, his enemies would not have been human.

Among his essays to do good, none were more incessant than the labours of his pen. Sibley's 'Harvard Graduates' names more than four hundred of his works. On February 1, 1701/2, Mather himself records that he prayed for two hundred and five of them, title by title; in the last three years of life he added fifty to the list of his publications; and not a few of them, sent forth anonymously, remain unidentified. They are of all sorts and sizes for the most part sermons, biographies, tracts, books of good counsel, and the like. In August 1713 he even thought of sending some agreeable Thing' to the

Spectator,' though whether he ever did so does not appear. Among all these works, however, three surpass the rest, both in bulk and in general interest. The first, the Magnalia Christi Americana,' was published in England, and finally reached his hands, in folio, on October 29, 1702; wherefore he set apart the next day 'for solemn Thanksgiving unto God, for his watchful and gracious Providence over that Work, and for the Harvest of so many Prayers, and Cares, and Tears, and Resignations, as I had employ'd upon it.' The second, the 'Angel of Bethesda,' completed after many years' work in February 1723/4, has remained in manuscript, but is shortly to be published by the Massachusetts Historical Society. The third, the Biblia Americana'-to his mind the most important of all-was begun in August 1693, finished on May 28, 1706, and augmented throughout his remaining twenty-one years; it remains, as the publishers of his time found it, far too bulky for publication. Together, these three books show how he believed that his pen might best do the earthly work of the Lord.

The Magnalia Christi Americana ' is an 'Ecclesiastical History of New England, from Its First Planting in the year 1620 unto the year of our Lord 1698.' Approached as if it were intended to set forth that history in modern spirit, it may well seem perversely irregular, overemphasising such events and persons as enjoyed Mather's approval, neglecting or abusing the rest. The dates of its composition should correct this impression. He conceived the plan of it in 1693; he finished the first draft in August 1697; the manuscript, revised and added to meantime, was dispatched to England, in 'near 300 sheets,' on June 8, 1700; the printed volume, as we have seen, arrived in Boston on October 29, 1702. These years, from 1693 to 1702, were precisely those between the witchcraft trials and the resignation of Increase Mather from the presidency of Harvard College, the years in which the power of theocracy was broken, and New England finally abandoned what Cotton Mather believed to be the divinely ordered policy of the Puritan Fathers.

The 'Magnalia' is at once an epic celebration of these ancestors and a passionate controversial document. By means of it Mather hoped to prove that during the early years of the New England colonies the conduct of life and