The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish | Page 5

way of
wisdom and courage to the immediate neighborhood among whom he
resided, but reluctant from temper, and from a disposition which had
been shadowed by withered happiness, to enact that part in the public
affairs of the little state, to which his comparative wealth and previous
habits might well have entitled him to aspire. He gave his son such an
education as his own resources and those of the infant colony of

Massachusetts afforded, and, by a sort of delusive piety, into whose
merits we have no desire to look, he thought he had also furnished a
commendable evidence of his own desperate resignation to the will of
Providence, in causing him to be publicly christened by the name of
Content. His own baptismal appellation was Mark; as indeed had been
that of most of his ancestors, for two or three centuries. When the world
was a little uppermost in his thoughts, as sometimes happens with the
most humbled spirits, he had even been heard to speak of a Sir Mark of
his family, who had ridden a knight in the train of one of the more
warlike kings of his native land.
There is some ground for believing, that the great parent of evil early
looked with a malignant eye on the example of peacefulness, and of
unbending morality, that the colonists of New-England were setting to
the rest of Christendom. At any rate, come from what quarter they
might, schisms and doctrinal contentions arose among the emigrants
themselves; and men, who together had deserted the fire-sides of their
forefathers in quest of religious peace, were ere long seen separating
their fortunes, in order that each might enjoy, unmolested, those
peculiar shades of faith, which all had the presumption, no less than the
folly, to believe were necessary to propitiate the omnipotent and
merciful father of the universe. If our task were one of theology, a
wholesome moral on the vanity, no less than on the absurdity of the
race, might be here introduced to some advantage.
When Mark Heathcote announced to the community, in which he had
now sojourned more than twenty years, that he intended for a second
time to establish his altars in the wilderness, in the hope that he and his
household might worship God as to them seemed most right, the
intelligence was received with a feeling allied to awe. Doctrine and zeal
were momentarily forgotten, in the respect and attachment which had
been unconsciously created by the united influence of the stern severity
of his air, and of the undeniable virtues of his practice. The elders of
the settlement communed with him freely and in charity; but the voice
of conciliation and alliance came too late. He listened to the reasonings
of the ministers, who were assembled from all the adjoining parishes,
in sullen respect: and he joined in the petitions for light and instruction,
that were offered up on the occasion, with the deep reverence with
which he ever drew near to the footstool of the Almighty; but he did

both in a temper into which too much positiveness of spiritual pride had
entered, to open his heart to that sympathy and charity, which, as they
are the characteristics of our mild and forbearing doctrines, should be
the study of those who profess to follow their precepts. All that was
seemly, and all that was usual, were done; but the purpose of the
stubborn sectarian remained unchanged. His final decision is worthy of
being recorded.
"My youth was wasted in ungodliness and ignorance," he said, "but in
my manhood have I known the Lord. Near two-score years have I
toiled for the truth, and all that weary time have I past in trimming my
lamps, lest, like the foolish virgins, I should be caught unprepared; and
now, when my loins are girded and my race is nearly run, shall I
become a backslider and falsifier of the word? Much have I endured, as
you know, in quitting the earthly mansion of my fathers, and in
encountering the dangers of sea and land for the faith; and, rather than
let go its hold, will I once more cheerfully devote to the howling
wilderness, ease, offspring, and, should it be the will of Providence, life
itself!"
The day of parting was one of unfeigned and general sorrow.
Notwithstanding the austerity of the old man's character, and the nearly
unbending severity of his brow, the milk of human kindness had often
been seen distilling from his stern nature in acts that did not admit of
misinterpretation. There was scarcely a young beginner in the laborious
and ill-requited husbandry of the township he inhabited, a district at no
time considered either profitable or fertile, who could not recall some
secret and kind aid which had flowed from