THE ENGLISH PURITANS

            Their palaces were houses not made with hands; their diadems crowns of glory which should never fade away. On the rich and eloquent, on nobles and priests, they looked down with contempt; for they esteemed themselves rich in a more precious treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime language, nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand. 

            The very meanest of them was a being to whose fate a mysterious and terrible importance belonged, on whose slightest action the spirits of light and darkness looked with anxious interest, who had been destined, before Heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a felicity which should continue when Heaven and earth should have passed away.

            Events which short-sighted politicians ascribed to earthly causes had been ordained on his account. For his sake, empires had risen and flourished, and decayed. For his sake the Almighty had proclaimed His will by the pen opf the evangelist and the harp of the prophet. He had been wrested by no common deliverer from the hand of no common foe. He had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony, by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. 

            It was for him that the sun had been darkened, that the rocks had been rent, that the dead had arisen, that all nature had shuttered at the sufferings of her expiring God. 

 

                                                                                                                        --- MacAulay