Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays

“ My fathers and brethren,” said John Higginson (whom the laborious Dr. Griswold considers to have been “incomparably the best writer, native or foreign, who lived in New England during the first hundred years of her colonization” ), “this is never to be forgotten, that our New England is originally a plantation of religion, and not a plantation of trade. Let merchants and such as are making cent per cent remember this. Let others who have come over since at sundry times remember this, that worldly gain was not the end and design of the people of New England, but religion. And if any man among us make religion as twelve and the world as thirteen, let such a man know he hath neither the spirit of a true New England man, nor yet of a sincere Christian.”