If the political problems of equality which were latent in
Calvinism now began to take on a different meaning under the
democratic conditions of pioneer life, the inner, spiritual
problems of that amazing creed were intensified. "Fallen" human
nature remained the same, whether in the crowded cosmopolitan
streets of Holland and London, or upon the desolate shores of
Cape Cod. But the moral strain of the old insoluble conflict
between "fixed fate" and "free will" was heightened by the
physical loneliness of the colonists. Each soul must fight its
own unaided, unending battle. In that moral solitude, as in the
physical solitude of the settlers upon the far northwestern
prairies of a later epoch, many a mind snapped. Unnatural tension
was succeeded by unnatural crimes. But for the stronger
intellects New England Calvinism became a potent spiritual
gymnastic, where, as in the Swedish system of bodily training,
one lifts imaginary and ever-increasing weights with imaginary
and ever-increasing effort, flexor and extensor muscles pulling
against one another, driven by the will.
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