But we cannot
judge fairly the contemporary effect of this pulpit literature
without remembering the passionate faith that made pulpit and
pews copartners in a supreme spiritual struggle. Historians
properly insist upon the aesthetic poverty of the New England
Puritans; that their rule of life cut them off from an enjoyment
of the dramatic literature of their race, then just closing its
most splendid epoch; that they had little poetry or music and no
architecture and plastic art. But we must never forget that to
men of their creed the Sunday sermons and the week-day "lectures"
served as oratory, poetry, and drama. These outpourings of the
mind and heart of their spiritual leaders were the very stuff of
human passion in its intensest forms. Puritan churchgoers,
passing hours upon hours every week in rapt absorption with the
noblest of all poetry and prose in the pages of their chief book,
the Bible, were at least as sensitive to the beauty of words and
the sweep of emotions as our contemporaries upon whose
book-shelves Spenser and Milton stand unread.
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