It is neither more nor less than a bit of popular legend. If
we mean by the phrase "religious liberty" a state of things in which
opposite or contradictory opinions on questions of religion shall exist
side by side in the same community, and in which everybody shall
decide for himself how far he will conform to the customary religious
observances, nothing could have been further from their thoughts. There
is nothing they would have regarded with more genuine abhorrence. If
they could have been forewarned by a prophetic voice of the general
freedom--or, as they would have termed it, license--of thought and
behaviour which prevails in this country to-day, they would very likely
have abandoned their enterprise in despair. [12] The philosophic student
of history often has occasion to see how God is wiser than man. In other
words, he is often brought to realize how fortunate it is that the
leaders in great historic events cannot foresee the remote results of
the labours to which they have zealously consecrated their lives. It is
part of the irony of human destiny that the end we really accomplish by
striving with might and main is apt to be something quite different from
the end we dreamed of as we started on our arduous labour. So it was
with the Puritan settlers of New England.
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