32 CENTENNIAL HISTORY
To the New Englander of a not very remote time,-including the occasion of which to-day is the fitting century-mark, Nature,-heedless as ever of the individual, but, as always, wonderfully careful of the type,-sent forth her decree that he must work or he should starve. To him also, the civil power,-in all of which he was the unit, equal to every other unit,-secured to him the peaceable fruits of all that he earned. He exemplified in his whole life the claim of his ancestry that "God sifted a whole nation, that he might send choice grains into the wilderness." His idea of the regency underlying all power and all authority in the state, and which monarchs and peasants must alike obey, was but the reflection of what in an earlier day Andrew Melville had so boldly said to his king: " I tell you, sir, that there are two kings and two kingdoms here in Scotland. There is Christ Jesus the King, and His kingdom the Kirk, whose subject James VI is, and of whose kingdom not a king, nor a lord, nor a head, but a member. And they whom Christ hath called to watch over His kirk and govern His spiritual kingdom have sufficient power and authority so to do both together and severally." A somewhat severe theology, rejecting all earthly intermediaries between him and his eternal Judge, brought each man personally face to face with the momentous verities both of this world and of the life to come. An average thrift, in which the conditions of life were neither very high nor very low but surprisingly equable,-where the land was burdened neither with millionaires nor paupers, begat contentment,-here as ever, the handmaid of prosperity. The Connecticut men of that age knew their rights and were justly jealous of them. But they knew each correlative duty just as well, and observed them all. A continuing sense of obligation was always before them ; the admonition "I must" was early and late ringing in their ears. They were militant men, too, upon occasion, and in any just and defensive war were ready to fight for their liberties and to conquer an honorable peace.