the only modes of spiritual instruction employed by the first settlers, until they procured clergymen from England, or appointed ministers from among their own elders; and these means were highly valued by the settlers, who had abandoned home, and kindred, and the comforts of civilized life, for no other motive than to secure to themselves the privilege of worshipping God according to their own ideas of what was good and profitable to their souls.  The talents and the elevated piety of William Brewster rendered him both a very valuable teacher, and also, in the eyes of the Puritans, an efficient substitute for their expected pastor.

[Footnote:  The Puritans never used the names Sunday or Sabbath. They objected is the first as savoring of Paganism and to the second as pertaining to Judaism; and yet they enforced the observance of the Christian’s day of rest with almost Mosaic strictness.]

On the present mournful occasion he addressed the congregation, in a very impressive manner, on the heavy loss they had sustained in the death of their valued President; and exhorted them to remember and to imitate his piety, his charity, and his exemplary patience and self-denial, under the trying circumstances that had marked the period of his brief government.  These circumstances had become less painful, it is true, since their friendly intercourse with the Wampanoges, and the genial change in the weather; but still the trials of the Pilgrims were by no means over, and their need of faith in the good providence of God, and of persevering resolution in the path which they had chosen for themselves, remained as great as ever.

Deeply was the less of their first President felt by the colony, for every individual mourned him as a private friend, as well as a wise end benevolent ruler.  But the blow fell with more crushing power on her who had shared his checkered life of joy and sorrow for many years in Europe, and had accompanied him into exile, with the devoted feeling that his presence would make the wilderness a home.  His sudden removal, and the cheerless blank that succeeded, were more than the strength of his afflicted widow could endure; and in six weeks she followed him the grave.  From that time, it appeared as if the severity of the scourge that had ravaged the infant settlement was exhausted, for scarcely any more deaths occurred during that year; and many who had hitherto suffered from the effects of disease, regained their usual strength, and lived to a remarkably advanced age.

William Bradford was the individual selected by the community to fill the arduous and responsible office that had been held so few months by Carver; and the choice was a most judicious one, for he was a man well suited to be the leader of a colony exposed to the peculiar difficulties that surrounded the Puritan exiles.  His uncommon sagacity and penetration of character, and his undaunted resolution in times of danger, caused him to be regarded as the very prop