Thus two ideas became paramount:  the idea of God, and the idea of conscience.  God was thought of as a judge who will reward His chosen servants by eternal happiness, but who will deliver those who do not know Him, or those who sin against His laws, to Satan and everlasting fire; a God to please whom is the first object of this life, as no pleasure and no pain here can compare with the pleasure or pain to come.  This conception of the Deity still survives among us, but it is not realized with the intensity of men who feel the hand of God in every incident of their lives, who fancy that the Devil in person is among them, and who distinctly hear his tempting words.  Conscience, the guide who pointed out the path of rectitude, became strict and self-searching, ever looking inwardly, and judging harshly, magnifying, through the greatness of its ideal of virtue, every failing into a crime.  The natural result of these ideas seething in a brain which had little other food was Puritanism:  the subordination of all other interests of life to the attainment of a spiritual condition acceptable in the sight of God.  Following this aim with feverish intentness, and tortured by a conscience of extreme tenderness, the Puritans naturally cast aside the pleasures of this life as likely to interfere with the attainment of future happiness, and as worthless compared to it.  It was no time for gaiety and trifling when the horrors of hell were staring them in the face.

There is extant a life-like picture of a London housewife, which can teach us much regarding the spirit of Puritanism.[83] “She was very loving and obedient to her parents, loving and kind to her husband, very tender-hearted to her children, loving all that were godly, much misliking the wicked and profane.  She was a pattern of sobriety unto many, very seldom was seen abroad, except at church.  When others recreated themselves, at holidays and other times, she would take her needlework, and say, ‘here is my recreation.’”

The self-denial of this virtuous housewife developed into that austerity which, when Puritanism had become the ruling power in England, closed the theatre and the bear-garden, stopped the dancing on the village green, and assumed a dress and manner, the sombreness of which was meant to signify a scorn of this world.  While we can now easily perceive the mistakes of the Puritans, and condemn the folly of prohibiting innocent amusements which form a natural outlet for exuberant spirits, it will be well if we can do justice to the nobility of aim, and the greatness of self-sacrifice, to which their austerity was due.  We must remember that the aim of the Puritans was a godliness far more exacting than that which we seek, and requiring a proportionate sacrifice of immediate pleasure.  We must remember, too, that the amusements of that time were in large part brutal, like the bear-gardens; and licentious, like most of the theatres.  Puritanism could only exist among men filled to an uncommon degree