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In the history of New England the Pilgrim is often confused with the Puritan, undoubtedly because the Puritan soon dominated and ultimately absorbed the Pilgrim. Nevertheless, the differences between them on this question of religious tolerance and the separation of Church and State were implacable, to adopt the word of a great American historian. Yet, in differentiating between Pilgrim and Puritan and in recalling the facts as to the origin of religious freedom and the separation of Church and State, the greatest of all the blessings we now enjoy—in giving most of the glory to the Pilgrims, notwithstanding the claims of Catholic Maryland—I am not at all unmindful that in religion and in politics the Pilgrim and the Puritan had many views in common, that our debt to both is quite inseparable, and that our gratitude to them should be eternal.

It is certainly impossible to exaggerate the debt we owe to the Puritan spirit—fierce, indomitable and undaunted, even if intolerant, for it was that spirit which cemented the foundations of our nation. It was the Puritan spirit that gave to England her noblest figures and her most inspiring traditions of battlefields. Towering above all other Englishmen is the lofty figure of the Puritan Cromwell, and second only to him are the Puritans Hampden, Pym, Selden, Milton, Vane, Hale. Hampden—the highest type of English gentleman, with a nobility and fearlessness of character, self-control, soundness of judgment and perfect rectitude of intention, to which, as Macaulay declared, "the history of revolutions furnishes no parallel or furnishes a parallel in Washington alone." If to-day England is to preserve her empire, upon which she boasts the sun never sets, she must appeal to the energy and fortitude and courage of the Puritan. She must invoke the spirit of Oliver Cromwell, whose mighty arm made the name of England terrible to her enemies and laid the foundations of her empire, who led her to conquest, who never fought a battle without gaining it, whose soldiers' backs no enemy ever saw, who humbled Spain on the land and Holland on the sea, and who left a tradition of military valor which is now the inspiration of the splendid courage, heroism and sacrifice of England's soldiers on the continent of Europe.