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But since, with the Puritans, Church or Spiritual interests were paramount, and since the separation between the Nova Scotia Puritans and the New England Puritans was merely sentimental and followed the religious schism, the Puritan literature of the period in Nova Scotia was wholly religious and theological. On the theological side, it took the form of controversial and polemical literature for the promotion of the ‘New Lights’ schism. On the religious and creative sides, it took the form of homilies, sermons, devotional works, prayers, and hymns.

The chief creative writer of the Puritan period was Henry Alline. During the conflict between the Orthodox Congregationalists and the ‘New Lights’ Henry Alline published a polemical pamphlet, The Anti-Traditionist, and five books of Hymns and Spiritual Songs. After his death his Life and Journal was published. It is interesting only to students of religious psychology and the varieties of religious experience.

But Alline’s Hymns and Spiritual Songs is a genuinely creative work. It contrasts admirably with the too often spiritually inept and doggerelized hymns and evangelical songs that have found a place in the hymnody of the Churches. Alline’s hymns and spiritual songs disclose on his part an authentic lyrical faculty, a sure sense of rhythm and of decent rhyme, and a respect for dignified diction and imagery. Though Alline’s work in prose and verse has no significance in the evolution of Canadian Literature, inasmuch as he did not even ‘influence’ Canadian hymnography, yet the literary historian must give him the distinction of being the first of the Pioneer Hymn Writers of Canada. The Puritan period in Nova Scotia had, however, no importance in the development of Canadian Literature.