Hero Tales from History — Roger Williams, A Minister Who Lived the Golden Rule

ROGER WILLIAMS, A MINISTER WHO LIVED THE GOLDEN RULE

When the Pilgrim Fathers left Europe in the clumsy little ship, the _Mayflower_, they came to America to have freedom to think and act as they believed right in matters of religion.

Many men in England who wished to have their own religious beliefs were called Puritans because they wished to purify the Church of England from things which they thought were wrong.

King James of England had announced that they must all worship in the ways of the Church of England or he would “harry them out of the land.

” Puritans and other people who would not conform to the service of the Church of England were called Nonconformists.

The group of Nonconformists who went away from their own country in 1620, to come as strangers to America, were called the Pilgrims.

They came to America in the _Mayflower_, and landed on a big boulder in the edge of the harbor at a place they named Plymouth.

Companies of Puritans sailed from England a few years later and landed on the shores of Massachusetts Bay, some at Salem, and some at a place they named Boston, for another town in England.

John Winthrop was the leader of this last company, and was made governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony.

The Puritans soon found that there were some of their number who did not believe just as they did.

It seems strange now that those who had come from England just to find a place where they could worship God in the way they saw fit could not let others do the same.

They came to do what their consciences told them was right, but they would not let others think that any other way was right.

So when members of the Society of Friends, called Quakers, came, dressing differently and thinking it wrong to fight and treat the Indians cruelly, the Puritans sent them away.

If the Quakers came back to Boston after being sent away, they were hanged on the Common.

A man who did not think what his neighbors believed was likely to have a hard time of it.

For any one to dress differently from others was considered a great offense.

It was the same all over the world, especially in England.

The first man who tried to wear a silk hat in London was chased through the streets.

The mob battered his hat and tore his clothes, and he barely escaped with his life.

Therefore, when Roger Williams, a bright young minister from England, came to preach in the first church of Boston, the people soon found that he believed in a different form of baptism from theirs, and some were angry enough to wish to kill him for being a Baptist.

So he left Boston and went to live at Plymouth.

The preaching of those days was not so much about doing good and living by the Golden Rule as about certain fixed beliefs.

This often led to angry arguments, and some good people became very violent.

On this account Roger Williams soon had to leave Plymouth.

Then he went to Salem and built a little church there which is still standing, about three hundred years old.

Here the young minister kept on preaching what the leaders thought were strange and wicked teachings.

It was decided that such a reckless preacher should be arrested and sent in chains to England to be tried, and imprisoned or put to death.

But Roger Williams heard of this decision and did not wait to be arrested.

When the captain and his men from Boston came to the Salem minister’s house, they found that he had left there three days before.

When the people of Boston, Salem, and Plymouth next heard of Roger Williams, he was settled on Narragansett Bay.

The Indians there received him gladly, for he had been one of the few white men who treated them kindly, as William Penn, fifty years afterwards, dealt with the Indians along the Delaware River.

Williams and his friends built a group of log houses and named their settlement Providence, because they believed that, in the providence, or care, of God, they had found a safe retreat among the savages from the severity of the pious Puritans of Massachusetts.

Quakers and other religious people, who were driven from the Puritan colonies, came and settled near Roger Williams.

Even here the people of different beliefs quarreled over religious matters, and good Pastor Williams had all he could do to keep them from fighting and injuring one another.

Soon the savage Pequot Indians tried to persuade all the Indian tribes to join together and kill at a stroke all the white men who had come over the Great Water and taken from the natives certain parts of their country.

When the white men of Boston and Plymouth heard of this they sent and begged Roger Williams to use his good influence with his neighbors the Narragansetts, a large and powerful tribe, to prevent them from joining in the plot to murder all the white men--as the Indians could have done if all the tribes had joined together and attacked all at once.

Here was a chance for Roger Williams to get even with those who had wished to kill or imprison him and who had driven him from place to place.

But the minister of Providence returned good for evil.

Taking his life in his hands, he went to the Indian village.

The Pequot braves were there in the wigwam of Canonicus, the Narragansett chief, [Illustration: THE LANDING OF ROGER WILLIAMS.

_From the painting by Alonzo Chappel_] trying to persuade him and his tribe to take part in a war against the “palefaces.

” Roger Williams was a hero.

He stayed with those Indians, sleeping with them at night without showing the least sign of fear, though he very well knew that a savage Pequot might stab him in his sleep.

The Providence minister was successful.

Canonicus refused to join with the Pequots.

Because the Narragansetts stayed out of the war, other tribes also kept out of it.

The Pequots went ahead, but the white men defeated and destroyed them.

By his conduct at this time of need, Roger Williams set both red men and white a noble example.

He taught them all by his life that a true Christian loves his enemies and does good to those who treat him badly.

The man who founded the town of Providence and the state of Rhode Island was the friend both of white men and red because he lived the Golden Rule.