Sermonstudio

Willa Cather wrote, "The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or woman." And in a very real sense, the United States of America began in the heart of William Bradford of Austerfield, England. He's been called "the first American."

There are those who've argued Captain John Smith was the first American, but after years of exploration he retired to England. Some set forward Virginia Dare, firstborn of the English on American soil, but little is known of her as she was a part of Manteo and "the Lost Colony." Some even clamor for John Winthrop, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, but he only tried to duplicate England in America.

William Bradford was different. No soldier of fortune, he was not an adventurer who came to American shores to get rich quickly, then take the next boat home to Great Britain. Bradford came to stay. He brought his wife. He planned to trade, to build a town, to establish a covenant way community of Jesus Christ.

And stay he did, his colony establishing the pattern for village life that would become the model for hundreds of other towns across North America.

Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote, "Those who have long enjoyed such privileges as we enjoy forget in time that men have died to win them." Such is the case with us here and now, with William Bradford then and there. That's why William Bradford, "the first American," returns today, in this Thanksgiving season, to speak, to remind us, to call us back to the neglected path.

(At this point the congregation sings the hymn, "We Gather Together." As it is ending, Governor Bradford enters from the rear of the nave, a hoe over his shoulder, giving a series of commands to the Plymouth settlers.)

John! My good man, take the young men to the shore and dig for mussels and put them in the spring to keep them for our needing.

And a good morning to you, Priscilla! Would you take three of the girls and see that the vegetable gardens are properly weeded?

Samuel, do not be forgetting to fell more trees what for timber for our stockade. Take Thomas with you. As many men as you need. And have Robert finish digging the saw pit.

(Bradford reaches the front of the nave, turns, removes his hat, wipes sweat from his brow, then addresses the congregation.)

You were asking about the sea voyage over. Indeed, we only had one storm. It lasted the entire voyage, September through November, nine weeks! We'd planned to settle south of here, at the mouth of Mr. Henry Hudson's river, but Cape Cod here to the north was where we made landfall, and the none of us had any stomach left for ship's travel. So we settled here.

Ah! This place likes me well! To be sure it's been hard, so many have died, but the good Lord has seen fit for our colony to make a beginning.

So now I've got the hour, and if you like I'll tell you the whole of our story.

If you travel back to England, you'll find my hometown at the southern edge of Yorkshire near Sheffield. My village is Austerfield. Of nearly 200 persons, it is.

Go in the Anglican Church, St. Helen's, and open the baptismal record and it will list my name, "William Bradford baptized into Jesus Christ as an infant, 19 March, 1589."

My father, William, a yeoman farmer, died when I was but sixteen months old. My mother Alice married again when I was four, sending me to live with my grandfather. But after two years he died. I went back to my mother to live, but after a year she, too, died. So at age seven my two uncles, Robert and Thomas, took me in, making me as a family servant.

I was a sickly child unable to do hard work. So I was taught to read and write so as to be useful in recording deeds, making contracts, and such. During this time I read the Bible, also, Fox's Book of Martyrs.

When a lad of teenage years, I was shepherd afore the family flocks. And on the hillside there I met another child shepherd, a Christian he was, who began to share the gospel of Christ Jesus with me. Soon I was following him to Babsworth, a village eight miles away, to the church where Richard Clyfton preached. I went every Sunday to learn all I could.

Well, soon my uncles missed me at St. Helen's and forbade me to go to Babsworth. I went anyway, so strong was my love for the Good News.

Gladly, a church was started closer by in Scrooby. And it was there I met William Brewster. He was 41. I was in my early teens. And he quickly became the father I never had. He let me watch him live. He taught me Christ, prayed with me, loaned me books -- he was my friend and mentor.

At Scrooby we made a covenant to live together in Jesus Christ. The Bible was our map. In it we found no warrant for bishops, big buildings, traditions, pipe organs, and the likes of Anglicanism. So we met in Brewster's house. He was area postmaster and had a fair-sized house in which we met. John Robinson, a Cambridge College graduate, who could read the Bible in its original languages, became our pastor. And under his eye we became a close family.

But did you know what we were doing in the house church was illegal? The state church of England offered no religious freedom to hold Bible studies outside her walls. And since we were meeting without her approval, when our doings were discovered, five of us were summoned to York to answer to authorities. There we were harassed, threatened, and Brewster's job and house taken away.

This was England in 1607. Queen Elizabeth I was on the throne. There was no law but her. Few could read. There was no public schooling. A family could never own land that was completely theirs. Unemployment was high. Discharged soldiers turned to highway robbery to make a living. There were so many people the government feared a revolt. So there was capital punishment for hundreds of crimes. No trial was necessary. Anyone could be thrown in jail, left to die of disease.

The five of us returned to Scrooby from the church authorities in York. We held a meeting of our covenant and it was decided to quit England for the shores of Holland and her promise of religious freedom. I was seventeen when we set out on foot for Boston, a tiny fishing village on the coast. There were nearly 100 of us who liquidated our holdings, gathered a small bundle, and began the trip.

In Holland we first tried to settle in Amsterdam where there were two free churches. Yet one church's pastor was scandalously involved in sexual misconduct. And the pastor of the second church had no set doctrine and drifted into strange ideas.

So we moved on to Leyden, Holland, a fair city built on thirty islands at the mouth of the Rhyne River. It was a cloth manufacturing center of about 100,000 people. It was also home to a fine university of lively ideas, art, and books. Some say Leyden is the prettiest city in all of Europe!

At first the only jobs we could find were low-paying servants' jobs. But we became Dutch citizens, joined the Guilds, and when my uncles in Austerfield died, I sold my family land, and bought a large house next to the University where our church could gather. I also bought a loom and began to manufacture silk and other cloths.

Now settled, I began to be in want of a wife. Several years earlier I'd met Dorothy May in Amsterdam. She was only eleven years old then, but I never forgot her. And by now she was sixteen and marrying age! I wrote and proposed. She accepted. And we were soon married at my house in Leyden.

By now our church had grown to near 300 souls. We were accustomed to meeting on Thursday nights and twice on Sundays. Our meetings generally lasted four hours each. There was an hour-long opening prayer. Pastor Robinson then read from the Geneva Bible, two to three chapters. A Psalm was sung. Then commenced a two-hour sermon, very meaty and interesting. Next we sang another Psalm, celebrated communion, even a baptism, and closed in prayer.

During this time we came to think of ourselves as God's saints on earth. We were brethren returning to the ancient way of the Bible. We were to come out of the wicked ways of the world and be separate.

How God did bless our twelve years in Leyden! We prospered materially, the church matured, and my Dorothy and I became parents of a fine son whom we named John.

Aye, but there were seeds of trouble sown in Europe. Catholic Spain was at war with Protestant Europe. And it looked like we'd be dragged into it. Some of our children were joining the Dutch Army, falling away from the Covenant. Many of us were becoming more Dutch than English!

Then the idea formed in our minds to make a new start in America: to be free of European wars, to own more land, to live our covenant unmolested, to create a better heritage for our children. We saw ourselves as Abraham, told to move from Ur to the new land God was to show him.

But where? We heard South America was a land of perpetual summer. But the Catholic Spanish were there. Then we got a copy of Captain John Smith's map of Virginia. We saw the northern part of the New World had rivers, natural harbors, forests, and game. Why, Captain Smith himself wrote, "If a man can't make a living there he deserves to starve."

The decision was made to move again, this time to America. We began to sell off our possessions and to negotiate with England for land in the New World. It took several years of hard effort.

The financial backing came from seventy merchant adventurers who put up 7,000 pounds each. (That is nearly a million dollars in today's money.) Lacking ourselves sufficient money to fund the trip, we bound ourselves in labor to these merchants who financed us. Our contract called for seven years' work during which no colonist could earn for himself, only for the merchants. We'd gather lumber, sassafras, and furs, especially beaver skins for fine English hats, ship it all back to England to be sold for the profit of our backers.

About 100 of us in the congregation of 300 agreed to go. Once we were firmly settled we'd call for the rest to join us. Pastor Robinson would stay with the Holland flock and come within a few years. So would our young son John.

The day before we were to leave Leyden, Pastor Robinson called for a day of solemn humiliation before God. A sermon was preached from Ezra 8:21. "Then I proclaimed a fast there, at the river ... that we might humble ourselves before our God, to seek from him a straight way for ourselves, our children, and all our goods." This was followed by a feast in Pastor Robinson's house. Then we wept as we boarded the barges in the river that took us to our ship. I can still remember my wife waving tearfully to our son as we pulled away from Holland's shores.

I wrote of that day in my diary. "So they left that goodly and pleasant city which had been their resting place nearly twelve years; but they knew they were pilgrims, and looked not much on those things, but lift up their eyes to the heavens, their dearest country, and quieted their spirits."

From Leyden we sailed across the English Channel to Southampton, England, where we were to meet Captain Jones and his ship the Mayflower. He'd already made several voyages to America, and had been hired by the merchant adventurers to take us over.

We also planned to take a second boat with us, the Speedwell. She'd remain with us in America, to be used for trade with the Indians.

By August 5, we were fully provisioned and set out from Southampton for the New World. But trouble hit hard. The Speedwell proved slow and leaky. So we had to put in at Dartmouth, England, to try to fix her. After several more weeks' delay, we put to sea once more, only to find the Speedwell unseaworthy as ever. So we turned back for England, this time putting in at Plymouth, England. There we had to abandon the Speedwell, a bitter blow, for we'd never planned to be self-sufficient as a colony. Rather than farm subsistently, we'd planned to live by trade with the Indians. And the boat was useful to that end.

All of this was too much for many of our brothers and sisters. The loss of the Speedwell. Too many fruitless days at sea, seven weeks by now. At Plymouth many of our brethren went ashore determining to return to Holland.

This left us undermanned for the colony. The merchant adventurers panicked and began recruiting anyone off the streets to fill the ranks. We stoutly complained. But what could we do?

So, on September 6, 102 men, women, and children crowded aboard the Mayflower. Forty-one of us were covenanted Christians, whilst 61 were strangers to our ways.

Our good ship was 180 tons, not small for her day. She measured 113 feet long, 26 feet wide, was deep-bellied and three-masted. And at a top speed of two miles per hour we set out for the New World, a voyage that was to last 65 days.

The sea journey can only be described as a long beating. Our toilets were slop buckets emptied in the bilge. There was no bathing. No privacy. What little water we had was rationed. Our food was always cold -- hard biscuits, salted beef, some beer.

And then came the storm. A continuous tempest of rain, wind, cold, and tossing. We were all seasick. The stench of vomit in our tightly-closed room below decks was awful.

The Mayflower's crew, thirty godless sailors, mocked us mercilessly. They threatened to throw our supplies overboard, told us we'd die and be fed to the fishes. One sailor in particular blasphemed our God and taunted us endlessly. He became the only man to die on the voyage over, his body dumped overboard.

Once, a mighty wave crashed over us and broke one of the beams supporting our main mast. It looked like we were done for! But a large press we'd providentially brought along for printing purposes was screwed into place in time to give the sagging beam support.

And all the while we worried over how we could build our covenant way community when the strangers among us so outnumbered the saints. We decided we would lead the colony no matter what!

On Friday, late in the day, November 9 it was, our good ship arrived off the coast at Cape Cod. Then we did fall to our knees and thank God for a safe deliverance.

The next day, a Saturday, we were all anxious to go ashore, but decided it was time to draw the strangers in our midst into agreement with what we'd come to do. So most of Saturday was spent writing out what we called the "Mayflower Compact" and agreeing to our common laws of governance.

Still anxious to go ashore, the next day was Sunday. It being the Lord's day, we obediently rested and worshiped. And come the dawn on Monday we rowed the women ashore to wash clothes whilst the men explored.

We found a water spring, wild berries, and Indians! They peeped at us through the forest, ran from us when we called out. We also found a store of corn and seed the Indians must have hidden. If it hadn't been for this, we'd have starved or had no seed to plant come springtime!

For the next weeks we anchored off Cape Cod on the Mayflower whilst Captain Jones, Miles Standish, myself, and others used the small boat to explore the sea. We battled freezing rain, counter winds, hunger, and cold for over a month as we explored for a suitable home for a colony.

Finally, we arrived at the site Captain John Smith had called "Plymouth" on his map of Virginia. It had fresh water, a hill to fortify, a bay deep enough for a ship, and land strangely cleared for agriculture, yet no Indians were to be seen.

We found out later, the Indians who'd cleared the land had been wiped out a year earlier by a plague. Other Indians were afraid to come near, fearful of the plague themselves. So, in God's providence, we'd settled in the only part of the New England coast free from hostile Indians. And the land was cleared already for our crops!

We rowed joyfully back out to the Mayflower to bring the ship and the colony ashore. But I was greeted with heavy news. I was told my lovely Dorothy, all of 23, had fallen overboard and drowned, her body never recovered. Oh, the pain! Oh, the loneliness! "Why, God?" I moaned for many a day. Yet, life must go on in a strange and hostile land. And go on we somehow did.

We moored the Mayflower in Plymouth harbor. December 18, 1620, it was. Then we rowed the first of the colonists ashore. There was a large rock fortuitously settled at the water's edge which enabled us to step ashore without getting our feet wet. I hear the stone remains to this day, marking the spot we did come to shore.

It being winter in northern climes, we had no time to spare. Our company of nearly 100 persons had no noblemen among us. Only four were past age fifty. We were mostly in our twenties, thirties, and forties. And 33 of us were children! Some of us were coopers, others of us weavers and farmers. And there were carpenters, sailors, soldiers, and tailors among us as well. We commenced to building temporary huts, bringing ashore our supplies, and planning our defense against any possible Indian attacks.

Then the sickness began. The general sickness, we called it. A kind of fever, the coughing of phlegm. In no time two or three of our colony were dying a day. By January and February only six or seven of us were well enough to care for all the rest. January 14 the thatched room of our main storage hut caught fire and we barely managed to save our supplies. All of this, but mercifully the winter of 1620-1621 was one of the mildest on record.

By early spring, of the 102 of us to arrive at Cape Cod, only 56 of us were alive. Nineteen men. The rest women and children. Four entire families were wiped out. Just three married couples remained. Only 21 of us pilgrims survived the first 120 days. Even John Carver, our first governor, died in mid-April. That's when I was elected governor of Plymouth Plantation for the first time.

It was during this dark time God blessed us with another of his providential miracles. March 16 it was. We men were discussing how best to join our meager resources to defend ourselves should Indians attack us. We'd seen them peeping at us from the woods. There had been several skirmishes. And some of our number had gone into the woods not to return. We feared the coming of spring and good weather might bring with it an Indian attack.

That's when, without warning, a redskin, wearing little clothing, walked right into our camp. He had a bow with arrows slung over his shoulders. His hair was cut short, long in the back. He just walked right up to us and said in plain English, "Welcome! You wouldn't happen to have a beer, would you?"

Tall and handsome, the Indian's name was Squanto. He spent the night in our camp; one of us was up all night as a sentry to watch him. The next day he called for his tribe to join us and they sang and danced to entertain us in a most welcoming manner.

It seems Squanto had befriended Captain John Smith years earlier, returned with him to England, learned the language, acquired a taste for English ale, and later sailed home to his native America. That's when he heard more Englishmen had arrived and he'd come to investigate.

Other Indians visited. We found out their tribe was called Wamponoan, "the people of the dawn," because they were the most eastern tribe. One of their number, Samoset, was very tall and handsome. He became a close friend of mine, the colony not able to survive without him. He taught us the Indian language. He taught us to plant our corn using alewives, or fish, as fertilizer, and to guard it to keep the wolves away. He taught us how to make peace with the surrounding Indians.

The first summer we put our griefs behind us and farmed and built as fast as we could. By fall we had eleven buildings up and a good crop in. We'd learned to fish some, and fowl was easily taken in the woods.

It was then William Brewster recalled October 3 to be a Dutch holiday, a time of thanksgiving for Holland's victory over the Spanish. He encouraged me to declare a similar day of thanksgiving for our good colony and her deliverance through so many perils. So I did so in November.

We were now twenty men, ten women, and the remainder children. We set about gathering wild turkey, shellfish, greens, wine of grapes. And, as it seemed good, we invited our Indian friends so as to strengthen our friendship.

To our horror ninety hungry braves showed up. They did bring five deer with them. But for three days of feasting our ten women had 142 demanding stomachs to fill!

We men played games of skill. Miles Standish, our military leader, entertained our Indian friends with battle drills. And the Indians danced for us.

No sooner was our Thanksgiving celebration over than we heard a ship was coming in. Panic filled our minds! Would it be a Spanish ship out to destroy us? Could it be a French warship that'd rob us and leave us to starve? It turned out to be a British frigate, the Fortune, bringing 35 more settlers, but not one box of provisions! And how were we to feed and house these souls when we were barely hanging on ourselves?

Of the new arrivals, most refused to work. They clearly planned to overrun the colony by weight of their numbers, make it their own, and keep us working!

Until now, all our labor was to the common good. All our crops went into the community storehouse, and each of us took out what we needed. Communism, thus, was our way of economy.

Remembering the Apostle Paul's admonition in Thessalonians, "If a man won't work, let him not eat," I as governor ordered our socialist economy ended. I gave each colonist a parcel of land to own, to work as a farm, and the fruits of his labor would be his. Thus ended our crisis of laziness. Though, I might add, some of our number got a mite thin before they learned to labor.

In our early years the good Lord provided for us in so many miraculous ways. When the Indian Squanto grew deathly ill with a fever, his fellow braves gathered to witness his death. We, too, gathered at his bedside, but our intention was to pray for him and nurse him back to health. In his pain, Squanto was very much afraid to die, and he begged us, "Pray for me so I can go to the white man's God in Heaven." Squanto was our first convert.

And another time Massasoit, king of the Indian tribes, became deathly ill. He'd gone blind and was clearly near death. The Indians called for us to come and prayerfully nurse their chief. We did. And again God raised him up, much to the amazement of the Indians.

Another summer, when the colony was up to 180 residents, we experienced a sizzling hot July with no rain. Our crops were drying up. And without a good harvest we'd surely starve come winter. So, we fasted and prayed. And soon God sent a two-week drizzling rain that revived our crops. Again the Indians were most impressed. "When we rain dance, a thundershower comes that washes our crops away. Your prayer brings a gentle rain," they mused.

Though we taught the Indians the gospel, few were converted. They liked our Ten Commandments, all except the one against adultery. "It's not convenient," they said.

As the colony began to take firm root, I began to desire a wife. When the good ship Swan put into harbor from England, I learned from the news of home that a lady friend of mine, Alice Southworth, had herself been recently widowed. I decided to write, asking her to marry me. And she agreed, taking passage on the next ship to Plymouth. The day of her arrival I met her at the water's edge in my tattered clothing. We were out of bread, had no ale or meat. All I could set before her was some cool spring water and a freshly boiled lobster. But Alice and I were to be very happily married the rest of our lives.

For your knowing, I remained governor of Plymouth Plantation for most of the first 36 years of its existence. If you study my faith you'll see the burden of it all etched into my countenance. There be so many aches in my heart!

Pastor John Robinson died in Holland, never able to come to America as the Anglicans blocked him. And William Brewster was to die, the man who'd been such a father to me.

The first shipload of lumber and fur we sent for England to help pay our debts was pirated by a French raiding ship. Still, within seven years, the plantation was able to pay off our debts with the merchant adventurers and be completely free.

But ease and prosperity were never completely ours. By now other colonies of England were springing up around us, particularly the Massachusetts Bay Colony and Boston with its Puritans led by John Winthrop. And it grew fast so as to make us an economic backwater.

What prosperity we did achieve seemed to serve as our ruin. For as soon as a young man made money, he'd buy land, move to it, and begin to miss church and grow ignorant of the Lord's ways. Soon there was drunkenness, fornication, and greed in the midst of us. And, discipline as we might, preach as we might, it seemed a flood we could not stem.

Over the years, I carefully wrote a history of our noble covenant ways. It's called Of Plymouth Plantation. And the story of every hope, every sorrow is there chronicled for you to read.

I guess you could say I got discouraged with my colony. In my late fifties, I left off writing in my book. Careworn, weary, feeling like maybe we had not fully achieved all we'd set out to do in the Lord, I endlessly mourned.

My good friend Edward Winslow, the colony's ambassador, was in England on business for us. And he decided to resign his post, to remain in Great Britain. One by one all of my friends moved away or died -- Standish, Robinson, Brewster, Winslow.

I felt so alone. Except for my Alice and my family and Jesus.

When I'd left Austerfield in England, we were a village of near 200 souls. And now after this toil and suffering, Plymouth was but the same size. And the sins of our lives were still with us. More and more, our youth failed to respect our covenant ways. All they desired was in work and possessions. We were the more eager to improve the quality of our outward estates than we were to perfect our spiritual estates.

I guess I learned the limits of my life. I learned how feeble our spiritual will is, how strong our flesh is. And no matter if one cross the vast ocean, one cannot escape what man is and of our continual need of God's forgiving grace in Jesus.

May 7, 1657, it was. My sixty-eighth year. I'd been ill for some time, taken abed. I'd not slept well the night. Feelings of light and warmth accompanied me. And visions I could not put into words. I awoke strangely refreshed. And I told my wife, "God has given me a pledge of my happiness in another world." I died in Jesus at nine in the evening.

The colony mourned my passing and quietly buried me on the hill overlooking the city. My beloved Alice lived thirteen more years, to age eighty. She, you'll find if you visit the old colony, is buried beside me, our life's work finished. In my history of the colony I concluded, "We have rather noted these things, that you may see the worth of these things and not negligently lose what your fathers have obtained with much hardship."

Ah! But we were once young. We once dreamed dreams and saw visions of God the Lord. But we grew old. And so many of our dreams never came true ...

Ah! But so very many did!

(Bradford exits.)