always, "look in and not out"--an utter reversal of the teaching
of to-day. The children of that generation lost something that had
been the portion of their fathers. The Elizabethan age had been
one of immense animal life and vigor, and of intense capacity for
enjoyment, and, deny it as one might, the effect lingered and had
gone far toward forming character. The early Nonconformist still
shared in many worldly pleasures, and had found no occasion to
condense thought upon points in Calvinism, or to think of himself
as a refugee from home and country.

The cloud at first no bigger than a man's hand, was not dreaded,
and life in Nonconformist homes went on with as much real
enjoyment as if their ownership were never to be questioned.
Serious and sad, as certain phases come to be, it is certain that
home life developed as suddenly as general intelligence. The
changes in belief in turn affected character. "There was a sudden
loss of the passion, the caprice, the subtle and tender play of
feeling, the breath of sympathy, the quick pulse of delight, which
had marked the age of Elizabeth; but on the other hand life gained
in moral grandeur, in a sense of the dignity of manhood, in
orderliness and equable force. The larger geniality of the age
that had passed away was replaced by an intense tenderness within
the narrower circle of the home. Home, as we now conceive it, was
the creation of the Puritan. Wife and child rose from mere
dependants on the will of husband or father, as husband or father
saw in them saints like himself, souls hallowed by the touch of a
divine spirit and called with a divine calling like his own. The
sense of spiritual fellowship gave a new tenderness and refinement
to the common family affections."