By Virginia Dawkins
At our Thanksgiving table each year, our son Mike reads the account of the Pilgrims’ journey and their arrival in America.
The following excerpts are taken from The Light and the Glory. Authors Peter Marshall and David Manuel tell the story based upon William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation.
“One hundred and two Pilgrims had been crammed into a space about equal to that of a volleyball court. Compound that misery by the lack of light and fresh air. Add to it a diet of dried pork, dried peas…and the stench of sea-sickness…The weary Pilgrims were forced to endure harassment from the sailors. Several of the crew had taken to mocking them unmercifully; they would gloat at their sea-sickness, and delight in telling them they would die and be fed to the fish…In the midst of a violent storm, little children were screaming while the Pilgrims prayed, ‘Yet, Lord, thou canst save!’
After sixty-six days at sea they arrived at Cape Cod. ‘Being thus arrived in a good harbor and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of heaven, who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean, and delivered them from all the perils and miseries. They were thus joyful. They had begun their long journey by kneeling on the dock at Delftshaven to ask God’s blessing, they ended it on the sands of Cape Cod, kneeling to thank Him for that blessing.’
‘This poor people’s present condition…no friends to welcome them, nor inns to entertain or refresh their weatherbeaten bodies, no houses, or much less towns to repair to, to seek for succour…’
With winter storms howling around the tip of the cape, ‘whichever way they turned their eyes (save upward to the heavens) they could have little solace or content in respect of any outward objects. For summer being done, all things stand upon them with a weatherbeaten face; and the whole country, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage hue. If they looked behind them, there was the mighty ocean which they had passed, and was now as a main bar and gulf to separate them from all the civil parts of the world…Let it also be considered what weak hope of supply and succour they left behind them…What could sustain them but the Spirit of God and His Grace?”
The Pilgrims were “People of the Book.” They believed the Bible was the revealed Word of God. Yet living by the Word had caused them suffering and persecutions: “For some were taken and clapped up in prison, others had their houses beset and watched night and day, and hardly escaped their hands, and the most were fain to flee and leave their houses and habitations, and the means of their livelihood…there was no hope of their continuance there…they would go where they heard there was freedom of religion for all men.”
Moses had led the Israelites from slavery in Egypt to a Promised Land. Likewise, the Puritans sought to leave the bondage of the Old World and find their own Promised Land.
Thanksgiving is a time to remember our heritage and give thanks for the privilege of living in the Pilgrims’ Promised Land—America.
