Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER I THE BAY PSALM BOOK "being thus . . . 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 thereof." Thus wrote Governor Bradford, in telling the story of how he and his fellow pilgrims in the Mayflower found a refuge on these western shores. The little book of devotion which they brought with them to their new home, and from which they sang praises to "the God of heaven" during the long and stormy voyage, bore the title: "The Booke of Psalms: Englished both in Prose and Metre." It had been published at Amsterdam in 1612, by Henry Ainsworth, an English clergyman who had separated from the Church of England, and who for a number of years had been living in exile. Most of the company that came over in the Mayflower were likewise Separatists who had fled to Holland for safety, and naturally they brought with them the Psalms which had been prepared by their fellow exile. They held this small book in tender affection and were loath to exchange it for a new version. In Plymouth, where it was first used, it was retained for more than two generations. Among the village maidens doubtless there was more than one Priscilla whom a John Alden might have found in meditation while "Open wide on her lap lay the well-worn psalm-book of Ains- worth." On the other hand, the Puritans who crossed in the great migration of 1630, and founded Boston, came direct from England. While they deplored the corruptions of the Established Church, they hoped for reform from within, and had continued their membership in the historic fold, looking askance upon the Separatists. They brought with them the version of the Psalms by Stern- hold and Hopkins. This versio...