"What could now sustain them but the Spirit of God and His grace? May not and ought not the children of these fathers rightly say, "Our fathers were Englishmen which came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this wilderness; but they cried unto the Lord, an He heard their voice and looked on their adversity." (Chaper 1, page 19, 2nd paragraph)
These words by Governor William Bradford sound so desolate. He had a harsh view of the New World because it was filled with wild things that he had never seen before and never experienced. It is interesting to me that these people ran to the New World because there was no one there; they wanted to be alone so that they could worship God the way they wished, and not by another man's leave. And yet, in the loneliness and the wildness of the place, they began to dislike it for the very reasons that inspired it in the first people. It shows that, as humans, we are afraid of change, of things we don't understand, of things that are unfamiliar. They felt completely out of their element; they didn't know how to survive in this new place.
How desolate and alone does a person have to feel to say that God is the onl one who could sustain them? Now, it's true; God is the only one who can sustain us, but you rarely ever hear it spoken of during good times. It is sad to me that he seems to have forgotten the reason that they came there in the first place. Instead of focusing on the beautiful home that God provided for them and all the possibilities that came with it, Bradford sees only the unknown and the negative.
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