perience with witches taught him a certain wariness of angels. In 1711, after thirty years of active service in the church, Mather writes in his diary this distinctly advanced criterion for inspiration:—
'There is a thought which I have often had in my mind; but I would now lay upon my mind a charge to have it oftener there: that the light of reason is the law of God; the voice of reason is the voice of God; we never have to do with reason, but at the same time we have to do with God; our submission to the rules of reason is an obedience to God. Let me as often as I have evident reason set before me, think upon it; the great God now speaks to me.'
Our judgment of Mather's vision must depend upon what reason told Mather to do. Well, every day of his life reason told Mather to undertake some good for his fellow men. At the beginning of each entry in his diary for a long period of years stand the letters 'G. D.,' which mean Good Designed for that day. 'And besides all this,' he declares, 'I have scarce at any time, for these five-and-forty years and more, so come as to stay in any company without considering whether no good might be done before I left it.' One sees in Mather a striking illustration of the Puritan passion for making
