New World - Same God

The Sermon on the Mount, in chapters 5 to 7 of Matthew, is the long hillside teaching that holds the Beatitudes and the Lord's Prayer. One line in it, Matthew 5:14, reads in the King James wording: 'Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.'

That verse crossed the Atlantic with the first English settlers of Massachusetts. In 1630, as the first Massachusetts Bay colonists set out, John Winthrop gave a sermon, 'A Model of Christian Charity,' telling them that 'we shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us.' He meant it as a warning as much as a hope: if the colony broke faith, everyone would see.

The picture sets the old scene in the new country. Christ stands barefoot on a grassy rise in a red robe over a gold tunic, a soft light behind his head, one arm open and one hand on his chest. Below him a crowd in plain colonial dress looks up: a woman in a white cap, a man in a tricorn, a bearded man in a broad-brimmed hat. Behind them a farmhouse sits in a green valley under a blue mountain and a heavy sky.