During the last couple of days we've been reminded of the "five kernels of corn" tradition. Susan Roser's website tells us that the tradition was begun in 1820 and I was pleased that Mary Ann referred us to a page which points out that the notion that there was actually a ration of five kernels of corn is unsubstantiated and contrary to common sense. But even if the settlers had endured a ration of five kernels of corn, what would that mean to us? Why would the Pilgrims themselves have had us observe such a tradition? When William Bradford wrote his history of the colony he wrote of a spirit he was grieved to see dying as the colonists became more worldly, and when he wrote of the starving time he wrote of a time which paradoxically may have been better than the later days of relative affluence. The starving time matters not because the Pilgrims suffered, but because they survived. And in Bradford's view they survived not because they were strong, for indeed they were weak, but because, in Bradford's view, God provided for them and sustained them. The starving times are meant to illustrate, as I believe Bradford's entire history is meant to illustrate, the utter dependence of man upon God. The core belief of the Calvinist is that man cannot save himself; that only God can save him. Bradford says, "all their victuals were spent and they were only to rest on God's providence; at night not many times knowing where to have a bit of anything the next day. And so, as one well observed, had need to pray that God would give them their daily bread, above all people in the world." (121-2) This is a time of want, but it is a time with its particular glory. Bradford continues, "Yet they bore these wants with great patience and alacrity of spirit; and that for so long a time as for the most part of two years." Bradford contrasts the Plymouth settlers to a group in a work by Peter Martyr who were reduced to eating, "dogs, toads and dead men," and says, "From these extremities the Lord in His goodness kept His people, and in their great wants preserved both their lives and healths. Let His name have the praise." (122) Later in the history Bradford says he must "take occasion not only to mention but greatly to admire the marvelous providence of God! That notwithstanding the many changes and hardships that these people went through, and the many enemies they had and difficulties they met withal, that so many of them should live to very old age!"(328) What is remarkable to Bradford is that it was not to be expected--it was not natural--that these poorly nourished, stressed people who endured "crosses, troubles, fears, wants and sorrows," should live so long. It was not natural; it was supernatural. He says, "Man lives not by bread only,...it is not by good and dainty fare, by peace and rest and heart's ease in enjoying the contentments and good things of this world only that preserves health and prolongs life; God in such examples would have the world see and behold that He can do it without them." (329) For Bradford and those Pilgrims who shared his beliefs the hunger, the betrayals, the poverty and debt, the terrors of the wilderness, were earthly reminders of their spiritual helplessness and that they survived when there seemed no earthly way they could survive was for them at once illustration and proof of the truth of their beliefs. Bradford, as much and maybe more than any of the Pilgrims, gave up a life of "peace and rest and heart's ease" for "crosses, troubles, fears, wants and sorrows." Most would probably have said he risked everything for the nothing represented by the five kernels of corn. But Bradford's eyes, I believe, saw that he had in fact risked nothing for the everything that those kernels can represent, for Bradford sees the starving time as proof that God can and will preserve His people when nothing in the world can save them. What we individually make of this in the twenty-first century is something for each of us to decide, and if five kernels of corn brings us to reflect on what our ancestors did and thought, what harm is there in that? Citations of Bradford's history are from the Modern Library edition of 1967, edited by Samuel Eliot Morison.