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A public-domain text about Boston, accessioned whole so the archive can quote it.","text_extract":"■0' \n\n\n'^. \n\n\nV^ \n\n\n.'^^ \n\n\nV^ \n\n\n^ \n\n\n'^a \n\n\n^ \" * . 1 JkO ^ * O « 0 ^ -ft* \n\n\nV \n\n\nw^ \nb^\". \n\n\nVL« ' • • » \n\n\n♦ '%?^ V\" • * • \" \n\n\n5°<. \n\n\n..-5 ?^ \n\n\nvV^ \n\n\n.-'' \n\n•.■>^ \n\n-oho' ^^ \n\n■' \n\n-*?^^ \n\n<■ \" -^^g\\/£7^^ \n\n\n-JZ/^-u< 9/oi,^ Cii^ \n\n\nINTRODUCTORY NOTE Vll \n\nwho served from 1655 to 1672, — a man of whom his colleague \nwrites that he was \" a blessing to his people, and that they two \n— pastor and teacher — lived together in love and peace for the \nspace of eleven years.\" \n\nThis colleague was Increase Mather, who succeeded Mr. \nMayo as pastor. For more than sixty years this remarkable \nman, — \" the most powerful individual force in America,\" and \nhis no less celebrated son. Cotton Mather, occupied the pulpit \nof The Second Church, and under such leaders the Society \ncould but grow and prosper and become a mighty centre of in- \nfluence in the community. \n\nVery marked was the interest which both the Mathers took \nin musical reform. Church music had sadly degenerated dur- \ning the one hundred and fifty years which had elapsed since the \nEnglish Calvinists, returning from their exile in Switzerland, \nhad brought with them the Genevan Psalter, and had introduced \ninto London the habit of singing Psalms in unison. The Eng- \nland of Elizabeth was a land of singers. What wonder, then, \nthat the English people enjoyed taking part in the worship, \n\"singing together with one voice,\" that they finally refused to \ntolerate the intricate anthems of the cathedral choirs, in which \nthe people could not join, and that, when they got the upper \nhand, they pulled the organs to pieces and destroyed the part- \nbooks ; but because they did these things it is a mistake to \nsuppose that the early Puritans were utterly unmusical. Intri- \ncate church music was to them papistical. It must be done \naway with, like the detested \"white surplices.\" Outside the \nchurch they did not object to it as a means of recreation. In- \ndeed, we find two such widely different men as John Milton and \nOliver Cromwell alike in their love for this art. \n\nWhen the Puritans came to America, they brought the habit \nof psalm-singing with them ; and, if they had been content to \nuse the words of Sternhold and Hopkins's version, all might \nhave been well. But instead of this they made a version of \ntheir own, which, though more literal, was almost unsingable. \nWorse still, they adopted the custom advocated by the West- \nminster Assembly of \" lining \" the Psalm ; that is, of having \n\n\nVlll INTRODUCTORY NOTE \n\neach line read by an officer of the church before it was sung, — \na practice originally made necessary by the scarcity of books, \nbut kept up long after there was a plentiful supply. These \ntwo causes alone were enough to ruin the effect of the music \nand make the art disliked by those who had never known any- \nthing better; but when we add that the tunes were handed \ndown by oral tradition, that no two churches sang them in the \nsame way, that each individual singer was at liberty to put in \nextra turns and quavers, that there was no pretence of keeping \ntime, and that the notes were often so prolonged as to require \na pause to take breath, it is hard to imagine a worse state \nof things, musically speaking. Reform was imperative, and \nit was started by the ministers. In 1718 Cotton Mather, \nthe colleague and successor of his father, published a new \ntranslation of the Psalms, called the \" Psalterium Ameri- \ncanum,\" in which, by an ingenious arrangement of different \ntypes and words in brackets to be omitted or retained at \npleasure, the Psalms could be adapted to tunes of different \nmetre. Three years later Thomas Walter, pastor of the church \nin Roxbury and grandson of Increase Mather, published a \nsinging-book, which was recommended by Increase and Cotton \nMather, and many other ministers, and was the first attempt \nat better music. The tunes were copied from Playford, and \nwere in three parts without words. \n\nOne of the rarest of the Cotton Mather tracts bears this \ntitle : — \n\n\" The Accomplished Singer. | Instructions | How the Piety \nI of Singing | with a | True Devotion may be | obtained \nand expressed ; the Glor | ious God after an uncommon man- \nner glorified in it, and His | people Codified. | Intended for \nthe Assistance of all that would | sing Psalms with Grace in \ntheir Hearts ; | But more particularly to accompany the | \nLaudable Endeavours of those who are | Learning to sing by \nRule. . . . BostoJi : Fn?ited by B Green for S Gerrish, \\ . . . \n172 1. 16 mo, pp. (4), 24.\" \n\n\nINTRODUCTORY NOTE IX \n\nThe first singing-school was started about 1720, and singing \nby note was thus introduced into the Boston churches, Dr, \nColman's society in Brattle Square probably being the first to \nemploy the new method. This innovation, or rather revolu- \ntion, was stoutly opposed by the advocates of \" the usual way.\" \nFiercely the battle of the singers raged, — the first of the many \nmusical contests in Boston. The leading ministers arrayed \nthemselves on the side of reform, many of them publishing \n\"spirited discourses\" on the subject. In 1723 appeared a \ntract entitled \" Cases of Conscience about singing Psalms,\" in \nwhich, among other propositions for consideration, is the fol- \nlowing : \" Whether they who purposely sing a tune different \nfrom that which is appointed by the pastor or elder to be sung \nare not guilty of acting disorderly and of taking God's name \nin vain, also by disturbing the order of the sanctuary.\" This \ntract shows the importance attached to the question, and the \nrude and even childish pettishness by which the Puritans of \nthat day sometimes manifested their individualit}^ and inde- \npendence. \n\nCotton Mather had the largest private library on the conti- \nnent,— a fact which must have been appreciated by his colleague \nand successor, the Rev. Joshua Gee, who was a brilliant, scholarly \nman, and which may have suggested to him the plan of found- \ning a Church Library for the use of the ministers. We are \nable to give the details of this scheme in his own words, copied \nfrom his Register Book. \n\nMr. Gee writes, \" In a conversation with the late venerable \nDr. Cotton Mather, sometime in the summer of the year \nMDCCXXVIL, I proposed to him the forming a library for the \nChurch under our Pastoral Care.\" He then gives in full a paper \nentitled \" A Proposal for a Church Library,\" and after this the \nlist of subscribers, headed by Dr. Mather, who, however, \" died \nbefore this subscription was compleated.\" \n\nThe Library thus started survived even the trying days of the \nRevolution. In 182 1, though many books had been lost, there \nremained 123 volumes, 50 of which were of small value. In \n1827, just a hundred years from the time when the plan for the \n\n\nX INTRODUCTORY NOTE \n\nlibrary was first proposed, \" at the request of Mr. Ware, who \nstated that efforts were making to build up a library for the \nTheological School at Cambridge 'to be deposited in the \nbuilding recently erected,' the Church 'voted that the pastor \nbe authorized to select such volumes as he may think proper \nfrom its Library, and make a donation of them to the Library of \nthe Theological School, with the proviso that the minister of the \nSecond Church shall always have free use of the library of the \nTheological School.' \" \n\nLittle need be said of Mr, Gee's colleagues, the Rev. Samuel \nMather and the Rev. Samuel Checkley, the latter of whom suc- \nceeded him as minister. Mr. Checkley was followed by Dr. \nJohn Lathrop, who served from 1768 to 1816, during which \ntime the church passed through many and momentous changes. \nDr. Lathrop was a firm patriot, whose sermons did much to \nstrengthen the people in resisting oppression and in gaining \nfor them the reputation, from a British point of view, of being \n\"a nest of hornets.\" The Second Church was among the \nheaviest sufferers by the war. The earliest mention of their \ntrials at this period is found in the following brief notice, copied \nfrom the list of deaths in volume vii. of the church records : \n\" Mch 5, 1770, James Caldwell, shot by the inhumane sol- \ndiers.\" When the scattered congregation returned to the city \nafter its evacuation by the British, they found their Meeting- \nHouse on North Square in ashes. In this crisis the New Brick \nsociety came to their aid. The New Brick Church, at the \ndedication of which Dr. Cotton Mather had said, \" There is not \nin all the land a more beautiful house built for the worship of \nGod than this,\" became their home, the two societies uniting \npermanently in 1779. \n\nFollowing Dr. Lathrop came, in 18 17, the Rev. Henry Ware, \nJr., whose ministry lasted till 1830. His name is the synonym \nfor saintliness wherever known ; and in him the cause of peace, \nof freedom, of temperance, of education, and of charity, found an \nearnest advocate and a diligent worker. Ralph Waldo Emer- \nson followed Mr. Ware in 1829, and continued a little over \nthree years, — a period of great intellectual and spiritual en- \n\n\nINTRODUCTORY NOTE \n\n\nXI \n\n\njoyment and comfort to the people. In 1833 the Rev. Chandler \nRobbins was ordained, — a man of the purest Christian char- \nacter, of profound learning, a tender pastor, a respected mem- \nber of the community, a learned and accurate historian, to \nwhom, through his forty years of service, the Church was \nindebted for loyalty to its interests through many trying cir- \ncumstances. The Rev. Robert Laird Collier was installed in \n1876, and resigned in 1879. Then came the Rev. Edward A. \nHorton in 1880, followed by the Rev. Thomas Van Ness in \n1893, the last two ministers being still alive. \n\n\nTABLE OF CONTENTS. \n\n\nPAGE \n\nIntroductory Note v \n\n\nPreliminarg ^rocectitngs. \n\nAction of the Proprietors 3 \n\nTHE Anniversary Committee 3 \n\nCotntnetnoratifac SnbtcES. \nService 0/ Su?iday Morning, November 19, 1899. \n\nProgramme 8 \n\nHistorical Sermon by Rev. Thomas Van Ness . . 9 \n\nAddress by Rev. Edward A. Horton 20 \n\nAddress by Wilmon W. Blackmar 29 \n\nUnveiling of Memorial Gifts 20-32 \n\nGeorge H. Eager Window, — The Ministers' Me- \nmorial ; William Wilkins Warren Window, — \nCourage and Charity ; John W. Leighton \nMosaic, — Truth ; Frederic W. Lincoln Tablet. \n\nAcceptance of Memorial Gifts on Behalf of the \n\nChurch by Stephen M. Crosby 33 \n\nThe Memorial of Ralph Waldo Emerson, — Sunday Afternoon. \n\nProgramme 35 \n\nRemarks by Miss Rebecca D. Homer 37 \n\nReadings from Mr. Emerson's Writings .... 37 \n\nAddress by Walter P. Eaton 38 \n\nUnveiling of the Bust by Miss Alice L, Higgins . 46 \n\n\nxiv TABLE OF CONTENTS \n\nA Puritan Sendee, — Su7iday Evening. \n\nFAGB \n\nProgramme 4^ \n\nPsalms and Anthems from the Psalter and Hymn \nBooks of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth \n\nCenturies 48 \n\nChorus from \" Judas Maccabeus \" 54 \n\nAddress by Rev. Elvin J. Prescott, First Church, \n\nSalem, 1629 55 \n\nRev. James Eells, First Church, Boston, 1630 . 58 \nRev. Eugene R. Shippen, First Church, Dor- \nchester, 1630 65 \n\nRev. James De Normandie, D.D., First Church, \n\nRoxBURY, 1 63 1 71 \n\nRev. George A. Gordon, D.D., Third Church, \n\nBoston, 1669 77 \n\n\nService of Monday Morning, November 20. \n\nProgramme 83 \n\nMeeting of the Second Church Branch of the \n\nWomen's National Alliance 83 \n\nWhat Women have done in the United States since \nthe Founding of The Second Church in Boston : \n\nIn Literature, Mrs. Mary P. Wells Smith, 84 \nEducation, Mrs. Emily A. Fifield , . 100 \nPhilanthropy, Mrs. Kate Gannett \n\nWells 116 \n\nTheology, Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer . 129 \n\n\nTABLE OF CONTENTS XV \n\n\nMonday Evening. \n\n\nPAGB \n\n\nProgramme 145 \n\nThe Influence of the Second Church in America, 145 \nOpening Address by Stephen M. Crosby . . . 148 \nOn American Literature, Rev. Francis Green- \nwood Peabody, D.D 153 \n\nIn Religion, Rev. Edward Everett Hale, D.D., 164 \n\nMendelssohn's \"Hymn of Praise\" 145 \n\n\nSermon by Rev. Thomas Van Ness, November 26, \n\n1899 176 \n\n\nThe Mather Chair 191 \n\nThe Mosaic-Truth 191 \n\nThe Ministers' Window 192 \n\nThe Warren Window 193 \n\nThe Lincoln Tablet 193 \n\nThe Emerson Bust 194 \n\nThe Roebins Tablet 194 \n\nPaintings 195 \n\nFlags and Decorations 196 \n\nA Street in Old Boston 197 \n\n\nLIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. \n\n\nPACK \n\nThe Mather Chair iii \n\nThe First Covenant vi \n\nInscription on the Front of the Meeting-House . xi \nMemorial Windows, Etc. : \n\nThe Ministers' Memorial 20 \n\nCourage and Charity 22 \n\nTruth 26 \n\nMemorial Tablets : \n\nFrederic W. Lincoln 30 \n\nRev. Chandler Robbins, D.D 34 \n\nThe Emerson Bust 46 \n\n\nPRELIMINARY PROCEEDINGS. \n\n\nPRELIMINARY PROCEEDINGS. \n\n\nA T the Annual Meeting of the Proprietors of The \n-^^- Second Church in Boston, held in May, 1898, \nattention having been called to the fact that the next \nyear would mark the two hundred and fiftieth anniver- \nsary from the foundation of the Church, the following \naction was taken : — \n\nVoted, That a Committee of five be appointed by the \nModerator of this meeting, with himself as one, to con- \nsider a plan and to fix the precise date for celebrating, in \n1899, the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of this \nChurch, and to report the same at a future meeting of the \nProprietors and members of the Society to be called by \nsaid Committee. \n\nAt the Annual Meeting of the Proprietors in April, \n1899, the chairman announced the appointment of the fol- \nlowing persons to constitute this committee: the Rev, \nThomas Van Ness, William M. Bunting, James N. North, \nFrancis H. Brown, and Stephen M. Crosby. The Com- \nmittee reported that they had duly considered the matter, \nand had outlined a plan to submit to the Proprie- \ntors, which comprised a two days' celebration ; and they \nfixed as a convenient date for the event Sunday and \nMonday, the nineteenth and twentieth days of November, \n1899. This date was selected because the exact day of the \norganization of the Church is unknown. It has been deter- \nmined that the Church came together some time in 1649, \nand that the first Meeting-House, erected in North Square, \n\n\n4 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nwas completed and in use in June, 1650. At a later \nday the Committee was increased by the appointment of \nWilmon W. Blackmar, Charles H. Bond, and Lamont G. \nBurnham. Still later the Minister's Auxiliary Committee \nwas asked to take a part by caring for the financial \nmatters. This Committee was composed of William M. \nBunting, Chairman, Franklin F. Raymond, Secretary and \nTreasurer; Edmund T. Pratt, Charles H. Bond, Ephraim \nB. Stillings, Charles Darrow, Elmer A. Lord, Daniel H. \nLane, Ralph M. Kendall, and Frank W. Downer. \nThe following action was then taken : — \n\nVoted, by the Proprietors, That it is desirable to hold a \nservice on the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the \nestablishment of The Second Church in Boston, sub- \nstantially on the plan outlined and presented at this meet- \ning, in commemoration of its foundation and continuance \nto the present day. \n\nVoted^ That the Committee who have had in charge the \npreliminary consideration of the subject of a celebration \nbe authorized to make suitable arrangements and carry \nout such service as, in their judgment, may seem desirable. \n\nVoted, That they be authorized to expend such sums as \nmay be placed in their hands for the purpose, and that it \nbe discretionary with them to enlarge their committee, \nand to appoint subsidiary committees, as they may deem \nbest. \n\nThe programme, as recommended by the Committee, \nwas also adopted by the Proprietors in the form in which \nit was finally carried out. \n\nSeveral members of the Parish expressed the wish to \nunite with the Church the names of members of their \nhouseholds, who had passed away, by the gift of valuable \nworks of art. These proposals were gratefully accepted, \nand the reception of such memorials was assigned to the \nmorning hours of the first day. \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 5 \n\nWith the same feelings of devotion the younger members \nof the parish wished to give the Church a memorial bust \nof Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of its early ministers ; and \nthe reception of this gift was assigned to the afternoon. \n\nFor the evening a Puritan service was proposed, in \nwhich, together with appreciative words from the minis- \nters of five of the earliest churches of the Massachusetts \nBay Colony, a musical service was to be held, which \nshould mark the progress of the Art from the forms of \nthe earliest days of the community down to those of the \npresent. \n\nThe morning of the second day was to be occupied by \nthe Second Church Branch of the Women's National \nAlliance in the discussion of the topic \"What women \nhave done since the Founding of The Second Church.\" \n\nIn the evening it was intended that addresses should \nbe made by carefully chosen speakers on the subject \n\"What The Second Church has done in this Community.\" \n\nThe following sub-committees were appointed : — \n\nOn Memorial Gifts and Decorations, Francis H. Brown, \nW. W. Blackmar; on Printing and the Press, W. M. \nBunting, L. G. Burnham ; on Reception, J. N, North, \nW. M. Bunting; on Correspondence and Invitations, \nS. M. Crosby, L. G. Burnham ; on Music, Thomas Van \nNess, J. N. North, C. H. Bond. \n\nThe musical part of the Commemorative Services was \nunder the care of the conductor and musical director of \nthe Church, Mr. H. G. Tucker, to whose skill and untiring \ndevotion the Committee were indebted for the entire \nsuccess of this portion of the celebration. He was ably \nseconded by the choir of the church : Mrs. Marian Titus, \nsoprano, Mrs. Louise Bruce Brooks, contralto, Bruce W. \nHobbs, tenor, Wirt B. Phillips, bass. \n\n\nCOMMEMORATIVE SERVICE. \n\n\nCOMMEMORATIVE SERVICE. \n\n\nTHE Morning Service on the 19th. of November \nwas opened by a voluntary on the organ. The \nFirst Service in the Book of Worship was used at this \nmorning exercise, and the following programme fol- \nlowed : — \n\nf^igtortcal SErmon Rev. Thomas Van Ness. \n\n^iJliress Rev. Edward A. Horton. \n\nsuitress . WiLMON W. Blackmar. \n\n?Enbeih'ng at iWentori'al ©tfts \n\nIn memory of (a) George H. Eager, (Window) \" Ministers' \nMemorial.\" \n(f) William Wilkins Warren, (Window) \" Courage and \nCharity.\" \n\n(c) John W. Leighton, (Mosaic) \"Truth.\" \n\n(d) Frederic W. Lincoln, Corinthian Tablet. \n\n^IccEptana of Plemorial (gifts .... Stephen M. Crosby. \n\n\nHISTORICAL SERMON. \n\nBY THE REV. THOMAS VAN NESS. \n\" These all having obtained a good report.\" — Heb. xi. 39. \n\nT CAN appreciate somewhat Paul's feelings when \nhe sat down to write an historical letter to his \nkinsmen, which should so speak to them of their \npast that by the recollection of the glorious deed \nof Hebrew prophets, statesmen, and citizens their \nown faith would be increased and their own courage \nsustained. How select ? What emphasize } What \nomit.? A multitude of faces, forms, and events, \ncrowd before his imagination, each asking, demand- \ning, that it be marked off as of special importance. \nPalestine was a small country, the Jewish people, \nin comparison with their neighbors, a feeble folk ; \nyet no Assyrian, Roman, or Persian historian had \nsuch a wealth of material from which to draw, so \nmany inspiring personalities about whom to write. \nPaul first lays down his definition of faith, \" The \nevidence of things unseen.\" Then, step by step, he \npasses on to prove his statement, putting before the \nmind's eye such a stately procession as the world \nhas never known. Abraham emerges from the \npast, then the patriarchs, Isaac and Jacob, then \nfrom Sinai's awful heights descends the great law- \ngiver. Back of him is seen Joseph, the boy, and \nJoseph, the man, who, through rectitude and pu- \n\n\nlO THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nrity, is raised to the power of a Pharaoh ; then Noah ; \nthen Joshua. So the record sweeps on, becoming \nmore dramatic as it proceeds, until it begins to be \nimpossible longer to single out individual instances. \nThen Paul in his thought gathers together all the \npast generations, saying of them, \" Through faith \nthey subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, \nquenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of \nthe sword ; out of weakness were made strong, \nwaxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies \nof the aliens. They had trials of cruel mockings \nand scourgings, of bonds and inprisonment. They \nwere tempted, slain with the sword. Destitute, \nafflicted, tormented, they wandered in deserts and \nmountains, in dens and caves of the earth. All \nthese obtained a good report, for they endured as \nseeing the invisible.\" \n\nAlmost in Paul's words I might sum up the gen- \nerations that have lived and died in the past two \nhundred and fifty years, and who, by their faithful- \nness and loyalty, have made this Second Church in \nBoston what it is to-day. Back and beyond you this \nmorning, you who are to be seen with the actual \neye, are those nameless hundreds, those uncounted \nthousands, wives, husbands, fathers, mothers, grand- \nfathers, great-grandfathers, who are thronging for- \nward for recognition ; loved ones who have recently \npassed from earth; and not far from them older \nparishioners who saw and knew Sumner, Andrew, \nWebster, and Lafayette, and those, too, who were \non speaking terms with Parker, Motley, Channing, \nHowe, and Longfellow. Then, back of them, those \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY I I \n\nwhose garb and manner are strangely unfamiliar, \nthose who helped make constitutional history, who \nbecause they had freemen's blood in their veins \nsympathized with and helped forward the struggle \nfor liberty, — friends of Otis, of John Adams, of Paul \nRevere, men who pledged their lives, their fortunes, \nand their sacred honor to a loved cause ; for they \nesteemed the reproach for liberty's sake greater \nriches than the pleasures to be enjoyed under a \nking's tyranny. Still back of them, the men and \nwomen who slowly, toilfully, worked to build up the \nold town of Boston, who Sunday after Sunday, \nthrough sunshine and rain, through snow and \nstorm, wended their way to the Old North Meeting \nHouse, and there in the stern lessons taught from \nthe pulpit obtained a reason for their own lives \nand a warning against cowardice, sloth, and unfaith- \nfulness. \n\nYes, faith is the evidence of things unseen ; and \nit was because those of whom I speak had such \nfaith that they endured as seeing the invisible. \nIt was because they had such faith that they believed \nGod's kingdom could be founded upon earth, and \nthat they were the divinely chosen instruments to \nestablish that kingdom. \n\nCertain historians, who look at things purely \nfrom the outside, say that The Second Church was \nestablished because the seating capacity of the \nFirst Church had been outgrown : others affirm it \nwas founded when the news reached Massachusetts \nof the execution of Charles I. and the setting up of \nCromwell's commonwealth ; but these are extrane- \n\n\n12 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nous reasons. They fall into place as coincidences, \nnot as cause. \n\n\" Beina: called of God to enter into church fellow- \nship together.\" \n\nThere you have the cause in the first covenant \nof this church. Michael Powell, James Ashwood, \nChristopher Gibson, and their four friends actually \nbelieved themselves \" called of God \" to do this \nthing as much as did ever Abraham when he went \nforth from Chaldea to establish the worship of God \namons: the Canaanites. \n\n\" We here freely this day,\" so the covenant goes \non to declare, \" do avouch the Lord to be our God \nand ourselves to be his people,\" and \" to cleave \nto him and to one another in him.\" \n\nIt is not compulsion, you see. No presbytery, \nsynod, bishop, or pope, demands that a Second \nChurch be started in the little colony. No ! it is a \nlayman's movement, a people's church, a demo- \ncratic organization. The stamp once placed upon \nit by those seven Puritan founders, every year that \nfollows only makes deeper, more indelible that \nimpression. \" We here freely this day do this \nthing.\" Those words fitly express what was true \nthe Sunday after the church was founded ; and the \nnext Sunday and the next Sunday and every Sun- \nday even unto this day. \n\nIs it any wonder that a church so founded should \nalways stand for political liberty, for intellectual lib- \nerty, for social fellowship, for religious democracy ? \n\" Everything produces after its kind,\" says the \nauthor of Genesis. It does not, therefore, take an \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 3 \n\nuncommon prophet to predict that such an organi- \nzation, such a church, will be found on the side of \nlearning over against superstition ; will be found to \nuphold the spiritual interpretation of the Lord's \nScriptures rather than the formal and literal inter- \npretation ; will be found on the side of the people \nrather than on the side of the king ; will join forces \nwith the patriots and not with the Tories ; will up- \nhold the cause of union and a united republic, and \nnot the cause of disunion and secession ; and \nthrough its sons and daughters, whether known or \nunknown, whether occupying the executive chair \nof this great city or speaking only from the centre \nof the domestic circle, whether instructing youth \nfrom a Harvard professor's desk or simply instruct- \ning the child at home, will always throw its influ- \nence on the side of freedom, progress, justice, and \nsecurity for all. \n\nI am not, therefore, surprised, as I turn one by \none the pages of the history of The Second Church, \nto read what I there find. I am not surprised to \nlearn that as early as 1774 Lathrop, from this pul- \npit, said, \" Americans, rather than submit to be \nhewers of wood or drawers of water for any nation \nin the world, would spill their best blood \" ; nor does \nit seem strange that the British general, in speaking \nof The Second Church, should call it \" a nest of \ntraitors.\" I should have been much more surprised \nif I had not so learned, or if I had read that the \npastor of The Second Church was given a vote of \nthanks by the British ministry because of his sub- \nserviency and the cowardly acquiescence of his \n\n\n14 \n\n\nTHE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\n\nflock in all the unjust measures of Lord North. I \nshould have been disappointed and chagrined if \nthat layman whose memory we are soon about to \nhonor had flinched or wavered in the right course \nwhen the destinies of Boston hung upon his execu- \ntive action in those dark days of 1863 and 1864. \n\nNo ; now and again there has been an arrest of \nmovement, a hardening of form and tradition, a \nsomething almost like a stultification of that origi- \nnal Second Church covenant ; but, whenever such \nhas been the case, there have arisen some laymen \nor some coterie of the members, or some minister, \nlike him whom we shall recall and honor this after- \nnoon, who by a brave word against creed or by a \ncourageous sermon against the tyranny of tradition \nhas brought the Second Church back to its right- \nful position in the path of progress. \n\nIt is the spirit, the life force of a church about \nwhich we are anxious to know, not the particular \nforms that spirit has taken on. It is for that rea- \nson I have so far said nothing of the outward and \nvisible sign of the church as a structure, as a build- \ning. Let me now say, merely as a matter of rec- \nord, that the first meeting-house was at the head of \nNorth Square. It was built of wood and completed \nin 1650. It remained in continuous use until the \nfire of 1676 destroyed it. Then, with commendable \nzeal on the part of the people, a new building was \nerected ; and this second building was the one de- \nstroyed by the British in 1775. \n\nAfter the evacuation of Boston, when the mem- \nbers of The Second Church returned to their homes, \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 5 \n\nthey found in the place of their loved sanctuary a \nheap of ruins. In their disappointment and dis- \ntress they were invited to worship with the \nSociety of the New Brick on Hanover Street. \nThe New Brick Society was an offshoot through \nthe New North of The Second Church. In a sense, \ntherefore, it was a union of parts. Dr. Lathrop as- \nsumed charge of the reunited organization in 1779, \ncontinuing in the ministry almost exactly fifty years. \nHe died January 14, 1816, deservedly beloved and \nhonored. \n\nThe following year Henry Ware, Junior, was in- \nstalled as pastor. Perhaps his best known work \nfor the community is his temperance work. In an \nage when drinking was a universal habit, it \nneeded moral courage to stand out so boldly, and \nchampion an unpopular cause. How new and \nstartling were his words on this subject may be \njudged from the fact that his \" Discourse on Tem- \nperance,\" put on sale in this country, had a most \nextensive circulation ; and the twelfth thousand was \nprepared to meet the demands in London. There \nare persons still living who remember the funeral \nservices at Harvard University held over the body \nof Mr. Ware in 1843. Some time in 1829 the Col- \nlege had elected him to the chair of pulpit elo- \nquence and pastoral care, though he did not enter \nat once upon his professional duties, but spent the \nbest part of a year travelling through Europe, giv- \ning the care of his pulpit into the hands of Emer- \nson, who in March of 1829 had been installed as \nMr Ware's colleague. \n\n\nl6 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nAlthough the ministry of Ralph Waldo Emerson \ndid not cover the full space of four years, yet the \ntime was long enough for the people to discover \nhis clear discernment of truth, subtlety of reason- \ning, and candor of speech, which in after life gave \nhim world-wide fame. It was under the Rev. \nChandler Robbins, Mr. Emerson's successor, that \nthe resolution was formed to erect a new church \nedifice on the old site. \n\nWhile the work of rebuilding was in progress, \nthe society availed itself of an invitation to worship \nunder the roof of the Old South. In courteous \nrecognition of the hospitality extended to it at the \ntime The Second Church presented to the Old \nSouth a silver cup, which appears upon its com- \nmunion table, and which bears this inscription : — \n\nTHE OLD SOUTH CHURCH, \n\nIN MEMORY OF HER \n\nCHRISTIAN HOSPITALITY \n\nTO THE \n\nSECOND CHURCH, \n\n1844. \n\nThe new church building was completed and \ndedicated in 1845. There are many still living \nwho remember the services of dedication, — remem- \nber, too, the sad, the disheartening years that \nfollow. \n\nIt will not do for us to judge those times, to say \nthat a grave mistake was made in erecting so ex- \npensive a building in a part of the city from which \nThe Second Church families were steadily moving. \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY IJ \n\nI do not know. I only know the outcome. In \n1849 the church had to be sold to another relig- \nious society ; and its members were forced to find \na new home in the Freeman Place Chapel, which \nstands to-day in the rear of Hotel Bellevue on Bea- \ncon Street. In 1854, by a happy union with the \nChurch of the Saviour, the able and beloved minis- \nter of The Second Church found himself once more \nthe pastor of a strong and united band of worship- \npers ; and for something like eighteen years the \nRev. Chandler Robbins faithfully served as minister \nin the Bedford Street building. Then once again \ncame the need of change. The Bedford Street \nChurch was carefully taken down, its stones brought \nhere to Copley Square, and the present building be- \ngun. As near as two buildings can be one, it may \nbe said that this structure is the Bedford Street \nChurch ; for the very stained glass windows, the \npews, the pulpit, even the organ, and much of the \ninterior furnishings in this church on the dedica- \ntion day, September 17, 1874, were those of the \nformer church edifice. \n\nAnd now, if we desire to take a typical period, \nan action, a form, or symbol which shall best epito- \nmize the spirit continuously animating this Second \nChurch, what shall be selected } What better than \nan event w^hich in itself shows supremely the love \nof liberty in the people's hearts and at the same \ntime the moral courage of their minister ? What \nmore comprehensive than that moment when the \nindependence of the little colony weighs in the bal- \nance over against the desire of a king } Here are \n\n\nl8 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nthe royal commissioners, backed up by military \nforce, demanding, in the name of Charles II., the \nsurrender of the charter : here, on the other hand, \nare the deputies to the General Court, about to be \ninstructed as to their vote. What is to be the out- \ncome.? The minister of the Second Church, the \nRev. Increase Mather, pushes his way to the \ncrowded Town Hall, and makes a speech which \nelectrifies all who hear it. \" I hope,\" he says, \n\" there is not a free man in Boston that can be \nguilty of such a thing. We shall sin against the \nGod of heaven if we do this thing.\" \n\nWhen Mather sat down, and the vote of the \nmeeting was taken, it was unanimous against sub- \nmitting to the king. \n\nWhen I first came to Boston some seven years \nago, a quiet, cultured gentleman, a member of our \nStanding Committee, called my attention particu- \nlarly to the work of the Mathers, Increase and Cot- \nton. \" It was a magnificent epoch in our history,\" \nhe said, \" and some time or other a commemorative \ninscription or tablet should bear witness to what \nfather and son did for Massachusetts and for The \nSecond Church.\" In our further talks about the \nMathers he made not only their characters better \nknown and appreciated by me, but unconsciously \nhis own as well. Would that he were here now to \nlook upon this window, which so fitly carries out \nhis thought and with such dignity and beauty \nteaches the lesson of moral courage and fidelity to \ncivic duty ! \n\nWhen Paul sat down to write that eleventh \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 9 \n\nchapter of Hebrews, the furthest thing from his \nmind was the idea of self-glorification or personal \nfame. In him there was burning a desire to make \nbetter known to his kindred the great and good of \nthe past, through whom the Lord had wrought \ngreat glory. Yet such is the law of virtue that \nwhile he, who will glorify himself, shall be forgot- \nten, yet he who for righteousness' sake is willing \nto be debased and held in small esteem shall live \nin men's hearts forever and ever. Therefore it is \nthat, try as Paul will, the eleventh chapter of \nHebrews commemorates not Barak or Samson or \nJephthah or any of the others whom the apostle \nsought to wrest from oblivion, but commemorates \nPaul himself. So, too, though the name be hidden \nin an obscure line, though the blaze of sunshine \nfall on the face of Increase Mather, though in \nstrong, bold letters the list of ministers be written \nso that all may read, yet, nevertheless, the law of \nvirtue cannot thus be evaded ; and he who rightly \nand fitly is brought to remembrance by this window \nis he who so unselfishly and modestly labored to \nbring others to our mind — none other than our \nloved, our revered friend, George H. Eager. \n\n\" Though a good life hath but few days, yet a \ngood name endureth forever.\" So it is written in \nthe very nature of things. \n\nMother, daughter, you who through your devo- \ntion have made this window to the memory of the \nministers a reality, believe me, it is like a palimpsest \nof old, which bears upon its surface not only the \nmessage in view, but as well the message of a sim- \n\n\n20 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\npie, lofty life, quietly and honorably lived, and leav- \ning to you as the most priceless heritage a name \nkept forever unspotted from the world. \n\nSeeing we are compassed about with such a cloud \nof witnesses, let us run with patience the race that \nis set before us. And let us not be weary in well- \ndoing ; for in due season we shall reap, if we faint \nnot, until we all come to the unity of faith, unto the \nperfect man, unto the measure of the fulness of the \nstature of Christ. \n\n\nADDRESS. \n\nBY THE REV. EDWARD A. HORTON. \n\nA REASONABLE question may arise in our \n^^ minds. The Second Church in Boston is \ncommemorating to-day its two hundred and fiftieth \nanniversary. Back at the beginning stands the \nserious-faced figure of the Puritan. Before he left \nEngland, he and his allies assailed the churches and \nbroke the frescoed windows. In the wrath of the \nwhite heat of his reforming spirit he smote for God, \nfor progress, for man, according to his light and \nwith the heavy accent of his moral conviction. Do \nwe wisely to-day establish memorials somewhat of \nthe character that were destroyed when The Second \nChurch was founded ? Ay, truly ; for the great \ntrait in the Puritans was the possibility of growth. \nI believe that the Puritan of two hundred and fifty \nyears ago would be glad to witness the scene of \n\n\nw/yr/y;,/,/:Am/y . y^^iiy //?«/,, ,„u/CtW<>M/^„^ i,. \n\n\nTHE MINISTERS' WINDOW \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 21 \n\nto-day. This is our way now of ennobling and lift- \ning higher the benefits and truths of organized \nreligion. To the Puritan in his time destruction, \ndeprivation, and concentrating one's gaze upon the \nessentials of religious faith and doctrine seemed \nthe great duty. Were he living now, his method of \nreligious progress would be enrichment and beauty. \n\nIt is a personal privilege and responsibility as \nwell as a public duty to make mention here to-day \nof two gifts to this ancient society. When I came \nto Boston in 1880, wondering what the future had \nin store for me, so bold as to assay that which had \nbeen planned for me, my heart was strengthened \nand my mind guided greatly by valorous men who \npledged themselves generously to stand by their \nchosen leader. The two tributes which have been \noffered this morning find sympathetic echo in my \nsoul. I see George H. Eager here to-day. I feel \nthe tender influence of his gentle yet firm charac- \nter : he was patient and wise. I behold the familiar \npresence of Mr. Lincoln, — sagacious, loyal, public- \nspirited, — a man knowing clearly that, when you \nhave summed up all the glories of modern civiliza- \ntion and have omitted the religious element, you \nhave left a fatal defect. To all this tribute my \nmind gives hearty response. \n\nAnd now we pay attention, loving and true, to \nthe memories of two more loyal sons of The Second \nChurch. \n\nUpon my right is a piece of art, — the flower of \nconsummate art and deathless love. The figure of \nSaint Martin may not represent to you — that is, \n\n\n22 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nto most of you — a familiar figure. Born in the \nfourth century near the Danube, his parents were, \nas we term them, ignorant heathen. But, early, his \nsoul responded to the missionary call. He was \nconverted; and, from that pledge of allegiance to \nthe Christ and the gospel so early given, he ran a \nbright and victorious career, far outstripping his \nfather so famous in martial renown. \n\nThe scene represented in this window is that of \nan actual event which has come down the centuries \nas a part of true history. A youth went to Saint \nMartin poor and forlorn, naked and in need. He \nlistened to the tale: he was moved to sympathy; \nand, taking his sword, he cut in two his mantle, and \ngave the youth one-half. This is the picture as it \nappears. Yet I wish to recall (and let the fact \nshine out henceforth and forever from the window \nto those who may hereafter see it) that our man of \nvalor was a soul of breadth. He became a bishop \nof France, and never feared to accept his responsi- \nbilities. When heretics were pursued and burned, \nhe went to the other bishops, and begged that these \noffenders might be given to him. He hoped in his \ntruly Catholic and Christian keeping he might help \nthem, and by gently reproving them of their errors \nwin them to the fold. His request was denied. \nThe heretics were killed by the sword and fagot. I \nlike to think how that act of Saint Martin redounds, \nnot simply to his memory, — to his glory, but it is \nthe type of broad, inclusive souls from century to \ncentury. \n\nThe other figure in this particular window \n\n\nTHE lATARREN WINDOW \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 23 \n\nemerges through the mist of uncertainty, — Dorcas, \n— a name that embodies to us in this century the \nsubstance of good will, charity, and kindliness. The \naffluent, loving helpfulness of the Dorcas societies \nhas gone out through the land. \n\nAll women have been kindled by that little rec- \nord in acts of the woman named Dorcas, whose \nmemories brought tears to her associates. That \npassage has kindled many a candle to cast its \nbeams of compassion round the world. Dorcas, the \nexample of charity, of loving heart, of sympathetic \natmosphere, of hand that does not dole out bene- \nfactions, but clasps the object of attention with a \nthrill of sisterly recognition, — Dorcas is the second \nfigure. \n\nNow what significance has this window with \nreference to him whom we to-day remember, the \nsource, the incentive, the motive, of this gift, — Will- \niam Wilkins Warren ? Much, very much. \n\nMr. Warren has not been from us so long but \nthat many in these pews this morning have felt the \nthrob of joy as they recall the friendship they had \nfor him. William Wilkins Warren was a man \nwith special privileges. The good Lord put a \nscope of opportunity about him, and he recog- \nnized it. He knew he was a steward; and phil- \nanthropy unloosed his purse, broadened his heart, \nled him to generous plans. But that window \ndoes not simply mean courage and charity. A \nbrute can be courageous. Saint Martin had \nenthusiasm for humanity, a consecrated purpose. \nMr. Warren took unto himself these ideas and \n\n\n24 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\ntendencies, and embodied them in his Hfe. For \nthat reason we place a memorial here, as some- \nthing not only betokening love, but quality of \njudgment. \n\nI need not recall, in a presence like this, the \ncharacteristics which made Mr. Warren the source \nof true eulogy when he passed away. He was a \nlover of those refinements of life which we call \ncivilization. Across this square, at the Art Museum, \nthere is placed that gift from him which will enable \nthe walls, for a long time to come, to bear testimony \nto canvas blossoming into beauty and stones setting \nforth incarnate life. I believe, if he could look \ndown, he would rejoice at a testimonial like this. \nDid I say Saint Martin was conspicuously broad \nand inclusive ? So was our friend. He loved \nto see the good in other churches. He fellow- \nshipped with men and women who had high aims \nand motives, and allowed no mental differences and \ndoctrinal divergences to interfere with his sense \nof brotherhood and large fellowship. \n\nThe flag of our country kindled in him respon- \nsive loyalty and plaudits. He had traversed this \nearth along many pathways, familiar and unfamiliar ; \nbut amid all this variety of experience he never \nbecame dulled to home appreciations. He was \ncompact to the last in honor to his native land and \nfirm in his confidence as to its future. He main- \ntained respect for the ordinary, typical citizen, and \ndeclared adhesion to the ideals of this republic. \nBack from these wanderings and observances he \ncame to the ballot box of the people, the civic \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 25 \n\nkings, back to the circles of scholarship, without \nany superciHousness or affected superiority. Nay, \nwith a heart full of love, genuine love, of the \nAmerican life, the American spirit, and the Amer- \nican opportunities, which are being worked up con- \nstantly into higher types. \n\nHe was, finally, religious : he embodied Christian- \nity in his daily life. He listened to the Sermon on \nthe Mount. He believed in organized religion and \nthe support of churches. A more faithful parish- \nioner I never had. The stream of his daily testi- \nmony was full of the richness which comforts the \nminister and steadies him for the contest in the \nmany vicissitudes of life. \n\nLet that window, in all its beauty, stand not \nonly for the figures, historic and religious, so finely \nportrayed there, but because we seem to see within \nthe light of them, absorbing their radiance and \ngiving it out as he did in his life, our beloved \nWilliam Wilkins Warren, — not dead, for he yet \nspeaketh. \n\nAfter the singing of the anthem, \" My Soul doth \nmagnify,\" and an organ postlude, during which the mosaic \ntablet behind the pulpit was unveiled, Mr. Horton con- \ntinued : — \n\nYou have all, friends, had a brief glimpse, and \nseen the beauty and penetrated somewhat the \nsignificance of this memorial tablet in mosaic \nabove the pulpit. It represents Truth. But \ntruth comes to us in different aspects, and the \nsuccessful artist has recognized that fact. Here is \n\n\n26 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nTruth, with the key : science understands that \ninterpretation. The theologian catches the mean- \ning issuing from that symbol, — to probe, to knock \nat doors that seem solid, to soar upward to the \nheights of the sky or downward into the depths of \nthe geologic world. Science has unlocked many a \ndoor, and that has come about because in man \nGod has planted the irrepressible and onward-urg- \ning love of truth. \n\nThere is a sword, too, which in Scripture hath \nsomewhat been symbolized by Saint Paul, — the \nsword of the spirit ; not the cleaver and hewer of the \nbattlefield, but the sword of an indomitable pur- \npose, which in youth responds to a call from the \nhigh heavens, is determined to make character, \nhelp lift up the world, and keep an untarnished \nrecord of ideal loyalty. The sword represents the \npractical embodiment of truth in laws, institutions, \ncharacter, in whatsoever perpetuates itself genera- \ntion after generation, though the thinker, the scholar, \nthe scientist, the theologian, come and go. \n\nThen there is the flaming emblem, the torch. \nThat is significant of truth's illuminating power. \nWhat is it that we should fear most in this world ? \nIgnorance, darkness, superstition ! Truth is the \ngas-jet in the bank at night, more potent than many \npolicemen. The torch of truth is handed from \ngeneration to generation, enlightening religion, \npolitics, and literature. Let the spirit indicated \nsustain this pulpit in finding and translating eter- \nnal life, appealing to all noble springs and high \nmotives. That should be the universality of a \npulpit like this, over which our memorial is placed. \n\n\n/■',./:y,„/,f /.m/y \n\n\n'^'■■'\"'\"y^'' \n\n\nTRUTH \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 27 \n\nIn memory of whom is the tablet placed here ? \nIn remembrance of my friend and yours, — my loyal, \nsturdy parishioner, John W. Leighton. It is very \nfitting that a tablet of this significance should be \nplaced to his memory. If there was one thing \nhe liked, it was daylight, clearness, frankness, \noutspoken sentiment. He preferred substance to \nform ; action rather than profession. The love \nof truth that leads to many manifestations some- \ntimes savors of impetuosity and rashness, of things \nnot always altogether agreeable. I would like to \nfind a reformer, for instance, that you would call a \ncourtier in the parlor or banquet hall. What the \nworld needs is nuggets of gold, which can be made \nup into ordinary usage, into things which are avail- \nable. The love of truth gives strength, — sometimes \nrugged, granite power ; but it is strength, it is never \nweakness. Men may like what I say or they may \nnot like it. They may fancy the utterances of the \noutspoken man or not : but there is one thing they \ncan never say of the man who keeps true to the \nconviction of his mind : they cannot assert that he \nis mean, that he is equivocal, that he manages men \nwith hypocrisy. I would rather have that charac- \nter of mind than the ability of those who deftly \nthread the devious intricacies of insincere diplo- \nmacy. \n\nMr. Leighton was independent, self-reliant. He \nwas honest. He had the treasure-house of in- \ntegrity : men could rely on his word. And, as he \npasses away, we think of the essential man. That is \nthe tribute which I know he would crave, simply \n\n\n28 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nthat he was honest, trusty, and true. I cannot con- \nceive of my friend Leighton caring for a tribute \nof this kind, simply as a formal and ecclesiastical \nmatter. I knew him thoroughly, and I am disposed \nto speak right to the mark ; but I do believe that it \nwould rejoice his soul, could he see this gathering \nand this tablet, and realize that such a typical \nrepresentation of truth, sincerity, earnestness, gen- \nuineness, was placed in the church where he loved \nto attend, — as his friend Warren did, — anxious for \nany message that would quicken to true life ; no \none more appreciative of the direct utterance of \nman to man. He believed in everything that might \nbuild up the character, and rejoiced in the prosper- \nity of the church. He gave his money, his time, \nhis advice, for the welfare of this time-honored \nsociety. \n\nAnd now, turning back to the memorial window, \nit is my precious privilege to speak through old \nfriendship, and to say that this window is given by \nthe wife of Mr. Warren. She does not need any \nvisible presentation to remind her of the more than \nfifty years of happy life they had together ; but she \nshares his spirit, and they together, as it were, set \nthis beautiful significant work of art in the walls of \nThe Second Church, for the good of youth, for the \nhelp of pure worship, and for the hallowing of these \nsacred courts. \n\nThis mosaic tablet is given by the wife and \ndaughter of Mr. Leighton, in the same grand, loyal \nspirit to the family and to the church. They have \nall done this, not from any personal pride or satis- \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 29 \n\nfaction, but that here, as congregations come and \ngo, this emblem may help the preacher carry his \nmessage to the people, enrich and round out the \nspirit of devotion ; appealing, amid service and \nsermon, to deep things, and enforcing by rich sym- \nbolic loveliness the truths of religion. \n\nSo may these symbols quicken all that is good \nand noble for centuries within the courts of The \nSecond Church in Boston. . \n\n\nADDRESS. \n\nBY WILMON W. BLACKMAR. \n\nA S we assemble here at the close of this the \nnineteenth century to celebrate the two hun- \ndred and fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of \nthis church, and look back through the long vista \nof years, recalling with pride and thankfulness the \nnames of the illustrious laymen who have been \nconnected with it, we must in justice and in truth \nplace prominently in the foremost rank of these the \nname of Frederic Walker Lincoln. \n\nNo wonder he was patriotic, public-spirited, and \ndevoted to all good causes tending to elevate and \nbenefit his fellow-men ; for in his veins ran the \nblood of those glorious men who carved from a \nmighty wilderness the great republic which, as the \npeer of any nation in the world, is our proud inheri- \ntance to-day. \n\nWith Abraham Lincoln, our martyred President, \n\n\n30 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nhe traced his Hneage to the Lincolns who settled \nin Hingham about 1637. His grandfather, Captain \nAmos Lincoln, when a youth of nineteen, took \nsides with the colonists against the aggressions of \nthe mother country, and was one of the famous \nBoston Tea Party which emptied the cargoes of \nthe offending ships into the harbor; and, standing \nfirmly by the consequences resulting from this and \nother defiant acts of the inhabitants of rebellious \nBoston, he enlisted in the patriot army, and on the \nbattlefield of Bunker Hill and on many another \nfield made sacred by the blood of free men he \nfought for independence. After this was won, he \nreturned to the pursuits of peace, and, as one of \nthe leading mechanics of the city, helped to build \nyonder State House. \n\nCaptain Lincoln married the daughter of Paul \nRevere, and therefore our late associate was the \ngreat-grandson of that famous patriot. \n\nTrue to his glorious lineage, he gave himself \nfreely and unselfishly with a rare public-spirited \ndevotion to so many good causes and institutions \nin his State and city that a mere recital by me \nof the names and descriptions of those with \nwhich he was identified and the offices he held \nduring his long and most active life would con- \nsume most of the time allowed me to-day. \n\nI need not say in this presence, to you who \nknew him so well and loved him so tenderly, how \nhonest, patriotic, unselfish, devoted, and capable he \nwas. His long and honorable service in political, \nfinancial, charitable, and religious organizations is \n\n\n'/w/M^iif/A/'/myy W//aH//////Mfim/£/:mm//«^fw \n\n\nTHE LINCOLN TABLET \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 3 1 \n\na guaranty that he possessed these sterling quali- \nties in the highest degree. \n\nWhether as mayor, president of a bank organized \nto protect the savings of the wage-earners, or over- \nseer of the city's poor, he did his varied duties \nthoroughly and well. A manly man, with the deli- \ncacy and tenderness of a gentle woman, he admin- \nistered charity to the worthy poor ; but with a hand \nof iron, when mayor of Boston, he crushed out the \ndraft riot which threatened destruction and dis- \ngrace to his beloved city. For this patriotic action \nhe was made a member of the Military Order of the \nLoyal Legion, which organization, with its colors \ndraped, appeared as mourners at his bier. \n\nWe remember with pride and satisfaction his \ngreat service to the State in her halls of legislation, \non her important boards and commissions ; his \ndevotion to our city during his unprecedented \nseven full years of service as its mayor; and his \nhonorable connection with the great financial and \ncharitable institutions with which his name has, \nfrom his early manhood, been so prominently as- \nsociated. \n\nBut here in the church he loved, and as a member \nand officer served so faithfully, we remember him \nwith a peculiar sense of gratitude, love, and admi- \nration. Baptized in and buried from this church ; \nas child and man, for more than eighty years closely \nidentified with its every interest; for thirty years \nsuperintendent of its Sunday-school ; for forty-four \nyears a member of its Standing Committee and \nits faithful treasurer; in prosperity and adversity \n\n\n32 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nalways the same faithful, hopeful, patient guardian \nof its interests ; — pastors came and went ; death and \nother causes radically and often changed the con- \ngregations,— but, ever faithful at his post, during all \nthese years stood Frederic Walker Lincoln ; and to \nhim more than to any other one man is due the \nfact that the dear old Second Church in Boston \nhas survived to celebrate this its two hundred and \nfiftieth anniversary. \n\nIn the name and at the request of his wife and \nchildren I have the honor to present this memorial \nof Frederic Walker Lincoln to The Second Church \nin Boston. And, as the signal lights shone forth \nfrom the Old North Church to start his great \ngrandsire, Paul Revere, on his perilous ride to \nwarn of danger and encourage to heroic action his \nfellow-countrymen, so may this tablet with its mod- \nest but complete recital of a life well spent in ser- \nvice to this city and State be always an ever-living \nsignal light in this church, to start our youth upon \nand encourage them to follow those glorious paths \nwhich lead to the freeing, uplifting, and helping of \ntheir fellow-men. \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 33 \n\n\nTHE ACCEPTANCE OF THE MEMO- \nRIAL GIFTS. \n\nBY STEPHEN M. CROSBY. \n\nA ND now, friends, there remains only for me, as \n•^ ^ the senior ofKicer of the Church, and in the \nsame spirit of love and tenderness, and with the \nmost hearty coiifiiff^ant6\\ ihjSJ?5**^has been said \nin memory of>6<^Miep«ftedisl^^^aS|J|^w:cept in the \nname and bemalf of The Second Churat in Boston \nthese beautiml gift^ '^ Tfl^ ■'■feyeome Henceforth a \npart of the li«^^^ of this chjjr(^^ part of its \ntreasures. Like m^\"^JSi!fij:^£=ii^^^5ast and like the \nstory of these lives, which henceforth becomes a \npart of its history, they will be a portion of what is \nto be bequeathed to those who in long succession, \nwe hope, are to follow and worship here. \n\nI am gratified personally that this duty falls to \nme, for, in a somewhat protracted term of service \nin this society, it has been my good fortune to be \nassociated intimately with every one of these noble \nmen in the various duties which have devolved \nupon our committee ; and I stand here to bear per- \nsonal testimony to-day to the faithfulness, the de- \nvotion, the often self-sacrificing readiness with \nwhich they gave of their time, their ability, their \nsubstance, if only this old church which they loved \nso well might be benefited and helped, and the \npurposes for which it stood might be strengthened. \nThose four men typified as well as any four mor- \n\n\n34 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\ntals may the special characteristics which this \nchurch in its long history of two centuries and a \nhalf has stood for and which these memorials are \nsupposed to represent, — Patriotism, Courage, Char- \nity, Truth. These were all manifested in their \nlives, in their words, and in their actions, simply, \nearnestly, and well, as they went about their work \nin the city. Every one made his mark in the \nsphere in which he was called to labor, and each \nleft behind him a memory which can be fitly and \nproperly commemorated here. \n\nBut it seems to me that, after all, the true benefit \nto this church will not be attained, and the memory \nof these men will not accomplish what it should, \nunless these memorials shall stand for something \nbetter than that, unless they shall stand as an in- \ncentive, as a direct, intentional, and powerful coer- \ncive force, to urge and stimulate the men and \nwomen who sit in these pews to-day to the same \nfaithful, earnest work which these men have done. \nNot only in the memory of the past are we to glory. \nWe are also to glory in the fact that their memory \nurges us to actions in the future which shall carry \nforward the work which they so long and so well \nmaintained, which shall firmly plant still farther \nin the future the standard round which they so \nbravely rallied. \n\n\" Lives of great men all remind us \nWe can make our lives sublime ; \nAnd, departing, leave behind us \n\nFootprints on the sands of time.\" \n\n\nlnw(M«.i;.<^-^3^^'ii^Bi6W^v>^:»9<.W'..'' \n\n\nJ \n\n\nt^ \n\n\nIN MEMORIAM \n\nREV CHANDLER ROBBINSDD \n\n1810 + 1882 \n\nTHE FAITHFUL CHRISTIAN MlNrSTEROFTHE \nSECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON' FOR- 41 YEARS \n\n1833 + 1874 \n\nMARY ELIZA : FROTHINGHAM \n\nWIFE OF \n\nREV CHANDLER ROBBINSDD \n1812 + 1870 \n\n\n■^^ \n\n\n^■ \n\n\nTHE ROBBINS TABLET \n\n\nTHE EMERSON MEMORIAL SERVICE. \n\n\nTHE Afternoon Service was conducted by the Young \nPeople's Fraternity of the Second Church in co- \noperation with the Young People's Union of Massa- \nchusetts. The following is the order of exercises : — \n\n©rgan iJoluntarg, \" Hymn of Praise,\" Mendelssohn. \n\nH. G. Tucker \nSolo, \"With Verdure Clad,\" Ow//V>// . . . Miss McKay \n\nOTortJS of SSEelcome .... Miss Rebecca D. Homer, \n\nPresident of the Fraternity \n\nJ^gtnn, \" The Light pours down from Heaven,\" Lowell Mason. \nILiturgg (leader and members responsively). \n\nWhat are the principles of our Union ? \n\nTruth, worship, service. \nWhat does Jesus say of truth ? \n\n'' Know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.\" \nHow may we know of the truth ? \n\" Revelation is not sealed ; \nAnswering unto man's endeavor. \nTruth and right are still revealed.\" \nHow shall we worship God ? \n\n\" God is a Spirit : they that worship him must wor- \nship him in spirit and in truth.\" \nShall we pray to God ? \n\n\" What are men better than sheep or goats. \nThat nourish a blind life within the brain. \nIf, knowing God, they lift not hands in prayer ? \" \n\n\n36 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nWhat does Jesus say of his mission ? \n\n\" I came that they might have life, and that they might \nhave it more abundantly.\" \nIs salvation thus dependent upon helping others ? \n\n** Heaven's gate is shut to him who comes alone : \nSave thou a soul, and it shall save thine own.\" \nFor what, then, do we unite ? \n\nIn the love of truth we unite for the worship of God \nand the service of man ; and, as his followers, we \naccept the religion of Jesus, holding, in accordance \nwith his teaching, that practical religion is summed \nup in love to God and love to man. \n\n3^eatiing0 from iEmerson's W,xiUns&, \n\nHerbert A. Wadleigh \nILcrb's pragcr. \n\nSolo, \" Promise of Life,\" Cowen Miss McKay \n\n^Itilircss Walter P. Eaton, \n\nPresidetit of the National Young People's Religious Union \n\n^Enbah'nfl of Bust Miss Alice L. Higgins, \n\nSuperintetident of the Sunday School \n\nClosttijg l^gmn, \"God bless our Native Land\" . . No. 321 \n\nBenellictton. The Lord watch between me and thee when we \nare absent one from another. Amen. \n\n\nREMARKS. \n\nBY MISS REBECCA D. HOMER. \n\n'T^HE large congregation gathered here, notwith- \n'■' standing the dreary weather, makes the privi- \nlege of welcoming you doubly pleasant. \n\nMany famous men have been connected with \nthis society, and this morning we have been doing \nhonor to some of its prominent ministers and lay- \nmen ; but, of all the names that have been upon our \nlips, there is none which stands for more wide- \nspread influence, through words spoken and writ- \nten, than the name of Ralph Waldo Emerson, our \nformer minister. As a loving tribute to one whose \nthoughts have reached throughout our land and \nupon whom we, as a society, love to think we have \na nearer and more personal claim, the young \npeople have deemed it a pleasure and a privilege \nto present a bust of Emerson to this church. \n\nOur Young People's Frdternity extends a hearty \nwelcome to this large congregation, and invites all \nto unite in the service which is to follow. \n\nAt this point selections from Mr. Emerson's essays \nwere read by Herbert A. Wadleigh, a member of the \nFraternity. \n\n\n38 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\n\nADDRESS. \n\nBY WALTER P. EATON, \n\nPresident of the National Young People'' s Religious Union. \n\nIXT'ERE it possible to characterize the mental \npower of Emerson in a single phrase, it \nmight be that he makes one think, and that he \ncarries one away, in mind and soul, by his passages \nof great and pathetic eloquence. \n\nYouth is the time when the mind is most eager \nto grasp new ideas of life and conduct, the time \nwhen the heart is most readily moved by poetry \nand eloquence. Hence it is that Emerson's appeal \nis so strong to young people everywhere. Accord- \ningly, it is most fitting that his memorial to-day \nshould be given and dedicated by the young people \nof the only church which he ever graced as pastor, — \nThe Second Church of Boston. \n\nIt is my own good fortune to be allowed on this \noccasion to pay my tribute to his memory, to give \nsome hint of that which he has done for me, some \nfaint suggestion of that which he can do for other \nyoung men and women. Such a man as Emerson \nis many-sided, has infinite aspects. The attitude \nof mind, for instance, which led him, in 1832, to \nresign from the charge of this Second Church, is \nrich matter for an essay or a sermon. A man who \nwould not pray publicly from his pulpit, nor ad- \nminister the Lord's Supper to his congregation, \nbecause he felt such acts to be, for him, insincere \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 39 \n\nand formal, and who sacrificed his chosen life-work \nrather than perform them; a man \"who broke \nhis own pedestal to destroy the idolatry he saw \nabout him,\" — has that in his character well worth \nour consideration. It is not so much with Emer- \nson, the man, that we must concern ourselves to-day : \nit is with the written works he has left behind ; \nand, again, with but one feature of those works, — \ntheir peculiar message to young people. That \nmessage is, perhaps, the most vital and lasting \nworth of Emerson's literary remains : it is of that \nmessage I shall speak. \n\nI can well remember my own first plunge into \nthe works of Emerson. It came about, like most \nof the good things in our reading, in a haphazard, \naltnost truant fashion. Many a time I had been \nadvised by friends, zealous of my moral well-being, \nto read his essays ; and I had always refused. We \nmust not be driven to morality and love of the \nspirit, or we rebel. Such love must come of its \nown accord, catch us by surprise, and startle us \ninto acceptance by its sudden nearness and appeal. \nThus it came to me. I chanced to read one day \nof an incident in Emerson's life. He had been \nlecturing in some out-of-the-way town, giving to \nhis small audience the wealth of his thought and \neloquence. After he had finished his lecture, the \nvillage Socrates came up to him, and said, \" Mr. \nEmerson, I don't agree with the ground you took : \ncan you prove to me that you are correct ? \" Emer- \nson arose. \" Sir,\" he answered, \" I never argue \nthese high questions : if I have given to one mem- \n\n\n40 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nber of this audience a deeper thought, a loftier \naspiration, I am satisfied. Good-night.\" \n\nThose were stirring words, — words that no young \nman with a drop of blood in his veins could well \nresist. I turned to Emerson gladly then, for I no \nlonger feared to find in him mere Sunday-school \nmorality. I turned to him, and opened on this pas- \nsage : — \n\n\" To believe your own thought, to believe that \nwhat is true for you in your private heart is true for \nall men, — that is genius. Speak your latent con- \nviction, and it shall be the universal sense ; for the \ninmost in due time becomes the outmost, and our \nfirst thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of \nthe last judgment. ... A man should learn to detect \nand watch that gleam of light which flashes across \nhis mind from within, more than the lustre of the \nfirmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses \nwithout notice his thought, because it is his. In \nevery work of genius we recognize our own rejected \nthoughts : they come back to us with a certain \nalienated majesty. Great works of art have for us \nno more affecting lesson than this. They teach us \nto abide by our spontaneous impression with good- \nhumored inflexibility, then, most when the whole \ncry of voices is on the other side. Else to-morrow \na stranger will say, with masterly good sense, pre- \ncisely what we have thought and felt all the time ; \nand we shall be forced to take with shame our own \nopinion from another.\" \n\nHere, surely, was no mere moralizing, but prac- \ntical good sense, the good sense of keen psychology ; \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 4 1 \n\nand good sense made strangely appealing by a cer- \ntain flavor of eloquence. The \"alienated majesty\" \nof my own rejected thoughts, spoken how often by \nanother, came vividly before me, and startled me into \nnew self-consciousness, awakening in me the majesty \nof those thoughts I had not rejected, arousing a \npassionate longing to speak henceforth according \nto my nature, not according to the dictates of this \nor that man or woman or custom. I read on : — \n\n\" Trust thyself : every heart vibrates to that iron \nstring. . . . Let a man know his worth, and keep \nthings under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or \nskulk up and down with the air of a charity boy, a bas- \ntard, an interloper in the world which exists for him. \nBut the man in the street, finding no worth in himself \ncorresponding to the force which built a tower or \nsculptured a marble god, feels poor when he looks \non these. To him a palace, a statue, or a costly \nbook, have an alien and forbidding air, much like a \ngay equipage, and seem to say like that, ' Who are \nyou, sir.f*' Yet they are all his, suitors for his no- \ntice, petitioners to his faculties, that they come out \nand take possession. The picture waits for my \nverdict : it is not to command me, but I am to settle \nits claim to praise.\" \n\n\" Discontent, — that is the first step in progress, \nthe first hint of the better life. Mankind is happy \nwith a drum and cymbals till some master comes to \nplay for them on the violin ; and thereafter the drum \nsounds less and less pleasant to their ears, for they \nhave heard a more perfect music. So the young \nman or woman who comes to Emerson all unaware \n\n\n42 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nas yet that he has a peculiar nature of his own, a \nyoung man or woman who takes his opinions second- \nhand, who finds his greatest ambition and highest \nhappiness in successful conformity to custom and \npink-tea leadership, will find, in the essays he reads, a \nnote of doubt, — a note that will grow and swell in \nvolume if allowed its way, until it changes entirely \nthe youth's ideals, placing the emphasis on character \nand spirit.\" \n\nCharacter and spirit, — those two things are \nEmerson's insistent message to young men and \nwomen, — a message needed no less in 1900 than in \n1832. For every man must grow through the stages \nof the past. The babe must be taught what the \nStone Men knew; the boy learns the chivalry of \nthe Middle Ages ; and the youth on the threshold \nof manhood has the choice of the best ideals of life \nhis own age affords. But it is always a choice : \nthere is always the question to be decided, — not. \nWhat shall I do for a living? What profession \nshall I learn ? but. What sort of a man shall I make \nof myself.'* What ideals shall I follow.? In this \ndecisive period we all have flashes of the truer light : \nwe all of us realize, even as we worry over the cut \nof our winter suit or rejoice that So-and-so has \ninvited us to her dance, that only as we are faithful \nto the deeper promptings of our natures are we of \nreal worth in the world. It is hard to keep this \nrealization always in the mind, it is hard to keep \nthe true light clear before the eyes. It is at this \nhour that Emerson brings to us the greatest help \nand counsel. \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 43 \n\nWe all have friends, and perhaps some of them \nare with us now, who thoughtlessly base their esti- \nmate of acquaintances on trifling peculiarities of \ndress or deportment, or who withhold their approval \nbecause a person does not entirely carry out the \nrequirements which the society of the day demands. \nIs it not safe to say that such critics seek the shadow \nrather than the substance ? With what tonic effect \nthese words of Emerson must appeal to their more \nthoughtful, sober sense ! \n\nCould any one come away unmoved from this frag- \nment of verse, so simple and straightforward that \nit reaches, perhaps, a pathetic dignity unattained \nby any of Emerson's more ambitious poetry ? — \n\n\" You shall not love me for what daily spends ; \nYou shall not know me in the noisy street ; \nWhere I, as others, follow petty ends ; \nNor when in fair saloons we chance to meet ; \nNor when I'm jaded, sick, anxious or mean : \nBut love me then and only when you know \nMe for the channel of the rivers of God \nFrom deep ideal fontal heavens that flow.\" \n\nCharacter, firmness, lofty independence, — that \nis the constantly recurring note. \" Know thyself : \nevery heart vibrates to that iron string.\" Know \nthyself first ; for thus only can you truly know others, \ncan you truly estimate their worth in the world. \nOnly as a young man hears the ring of his own God- \ngiven manhood has he the least right or the faintest \ntitle to pass judgment on the meanest of his fellows. \nOnly character is worth while. This is Emerson's \nmessage to young men and women. It is a message \n\n\n44 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nfor to-day as well as for yesterday, and for infinite \nto-morrows. While his message is this, it is some- \nthinsf more besides. Self-reliance, character, — these \nare not always enough, noble and necessary though \nthey be. A something more is needed, which is \nspirituality, — a wholesome cheerfulness and trust. \n\nOne of the greatest results of an undergraduate \ncourse at Harvard is the birth of mental freedom, \nthe development of individual thought and judg- \nment. But too often Harvard College does not \nconfer with these the equal blessings of cheerfulness \nand faith. She sets free the intellect: she does not \nbreathe life into the spirit. She breeds character \nwithout ambition, strength without heroism. The \nyoung man who is a cynic because he has sought \nan answer, but found none, is more worthy of \nrespect, to be sure, than the young man who has \nnot sought at all. His epigrams, though they give \nthe sneer to what is most sacred in life, are better \nto hear than the everlasting gibber of the youth \nwho aspires to be known as a \" sport.\" Yet such a \nman is not heroic. Such a man can kindle no fire of \nenthusiasm, can possess no glad contagion of spirit. \nTo such a young man Emerson brings a further \nmessage, — the message of spiritual hope and fervor, \nof the bravery of the soul. He has well described \nhimself and his own mission to youth in his essay \non \" Success.\" \n\n\" 'Tis cheap and easy to destroy,\" he says. \" There \nis not a joyful boy or an innocent girl buoyant with \nfine purposes of duty, in all the street full of eager \nand rosy faces, but a cynic can chill and dishearten \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 45 \n\nwith a single word. Despondency comes readily \nenough to the most sanguine. The cynic has only \nto follow their hint with his bitter confirmation, and \nthey check that eager courageous pace, and go home \nwith heavier step and premature age. . . . Yes, this \nis easy ; but to help the young soul, add energy, \ninspire hope, and blow the coals into a useful flame ; \nto redeem defeat by new thought, by firm action, — \nthat is not easy, that is the work of divine men.\" \n\nThat divine work of inspiration, of planting hope \nin the life of the spirit, is also of Emerson's mission \nto America. Know thyself, discover your character \nand worthy tendencies, and then trust them with \nimplicit faith ; keep your ideal always before you ; \nlive the \"strenuous life\"; be heroic in your own \nsphere, however humble. No man lives in vain ! \nEvery man has a soul to answer for, an uncommon \nwork to do. \n\nFinally, it is Emerson's mission constantly to re- \niterate in young and eager ears these words : \"Trust \nthyself \" : every heart vibrates to that iron string. \nAccept the place the Divine Providence has found for \nyou, the society of your contemporaries, the con- \nnection of events. Great men have always done so, \nand confided themselves childlike to the genius of \ntheir age, betraying their perception that the Eternal \nwas stirring at their heart, working through their \nhands, predominating in all their being. And we \nare now men, and must accept in the highest spirit \nthe same transcendent destiny. \n\nSurely, these are words of inspiration, a strain of \nthe grandest heroism. Surely, the mild-faced, quiet \n\n\n46 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nman who spoke them was as true a hero as the capt- \nurer of cities or the sinker of fleets, — a hero of the \nspirit. Surely, the young people of that congrega- \ntion who once listened to his lofty thought and \nlooked up to his sunny countenance do naught \namiss in giving us back again his features for a last- \ning recollection. As we look upon his face, here in \nmarble, may each young heart hear once again his \ncounsel ! — \n\n\" Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. \nNothing can bring you peace but the triumph of \nprinciple.\" \n\nThe bust of Emerson, which had been draped with the \nAmerican flag, was unveiled by Miss Alice L. Higgins, \nthe Superintendent of the Sunday School, who said : — \n\nWe have come in this century to feel that all \nthings have history; nothing springs into being at \na word, but somewhere has been a flash of concep- \ntion, a period of development leading up to the \nglad moment of fulfilment. \n\nEven so has it been with this memorial, which \nsome four years ago, it became the earnest wish of the \nyoung people of this church to give to their church. \nPerhaps no one knows better than I the cost of \nthis memorial in the coin of loving service and \nglad self-sacrifice. \n\nYou have heard why it is peculiarly the privi- \nlege of the young people here to remember Emer- \nson. His voice in that pulpit preached the gospel \nof individual character before he preached it to a \nlisteninor world. \n\n\nRALPH WALDO EMERSON \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 47 \n\nFar back in the past was the first church of this \nsociety dedicated by those who felt themselves ser- \nvants of Almighty God. To-day has this church \nbeen anew dedicated by those who feel themselves \nchildren of an all-loving Father. Long may it \nstand; and while it stands may this memorial re- \nmain, given by the young people in memory of the \nspirit and character of Ralph Waldo Emerson. \n\n\nThe bust of Mr. Emerson was made by the well- \nknown sculptor, Mr. Sydney L. Morse, of Buffalo, N.Y. \n\n\nA PURITAN SERVICE. \n\n\nTHE evening of Sunday was devoted to a Puritan \nservice, and included addresses by the ministers of \nfive of the oldest churches of the Massachusetts Bay \nColony. \n\nThe music of the evening was rendered by a select \nchoir of sixteen voices, a string orchestra and flute, under \nthe direction of H. G. Tucker, and in the final number by \na chorus of forty voices from the Handel and Haydn \nSociety. Miss Mary Phillips Webster selected quotations \nand rendered valuable assistance in arranging the musical \nprogramme. It was intended to show the gradual devel- \nopment of church music from the sixteenth to the nine- \nteenth century. \n\n\nA PURITAN SERVICE. \n\n\" Either at morning or evening, there may be sung an hymn, or such \nlike song to the praise of Almighty God in the best melody and music \nthat may be conveniently devised, having respect that the sentence of the \nhymn may be understood and perceived.\" (Queen Elizabeth'' s Injunctions \nfor the Guidance of the Clergy, i 559.) \n\n\" The people are everywhere exceedingly inclined to the better part. \nThe practice of joining in church music has very much conduced to this. \nFor, as soon as they had once commenced singing in public, in only one \nlittle church in London, immediately not only the churches in the neighbor- \nhood but even the towns far distant began to vie with each other in the \nsame practice. You may now sometimes see at Paul's cross, after the \nsermon, six thousand persons ... all singing together and praising God.\" \n(Bishop feweVs Letter from London to Peter Martyr at Zurich^ Mar. 5, 1 560.) \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 49 \n\n©III l^untJrebti). Original tune, 1552; Kethe's words, 1561. \n\nFrom Sternhold and Hopkins, 1588. \n\n( To be Sling by all the people in unison without accompaniment.') \n\n\n^ \n\n\nTT \n\n\n,)^]^,.o^>-^>'^'U,)°<> \n\n\n^^o-^,^*h,l^^..-\"ti,.^ \n\n\n$ \n\n\n\" o Y \n\n\n'* All people that on earth do dwell \n\nsyng to the Lord with cheerefuU voyce \nHim serue with feare his prayse forth tell ; \ncome ye before him and reioyce. \n\nThe Lord ye know is God indeede, \nwithout our aide he did vs make ; \n\nWe are his flocke, He doth vs feede, \nand for his sheepe he doth vs take. \n\nO enter then his gates with prayse, \napproch with ioy his courts vnto ; \n\nPraise, laud, and bless his name alwayes, \nfor it is seemely so to doe. \n\nFor why ? the Lord our God is good, \n\nhis mercy is foreuer sure ; \nHis truth at all times firmely stood, \n\nand shall from age to age endure.\" \n\nStJtiuss Rev. Elvin J. Prescott, \n\nMinister of the First Church in Salem. {Founded 1629.) \n\n\"Concerning singing of Psalms, we allow of the people's joining with \none voice in a plain tune, but not of tossing the Psalms from one side to \nthe other with intermingling of organs.\" {Confession of Puritans, 1571.) \n\n\n50 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\n\" If God give you a spirit of Reformation . . . what will the end be ? \nComfort and blessing. . . . \n\n\" Therefore I beseech you in the name of God, set your hearts to this \n•work.' And if you set your hearts to it, then you will sing Luther's \nPsalm. That is a rare Psalm for a Christian ! \" {Speech of Oliver Crom- \nwell at the Opening of the Second Protectorate Parliament, 1656.) \n\niLutfjet's Psalm. (Psalm 46.) \n\nSternhold and Hopkins, ed. 1630. \n\n( To be sting in unison without accompaniment.) \n\n1. \" The Lord is our defence and aide, \n\nthe strengthe whereby we stand ; \nWhen we with woe are much dismaide, \nhe is our help at hand. \n\n2. Though the earth remoue we will not feare, \nthough hills so high and steepe. \n\nBe thrust and hurled here and there, \nwithin the Sea so deepe. \n\n3. Not though the waves doe rage so sore, \nthat all the bankes it spills ; \n\nAnd though it ouerflow the shore, \nand beat downe mightie hils ; \n\n4. Yet one faire flood doth send abroad \nhis pleasant streames apace. \n\nTo fresh the Citie of our God, \nand wash his holy place. \n\n5. In midst of her the Lord doth dwell \nshe can no whit decay ; \n\nAll things against her that rebell \nthe Lord will truely stay. \n\n7. The Lord of hosts doth us defend, \nhe is our strength and tower ; \nOn Jacob's God we doe depend. \nAnd on his mightie power.\" \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 5 1 \n\nCOLOSSIANS III. \n\n\" Let the word of God dwell plenteously in you, in all wisdome teaching \nand exhorting one another in Psalmes, Himnes, and spirituall songs, sing- \ning to the Lord with grace in your hearts.\" \n\nJames V. \n\" If any be afflicted, let him pray, and if any be merry let him sing \npsalmes.\" {Title-page of Bay Psalm Book, 1640.) \n\nPsalm 23, from Mather's Psalterium Americanum. 17 18. \n\n{Set to \" Low Dutch Tune\" unaccompanied. From Bay Psalm Book, ed. \n1698. Each line read or lined out by an officer of the church before being \nsung.) \n\n1. My Shepherd is th' Eternal God ; || I shall not be in \n\n[^ng] want : |1 \n\n2. In pastures of a tender grass || He [ISijer] makes me to \n\nlie down : || To waters of tranquilities || He gently car- \nries me, [^lonjg.]!! \n\n3. My feeble and my wandermg Soul || He [kintilg] does \n\nfetch back again ; || In the plain paths of righteousness || \nHe does lead [^nti iguiliE] me along, || because of the \nregard He has,|| [lEbcr] unto His Glorious Name.|| \n\n4. Yea, when I shall walk in the Vale || of the dark [tiisihal] \n\nshade of death, || I'll of no evil be afraid, || because thou \n[e&cr] art with me.|| Thy rod and thy staff, these are \nwhat II yield [constant] comfort unto me. \n\n5. A table thou dost furnish out || richly [for me] before my \n\nface. II 'Tis in view of mine enemies ;|| ['^nti tf)en] \nmy head thou dost anoint || with fatning and perfuming \nOil : II my cup it overflows. || \n\n6. Most certainly the thing that is || Good, with [most fti'ntj] \n\nBenignity, II This all the days that I do live || shall [sttll \nant] ever follow me ; || Yea, I shall dwell, and Sab- \nbatize, II even to length of days,|| Lodg'd in the House \nwhich does belong || to [Ijim liif)a's] the Eternal \nGod. II \n\n^tJtress Rev. Eugene R. Shippen, \n\nMinister of the First CJntrch in Dorchester. {Fotmded 1 630.) \n\n\n52 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\natiljresg Rev. James Eells, \n\nMinister of the First Church in Boston. {Founded 1630,) \n\n\"For Man may justly tuneful Strains admire, \nHis Soul is Music, and his Breast a Lyre. \nMusic, the mighty Artist, Man can rule, \nSo long as that has Numbers, he a Soul.\" \n{Quoted by Thomas Walter in his \"Sermon on Regular Singing\") \n\n^galm 119 .... From Walter's Singing Book (172 1). \n\n{Recommended by Increase and Cotton Mather ; sung in three parts, \n\nunaccompa nied. ) \n\n12. Bless'd art thou, O ETERNAL God ; || \nThy Statutes [tfjerefore] teach thou me. || \n\n13. I all the Judgments of thy mouth || \nhave with my lips declar'd [aftroati] \n\n14. I in thy Testimonies way, II [as mud)] \nas in all wealth, rejoyce. \n\n15. I'll on thy Precepts meditate ; || \n\nand I'll regard [toitij care] thy Paths.\" \n\nPsalterium Americanum^ \n\n\" Down starts the Bass with Grave Majestic Air, \nAnd up the Treble mounts with shrill Career, \nWith softer Sounds in mild melodious Maze \nWarbling between, the Tenor gently plays \nAnd, if th' inspiring Altus joins the Force \nSee ! like the Lark it Wings its towering Course \nThro' Harmony's sublimest Sphere it flies \nAnd to Angelic Accents seems to rise.\" \n\nDr. Mather Byles. \n\nS>i)8tbatn£. A favorite Fuguing tune. \n\nDaniel Read, Philo-Musico, 1793. \n\n{From The American Singing Book, 1793; with accompaniment of strings \n\nand flutes.) \n\n\" While Shepherds watched their flocks by night. \nAll seated on the ground, \nThe Angel of the Lord came down, \nAnd glory shone around.\" \n\n^libwas Rev. James De Normandie, D.D., \n\nMinister of the First Church, Roxbury. {Founded 1631.) \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 53 \n\n\" in the singing seats \nOf the meeting-house, — bass-viol, flute. \nAnd tuning-fork, and rows of village-girls, \nWith lips half open ; treble clashed with bass \nIn most melodious madness.\" \n\nLucy Larcom. \n\n©enmarit .... From Lock Hospital Collection, ed. 1809. \n\n(Used by Handel and Haydn Society of Boston at their first meetings ; small \norgan, strings and fiute.) \n\n\" Before Jehovah's awful throne, \nYe nations bow with sacred joy. \nKnow that the Lord is God alone ! \nHe can create and he destroy. \n\nHis sov'reign power without our aid \nMade us of clay, and form'd us men : \n\nAnd when like wandering sheep we stray'd. \nHe brought us to his fold again. \n\nWe are his people, we his care, \n\nOur souls, and all our mortal frame ; \n\nWhat lasting honours shall we rear, \nAlmighty Maker, to thy name ? \n\nWe'll crowd thy gates with thankful songs. \n\nHigh as the heavens our voices raise \nAnd earth with her ten thousand tongues \n1 Shall fill thy courts with sounding praise. \n\nWide as the world is thy command, \n\nVast as eternity thy love, \nFirm as a rock thy truth must stand. \n\nWhen rolling years shall cease to move.\" \n\nIsaac Watts, \n/oktt Wesley. \n\n^tJliregg Rev. George A. Gordon, D.D., \n\nMinister of the Third {Old South) Church. {Fottnded i66g.) \n\n\n54 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\n\" But let my due feet never fail \nTo walk the studious cloister's pale \nAnd love the high embow'ed roof, \nWith antique pillars massy proof, \nAnd storied windows richly dight \nCasting a dim religious light ; \nThere let the pealing organ blow \nTo the full-voiced quire below \nIn service high and anthems clear, \nAs may with sweetness, through mine ear. \nDissolve me into ecstacies. \nAnd bring all Heaven before mine eyes.\" \n\nJohn Milton. \n\nCJjorUB, \" Judas Maccabaeus,\" By Handel. \n\n(The music of this Oratorio was advertised for sale in the \" Boston Cen- \ntinel,\" Feb. 23, 1807, as \"by Mr. Handell\"; full organ, strings and flutes, \nwith chorus.) \n\n\" O Father, whose almighty pow'r \nThe heav'ns and earth, and seas adore ! \nThe heart of Judah, thy delight, \nIn one defensive band unite \nAnd grant a leader bold and brave, \nIf not to conquer, born to save.\" \n\nConflteflational f^gmn. \"America.\" \n\n(Organ, orchestra, chorus and people.) \n\n\" Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old . . . Forget not.\" \n{John Milton). \n\n\" I have witnessed the growth of their faith, I have seen the advance- \nment of their virtue, I have known their perseverance in good works. To \nthem I say. Go on, and the Lord go with you in peace and strength. . . . \nAnd when the day shall have arrived that these temples have mouldered, and \nall earthly worship ceases, — then — it is my hope and prayer that we shall \nbe found side by side in the worship of eternity. . . . God bestow upon you \nthe choicest of spiritual blessings. . . . May the spirit of Christ dwell in you \nrichly with all vrisdom ; and the peace of God which passeth all under- \nstanding abide among you and sanctify you always.\" {From Farewell \nAddress of Henry Ware, Jr., Oct. 4, 1830.) \n\n13£iutitction Rev. Thomas Van Ness, \n\nMinister oj The Second Chtirch in Boston. {Founded 1649.) \n\n\nADDRESS. \n\nBY THE REV. ELVIN J. PRESCOTT, \nMinister of the First Church, Salem. \n\nFriends of The Second Church in Boston, — I come \nto you to-night to bring you the greetings of the \nold First Church of Salem. Last night I stood \nbefore the little old First Church building in \nSalem, showing it to some friends. This morning \nI took the train and went down to Hingham and \npreached in that which is the oldest church build- \ning now occupied in America, and to-night I come \nhere to bring the greetings of the oldest organized \nreligious society in America, upon your two hun- \ndred and fiftieth anniversary ; and really, friends \nI do not know whether I belong to this century or \nto some other ! \n\nAs I look back over the past and consider our \ntheme, — \" Our Debt to this Same Past,\" — it seems \nto me that the key-note of our thoughts might be \nthe strength of character that these men brought \ninto our land. God never undertakes to do a great \nwork without beginning in seemingly small ways. \nHe sows a tiny seed, and from that seed there \ngrows a mighty plant. One would hardly have \nrealized, had he lived in the early days of Puritan- \nism in England, that those men who sailed over to \nAmerica, so few of them, were to lay the founda- \n\n\n56 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\ntion not only of a church, but of a mighty country \nand a mighty democracy. There was a mighty \ncountry to be settled, there were great forests to be \ncleared. There was to be established here a re- \npublic, a democracy, such as the world had never \nseen. What was needed ? The one thing needed \nmore than anything else was men, — strong, noble, \nand inspired men, men of strength of character. \nAnd if our Puritan ancestors were sometimes re- \ngarded as cold externally, if they were cold in their \nPuritanism, if the history of the inner life counts \nfor anything, we are told that in that inner life they \nwere warm-hearted. They were tender and loving \nin their homes, showing that strength and ten- \nderness could be combined. So it seems to me \nthat in Salem, in Boston, in Dorchester, in these \ntowns of Massachusetts Bay, there was laid the \nfoundation of that great strength of character \nwhich was not alone to give democracy in religion, \nbut in government as well. That is one of our debts \nto the past. \n\nBut there is another side to this question. We \nare not only to ask, What is our debt to the past, \nwhat do we owe these men ? But what shall we do \nto pay that debt ? If these men studied those great \nprinciples and carried them into effect, so that the \nresults have been what they are, then on such an \noccasion as this it is well for us to ask, What shall \nbe done to pay that debt.? If two hundred and \nfifty years ago there was a religious movement in \nBoston which resulted in the establishment of this \nchurch, as two hundred and seventy years ago there \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 57 \n\nwas such a movement in Salem, the question at the \nclose of the nineteenth century is: What is going \nto be the future of that church ? What is going \nto be the future of our religion, the outcome of \nthis strong old Puritanism? The Puritan minister \nstood as a man of God. He was the man that in- \nterpreted to the best of his ability the spirit of the \ndivine life that entered his heart. The modern min- \nister, his follower, stands as the interpreter of that \nlife as it appears to him in the present, — in science, \nart, literature, and in all phases of modern life. \nMore than that, he stands as did his older brother, \nas the inspirer to his congregation, to take his in- \nterpretation and make it a living reality in the \ncommunity. This has been therein the work of the \nChristian minister. This is his work to-day as \never. If we are to pay our debt to the past, the \nminister of to-day, the church of to-day, needs the \ninspiration, the fire, the benediction, that shall enter \nhis heart and inspire it with religious zeal and \nearnestness to carry on this work that these men \nhave so nobly and gloriously started. I believe \nthat every milestone in the progress of the Chris- \ntian Church means that we see this duty more \nclearly. We are holding this service to mark this \ntwo hundred and fiftieth milestone, from which we \ntake a new step toward better things. That is the \nway we are to pay the debt to the past, and in that \nspirit I come to you with the greetings of the First \nChurch of Salem. \n\n\n58 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\n\nADDRESS. \n\nBY THE REV. JAMES EELLS, \nMinister of the First Church in Boston. \n\nMy Friends of The Second Church., — I find it diffi- \ncult to put in words how very glad I am, and how \ngreat a privilege I regard it, to be here on this \nmost interesting anniversary. Before venturing \nto come, I took counsel with your older sister, \nthe First Church of Boston ; and, looking at me \nearnestly, she said : \" Tell her that I remember \nthose long, lonely years before she came, and how \nglad I was when she came, and what a joy it has \nbeen to work with her. Tell my sister. The Second \nChurch, how I rejoice with her at this time.\" And \nthen she grew serious and a little more earnest, \nand said, \" Be sure and tell her that our work is \nnot yet done.\" And so I come to bring you her \ngreetings. Our work is not yet done, and the \nFirst Church will be glad to know that your work \nis going on with greater and fairer spirit than even \nin the past. \n\nBy the request of your committee, I am to speak \nof \" Our Inheritance from the Past.\" I desire very \nbriefly to take one phase of this subject which \noften receives too scant notice. \n\nWe inherit formative forces, not their appli- \ncations; potentialities, not their embodiments. \nWhich truth frees us from the necessity of claim- \ning only such things as seem to be most in accord \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 59 \n\nwith our present or so nearly in accord as to be \nmade to appear quite so with a Httle patronizing \napology. For many things of the past we have \nno word but that of sweeping denunciation or \nrighteous scorn. But that may lose for us the \ndeep and eternal worth of those very things. \nAbiding verities underlie the phenomena of every \nage. We may forfeit the worth of the verity when \nwe refuse the phenomenon. Let me show you \nwhat I mean, for this is really my theme. \n\nI do not forget that I am speaking to some \nwhose ecclesiastical, if not personal, ancestors were \nparishioners of the two mighty Mathers. Nor can \nI forget the prominent part which these two men \ntook in the prosecution of witchcraft. Here is our \nfirst item. After this excitement had passed, the \nRev. Cotton Mather was called upon by the gov- \nernor to justify what had been done. The result \nwas a book entitled \" The Wonders of the Invisible \nWorld, being an Account of the Tryalls of Several \nWitches lately Executed in New England.\" This \nbook was published in 1693, while as yet he was \nthe colleague of his father in the ministry of this \nchurch. It thus sets forth the prevalent notion \nconcerning witches : \" The New Englanders are \na people of God, settled in those which were once \nthe Devil's territories; and it may easily be sup- \nposed that the Devil was exceedingly disturbed \nwhen he perceived such people here. The Devil, \nthus irritated, try'd all sorts of methods to over- \nthrow this plantation. . . . But all these Attempts \nof Hell have hitherto been Abortive. Wherefore \n\n\n60 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nthe Devil is now making one Attempt more upon \nus; an Attempt more Difficult, more Surprising, \nmore snarl'd with unintelligible Circumstances, \nthan any that we have hitherto Encountered. . . . \nHe has drawn forth his most Spiritual ones to \nmake an Attacque upon us. We have now with \nhorror seen the discovery of Witchcraft. An \nArmy of Devils is horribly broke in upon the place \nwhich is the Centre of our English Settlement, and \nthe houses of the good People there are fill'd with \nthe doleful shrieks of their Children and Servants \ntormented by Invisible Hands with Tortures alto- \ngether Supernatural.\" Increase Mather, eight \nyears before, had written of spectres seen, houses \nhaunted, storms stirred up, all (to him) the un- \ndoubted work of demons. \n\nAnother amazing thing is the definiteness of \nthe relation of these people to God. To men who \nbelieved so profoundly in the work of spirits, it \nwas of supreme importance that the influence of \nthe Good Spirit should be so thorough and so con- \nsistently recognized as to leave no loophole for the \nentrance of any least abomination. Believing them- \nselves to be under the direct and immediate control \nof God, that control must be evidenced in what- \never happened. Such happenings, small or large, \nbecame for them providential. The author of \" The \nWonder-working Providence of Z ion's Savior in \nNew England \" affirms therein that God \" standeth \nnot as an idle spectator beholding his people's ruth \nand their enemies' rage, but as an actor in all ac- \ntions to bring to naught the desires of the wicked. \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 6 1 \n\nhaving also the ordering of every weapon in its first \nproduce, guiding every shaft that flies, leading each \nbullet to its place of settling, and each weapon to \nthe wound it makes.\" Nothing could be more \ndefinite than that. Into the care of this Provi- \ndence they put themselves austerely, simply, grimly. \nGod's commands they obeyed to the letter. For \nhim they would live and die ; and their defence, \nwhen under question or censure, was the defence \nof Cotton Mather after the witchcraft frenzy, that \nGod had assumed all the responsibility for that pro- \nceeding. They carried this idea into everything. \n\nThe General Court, in 1654, decreed that \"those \nwho have manifested themselves unsound in the \nfaith, or not giving due satisfaction according to \nthe rules of Christ,\" could not teach in the public \nschools, — an order which caused much discomfort \nand trouble. But there was nothing else to be \ndone. Colleges and Latin schools were founded \nfor the express purpose of educating young men \nfor the ministry. The General Court also records, \n\" To the end that the body of the commons may \nbe preserved of honest and good men, it was \nordered that for time to come no man shall be ad- \nmitted to the freedom of this body politic but such \nas are members of some of the churches within the \nlimits of the same.\" It was their maxim that an \norderly and peaceful government must be founded \nupon religion, and they knew of no other way to \naccomplish this. There was no lawyer in the com- \nmunity for years, but they needed none. Their law \nbook was the Bible. Their statutes were those of \n\n\n62 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nGod revealed and committed to Christian magis- \ntrates for administration. This rigor is explained \nwhen we see on the Records of the Massachusetts \nCompany that \" the propagating of the Gospel is \nthe thing we do profess above all to be our aim in \nsettling this plantation.\" \n\nLastly, I must open that dark page of persecu- \ntions, when men and women were expelled and \npunished for believing contrary to the majority. \nMistress Ann Hutchinson threw the little commu- \nnity into a ferment of excitement by her adherence \nto the covenant of grace instead of the accepted \ncovenant of works. As everything was definite in \nthose days, she and her followers left nothing to \nthe imagination in their practices. And Mistress \nAnn Hutchinson was driven forth remorselessly \ninto sickness, privation, exposure, and ultimate \nmurder, for her \" damnable heresies.\" Roger Will- \niams, because he had \" broached and divulged newe \nand dangerous opinions against the auchthoritie of \nmagistrates,\" was ordered to \" depart out of their \njurisdiction within sixe weeks nexte ensueing.\" The \nBaptists were persecuted almost beyond human en- \ndurance — whipped, imprisoned, fined, reviled, ban- \nished — because they assailed the \" standing order,\" \nmade \" infaunt baptisme a nullitie,\" pronounced all \nmembers of churches \" unbaptized persones,\" and \ndenied them valid ministry and ordinances. The \nCourt, therefore, judged it \" necessary that they be \nremooved to some other part of the country or else- \nwhere,\" to set up their \" free school for seduction \ninto wayes of error.\" But by far the most tragic \n\n\nI \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 63 \n\nand sad of these struggles was the treatment of the \nQuakers. What need to recount the story of Mary \nDyer and George Fox, of the hangings on Boston \nCommon, of the floggings at the tail of an ox-cart \ncreeping through the village streets? It is all \ndreadful, pitiful, shameful. But is there nothing \nfor us other than sorrow that such thingrs could \never be, or the wish to forget and apologize for \nthem.? Have we no inheritance from these dark \nthings ? \n\nWhen men nervously shut their windows in the \ngathering gloom of night-fall, shuddered when the \nwind howled in their great square chimneys, and \nblanched if the gaze of an ancient dame were fixed \nupon them, I take it to have been merely the per- \nversion of the noblest truth. I believe it to have \nbeen that day's crude, dramatic, unconscious but \npowerful witness borne to the truth that matter is \ninterfused with spirit ; that this life of ours and \nall the reaches and affairs of it are dominated by \nspirit ; that matter has no essential obstacle to the \ninfluence of God. Their doctrine of special provi- \ndence is a corollary to this same truth. When they \ndeclared so narrowly and with such bigotry that \nnone but church members could teach school or \nvote ; when they insisted upon the most trivial \nthings as the direct action of Deity ; when they \nmade the Bible the literal rule of their faith and \npractice, and fell into such absurd mistakes in so \ndoing, — I find in it the great, burning desire of all \nearnest, conscientious men, — that God, and Right- \neousness and Truth shall be the very foundation of \n\n\n64 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nall statecraft and community intercourse. I do not \ncare for their \" Blue Laws,\" nor do I inherit them. \nThey were practices, not potentialities ; but I fear \nlest in sweeping them out of doors I lose also the \ninheritance of loyalty to God which they betoken. \nI fear, in laughing at their absurdities, I be guilty \nof being laughed at for my shallowness. When \nthey sternly, savagely drove from among them those \nwho did not share their beliefs, I do not find merely \ncruelty nor intolerance. Rather it is the rough but \nsupreme recognition of the community idea, — that, \nif one member suffer, all the members suffer, that \nthe sin of one darkens the fair lives of all, that no \nfull righteousness can prevail if sin is permitted. \nThey purified their lives by expelling the turbid \nelement. It was expulsion rather than reformation. \nWe shall be vastly poorer if out of our inheri- \ntance we leave this truth of the recognition of the \nindwelling, incoming God, if we forget that we be- \nlong to the community, and that instead of expel- \nling the sinner we should strive as never before to \nexpel the sin, with the same relentless, uncompro- \nmising severity. This sombre, sober, materialistic \nlife of ours is all sun-shot with the glory of the pres- \nent God, not by the demons of witchcraft. And we \ninherit the beautiful riches of God, who \"fulfils him- \nself in many ways, lest one good custom should cor- \nrupt the world.\" Standing here on the threshold \nof a new era of better living, and newer, more hope- \nful years, what wealth can you take with you like \nthe belief that this matter-of-fact, hurrying, familiar \nworld is all God's, through and through, and there- \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 65 \n\nfore spirituality is not an idle dream ; that this \ncommunity lays its just claim upon your faith and \nhope and charity, emphasizing that claim by insist- \ning that ye cannot be perfect and entire until the \ncommunity lacks nothing? Into this vast, this win- \nning, this magnificent inheritance may we all go, as \nsome time into the joy of our Lord. \n\n\" Ah ! from the old world let some one answer give : \n\n' Scorn ye this world, their tears, their inward cares ', \nI say unto you, see th^t your souls live \nA deeper life than theirs ! \n\n\" Children of men ! not that your age excel \nIn pride of life the ages of your sires, \nBut that ye think clear, feel deep, bear fruit well. \nThe Friend of man desires.\" \n\n\nADDRESS. \n\nBY THE REV. EUGENE R. SHIPPEN, \nMinister of the First Chinrh in Dorchester. \n\n/^NE of the first sermons preached by Increase \nMather had for its text, \" Pray for the peace of \nJerusalem : they shall prosper that love thee,\" \nThat sermon was in 1661, in his home church in \nDorchester, three years before his installation as \nminister of this your church. Let that text be my \nsalutation this night as you celebrate your quarter \nmillenial anniversary. May peace rest upon this \nchurch, and prosperity make here its abiding home ! \n\n\n66 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nThat is what we of Dorchester would wish for you. \nWith that wish for your successful future are joined \nour congratulations for your honorable past. The \nFirst Parish in Dorchester has a distinct share in \nthat past, and we rejoice with you in your anniversary \ncelebration as kinsmen. Men and women trained \nto godliness in the Dorchester church in the early \ndays gave their strength to this church of yours \nwhen most it was needed. In our church records \nthere is entry after entry \" dismissed to joyne unto \nthe new church at Boston \" (your church being called \nthe new church until the formation of the Third \nChurch). Some of these records relating to the \nSecond Church antedate your own extant records. \nAron Way, William Ireland, Thankfull Baker, Ma- \nhalaleel Munings are among the names of Dor- \nchester members dismissed to Boston. Dorchester \nblood thus flows in the veins of this ao-ed but active \nreligious body. \n\nPersonal ties in this way created were strength- \nened as the years went on by the bonds of spiritual \nfellowship. The two churches were one in their \nattempt to create a theocracy. They were one in \ntheir espousal of the cause of independence. They \nwere one in their gradual loosing of the chains of \nCalvinism. They are one to-day in proclaiming \nthe simple religion of Jesus. \n\nOur records bear early witness to the intimate \nrelations between the two churches. Frequent were \nthe days of thanksgiving and humiliation jointly \nobserved. One of the most significant and inter- \nesting of the special days observed by the churches \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 67 \n\nof Boston and neighborhood was that set apart in \nDecember, 1659, \"on y^ behalf of o\"\" native Cuntry \nthey being at this time in such an unsettled way of \ngovernment being w^'^out p'tector & w^^'out parla- \nment only y^ power remaining in y^ army & they \nalsoe being devided,\" * \n\nBut for one reason above all others the Dor- \nchester church claims a share in your history : we \ngave you the Mathers. Six of them, perhaps more, \nhave preached in your church, three of whom (I \nmight almost say four) were your settled ministers. \nRichard Mather, the founder of the famous family, \nwas minister of the First Church and Parish in \nDorchester from 1636 to 1669. Of his labors in \nhis parish and in the colony I need not here speak. \nDistinguished as he was in his day and generation, \nit was his happy fate to give to posterity, and \nespecially to this church, sons, and, through them, \ngrandsons to shed even greater lustre on the name. \nAs the quaint inscription upon his head-stone in \nthe Old Dorchester Burying-ground reads : — \n\nDiuiNELY Rich & Learned Richard Mather \nSons like Him Prophets Great Reioiced this Father. \n\nThree of Richard's sons are associated with your \nchurch, Samuel, the oldest, was the first minister \nof this church. Though not actually settled, and \nso not appearing in the list, he was yet the first \nminister called to the pastorate of The Second \nChurch, and, as a matter of fact, served most ac- \nceptably as the minister for several months, until \nhis return to England, \n\n* Records of the First Church at Dorchester, p. 32. \n\n\n68 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nAnother son, Eleazar, is in the Dorchester rec- \nords thus distinguished in a note by the scribe: \n\" Preached at Boston North,\" that being one of the \npopular titles of The Second Church. We know, \nhowever, that he was settled over the church at \nNorthampton, its first minister, so that his services \nhere must have been only occasional. There is a \nmelancholy interest connected with Eleazar Mather \nin that he was the father of the hapless Mrs. \nWilliams, of Deerfield, killed by the Indians. \n\nThe sixth son of Richard Mather, Dorchester \nborn and bred, was Increase Mather. In the \nannals of the Protestant ministry there are few \nmore illustrious names. For over half a century \nminister of this church, for sixteen years President \nof Harvard College, the first to receive its honor- \nary degree of Doctor of Divinity, Increase Mather \nwas in his day perhaps the chief citizen of Boston, \nand the leading spirit in New England. \n\nThree years before he became your settled Min- \nister, he supplied on alternate Sundays for one \nwinter the pulpit of this church and his father's \nchurch in Dorchester. A very special interest \nDorchester had in him, therefore. Under date of \nMarch 22, 1664, the following entry was made in \nour Dorchester church records. Let me read it \nfrom the precious volume itself, which our senior \ndeacon with many warnings and much misgiving \nhas allowed me to bring here : — \n\n\" The day above said ther was a letter read sent \nto y^ Church from y^ last gathered Church at Bos- \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 69 \n\nton wherin was manifested & declared ther purpos \nfor to p ceed to ordaine M' Increase Mather to y^ \noffice of a teacher unto that Church, alsoe ther \ndesier is y* y^ Church of dorchester would send \nsome messengers for to assist & be p''sent at that \nwork.\" * \n\nOf Cotton Mather, the most famous member of \nthe family, and of Samuel, your ministers, time \ndoes not allow me to speak ; nor, indeed, was their \nconnection with Dorchester such as to give me \nspecial reason for so doing. I think, however, I \nhave made out my case, showing that through the \ntransplanting of members, the unbroken spiritual \nfellowship of two hundred and fifty years, and in \nthe gift of the Mathers, we of the Dorchester First \nChurch and Parish have a special right to rejoice \nwith you, and reason for a special interest in your \nhistoric retrospect. \n\nOne word in conclusion. The Puritan Church \nproduced God-fearing men of the highest character. \nThey, in turn, gave to the church of God their \nsupreme devotion. If the church producing the \nmen and the men serving the church had great \nfaults, it was simply because their pattern was \ngreat. \n\nI, for one, should like to see the spirit of Puri- \ntanism rise phoenix-like from the ashes of history. \nBetter intolerance than indifference. Superstition \nwere a lesser evil than a negative liberalism. Other- \nworldliness is at any rate nobler than worldliness. \n\nBut the spirit of Puritanism is not involved in \n\n* Manuscript Records, p. 59. \n\n\n70 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nits faults. I see in it religious reverence, personal \ndignity, and \"militant sincerity.\" Its essence is \nembodied in the lines with which I close, — an ode \nwritten by a former member of the Dorchester \nchurch. \n\nThou living Truth and vital Power ! \n\nWe cling unto thy changeless breast, \nThe phantoms of a mortal hour, \n\nAnd find immortal life and rest. \n\nOur fathers spoke their thought of Thee \nIn words austere, with lips aglow. \n\nAnd told in prayer, on bended knee, \nThe mystic tale of human woe. \n\nWe, children of a later hour, \n\nSeek in soft speech and gentler tongue \n\nTo veil the splendor of thy power. \nAnd do thy brooding love no wrong. \n\nOur fathers caught with straining ear \n\nThe echoes of the Sinai storm ; \nAnd we a rarer music hear, — \n\nThe worship of the Life new-born. \n\nBut guard us, O thou living Lord, \n\nIf, lost our silken lines among. \nWe miss the high, heroic chord \n\nThat through their manly accents rung. \n\nShone on their brows the fervid beam \nOf truth, in human symbols given ; \n\nOh, guard us, lest earth's tender sheen \nShut off that grander light of heaven. \n\nEliza Thayer Clapp. \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 7 1 \n\n\nADDRESS. \n\nBY REV. JAMES DE NORMANDIE, D.D., \nMinister of the First Church in Roxbury, 1631. \n\nA MONG my books is a small volume printed in \n•^ ^ London in 1639, in which it is stated that \nBoston is a pleasantly situated town about two miles \nnorth-east of Rocksborough ; and of Rocksborough \nmuch is said of its beauty and richness, its fine \nhouses, herds of cattle, great orchards, impaled corn- \nfields, and a beautiful stream flowing through the \ntown. That is Stony Brook, which sometimes has \nflowed altogether too much. \n\nWhen we recall that this was only nine years \nafter the first settlements, we see how rapid the \ngrowth was in spite of all the difficulties which \nbeset the colonists in clearing the forests, in severe \nwinters, and from hostile natives. \n\nNow the general features in the doctrines, modes \nof worship, social customs, and laws in these early \nchurches here represented were much the same. \nThere was the same solemn, strict, and universal ob- \nservance of the Sabbath. There was the same \ninterest in the pulpit and the pews in long sermons \nand prayers, the same sense of judgment for every \ncalamity and of providence for every success. \n\nIn all the enterprises, dangers, privations, and \npromises of building up a new country, the church \nof the Puritans was a most conspicuous feature. \nThe covenant was no unmeaning form, — to walk \n\n\n72 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\ntogether by the grace of God, and to watch over one \nanother for good. The spiritual watchfulness in \nthese early churches knew no lapse. No papal in- \nquisition was ever keener than the Puritan's search \nfor heresy or for sin, but a tender love and sym- \npathy went with it. The atmosphere of every \nhome was well known, and every lapsing brother \nor sister was brought to the open confessional or \nbanished the settlement. On the Rockesburgh \nHill, hard by the first little rough meeting-house, \nabout 20 X 30 and 12 feet high, stood the stocks, \nguardian of peace and terror of evil-doers, where \nthe offender had to stand in full view of the elect. \n\nThe Church Records make strange reading to us ; \nbut there was no hesitation in the Minister about \nputting down in black and white the praises or the \ntransgressions of his flock. But we see the sins \nmake a small part of the volumes. Here comes out \nthe stern hope of the church about erring brethren : \n\" And we have come to hope that the full proceed- \ning of discipline will doe more good than theire sin \nhath hurt.\" And here is their watchfulness over \nthe morals of trade : \" The wife of William Webb, \n— she followed baking; — & throuQ-h her covetuous \nmind she made light waight, after many admoni- \nshions flatly denying that after she had weighed \nher dough, she never nimed off bitts from each \nloaf, which yet four witnesses testified to be a com- \nmon, if not a practis, for all which grosse sins she \nwas excommunicated. But afterwards she was \nreconciled to the church, lived Xianly, and dyed \ncomfortably.\" \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 73 \n\nWhile in such records and religious experiences \nthese churches were, I take it, much the same, the \nFirst Church in Rockesburgh was distinguished \nfrom the others apparently by two interests. Its \ncare for the young was most marked. Here, as far \nas any records can be found, was the first Sunday- \nschool in the New World ; but its work is hardly \nthat which would commend itself to the members \nof our Young People's Religious Union. \n\nIn the first church book, under date of lo month, \n6, 1674, it is written, \"This day we restored our \nprimitive practice [showing it had been an earlier \ncustom] for the training up our youth, — first, \nour male youth, in fitting season stay every Sab- \nbath after the evening exercise in the Public meet- \ning-house, where the elders will examine their \nremembrance that day [of the sermon] any fit \npoynt of Catechise. Secondly, that our female \nyouth should meet in one place, where the elders \nmay examine them of their remembrance yesterday, \n& about Catechise, or what else may be con- \nvenient.\" \n\nThen Eliot was beset to do something for the \neducation of the young. It was a care never out of \nhis mind. At one of the meetings of all the min- \nisters of this neighborhood he exclaimed with great \nfervor : \" Lord, for schools everywhere among us. \nThat our schools may flourish. That every mem- \nber of this assembly may go home and procure a \ngood school to be encouraged in the town where he \nlives. That before we die we may be so happy as \nto see a good school encouraged in every plantation \nof the country.\" \n\n\n74 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nIt was out of this interest that the old Roxbury \nLatin School was established under the care of the \nFirst Church, after the type of those schools then \nso famous in England, and called \"grammar \nschools,\" because grammar was the key of lan- \nguage,— that mysterious power by which soul \nspeaks to soul. Cotton Mather says of the issue of \nthis school that Roxbury has afforded more scholars \nfirst for the college and then for the public than \nany town of its bigness, or, if I mistake not, of \ntwice its bigness, in all New England. And still \nto-day, after two hundred and fifty years, it remains \nunique and distinguished as one of the best fitting \nschools for our neighboring university. \n\nThe other feature of the First Church was the \nmissionary work of the apostle Eliot among the \nIndians. So far as I can recall, the other churches \nhere represented had no interest whatever in this \nwork. I am not sure that any word can be found \nin their early history referring to it. \n\nAnd so at a later period, when the anti-slavery \ntimes came, there is but one of these same churches \nwhich has a public word to say about that, — the \ncourageous and godly ministry of Nathaniel Hall, of \nthe First Church in Dorchester. \n\nThere can be little question that the Puritans as \na class cared nothing about the Indians. They \nbelieved they were the children of the Devil. \nThey had no confidence that the Indians could be \ncivilized or converted, and very early they had a \nproverb that the only good Indian was a dead \nIndian. And it is true that a large part of the \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 75 \n\nAmerican people still feels so toward the remnants \nof the race lingering along the fringe of our West- \nern civilization. Just as the race is about to disap- \npear, the awakened heart of the nation begins to \ntake a better attitude. \n\nBut Eliot believed the Indians were the lost \ntribes of Israel, and that in their language he would \nfind some traces of the Hebrew, which he firmly \nbelieved was the language of heaven, in which by \nGod's own voice the Old Testament had been \ngiven to men, and which would be forever the lan- \nguage of the redeemed. So he began that wonder- \nful missionary life, as all true missionary work be- \ngins, in the love of humanity; and no human \nlabors were ever more earnest, devoted, and self- \nsacrificing. \n\nIn his home, at the foot of the hill on which the \nchurch stands, — the same site still marked by the \nmost commanding old Puritan House of God in \nNew England, — he had an evening school for the \nIndians ; and during the week, or when he could \nhave a spare Sunday for longer journeys, wherever \nthe Indians could be gathered in wigwams, under \nspreading trees, down along the Cape, all through \nWestern Massachusetts, and up to the borders of \nNew Hampshire, there Eliot was to be found. \nNo difficulties too great. No thought of self came \nto the surface. Every personal comfort was sur- \nrendered, every sacrifice was gladly borne. And \nthen he would come back, and through the long \nnight, by his tallow candle, give himself to the \ntranslation of the Scriptures into their language \n\n\n76 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nwith a diligence and love which shames almost \nall records of scholarship. \n\nHis missionary zeal was not less than Saint \nPaul's, his charity as sweet and abundant as Saint \nFrancis of Assisi, and his whole life a testimony \nthat the call to saintliness has not ceased and the \npossibility of it has not died out. The First Church \nof Roxbury has great reason to be proud of his \nministry and to cherish his memory; and it still \ntries to carry on his work of converting the sur- \nrounding and unchurched heathen. \n\nNearly twenty years have passed since it cele- \nbrated the anniversary which gathers you together \nhere this evening. We rejoice in your record as \nin our own, — that you, as we, were led into that \nmovement which under Channing came to some \nof our churches with a new and richer spiritual life. \nIt is an interesting fact in the history of religion \nthat the flourishing condition of one church is only \na help to all others ; and, when the spiritual life of \none languishes, its baneful influence is felt in a \nweakening will. We bear our best greetings to \nyou in grateful memories of all the life of this \nchurch has meant to the community for two hun- \ndred and fifty years, and join our prayers with yours \nfor only increasing Christian activities and useful- \nness for centuries without end. \n\nThese churches have a noble history to encour- \nage them; and now, looking not to the past, but to \nthe future, the serious question is, What shall we \ndo to increase our mission ? The real value of a \nchurch is not in its past, but in its zeal and ability \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY ']'] \n\nto minister to the religious needs of to-day. We \nare not like the fathers by wearing the gown and \nbands, or by subscribing merely to their doctrines, \nbut by their zeal for the truth, by their love for \nhumanity, and by a deeper faith in those few great \nspiritual realities which have ever been and must \never be the refuge and support of the human soul. \n\n\nADDRESS. \n\nBY REV. GEORGE A. GORDON, D.D., \n\nMinister of the Third Church in Boston. \n\n\"XX/HEN in a large family — a family of five — a \nlovely sister has arrived at the interesting \nage of eighteen, it is in order for the older sisters to \nbid her welcome to the great world of womanhood ; \nand they do so by telling her what very great \nthings are before her, and for what great things she \nis indebted to them. Afterward, the younger sister \ncomes, shy, lonesome, green in her immaturity, and \nstammers out her welcome. \n\nThis church has reached an interesting period \nin its existence, and its older sisters have bidden \nher welcome ; and I think they have reminded \nher of her debt to them. And now it is my turn \nto tell you how much love and sympathy and \nhearty congratulation there are in the heart of the \nThird Church, your younger sister, for you of the \nSecond Church. \n\nThere are a great many things that are uncertain \n\n\n78 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nin human affairs and in church affairs, but there \nis one thing pretty certain ; and that is that the \nrecord of Dr. Sewall of fifty-six years as pastor of \nthe Third Church will not be broken by the pres- \nent incumbent, and I should say with nearly the \nsame certainty that the record of Increase Mather \nof sixty-two years as incumbent of this pulpit will \nnot be broken by Mr. Van Ness. I am sorry for \nthis, for I think that you are far better off under \nhis ministry than you would be under that famous \nand rather grim old man. \n\nThe thing that lies in my heart to say to-night \nis a word of congratulation over the treasure of \nyour two hundred and fifty years of history. It is \na treasure, taken as a whole, — an inexpressibly pre- \ncious treasure. I am not going to repeat the \nnames of the old gentlemen. Many of them were \ntyrannical, and, it seems to me, not very good, on \nthe whole ; but the period covered by your life as an \necclesiastical organization is a great period. It is \nfull, as I have said, of precious treasures; and I \nwish to indicate two or three lines along which that \ntreasure may come mightily to the support of your \nlife here to-day. \n\nIn the first place, your history is wisdom. Men \nwith no history are fools, and so with churches. \nThere were brave men before the days of Aga- \nmemnon, and there were thinkers before the preach- \ners of to-day arrived, believers in God, seers into \nthe heart of reality, devout men, great-hearted lov- \ners of their kind ; and the sense that the past has \nseen the things that you have seen and grasped \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 79 \n\nthem and wielded them for the benefit of mankind, \nis, I think, of inexpressible value in sobering the \nintelligence and enlarging the mind of the progres- \nsive people of to-day. \n\nAnd there is a peace about that Puritan life, \nowing to the depth of its faith and the greatness \nof the truth in which it dealt, which, I think, all \nour churches should remember. The Puritan spoke \nof God and divine sovereignty and divine decrees \nand eternal righteousness and heaven and hell, \nthe great issues of the moral battle in this world. \nThe people were held in the grasp of great truths, \nand this was the foundation of their peace. You \ngo out to sea in a yacht, and it is all very well when \nthe weather is fine ; but let a north-east storm spring \nup, and the jumpings and the tossings of your \nyacht will make those on board very uncomfortable ; \nwhereas, if you are on a great Atlantic liner in that \nvery storm, you can feel under you a steady keel. \nOur people to-day are going through life on little \nbits of yachts, cat-boats even ; and in consequence \nthere is hurry and bluster and fume and fury in their \nlives. What they want is the great elemental \ntruths that the Puritan spoke and believed, — God, \nas we may apprehend him to-day, sovereignty as we \nmay apprehend it to-day, universal righteousness, \nheaven, hell, all the great things that still surround \nus and constitute our moral and spiritual environ- \nment, and that appeal to our life as they did to the \nold Puritan. We must remember that in many \nrespects what James Russell Lowell said is true, \nwhen we think of the elevation of the Puritan ideal \n\n\n8o THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nand the strenuousness of the Puritan devotion to \nhis ideal measured against ours : — \" We are scarce \nour fathers' shadows cast at noon.\" \n\nThen there is what I call the sentiment of his- \ntory, which becomes life, profound, tender, true, in- \nfluential, victorious, in the movements of to-day. \nYou take this Bible. Every morning that your \npastor reads the lesson from it, the accent of eight \ngenerations of serious and high-minded men and \nwomen is there. You sing the hymns that have \nbeen sung by a great body of suffering, brave, \nrejoicing people through all these years. Your \nworship, your faith, your church organization, are \nsteeped through and through with humanity. To \nopen your imagination to this is to allow the high, \ntender, human soul of history to enrich and sweeten \nand gladden your life. When the Bible says, O \nGod, our fathers' God, does it not add something \nto our faith in God ? Does not God take on hue \nand color and power and majesty, as he comes \nthrough the atmosphere of our great human parent- \nage, just as the sun is glorified as it comes up \nthrough the rich morning atmosphere or as it goes \nfrom us through the gates of evening.? It is some- \nthing to have God : it is something more to have \nour fathers' God and our mothers' God, — God \nglorified through the humanity of two hundred and \nfifty years. It is a mighty possession. \n\nI think often of the first three churches of Bos- \nton,— The First Church, The Second Church, and \nThe Third Church. They constitute an ecclesiasti- \ncal aristocracy. I think of them as three ocean \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 8 1 \n\nliners going from the same port. The First \nChurch started a Httle ahead, taking a course of its \nown. The Second Church started next, and took a \ncourse of its own. The Third Church sailed last \nof the three, in rather rough water, and took a \ncourse of its own. Each has been sailing on its own \ncourse, through sunshine and through storm, \nthrough pleasant weather and through severe weath- \ner, ever since ; and, as they get toward mid-ocean, \nperhaps, they are out of sight of each other. They \nhave been often out of sight of each other, and prob- \nably an accurate historic chart would show how far \ntheir courses had been apart and how little they had \nseen of each other for the last century. But even \nthen the same ocean is under the keels of all three, \nand the same sky with its everlasting guiding lights \nis over all three ; and the heart of each trusts the \ndeep below and the deep above. And may we not \nhope that as they converge in their courses toward \nthe same port, — and they are bound for the same \nport, — they will come more and more within \nsight of each other again? And is not this meet- \ning a sort of flag thrown out to show that they \nare beginning to sight each other again, that their \ncourses are really converging ? Let us hope that for \nthe remainder of the voyage the water may be good, \nand the health of the passengers good, the wisdom of \nthe captains good, everything good. And, when we \ncome to the close of this dispensation, may we touch \nsome great, eternal reality, not unfittingly symbolized \nby the port of peace, where the three stately liners \nshall anchor side by side. God bless you, men and \n\n\n82 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nwomen of The Second Church in Boston. God \nbless your leader and those he leads. And take, I \nbeg you, into your hearts the large, thankful, con- \ngratulatory, loving greeting of your younger sister \nand neighbor, The Third Church of Boston. \n\n\nTHE WORK OF WOMEN. \n\n\n^\"T^HE morning of Monday, November 20, was allotted \n-■' to the Second Church Branch of the Women's \nNational Alliance, and the following programme was fol- \nlowed : — \n\n©rgan Fohmtarg. \n\nI^omn 133, Colchester, 1685. \n\nSSEelcome ftg tlje ^reiSitiEut Mrs, E. H. Brigham \n\nPrager Rev. Thomas Van Ness \n\nl^gmn 160, Coronation, 1793. \n\nSubject : What Women have done, in the United States, since \nthe Founding of The Second Church in Boston : \n\nJn ILiterature Mrs. Mary P. Wells Smith \n\nEn iStiucatfon Mrs. Emily A. Fifield \n\nS0IO, selected Mrs. W. H. Prior \n\nEn pijilantijropg Mrs. Kate Gannett Wells \n\nEn ^Tljcologg Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer \n\nl^gmn 21, Bethany. \n\nBenetiirtion Rev. Edward A. Horton \n\nAt the close of the exercises an informal reception \nwas held in the church parlor, to which all present were \ncordially invited. \n\n\nWHAT WOMEN HAVE DONE IN LIT- \nERATURE IN THE UNITED STATES \nSINCE 1649. \n\nBY MARY P. WELLS SMITH. \n\n'\"p^HE Second Church of Boston was founded in \n•^ 1649. Girls were not admitted to the public \nschools of Boston until 1 789, one hundred and forty \nyears later, when they were permitted to go half the \nyear, in summer only. Writing was not considered \na necessary accomplishment for \"females,\" even in \nthe early part of this century. Not one woman in \na dozen could write her name at the Revolutionary \nperiod. The Puritan estimate of literary women is \nillustrated by the account in John Winthrop's His- \ntory of New England of Mr. Hopkins, \"Governor \nof Hartford upon the Connecticut,\" who brought to \nBoston his wife, \" a godly young woman and of \nspecial parts,\" who had lost her reason, Winthrop \nsays, \"by occasion of giving herself wholly to read- \ning and writing.\" \" If,\" he adds, \" she had attended \nto her household affairs, and such things as belong \nto women, and not gone out of her way and calling \nto meddle in such things as are proper for men, \nwhose minds are stronger, she had kept her wits, \nand might have improved them usefully and honor- \nably in the place God had set her.\" \n\nThe love-letters of Margaret Winthrop to her hus- \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 85 \n\nband, the vivid narrative of her captivity by Mrs. \nMary Rowlandson, the lively account of her perilous \njourney from Boston to New York by the sharp \nquill of Madam Sarah Knight, and other writings \nwhich have been preserved, show that our Puritan \nforemothers were far from destitute of native ca- \npacity. But overpowering indeed must have been \nthe literary impulse in a woman's soul impelling \nher to authorship under the prevailing adverse \nconditions. The marvel .is, not that the first cen- \ntury of our period shows so few authoresses, but \nthat it records any. Yet the first person to publish \na volume of verse in New England was a woman. \nMistress Anne Bradstreet, the pioneer American \nauthoress. Married at sixteen and the mother of \neight children, Mrs. Bradstreet's days could hardly \nhave been those of literary leisure. But her poems, \npublished in London in 1650 under the title \"The \nTenth Muse lately sprung up in America, by a \nGentlewoman in those Parts,\" compare favorably \nwith others of her time. She prefaced them with \nthese apologetic lines : — \n\n\" I am obnoxious to each carping tongue, \nWho says my hand a needle better fits. \nA Poet's pen all scorn I should thus wrong, \n\nFor such despite they cast on Female wits. \nIf what I do prove well, it won't advance, \nThey'll say it's stolen, or else it was by chance.\" \n\nShe closes with, \n\n\" Men can do best, and women know it well. \nPre-eminence in all and each is yours, \nYet grant some small acknowledgment of ours.\" \n\n\n86 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nEither her seemly humility or her social position \ndisarmed criticism, for Cotton Mather graciously \nsaid that her poems \" afforded a grateful entertain- \nment unto the ingenious\" ; and Nathaniel Ward, in \nhis poetical preface to the posthumous volume of \nher poems, makes Apollo exclaim, on being pre- \nsented by Minerva with Mrs. Bradstreet's book : — \n\n\" I muse whither at length these girls will go. \nIt half revives my chill, frost-bitten blood, \nTo see a woman once do aught that's good ; \nAnd, chode by Chaucer's boots and Homer's furs, \nLet men look to't lest women wear the spurs.\" \n\nThe time distracted from Mrs. Bradstreet's lit- \nerary labors by her eight children cannot be deemed \nlost, when we know that their descendants include \nsuch illustrious names as William Ellery Channing, \nJoseph S. Buckminster, Richard H. Dana, and \nOliver Wendell Holmes ; and we can well believe \nthat the Rev. John Norton, in his \" Dirge for the \nTenth Muse,\" did not exaggerate when he wrote \nof her, — \n\n\" Her breast was a brave palace, a Broad-street \nWhere all heroic thoughts did meet, \nWhere nature such a tenement had ta'en. \nThat other souls, to hers, dwelt in a lane.\" \n\nJane Turrell, daughter of the Rev. Benjamin Col- \nman, wrote verse, collected after her early death at \ntwenty-seven by her husband in a volume called \n\" Memoirs of the Life and Death of the Pious and \nIngenious Mistress Jane Turrell.\" Elizabeth Fer- \nguson, of Philadelphia in 1756, when seventeen \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 87 \n\nyears old, translated the whole of \" Telemaque \" \ninto blank verse, as a consolation under a disap- \npointment in love. It was never published, was \nperhaps discreetly \" hushed up \" among her friends. \nA literary phenomenon difficult to explain was \nPhillis Wheatley, a negro slave brought from Africa \nwhen eight years old, and sold in the Boston slave \nmarket. A volume of her verse published in 1773 \nhas been pronounced \" a very respectable echo of \nPope.\" Elizabeth Singer Rowe was also an es- \nteemed poetess of this generation, favorably alluded \nto by Sewall as \" Philomela.\" Her name seems \nto close the list of pre-Revolutionary authoresses, \nunless we accept the pleasant tradition which \nmakes Mistress Vergoose the immortal benefactress \nof childhood. \n\nWomen shared in the general awakening of the \nAmerican intellect born of the Revolution. The \nfirst woman in this country to devote herself to \na literary life was Hannah Adams. Obtaining her \neducation alone, chiefly from reading books in her \nfather's shop, she brought out in 1784 her first \nbook, \" Views of Religious Opinions,\" followed by \na History of New England, History of the Jews, \netc. She ranks with Belknap and Abiel Holmes \nas a leading historical writer of the period. We \nrealize the deprivation suffered by a woman of \nliterary tastes in her time, when told that all her \nlife Hannah Adams looked eagerly forward to \nHeaven as a place where her thirst for knowledge \nmight be gratified. \n\nAbigail Adams little dreamed of ranking among \n\n\n88 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nthe \" black swans,\" as she says literary women are \nconsidered, though she quotes with approval a \n\"generous writer,\" who says, \"To woman's natural \nperfections add but the perfection of acquired \nlearning, what polite and charming creatures would \nthey prove ! \" Her letters reveal a woman of ster- \nling ability, and are invaluable as a domestic pict- \nure of the times, an inner history of the Revolution \npossible only to the pen of a bright woman. Her \nfriend Mrs. Mercy Warren, by whose Plymouth \nfireside many political plans originated, when sev- \nenty-seven years old, wrote the first history of the \nRevolution, especially important as the work of a \ncontemporary. \n\nThe first novels written in America were by \nwomen. Mrs. Susanna Rawson wrote \"Charlotte \nTemple,\" a melancholy tale, wet by the tears of \ncountless readers. Mrs. Rawson also felt obliged \nto appease male critics with the usual servile apolo- \ngies, in these lines : — \n\n\" Know you not that woman's proper sphere \nIs the domestic walk ? To interfere \nWith politics, divinity, or law \nAs much-deserved ridicule would draw \nOn woman as the learned, grave divine \nCooking the soup on which he means to dine. \nOr formal judge, the winders on his knee, \nPreparing silk to work embroidery.\" \n\nMrs. Tabitha Tenney wrote \" Female Quixotism ; \nor, Extravagant Adventures of Dorcasina Sheldon,\" \na satire on the romanticism then prevalent among \nyoung women, which had great vogue. It must \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 89 \n\nbe remembered that fiction had its birth in Eng- \nland but little prior to this time, with Richard- \nson's \" Pamela.\" Another early novel was \" Eliza \nWharton,\" by Hannah W. Foster. In it, as the \ntaste of the time demanded, the \" tear of sensibil- \nity \" oft shone in the eye of the hero, as he \" with \nardor pressed to his lips \" the hand of the ever- \nblushing heroine. To this era belongs also Sarah \nMorton, styled by her friend Robert Treat Paine \n\" the American Sappho.\" \n\nThe fruits of the admission of girls to the public \nschools were soon manifest. In the last decade of \nthe eighteenth century were born Eliza Leslie, \nMaria Brooks, or \" Maria del Occidente,\" as \nSouthey named her, Caroline Oilman, Sarah J. \nHale, Emma Willard, Hannah F. Gould, Lydia H. \nSigourney, and Catharine Sedgwick. With these \nhonored names feminine authorship in America \nfairly begins. Eliza Leslie was apparently the pi- \noneer writer for children, with her stories \" For \nEmma,\" \" For Adelaide,\" etc. She wrote bright \nsatiric sketches for Graham s and Godeys, those \npopular precursors of the modern magazine swarm, \nand edited \" The Gift,\" the best among the annuals \nthen so fashionable. She also wrote \" The Be- \nhavior Book,\" a work so replete with sound sense \nthat young girls might still learn things worth \nknowing from its perusal, even if they found some \nof its teachings slightly antiquated, as where Miss \nLeslie advises young ladies, when walking with \ntheir superiors, \" always to go a little behind.\" \nMany a noble woman was trained on the \" Be- \n\n\n90 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nhavior Book.\" Caroline Gilman wrote much and \nacceptably in the Rose, a magazine established \nand edited by her in Charleston, to which she later \nadded the Rosebud, one of the first weekly ju- \nvenile papers in the country. Sarah J. Hale's un- \nflagging industry made her the prototype of the \nmodern literary worker. She edited Godeys \nLadies Book, wrote tales, poems, and books, and \npublished \" The Woman's Record \" and \" Sketches \nof all Distinguished Women from the Beginning till \nA.D. 1850,\" two books indicating that the apolo- \ngetic period for literary women was passing. \nEmma Willard found time from her educational \nlabors to write books of travel, text-books, and \npoems, including one not yet forgotten, \" Rocked \nin the cradle of the deep.\" We can but think \nfondly of Hannah Gould's natural, graceful poems, \nso dear to childhood. \n\nThe two leading names of this period, however, \nfor years ranking first among American author- \nesses, were those of Miss Sedgwick, and Mrs. Sig- \nourney, \" the American Hemans,\" as it was the \nfashion to call her. Mrs. Sigourney published fifty \nvolumes. Her poems seldom appeal to modern \ntaste ; and we are reminded in perusing them of \nMrs. Dodge's saying, that \" Pegasus generally feels \ninclined to pace towards a graveyard the moment \nhe feels a side-saddle on his back.\" But a melan- \ncholy sentimentality was the literary fashion of her \ntime. Every one wrote pensive odes \"To Tears,\" \n\"To Memory,\" \"To Melancholy,\" \" To Twilight.\" \nJ. G. Percival wrote an ode of eighty-two lines, \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 9 1 \n\nin one of the annuals \" To Consumption,\" begin- \nning, \n\n\"There is a sweetness in woman's decay.\" \n\nMrs. Sigourney's poems had immense popularity, \nand their pure, devout spirit helped many souls. In \ntime-embrowned \" Friendship's Offerings,\" it is her \npoems that we oftenest find scored by the faded \npencil-marks of long since vanished hands. \n\nIt Is unnecessary to mention \" The Linwoods \" \nand the other well-known works of Miss Sedgwick, \neminently stories with a purpose. She aimed di- \nrectly to help and improve the world ; and her \ncheerful, sensible tales exerted a wide and always \nwholesome influence. Two literary phenomena of \nthe early century were the Davidson sisters, whose \njuvenile efforts were published, and even won \nSouthey's praise. There is a hectic flush on the \npoor little verses, and we are not surprised that the \nyoung poetesses laid down their lyres forever at the \nages of sixteen and fourteen. Other authoresses \nborn early in the century were Caroline Lee Hentz ; \nAnn S. Stephens, a noted magazine writer and \neditor ; Frances Sargent Osgood ; Ellen Sturgis \nHooper, who wrote for the Dial \" I slept, and \ndreamed that life was beauty\" ; Louisa J. Hall, who \nwrote \" Down hill the path of age ? Oh, no \" ; Amelia \nWelby; Emily Judson, better known as \"Fanny \nForrester \" ; Mrs. Parton, or \" Fanny Fern,\" whose \npungent squibs originated a wave of vegetable \npseudonyms ; Mrs. Whitcher, the inimitable \" Widow \nBedott \" ; the voluminous Mrs. Southworth ; Louisa \n\n\n92 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nTuthill; Elizabeth Ellet, author of \"American \nWomen in the Revolution \" ; Delia Bacon, made \nfamous by the Baconian - Shakspere controversy; \nCaroline M. Kirkland, whose keenly observant \ntales of Western life are still enjoyable for native \nhumor and as pictures of what already seems an in- \ncredible past, the West, of which Dickens's \" Ameri- \ncan Notes \" and Mrs. Trollope's diatribe were \nhardly caricatures ; and Susan Warner, author of \nthose immensely popular tales, \" The Wide, Wide \nWorld \" and \" Oueechy.\" We mark a notable \nchange of ideas in reading Miss Welby's poem, \n\" The Old Maid.\" After our tenderest sympathies \nhave been roused for this unfortunate, who has \noutlived all making life worth while, it is a shock \nto the modern mind to read, \" It is her thirtieth \nbirthday.\" \n\nIn 1802 was born a woman who left an impress \non the world, — Lydia Maria Child, a notable writer \nas well as a woman of delightful personality. \n\n\" What a wealth would it bring to the narrow and sour, \nCould they be as a Child but for one little hour ! \" \n\nPassing briefly by her excellent stories, '* Hobo- \nmok,\" \" The Rebels,\" in which appeared the famous \nspeech of James Otis, often quoted as by Otis him- \nself, \" Philothea,\" and the rest, we note that again \nwas a woman a pioneer. Mrs. Child wrote the first \nbook against slavery in this country, her \" Appeal \nfor that Class of Americans called Africans.\" Hig- \nginson says that the perusal of this \" wonderfully \nclear, convincing book,\" with Miss Martineau's \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 93 \n\nkindred work, made him an Abolitionist. Undis- \nmayed by the decline in literary prestige and profit \ncaused by this publication, Mrs. Child moved to \nNew York in 1841, to edit with her husband the \nNational Anti-slavery Standard. Incidentally, she \nwrote her \" Letters from New York.\" She was a \nleader in juvenile literature, not only in her books \nfor children, but in her popular Jiwenile Miscel- \nlany. Her useful life extended late into the \ncentury, and she was occupied in its last years by \ncompiling \" Looking towards Sunset,\" \n\nAnother woman whose helpful life nearly covered \nthe century was Elizabeth P. Peabody, to whose \nwritings we chiefly owe the introduction of the \nKindergarten System in our country, and to whose \n\" Recollections \" we are indebted for a closer view \nof Channing. With George Ripley she was the \nbusiness manager of the Dial. \n\nTo the early part of the century also belongs the \ngreat name among American literary women, that \nof Margaret Fuller D'Ossoli. Born when feminine \nscholars were almost unknown, her education was \nthe product, not of the inadequate schools of her \ntime, but of arduous solitary labor, impelled by an \ninnate thirst to know. She was ranked as equal \nfriend and co-laborer by Emerson and the other in- \ntellectual leaders. She wrote editorials and literary \nreviews, as yet unsurpassed, for the Tribune under \nGreeley, helped introduce the study of German \nliterature in the country, was the first editor of the \nDial, and a leader in the Transcendental move- \nment, that glorious New England renaissance, the \n\n\n94 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nrevival of the life of the spirit. Her Boston con- \nversations may safely be pronounced the remote \nbeginnino; of the woman's club movement. In \nwriting of these proposed conversations to Mrs. \nRipley, she said, — \n\n\" The advantages of a weekly meeting for conver- \nsation might be great enough to repay attendance \nif they only supplied a point of union to well-edu- \ncated and thinking women in a city which, with \ngreat pretensions to mental refinement, boasts at \npresent nothing of the kind, and where I have heard \nmany of mature age wish for some such place of \nstimulus and cheer.\" \n\nThese conversations, on such topics as the His- \ntory of Religions, the Fine Arts, the Influence of \nWomen, Ethics, Education, etc., opened a new \nworld to women. To know the literary world of \nMiss Fuller's time, turn over the pages of the New \nYork Mirror, edited by N. P. Willis, and note the \nnauseating strain of compliment to women, the \ndoubtless well-meant but almost insulting tone of \ncondescending patronage. \" To our fair and ever- \ngentle countrywomen is mainly to be attributed the \n» success of the Mirror,'' purrs the editor. \" The \nladies are all constancy and devotion. We would \nrather cater for the edification of one fair and gentle \nspirit than for a host of the bearded and coated \ntribe.\" He says of Mrs. Oilman's Southern Rose, \n\" It unfolds its blushing and graceful buds in \nCharleston.\" With infinite contempt Margaret \nFuller tossed behind her these meaningless compli- \nments, demanding that a woman's work be judged \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 95 \n\npurely on its merit as work. The writings she left \nare no measure of her literary rank. What she was, \nnot what she wrote, has made her name a stimulus \nand inspiration to American women. \n\nA sign of the times was the Lowell Offering \npublished by the factory girls of Lowell, originating \nin Lucy Larcom's home, her first poems appearing \nin it. A collection from its pages, published in \nLondon in 1849, was well named \"Mind among \nthe Spindles.\" Women's minds in America were \nindeed awakening, not only among the spindles, \nbut behind the needle and the broom. \n\nThere is still with us one who can say of the \nincredible changes our century has brought in \nwoman's opportunities, \" All of it I saw, part of it I \nwas,\" — Julia Ward Howe, As lecturer, as edi- \ntor with Dr. Howe of the Commonwealth, as a \nwriter, she has borne noble part in uplifting, not \nonly her sex, but humanity. It was her high privi- \nlege to voice the patriotism of a nation in her \nglorious \" Battle Hymn of the Republic.\" Now, \n\"eighty years young,\" her recent delightful volume \nof \" Reminiscences \" shows unabated mental force. \nHer contemporary, Harriet Beecher Stowe, was \ninspired to write the powerful story \" Uncle Tom's \nCabin,\" which wrought so mightily for the freedom \nof a race, which, translated into all languages, dram- \natized in many forms, is still, like John Brown's \nsoul, \" marching on,\" pleading for the down-trodden. \n\nA little later were born such well-known writers \nas Maria Lowell, Caroline Cheseborough, Caroline \nA. Mason, Ednah D. Cheney, Elizabeth Stoddard, \n\n\ng6 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nMrs. A. D. T. Whitney, Mrs. Lippincott, or \" Grace \nGreenwood,\" Alice and Phoebe Gary, Lucretia P. \nHale, Caroline H. Dall, Lucy Larcom, Rose Terry \nCooke, Margaret Preston, Julia Dorr. Some of \nthese writers are still working on with that un- \ndiminished mental power which is the surest wit- \nness of the spirit's unending life. \n\nBy the time we reach the thirties, the list swells \nperceptibly ; and we have such familiar names as \nHelen Hunt Jackson, Celia Thaxter, Charlotte \nFiske Bates, Mrs. Piatt, Emily Dickinson, Harriet \nMcEwen Kimball, Edna Dean Proctor, Louise \nChandler Moulton, Marion Harland, Augusta \nEvans, Mary L. Booth, Margaret Sangster, Mary \nMapes Dodge, Helen Campbell, Mrs. Croly, or \n\"Jennie June,\" Rebecca Harding Davis, Jane G. \nAustin, Amelia Barr, \" Gail Hamilton,\" Olive \nThorne Miller, Kate Sanborn, Kate Field, Nancy \nPriest, author of \"Over the River,\" Elizabeth \nPrentiss, author of \"Stepping Heavenward,\" \nAmanda Douglas, Harriet Prescott Spofford, \nMrs. Annie Fields, Katherine Wormeley, Eliza- \nbeth Gary Agassiz. Now, too, was born Louisa M. \nAlcott, the story of whose brave life struggle, as \ntold by Mrs. Cheney, has inspired many young \nwomen. She revolutionized juvenile literature, and \nwon that sweetest fame, the faithful love of child \nhearts. Said a little girl in Colorado lately, \" When \nI go to heaven, after I have found the family, I \nshall hunt up Miss Alcott.\" \n\nIt is instructive to note, with each added decade, \nhow surely woman's intellectual achievement has \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 97 \n\nkept pace with her educational opportunities, and \nhow the ranks of writers swell as we go on. Pre- \ncisely half a century ago, in 1850, was held the \nfirst Woman's Rights Convention, and that agita- \ntion begun which even its opponents must admit \nhas immeasurably changed for the better the \nposition of women. At this time, too, girls first \nreceived a high-school education. It is not strange \nthat in this last half-century the list of successful \nwriters has grown, until it is impossible even to \nmention the names of those upon whose work we \nshould delight to dwell, did time permit. Among \nsuch names readily occurring to us are Elizabeth \nStuart Phelps Ward, Constance Fenimore Wool- \nson, Maria Pool, Miss Woolsey, Mrs. Burnett, \nMary Hallock Foote, Mary H. Catherwood, Mrs. \nHolley, or \"Josiah Allen's Wife,\" Mrs. Custer, \nMrs. John and Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer, \nMrs. Burton Harrison, Anna C. Brackett, Sarah \nK. Bolton, Harriet W. Preston, Emma Lazarus, \nAlice Williams Brotherton, Sarah O. Jewett, Mary \nWilkins, Alice Brown, Kate Douglas Wiggin, \nEdith M. Thomas, Agnes Repplier, Margaret \nDeland, Miss Murfree, Laura S. Richards and \nMaud Howe Elliott, Alice Morse Earle, Anne H. \nWharton, Sarah Mac Lean Pratt, Anna Bowman \nDodd, Elizabeth W. Latimer, Katharine Lee \nBates, Eliza Orne White, Clara Erskine Clement, \n\" Eleanor Putnam,\" the Goodale sisters, Ruth Mc- \nEnery Stuart, Lillian Whiting, Kate Tannatt \nWoods, Louise L Guiney, Alice Stone Blackwell, \nHelen M. Winslow, Charlotte Perkins Stetson, \n\n\n98 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nGrace Ellery Channing, Molly Elliot Seawell, \nMary Johnston. The list of women who are doing \ngood literary work in various lines extends in- \ndefinitely. \n\nColleges have so recently been opened to women \nthat the fruits of university education are not yet \ngarnered; but in every magazine and publisher's \nlist the names of new and hitherto unknown au- \nthoresses greet us, attached to work that would \nonce have assured the writer's fame. One is \nsometimes tempted to look wistfully back to Han- \nnah More's time, when Dr. Johnson and his \nfriends ranked literary effort by a woman with the \nphenomenon of a dog walking on his hind legs! \nWould the editors of the Atlantic Monthly to-day \naccept \" Coelebs in Search of a Wife,\" or the \neditor of the Christian Register eagerly jump at \n\"Thoughts on the Manners of the Great\"? It \ntook so little to give a woman literary repute then ! \nBut, as Tennyson said to George Eliot, \" Every- \nbody writes so well now ! \" \n\nWomen first venturing to act as reporters for \nthe press encountered the inevitable ridicule at- \ntending women pioneers in any new field of effort ; \nbut now many newspapers employ bright young \nwomen on their staff, and journalism is accepted as \nanother activity open to women. There is great \nliterary activity everywhere among our women. \n\nThe phenomenal development of women's clubs \nin the last quarter of the century is a sign of the \ntimes not to be overlooked. There are now two \nthousand women's clubs in the United States, di- \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 99 \n\nvided among thirty States, bringing a degree of \nintellectual culture within the range of most women, \nand, through women thus aroused to intellectual \npleasures, benefiting whole communities. The fol- \nlowing is only one instance of such influence. But \na few years ago there was no public library in \nMontgomery, Ala., and almost no private ones, this \ndearth at the capital auguring even worse depriva- \ntion throughout the State. Now Alabama has fifty \nwomen's clubs ; and their State Federation at Mont- \ngomery is sending out travelling libraries into the \nobscurest nooks of the State, books eagerly received \nand read. \" Into almost colorless lives, barren of \nany diverting interest,\" says a recent report, \"come \nthese books, with a revelation of broader thinking \nnobler ambition, greater worlds, and perhaps, best \nof all, a harmless recreation.\" \n\nIn concluding this hasty review of woman's liter- \nary effort from the beginning of our country's his- \ntory, we may ask, How much of this mass of writing \nwill survive the test of time ? Little, if any. But \nthe same is true of all writing of the period. \nHappy the century that produces even one book or \npoem that lives ! Yet this labor has not been lost. \nThe writers have, in remarkable degree, been \nwomen of noble personality, helping the world in \nmany ways besides with their pens. Their writ- \nings have been pure and good, breathing high \naspirations. Each in her way has distinctly helped \ngive this old, young world of ours its needed \npush on and up, and every woman achieving \nanything of worth has helped open the way for \n\n\nlOO THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nyounger workers pressing on behind. At the end \nof our century women at last share full intellectual \nopportunity. Their effort has at least borne this \nfruit: women have achieved a standing place. \nThey face the twentieth century, ready to begin. \n\n\nWHAT WOMEN HAVE DONE IN \nEDUCATION. \n\nBY MRS. EMILY A. FIFIELD. \n\nTXT\" HEN the committee invited a woman to \n\" \" speak on such a mighty subject as \" What \nWomen of the United States have done for Edu- \ncation during the Last Two Hundred and Fifty \nYears,\" they could not have realized what an op- \nportunity it would afford to occupy the whole \nmorning, to the exclusion of every other speaker. \n\nThe temptation is great to do more than general- \nize, so many are the delightful and interesting by- \npaths of history and reminiscence leading from the \ncentral topic of education. \n\nThe regulation history of the United States up to \nto-day contains little about the work of women in \nany department, but we all know that they have had \na hand in affairs, all the same ; and, when the his- \ntory of the next century is written, both women \nand education will begin with capitals. \n\nThe subject naturally divides itself into two \nperiods, before and after 1800. There is little of \ntradition or history to tell of the first. During the \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY lOI \n\ncolonial times, women as well as men were helping \nin the struggle for daily bread, and later in laying \nthe foundations of the republic. \n\nWarfare with Indians, clearing wild forest lands, \nthe establishment of industries and constant devo- \ntion to material conditions, with no art and no \nliterature to beautify and uplift their lives, but every- \nthing done under the shadow of a stern theology, — \nthis is the story of the colonial period. \n\nYet the Colonial epoch is called the heroic period \nof our annals ; and during these years the free church, \nthe free school, the town meeting, became distinctive \ninstitutions. Some one has said, \" Without the \ntraining of such institutions, successful colonial re- \nsistance would have been impossible ; and, without \nNew England, this training would not have been.\" \nIt was the Puritan spirit which awakened the sen- \ntiment of independence, and the pioneer work of \nNew England which secured that independence. \n\nJohn Adams declared the five elements of New \nEngland civilization to be \" free labor, a free church, \nthe district school, town meeting, and training day \" ; \nand these, carried to all parts of our country, have \nbeen the foundations of American education and \ncitizenship. \n\nIn Massachusetts as early as 1647 schools had \nbeen begun in nearly all the towns, but other States \nvaried; and in New York as late as 1806 there were \nonly private schools, no college, no academy, and no \npublic schools. The teachers of the schools were \nmen. All of them were scholars, and most of them \nhad been clergymen. Yet younger children must \n\n\nI02 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nall have been taught by women, as from the earliest \ndays we read of the dame school, already an Eng- \nlish institution. \n\n\" The good dame, as she knits or sews or spins, \nlistens to each child in turn as he calls the letters \nin their order. She tells him stories from the Bible, \nand strives with moral precepts to bring him up in \nthe fear and admonition of the Lord.\" \n\nSuch was Sarah Knight, who came to Norwich, \nConn., in 1698, and moved to Boston early in the \neighteenth century. As a famous schoolmistress, \nshe obtained the title of Madam. She is described \nas a \" woman of considerable distinction.\" A many- \nsided character, she possessed to an unusual degree \ngreat energy and good education. She wrote poetry \nand diaries, speculated in Indian lands, and at dif- \nferent times, kept a tavern, managed a shop of \nmerchandise, and cultivated a farm. In 1705 she \nopened a school for children, and under her instruc- \ntion Dr. Franklin and Samuel Mather secured \ntheir first rudiments of education. She was highly \nspoken of by Dr. Cotton Mather as a \" woman of \ngood wit and pleasant humor.\" This same Madam \nKnight in 1704 made a journey on horseback from \nBoston to New York to claim some property be- \nlonging to her husband. A perilous journey like \nthis, of six days, was a tremendous undertaking for \na lone woman a hundred and ninety years ago, when \neven men would not start on a journey of a few miles \nwithout asking for prayers before they set out ; and \nthe diary of her travels is to-day considered of im- \nportance and interest, as giving a picture of the times, \nthe manners, and the condition of the country. \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY lOT, \n\nAs population scattered, women were more gen- \nerally employed to teach neighborhood schools for \na few weeks or months at a time. For example, in \nNorthfield, Mass., which in 1721 was far out on the \nfrontier, the first teacher was Mrs. Elizabeth Field, \nthe wife of the village smith. She had a class of \nyoung children twenty-two weeks in the warm sea- \nson at fourpence a week. While teaching, she \nmade shirts for the Indians at eightpence each, \nbreeches for her husband's brother at a shilling and \nsixpence a pair, and cared for her four young chil- \ndren. This is history. \n\nBut women were not formally recognized as \nteachers until after the Revolution, and the educa- \ntion of women was very generally neglected. To \nquote Mrs. Abigail Adams, one of the most highly \ncultivated women of her time \"at the close of \nthe century, female education in the best families \nwent no further than writing and arithmetic, and \nin some few instances music and dancing.\" \n\nIt is true that the standard of education was not \nhigh even for men. The twenty-five colleges in \nthe United States in 1800 were little more than \nhigh schools, the graduates were few in number, \nand there were no libraries. \n\nGeorge Ticknor, writing of these early years, said \nthat good school-books were rare even in Boston. \nA copy of Euripides could not be bought at any \nbookseller's, nor a German book be found in the \ncollege at Cambridge. \n\nThe academies, however, added to the educa- \ntional advantages then to be obtained, and from the \n\n\nI04 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nestablishment of Dummer Academy in 1761 to the \npresent day have fulfilled an important mission. \nBy the end of the century these academies were \nto be found in almost every State, both North and \nSouth. Among these was a school in Hingham \nfounded by Madam Sarah Derby, who died in \n1 790, leaving the land and ample provision for the \nschool, which in 1797 was incorporated by act of \nthe General Court as Derby Academy. \n\nAs early as 1 745 the Moravians had established \nschools for girls in Pennsylvania and North Caro- \nlina, and the Penn Charter School of Philadelphia \nadmitted both sexes on equal terms. In New Eng- \nland among the earliest schools for girls was Dr. \nDwight's Young Ladies' Academy at Greenfield, \nConn., and the Medford School near Boston ; but \nit was fifty years after the Revolution before girls \nacquired equal privileges with the boys in the \nschools of the larger towns. The Revolution gave \na new impulse to many concerns, and public sen- \ntiment was changing regarding the education of \nwomen. A protest of feeling against the immense \ndisparity between the education of boys and girls \nhad already begun. \n\nWith the dawn of the nineteenth century three \nstars of the first magnitude shone out of the morn- \ning sky, and the story of girls' schools in the \nUnited States became interwoven with the lives of \nthree women whose names and work have become \nhistorical. \n\nMrs. Emma Willard, who is considered a pioneer \nin the education of women, taught first a young \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY I05 \n\nladies' school in Vermont, and in 182 1 founded \nthe Troy Female Seminary, which was a great \nadvance in the scope and conception of the acad- \nemies of that day. This school was an unparalleled \nsuccess, and has educated more than five thousand \npupils. \n\nAmong other things Mrs. Willard introduced \nthe study of physiology, and so great was the \ninnovation that at the examination or commence- \nment, the entire audience, shocked at the indeli- \ncacy of teaching such a subject to girls, rose and \nleft the room. At her school also occurred the first \npublic examination of a girl in geometry, for Mrs. \nWillard attached great importance to the study of \nmathematics. \n\nIn the year after the opening of the Troy Acad- \nemy, Miss Catherine Beecher at Hartford began \nher higher school for young women, which for ten \nyears was so successful that it attracted pupils \nfrom all over the Union. As teacher and author, \nMiss Beecher was for forty years an influential \nspirit in educational matters. \n\nAt the same time Mary Lyon, whose name \nshould always be held in honor, was teaching in \nNew Hampshire, and hoping for a school which \nshould be to young women what a college was to \nyoung men. Together with Miss Zilpah Grant, \nshe taught a school at Derry, N.H., and then one \nat Ipswich, Mass., and at last, in 1837, by patient \nself-sacrifice and persistent devotion, founded Mount \nHolyoke Seminary, the first chartered institution \nto hold permanent funds for the education of \nwomen. \n\n\nI06 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nAs the colleges owed their origin to the desire \nof the people for learned ministers, so these schools \nwere religious schools, with systematic Bible study \nand a devotional spirit pervading all the work. \nBeyond this, however, these schools were designed \nto give a solid, extensive, and well-balanced English \nand classical education, — for culture, and not for \naccomplishments. \n\nIt has been said that it is to these early semi- \nnaries that the historian must look to account for \nthe great moral reforms of the century, which took \nso deep a hold on New England life. Not only \ndid Mary Lyon send out Harriet Newell and Mrs. \nJudson as missionaries to the heathen, but from \nthese schools came the strongest workers against \nintemperance and slavery. From them, too, was \nscattered the idea of the higher education of women \nall over the country, and from them went out \nhundreds of teachers into the little school-houses of \nthe land. \n\nAs the colleges produced men of courage, trained \nintelligence and intellectual force, fit to be statesmen \nand leaders in national affairs, so these schools \nfilled an illustrious part in the development of the \nmoral and intellectual powers of the women of the \nday. \n\nA little later in the century, two other stars \nappeared of wonderful brilliancy. One of these \nwas the rare conversationist, reformer, and phil- \nanthropist, as well as teacher, Margaret Fuller, \nwhom Emerson, Channing, and James Freeman \nClarke have each honored with a Memoir. As a \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY IO7 \n\nteacher of languages in Boston and as principal of \nthe Green Street School in Providence, R.I., Mar- \ngaret Fuller was regarded as unusually excellent; \nbut her great work in teaching was the conversa- \ntion classes for women held in Boston, in which \nphilosophical and social subjects were studied and \ndiscussed, and which have been regarded as the \nbeginning of the modern movement in behalf of \nwomen's rights. She was a leader in introducing \nto Americans a knowledge of German literature \nand philosophy, and there is no doubt of the im- \npress she made upon her generation. \n\nQuite different was Maria Mitchell, who yet \ngained a world-wide reputation as teacher and stu- \ndent. While teaching school in Nantucket, she \nassisted her father, one of our early astronomers, \nmaking careful observations by herself and devot- \ning: time to the examination of nebulae and comets. \nIn 1847 she discovered a comet, for which dis- \ncovery she received a gold medal from the King of \nDenmark. In 1865 she became Professor of Astron- \nomy at Vassar College, later received the degree of \nLL.D. from Dartmouth and Columbia, and was the \nfirst woman to be elected to the Academy of Arts \nand Sciences. Professor Mitchell was prominent \nin movements tending to elevate woman's work, \nbeinor President of the American Association for \nthe Advancement of Women. Like Mary Somer- \nville in England, she was an outpost in a new field \nfor such advancement. \n\nIn a similar way, at a later day. Professor Ellen \nRichards, the first woman student at the Massachu- \n\n\nI08 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nsetts Institute of Technology, has led the advance in \nwoman's work in the chemical laboratory, and made \nit apparent that there is a sphere for women in the \nstudy of Household Art and Domestic Science. \n\nIf this paper were written to tell what has been \ndone for women instead of by them, it would now \nbe the time to speak of the great work of Horace \nMann and other men of his period; but it must \nsuffice to say that each year saw some social barrier \nand some prejudice swept away from the educa- \ntional pathway, and that both men and women by \ntheir efforts and example contributed largely to this. \nFrom this time distinguished educators came, like \nLeonids, each leaving its trail of light. \n\nIn 1852 Mrs, Carl Schurz came to the United \nStates, and founded among the Germans in Wis- \nconsin a kindergarten, — \" a school for young chil- \ndren conducted on the theory that education should \nbe begun by gratifying and cultivating the normal \naptitude for exercise, play, observation, imitation, \nand construction,\" the function of education being \nto develop the faculties by arousing voluntary ac- \ntivity. The name was given by Friedrich Froebel, \nwho introduced this method of training in rooms \nopening on a garden. Mrs. Schurz was herself \" an \nadept in the theory, and expert in practice by at- \ntending con ainore Froebel's own lectures and kin- \ndergarten in Hamburg.\" \n\nThrough Mrs. Schurz, Elizabeth Peabody be- \ncame acquainted with the kindergarten idea, and at \nlength went to Europe to study the system for her- \nself. She was one of the earliest as well as one of \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY IO9 \n\nthe most persistent advocates of its merits, and was \nthe pioneer in Boston, opening a school in 1859, \nwhich was maintained for many years. Miss Pea- \nbody's whole life was given to education. To her is \ndue much of the highest religious, intellectual, and \nmoral influence of Boston, as well as the wide-spread \nknowledge of Froebel's system. \n\nThe kindergarten was a new influence, a new in- \nstitution in American education, and the interest \nbeing communicated to other cities, they, too, be- \ncame centres for the work. \n\nIn 1870 Mrs. Kriege and her daughter, straight \nfrom the training school founded by Froebel, \nopened what has been called the first true kinder- \ngarten. A year later Miss Boelte, afterward Mrs. \nKraus-Boelte, was made director of a kindergarten \nin New York. In this school Miss Susan Blow was \na pupil, and on her graduation opened a kinder- \ngarten in St. Louis, and became a prominent leader \namong kindergartners. \n\nThe first kindergartens in the United States were \nprivate, but they were soon undertaken for the poor \nand uncared for, and the work of women in the \ncharity kindergartens of San Francisco, Chicago, \nPhiladelphia, and Boston, has been immense in \napplying the best influences and the best teaching \nto the neglected classes. In this direction the \nremarkable work of Mrs. Quincy Shaw should be, \nof course, well known to all here. \" In 1877 she \nstarted four schools among the poor at her own \nexpense. The year following she opened fourteen \nmore. All were among the laboring and poorer \n\n\nno THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nclasses, all free, and all an individual charity. The \nwork extended to Cambridge, and included about \nthirty schools, at an annual expense of from thirty \nthousand to fifty thousand dollars.\" \n\nThis alone was a colossal enterprise to be carried \non by a woman, but Mrs. Shaw's interest in educa- \ntion has not been confined to the kindergarten. It \nhas been almost equally shown in all forms of \nmanual training. In this branch of education the \nwhole country is continually indebted to her for \nthe training of teachers, and for the experimental \ninvestigation and trial of methods, which must \nalways depend upon private sources. \n\nAnother name comes always to our lips in con- \nnection with the benefactions of Mrs. Shaw, — the \nname of Mary Hemenway, who in many ways \nadvanced the cause of education. Mrs. Hemen- \nway's efforts and gifts were directed to secondary \nrather than to primary education. Through her \ngenerosity and public spirit the teaching of sewing \nand cooking was introduced into public schools, and \nher last great work was the development of the \nSwedish system of gymnastics and the establishment \nof a Normal School of Gymnastics for the training \nof teachers. In 187S, having saved the historic \nOld South Meeting-house from destruction, she \nprojected a plan for the encouragement of the study \nof American history among young people ; and \nfrom this has grown the Old South educational \nwork, which has gained such proportions. \n\nIt was Mrs. Hemenway who inspired John Fiske \nand James Hosmer to undertake the historical \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY I I I \n\nwork which will be of such great value, and her \nlifelong interest in American history led her to \ngive large support to archaeological expeditions and \nexplorations in the South-west, and to work among \nthe Zuni Indians. \n\nAll this was related to her educational work, for \nthe underlying motive for her interest and enthu- \nsiasm seemed always to be patriotism, — the devel- \nopment of the children, that America might be \nhonored by having only loyal, upright, physically \nand mentally strong citizens. \n\nThe generosity and devotion of these women \nhave only been equalled by that of Mrs. Leland \nStanford, of California, who has so lately given her \nimmense fortune to the Leland Stanford Univer- \nsity, making it of surpassing usefulness to the \nwhole country. Thus women have not expended all \ntheir interest upon children. They have shown \nthat they believe in the highest culture for all, for \nwomen as well as for men. \n\nFirst, as has been seen, came the girls' acad- \nemies, some of which remain. This secondary \ntraining greatly increased the demand for more ad- \nvanced education. Refused admission to most of \nthe established colleges, women sought to found \nothers for themselves. Thus the colleges wholly \nfor girls came into existence, — Georgia Female \nCollege at Macon, a Wesleyan College in Ohio, \nthe Mary Sharp College in Tennessee, and Elmira \nCollege in New York, while later came Vassar, \nSmith, Wellesley, and Bryn Mawr. Of these, one \nwas founded by a woman, Sophia Smith. The \n\n\n112 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nsame demand which has produced these colleges \nfor girls has opened the doors of some of the older \ncolleges to women, Oberlin and Antioch being the \npioneers in coeducation. \n\nOberlin was the college where Lucy Stone strug- \ngled so heroically for an education, where she was \nallowed to graduate, but not to read her own essay, \nand where many years after she triumphantly made \nan address, although still a woman ! To-day, of \nthree hundred and forty-five colleges and universi- \nties reporting to the National Bureau of Education, \nand exclusive of those for women alone, two hun- \ndred and four are coeducational. Of the fourteen \nhundred students now in Leland Stanford Univer- \nsity, five hundred are girls. \n\nContemporary with the founding of Smith and \nWellesley, an organization was formed by progres- \nsive women in Boston, whose aim was to aid in the \nmore thorough education of women. \n\nArrangements were made with Harvard College \nfor examinations similar to those already accorded \nto women by the Edinburgh, Oxford, and Cambridge \nUniversities. After five years' experience, instruc- \ntion was provided, as well as examination ; and the \norganization was incorporated as the Society for \nthe Collegiate Instruction of Women. Of this cor- \nporation, Mrs. Elizabeth Agassiz, always to be re- \nmembered in a wonderful family of educators, has \nbeen until within a few days the President; and \nthis Harvard Annex, as it was called, has now \nbecome Radcliffe College. \n\nThere are in our country many educational \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY II 3 \n\ninstitutions supplementary to the regular school \nand college, such as the Chautauqua University, \nthe Correspondence University of New York, and \nothers similar. \n\nOne of these deserves special place in this paper. \nThe Society to encourage Studies at Home was \nfounded in 1873 by Miss Anna M. Ticknor, for \nthe purpose of inducing women to form the habit \nof devoting some part of every day to systematic \nand thorough study. At one time nearly two hun- \ndred women gave their services in the instruction by \ncorrespondence, each taking some specialty. Each \npupil being furnished with lists of books as well as \nwith printed directions, and constantly communi- \ncating with the head of her department, uniformity \nwas secured, while each student was treated in- \ndividually with regard to her special needs. Many \nthousands have availed themselves of the opportu- \nnities afforded by this society. \n\nThe Association of Collegiate Alumnae merits \nrecognition also, its object being to unite the \nwomen who are college graduates in practical edu- \ncational work. Its members are doing more or \nless special and graduate work in social and sani- \ntary science, in study of occupations for women, \nlocal histories and health statistics and other sub- \njects covering a wide range of investigation. \n\nMuch could be said of women serving as trus- \ntees and as presidents of colleges, and filling such \npositions with marked ability and success. \n\nAfter all, is there really any better educational \nwork done in the United States than the common \n\n\n114 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nwork of the ordinary women teachers of little chil- \ndren ? Is not theirs the formation agency, which \npreserves and elevates and starts on the way to \nperfection those who shall make our country the \ngreat and happy nation it may be ? This, too, has \nbeen a growth. In spite of Miss Beecher and \nMount Holyoke, women teachers were few and \nwere most indifferently regarded till the middle of \nthe present century. As late as 1845, in some of \nthe New England States, not more than a dozen \nwomen teachers were employed ; while to-day the \ngreat preponderance of such teachers is most \nmarked, averaging 90 per cent, of the teaching \nforce. These teachers, trained side by side with \nboys in school, graduating from the same college \nand normal school, have the same lofty ideals, the \nsame professional enthusiasm as men, and perform \nequally well the duties they assume. All honor to \nthe women who are making for the next century \nthe story of what women have done for education ! \n\nAs we look back over this meagre chronicle of \nthe events of two hundred and fifty years, how \nshort the time appears, and how great the changes. \n\nIn the beginning, girls were not thought worthy \nof being admitted into the day-school with the \nboys. Now the daughter of the family as generally \nenters college as the son. \n\nThe century, that began by saying that women \ndo not need to be educated to be happy wives and \ngood mothers, closes by declaring that, the more \nand better knowledge a woman has, the better wife \nand mother is she. \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY II5 \n\nMatthew Vassar said, \" As the mothers of a \ncountry mould the character of its citizens, deter- \nmine its institutions, and shape its destiny, the \nduty and necessity of the thorough training of all \ntheir faculties seems unquestionable.\" \n\nFor this education the women themselves have \nmade every effort, against tradition, prejudice, \nscepticism, ridicule, superstition, and the terrible \napprehension that they would desert their own \nsphere for that of men. Time and common sense \nprevailed, and it has become the ruling idea of the \nAmerican people that all shall have the opportu- \nnity for being educated into the highest type of \nmanhood and womanhood. Men and women alike \nare working toward this end in the most steadfast, \nunrelenting way. For women the opening college \ndoors, the professional schools, the fellowships and \nendowments, all show the increasing belief in their \ncapabilities and their needs ; and almost the best \nwork of women has been to show that the highest \neducation has not taken away the grace and charm \nof womanhood or tempted them to abandon do- \nmestic life or to attempt occupations for which they \nare not fitted. With reverent gratitude to the \nwomen of the past, who have done so much for \neducation, and who have made it possible for a \nwoman to speak of it in such a place and time as \nthis, an imperfect tribute comes to an end. \n\n\nIl6 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nWHAT WOMEN HAVE DONE IN \nPHILANTHROPY. \n\nBY MRS. KATE GANNETT WELLS. \n\nTN the time assigned me, I can but indicate lines \nof feminine philanthropic work, within the last \ntwo hundred and fifty years. Its progress has \nbeen steadily made from the basis of individual to \nthat of organized work. No clearer distinction \nbetween the past and present activity is presented \nthan this. \n\nThe philanthropic work of women began in tend- \ning the graves of the Plymouth Bay settlers, in \ncaring for the frail, consumptive lives of our fore- \nmothers and forefathers, and in placing the burn- \ning coal in the foot-box stoves which kept the \nparishioners' feet warm during the long Sunday \nsermons. I like to think of those foot-stoves as \nprobably the first objective proof of woman's phi- \nlanthropy on church lines. Next to that came the \nslow development of the sewing circle ; and now by \nyour beautiful window representing Saint Dorcas \nyou have dared to commemorate the gratitude of \nthe church militant to the domestic, womanly im- \nplement of the needle. \n\nThe church sewing circle grew into prominence \namong Congregationalists long before its era began \nwith Episcopalians, who were the seceders from \nCotton Mather's authority. But it is always to be \nremembered that Congregational New England \nwomen were the first to maintain their separate ex- \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY I 1 7 \n\nistences from men as working forces, which to my \nmind indicates that it is easier to work out one's \nfreedom in thought from dogma than from social \nconventions of long-established dignity. Does not \nthis supposition account for the slow progress of \norganization among women, and also for the fact \nthat the Women's Board of Missions, Orthodox \nCongregational, antedated all other church philan- \nthropy undertaken on a large scale ? \n\nMinute research may reveal where sprouted in \nthe United States the first sewing circle and hospi- \ntal work of women. But at the North probably \nthe first conspicuous result of organized sewing \nwas visible in the garments made by Boston \nwomen for the soldiers under General Braddock, \nwhen our great-great-grandmothers offered their \nservices with needle and thread and scissors to the \ntown authorities. \n\nCertainly from this time women's activities for \nothers began to move on co-operative lines ; while \nat the South philanthropy still was conducted on \npersonal terms, though far back run the honorable \nrecords of the brave French Huguenot women of \nthe Carolinas. Certainly, no Northern women ever \ndisplayed more steady purpose in alleviating distress, \nin managing large numbers of dependants, in or- \nganizing work and supplies, than did the mothers, \nwives, and daughters of Southern planters, the evils \nof slavery being greatly lessened by their philan- \nthropies. Among them Eliza Pinckney was no- \ntable, also was the first American woman who \nutilized the products of her own industry into a \n\n\nIl8 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nnational business over one hundred and fifty years \nago. She not only took care of her husband's and \nfather's estates, but introduced reforms in agricult- \nure, especially in the cultivation of indigo, which, \nuntil she raised it, was unknown in this country, \nand which, through her agency became an enor- \nmous Southern product, though later it was sup- \nplanted by cotton. She stands out from among \nthe colonial and Revolutionary women in this man- \nner of business philanthropy in contrast with Cath- \nerine Schuyler and other Northern and Southern \nwomen, whose intense personal family life enabled \ntheir husbands to place their whole strength at the \ndisposal of their country. Such domestic intensity \nmust, however, be again contrasted with the house- \nhold life of to-day, which has had its drudgery les- \nsened by machines, inventions, bake-shops, etc., that \nhave permitted women to have leisure for outside \noccupations. \n\nBetween the later typical Northern and Southern \nwomen should be put the Quaker women, who \nwith the Quaker men made the orreat success and \nenergy of the Central West, when they migrated \nthither from the South, after the invention of the \ncotton gin and Nat Turner's rebellion had caused a \nreaction in favor of slavery. Next to the group \nof Revolutionary women came these self-denying \nQuaker women, who housed the huge yearly gath- \nerings of their faith and also made the abolition of \nslavery their philanthropic cause. \n\nAs we approach the beginning of the nineteenth \ncentury, we find in Boston the clearest traces of the \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY II 9 \n\ncoming era of organization. The historic reason \nfor this Hes in the two different influences which \nmoulded Northern and Southern life. At the \nSouth, State government was in the line of Nor- \nman influence, to which can be directly traced \nCalhoun's later attitude of belief in State sov- \nereignty. Transfer that theoretical position to \nwoman's limited activities, and we have the years \nin which each one's house and plantation was the \norbit in which she moved. \n\nI know my historical leaps are wide, but my \npresent moments are few. To return to my argu- \nment, at the North, — in New England, surely, — \ngovernment was produced through an association \nof townships. Therefore was it natural that there \nwomen should first enter upon organization on the \nbasis of association. From individual care for the \nindividual fatherless and widowed people to sewing \ncircles in the church, there came in 1800 organized \ncare for them outside of church lines ; and thus the \nBoston Female Asylum became the fourth chari- \ntable society of Boston and the first fotiuded by \nwomen. Woman had broken away from theologic \ncontrol, and aspired to plant her deeds of benevo- \nlence on a city's needs. \n\nIn 18 1 6, the sewing circle idea still dear to her, \nshe founded the Fragment Society, which exists \nto-day, with its warm friendliness, its bounteous \nsuppers, and its Bible reading. In the same year \nwas established the Widows' Society, in connection \nwith which we join the beloved name of Ann Will- \niams, who is yet with us to be honored; and in \n\n\nI20 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\n1847 came the Needlewoman's Friend Society, \nstill beneficent and large in its operations. From \nthose days onward, till within the last twenty years, \nphilanthropy was conducted through increasing \nchurch enterprises. The sewing circle of ladies be- \ncame converted into a gathering of cutters, while \nothers did the sewing, and the sale of garments \nsupervened. Church philanthropy thus began to \nbe conducted on a business rather than on a, char- \nitable basis, though now the Needlework Guild of \nAmerica spreads its charity abroad, reaching in- \ndividuals, however, only through garments given \nfirst to an organization. \n\nThen opened the business of fairs ; and shop- \nkeepers entered their protests at these amateur \ntransactions, which lessened their receipts. Fairs \nstill remain, and hard to find is the woman who has \nneither the hardihood to make for a fair table, nor \nto buy at one. \n\nThere are two shining contrasts to this consolida- \ntion of philanthropy on church lines, They are, — \nyou all know them, — first, the Sanitary Commission, \nwhich made it right to sew and pack on Sundays. \nThe result of its formation was the arousing of a \nspirit of patriotism North and South which brought \nthe whole womanhood of the country into two \nopposing camps for the one object, — to relieve \ndistress. That Commission was the harbinger of \nthe peace which should never again be broken by \nsectional animosities. The other contrast is that \nof the anti-slavery organization whose work reads \nlike idyls of self-sacrifice and glowing friendships. \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 121 \n\nBegun in individual acts, largely continued in that \nway, it yet spread out into organization, above and \nunder ground, and helped at least to bind woman \nto woman in stronger bonds than those of creed. \nWith all the loving service of that Commission, \nthere was another healing charity exclusively \nfeminine. The first hospital and dispensary for \nwomen was established by Drs. Elizabeth and \nEmily Blackwell and Dr. M. E. Zakrzewska in \nNew York City, its charter being obtained in 1854. \nIt was first opened in 1857, women physicians only \nin attendance. In 1854 also, in consequence of a \njourney of Dr. Zakrzewska to Philadelphia to obtain \nfunds for her \" New York Infirmary for Indigent \nWomen,\" there was established in the Quaker City \na hospital by women, for women, in connection with \nthe Pennsylvania Medical College for Women. In \n1859 Dr. Zakrzewska organized a hospital depart- \nment in connection with the New England Female \nMedical College in Boston, which was soon given \nup, and the New England Hospital for Women and \nChildren in this city organized in 1862. To these \nhospitals is related a long retinue of philanthropies: \nthe training of nurses and attendants ; the support- \ning of convalescent homes; the caring for unmar- \nried women and their babies ; district nursing ; diet \nkitchens ; cooking-schools ; domestic service reme- \ndies ; etc. All have grown naturally out of the \nfirst woman's hospital. All are organizations for \nwomen, conducted by women. What individual in- \nitiative started has been maintained and strength- \nened by organization. Therefore, next to fairs in \n\n\n122 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nthe stage of development should be put hospital \nwork : only let It be remembered that, while we \nProtestant women were struggling out of the little \nwhirlpools of individual philanthropy, Catholic \nwomen were serving humanity in organized sister- \nhoods, and were far ahead of us Protestants in con- \ncentrated philanthropies. \n\nVery, very slowly in this country came individual \n— still less, organized — ^ prison work. What there \nis to-day is done conjointly with men, though the \nReformatory Prison for Women in Massachusetts \nwas under a woman, Mrs. Ellen C. Johnson, long \nits honored superintendent, her administration being \none of rare financial and reformatory success. A \njoint commission of men and women, however, \nsuperintended it. Alongside of these dawning \ninstitutions crept in organized work by visiting the \npoor outside of church districts. Then was it that \nphilanthropy showed itself free from sectarianism. \nMore and more has the visiting become the work of \nwomen, first through the Provident Institution, and \nthen through the Associated Charities, established \nin 1879. Women have had much to do (and not- \nable among them in this direction is Mrs. James T. \nFields) in bringing philanthropy into the service of \ncivil polity in this the first conscious, broad attempt \nto unite all the helpers of a city in a concerted, per- \nmanent enterprise for the benefit of all. \n\nFrom this time onward the record of service to \nothers was almost in ways of competition at North \nand South and West, each place having its salient \nfeatures of achieving the same end. As a psycho- \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 23 \n\nlogical problem, it is interesting to note that ortho- \ndox women turned to rescue work for so-called un- \nfortunate women sooner than Universalist or Uni- \ntarian women, who have, on the other hand, first \ndeveloped educational philanthropy. But I must \nnot touch on education : that department was as- \nsigned to-day to another most fitted to deal with \nit. The coming ages alone will show whether all \neducation is philanthropy or all philanthropy is \neducation. \n\nThe next stage in philanthropy among women, \nits possibility largely growing out of the spirit of \nco-operation, is the club movement, beginning with \nthe New England Club and the New York Sorosis, \nwhich 1 claim for philanthropy, as it also may be \npartly claimed for education. I will not enlarge \nupon it, for its enormous moral impulse in uniting \nthe capacities of womanhood for work is as well \nknown as its increasing tendency to labor for the \nbenefit of others rather than for its own intellectual \nor social pleasure. \n\nMost fitting is it that a Southern woman should \nbe president of the Federation of Clubs, a move- \nment of all women, and that a Western woman \nhas been president of the International Council, \nsince empire moves westward. \n\nIn connection with the club movement, most \nhonorable mention should be made of the organiza- \ntion of the Working-girls' Clubs. They, too, are \nbecoming national in their interchange of purposes \nand convictions. \n\nWhat would Dorothy Hancock have done if, when \n\n\n124 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nshe wished to send her maids to milk anybody's cow \non Boston Common, there had been no maids to \nsummon, as they had gone to a Federation meet- \ning? These clubs are lessening the imaginary so- \ncial differences in occupation, and are the organ- \nized refrain of Burns's song, \" A man's a man for a' \nthat,\" as man is the generic term for the beautiful \nspecies, woman. \n\nWith the club movement should also be correlated \nthat of the college settlements, a wide-spreading \nuprising of the better self in education. The dis- \ntinctive adjective was soon dropped as too narrow; \nbut the open spirit that actuated it remains, as it is \nculture offering itself to all the various opportunities \nof philanthropy working through education, the first \nlarge distinct recognition by women of this union \nof forces. With the organization of clubs and \ncollege and social settlements we enter upon the \nextension of philanthropy into State and national \naspects, since the Sanitary Commission as a national \nwork expired with the war. \n\nIn such national woman's work should be ranked \nfirst, at least in magnitude, the Woman's Christian \nTemperance Union. The \"earnest, impetuous, \ninspired\" praying bands of 1873-74 have become \nthe unions, \" firm, patient, and persevering.\" The \nhome has been the starting-point and the focus, \nthe cause and result, the means and the end, for \nwhich its millions of members work for others by \nthousands of agencies. Less in extent, but noble \nand valiant in service, are the Young Women's \nChristian Associations and the Women's Unions \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 25 \n\nand Exchanges (such as we here are famihar with \non Boylston Street, incorporated in 1880), having \nfor their aim, irrespective of rehgious tests, the \npurpose of fellowship among women and the pro- \nmotion of practical methods for securing their \neducational, social, and industrial progress. \n\nSuch unions are eminently philanthropic, are \nspreading all over the country, are liberalizing creeds, \nand are to be reckoned with as one of, if not the \nbroadest application of the theories of philanthropy \nto practical dealings with life. \n\nAnd, if woman's love for the beautiful was the \nirresistible impulse that drove her into artistic \nphilanthropy, certainly the higher requirements \nwhich are now demanded for all art work, from \npatchwork quilts to china painting, embroidery \nand tapestry, have added to woman's income ; and \nanything that does that is philanthropy. \n\nAround these larger philanthropies of the unions \ncluster groups of independent centres, employment \nbureaus and industrial schools. \n\nWithin fifteen years another division of philan- \nthropy has been set off. Summer playgrounds, va- \ncation schools, women's gymnasiums, country weeks \nand picnics, flower missions, — almost all have been \nstarted by women, for women and children. Some \nare independent organizations offered by women, \nothers are connected with previously established \nagencies for doing good, some are working under \ncity or school control ; but all are bringing to the \nsummer season glad hosannas of joy that vacation \nhas come, and country pleasures are to strengthen \n\n\n126 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nmind and body. This radiant work, too, is brighten- \ning into national repute as one playground sends \nits joyous echoes far out into another. Women \ncan't help caring ever to make children happy. \nThis great various playground work can be \ncounted as the crowning joy of her motherhood \nof hospitality. \n\nLastly, we come to the legislative division of \nphilanthropy. Under this are included the pro- and \nanti-suffrage organizations ; for whether or not one \nis a suffragist the work is a woman's work, begun \nby the pro-suffragists on as honest lines of philan \nthropy as ever actuated any woman to work for \nanother, and has become national. Also, all the \nwork that women are now doing in the service \nof the State, city, town, on various State and city \nboards and committees. None of it is paid, but \nit is done gladly as woman's contribution to her \ncountry's needs. There is scarcely a large institu- \ntion anywhere which does not count women among \nits managers on an equality with men. Surely, the \nbygone days of home usefulness alone have bloomed \ninto a great beauty of wide, beneficent action. This \nlegislative national stage of philanthropy embraces \nCatholic, Protestant, Jewish, and all other women. \nThe first National Council of Jewish Women was \nheld in November, 1896, in New York; and their \nconvention revealed a large number of helpful facts \nin their renderings of philanthropy. And what \nshall be said of the immense moneyed contributions \nof women ? They cannot be computed, for they \ncannot include the amounts of that self-denial which. \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 12/ \n\nhas made it possible for the widow's mite to be \nreckoned on as financial aid. The widow and \nHelen Gould are alike philanthropists ; yet it was \nbut fifty years ago, said Mrs. Robinson, in her book \non Lowell life, that women first spent their own \nmoney earned by themselves. \n\nPhilanthropy, begun in the individual ministra- \ntions of the women of Plymouth Bay, widened into \nchurch work of sewing circles and visiting the sick, \nfrom that into channels of raising money for the \nneedy by fairs, and of gradual working outside of \ncredal connections into helping the city or town \npoor. Then came the fuller development of organ- \nization, until national associations were welded \ntogether out of local ones, these, in turn, circling \nthe globe with their international forces, like the \nInternational Council of Women. With all the \nardor and imagination that have gone into the com- \npounding of these philanthropic relations has been \ncoupled the foretJio2tght by which women have \nbrought legislative aid to assist them, and have \nthemselves become the nation's councillors. \n\nWould that I had time to note the hundreds of \nwomen who have been leaders in effecting these \nmarvels ! \n\nLet me mention seven, as they serve to show the \nevolution that has slowly been working its way \ntoward something forever to be better than what \nhas been, no matter how great was that past. \n\nAnne Hutchinson, — I name her first, as standing \nfor philanthropy through spiritual forces ; Catherine \nSchuyler, as the type of those women who thought \n\n\n128 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nby serving their home best they served their coun- \ntry most ; Eliza Pinckney, who taught that to \nincrease the industries of a Nation was philan- \nthropy; Lucretia Mott, who brought freedom to \nthe slave ; Dorothea Dix, who by knowing how to \nmanage legislatures brought relief to the insane ; \nMary Hemenway, who gave her wealth to foster \nphilanthropy by increasing practical applications of \neducation and to strengthen patriotism ; Frances \nWillard, whose temperance included the prohibition \nof everything which did not conduce to the highest \nwelfare of State and home. \n\nEach of these women with their countless hosts \nof followers, who chose as exemplar that woman \nwhose methods they liked best, worked from the \ninternal development of her soul to the external \nmarshalling of her strength for the varied forms \nof philanthropy. Not one ever forgot she was a \nwoman because she was a philanthropist. None \never laid aside the basic principle of individualism \nin the scope for organization. The personality \nof each has passed into the nation's keeping, since \neach was true, first unto herself, and then accom- \nplished her purposes by subordinating self unto the \ngood of all. \n\nFrom the individual to organization, from one's \nchurch to one's country, has the quest of philan- \nthropy hastened ; and Increase Mather, Ralph \nWaldo Emerson, and Thomas Van Ness, each \nsays that the woman whom he knew best, best \nserved the Lord. \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FII-'TIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 29 \n\n\nWHAT WOMEN HAVE DONE IN \nTHEOLOGY. \n\nBY REV. ANNA GARLIN SPENCER. \n\n^\"T^HE contribution made by women to the church \n-*- life of thought and of effort in America since \nthis Second Congregation of Boston was formed \ncannot be sketched, even sHghtly, without allusion \nto two events which preceded that one; namely, the \narrival of Anne Hutchinson from England in 1634 \nand the beginning of her ministry in Boston shortly \nafter, and the first synod, or \" Assembly,\" of the \nChurch in New England, which was held in New- \nton in 1637. Anne Hutchinson, whom Governor \nWinthrop, who did not like her, called a \" woman \nof a ready wit and a bold spirit,\" believed that \" the \npower of the Holy Spirit dwells in every believer,\" \nand that the inward revelations of the Spirit were \nof supreme authority ; and she therefore felt no \nneed for ecclesiastical sanction for her preaching. \nWinthrop tells us that she held \" two dangerous \nerrors : first, that the person of the Holy Ghost \ndwells in a justified person ; and, second, that no \nsanctification can help to evidence to us our own jus- \ntification.\" Whether her errors of theology or her \nsex had most to do with her persecution by the \n\" teaching elders and magistrates \" of New England \nwe cannot now say, but her sex furnished a conven- \nient weapon against her continued ministrations. \nWe read that the Newton Assembly of 1637 was \n\"attended by all the teaching elders throughout the \n\n\n130 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\ncountry and many new come from England,\" and \nthat it spent the first days of its deliberations in \ndefining and condemning over \" eighty erroneous \nopinions now taught in the Colonies,\" and that it \nplaced prominently among these the peculiar tenets \nof Mrs. Hutchinson and her followers. This, we \nare told, \"offended some from Boston,\" who de- \nparted to come no more. The last day of this As- \nsembly was given wholly to the discussion of the \nquestion of women's preaching, and of the rights of \nthe laity, especially of those differing from the ma- \njority of the Church in points of doctrine. The \nfollowing \" Resolve \" was passed : \" That, though \nwomen might meet, some few together, to pray and \nedify one another, yet such a set assembly, as was \nthen the practice at Boston, where sixty or more did \nmeet every week, and one woman, in a prophetical \nway, by resolving questions of doctrine and ex- \npounding Scripture took upon her the whole \nexercise, is agreed to be disorderly and without \nrule.\" That is to say, it was decided that it was \nproper to hold a small \"female prayer-meeting,\" \nbut that a congregation of women met to listen to \none woman was an unlawful body. \n\nThe power of the woman against whose preach- \ning this \" Resolve \" was aimed cannot be denied ; \nfor we are told that the dispute between her fol- \nlowers and her opposers \" impressed its spirit into \neverything.\" It interfered with the levy of troops \nfor the Pequot War; it influenced the respect \nshown to magistrates, as when in this first As- \nsembly some of the Boston delegates boldly de- \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY I3I \n\nclared that \" magistrates had no place in a meeting \nof Church members, and they should not yield \nobedience to them in religious concerns \" ; it even \nentered into the distribution of town lots, the \nassessment of rates, and other secular affairs. So \nthat we read of a formidable number of men \n\" ordered disarmed \" because of this religious dis- \npute, nearly sixty of them \" men of Boston, beside \ngoodly numbers belonging to Salem, Newberry, \nRoxberry, Ipswich, and Charlestown.\" The order \nin the Colony Record reads as follows : — \n\n\" Whereas the opinions and revelations of Mr. \nWheelwright and Mrs. Hutchinson have seduced \nand led into dangerous errours many of the people \nhere in New England, insomuch as there is just \ncause of suspicion that many of these upon some \nrevelation may make some sudden irruption upon \nthose that differ from them in judgment, for pre- \nvention of this it is ordered that ' these men,' etc., \nbe disarmed.\" \n\nThe great Cotton and Sir Harry Vane supported \nMrs. Hutchinson, as well as many others of impor- \ntance, besides the \" Mr. Wheelwright\" who was her \nbrother, and whom Governor Winthrop speaks of \nwith some contempt as \" a sometime silenced \npreacher of England.\" It is claimed that at one \ntime all but five members of the Boston Church \nwere her followers. But this did not save her from \n\" severe dealings \" ; and she was, as we all know, \n\"publicly admonished,\" and finally \"banished from \nthe Massachusetts Colony.\" Her admonishment \nconsisted of a lecture \"lasting from ten o'clock in \n\n\n132 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nthe morning until eight at night,\" which was inter- \nspersed with her own replies, in which, as Win- \nthrop says, \" she held her own, and carried her sons \nwith her, so that they had to be admonished also.\" \nAs it had already been clearly shown that her \n\" husband was wholly influenced by her,\" it would \nseem that this first woman minister of America \nwas held in high esteem by the members of her \nown household. Her banishment from Massachu- \nsetts gave a great help to Rhode Island in the di- \nrection of \" soul liberty ; \" and her preaching laid an \nimportant foundation for the sect of Quakers, who \nwere, and still are, the finest expression of woman's \ninfluence in theology and in the religious life \nwhich the Christian Church has shown. When in \n1656 the Quakers first made their appearance in \nNew England, it was in the persons of two women, \nMary Fisher and Ann Austin ; and there was great \nexcitement when the news of their arrival reached \nthe ears of the General Court, That body ordered \n\" a day of humiliation to seek the face of God in \nbehalf of our native country in reference to the \nabounding errours, especially those of the Ranters \nand Quakers.\" The two women were cast into \nprison until the shipmaster could return them to \nBarbadoes ; but they were but the first of a mighty \nhost of heretics against whom many peculiar and \nsevere penalties were aimed, not only by the Gen- \neral Court of Massachusetts, but by the authorities \nof Connecticut and New Haven. Among these \nQuakers of greatest note were Annie Burden and \nMary Dyer, the latter hanged on Boston Common \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 33 \n\nin 1660, and declaring with her latest breath, \"In \nobedience to the will of the Lord I came, and in \nHis will I abide faithful to the death.\" \n\nSome of the early Friends, or Quakers, behaved \nin a strange manner, it is true, testifying by un- \nseemly words and deeds to their sense of spiritual \ndirection by \"the inner light.\" But the sect from \nthe first placed men and women on an equality, and \nall classes of every social grade as well, and can \nboast of many godly and effective preachers of both \nsexes. Among these we may give high place to \nSybil Jones, the minister to souls in prison, of \nAmerican as Elizabeth Fry was of English birth ; \nand to our own Lucretia Mott, the Benjamin \nFranklin and William Lloyd Garrison combined \namonor American women. Lucretia Mott was not \nonly a perfect union of domestic virtue and social \nhelpfulness, but she was one of the greatest leaders \nof either sex in the application of rational thought \nto religious concerns. Of the foundation of the \n\" Hicksite,\" or Unitarian, branch of the sect of \nFriends, she said, \" At twenty-five years of age, \nsurrounded by a little family and many cares, I felt \ncalled to a more public life and devotion to duty, \nand engaged in the ministry in our society, receiv- \ning every encouragement from those in authority \nuntil a separation from us in 1827, when my con- \nvictions led me to adhere to the sufficiency of the \nlight within us, resting on truth as authority rather \nthan taking authority for truth.\" When the Free \nReligious Society of America was formed, in the \nattempt to unite men and women for the study of \n\n\n134 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nTruth and the unity of rehgious Faith under all \ndiffering symbols of religious dogma, its chosen \nmotto was \" Truth for Authority, not Authority for \nTruth \" ; and it thus linked its purpose with \nLucretia Mott's simple creed, as it claimed her for \none of its original and official members. \n\nThere are now about three hundred and fifty \nwomen preachers in the Society of Friends. As the \nyears have gone on since this old Second Church \nwas founded, the sects have multiplied and increased \nin our America ; and the entrance of women into \ntheir recognized and public service has been in in- \nverse ratio to the ecclesiasticism of the body and in \nalmost exact proportion to its Congregationalism (or \ndemocracy) of polity. As in the old Assembly of \n1637 the rights of the laity and the separation of \nChurch and State were most insisted upon by those \nwho supported Mrs. Hutchinson in her right to \ngive \" two lectures a week with an attendance of \neighty or more persons,\" so, in the course of history \nsince that time the claim of the church body to be \nthe seat and source of church power has been inti- \nmately bound up with the entrance of women into \npositions of trust and leadership in the administra- \ntion of church affairs. We will briefly consider \nthe growth of women's initiative in church matters \nas related to the different sects in their gradations \nfrom a hierarchy to a democracy. \n\nThe Roman Catholic Church has a recognized, \nhonored, and most useful place for consecrated \nwomanhood, and, it must be remembered, first gave \nwomen a social career in the early days of the \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 35 \n\nChristian Church. But it must be a celibate \nwomanhood, removed from all the ordinary duties \nand offices of the mother sex. The Protestant \nEpiscopal Church has increasingly given to women \na field for distinctive work by the establishment \nof two deaconess orders and fourteen sisterhoods \nand a religious Order of Widows. The General \nConvention of the Protestant Episcopal Church of \n1889 provided that every candidate for the office of \ndeaconess, before she is set apart, shall have had \n\"an adequate preparation for her work, both tech- \nnical and religious, which preparation shall cover \nthe period of two years\"; and in 1890 the Grace \nHouse Training School for Deaconesses was es- \ntablished in New York. The deaconesses of this \nChurch, although devoted to philanthropic work \nfor the most part, are a great source of strength \nto their denomination. The Methodist Episcopal \nChurch, of which Susanna Wesley has been called \n\" the real founder,\" owes its introduction into this \ncountry to a woman, Barbara Heck, as much as, \nif not more, than to its first preacher in America, \nPhilip Embury; for Mrs. Heck, landing in New \nYork in 1760, with Mr. Embury, who was her \ncousin, and feeling deeply concerned because he \ndid little or nothing for the first five years of his \nresidence to hold together and increase the Wes- \nleyans who came with them, herself started the first \n\" class meeting \" by a \" lively testimoney against \ncard playing,\" which consisted of burning the cards, \nand insisting that Embury enroll herself and four \nother persons as a regular \"class.\" It was she \n\n\n136 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nwho furnished the plans for the first Methodist \nchapel, which took the place of the old \" rigging \nloft,\" which was the original home of the Wes- \nleyans in this country. In spite of these facts, \nhowever, and notwithstanding the freedom of \nprayer and speech always allowed women in the \nclass meetings, the class leaders are all men ; and \nwomen are as yet denied full ordination to the \nMethodist pulpit. Women, however, were at one \ntime \" licensed \" as \" exhorters \" by the Methodist \nEpiscopal Church ; and under that name some \nwomen achieved great power as evangelists. But \nwhen those licenses were revoked, and the semi- \nministerial class abolished, the logical next step \nof ordaining these women who had already \"veri- \nfied their credentials \" was not taken. The move- \nment to remove the sanction of the Church from \nthe class called \"licensed exhorters\" was not \naimed against women preachers, but rather against \nilliterate men, and in the interest of a more digni- \nfied, learned, and united preaching class. It was \napplied, however, in a way to do great injustice to \nwomen, and has given the demand of the Method- \nist women for official recognition in the ministry \nof their Church a sting of protest against actual \nwrong which has no such basis in fact in any other \ncommunion. \n\nThe Primitive Methodists have always used \nwomen preachers as evangelists, especially among \nthe more depraved classes, and this was one of the \npoints of difference between them and the main \nbody which caused the separation ; while the Ger- \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 37 \n\nman Methodists, or \" United Brethren in Christ,\" \nhave ordained many women elders and some women \n\" circuit riders \" of the original Methodist style. \n\nThe German Lutheran Church has discussed the \nquestion of women's preaching, in a synod held in \n1891 and later several times, and decided that \nM^omen must not teach in the Church at all, either \nin the pulpit or the congregation. Yet those who \nwitnessed the vigor and ability of the German \nLutheran women at their denominational congress \nat the World's Parliament of Religions, and marked \nthe large number and well-organized variety of \ntheir special women's activities, realized that some \neffective \" teaching \" is already done by the \nwomen of that Church; and as early as 1849 this \nChurch introduced the Order of Deaconess into \nthis country, and America has now at Philadelphia \nthe finest \" mother-house \" in the world for the \ntraining and work of the Lutheran deaconesses. \n\nThe Presbyterian Church, although for many \nyears excluding women from all voice in church de- \nvotion or government, has for some time allowed \nthem to take part in prayer-meetings, and even \nsometimes to speak at regular meetings and synods \non missionary or philanthropic topics ; and at a \nsynod of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, held \nin 1889, it was voted by a majority of ninety-three \nto twenty-four that the ordination of a woman as \ndeacon is \"in harmony with the New Testament \nand the Constitution of the Apostolic Church.\" \nOf the congregational bodies, although the Calvin- \nist Baptists exclude women from the ministry, \n\n\n138 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nthe Free Baptists are conspicuous in their official \nrecognition of women preachers, the General Con- \nference of that body having adopted in 1886 \nthe following resolution : \" That intelligent, godly \nwomen, who are so situated as to devote their time \nto the ministry, and desire to be ordained, should \nreceive such indorsement and authority as ordina- \ntion involves, provided there are no objections \nother than the matter of sex.\" The number of \nFree Baptist women ministers is large, and growing \nall the time. \n\nThe Trinitarian Congregational body, although \nSfiving official recognition to the first ordained \nwoman minister in America, Antoinette Brown \nBlackwell, early in the fifties, and although opening \nits college at Oberlin, even to its Divinity Depart- \nment, \"both to women and negroes,\" in days when \nboth classes were equally excluded from most halls \nof higher learning, and although its system of church \ngovernment has made it possible for each church \nto choose freely its own minister and mode of \nordination, has never given the welcome to women \npreachers that the Free Baptists have extended. \nThe opening of the Hartford Theological Semi- \nnary, however, and the general employment of \nregularly sanctioned women missionaries in foreign \nlands, and the almost universal welcome given \nwomen who bear special messages of social \nbetterment to leading pulpits of the Orthodox \nCongregational body, all show a strong movement \nwithin it toward full equality of opportunity to men \nand women. \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 39 \n\nThe Unitarian Congregationalists, in setting up \nhousekeeping for themselves, did not much enlarge \nthe sphere of feminine service in the church, \nhaving refused as late as i860 to admit women to \nthe theological school at Meadville, and even now \nshutting out its daughters \"who would prophesy\" \nfrom the training of the Harvard Divinity School, \nexcept under difficult conditions. Ten years after \nits refusal to admit Olymphia Brown, Meadville \nopened its doors to women students with full and \ngenerous privilege ; and considerably more than \ntwenty women have been graduated there, and \nachieved successful work in the ministry. \n\nThe Universalist denomination was the first to \nadmit women to exactly equal training for the \nministry, and naturally has to-day the largest \nnumber of women preachers \" in good and regular \nstanding \" of any sect except the Friends, having \nover sixty in 1895. The Unitarian pulpits, how- \never, have had occasional ministration from many \nnoted women, who are, like Julia Ward Howe, \n\"born preachers,\" but not exclusively devoted to \nchurch work. And perhaps such occasional preach- \ning has given as much impetus to the sect in which \nit has been most conspicuous, and has as well illus- \ntrated the newly developed moral and intellectual \ninitiative of women, as the more regular ministra- \ntion of women in some other sects. \n\nThe duties of the Christian ministry, as they \nhave been interpreted and practised by women in \nour country, have proved compatible with high \ndevotion to family life and successful administration \n\n\n140 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nof household affairs, and many of our best known \nand ablest women ministers have been wives and \nmothers; while in the Unitarian ministry, especially \nwhere young and single women have entered upon \nthe work of church leadership, they have often pre- \nvented any possible criticism or misunderstanding \non the part of the socially fastidious or conserva- \ntive by following the example of the apostles and \n\" going out two by two.\" In that way two women \nfriends have often not only served their church with \na double ministry, but, by making a refined and at- \ntractive home life for themselves, demonstrated the \nsocial safety and dignity possible in the ministerial \nprofession. And, where a young single woman has \nundertaken a church leadership alone, it has often \nbeen with the help and protection of her mother or \nsister or some older friend, who stood to her life and \nwork in the relation of the \"minister's wife\" to the \nman preacher in charge of a parish. \n\nThe office of a \" teaching elder,\" to use the fine \nold phrase, has already proved especially congenial \nto women of the idealizing faculty, and also to those \ngifted in social organization. In those simpler \nforms of church order in which the sacramental \nservice is supplanted by the teaching function, and \nthe ministrations of a friend and helper and in- \nstructor are alone required, there has been found \na noble field for their devotion. The ministerial \nprofession has proved also more harmonious with \nthe domestic and social relations of a completed \nwomanhood (one including wifehood and mother- \nhood in its range of experience and duty), than has \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY I4I \n\neither the law or medicine or a business career, as \nthese are ordinarily practised. For the ministry, \nlike art, literature, and other forms of teaching, \nprofits rather than loses by periods of quiet reflec- \ntion in pauses of active work, and thus falls in well \nwith the periodicities of the married woman's life. \nMoreover, the cumulative power of personal influ- \nence (which is the distinguishing feature of the \n\" teaching elder's \" work) suggests long residence in \none place, regular duties performed near the home, \nand a slow development of public service, all conso- \nnant with the best interests of family life. As ordi- \nnary pastoral work is more and more seen to be \nmerely a part of teaching, and as the services of the \nfew great preachers (among whom doubtless will be \nalways found some women) are more and more con- \nserved for the benefit of the whole church body by \na better business administration of church affairs, \nthe place of the cultured but not extraordinary \nwoman in the profession will be doubtless much en- \nlarged, and in consequence the relation of the \npastoral office itself to other forms of teaching and \nphilanthropic work better outlined. \n\nFinally, mention must be made of the part \nwomen have played in the birth of new sects dur- \ning the last two hundred and fifty years. The \nShaker sect, as is well known, is the outgrowth \nexclusively of a woman's leadership, \" Mother Ann \nLee,\" of England, in 1770, as a member of the \nSociety of Friends, professing to receive a special \nrevelation which declared her the \" Christ of the \nfemale order,\" her followers receiving her as \" God \n\n\n142 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nrevealed in the character of mother, the bearing \nSpirit of all creation.\" In 1774 she took nine of \nher disciples to America, and began in New York \nState the community life which has been such a \nmarked feature of the Shakers' faith. The essen- \ntial doctrines of this sect, human brotherhood \nreaching to a complete community of goods, non- \nresistance, non-participation in secular government, \nstrict celibacy, and perfect chastity, and the remark- \nable pecuniary success of the Shaker settlements, \ntogether with the strength of devotion which has \nbound so many men and women together in so \nstrait a way of life, prove great power in the origi- \nnal impulse started by \" Mother Ann.\" The es- \nsential difference in social and domestic ideals \nbetween the Shaker sect, founded by a woman, and \nthe Quaker sect, so largely the fruit of woman's in- \nfluence, on the one side, and those of the Mormon \nsect and of the Oneida Communists, which were \nthe outgrowth of purely masculine leadership, on \nthe other side, suggest to the student of compara- \ntive sex-development some curious points of inves- \ntigation. The Salvation Army, like its prototype, \nearly Methodism, is quite as much the outgrowth \nof woman's devotion and initiative as of man's, and \nis a remarkable instance of a union of husband and \nwife in a movement of world significance. And \nalthough this movement is not American, but \nEnglish, the branching sect now identified wholly \nwith American life is led by that most engaging \nand persuasive of women preachers, Mrs. Balling- \nton Booth, quite as much as by her loyal husband. \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 43 \n\nThe Spiritualist sect is marked by especially femi- \nnine features, some, of course, not of the highest \ntype of sex-di£ferentiation, since, whatever may be \nthe substrata, the outward manifestations of that \nfaith are intimately associated with certain nervous \nconditions in which women (and men of semi- \nartistic and semi-invalid temperament) show the \nmost striking powers of sensitive response to out- \nward influence. The latest religious sect called \n\" Christian Science,\" was founded by a woman, and \nis especially American, and now in its first flush of \nyouthful enthusiasm. \n\nThe official work of women in the Church, how- \never, either as ministers or as sect-makers, is not \nthe chief contribution of women to church life and \nactivity during the two and a half centuries. The \ngreat work of women in this particular has been \naccomplished in the lay membership of the Chris- \ntian Church, in the moulding of its standards and \nideals as conceived and realized in the personal \nlife, and in the practical achievements of the \nChurch as an uplifting social force. The great \nbody of the Christian Church is of the mother-sex. \nThe great sacrificial services of the Church have \ndepended in large measure upon women for their \nfulfilment, if not for their initiative. In the sorry \nrecord of the sins and weaknesses and failures \nof the Church, women have had large share ; and in \nits high usefulness they can claim — in numerical \nforce, at least — a larger portion than can men. \nThe great question now is, not. What are women \nfree to do in and for the Church } but, //ow can we \nsecure and keep any men in it to do anything? \n\n\n144 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nIt is an absurdity and one still witnessed, so slow \nis human growth, to withhold any place in the \nchurch offices from women, since they are the great \nconstituency and dependence of the religious body, \nand have now opportunities of training for all re- \nsponsible positions of leadership. But the great \nand pressing problem in the more enlightened \nportions of the religious body is that of winning \nback to the support of this time-honored institution \n(which we cannot yet believe outgrown) the active, \nearnest, and general devotion of the best and wisest \nmen. Such men as Winthrop and Endicott and \nDudley and Willoughby, and the Plymouth worthies, \nand all the greatest men of Massachusetts Colony, \n— these gave the vigor and force of the church \nlife in the days of history this old Second Congre- \ngation has witnessed and of which it has been a \npart. If our descendants are to celebrate the five \nhundredth anniversary of the founding of The \nSecond Church in Boston, there must be deeper \ndevotion and more universal allegiance to the \nChurch on the part of men than there is now. \nThe present problems in religious concerns force \nthe conviction upon the thoughtful that the Church \nas an institution must be changed radically, in some \nas yet unknown ways, in order to fit it to a social \norder which has already changed radically from the \nconditions surrounding the Puritan of New Eng. \nland. To many of us it is clear that the peculiarly \npractical and flexible genius of womanhood \" has \ncome into its kingdom \" of moral and intellectual \ninitiative in the Church \" for such an hour as this.\" \n\n\nTHE INFLUENCE OF THE SECOND \nCHURCH IN AMERICA. \n\n\nTHE service of Monday evening was devoted to ad- \ndresses on the influence of The Second Church in \nAmerica. As a part of the service of this evening, the \nconductor and choir of the church rendered the \" Hymn of \nPraise\" of Mendelssohn, assisted by the soloists and mem- \nbers of a chorus whose names are given below.* \n\nThe Order of Service of this evening, as originally pro- \nposed, is given in full. The addresses by his Excellency \nGovernor Wolcott and President Eliot were necessarily \nomitted. The chairman of the Standing Committee pre- \nsided, and introduced the speakers. \n\nI^gmn of ^rai'Sf, Op. 52 . . Felix Meiidelssohn-Bartholdy, \n\n{For Orchestra, Chorits, and Soloists.) \n\nSymphony. \nMaestoso con moto, Allegro, Allegretto un poco agitato, Adagio religioso. \n\n* Conductor, Mr. H. G. Tucker. Soloists: Mrs. Marian Titus, soprano; Miss Bertha \nW. Swift, soprano; Mr. B. W. Hobbs, tenor; Mr. J. H. Ricketson, tenor. Organist, Mr. \nG. W. F. Reed. Orchestra of thirty players, Mr. Isidor Schnitzler, principal. Chorus: \nsoprano: Miss Mary B. Anderson, Miss.;Louise Baum, Miss Eleanor M. Colleton, Mrs. \nR. G. Harris, Miss Mara V. Hastings, Miss Alice Hutchinson, Miss Edith G. Mason, Miss \nM. deV. Mitchell, Miss Bertha W. Swift, Miss E. P. Syer, Mrs. Marian Titus, Miss E. M. \nTuckerman, Miss Grace E. White; alto: Mrs. M. A. Brewer, Mrs. Louise B. Brooks, Miss \nMary E. Burroughs, Miss Jennie Hayes, Mrs. H. C. Lewis, Mrs. Edith MacGregor Woods, \nMiss L. T. Murphy, Mrs. Fanny Holt Reed, Mrs. H. K. Sanborn, Miss Louise Schroeder, \nMrs. Anna von Rydingsvard ; tenor: Mr. Stephen Alta, Mr. C. F. Atwood, Mr. L. E. Black, \nMr. E. P. Boynton, Mr. Charles Chase, Mr. Henry B. Coughlan, Mr. James F. Harlow, \nMr. B. W. Hobbs, Mr. H. M. Murdough; bass: Mr. George M. Brooks, Dr. A. N. \nBroughlon, Mr. Charles H. Hillman, Mr. C. W. Cole, Mr. Hobart E. Cousens, Mr. G. W. \nDudley, Mr. John S. Kilby, Mr. W. B. Phillips, Dr. Mark W. Richardson. Orchestra \nselected by Mr. Carl Behr. \n\n\n146 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nCantata \n(Chorus and Soprano Solo). \n\" All men, all things, all that has life and breath, sing to the Lord. \nPraise thou the Lord for his great loving-kindness.\" \n\nEntrflliiirt0rg Bemarks Stephen M. Crosby. \n\n^lJtJr£S0. \" The Influence of The Second Church in America.\" \n(a) \" In Government.\" \n\nHis Excellency Roger Wolcott, \n\nGovernor of Massachusetts. \nSTenor Solo. \" Sing ye praise.\" \n\nlvECttatib£. \" He counteth all your sorrows.\" \n\nCi)orus. \"All ye that cried unto the Lord.\" \n\n©uet anb Cfjorus. \" I waited for the Lord.\" \n\n'Suitress. \"The Influence of The Second Church in America.\" \n{b) \" In Education.\" \n\nCharles W. Eliot, LL.D., \nPresident of Harvard University. \n\nSTenor Solo. \n\n\" The sorrows of death had closed all around me. But, said the Lord, \ncome, arise from the dead, awake thou that sleepest, I bring thee \nsalvation.\" \n\n3Elecitattfci£. \" Watchman, will the night soon pass ? \" \n\nSoprano 3Secitati6e. \"The night is departing.\" \n\nCljorus. \n\n\" The night is departing. The day is approaching. Let us cast off \nthe works of darkness. Let us gird on the armor of Light.\" \n\n^tJtircss. \" The Influence of The Second Church in America.\" \n{c) \" In Literature.\" \n\nFrancis G. Peabody, D..D., \nPlunnner Professor of Christian Morals \nin Harvard University. \n©ffetmg. \n\nCf)Otale. \" Let all men praise the Lord.\" \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 47 \n\nPuet. (Soprano and Tenor.) \" My song shall be alway thy \nmercy.\" \n\nIltiliress. \"The Influence of The Second Church in America.\" \n((i) \" For Religious Independence.\" \n\nRev. Edward Everett Hale, D.D. \n(!i;{)Ciru0. \n\n\" Ye nations offer to the Lord glory and might. Oh, give thanks to \nthe Lord.\" \n\nCtrngregational ?l?mnu. \"America.\" \n\nBenrticti'on. \n\n©rcsliEn ^men. \n\n\nOPENING ADDRESS. \n\nBY STEPHEN M. CROSBY. \n\nLadies and Gentlemen, Members and Friends of \nthe Society of The Second Church in Boston, — I \nhave the honor, in behalf of its lay members, to \nwelcome you cordially to participate in the glad \nand thankful celebration of this evening. \n\nThe distinctly religious and devotional exercises \nin commemoration of this two hundred and fiftieth \nanniversary of the foundation of this Society have \nbeen most successfully carried out ; and we are met \nthis evening to close the series on the secular side \nof our history by considering the development and \nprogress in governmental, political, educational, \nliterary, and religious liberty which has marked these \ntwo and a half centuries, and toward which this \nancient church has, in this vicinity at least, con- \ntributed in no small degree. \n\nIt has been given to but very few organizations \nin this country to be able to maintain a coherent \nand continuous existence through such a lengthy \nperiod as we may proudly claim ; and, curiously, it \nis only such as have their foundation in the re- \nligious element in human nature that have been \nthus preserved. \n\nPolitical and social combinations, however \npowerful, arise, culminate, change, and disappear; \nbut that principle within all men which holds them \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 49 \n\nto their dependence upon God, which forces them \nto a recognition of the eternal verities of life and \nthe possibility of the life to come, forms a bond of \nunion which reasserts itself in oreneration after oen- \neration, with ever cohesive and effective force. \n\nSo when seven brethren in 1649 — the settlement \nof Boston not yet twenty years old, and their sister \nChurch, the First, only seventeen years old — met, \nprobably not in an \" upper chamber \" (there were \nnot many, if any, \" upper chambers \" in those days), \nbut in some convenient log hut, and united them- \nselves in a covenant, and did \"avouch the Lord to \nbe our God and ourselves to be his people ... to \ncleave to him and to one another in him,\" they \nlaid the foundation of their church so simply, yet \nso deep and strong, that eight successive genera- \ntions of men have builded and rested thereon, un- \ndismayed by vicissitudes, uncorrupted by prosper- \nity. \n\nMen in those days gathered around the church \nas the central focal point, lavished their labor on \nthe construction of its edifice, defended it with \ntheir guns from hostile, savage attack, builded their \nhomes near it, and found in its worship almost their \nonly relief and recreation from the hard, continuous \nstruggle of their daily lives. Their minister was to \nthem the oracle of God. He was their counsellor, \ninstructor, guide, and leader. \n\nIt was in a century of immense upheaval and \nunrest that this little society was born. That \nyear, 1649, had just witnessed the beheading of \nCharles I. His son Charles II. was in exile, and \n\n\n150 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nthe redoubtable Cromwell was rapidly paving the \nway by his victories for the short-lived Common- \nwealth of England. During the first half-century \nof the existence of The Second Church the colonies \nof New England, and especially that of Massachu- \nsetts, were subjected to constant restrictions and \nencroachments upon their chartered rights, met by \nthe colonists with persistent though often unavailing \nopposition. Finally, in 1683, Edward Randolph, a \nbitter enemy, was sent by the king to demand of \nMassachusetts a surrender of its charter, and to \nenforce obedience if compliance was denied. \n\nThen The Second Church, in the person of In- \ncrease Mather, its pastor, and one doubtless of the \nbravest, — if not the bravest, — clearest-headed, ablest \nmen in the colony, came to the front ; and, during \nthe five years of oppression and tyranny which fol- \nlowed, he was the leading spirit in stimulating and \nencouraging the people to protest, appeal, and re- \nsistance, until in 1688 he was sent to England bear- \ning the address of the \" churches,\" mind you, not \nof the \" Good Government Clubs,\" the \" Citizens' \nReform Associations,\" or any other such second- \nrate substitutes of modern times, but of all the \n\" churches,\" of which our neighbor, now known as \nthe \" Old South,\" was by that time one, to \" solicit \" \nat the foot of the throne the royal \"clemency and \nprotection.\" How successful he was in this mis- \nsion the history of the time and of Massachusetts to \nthis day bears abundant evidence. \n\nAgain during the war of the Revolution The \nSecond Church, led by another of its pastors, \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 151 \n\nJohn Lathrop, was so prominent in fomenting re- \nsistance to British authority that General Howe \ndubbed it a \" nest of traitors,\" and permitted \nits meeting-house, the \" Old North,\" to be torn \ndown. \n\nComing down to our own times, we find Frederic \nW. Lincoln, who for sixty years served this church \nand congregation in various official capacities, while \nWar Mayor of Boston, in the dark and trying years \nof the Rebellion, enforcing order, stimulating the \npatriotism of the citizens, quenching the draft riots \nas they were quenched in no other city of the \nUnion, and steadying and upholding by counsel \nand assistance not only Governor Andrew, but \neven President Lincoln himself. \n\nBut it is not my province to enlarge upon any of \nthe themes which are to be presented to you this \nevening. So much only I feel authorized to say, to \nexplain that, when the influence of The Second \nChurch in America, in government, is named, we \nmake no idle boast. \n\nAnd here we are called to meet the first disap- \npointment which in any way mars the hitherto \ntriumphant success of our celebration. His Excel- \nlency the Governor and the honored President of \nHarvard University, both of whom take a great \ninterest in this occasion and promised to be pres- \nent, are at the last moment detained by illness in \ntheir respective homes. Governor Wolcott's father \nwas many years a member of this Society, and a \nmember of its Standing Committee ; and the son \nremembers still with affection and interest his con- \n\n\n152 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nnection with the services of the Church. Twice \na day on Sunday was then the rule. Are there \nmany of these young men, from whom a possible \nfuture governor may be taken, ready to cheerfully \nassume such duty now? It is to his Excellency, as \nto us, a source of great regret that he cannot be in \nhis place with us this evening. \n\nThis same great pastor of ours, Increase Mather, \nfound time amid his other occupations to be for \nsixteen years the President of Harvard College. It \nhas been wittily said of him \" that, when not busy \ncaring for his church or shaping the politics of the \ncolony, he would step over to Cambridge and take \ncharge of Harvard College.\" \n\nThe presence this evening of Dr. Eliot, who \nstands conspicuously to-day as the exponent of \nprogressive educational movement, not only in \nMassachusetts, but in the whole country, would \nhave brought in close touch again these venerable \ninstitutions whose proud records seem to have a \ncommon starting-point. \n\nBut, if we are deprived of the pleasure we antici- \npated from the addresses of these gentlemen, the \nrest of our programme will be undisturbed, and a \nbrilliant part of it will be Mendelssohn's \" Hymn of \nPraise,\" one of the magnificent musical creations \nnot often heard. Under the lead of our accom- \nplished Musical Director, with his excellent choir \nand brilliant instrumental and vocal assistants, we \nshall listen to a rendering of this work which may \nmake us almost think it would have been enough \nto have the joy of our hearts expressed only by \nthese glorious symphonies and songs. \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 53 \n\nBut we have closer ties with Harvard Colleo^e \nthan merely to have furnished it with a President. \nSamuel Mather, our first minister, was a tutor and \nthe first \" Fellow of the College \"; Increase Mather \nreceived its first degree of Doctor of Divinity; John \nLathrop was for nearly forty years a member of its \nCorporation ; Henry Ware, Jr., was one of its pro- \nfessors ; and Emerson received his training at its \nDivinity School. So, when we would speak of the \ninfluence of The Second Church upon the literature \nof the two and one-half centuries of its existence, \nwe turn naturally to our \" foster sister,\" I may \nalmost call her; and she responds to-night in the \npresence of Professor Francis G. Peabody, D.D., \nwhom I now have the honor to present to you. \n\n\nTHE INFLUENCE OF THE SECOND \nCHURCH ON AMERICAN LIT- \nERATURE. \n\n\nO \n\n\nBY REV. FRANCIS G. PEABODY, D.D. \n\nNE of the most striking coincidences which \nthis occasion recalls is found in the relation of \nThe Second Church in Boston to the history of \nAmerican literature. If we divide the two hun- \ndred and fifty years which we now commemorate \ninto two periods, and distinguish the New England \nof colonial days from the New England of the mod- \nern age, we are led at once to recall two names \nwhich represent by pre-eminence the literary life of \n\n\n154 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nthese two periods ; and both of these names are \nthose of ministers of this venerable church. Cotton \nMather was the incarnation of the spirit of Puri- \ntanism,— of its strenuous and self-searching con- \nscience, of its prodigious theological activity, of its \ntheocratic view of government, and of its credulous \nliteralism. Emerson was the prophet of the mod- \nern American spirit, — of its buoyant idealism, its \nindifference to tradition, its sense of destiny, its con- \nfident optimism, its touch of humor, and its freedom \nin the truth. If one would interpret that strange \nphase of intellectual progress which is represented \nby New England in the first half of the eighteenth \ncentury, with its mingling of great learning and \ngreat credulity, of deep humility and vast self-con- \nfidence, of dominating ecclesiasticism and awaken- \ning democracy, he must study it in the voluminous \nwritings of Cotton Mather. If one would know \nhow the character of modern American life was de- \nveloped in the first half of the present century, \nhow it happened that cheerfulness, courage, candor, \nself-confidence, and hopefulness, came to be so in- \nwrought among our national instincts, he will find \nthese traits expressed in their most alluring form \nin the writings of Emerson. \n\nWhat an extraordinary contrast, both of literary \nachievement and of personal character, is presented \nto us in these two pastors of The Second Church ! \nMather was turbulent and combative, a perplexing, \noscillating, often grotesque character. Emerson \nwas singularly self-contained and incapable of con- \ntroversy, consistent in character, and restrained and \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 55 \n\nstudied in his literary art. For no less than forty- \nfour years Mather was minister of this church, and \nwas concerned throughout that period with every \npolitical, social, and theological issue about him. \nIn less than three years Emerson found it neces- \nsary to his peace of mind to withdraw from your \nministry into the secluded concentration of his re- \nflective life. Mather published no less than three \nhundred and eighty-six works, dealing in the most \ndiscursive fashion with every variety of human in- \nterest ; and, not content with this enormous pro- \nduction of printed works, he labored for twenty \nyears on a vast and unpublished commentary of \nScripture, and sighed for yet other worlds to con- \nquer. \" Is there no possibility for me,\" he writes \nin his diary, \" to find ye time that I may contrive a \nsystem of the sciences, wherein they shall be saved \nfrom vanity and corruption ? \" The complete writ- \nings of Emerson, on the other hand, might be in- \ncluded in the dimensions of a single work of his \nversatile predecessor. He left but a few score of \nessays, addresses, and poems, reiterating in ever- \nrecurring and yet ever-varying expression, like the \nsuggestion of a fundamental musical motif, his \ntranquil interpretation of an ideal world. Mather, \nin his relation to social reform, was aggressive, self- \nconfident, and omniscient. He fulminated against \nslavery, pleaded for peace, discoursed on temper- \nance, encouraged Christian missions, advocated in- \noculation, accepted the Newtonian astronomy, and \nset aside one day in each week to ask himself, \n\" What special subjects of affliction or objects of \n\n\n156 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\ncompassion may I take under my practical care, \nand what shall I do for them ? \" Emerson's atti- \ntude toward social reform was tranquil and dis- \npassionate. He was for the most part silent in \nmeetings, and his voice, as the prophet wrote of \nthe Messiah, \"was not heard in the street\"; but, \nwhen the thoughtful student of the present day \nlooks for the justification of his social hope, he \nlifts up his eyes to the calm teaching of Emerson, \nas to the hills from whence cometh his help. \" He \nwho would help himself and others,\" said Emer- \nson, as if thinking of the impetuous and domineer- \ning philanthropy of Mather, \" should not be a \nsubject of irregularity and interrupted impulses \nof virtue, but a continent, persisting, unmovable \nperson, . . . men who have in the gravity of their \nnature a quality like that of the fly-wheel in a mill. \n... It is better that joy should be spread over all \nthe day in the form of strength than that it should \nbe concentrated into ecstasies full of danger and \nfollowed by reaction.\" \n\nHere are the polar opposites of personality; \nMather with his self-accusing, self-examining \ndoubts, his quick indignations and fiery retorts, \nEmerson with his unclouded calm amid the mis- \nrepresentations of the Pharisees, as though he had \nheard the great word, \" Father, forgive them, for \nthey know not what they do.\" Mather, in his per- \nsonal appearance, was full-robed, full-wigged, full- \nlipped, with heavy chin, as one combating the \nspirits of flesh and sense : Emerson was frail and \nspare, with searching eyes and gentle mien, as \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 57 \n\nthough he needed no deliverance from any burden \nof the flesh to wear the spiritual body of the \nresurrection. Mather's interior life is a constant \ndrama of temptation and inconsistency. He \nwatches himself in thought and deed, and fines \nhimself for any lapse from virtue. For days he \nwithdraws into meditative ecstasy, and renounces \nall the vanities and evil courses of the world, only \nto be led again into irritability or envy or scorn. \n\nI heard one of our young athletes once describe \nthe special qualities essential to success in the \nmodern science of football. The youth, he said, \nwho would distinguish himself in the position of a \n\" centre rush \" must be possessed by a high quality \nof patience ; that is to say, this philosopher of ath- \nletics went on, the \" centre rush \" must watch and \nwait for the opportunity, which will soon be given \nhim, to \" slug \" his opponent. Cotton Mather was \nqualified for this position in literary athletics. He \nrestrained and humiliated his soul for brief in- \ntervals, only to smite with renewed vigor the evil \nor the evil-doer which for the moment confronted \nhim. With entire justice he wrote of himself in \none of his moments of self-abasement : \" In my re- \nmarks on the folly and baseness continually ex- \npressed by our absurd and wicked people, I do not \nalways preserve that meekness of wisdom which \nwould adorn the doctrine of God, my Saviour. I \nwill ask wisdom of God for the cure of this dis- \ntemper.\" Emerson, on the other hand, as one of \nhis biographers remarks, has little to say \" of the \nhorrid burden and impediment on the soul which \n\n\n158 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nthe churches call sin.\" His personal life seems \nswept by no disturbing passion. His experience \nflows with the even movement of a full, deep \nstream. When he preaches, it is as one who im- \npresses chiefly \" the reality of religion\" with \" an in- \ndefinite charm of simplicity and wisdom.\" When \nhe withdraws from his ministry, it is with no stormy \nscene or wrestling of spirit, but with entire serenity \nand unruffled good-will. \" Every man,\" he writes, \n\"hath his own use.\" \"I cannot give you,\" he \nsays again, '* one of the arguments you earnestly \nhint at ; for I do not know what arguments mean \nin reference to an expression of thought.\" It is \ndifflcult to imagine what Cotton Mather could \nhave said to a person who made such a reply. To \nattack such an unresisting medium would be as if \none should assail the atmosphere, only to find it \ntranquilly flowing back with perfect elasticity, and \ninviting one to breathe it anew. \n\nSo stand these two opposite types of literary dis- \ntinction in the history of The Second Church in \nBoston. It is as if the past and the present stood \nface to face. It is impossible to imagine a rever- \nsion of literature or theology to the type of Cotton \nMather. It is almost equally impossible to imagine \nany future evolution of literature or theology which \nshall carry us far from the illuminating aphorisms \nand the comprehensive theism of Emerson. Cotton \nMather was, as one of his most observing biog- \nraphers has remarked, a Puritan priest who was un- \naware of the fact that \" Protestantism can have no \npriesthood.\" Emerson, on the other hand, was re- \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 59 \n\npelled by even that vestige of sacerdotalism which \nhe discovered in the administration of the Lord's \nSupper, and gave himself wholly to the part of a \nprophet of the Eternal. \n\nYet what strange affinities appear in these remote \nand contrasted types ! Both of these men, in their \nliterary achievements, were distinguished by origi- \nnality, candor, and courage. \n\nCotton Mather was in many ways as sympathetic \ntoward unfamiliar and even unpopular thought as \nEmerson. Precisely as Emerson's intellectual sym- \npathy crossed the sea and found companionship \namong the German philosophers, so Mather, in \nwhat was probably the first contact of the American \nmind with Germany, corresponded with the Ger- \nman professor and philanthropist, Francke, and \nlearned from him of what he called \" the warmth \nfrom the fire of God which flames in the heart of \nGermany.\" With the same spirit in which stu- \ndents from Harvard University migrate to the Uni- \nversity of Halle in pursuit of the higher learning, \nCotton Mather two hundred years ago desired to \nimport the higher scholarship of his time to our \nseat of learning. \" I will make a present,\" he wrote, \n\" into our poor colledge of certain books that are of \ngreat improvement and influence in the famous \nFrederician University, and of a tendency to correct \nthe present wretched method of education here.\" \nEven the literary style of the two men, though as \ndifferent as diffusiveness and artificiality are from \ncompactness and precision, show a kinship in orig- \ninality, independence, and self-mastery. In both \n\n\nl6o THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nthere is complete subordination of form to thought, \nand perfect liberty from constraint and self-display. \n\" There has been,\" says Cotton Mather, as if de- \nscribing the writing of Emerson, \" a deal of ado \nabout a style, so much that I must offer you my \nsentiment upon it. There is a way of writing \nwherein . . . the writer pretends not to reading. Yet \nhe could not have written as he does if he had not \nread very much in his time ; and his composures \nare not only a cloth of gold, but also stuck with as \nmany jewels as the gown of a Russian ambassador.\" \nAnd for himself he says : \" I can truly say that I \nhave studiously set aside that care of embellishing. \nI have dropped a world of what some would call \nornaments which, while I was writing, offered them- \nselves to my mind.\" \n\nBoth of these men, moreover, the priest and the \nprophet, were at one in their supreme devotion to \nthe religious life. To Mather, it is true, religion \nwas beset by dogmatic tests and Biblical literalism : \nto Emerson religion, as he wrote, was to come \" full \ncircle,\" to show the identity \" of the law of gravita- \ntion with purity of heart,\" and to prove \" Duty to \nbe one thing with Science, with Beauty, and with \nJoy.\" Yet the prophet of religion has no funda- \nmental controversy with its priest. \" It is an office,\" \nEmerson himself says, \" which is coeval with the \nworld.\" \" A man enamoured of this excellency be- \ncomes its priest or poet.\" Wherever, then, a true \npriest, in however mistaken forms, has truly served \nhis altar, there the true prophet finds a work which, \nas the greatest of prophets said, he comes \" not to \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY l6l \n\ndestroy, but to fulfil.\" It is Emerson, not Mather, \nwho says of the Christian religion : \" Two inesti- \nmable advantages Christianity has given us : first, \nthe Sabbath, the jubilee of the whole world ; and, \nsecondly, the institution of preaching, ... to cheer \nthe waiting and fainting hearts of men with new \nhope and new revelation.\" \n\nFinally, these two great names in the history of \nliterature unite in indicating to us the natural limits \nand the legitimate place of the preacher in the \nmodern world. For the universal genius of a \nMather and his priestly authority in all spheres of \nlife, the pulpit no longer offers an opportunity. \nIndeed, it may almost be said that there is no place \nin the modern world for omniscience and self-asser- \ntive learning, equally at home in history, science, \nreform, administration, and preaching. The spe- \ncialization of modern life has set stern limits \naround each vocation ; and few men are foolish \nenough to risk that saying which was spoken of \nthe distinguished Whewell, that \" science was his \nforte, and omniscience his foible.\" On the other \nhand, it is equally evident that the proper sphere \nfor the sreat work of Emerson did not lie within \nthe limits of the pastoral ofiice, and that one of the \nchief services of The Second Church to the world \nwas in giving to its young minister an easy escape \nfrom the preacher's calling. It was not merely a \nfailure to modify a special form of worship which \ndetermined his change of career. He had at \nbottom a view of life and of duty which in any \nevent would have soon led him to withdraw. His \n\n\n1 62 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nsermons are marked by few of those great qualities \nwhich were so soon the fruit of his seclusion and \nindependence. His transition to Concord was as if \na caged bird had found the liberty of the woods, \nand had at once soared and sung. \n\nDo such admissions, however, indicate that the \noffice of the minister is either inadequate or super- \nfluous or subordinate? On the contrary, they give \nto the ministry precisely that limitation and defini- \ntion which establishes its place in the varied life of \nmodern society. The pulpit is not the throne of a \ntheological dictator like Mather, nor the medium of \na spiritual philosophy like that of Emerson, It is \nno more an indictment of the preacher's function \nto observe that it was inconsistent with Emerson's \nsolitude of soul than to observe that it is no longer \npossible to unite the duties of minister of The \nSecond Church with the duties of the President \nof Harvard College, as Increase Mather united \nthese duties for seventeen years, and as Cotton \nMather much desired to unite them. Let us accept \nwith gladness the special task which distinguishes \nthe Christian ministry from these great representa- \ntives of the history of literature. There is a point \nin which the functions of the priest and of the \nprophet meet, and create a work less ambitious \nthan these which we have traced, but not less es- \nsential for the common good. It is the work of the \nChristian pastor, the shepherd of the religious life, \nwho, when he putteth forth his sheep, goeth before, \nand the sheep, knowing his voice, follow him. \n\nWe turn once more to the records of The Second \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 63 \n\nChurch, and many such faithful, humble-minded \npastors stand before us. Let us recall but one of \nthem. Henry Ware, Jr., was, as compared with the \nmassive learning of Mather or the spiritual insight \nof Emerson, an insignificant person in the history \nof literature. From the point of view, however, of \nThe Second Church, he was nearer than either of \nhis orreater associates to the ideal of a Christian \npastor. He was not an accomplished scholar or a \nthrilling preacher. His literary contributions are \nno longer read, and, with perhaps a single excep- \ntion, were never widely read. If, however, the \nformative influences of the successive preachers of \nthis church could be now identified among the \nsaints in heaven, a full proportion of profound \nchanges of human character in the history of this \npeople would be traced to the simple, unaffected, \nsincere piety of the ministry of Henry Ware. \n\nLet us not deceive ourselves as we trace the in- \nfluences on literature which this church has been \npermitted to exert. These effects of a church are, \nafter all, accidental and occasional. Sometimes the \nliterary achievement may overshadow the preacher's \noffice, as in the case of Mather. Sometimes it may \nrepel from the preacher's office, as in the case \nof Emerson. Meantime, amid the world of litera- \nture there still remains an opportunity, more \nhumble in its pretensions, more ephemeral in its \nreputation, but quite as creative and transforming \nin its effect, for the faithful pastor of a faithful \nflock, — the true priest, who finds in forms their \nspiritual symbolism, the true prophet, who preaches \n\n\n164 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\ntruth which is eternally real to him. Among the \ngreat words of the scholars and the poets there is \nstill a place for that word which is made flesh in \nthe pastor's life, and which dwells among us, with \nits example and leadership, full of grace and truth. \n\n\nIn introducing Dr. Hale, Mr. Crosby said : — \n\nAnd now it is my great pleasure to present to you one \nwhom we all know and recognize as the Nestor of our \nfaith, one who is an appreciative and charitable critic of \nthe past, full of confidence in the present, and equally full \nof hope and trust in the great power and sweetness of the \nfuture, one who needs no introduction, Edward Everett \nHale. \n\n\nADDRESS. \n\nBY THE REV. EDWARD EVERETT HALE, D.D. \n\n* I ^HE religious history of a church like this is \nwritten in the lives of the thousands on \nthousands whom it has trained and of those whom \nthey have trained, — of hundreds of thousands. \n\nAnd this means in their eternal lives. \n\nClearly enough, the visible expression of that \nhistory is made most distinctly for you and me, in \nthe lives and the work of the ofificial servants of \nsuch a church, — of the men who have preached in \nits pulpit, have counselled its members and been \ncounselled by them. The lives and work of men \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 65 \n\nwho have christened their children, and have \nseen them grow up into men and women, are an \nexponent of what was the quality and intensity of \nthe Christianity of their time. It is one of the \nsimple miracles of our Congregational order that \na body of God-loving and intelligent people do \nchoose from men like themselves an official servant, \nwho is at once teacher and learner, helper and \nhelped, one sent and one sending. He is leader \nand led. They choose him because they think he \nis near to God, and can help them see God and \nhear him. They ask him to do so, and they help \nhim to do so. He teaches them, and they teach \nhim. Like master, like man ; like preacher, like \nhearer. The congregation makes the man, in a \nthousand subtle agencies, as the man by a thou- \nsand makes the couCTCo-ation. \n\nThe history of this church presents several lives \nto us of such men, who have filled notable places in \nthe larger history of the world. It records many \nother names of preachers, of whom, as the Book of \nEcclesiasticus would say, there is no memorial, but \nof whom, all the same, the work was solid, so that \nthey need no memorial. I will not try — what \nwould be a pleasant thing to do — to recall from \nforsetfulness some of these names. There is no \ndishonorable name on the long record, though \nthere are forgotten names. But I can and will say \nsomething, first, of the lives of the Mathers in the \nfirst century of your history, and then of the lives \nof two men in this century who are not forgotten \nand cannot be. \n\n\nl66 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nIncrease Mather and Cotton Mather, the father \nand the son, were the ministers of this church for \nmore than two generations. In that period Boston \nwas wholly changed. At the beginning here was \na little village, of perhaps five thousand people, \nunknown to the world. At the end of it the com- \nmerce of Boston was larger than that of Scotland \nand Ireland combined, and her dealings were with \nalmost every port in Europe. The Mathers and \ntheir people were doing their best, in all this time, \nto infuse a Divine Life into such human affairs. I \ncould easily spend the evening in briefly describing \nthousands of forms of generous activity in which \nthey led and pushed, coaxed and goaded Boston \ninto a life ideal, and not material, — life to the glory \nof God, and not the glory of Mammon or Baal \nor Dagon. \n\nIn more than a thousand of such efforts, one \nof the Mathers made a horrible mistake, which is \nalways remembered against him, the younger of \nthe two. But then and there he was acting from \na noble motive, and even that Salem witchcraft \nmisery was an effort to carry forward the \" will of \nGod \" as he supposed God's will to be. \n\nSimply, — and this is all-important, — the Mathers, \nfather and son, meant that God should rule this \nworld, the devil should not, and that man should \nnot, except by God's order. They really meant \nthat the people around them should live to God's \nglory, and not for their own petty profit or pelf. \nIn their mistakes and in their successes they \nstand thus for the genuine Puritan theory that \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 6/ \n\nreligion must not be parted from daily life. God's \nglory first, God's glory second, God's glory all the \ntime. \n\nThis means, in our language. Public Spirit. It \nmeans public spirit as distinct from private com- \nfort or private wealth. It means God's will in the \nwhole of the community, — at the town dock, in \nthe public schools, in the nursery, on Cornhill, or \non the Common. It means this in contrast with \nwhat is meant by a \" religious administration \" which \nis conducted by companies of priests who keep \noutside the world and occupy themselves with \ntrumpets and bells and incense and processions \nand altar covers and other ordinances of service. \nIt means a church of the people, carried on by the \npeople and carried on for the people. \n\nOf all this you can find no better types than the \ntwo Mathers. The subjects of their sermons are \nwhat we should call pre-eminently secular ; that \nis, they are subjects of the time when they are \nspoken. Earthquakes, murders, piracy, schools, \norovernment, charters. General Courts, — whatever in \nlater times the daily press discusses, these men \ndiscuss in The Second Church and at the Thursday \nLecture. \n\nIn the course of such work for Monday, Tuesday, \nand Wednesday, they fell foul, alas ! of the Salem \nwitchcraft. They did not create it, but it found \nthem. The father, Increase Mather, opposed the \nmadness of the affair with all his might. But \nCotton Mather, the son, held, alas! a brief \nfor the other side. He was now only thirty \n\n\nl68 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nyears old. As a young man, he had years before \nwritten a book on \" Invisible Wonders.\" It is not \na whit more absurd than the absurd books which \nabsurd people read and write to-day. In that book \nhe had granted the existence of people possessed \nby evil spirits, just as similar writers do to-day, \njust as the Bible does. When the Salem prosecu- \ntions came on, he would not and did not disdain his \nearlier words. That devilish pride of consistency \nheld him to what had been written; and so he is \ncharged to-day, in history, with bringing on the \ncatastrophe. Appleton's Cyclopaedia says, coolly, \nthe prosecutions were abetted and mainly carried \non by Cotton Mather; and afterward, when our \npoor old Judge Sewall confessed in penance his \nshame and error, Cotton Mather — yes, for thirty \nyears more of life — would not own that he was \nwrong. \n\nThis shows cowardice, it shows weakness, it \nshows the accursed danger of books, it shows per- \nsonal narrowness. But it is hard to call it inten- \ntional wickedness. And it does show also what I \ncalled the Puritan determination, that God shall \nrule, his will shall be done — shall — on earth as \nin heaven. Alas that they construed his will so \nbadly ! \n\nNow we must not say that it was right for Cot- \nton Mather to use the pulpit for temperance, for the \nslaves, for suppressing street profanity, for health, \nfor education, for inoculation, and then turn and say \nthat he ought not to have interfered in the witch- \ncraft trials. All we can say is that he ought to \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 69 \n\nhave judged right in such matters, and that he did \njudge wrong. \n\nFor which, perhaps, I ought not to ask you to for- \ngive him. We know so much, and it is so certain \nthat we are always right, that we find it hard to for- \ngive him that he was in this case wholly wrong. \n\nBut we will remember that for the nearly forty \nyears of his ministry he was working against slav- \nery, against intemperance, for the schools, against \nthe devil, and that he was trying — in a stupid way, \nif you please — to make others do so. He forced \ninoculation upon Boston, with the help of Boylston, \nwhen half the medical profession and the most of \nthe town were against him ! \n\nHe has been judged before now, and the verdicts \nare on record. We cannot change them if we \nwould. Certainly, of the high award of that Infi- \nnite Tribunal where justice and mercy always \nmeet together, — the tribunal which assigned to him \nlong ago his duties and his place in larger worlds \nthan this, — I can say nothing. No ! I have not \nenough, thank God, of the impiety of the theolo- \ngians. \n\nBut on that other estimate which mankind should \nplace on him, I have sometimes pondered. I have \nfancied what might happen if we had now a perma- \nnent tribunal of great statesmen, great jurists, great \nmen, who, after a century and a half, might have \nthe duty of revising the somewhat ephemeral judg- \nments of our lower courts. May we imagine, per- \nhaps, such a court — James Martineau, Benjamin \nHarrison, and the Baron de Staal — intrusted yes- \n\n\n170 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nterday with such a revision of the Mather verdicts ? \nMay I imagine the counsel for the poor man there \nwith his brief, and the chief justice questioning him ? \n\n\" What do you say, sir, about this miserable \nwitchcraft business ? \" \" Oh ! we say as little as \nwe can, may it please the court. We say that, \nwhen he was almost a boy, he had abridged the \nscience of the time, which was all wrong. We say \nthat then he had not courage enough nor sense \nenough to oppose the science of his day. But \nwe find no wilful selfishness nor moral obliquity \nin that stupidity. We admit ignorance and stu- \npidity.\" \n\n\" Note that, Mr. Clerk. Ignorance and stupidity \nare admitted.\" \n\n\" Yes, my lord, ignorance, obstinacy, and stupid- \nity. But in asking for a revision of the world's \njudgment, if the court please, we offer this little \nmemorandum of Benjamin Franklin's. \n\n\" Oh, Ben Franklin ! There was integrity and \ncourage, backward sense and forward sense. What \ndoes Franklin say ? Read the note, Mr. Clerk, if it \nis not too long.\" \n\nAnd the clerk reads : \" Benjamin Franklin to \nSamuel Mather. There was a book of your \nfather's, ' Essays to do Good,' which I read in boy- \nhood.* If I have been, as you seem to think, a \nuseful citizen, the public owes the advantage of it \nto that book.\" \n\n\" Does Ben Franklin say that ? Do you note that, \ngentlemen, — all the use that he has been to this \n\n*Passy, May 12, 1784. \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY I71 \n\nworld, — all of it ? That is a great deal. All this \nelectrical science born from Franklin's discoveries, \nall this practical education suggested by Frank- \nlin's benevolence, all these public libraries, fostered \neven in their infancy by him, all these devices for \nhuman comfort, all these refuges for orphans, these \nschools and colleges for men, and, above all, peace \nbetween England and America, the statesmanship \nof that great treaty which made friends of the two \nempires which should never be enemies, — all this \nwork, which makes Franklin Franklin, all this is \ndue to one book of this poor criminal. Cotton \nMather. \n\n\" Gentlemen, really, I think, we must not be too \nhard on the conservative obstinacy in youth of a \nbadly taught young man.\" \n\nThe simple truth is, if anybody cares, that the \nwitchcraft horrors sprang from the folly and mad- \nness of the theory then held as to written Script- \nure,— the theory in which Cotton Mather had been \nbred, \" A witch shall surely die.\" Those are the \nwords in this Bible. If such words are the present \nvoice of the present God, — and Cotton Mather \nhad been taught that they were, and believed they \nwere, — why, he was compelled, and the Danvers \njudges were compelled, to follow, — fated to the \nhorrid plunge they made with him. \n\nNow it is not hard to see that the memory of an \ninfluence so horrible did its blessed work in a hun- \ndred years. That fatal error wrought out the truth, \nwhich The Second Church of later times has done \nits share in proclaiming since, that the whole word \n\n\n172 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nof God cannot be cai-ved in stone, — no, nor \nchained upon paper. Remember that \" God made \nknown his ways unto Moses,\" not his words, — \" his \nacts unto the children of Israel.\" The word is \nnearer. The word is very nigh thee, — in thy heart \nand in thy mouth. \n\nYes, the letter killeth. The letter of Moses \nkilled those fifty witches at Salem. But the Spirit \ngiveth Life ; and the Spirit gives us at last such men \nin our pulpit as Henry Ware, as Waldo Emerson. \n\nOnly one hundred and one years after the Salem \nwitchcraft Henry Ware was born. From the hills \nof his birthplace, Hingham, you can see the blue \nline of Salem, five-and-twenty miles across the bay. \nOne century, — enough to make the difference be- \ntween the Salem of the witchcraft and the Salem of \nBentley and Lowell and Cabot, the men of the India \ntrade and of the constitution of Massachusetts. \nThere were men at Ware's christening who had \nheard Cotton Mather preach, I suppose. \n\nAnd the difference — morally, spiritually, yes, \nand physically and socially — is like the difference \nbetween the planet Mars and the planet Terra, if \nthat be the name they give us in Mars. \n\nThe religion taught and preached in that century \nby such men as Cotton Mather and his successors, \nby the two Eliots at the North End, by Jonathan \nMayhew at the West Church, by Oliver Everett in \nthe New South, and by Charles Chauncy at the \nFirst Church, is a sort of religion w^hich from such \nmen as Cotton and Mayo and Increase and Cotton \nMather, evolves such men in less than three gener- \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 73 \n\nations as Henry Ware and Ralph Waldo Emerson. \nFor Ware and Emerson both grew up in these \nconditions of the Puritan religion of the Bay. \n\nIn their time, as I happen to know, the world \ntried to think that these two prophets were far \napart. \n\nIn truth, as we know, they were both exponents \nof the central gospel of all religion, — \" Where ye go, \npreach, saying. The kingdom of God is at hand.\" \n\n\" God is here. God is nowT It is the religion \nof Pope Pius on the Seven Hills. It is the religion \nof the miner who is kneeling by his child's bed- \nside in the Montana hills to-night. The centre of \nall religion, the only religion worth the words it \nspeaks, the religion of our own Unitarian Church, \nwhich is \" the Church of the Holy Spirit.\" \n\nYet with these ears I have heard Henry Ware \ndiscuss that puzzle of the definition of Person, — \nwhat Person is and what it is not, — which seems at \nonce such a riddle and such a fascination to men as \nyoung as he was. And / suppose that the hearers \nsupposed that he supposed that he was in antago- \nnism to Waldo Emerson ; and yet it is certain that at \nthat same moment Emerson was saying some word \nwhich was making more clear to some dazed, \npuzzled child of God that God is here, that God is \nnow, that he and God are one, if he will. \n\nPersonal religio7i ! That I also partake of the \ndivine nature, that God is with us, — Emanuel. Not \nGod with him, not God with one prophet or two; \nbut that, if we seek him, surely we shall find him, if we \nseek for him with all 6)2^^ hearts. Here is the religion \n\n\n174 \"TH^ SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nof Emerson, the religion of the Wares, the rehgion \nof Channing as of Martineau, of Swedenborg, as of \nWhitefield and Wesley, and George Fox and Jacob \nBoehme, the religion of Owen Feltham and De Sales \nand Saint Francis, the religion of every mother \nwho ever taught her boy to say \" Our Father,\" of \nevery child who lisped the word so taught him, — \nthe religion for which the Saviour died, for which \nPaul was beheaded and Peter crucified, the re- \nligion in which David sang and Isaiah spoke, the \nreligion in which God said, \" I am,\" to Moses, and \nthe whole world replied, \" Thou art.\" \n\nOf all prophets speaking the English language \nin our time, it has been given to Ralph Waldo \nEmerson, the minister of the Second Church, to \nmake this proclamation with most persuasive power, \n\" The reign of God is here,\" the kingdom of God \nis at hand. \n\nIn that miner's camp in Montana the well-worn \nvolume of the \" Essays \" lies behind the powder- \nhorn. In the cupboard of the starving student in \nParis, where, alas ! there is no Bible, there is the \nessence of the Bible in these same \" Essays.\" In \nthe cabinet of the Emperor of Russia lies the trans- \nlation of Emerson. And under the shadow of the \nmainsail, in the heat of the summer sun, as at this \nmoment your cousin rounds Cape Horn, he is at \nthis moment reading his Emerson. Here are lines \nwhich go out to all times. Here is the word which \ngoes to the end of the world. \n\nBlessed be the church, and honored, whose pulpit \nis proud to echo the Eternal Voice, even as it was \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 75 \n\nspoken by such men. Thanks to the God who has \nled it out from the worship of stones or of the \ncarving upon stones, from any idolatry of any \nletter, into the fulness of life, into the very free- \ndom of Christ himself. The letter killeth, but the \nSpirit giveth Life; and, for the future, prayers \nand hopes. How blessed a thing this is, that we \nshould be called \" the children of God \" ! \n\nAfter the chorus following Dr. Hale's speech, Mr. \nCrosby asked the congregation to join in the national \nhymn, \"America,\" in the spirit of enthusiasm and \nthankfulness that should mark those who felt the duty of \ntheir obligation to the generations whose labors, priva- \ntions, and sacrifices had made possible the glorious \nAmerica which we possess, and that the congregation \nshould adopt a custom of the fathers, and rise and turn \ntheir faces to the choir. \n\nA benediction was pronounced by Dr. Hale. \n\n\nSERMON. \n\nBY THE REV. THOMAS VAN NESS. \nNovember 26, 1899. \n\nForgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth \nunto those things which are before, I press forward toward the mark \nfor the prize of the high calling of God. — Phil. \n\nTF any man had a right to look back with pride \nand pleasure upon his past life, that man was \nPaul. As he sat there in his prison at Rome, \nwriting letters to the various infant churches in \nMacedonia and Asia Minor, what more natural \nthan to indulge in reminiscences, to tell of his \nwanderings, his imprisonment, his remarkable ex- \nperiences on sea and land, or his audience with \nKing Agrippa, with Festus ? Surely, any one with \nsuch a record might well have been pardoned if he \nhad written about himself and drawn from his per- \nsonal career lessons of God's care and providence. \nWhat I particularly like about Paul is that he \ndoes not boast, is not puffed up or carried off his \nfeet, as we say to-day, by a sense of his own impor- \ntance. He does not dwell on what he has accom- \nplished ; for every achievement is but a prelude to \nsomething better, higher, further off. Therefore, \nhe has no time to talk of past deeds. As soon as a \nproject is brought to a successful issue, Paul puts \nit out of his mind, \" forgets it,\" as it were, so that \nhe may bend all his energies to pressing forward \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 77 \n\ntoward something else, and thus eventually win the \nprize of the high calling of God. \n\nYou see two boys at college. One impresses \nyou as much brighter and quicker than the other, \npossessed of more native ability. Concerning him \nyou predict great things, a brilliant future. Fif- \nteen or twenty years pass, and you need to revise \nyour judgment. The young man from whom you \nexpected so much, it is true, leads an honorable \nlife, but beyond that, little more can be said of him ; \nwhile of the other you are forced to say that he is \nsteadily growing in influence, and will undoubtedly \nmake an indelible mark upon the world. \n\nHow does it happen that your judgment was \nso in error? Had the second youth any special \nfaculty which you failed to note ? No, the dif- \nference between the two young men was the \ndifference between possessing vision and no vision. \nThe one upon whom you counted was satisfied \nwith the conventional standards, measured himself \nby those around him, by their acquisitions, did not \ncare to become anything more. The other youth \nin early life had put before his mind an ideal, per- \nhaps unattainable, but, nevertheless, a continual \nincentive to renewed exertion. Because of that \nideal he was never quite satisfied to rest on what \nhad been done, but, like the apostle, was ever \nreaching forth and pressing on, — in short, was de- \nveloping and becoming more noble, strong, and \ninfluential. \n\n\" What position does he hold ? \" \" To whom is \nshe related ? \" \" How much is he worth } \" By \n\n\n178 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nthese questions and the answers which they ehcit \nwe try to fix the place of a man or a woman in \nsociety or the business world. If we really desire \nto know the relative standing of people, it would be \nmuch better to inquire concerning their ambitions \nand their aspirations. What are his desires ? \nWhat his ideals ? Has he a vision ? Does he \nreach forward and press on toward some goal ? If \nso, then of that particular person we can safely \npredict an ever expanding, never failing life. \n\nAverage abilities conscientiously used often be- \ncome the most effective ; for it is a fact which all \nhistory goes to prove that capacity grows out of \ndesire, or, as Lowell puts it, in an exaggerated line, \n\n\" Perhaps the longing to be so \nHelps nnake the soul immortal.\" \n\nYes, the desire, the longing, to be something has \nundoubtedly conferred earthly immortality on more \nthan one whose name is now written on the death- \nless roll of fame. \n\nFor the last two weeks we have been standing \nin the blaze of glory which shines down from the \npathway of our memorable past. As a church, we \nhave a record, a history, which gives us, deservedly, \nthe right to be proud and self-congratulatory ; but \nnow the question comes. What is to be our temper \nof mind toward that past and the achievements of \nour forefathers ? Are we to be contented with the \nposition attained, or does that past stimulate us to \nrenewed effort ? In other words, have we desires \nand ambitions or have we not ? Is there some \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 79 \n\nvision continually beckoning us on and upward, \nsuch as the vision of our Puritan ancestors, — \na vision of a regenerated earth, of a new common- \nwealth, of the coming of the kingdom of God? \n\nOn this first Sunday of a new church century it \nbehooves us to ask this question, and to pause for \nits very serious consideration. A certain well- \nknown oflEicial, who for the last three years has \nbeen much in the public eye, recently made a plea \nfor what he calls the strenuous life, — the life of \ndaring and doing. He is trying to awake the \nAmerican youth to the fact that struggle, fight, \nwork, are essential, not simply in order to achieve, \nbut in order to exist at all, in order to keep from \ndecay and death. \n\nThe strenuous life ! But that is what Paul was \npreaching, — yes, and living. As he so clearly \npoints out, all one's toil and work will come to \nnaught if there is not in mind some definite goal. \n\nA definite goal ! This at once gives singleness \nof purpose. It reduces effort from a complex to a \nsimple thing. You see many people pressing for- \nward to-day, but in zigzag directions. Conse- \nquently, the result of their work is scattering, in- \neffective. \n\nTo keep this church in the future from dissipat- \ning its energy, it is needful for us to concentrate \neffort, to have a plan, a purpose, a mark toward \nwhich we shall move, as has the swimmer making \nfor the shore or the runner in a race. At once this \nwill give to all our thought and all our work a \nunity of effect, and amazingly increase our power. \n\n\nl8o THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nSo much settled, the question comes, In what \ndirection shall we move ? What shall be our ulti- \nmate goal ? \n\nWhat better than that which our Puritan ances- \ntors put before themselves as the one thing worthy \nof accomplishment ? \n\nIf there is an historical fact well settled to-day, it \nis the purpose which animated our Puritan fore- \nfathers, the reason why they left England and came \nto this bleak and desolate coast of New England. \nThey came here, not as did the French Jesuits to \nCanada, because their hearts were aflame with a \ndesire to save souls, nor like missionaries, because \nthey had some special creed or doctrine which they \nwished to preach to every living creature on the \nface of the earth ; but they came because they had \na certain theory of government, a certain rule of \nconduct, a certain very definite idea of life. They \nwere intent upon establishing here a Puritan com- \nmonwealth, \" a Church without a bishop, a State \nwithout a king.\" To put it in a sentence, they \nwanted to establish here the kingdom of God. \n\nIt is foreign to the point, and a remark worthy \nonly of a cynic, to say that they established more \nnearly the kingdom of the devil. I am not now \ntalking of what they did or did not accomplish. I \nam simply trying to make clear what was their aim, \ntheir one great desire. \n\nCan we put before ourselves a better, a more \nworthy object.'' \n\nSuppose for the moment you agree with me that \nto try to establish here in New England, in Massa- \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY l8l \n\nchusetts, in Boston, the kingdom of God, is an aim \nquite worthy enough for which to strive. See how \nthat at once simpHfies our future church policy. \n\nHereafter we can Hsten with respect and sym- \npathy to far-off missionary appeals for help, to those \nwho believe our chief duty is to spread the gospel \nin Japan, in the hills of India, in Hungary, among \nthe Molokains of the Trans-Caucasus; but to one \nand all such appeals we can kindly, but firmly, re- \nturn the answer: \" This is not our direct work, not \nthe especial thing for which we were founded. We \nwish you God-speed in your efforts ; but we must \nnot scatter our energies, cannot turn aside to do \nyour particular work. Our duty is to reach forth \nand press onward toward our own special goal.\" \n\nThis, too, separates our pulpit from those given \nover to the promulgation of some particular creed, \nsome particular doctrine, and, as a consequence, \nwill keep us from theological controversy and ec- \nclesiastical strife. \" No,\" we can say to our more \nzealous denominational friends, \" our chief work \nis not, as you think, to combat wrong doctrine, \nto show the exact difference between Orthodoxy \nand Unitarianism, to define the belief which each \nmember must have, to point out the existing errors \nin Presbyterianism or Lutheranism. Speculation, \nphilosophy, metaphysics in a way are implied \nin the very fact that we are a church ; but, \nas a church, we were not founded to preach \nsome certain theory of the universe. If we did, \nthen that theory in time might pass away, as did \nthe theory of the universe preached by Cotton \n\n\n1 82 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nMather. Or, if we maintained some particular type \nof metaphysics, then that, too, in time would be- \ncome obsolete, as have the metaphysical systems of \nthe sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. No, The \nSecond Church was founded, as its original cove- \nnant plainly states, because its incorporators desired \nGod to dwell among them and to acknowledge \nthem as his people, and, further, so that God's king- \ndom and grace might be advanced by them. \nAgain, then, we can say, as did they : — \n\nWe desire God to dwell among us ; \n\nWe pray that by the character of our lives he may own us as \nhis people ; and \n\nWe resolve that God's kingdom and grace shall be advanced \nby us. \n\nHaving now set before ourselves this original aim \nand object of our forefathers, having definitely in \nmind the task that is set us to do, let us each indi- \nvidually say, in the language of Paul, \" Forgetting \nthose things which are behind and reaching for- \nward unto those things which are before, I press \nforward toward the mark for the prize of the high \ncalling of God.\" . . . \n\nThe practical member, right here, very naturally \nasks, \" But in what way do you think The Second \nChurch in Boston can best advance God's kingdom \nand grace ? \" \n\nThe question deserves a direct answer; but, be- \nfore we attempt to answer it, let us look at one or \ntwo things connected with our late celebration. \n\nDid you notice — but, of course, you must — how, \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 183 \n\nnot by premeditated action, but by a sort of in- \ntuitive feeling, all the speakers singled out three \nepochs in the life of the church. Those three epochs \nare connected with the names of three ministers, — \nIncrease Mather, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and \nHenry Ware, Jr. \n\nFor what did those three men especially stand ? \nIncrease Mather was not as great a preacher as his \nson ; Emerson was one of the poorest pastors ; and \nHenry Ware, Jr., could not rank with Lathrop as a \ncontroversialist, nor, indeed, with those who came \nafter him as a public speaker. Why, then, by com- \nmon consent, are these three ministers singled out \nfrom all the rest as representative ? What did they \nsay or do which the world does not wish to forget ? \nfor, if we can find that out, then we may be sure \nthat those same characteristics will be needful in the \nfuture, and must be embodied in any policy of the \nchurch, if it is to be successful. \n\nI think you will agree once again with me, when \nI say that Increase Mather is not remembered to- \nday for his preaching, — for much of it was rubbish; \nnor is he remembered by his books and literary \nproductions, — for those books are consigned to the \nupper shelf and never read. But he is remem- \nbered with respect and admiration because of his \ncourage, of that highest kind of courage, — moral \ncourage. \n\nLet any one of you put yourself in his place, and \nask what, under the same circumstances, you would \nhave done in those momentous days when the in- \ndependence of the Massachusetts Colony hung in \n\n\n184 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nthe balance, and you will realize more vividly the \namount of soul bravery it required on Mather's \npart to risk his position, his influence with the \nruling powers, his very life, as he did, for the civic \nformation of his native town. \n\nThen come to Emerson. What was the distinct \nnote in his preaching ? \n\nYou had your answer first in the address given \nlast Sunday by the young man who represented \nthe National Religious Union, and afterward, on \nMonday, in the closing remarks of Edward Everett \nHale. \n\nMr. Eaton said, and said truly, that through \nEmerson he came to know himself. In that essay \non Self-reliance are these words : \" Never imitate : \nabide in the simple and noble regions of your life. \nObey your heart, and you shall reproduce the fore \nworld again.\" \n\nIn picking up my own volume of Essays, I find \nthat back in 1879, just twenty years ago, I came \nacross that very passage ; and it revolutionized my \nwhole inner life, so that since then I have never \nconsciously imitated any one in speech, thought, \naction, or way of looking at events. I make this \npersonal confession simply as added testimony. \nYes, Emerson helps to give us confidence in our- \nselves and our own thoughts, — makes us appre- \nciate how noble and God-like we are. His is dis- \ntinctly a message of cheer. When you have once \nread his essay on Compensation, you feel from then \non, no matter what be taken, no matter what your \nlosses, that you are not utterly bereft ; for some- \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 85 \n\nthing else of equal virtue and profit has been \nslipped into the vacant place, and that you may \nstill enjoy. \n\nCheer and hope! I think those two words char- \nacterize the message of Emerson, — cheer and \nhope. Do you think the time will ever come when \nmen and women will not want to be cheered and \ninspired to greater things ? or when they will not \nwant to be lifted up above the humdrum common \nlevel by a great hope, which whispers to them of \ntheir immortality and kinship with the Eternal \nGod.? \n\nAnd what of Henry Ware, Jr. ? What especially \ndistinguished his pastorate from the others ? We \nare told that during the time he was minister The \nSecond Church knew a distinct revival, and at- \ntained as great strength as during the best period \nof the Mathers. How was this revival brought \nabout ? I think I am able to say, after reading his \nmemoirs given me by that dear old parishioner, \nMrs. Burdett, now some ninety-three years of age, \nwho knew Mr. Ware very intimately. \n\nI find, among other characterizations, this, which \nI believe correct : \" Mr. Ware had an entire sympa- \nthy with and love of mankind under all circum- \nstances and conditions, with all degrees of cultiva- \ntion, and with every variety of moral character. \nThis had much to do with his power of exercising \ninfluence over all classes of men.\" \" Mr. Ware,\" \nsays another writer, \" was the embodiment of sym- \npathy. When with him, all sorts and conditions of \nmen forgot their differences, and were made one \nin a common fellowship.\" \n\n\n1 86 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nThere you have the secret in those last words. \nMr. Ware was able to establish a common fellow- \nship. In a period when social differences were ac- \ncentuated, at a time when class distinctions divided \nmen into various little cliques, Mr. Ware broke \ndown such arbitrary differences, and through \nChristian fellowship united all his people on the \none great plane of human brotherhood. \n\nCourage, cheer, fellowship, — for these three \nthings do we especially remember Mather, Em- \nerson, and Ware. These are the characteristics \nwhich they contributed to the stream of Second \nChurch life, and these are the things which must \nstill be embodied in the teachings and articles of \nThe Second Church if it desires to go successfully \nforward into the twentieth century. \n\nNow we are ready to answer the question of the \npractical man who asks in what way we think this \nchurch can best advance God's kingdom and grace \nhere in Boston. \n\nFirst, we should say, in not limiting our interests \nor subjects of consideration to those things which \nsimply affect our own personal life and prosperity, \nbut in being interested in every civic matter which \nmakes for a healthy municipality. This pulpit, the \nmembers of this church, must be awake to the \nduties of citizens/lip. As a church, we must work \nfor good government, for an honest administration, \nfor a clean and intelligent democracy. This means \nan interest in our public schools, in our libraries \nand art galleries, in our highways and common \nparks, in our water supply and gas supply, in our \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 87 \n\nphilanthropic and charitable institutions. Not \nnow, as when Increase Mather lived, does a kins; \nthreaten our liberties ; but none the less are those \nliberties in peril from political wire-pullers and con- \nscienceless corporations. Read how almost impos- \nsible it is for the City of New York to once again \nget back under its own control the Battery Park, \nand you will understand what danger there is lurk- \ning on every side to destroy the people's rights. \n\nAgain, we wish to raise up laymen and ministers \nwith the courage of their convictions, who, if needs \nbe, are willing to stand in the legislative hall or in \nthe council chamber, and boldly say, as did Increase \nMather, when an iniquitous measure is likely to be \npassed, \" I hope there is not a freeman in Boston \nthat can be guilty of such a thing.\" \n\nThis pulpit in the coming years, if it follow \nin the true line of progress, must be dedicated \nto affirmations, not negations. As in Emerson's \nday, it must affirm that God is, that he is here \nand now in our souls, that we are God's sons \nand daughters, and have within ourselves infinite \npossibilities. The gospel sounding forth from Sun- \nday to Sunday needs to be shot through with hope \nand cheer, — an immortal hope, a cheer because of \nwhat we can do, what we are, and what we are to \nbecome. Because of the message thus delivered, \nevery man should leave this building with a more \nbuoyant step than when he entered, and with a \nhigher opinion of his own capabilities, — yes, with \na higher, a loftier conception of his fellow-man and \nof the God-like qualities of his nature. \n\n\n1 88 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nLastly, because of the feeling of fellowship that \nis thus engendered, every man and every woman \nentering our doors should feel that here earthly \ndistinctions of station, wealth, culture, and official \nposition are ignored, — that for a short hour, at \nleast, we meet on an equal footing. \n\nSocial fellowship, my friends, is what we are re- \nquired to emphasize. A republican form of gov- \nernment cannot long outlast the dying out of the \ndemocratic spirit. Patriotism, therefore, as well as \nreligion, bids us lay aside all earthly differences, \nand as a church unite in a common brotherhood \nwhere the sorrows of each are the sorrows of all, \nand where the joy of each may be shared by all. \n\nWhat more need I say, except to tell you that I \nbelieve you will thus reach forward and press on \ntoward the establishment of God's kingdom in this \ncity, and that you will all help to make The Second \nChurch a centre of courage and cheer, a place filled \nwith the sunshine of hope and Christian fellowship. \nLast week taught me how fully you are already in- \nfused with the spirit of co-operation and kindly feel- \ning. I say it augurs well for the future of a church \nwhen something like three hundred people can be \nbrought together, — singers, ushers, speakers, pa- \ntronesses, musicians, helpers, and assistants, all har- \nmoniously uniting in a five days' celebration and \ncarrying out the various exacting details without a \nsingle jar or feeling of rancor or jealousy. Such a \nvoluntary blending of parts shows that our religion \nis something more than theory. It is exemplified \nin our every-day actions. \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 89 \n\nWill it be said that I have narrowed the channel \nof progress and limited to local bounds the work \nthis church ought to do ? \n\nI grant that in certain directions I would so limit \nour efforts, but only because I am anxious that we \ngain in intensity and have singleness of aim. . . . \n\nHere is a light-house keeper. A certain amount \nof oil is intrusted to his care. What shall he do ? \nDivide it so that it may be enough for many little \nflickering lights, or keep it intact in his one lamp, \nand then, courageously mounting the steps of the \ntower, place his one lamp in the focus of the lens, \nso that its light may stream forth to illuminate the \ndarkness of a treacherous coast. \n\nTo us has been intrusted this time-honored in- \nstitution, this Second Church, which, like a tower \nof strength, stands forth in the community. What \nshall we do with our power, with our light, with the \nilluminating oil ? Divide it or concentrate it } \n\nLet us with Saint Paul say, \" This one thing I \ndo.\" \n\nFrom our point of vantage we will flash forth our \nsignals. \n\nGod's in the heavens. \n\nMan is his child. \n\nThere is a harbor of refuge. \n\nCourage ! \nIn time it may be reached. \n\nPossibly some tired and disheartened mariner on \nthe sea of life, seeing that signal, may take new \ncourage. In the night of storm and darkness, in \nthe time of trouble and sorrow, he may not know \n\n\nIQO THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nwhither he is drifting, and all faith in the goodness \nof things, in the heavenly harbor, may have died \nout; but just at the moment of his worst discour- \nagement and despair, through the gloom and fog of \nhis unbelief, there may stream forth our light of \nfaith and cheer. That message will be understood. \nIt will bring to his heart new hope, new determina- \ntion. Because of our signals he, with others, will \nonce again steer in the right direction and event- \nually reach the harbor of peace, where with the re- \ndeemed he shall know the joy of those who look \nupon the face of the Father and hear the words. \nHe that overcometh shall inherit all things, and I \nwill be his God and he shall be my son. \n\n\nAPPENDIX. \n\n\nTHE Mather Chair, a picture of which forms the \nfrontispiece to this volume, is believed to have be- \nlonged to Cotton Mather. It stood for many years in the \nHanover Street Church, and, while not intentionally \nincluded in the bill of sale of the building, remained in \nthe Church on the removal of the Society. It was sub- \nsequently bought back from the purchasers of the build- \ning by Mrs. Elizabeth Means and other Ladies of the \nParish, and was restored to its proper place. It bears \nthis inscription : — \n\nTHIS CHAIR BELONGED TO THE \n\nSECOND CHURCH, BOSTON, \n\nDURING THE MINISTRY OF THE \n\nREV. COTTON MATHER, D.D., \n\nWHOSE PASTORATE ENDED \n\nFEBRUARY 13, 1728. \n\nThe art decorations which the Society now possesses \nare here described, and the inscriptions thereon given : — \n\nThe mosaic. Truth, erected by the wife and daughter \nof Mr. John W. Leighton, who was born in Eliot, Me., \nFebruary 26, 1825, and died in Brookline, October 6, \n1897. A strong friend of the Church, and deeply inter- \nested in its welfare. \n\nIt is a glass mosaic, four by eight feet in size, and is a \nsymbolic figure of Truth with sword, torch, and key. \nThe tablet is set in a massive frame of bronze. This is \n\n\n192 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nthe first figure in Tiffany favrile glass mosaic erected in \nthe New England States. \nIt is thus inscribed : — \n\nTHE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE. \n\nPRESENTED IN MEMORY OF \n\nJOHN WILLIAM LEIGHTON \n\nBY HIS WIFE AND DAUGHTER. \n\nERECTED A.D. 1899. \n\nThe Ministers' Window, a memorial of Mr. George \nHenry Eager, who was born in Northboro, Mass., Novem- \nber 18, 1833, and died in Boston, January i, 1897. Mr. \nEager was a highly respected citizen, business man, and \nfriend, and warmly attached to The Second Church. For \nmany years he was a faithful member of its Standing Com- \nmittee. His interest in the church was strongly shown \nby his preparation and publication of an epitome of its \nhistory, which appeared in 1894. \n\nThe Inscription on the window is as follows: — \n\nPROTEST OF INCREASE MATHER AGAINST THE \nSURRENDER OF THE \nCOLONY CHARTER TO THE ENGLISH COMMISSIONERS \nA.D. 1683-84. \n\nJohn Mayo. John Lathrop. \n\nIncrease Mather. Henry Ware, Jr. \n\nCotton Mather. Ralph Waldo Emerson. \n\nJoshua Gee. Chandler Robbins. \n\nSamuel Mather. Robert Laird Collier. \n\nSamuel Checkley. Edward Augustus Horton. \nThomas Van Ness. \n\nERECTED IN THE 25OTH YEAR OF THE \n\nFOUNDING OF THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON, \n\nTO COMMEMORATE ITS MINISTERS, \n\nAND PRESENTED IN LOVING MEMORY OF \n\nGEORGE HENRY EAGER \n\nBY HIS WIFE AND DAUGHTER, 1 899. \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 93 \n\nIn the window, Mather is shown standing, addressing \nthe commissioners who are seated at the table. In the \ncostumes a strong contrast is noticed between the rich \ndress of the Englishmen and the Puritan simplicity of the \nColonists. The upper parts of the window are filled \nwith a beautifully designed canopy, in which Gothic and \nRenaissance details are intermingled in the style of the \nintermediate period. \n\nThe Warren Window, commemorative of Mr. William \nWilkins Warren, an honorable, upright merchant of \nBoston, a faithful member of The Second Church, a wise \nand generous benefactor of charitable organizations, a \npatron of art. He was born in West Cambridge, Mass., \nApril II, 1814, and died in Boston, January 23, 1890. \n\nThe window has for its subject on one side the story \nof St. Martin of Tours, dividing his garment with the \nnaked youth ; on the other, a figure of Dorcas with tv/o \nof the orphans whom she cherished. The artist is Mr. \nFrederick Wilson of the Tiffany studios. \n\nThe window bears these words : — \n\nST. MARTIN. \nHE THAT DOETH THE WILL OF GOD ABIDETH FOREVER. \n\nDORCAS. \nLOVE IS THE FULFILLING OF THE LAW. \n\nIN LOVING MEMORY OF \n\nWILLIAM WILKINS WARREN \n\nWHO PASSED TO THE HIGHER LIFE \n\nJANUARY 23, 1890. \n\nERECTED BY HIS WIFE. \n\nThe Lincoln Mural Tablet is severely, but beauti- \nfully classic in design, and is a pedestal upheld by two \n\n\n194 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nCorinthian pillars. It is a memorial of the Hon. Frederic \nWalker Lincoln, and bears this inscription : — \n\nIN MEMORIAM \n\nFREDERIC WALKER LINCOLN \nFEB. 27, 1817-SEPT. 13, 1898 \n\nA FAITHFUL MEMBER OF \nTHE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON. \n\nSUPERINTENDENT OF SUNDAY SCHOOL \n1846 TO 1876. \n\nTREASURER OF THE CHURCH AND \n\nCHAIRMAN OF THE STANDING COMMITTEE \n\n1851 TO 1895. \n\nDEACON 1883 TO 1898. \n\nTHIS TABLET IS ERECTED IN \n\nLOVING REMEMBRANCE \nBY HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN \n\nHe that followeth \n\nAfter righteousness and mercy \n\nFindeth life, \n\nRighteousness, and honor. \n\nThe Leighton, Eager, Warren, and Lincoln memorials \nwere designed and made by the Tiffany Art and Decora- \ntive Company, under the supervision of Mr. Edwin \nStanton George. \n\nThe Emerson Bust, made by Mr. Sidney Morse of \nBuffalo, N.Y., was given to The Second Church by the \nmembers of the Young People's Fraternity. It has been \nplaced on a temporary support in the western transept, \nbut at an early day will have an artistic pedestal, with an \nappropriate inscription. \n\nIn addition to the works of art which were dedicated on \nthe occasion of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary it \nis fitting to mention the Tablet which was given to the \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 95 \n\nSociety, in 1891, by Mrs. Maria Louisa (Robbins) Davis, \nthe daughter of the Rev, Chandler Robbins, D.D., who \nwas installed as Minister of The Second Church in 1833, \nresigned his pastorate in 1874, and died in 1882. The \nTablet occupies a conspicuous place at the right of the \npulpit, and is reproduced in photogravure in this book. \n\nI know that \n\nmy \n\nRedeemer liveth. \n\nIN MEMORIAM \n\nREV. CHANDLER ROBBINS, D.D. \n\n181O-1882 \n\nTHE FAITHFUL CHRISTIAN MINISTER OF \n\nTHE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON FOR 41 YEARS \n\n1833-1874 \n\nAND \n\nMARY ELIZA FROTHINGHAM \n\n\\VIFE OF \n\nREV. CHANDLER ROBBINS, D.D. \n\n1821-1S70 \n\nBlessed are the dead which die in \n\nthe Lord ; for they \n\nrest from their labors, and their works \n\ndo follow them. \n\nA.D. i8qi. \n\n\nOn the occasion of the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anni- \nversary, the following paintings were loaned to the Soci- \nety by the Massachusetts Historical Society, and occupied \nprominent positions on the walls of the Church : — \n\nPortrait of Increase Mather, who was born in Dorchester, \nJune 21, 1639; Minister of this church, 1664-1723; died \nAugust 23, 1723. Painted by Van dek Sprjtt, 1688, \n\nPortrait of William Welsteed, born 1695 ; Minister of \n\n\n196 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nthe New Brick Church, 1727-53; died January 7, 1753. \nPainted by Copley. \n\nPortrait of Joshua Gee, born in Boston, June 29, 1698 ; \nColleague of Cotton Mather, 1723; Minister, 1728, till \nhis death, May 23, 1748. Painted by Smibert. \n\nPortrait of Mrs. Anna Gee, wife of the Rev. Joshua \nGee. Painted by Smibert. \n\nPortrait of His Excellency Thomas Hutchinson, Gov- \nernor of the Province of Massachusetts ; born September \n9, 171 1 ; died June 3, 1780; an attendant of this Church. \nPainted by Truman, 1741. \n\nPortrait of John Lathrop, born May 17, 1740; Minister \nof The Second Church 1768-1816; died January 4, 1816. \nPainted by Williams, 1808. \n\nIn addition, the Committee were indebted to the family \nof the Rev. Henry Ware, Junior, for a loan of the por- \ntrait of their father. He was born in Hingham, Mass., \nApril 21, 1794; was Minister of The Second Church \n1817-1830; and died at Framingham, Mass., September \n22, 1843. Painted by Frothingham. \n\nBy the kindness of General W. W. Blackmar and \nof the Wardens of King's Chapel, the committee were \nable to display in front of the gallery of the Church \na series of flags, namely: — that of the United States \nof the present day, together with the sea colors of \nNew England in use as early as the end of the seven- \nteenth century; the British Union Jack of 1707; the Pine \nTree flag of New England ; the Grand Union flag raised \nby Washington at the camp at Cambridge, January i, \n1776; other early flags of New England; and the flag of \nNew England sent by King James H. with Governor \nAndros in 1686. \n\n\nA STREET IN OLD BOSTON. \n\n\nA HAPPY thought of the Ladies of The Second Church \n^ ^ resulted in an entertainment (preliminary to the regular \nreligious celebration), which, in its way, fitly illustrated and \nexpressed the secular side of Boston — its customs, manners, \nand architecture — since its foundation in 1630, and elicited \ngreat interest as well as much applause from the general \npublic. \n\nThis entertainment consisted in faithfully reproducing, in \nCopley Hall, many of the old buildings in Boston of the early \nPuritan, Provincial, and Revolutionary times, some of them \nfamous in story and song, and all of them quaint beyond \nexpression. In fact, the large Hall was transformed into a \nveritable street, its sides lined with the semblance of houses, \neach of which was believed to represent a certain distinct \nperiod or style of architecture. \n\nIn each building was an exhibit of colonial furniture, wares, \nand curiosities, with many interesting or useful articles which \nwere offered for sale. The attendant ladies were dressed in a \nmanner befitting the time in which they were supposed to be \nliving. The various periods represented gave an opportunity \nfor a variety of costumes, running all the way from the rich \nbrocades of the stately dame, with powder, paint, and patches, \nto the quiet garb of the sedate Puritan maiden. \n\nThe old street in Boston was in charge of a Committee \ncalled the \"Auxiliary Aid\" (composed of the wives of the \npresent and former members of the Auxiliary Committee of \n\n\n198 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\ngentlemen), ably seconded by the ladies whose names are \ngiven below in connection with the different buildings repre- \nsented. \n\nThe musical entertainment was under the charge of Mrs. \nCharles H. Bond ; and for the presentation of the minuet by \nher little proteges the Committee were indebted to the kind- \nness and services of Mrs. William S. Butler. \n\nThe following buildings were represented in the historical \nfestival : — \n\nEARLY PURITAN PERIOD, 1649-1666. \n\nThe William Blackstone House. This is believed to have \nbeen the first residential building in Boston, and was situated \non Beacon Hill, not far from the junction of the present Chest- \nnut and Walnut Streets. \n\nLadies in Charge. — Mrs. Frank W. Downer, Mrs. E. T. Pratt, \nassisted by Miss Gertrude S. Sands, Miss Gertrude D. Reuter, Miss \nClara S. Hall, Miss Helen C. Pray, Miss Mildred Williams, Miss \nEthel McKenny, Miss Irma Bradshaw, Miss Maud H. Hunt, \nMiss Helen Johnson, Miss Margaret Miller. \n\nThe Old North Meeting-house. — No small part of the \nearly history of Boston is connected with this ancient edifice. \nThe first building was begun in 1649 in Clarke's Square, or, as \nit was later known, Frissell's Square and, for the past hundred \nyears, North Square. It was occupied in 1650, burned in \n1675, and replaced by the building represented in the Old \nStreet in 1676, In all probability it was a fair copy of the \nancient building. \n\nIt was provided with bell and clock. The bell was rung at \nfive o'clock in the morning, at one o'clock (the hour for closing \nthe market), and at nine o'clock in the evening. The town's \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 99 \n\npowder was stored here for a long time. From the very begin- \nning this meeting-house was a stronghold of political liberty ; \nfor, as is well known, the Mathers — Increase and Cotton — \npreached from its pulpit, and their influence largely moulded \nthe thought and customs of the early colony. It was also from \nthis pulpit that Lathrop preached his memorable sermons in \n1774. Attention was drawn to him and to his congregation by \nhis patriotic utterance when, on a certain Sunday, he declared \nthat \" Should the British administration determine fully to exe- \ncute the laws of which we complain, we have yet to fear the \ncalamities of a long civil warT \n\nStrong, frank, treasonable words, these ; and it is not strange \nthat General Howe gave willing assent to the desire of \" cer- \ntain evil-minded men of the king's party to pull down the old \nNorth Meeting-house.\" That was an end to the \"nest,\" no \ndoubt ; but the traitorous hornets came back so stingingly that \non the seventeenth day of March, 1776, General Howe himself \nwith his royal army was quite glad to say good-by to Boston. \n\nThe Old North Meeting-house was never again rebuilt. \nThe land on which it had stood was sold for ;!{^2io in 1786 to \nthe minister, the Rev. John Lathrop, who built for himself a \nfine residence there. A block of brick houses now occupies the \nancient site. \n\n\nTHE COLONIAL PERIOD, 1666-1692. \n\nThe Mayo-Mather House. — The first regular Minister of \nThe Second Church was John Mayo, who was ordained in \nNovember of 1655. Although he held the office of Pastor for \nnearly twenty years, yet little is now known of his personality \nand work. The records of the Church give us one item, how- \never, concerning his funeral, which in a few words illustrates, \n\n\n200 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nunintentionally perhaps, something of the customs of former \ndays. It is said, \" The whole cost of the Rev. John Mayo's \nfuneral was ten pounds four shillings.\" Of this amount nearly \nfour pounds were spent for wine, and five pounds fifteen shill- \nings for gloves. It is hardly likely that Ma3'o himself occupied \nthe house which afterward in connection with Mather bore his \nname; nor is it probable that Increase Mather lived in this \nmansion, except, possibly, in the closing years of his life. \nAfter the disastrous fire of 1676, many excellent buildings \nwere erected ; and it seems reasonable to suppose that the \nMayo-Mather house was put up in the latter part of the seven- \nteenth century, when a better and more substantial type of \narchitecture commenced to prevail. \n\nLadies in Charge. — Mrs. James N. North, Mrs. Otis H. Luke, Mrs. \nF. F. Raymond, Mrs. Frank Harvey, Miss Bessie North, Miss \nBlanche Ware, Miss Alice Meserve, Mrs. Otis Smith. \n\n\nTHE PROVINCIAL PERIOD, 1692-1775. \n\nThe Old Feather Store, built by -Thomas Stanbury in \n1680, stood on the corner of North Street and Dock Square, \nfronting upon three sides. In the early part of the eighteenth \ncentury it was so close to tide-water that the prows of vessels \nmoored in the dock would almost touch the building. The \narchitectural style was quite common in the Netherlands and \nin the old trading towns of England. The upper stories \nprojected some two feet over the lower story, giving a con- \nsiderable increase of space to the upper chambers. The build- \ning was of wood, the frame being of hewn oak, and the outside \nwalls of rough cement. In this cement there were imbedded \nbits of broken glass and fragments of junk bottles. The date, \n1680, was placed upon the principal gable, on the westerly \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 20I \n\nfront. From its peculiar shape the boys in the neighborhood \ncalled the building \"The Old Cocked Hat,\" and by that name \nwas it popularly known for years afterward. \n\nNearly every variety of trade was carried on in the building. \nThe Simpsons kept here a feather store ; though before that, \naccording to Snow, \" the leading apothecary shop of the town \nwas at ' The Old Cocked Hat,' \" and was kept by the Green- \nleaf family. The old feather store was demolished in the \nyear i860. \n\nLadies in Charge. — Mrs. D. H. Lane, Mrs. L. G. Burnham, \nMrs. C. H. Bond, Mrs. E. B. Stillings, Mrs. Charles A. Gleason, \n\nThe Peter Faneuil House. — This house, a fine old stone \nmansion, stood on the Beacon Hill side (now Tremont Street), \nopposite the King's Chapel Burial Ground. The lot formed \nthe south part of Governor Bellingham's estate. \" The deep \ncourt yard,\" says Miss Quincy, \" was ornamented by flowers \nand shrubs, and divided into an upper and lower platform \nby a high glacis, surrounded by a richly wrought iron railing. \nThe edifice was of brick, painted white ; and over the entrance \ndoor was a semicircular balcony.\" It is doubtful whether \nMiss Quincy is right in her statement that the house was of \nbrick, as from papers in the Massachusetts archives we learn \nthat it was spoken of as being built of stone. \n\nThe Faneuils were French Huguenots from La Rochelle. \nPeter Faneuil, the giver of the historic hall which bears his \nname, was born in 1700. He was the wealthiest Bostonian of \nhis day. He lived in a style worthy of his position as a \nprince among merchants. He had five negroes to wait upon \nhim, and \"drove out in a coach with English horses.\" His \ncellar was filled with good wine, beer, Cheshire and Gloucester \ncheeses, and other tempting and palatable foods. He lived \n\n\n202 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nonly forty-two years, dying suddenly, in 1742, of dropsy. The \nFaneuil mansion was also the home of Governor Phipps. \n\nLadies in Charge. — Mrs. William M. Bunting, Mrs. Ralph Miles \nKendall, Mrs. E. Bertram Newton, Mrs. Elmer A. Lord. \n\n\nThe Benjamin Franklin House. — The old house here \nrepresented was a quaint specimen of an order of buildings \ncommon in the Provincial period. Josiah Franklin, the father \nof Benjamin Franklin, was a native of England. He became a \nrespectable soap boiler and tallow chandler in Boston. Ben- \njamin was born on January 6, 1706. His early youth was \nspent in learning how to make tallow candles for his father; \nand \" in his leisure moments,\" we are told, \" he was engaged \nin throwing rubbish into the mill-pond.\" After his father's \nbusiness became distasteful to him, he entered his brother's \nprinting-office on Queen Street. In 1691 the town granted \nliberty to Josiah Franklin to erect a building near the South \nMeeting-house, and on this spot on Milk Street the renowned \nphilosopher was said to have been born. Franklin himself, \nhowever, bore testimony to the fact that he was born on the \ncorner of Union and Hanover Streets, where his father then \ncarried on his business. It is doubtful whether or not the \nfather of Benjamin Franklin removed from Milk Street pre- \nvious to January 6, 1706, the date of the doctor's birth. \n\nLadies in Charge. — Mrs. D. W. Ensign, Mrs. Arthur Chesterton, \nMiss Sarah King, Mrs. E. P. Wilcox, Mrs. C. P. Bonney, Mrs. J. P. \nSelinger, Miss Kraus. \n\n\nREVOLUTIONARY PERIOD, 1775-1789. \n\nThe Green Dragon Tavern. — The Green Dragon Tav- \nern, perhaps the most famous hostelry in Massachusetts, was \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 203 \n\none of the first substantial brick buildings erected in Boston. \nIt was located on Union Street, not far from Hanover Street. \nA stone tablet on the present business block. 80-86 Union \nStreet, marks its ancient site. It was probably built not far \nfrom the year 1680, and was used as an inn about 1695. \n\nOn St. George's Day, 1706, Governor Joseph Dudley, who \nhad come to town guarded by the troops with their swords \ndrawn, dined here in state, and then proceeded to the Town \nHouse. \n\nIn 1709 the birthday of Queen Anne was celebrated by a \n\"treat\" given here by the Council to the Governor. This en- \ntertainment cost the Honorable Councillors the sum of five \nshillings apiece. \n\nUndoubtedly, if the secret history of the Revolution were \nwritten, it would show that its initiatory movements were \nlargely planned within this Tavern. Paul Revere tells \nus that he was one of a Committee of Thirty organized to \nwatch the movements of the British. \" We held our meetings \nat the Green Dragon Tavern, and swore not to reveal our \ntransactions to any except Hancock, Adams, Warren, Otis, \nand Church.\" \n\nThe \" North End Caucus,\" having its headquarters at the \nGreen Dragon, was most instrumental in the \"tea plot.\" An \nold song of theirs ran as follows : — \n\n\" Rally, Mohawks ! bring out your axes ! \nAnd tell King George we'll pay no taxes \n\nOn his foreign tea. \nHis threats are vain : he need not think \nTo force our wives and girls to drink \n\nHis vile Bohea. \nThen rally, boys, and hasten on \nTo meet our chiefs at the Green Dragon.\" \n\n\n204 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nLadies in Charge. — Mrs. Thomas Van Ness, Mrs. Renton Whid- \nden, Mrs. Quincy Kilby, Miss Helen Paine, Miss Anna Royce, Miss \nPeckham. \n\n\nThe King's Head Inn. — On the north corner of Fleet \nand Ship Streets, near Scarlet's Wharf, Major Thomas Savage \nhad his house and garden in the early days of the colony. \nAfter his death, in 1682, the King's Head Inn was located \nhere. It was burned in 1691, but rebuilt of wood, and con- \ntinued a large and flourishing hostelry until the beginning of \nthe Revolution, when it was converted into barracks for the \nmarines, and then taken down for fuel. \n\nLadies in Charge. — Mrs. William H. AUine, Mrs. Homer V. \nSnow. \n\nThe Home of General Joseph Warren. — Dr. Joseph \nWarren, in the latter part of 1770, leased a house belonging to \nJoshua Green, which stood on Hanover Street, about opposite \nthe head of Elm Street. The site is now occupied by the \nAmerican House. Warren continued to live in Hanover Street \nuntil the time came when he gave his undivided attention to \nthe preparation for the coming struggle with the mother \ncountry. As all know, he was one of the Revolution- \nary heroes killed at the battle of Bunker Hill, 1775. The \nWarren house may be considered a type of the residential \narchitecture in the years just preceding and during the Revo- \nlutionary period. \n\nLadies in Charge. — Mrs. E. B. Kellogg, Mrs. E. P. Jones, Mrs. \nViola Paine. \n\n\nTWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 205 \n\n\nNEO-CLASSIC (OR EMPIRE PERIOD), 1789-1815. \n\nTontine Crescent (Franklin Street). — The Tontine Cres- \ncent was the first attempt in Boston at building residences in \nblocks. The houses were arranged with skill and good taste, \nthe long line of the crescent being broken in the centre by an \narchway thrown over an entering street, since called Arch \nStreet, and the sky line being judiciously varied by the \nsuperior elevation of the centre building, the second story of \nwhich was used as the home of the Boston Library, now in \nBoylston Place. For many years the Massachusetts Histori- \ncal Society occupied the upper story of this building. \n\nMr. Charles Bulfinch, the well-known architect, was the \ndesigner of the Crescent. The houses were of ample size, \nand were for half a century among the most desirable in \nBoston. The Tontine Crescent was, probably, begun some- \nwhere in the year 1794. The growth of the city just at that \ntime was not sufiicient to warrant the erection of such ex- \npensive dwellings. Heavy mortgages, followed by forced \nsales, reduced Mr. Bulfinch almost to the verge of bankruptcy. \n\nLadies in Charge. — Mrs. E. A. Grozier, the Misses Delano, \nMiss Edith Brown, Miss Blanche vStevenson, Miss Alice Daniels, \nClarence Miller, Miss Maria Clarke, Miss Fanny Johnson. \n\n\nEARLY AMERICAN PERIOD, 1815-1859. \n\nThe Lamb Tavern. — The present Adams House stands on \nthe ground formerly occupied by the Lamb Tavern, sometimes \nstyled the \" White Lamb.\" Colonel Doty kept at the sign of \nthe Lamb in 1760, though there are records of the tavern's \nexistence in 1746. The Lamb was an unpretending building \n\n\n206 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON \n\nof two Stories, but of good repute in Old Boston. In the early \npart of this century it was conducted successively by Laban \nAdams, for whom the house was named, — father of W. T. \nAdams, \"Oliver Optic,\" — and by A. S. Adams. The first \nstage to Providence, advertised July 20, 1767, put up at the \nsign of the Lamb. \n\nLadies in Charge. — Mrs. Hatherly Foster, Mrs. Eugene G. Ware, \nMrs. Louis R. Lincoln, Mrs. George O. Wales, Mrs. C. A. Abbott, \nMiss Mabel Mawhinney. \n\nOn the evening of Wednesday, November 15, musical \nselections were offered by Miss Cutter's orchestra and by Mr. \nWalter S. Hawkins, soloist. During the evening of Thursday \nYe Old Towne Choir, composed of students of the New Eng- \nland Conservatory of Music, gave solos and quartettes, with \ninstrumental selections by a stringed quartette. Mr. Clarence \nMiller acted as Town-crier. This was followed by a minuet \ndance by a group of children in the style and dress of the \nRevolutionary period, under the care of Mrs. William S. Butler, \npreceded by a recital of \" Grandma's Minuet,\" by Miss Mabel \nPatten. \n\nThe dancers were Mabel Patten, Lillian Kaufman, Mabel \nPrince, Helen Kilmurry, Coy Prince, Fern Foster, Lillian \nGoldstein, Dora Levine. Miss Laura M. Hawkins acted as \naccompanist. \n\nFor the use of a grand pianoforte during the rehearsals for \nthe two hundred and fiftieth anniversary, and at the services \nthemselves, the committee were indebted to Messrs. Chicker- \ning & Sons of Boston. \n\nThe general design and the details of construction of The \nOld Street in Boston were carried out by Lee L. Powers & \nCompany of Boston. \n\n\n> \n\n\n*-. \n\n\n5> \n\n\n^0. \n\n\nV-.-'.-^ %-^^'y \\.-'f.^.-^* ^.-^i! \n\n\n^0. \n\n\n\\ ■%/ .'i<^%, %,^* /^\\ ■%/ 4,,,^ \n\n* ^^ \"^ ^* 'S^' \n\n<<^ .*'^^^-. V A\" ^''.^ \n\n\n1^ ^ • °' \"^P^ \n\n\n.0 \n\n\nx^^-^. \n\n\n<-!^' \n\n\n1^ \n\n\n-oV\" \n\n\n^^-v. \n\n\n,^< ^oV \n\n\nM;'o '^v?^. .<• \n\n\njy .1*°' ^ \n\n\n<^. \n\n\n.0 \n\n\n^oV^ \n\n\nV \n\n\n^ \n\n\n-^ \n\n\no w 0 '^ ^0' \n\n\n\"^V^^ \n\n\n'^• \n\n\n\"^.PC.'^ \n\n\nvOUNO, \n\n\n","title":"The Second church in Boston; commemorative services held on the completion of two hundred and fifty years since its foundation, 1649-1899","updated_at":"2026-09-05T09:59:57.770430Z","urn":"urn:lemay:boston:document:the-second-church-in-boston-commemorative-services-held-on-the-completion-of-two-hundred-and-fifty","version":1,"withdrawn_reason":null},"urn":"urn:lemay:boston:document:the-second-church-in-boston-commemorative-services-held-on-the-completion-of-two-hundred-and-fifty","version_history":[{"change_note":"accessioned from the Internet Archive, item secondchurchinbo00seco","changed_by":"archive-ingest 0.1.0","recorded_at":"2026-09-05T09:59:58.077345Z","version":1}]}