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 TO 
 
 ON BEHALF OK 
 
 Clje ifir^t Cljurcl) in Ii3o0ton, 
 
 RuFus Ellis, William F. Matchett, 
 
 G. Washington Warren, Thomas Minns, 
 George W. Wales, 
 
 CommtttEE on fHcmattal Folume. 
 
THE COMMEMORATION 
 
 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON 
 
 OF THE 
 
 COMPLETION OF TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY 
 YEARS SINCE ITS FOUNDATION, 
 
FIFTH HOUSE OF WORSHIP. 
 
 CORNER OF BERKELEY AND MARLBOROUGH STREETS. 
 1868. 
 
THE COMMEMORATION 
 
 / BY THE 
 
 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON 
 
 OF THE 
 
 Completion of 2r\ua Il:)unliret» anti Mft^ gears 
 
 since its foundation. 
 On Thursday, November i8, 1880. 
 
 ALSO 
 
 FOUR HISTORICAL SERMONS. 
 5Bitl) EUujstrationjs. 
 
 Printed by Order of the Society. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 HALL AND WHITING. 
 
 1881. 
 
Copyright, 1881, 
 By Rufus Ellis. 
 
 University Press : 
 John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 ^rdiim'narg Proccclitngs. 
 
 Page 
 
 Committees Appointed xiii 
 
 Participation in City Celebration xv 
 
 Invitations and Arrangements xix 
 
 l^iston'cal ^frmons. 
 
 RuFus Ellis, D.D., preached Nov. 14, 1880 3 
 
 „ „ „ „ „ 21, 1880 28 
 
 „ „ „ „ „ 28, 18S0 49 
 
 N. L. Frothingham, D.D., on ihe Two Hundredth 
 
 Ant^iversarv 69 
 
 CommEm0ratibe Scrfat'ccs. 
 
 Address of Welcome hy Hon. Nathaniel Silsbee ... 92 
 
 Prayer of Rufus Ellis, D.D 95 
 
 Reading of Scripture by Joseph T. Durvka. D.D.. . . 96 
 
 Address of George E. Ellis, D.D 98 
 
 ,, „ Hon, Robert C. \\'inihr()I' 113 
 
 „ „ Governor Long 122 
 
 „ ,, Mayor Princi: 125 
 
 Poem iiy William Evereit, Ph.D 1.^2 
 
 ADDRF.SS of President Eliot 136 
 
 „ „ „ Noah Porier 142 
 
vi CONTENTS. 
 
 Pace 
 
 The Hundred and Seventh Psalm 150 
 
 Address of Rev. Grindall Reynolds 151 
 
 „ „ Phillips Brooks, D.D 156 
 
 „ „ Prof. C. C. Everett, D.D 161 
 
 „ „ Hon. Robert S. Rantoul 167 
 
 „ G. W. Briggs, D.D. . 169 
 
 Hymn by Rev. Charles T. Brooks 172 
 
 The Seventy-eighth Psalm 174 
 
 CorrESpontJfnce. 
 
 From the President of the United States, Secretary of 
 
 State, and Attorney-Gener.'Vl 177 
 
 From Boston, England 178 
 
 From Ministers of First Churches and others . . . 183 
 From Commander Stevens and Captain Wyman of the 
 
 Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company . . . 196 
 
 ^pp cull II. 
 
 Church Covenant and Roll of Ministers 201 
 
 Former Houses of Worship and Communion Plate . . 202 
 
 Ushers on Commemoration Day 204 
 
 Corner-stone Address by Rev. Rufus Ellis 204 
 
 Description of Church and Chapel Windows .... 208 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Pace 
 
 Present Church Frontispiece. 
 
 Card of Iwitaiion xv 
 
 PoRi'RAir OF Rfv. John Wilson i 
 
 Chlrch in Chauncy Place 69 
 
 The Old Brick Church 90 
 
 PoRTR-AIT OF RfV. RuFUS ElLIS I 74 
 
 „ „ Nathaniel Thavkr 199 
 
PRELIMINARY PROCEEDINGS. 
 
PRELIMINARY PROCEEDINGS. 
 
 \ T the annual meeting of the Proprietors of the First 
 -^^- Church in Boston, held April 15, 1879, G. WASH- 
 INGTON Warren, Moderator, having suggested the pro- 
 priety of taking early measures to prepare for a suitable 
 celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of 
 the foundation of the church, which would occur next year 
 (1880), it was 
 
 Voted, " That the Standing Committee of the Parish, with 
 the Pastor and Deacons of the Church, be appointed a 
 committee to consider and report at the next annual 
 meeting, what day shall be selected and what arrangements 
 shall be made for the observance of the two hundred and 
 fiftieth anniversary." 
 
 The officers of the Parish and of the Church had several 
 meetings, at which the minister was present by their invi- 
 tation. The result of their deliberations was embodied in 
 the following Report, Avhich was presented at the annual 
 meeting of the Parish held on the third Tuesday of April 
 (20th), 1880, and unanimousl)' adopted. 
 
 REPORT. 
 
 The Committee appointed to consider and report what 
 measures should be ado})ted for the due observance of the 
 two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of 
 
Xll FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 the First Church in Boston, and what day should be desig- 
 nated therefor, respectfully report: — 
 
 They find that already considerable interest has been 
 awakened on the subject, and that a general feeling is 
 manifested in favor of a suitable commemoration. They 
 propose that Thursday, the 28th day of October next, be 
 selected for the services, that being about the time, as 
 nearly as can now be ascertained, when the church came 
 over from Charlestown to worship in Boston in 1630. 
 They also recommend that all the arrangements for the 
 commemoration be put in charge of a committee of twelve, 
 as at least four sub-committees will be required to carry 
 out all the details, as invitations and speaking, decoration 
 and music, entertainment and finance. 
 
 It has also been suggested that an historiographer be 
 appointed who shall collect and prepare for publication 
 the materials for a memorial of this eventful period in the 
 history of the church. It is understood that the First 
 Church will be invited also to participate in some way in 
 the Municipal Celebration of the 17th of September, and 
 that on the Sunday preceding the 28th October, our pastor 
 will deliver a Commemorative Discourse. 
 
 The Committee recommend the adoption of the accom- 
 panying vote. 
 
 Per order of the Committee, 
 
 G. Washington Warren. 
 
 Voted, "That a Committee of Twelve be appointed from 
 the Parish, who shall make all the arrangements necessary 
 for the proper celebration, on Thursday, the 28th day of 
 October next, of the completion of two hundred and fifty 
 years since the foundation of the First Church in Boston; 
 and that they also cause to be prepared a suitable memo- 
 rial volume, containing the addresses and incidents of the 
 celebration, and such other historic matter connected with 
 the Church as may be deemed appropriate." 
 
PRELIMINARY PROCKEUIXGS. XIH 
 
 The Committee of Twelve were then appointed as 
 follows : — 
 
 Nathaniel Thayer. James C. White. 
 
 G. Washington Warren. Asa P. Potter. 
 
 George W. Wales. Joseph B. Moors. 
 
 Mrs. George O. Shattuck. Thomas Minns. 
 
 Mrs. George S. Hale. William F. Matchett. 
 
 Miss Gertrude Ellis. Thomas O. Richardson. 
 
 And to this Committee the minister was added. 
 
 The Committee was soon organized, and held frequent 
 meetings. It became apparent that, for various reasons, 
 the commemoration should be postponed to a later day 
 than that first decided upon. 
 
 On June 19th the following Report was made at a Special 
 Meeting of the Proprietors, called for that purpose, by 
 Thomas O. Richardson, on behalf of the Committee : — 
 
 SFXOND REPORT. 
 
 That the Committee duly organized by the choice of 
 N.\TiiANiEL Thayer as President, George \V. Wales as 
 Vice-President, Tiiomas O. Richardson as Secretary. 
 The vacancies caused by the declination of Mrs. Georc;e 
 S. Hale and Mrs. George O. Shattuck were filled by 
 the choice of Hon. GEORGE S. Hale and Mrs. J.\COB C. 
 Rogers, who have accepted the positions, and the Com- 
 mittee is now full. 
 
 Before the Committee had proceeded far in perfecting 
 their plans for the celebration, it was obser\'ed that the 
 day fi.xed upon for the celebration, Thursda)'. the 28th day 
 of October, was just on the eve of the Presidential election, 
 which ma\^ prove to be a time of great political excitement, 
 and it was thought best by the Committee to ask the Society 
 to pass a vote authorizing the Committee to fi.x some other 
 day for the celebration. 
 
 It was also mentioned b\' those members of the Com- 
 
xiv FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 mittee most familiar witli the history of the past, that the 
 Society formed in Charlestown, Aug. 27, 1630, was not 
 fully removed to and established in Boston till November 
 of that year, and if the day of the celebration was now to 
 be fixed for the first time, November would be a more 
 appropriate month than October. 
 
 It was further learned that some whom it would be 
 very desirable to have take part in the celebration have 
 such engagements in other cities that their presence could 
 not be expected till November. 
 
 Thomas O. Richardson, Secretary. 
 
 Whereupon it was unanimously 
 
 Voted, " That the Committee on the celebration of the 
 completion of two hundred and fifty years since the foun- 
 dation of the First Church in Boston have authority, if 
 they deem it expedient, to fix some other day than Thurs- 
 day, Oct. 28, 1880, for that celebration." 
 
 Under the authority of this vote, the Committee fixed 
 upon Thursday, November i8th, at two o'clock, p.m., as 
 the time for the commemoration. The following sub- 
 committees were appointed, who were to report their 
 recommendations to the General Committee for their ap- 
 proval : — 
 
 On Speakers and Order of Exercises. 
 
 Nathaniel Thayer. Joseph B. Moors. 
 
 RuFus Ellis. George S. Hale. 
 
 George W. Wales. Thomas O. Richardson. 
 
 On Music and Decorations. 
 James C. White. Miss Gertrude S. Ellis. 
 
 William F. Matchett. Mrs. J. C. Rogers. 
 
 Thomas Minns. 
 
 On Invitations, Circulars, Tickets, and Printing. 
 
 G. Washington Warren. Thomas Minns. 
 Thomas O. Richardson. 
 
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PRELIMINARY PROCEEDINGS. xv 
 
 On JFinancc. 
 Joseph B. Moors. William F. Matciiett. 
 
 Asa p. Potter. 
 
 On Memorial Volume. 
 
 RuFus Ellis. William F. Matchett. 
 
 G. Washington Warren. Thomas Minns. 
 
 George W. Wales. 
 
 In addition to the sub-committccs, G. WASHINGTON 
 Warren and George S. Hale were appointed a com- 
 mittee to confer with the authorities of the City of Boston, 
 as to the participation of the First Church in Boston in 
 the city celebration of its two hundred and fiftieth anni- 
 versary, to be held on September 17, 1880. In the con- 
 ferences which this committee had with His Honor the 
 Mayor and the Celebration Committee on the part of the 
 city, it was determined that the minister of the First 
 Church should be the chaplain of the day; that its com- 
 mittee should be represented in the city procession, and 
 also at the festival to be held in Faneuil Hall on the even- 
 ing of September 16. 
 
 In pursuance of this arrangement, G. WASHINGTON 
 Warren was called upon by his Honor the Ma}-or to 
 respond on behalf of the First Church, at the festival in 
 Faneuil Hall, which he did in the followin<j manner: — 
 
 address of HON. G. WASHINGTON WARREN AT 
 THE FANEUIL HALL RECEPTION. 
 
 Mr. Mayor, — In respondini^ to the call to speak in 
 behalf of the First Church in Boston, I may sa\- that, like 
 that church and like this t^ood town of Boston, I had my 
 origin in Charlestown. I was born, sir, within a stone's- 
 throw of the spot where the first Court of Assistants was 
 held, and where Governor John W'inthrop for the first time 
 on the soil of Massachusetts unrolled the charter which he 
 
Xvi FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 brought over from England. It always has seemed to me 
 that a statue of Winthrop holding the invaluable charter 
 ought to be erected upon that spot; or, at least, some 
 memorial should be placed there to distinguish that great 
 historic event. 
 
 Before forming a town, however, and before taking 
 measures to constitute a commonwealth, the first thing 
 which Winthrop and his associates did was to form a 
 church, — showing that the chief object which they had in 
 mind, and what they came here under so many privations 
 to. secure, was the free, unmolested worship of God, ac- 
 cording to the dictates of their own consciences. And 
 this first work which they did has lasted to this day. The 
 First Church has now precisely the same form of covenant, 
 in precisely the same words, which was framed and signed 
 by Winthrop, by Isaac Johnson, — the husband of the 
 Lady Arbella, — by Deputy-Governor Dudley, by John 
 Wilson, the first minister, and the others. This was on 
 July 30, 1630. The first Court of Assistants was held on 
 the 23d of August following, at which the first thing deter- 
 mined upon was how the ministers should be maintained. 
 This was fifteen days before Boston was named. 
 
 The difference between the first house of worship erected 
 by Winthrop and his associates, the low, mud-plastered 
 building at the corner of State and Devonshire streets, and 
 the tasteful temple which their successors now hold, at the 
 corner of Berkeley and Marlborough streets, marks, as 
 well as any other illustration which can be given, the ad- 
 vance which these two hundred and fifty years have brought 
 about. But the most interesting memorial we have in our 
 present elegant architectural church edifice is the original 
 church covenant, inscribed on one of the stained-glass 
 windows. By this we testify that, whatever change and 
 progress may be brought about by prosperity in material 
 things, there need be no change in the expression of Chris- 
 tian fellowship. Governor Winthrop, we are told, often, in 
 
PRELIMINARY PROCEEDINGS. xvii 
 
 the absence of his minister, exhorted in the church. And 
 this grace, or at least the facuhy of exhibiting it, has been 
 shared by his successors in office. 
 
 We of the First Church in Boston cheerfully co-operate 
 with }'ou, sir, and the other fathers of the city, in seeking 
 to pay honor to the memory of John Winthrop, your 
 founder and our founder. No character, during the cen- 
 turies of modern history, is more illustrious for those pecu- 
 liarly combined qualities of persistency and resignation, of 
 courage and meekness, of firmness and conciliation, which 
 he exhibited in the accomplishment of his great work, — 
 the founding of a Christian commonwealth. Moses, in 
 leading the Israelites through the wilderness, did not show 
 greater faith and courage than did Winthrop when he 
 pioneered his fleet of ten ships to these inhospitable shores. 
 Whatever good influence Massachusetts has exerted, what 
 she is and what she has been, may be traced back to the 
 good seed which he brought with him and planted here. 
 
 Mr. Mayor, the motto on our city seal — Siciit patribiis, 
 sit Dais nobis — is an official acknowledgment of the provi- 
 dence of God, and a perpetual prayer for its continuance. 
 This is the lesson of the hour. As long as in church and 
 in school and in daily life the providence of God is de- 
 voutly recognized, we need fear no evil. 
 
 By a felicitous arrangement, the Commemoration Ser- 
 vices on the part of the city, on September i/th, were 
 held in the Old South Meeting-house, so closely asso- 
 ciated with many of the great historic events which trans- 
 pired in Boston during its last century and a half; and, in 
 order to prevent any delay or confusion, they were ap- 
 pointed to be held at nine o'clock in the forenoon, before 
 the splendid pageant of the procession. This, although a 
 novel, was a very judicious and appropriate course of 
 proceeding on the part of the city, and is worthy of imita- 
 tion in the future. 
 
xviii FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 As the minister of the First Church was spending his 
 vacation abroad at this time, his place as chaplain of the 
 day was supplied, at his request, by his brother Rev. 
 George E. Ellis, D.D., of Boston, formerly minister of 
 the Harvard Church in the Charlestown District of the 
 city, but at this time a parishioner of the First Church, 
 which he most acceptably represented on this interesting 
 occasion. 
 
 In the oration delivered by His Honor Fredekick O. 
 Prince, the Mayor, the following appropriate reference 
 was made to the historic connection of the First Church 
 with the old town of Boston, closing with a just tribute to 
 its present minister: — 
 
 " Among the first acts of the colonists upon their arrival 
 in New England was the formation of a church. The cove- 
 nant was signed July 30, 1630, and this was the foundation 
 of the First Church of Boston. The meetings of the con- 
 gregation were originally held under the shade of an oak- 
 tree, literally a house not made with hands. The first 
 meeting-house was built in 1632, and was said to have had 
 mud walls and a thatched roof. It was located in State 
 Street, where Brazer's Building now stands. In 1639 a 
 new house was built on the site in Washington Street, now 
 occupied by Joy's Building. The cost was paid by the 
 weekly church collections. This fact is interesting as show- 
 ing that thus early the people of Boston initiated the policy 
 of supporting religion by voluntary contributions, without 
 recourse to rates or taxation bylaw. In 1711 the house 
 was destroyed by fire and rebuilt. In 1808 the society 
 removed to a new meeting-house on Chauncy Street, 
 where it remained until 1868, when it removed to the 
 beautiful church on Berkeley Street, where, under the 
 charge of its present excellent pastor, it is successfully 
 performing its Christian work. Esto pcrpctua ! '' 
 
PRELIMINARY PROCEEDINGS. xix 
 
 In the procession whi"ch followed and constituted the 
 great public demonstration of the day, the First Church 
 was represented by the acting chaplain and a part of the 
 Committee, in the carriages with the other invited guests. 
 
 The foregoing brief account of the participation of " the 
 First Church in Boston " in the late imposing celebration 
 of the city is here included, not only for the reason that 
 the elegant edition of the Memorial Volume published by 
 the city is already exhausted, but also because it seemed 
 to fall within the province of the Committee, as indicated in 
 the first Report to the Parish, to make arrangements for 
 uniting in some way with the city authorities, and to put 
 upon their own record, as well, the results of their doings. 
 It will be seen that the close connection between the old 
 church and the old town of Boston was duly recognized in 
 both celebrations of their common jubilee. 
 
 During the absence of the minister in Europe, Mr. 
 Arthur B. Ellis attended, by invitation, the general 
 meetings of the Committee. 
 
 Invitatfons to the celebration of the First Church were 
 extended to the ministers of churches formed in Massa- 
 chusetts before 1650, to the churches formed directly from 
 the First Church, to various ministers and bishops, Ro- 
 manist and Protestant, of all the different denominations ; 
 to the President of the United States, the Governor of 
 Massachusetts, the Mayor of Boston ; to many other prom- 
 inent citizens, and to the Vicar of St. Botolph, and others, 
 of Boston, ICngland. Admission to the floor of the church 
 was by ticket only ; the gallery was thrown open to the 
 public. The half of the floor north of the broad aisle was 
 reserved for invited guests, the other half for the members 
 of the society and their friends. The arrangements were 
 so complete, and were so well carried out by the Com- 
 mittee and the ushers in attendance, and the services of the 
 pulpit and the choir, the public addresses and the poem, 
 
XX FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 were all so excellent, so elevated and catholic in spirit, 
 that the occasion will be remembered as a fit observance 
 of one of the most interesting anniversaries connected with 
 the history of Boston and of Massachusetts. 
 
 Simultaneously with these proceedings, Mr. ARTHUR 
 B. Ellis, son of the minister, was busily engaged in 
 collecting materials for a complete history of the First 
 Church in Boston ; and having received sufificient encour- 
 agement, he announced his intention to prepare and pub- 
 lish the work on his own responsibility. Rev. GEORGE 
 E. Ellis will assist him in the revision, and will write 
 the Preface. The Committee, therefore, took no steps 
 towards the appointment of an historiographer, as con- 
 templated in the Report of the Standing Committee and 
 Deacons above-mentioned, and they have omitted in this 
 volume much matter which would otherwise have been in- 
 serted. The work of Mr. Ellis will be published in a 
 style similar to this volume, and may be deemed a com- 
 panion to it. The two together may serve the important 
 purpose of perpetuating a worthy record of the most in- 
 teresting events in the history of this ancient church, and 
 of the late most successful and satisfactory Commemo- 
 ration. 
 
 The Committee on the Memorial Volume, having been 
 intrusted with the preparation of this work, have caused it 
 to be illustrated by the views of the two former houses of 
 worship and of the present church edifice ; and also by 
 photographs of the first and of the present minister, and 
 of Mr. Nathaniel Thayer, one of the descendants of 
 Rev, John Cotton, and one who for many years was 
 Chairman of the Standing Committee, and whose counsel 
 and valuable aid have always been liberally bestowed. 
 
laeoi "nota «uen i "owtt 
 
 ^ogj^'VOv^fi'^ 
 
HISTORICAL SERMONS 
 
 ON THE OCCASION OF THE 
 
 ^boo llnmtirrii anti jFiftictl) ^nnibrrsaru 
 
 First Church of Christ in Boston 
 
 P,Y REV. RUFUS ELLIS, D.D. 
 
HISTORICAL SERMONS. 
 
 I. 
 
 '• For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose 
 
 BUILDER AND MAKER IS GOD." — //tA xi. lO. 
 
 ON Thursday of this week we hope to commem- 
 orate the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary 
 of the foundation of this church; but I must not 
 fail to say that the 30th of July, Old Style, or the 
 9th of August, New Style, and not the 18th of No- 
 vember, was the birthday of our religious congrega- 
 tion. We can plead as apologies for our delay only 
 those habits of modern life, even in our Northern 
 city, which make a midsummer gathering all but 
 impossible, and the fact that until the autumn of the 
 year 1630 the Sunday worship of First Church was 
 divided between Charlestown and Boston, and this 
 church had not become the First Church of Christ 
 in Boston. Our last Half-Century Sermon was 
 preached by my predecessor in this ministry, on the 
 29th of August, 1S30; after the time, because, per- 
 haps, the summers were already unfavorable to the 
 assembling of city congregations. You might ask 
 me to bring up the story of our church fcM" the last 
 
4 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTOxN. 
 
 fifty years ; but this has already been done, — partly 
 when Dr. Frothingham took leave of you as your 
 minister, and partly by myself as we have passed 
 from one house of worship to another, or have come 
 to one and another stage of our journeying together. 
 And so I am rather moved to go back to the begin- 
 ning, and from the beginning to advance a little 
 way forward through the years when this churcli 
 and this town were one, and the congregation not 
 only the First, but the only church of the infant 
 I/' community, — that is, from July 30, 1630, to June 5, 
 1650, at which time the Second Church was gath- 
 ered, — a very stirring period in the lives of the Old 
 and of the New England, — lives which were indeed 
 far more than now one life, though Old and New 
 were then weeks or months- apart, and not, as now, 
 only moments. 
 
 On that midsummer day, which we recall as our 
 birthday, four Englishmen came together for a most 
 solemn act, in a spot on the north side of Charles 
 River, which the natives called Mishawam, and which 
 had already got the name of Charleton or Charles- 
 town. All of them leaders, one of them, John Win- 
 throp, who is richly entitled to be first named, was 
 the leader of some thousand men and women, who 
 crossed, between the spring and winter of 1630, from 
 England to the Bay of Massachusetts. Of these, 
 one hundred and fifty, under Winthrop's guidance, 
 had found their way to the banks of the Mystic and 
 the Charles, the germs of a new commonwealth in 
 
HISTORICAL SERMONS. 5 
 
 their minds and hearts. They were loyal subjects 
 of England's king, and, in their free fashion, loving 
 children of England's Church ; but in the State and 
 in the Church they had found themselves straitened 
 in the dear old home. Conforming as far as they 
 honestly could to the ancient order, they still longed 
 for a larger liberty, and a ministry more according 
 to the Spirit as it moved upon their hearts. In many 
 instances thev had found much induls^ence from 
 church authorities. John Cotton makes a very ten- 
 der acknowledgment of this allowance in a touching 
 letter to the Bishop of Lincoln. Indeed, not a little 
 of the Christian freedom, which was afterward ruled 
 out, and necessarily organized as Dissent, was in that 
 day enjoyed within the limits of the English Church. 
 Nevertheless, our fathers and mothers in this con- 
 gregation, much as they loved the old religious home, 
 were no longer quite at home in it. It was not 
 enough for them to join in its common prayer and 
 to be members of its multitudinous Church, and to 
 live to2:ether in no closer relio^ious communion than 
 it provided in the order of its Christian year and in 
 its beautiful ceremonial. For more than all else to 
 them was their relio^ion, — not one of manv realities, 
 but the one reality of their life, — and they must 
 build it into home and city. So these men and 
 women were in the wilderness, — a worn, enfeebled, 
 and, with all their earnestness and singleness of pur- 
 pose, a much depressed, though not disheartened 
 company. It was their day of trial, and to their 
 
6 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 faith it was the very time for entering into the closest 
 religious communion, that they might be strong and 
 patient together. It had been their way in the old 
 country, so far as it was permitted, to supplement 
 the usual and obligatory ministries and observances 
 of the national Church by a kind of congregation 
 within the congregation, — a company of men and 
 women, covenanting each with the other, and all 
 with the Invisible Head, to live by the divine grace 
 and in all mutual love and fidelity. There was such 
 a company in the great Church of St. Botolph in 
 Old Boston, England, with which some of these im- 
 migrants had been connected. Sunday afternoons 
 and on week-days, — notably on Thursdays, — these 
 congregations listened to lectures and joined in free 
 prayer, under the spiritual leadership of ministers, 
 some of whom still served in the English Church, 
 while others had overtaxed the patience of their 
 bishops, and had been silenced for non-conformity 
 with the ceremonies, which seemed to these earnest 
 Protestants inseparably associated with the corrup- 
 tions of Rome. Gradually these congregations be- 
 came the realities of the living present ; the old 
 ritual was positively an offence to their fervid spir- 
 its ; the Church was again the two or three met 
 together in the name of Jesus; and when they 
 found the ocean between them and their old home, 
 and were removed forever from the old places of 
 prayer, with their tender associations, and were no 
 longer under any temptations or obligations to con- 
 
HISTORICAL SERMONS. 7 
 
 form, — it was inevitable that the new communion 
 should come into the place of the old, and an ex- 
 treme simplicity supplant an extreme formalism. It 
 is interesting to note how careful they wqre, for a 
 time at least, not to discredit, or in any way dispar- 
 age, the Church which they seemed to have out- 
 grown ; and yet, none the less, it dropped away from 
 them as the husk from the ripe fruit, and, as time 
 went on, became to their fervid spirits a hinderance 
 and a stumbling-block. 
 
 So, as when Judaism became the simplicity of 
 Christ, they passed gradually and half-consciously 
 from ecclesiastical Christianity into a pure Congre- 
 gationalism or independency, almost without priest 
 and ritual ; and, in our Bay of Massachusetts, four 
 chief men of the little company of emigrants came 
 together to prepare the way and make the beginning 
 of what they call a congregation or church, under 
 Christ their head, Christ the Invisible, mediated and 
 represented by no hierarchy. Four English gentle- 
 men, one of them an ordained and highly connected 
 minister in the English Church, moved to prompt 
 action by the stress of the times, invited their fellow- 
 Christians of Salem and Plymouth to keep the 30th 
 of July (it was a Friday) as a fast; and on that day 
 they prepared and subscribed the covenant of this 
 church as it stands forth upon one of our church 
 windows to-day. Following the signature of John 
 Winthrop, we read the names of Thomas Dudley, 
 Isaac Johnson, and Rev. John Wilson. 
 
8 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 John Winthrop came of good English stock, and 
 was born in Groton, Suffolk County, in 1587, now 
 forty-three years of age, religious and wise, gentle 
 and steadfast, more than abreast of his time, — a 
 man in whom Church and State might well be at 
 one ; a governor whose name stands at the head of 
 the covenanted company, not for a form or a show, 
 but because he was indeed the head and front of 
 the fellowship. He lives still in some exquisite 
 letters, as well as in his sensible and careful record 
 of the experiences of the young colony, and most 
 of all in the State in which his best life was forever 
 embodied ; and it was most happy that a common- 
 wealth so dominated by theologians was governed 
 by a statesman like Winthrop, who could be at 
 once a theologian and a man of large political wis- 
 dom, common-sense, and sweet humanity. It is 
 recorded of him that, when a preacher could not be 
 found, he " exercised in the way of prophesying," 
 that is, he preached ; and one cannot help wishing 
 that some of those lay sermons had been taken down, 
 especially as the pulpit literature of the time and 
 place are not for us very interesting or edifying. 
 
 By the side of Winthrop stands Thomas Dudley, 
 born in Northampton, England, in the year 1576, — 
 a man of a sincere temper and earnest, honest pur- 
 pose, as we cannot doubt, but somewhat querulous 
 and exacting, and quite as ready to insist upon his 
 rights as to discharge his duties, nevertheless hon- 
 orable and honored, if not so lovable as our admira- 
 
HISTORICAL SERMONS. 9 
 
 ble first governor. He had served Queen Elizabeth 
 of England as a captain of English soldiers in the 
 French army under Henry IV., and had been the 
 faithful steward of the Earl of Lincoln. Isaac John- 
 son comes next, — " a prime man amongst us, having 
 the best estate of any, zealous for religion, and the 
 greatest furtherer of this plantation," but a man fast 
 passing into the shadow of sickness and death, first 
 of his wife, the Lady Arbella, daughter of the Earl 
 of Lincoln, and soon after his own. " Dead since " 
 was presently written over his name as it stands 
 under the covenant ; and, as Dudley tells us, " he 
 made a most godly end, dying willingly, professing 
 his life better spent in promoting this plantation 
 than it could have been any other way. He left us 
 a loss greater than the most conceived." 
 
 The fourth signer is Rev. John Wilson, born in 
 1588. His father had been chaplain to the Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, canon of Windsor, prebendary 
 of Rochester, and rector of Cliffe in Kent ; and in 
 the Chapel of St. George, at Windsor, there was, 
 until 1 789, a gravestone, a brass upon which marked 
 the place of his burial by the figure of a man, and 
 these fitting inscriptions: "To me to live is Christ, 
 and to die is gain," and "Who thinks of death in 
 life can never die." John Wilson had i)reached in 
 Sudburv, in Suffolk, some eifrht or nine vears. He 
 does not write his name first. It is not his church. 
 He claims no precedence as a clergyman, though 
 he prized his orders. He is one of the brethren and 
 
lO FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 a member of the congregation with the rest. I con- 
 fess that I am greatly drawn to him, as to one who 
 was not given to much self-assertion, and might easily 
 have made for himself a greater name than has been 
 granted him. He had been sorely harassed in Eng- 
 land for non-conformity, and came to this country 
 for freedom and peace. The first religious teacher 
 of the church, and then associated with the teacher 
 as pastor, he shared and survived the services of 
 two other ministers, — according to my poor judg- 
 ment, a wiser and better balanced man, as I cannot 
 help saying, than the famous John Cotton, and, 
 measured by the standard of his time, of much mod- 
 eration and gentleness. If his sermons, save here 
 and there one, have not survived him, they can 
 hardly have been less interesting than those of his 
 great colleague, whose expository discourses the 
 antiquarian still tries to read, not without a feeling 
 of gratitude that he did not yield to the urgency of 
 Hueh Peters and the rest, and devote himself exclu- 
 sively to what they called " raising marginal notes 
 upon Scripture." So much of John Wilson, who 
 came over with the first company, leaving an un- 
 willing wife, who remained behind until 1635, — " I 
 marvel," wrote Margaret Winthrop, "what mettle 
 she is made of," — the first teacher as well as pastor 
 of our church, very tender toward the old ways as 
 well as forward-looking and forward-moving, and, 
 as we shall perhaps see by and by, a good, sensible 
 politician in the best sense of that abused word, and 
 
HISTORICAL SERMONS. II 
 
 able to stand between Winthrop and a fanatical 
 crowd in a day of trial for the infant common- 
 wealth. 
 
 It has been my privilege during the past summer 
 to spend a few days in that part of England which 
 was the home of these founders before they crossed 
 the ocean. In the shires of Suffolk, Lincoln, Rut- 
 land, Northampton, Derby, you will find the places 
 that knew them while their feet pressed English 
 soil. I have stood under Winthrop's mulberry-tree 
 in Groton, and traced the fair record of his baptism 
 in the church of that parish which the generous 
 bounty of that good man's descendants in this 
 country is restoring and beautifying. I have been 
 hospitably entertained by the family of Johnson, 
 whose Isaac, know^n as the Puritan, came to this 
 new world with his fair wife, the Earl's daughter, 
 only to share with her its sicknesses and its death ; 
 and I learned that the Johnsons are still lords of 
 the manor as of old in Rutland, presiding over 
 the noble charities of the Archdeacon, the grand- 
 father of our founder, patrons of famous parishes 
 and schools, as in the lovely towns of Oakham and 
 Uppingham, with their beautiful old churches and 
 castles. I have visited with great interest the larger 
 of these schools, and have tarried in Boston, as ten 
 years ago, to visit St. Botolph s cathedral-like pile, 
 and stand by John Cotton's pulpit; our Unitarian 
 friends in that city extending the warmest hospi- 
 talitv, and sendins^: to vou kindest c:reetinG;s for vour 
 
12 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 two hundred and fiftieth year of church life. I have 
 passed through Sudbury, where Wilson preached 
 several years, and through Northampton and Derby, 
 the birthplaces of Dudley and Cotton ; and even in 
 our changing world it has been easy to see from 
 how much that was binding, stately, and seductive 
 they went forth in obedience to heavenly visions. 
 They left a world which most men would have pro- 
 nounced very good, to make another world which, 
 to their faith, hope, and charity, was unspeakably 
 better. Even in dear Old England they could not 
 do God's work as he would have it done. I do not 
 wonder that they clung to the old altars and the old 
 observances as long as they could. It was the bond 
 of life -long custom and usage, the dear habit of 
 childhood, and not constraint and calculation, which 
 made them at least partial conformists so long as 
 they were on English soil and within sight of the 
 old parish churches ; and they had scarcely the heart 
 to rear any chapels of dissent by their side. They 
 must cross the sea for this, and they could do so 
 only with a sad intensity. It was a day of faith, the 
 golden age of English piety. It was not good for 
 EnQ:land that she could not bear with them. She 
 needs to-day, and in this very hour, the life that 
 made the New England out of the Old, and that 
 passed so lavishly into this church of our fathers, as 
 into so many other foundations upon which so many 
 generations have builded. 
 
 We find, then, in this meeting of these four 
 
HISTORICAL SERMONS. 1 3 
 
 fathers of the Massacliusetts Colony at Charlestown, 
 the fountain and origin of our church Hfe ; and it 
 was undoubtedly the purpose and the hope of these 
 fathers and their associates that this church life 
 should be at once the mind and the heart, the in- 
 most source out of which should be the issues of all 
 other living, — in the home, the market-place, and 
 the commonwealth. The congregation was to in- 
 spire and guide, to supply voters, to call offenders 
 to account, to advise magistrates, to pervade and 
 occupy and possess all things, — the society of soci- 
 eties, seeking in all faith to be a kingdom of God. 
 Of course there were difficulties in such an enter- 
 prise, which all too quickly came to light. These 
 congregations were already not one, but many, each 
 with its own mind, and that a very decided mind. 
 Besides, from the very beginning, there were some 
 honest men and women who were not yet ready to 
 join any of the congregations and so qualify them- 
 selves to be voters ; and what if the ministers should 
 be of one opinion and the rulers of another.^ But 
 as yet it did not appear whereunto all this would 
 grow, or how difficult it would be to maintain church 
 sujDremacy or in any way to blend Church and State 
 in a Christian commonwealth. 
 
 On the first Lord's Day after this memorable 
 Friday, five more names were written under the 
 covenant, and so on, week by week, until they are 
 sixty-four men and thirty-two women. The cove- 
 nant and the siirnin*'- are alike set down in our 
 
14 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 church records for the 27th of August, probably 
 because this date marks a certain completing of the 
 enrolment and a formal organization of the church 
 in simple congregational fashion by the choice of 
 Wilson as teacher, Nowell as elder, Gager and 
 Aspinwall as deacons, — we of the congregation 
 chose them ; and upon each and the other were laid 
 ordaining hands, Mr. Wilson, the teacher, distinctly 
 declaring that he meant to put no slight upon his 
 orders in the Church of England. The little con- 
 gregation had no need to fashion any ritual. They 
 found it only too delicious to pray as the Spirit 
 gave them utterance. They will not have even the 
 Bible read in the course of their worship, unless it 
 is expounded, and the truths brought into the 
 light by the divine blessing upon a living ministry. 
 They will have none of what they called "dumb 
 reading." 
 
 What were styled " conceived," or, as we say, ex- 
 tempore, prayers had been allowed them in their 
 old church only grudgingly and in very stinted 
 measure. Here there shall be no other prayers, not 
 though it were the Lord's Prayer, which had been 
 so misused as a pater 7ioster?ind by vain repetitions. 
 They would share no white surplice with Romish 
 priests, but would minister in the scholar's black 
 gown of Geneva. It seemed to them a mere formal- 
 ity, and too much like the genuflections of the old 
 superstition, to bow the head at the name of Jesus, 
 though none could exceed them in their reverence 
 
HISTORICAL SERMONS. I5 
 
 for that Holy One. Like the early disciples, they 
 would gather about the sacramental table rather than 
 kneel about the altar, lest haply men should say, 
 " they worship the bread and the wine." They will 
 have no funeral prayers, but will bear their dead to 
 the last resting-place and lay them away in touching 
 silence, lest they should be thought to pray for the 
 departed spirit, and say masses in the ancient man- 
 ner. They will not only lay aside the marriage ring 
 as heathenish, but, by a strange revulsion, they will 
 have marriage a civil service to be performed, not 
 by the minister, but by a magistrate. They cannot 
 quite refuse to sing ; but there shall be no instru- 
 ment sa\'e the human voice, and such rough psal- 
 mody as was supplied to the Puritans of Amsterdam 
 by Henry Ainsworth; their tunes, some ten in num- 
 ber, oftenest York, Hackney, Windsor, St. Mary, and 
 St. Martyn's. 
 
 Thus organized, the congregation entered upon 
 an autumn of fair, open weather, with gentle frosts, 
 followed by an early and very severe, but not j3ro- 
 tracted winter. From the first the settlers steadily 
 gravitate to our peninsula, invited and welcomed by 
 the hospitable Blaxton, who, though clerical himself, 
 soon found the ecclesiastical element among his 
 guests excessive, and struck out anew into the wil- 
 derness, where he could be quit of ministers as well 
 as of bishops. Tliere was as yet no house of wor- 
 ship. The great house at Charlestown, in fine 
 weather a widely sj)reading tree, and sometimes one 
 
r6 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 of the few dwellings, served for a meeting-place. 
 Modest shelters — cabins, I suppose, we should call 
 them — were gradually springing up within the com- 
 pass of some two miles of dry land, what seemed at 
 high water two islands ; but it was a time of sick- 
 ness, struggle, suffering from extreme scarcity of 
 food, and much depression. Shell-fish had to serve 
 for meat, ground-nuts and acorns for bread. Deacon 
 Gamer's term of service had been of the briefest. 
 He died on the ist of September, — "a godly man," 
 they said, " and a skillful chirurgeon." On the last 
 day of the same month, Isaac Johnson followed the 
 same way. The Lady Arbella had died a month be- 
 fore at Salem. Her burial-place was said to be near 
 Bridge Street, Salem, as you go to Beverly. The 
 earthly remains of her husband were laid in what is 
 now King's Chapel Burial-ground. The teacher 
 remained with the congregation until the end of the 
 first month of spring, when, with several of the emi- 
 grants, he went to England, — some, like himself, to 
 bring their families, others in discouragement, not 
 proposing to return. Winthrop records that, on the 
 29th of March, about ten of the clock, Mr. Codding- 
 ton and Mr. Wilson, and divers of the congregation, 
 met at the governor's ; and there Mr. Wilson, pray- 
 ing and exhorting the congregation to love, com- 
 mended to them the exercise of prophecy in his 
 absence, and designed those whom he thought 
 most fit for it, — the governor, Mr. Dudley, and El- 
 der Nowell. Then he desired the governor to com- 
 
HISTORICAL S1:R.M0NS. I 7 
 
 mend himself aiid the rest to God by prax'er, \vliicli, 
 being done, they accompanied him to the boat on his 
 way to the ship, wliich sailed with hini from Saleni 
 to England, on the ist of April, for more than a 
 year's absence, that is, until the 26th of May, 1632. 
 The church, however, was not during so much time 
 without pastor or teacher. By the 2d of November 
 the charge passed, for the time, into the able hands 
 of famous John Eliot, who will ever be gratefully 
 remembered as the Apostle to the Indians. The 
 church would gladly have associated him with Wil- 
 son, giving him, in the joint offices wiiich their cus- 
 tom provided, the place of teacher, for which Wilson, 
 in their judgment, was less fitted than for the work 
 of pastor, though sermons were expected from both 
 clergymen in the course of the Sunday ministrations. 
 Indeed, there was no lack of ministers. Roger Wil- 
 liams, of whom the world has heard so much, had 
 arrived in Boston on the 5th of February, 1631, that 
 is, before the departure of Wilson, In a letter, writ- 
 ten to Cotton, of Plymouth, forty years later, Williams 
 claims to have been unanimously chosen teacher of 
 our church, and adds that he declined the office, be- 
 cause of their tacit, if not open, communion with the 
 Church of England, which, in his judgment, was no 
 true Christian church, and not fit to have communion 
 with. The record has no word upon the subject : 
 but our record is very meagre, as is often the case 
 where men are making history, and have no time to 
 write it down. We only know, as I have said, that 
 
l8 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 Eliot, who is remembered for his deeds as WilHams 
 for his theories, took the temporary charge, while the 
 future founder of Rhode Island went on his way for 
 a season to Salem. 
 
 It is characteristic of the spiritual ferment of the 
 times that, in the interval during which the con- 
 gregation was only in the care of laymen, there 
 came from the church of Watertown the startling 
 intelligence that Elder Richard Brown maintained 
 that the Church of Rome, as well, I suppose, as the 
 churches in Boston, Dorchester, Roxbury, and his 
 own, is a true church of Christ. It would be sad, 
 indeed, to think otherwise, when we recall the proph- 
 ets, apostles, martyrs, saints, of that ancient com- 
 munion, of whom the world was not worthy; but it 
 was a heresy, then and there, to think so ; and good 
 John Winthrop, the governor, and Thomas Dudley, 
 the deputy-governor of the little commonwealth, and 
 the elder of our church, must go to Watertown, and 
 confute a doctrine so strange and dangerous. Of 
 course they could consistently claim no authority 
 over a sister church in every way their peer, and they 
 must be content to offer counsel. Richard Brown 
 seems to have been quick-tempered and passionate 
 of speech ; but, though plainly in this, as in some 
 other opinions, of a larger and better mind than his 
 brother Puritans, he allowed himself to be persuaded 
 by them, as is so often the case in theological mat- 
 ters, and their anxieties were quieted. 
 
 We see in another instance how much cono-resfa- 
 
HISTORICAL SERMONS. I9 
 
 tionalism and independency were still an experiment, 
 a theory, and an ideal. In the course of this very 
 year we find the Court protesting against the settle- 
 ment of Roger Williams over the Salem church, on 
 the ground that he had declined communion with 
 the Boston church, because the members of this 
 church had not formally separated themselves from 
 and disowned the Church of England, and had him- 
 self taught the very sensible, though, for that day, 
 very advanced doctrine, that the civil magistrate 
 might not punish the breach of the Sabbath, or any 
 other disobedience to a distinctivelv relicrious com- 
 mand. It is pleasant to observe that in this case 
 Congregationalism and independency had their way, 
 and that Mr. Williams was established in Salem 
 spite of the protest, — established, I mean, so far as 
 it was possible to bind to one place and duty a per- 
 son so restless and erratic ; for we hear of him in 
 Plymouth by the 25th of October, 1632, and again 
 in Salem in 1633. The magistrates of the little col- 
 ony did not confine themselves to protest in things 
 spiritual and moral. Henry Lynne was whipped 
 once and again for slandering the government and 
 the churches ; and early in this very year a much 
 severer sentence for a similar offence was passed and 
 executed upon Philip RatclifTe. 
 
 But we must remember that this was only the 
 earlier half of the seventeenth century, and that as 
 late as 16 10, about the time when John Cotton 
 took the charge of St. Botolph's in Old Boston, an 
 
20 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 Arian or Unitarian was burned for his heresy at 
 Smithfield. King James I., who prided himself 
 upon his theology, tried, in one of his sober hours, 
 to convince him of his error ; but, having learned 
 from the heretic's own lips that for many years he 
 had thought it unscriptural to pray to Jesus, he 
 spurned him with his foot as unfit to be in his royal 
 presence, and consigned him to the executioners. 
 
 The little company in Charlestown and Boston 
 were much heartened by the return of Mr. Wilson ; 
 and, although the worshippers from Charlestown 
 were soon to have a distinct organization of their own, 
 they joined the larger company in building a house 
 of worship and a dwelling for the teacher. The 
 contribution for this purpose amounted to £ 1 20. 
 The church was, of course, a very humble structure, 
 of which there is only a traditional likeness. Built 
 of wood and clay, it stood at the easterly corner 
 which State Street makes with Devonshire Street. 
 I may add that the name " meeting-house " had not 
 yet displaced the word " church." It was a neces- 
 sity of the earlier days that the Sunday gathering- 
 place should be also the place for week-day meetings, 
 and should come to be the meeting-house, as was 
 the case indeed with the great cathedrals in the 
 days of their greatest usefulness and glory, and as 
 it was indeed until within a very few years with 
 old St. Botolph's Church, used, so they told me, 
 as a voting-place, what they call in England " the 
 hustings." 
 
HISTORICAL SERMOxN'S. 21 
 
 The unavoidable withdrawal of the members from 
 Charlestown — nineteen men and sixteen women — 
 left Wilson with a small company ; and, as it seems 
 to have been their settled conviction that they must 
 have a more commanding teacher, he was formally 
 installed as pastor of the church on the 22d of No- 
 vember, 1632, and filled the office with exceeding 
 fidelity to a good old age, — an illustration of the 
 Scripture that, when a man's ways please the Lord, 
 He makes even his enemies to be at peace with hmi ; 
 for there were divisions and alienations, and bitter- 
 ness even in those fervid days. Meanwhile, in the 
 Old England, Archbishop Laud, one of the most 
 insane of ecclesiastical reactionists, was preparing a 
 teacher after their own heart for this New England 
 conf^reo-ation. lohn Cotton had been for some 
 twenty years rector of the fine and almost cathedral 
 Church of St. Botolph, Boston. He had carried 
 to that parish from the University of Cambridge an 
 excellent reputation as a scholar, especially in the 
 Greek and Latin tongues. Of the Greek, he is re- 
 ported to have had a critic's knowledge, and liis 
 Latin is said to have been even elegant. His first 
 university sermon, we are told, was enthusiastically 
 received by the dignitaries of the colleges, and great 
 things were predicted of the young preacher. But 
 his hearers were not long of this mind. Pricked 
 to the heart by the words of an earnest Puritan 
 preacher, he pressed upon the congregation repent- 
 ance toward God, and faith in the Lord jesus Christ ; 
 
22 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 but what they heard with their ears only served to 
 harden their hearts and darken their faces. It befell 
 him quite contrary to the experience of Dr. Chalmers, 
 the famous Scotch preacher. So long as Chalmers 
 was what is or was known in Scotland as " a moder- 
 ate," no one cared much to hear him, while the lar- 
 gest church would scarcely hold his congregation 
 when he became earnest and evangelical, and had 
 a point to carry in his preaching. But Cotton's 
 fame as a preacher must have depended largely, first 
 and last, upon voice and manner. His style is 
 didactic, expository, and extremely dry ; and one 
 wonders what can have become of the eloquence 
 w^hich so charmed the dons of the University, or 
 why that might not have been retained for the 
 Master's service, as Wesley claimed the world's 
 tunes for sacred uses. Nevertheless, we must not 
 go behind the record ; and it is beyond question that 
 to hear John Cotton preach, and look up to him as 
 teacher and guide, spiritual and even temporal, was 
 to our fathers the end of all perfection. He was 
 greatly prized and loved in Old Boston. Williams, 
 his English diocesan, not only Bishop of Lincoln, 
 but Dean of Westminster and Keeper of the Great 
 Seal, a busy, bustling, but most kindly man, ex- 
 tended to him every indulgence; and yet a church 
 with a settled ritual and order could hardly tolerate 
 such freedoms as even Cotton, unwilling Dissenter as 
 he was, felt compelled to insist upon ; and to Arch- 
 bishop Laud his irregularities were intolerable. It 
 
HISTORICAL SERMONS. 
 
 23 
 
 was plain that his ministry at lioston must soon 
 come to an end, and it seemed likely that he would 
 pass from his rectory to prison. Indeed, had he not 
 remained in close retirement in London, that would 
 undoubtedly have been his fate. So he recalled 
 the Scripture, " If they persecute you in one city, 
 flee to another;" and, in company with Thomas 
 Hooker and Samuel Stone, reached Boston in the 
 " Grififm," the 4th of September, having foiled the 
 attempts of the government to detain him and his 
 comjDanions. 
 
 When we find how utterly and absolutely congre- 
 gational Cotton had become, we can hardly wonder 
 that the Primate of England was not content with 
 him. He refused to baptize his child born upon the 
 passage, not, as he said, with his exasperating mi- 
 nuteness, because he had scruples as to the use of 
 salt water, but because, being no longer the minister 
 of a congregation, he did not hold himself em- 
 powered to administer the sacraments ; and so the 
 boy got the name " Seaborn " only after his father 
 had been installed teacher of our church, and so had 
 gained the right to baptize him. It might suffice to 
 say that Cotton was welcomed to New England with 
 open arms, and sought by one and another congre- 
 gation, and that it was even proposed that a State 
 maintenance should be pro\ided for him. This last 
 proposition was happily discountenanced ; and he be- 
 came at once the teacher of our church, as \\ ilson 
 was already the j^astor. 
 
24 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 The simple ceremonial is briefly set down in 
 Winthrop's journal, with the story of tlie admission 
 to the fellowship of the church of the minister and 
 his wife ; and we are glad to learn that the baptism 
 of the little Seaborn was no longer delayed. It was 
 a day of promise and hope. The colonists had 
 been assured that the ceremonies of the English 
 Church would not be pressed upon them, and that 
 their enemies, Gardner, Morton, and Ratcliffe, 
 would not be allowed to prejudice them with the 
 authorities in the fatherland ; and though Dudley, 
 in his severe Puritan temper, would not be as com- 
 pliant as the rest in kindly feeling toward bishop and 
 king, the commonwealth and the Church may well 
 be accounted happy in their prospects and fairly 
 equipped for their work in the wilderness. 
 
 In such wise and out of such living stones were 
 the foundations laid. They were worthy to uphold 
 any superstructures which in the coming ages should 
 be reared upon them. No faith could have been 
 stronger, no consciences more sincere, no desire to 
 live near to God and to his children deeper than 
 theirs who brought their all to these shores, and 
 labored, in the best light they could gain, to bring 
 order into our imperfect and, as they believed, fallen 
 world. They were altogether single and, as men 
 account, narrow. They sought the kingdom of God 
 almost as those might who cared little whether or 
 no anything else should be added to it. 
 
 Experimental religion ; obedience to the divine 
 
HISTORICAL SERMONS. 
 
 25 
 
 law as taught by Moses, as fulfilled by Jesus ; mutual 
 oversight and co-operation for the ends of practical 
 righteousness ; the commonweal ch a reign of law, 
 with so much love of thrift as is inseparable from 
 the life of an Englishman, — these were all they 
 prized and cherished. There was scarce anything, 
 Sundays or week-days, to remind one that they had 
 come from the land of Chaucer, Spenser, Bacon, 
 Shakspeare, Raleigh ; that they could exercise their 
 imaginations upon any subjects save the joys of the 
 redeemed and the sufferings of the damned ; and 
 there seemed to be no pause in the intensity of 
 their pursuit of the one thing needful. A college 
 was for them a school for the training of ministers. 
 A knowledge of Hebrew was precious, because He- 
 brew was the language in wliich God had spoken 
 to Moses; and a knowledge of Greek was precious, 
 because Greek was the language in which God had 
 caused his last word to his rebellious children to be 
 written. The heavens were watched chiefly for the 
 signs and wonders wliich proclaimed di\inc warn- 
 ings. Were men drowned in the rough sea, it was 
 "a breach of God upon them ; " for the religious and 
 moral nature pervaded and occupied and awed their 
 whole being. 
 
 In this faith they lived and endured hardness, and 
 encountered, in their endeavor to translate their truth 
 into life, endless perplexities, and have been .stigma- 
 tized as inconsistent because they could not attain 
 in the seventt'enth centurv to what we call the liber- 
 
26 riRST CHURCH in boston. 
 
 ality, aiul what they j^crhaps wouUl call, wore they 
 here, the incliHeionco aiul laxity, of the nineteenth 
 century. In this faith they died, some of them, as 
 earnest men are very likely to do, rather lamenting 
 their failures than celebrating their successes. We 
 may, if wo oan, add to their laith knowledge ; we 
 m;u' claim for earth and earthly things, tor art and 
 human culture, the rights which they seemed to 
 forget ; but, if we try to centre our life and work 
 other than they centred it, we seek to build a city 
 without foundations, and shall learn sooner or 
 later that, " e\ce}")t the Lord build the house, they 
 labor in \ain who build it." 
 
 There are deeds and sights in our modern New 
 England upon which we should be ashamed to have 
 the fatherL' of New England look, not because of 
 their Puritan scruples, but because they were Chris- 
 tians, — men of clean hands and pure eves. We 
 must be baptized again into their sj^irit of non- 
 conformitv, of intellectual and moral honesty, the 
 courage of our convictions, the spirit which does 
 not suffer men to go with the crowd when reason 
 and conscience and the living Christ bid them go 
 alone. \\ e must honor their new departures bv our 
 own torward movements. We must be content with 
 them to break rank and go alone, or be the faint 
 and few that make up the advanced army, and live 
 and die in that faith which is now, as ever, the sub- 
 stance of things hoped for, and the evidence of 
 thinos not seen. 
 
HISTORICAL SERMON'S. 27 
 
 The Frenchman Renan, in the third of his Eng- 
 lish Lectures of the present year, affirms that " the 
 nation which is much occupied with social and re- 
 ligious problems is almost always politically weak. 
 The country that dreams of a kingdom of God, that 
 lives for general ideas, and is engaged in enterprises 
 of universal interest, sacrifices, in so doing, its proper 
 individual destiny, weakens and destroys itself as an 
 earthly country. We ne\'er with impunity bear the 
 fire in our own bosoms." Let us sec to it that New 
 England in the future as in the past is a living refu- 
 tation of this dreary and unchristian philosophy, and 
 was planted to show that the precise opposite is the 
 truth of our life on earth. 
 
II. 
 
 " For it hath been declared unto me of you, my brethren, 
 
 BY THEM WHICH ARE OF THE HOUSE OF ChLOE, THAT THERE 
 ARE CONTENTIONS AMONG YOU. Is CHRIST DIVIDED ? " — I Cor. 
 i. II, 13- 
 
 T N a former sermon I have traced the history of 
 our church until the day of the installation of 
 John Cotton as teacher. I propose now to follow 
 its fortunes during those years when it was the one 
 and only church in Boston, the embodiment of the 
 religious life of the little town, and, so close was 
 the connection between things secular and things 
 sacred, as truly the town as it was the church. With 
 Cotton for teacher and Wilson for pastor, a congre- 
 gation so rich in faithful men and women may well 
 be regarded as established on this peninsula, and 
 fully equipped for its serious and difficult work. In 
 English history — and Old England and New Eng- 
 land were very closely bound together — the years 
 from 1633-4 to 1650 were crowded with events of 
 the deepest interest. We begin with Charles I. and 
 Archbishop Laud taking their first steps toward 
 their scaffolds ; and we end with Cromwell, who has 
 beheaded his king and has entered Scotland to fight 
 the battle of Dunbar. In some sort still a part of 
 
HISTORICAL SERMON'S. 
 
 29 
 
 the English nation, and filled to overflowing with 
 its new life, this congregation, in common with 
 many other congregations already formed or form- 
 ing around them, is embarked in what jM-oves to 
 be a very exacting and altogether new enterprise. 
 Partly aforethought and partly through the force of 
 circumstances they are beginning the world anew. 
 They have gone back to a few great elemental prin- 
 ciples. They are, indeed, the subjects of England, 
 and I have no doubt thought themselves quite sin- 
 cere in saying with Dudley that " in this they had 
 not altered." They were not, as he declares, " like 
 those who have dispensations to lie ; but as we were 
 free enough in England to turn our insides out- 
 wards, sometimes to our disadvantage, very unlike 
 is it that now, being procnl a fulniinc, we should 
 be so unlike ourselves." Nevertheless, they are far 
 from England, and at liberty to fashion Church and 
 State according to new patterns ; and we find that, 
 however they may be sincerely conservative and 
 may profess loyalty, whenever some special act of 
 obedience is asked of them, they take the matter into 
 consideration until the home rulers have forcrotten 
 about it, and then choose their own wav. Teemino; 
 with the spirit of the new creation, their opportuni- 
 ties are rarely lost upon them. 
 
 But with op})()rtunity comes trial. We of the 
 congregation have for our law and guidance infalli- 
 ble sacred books, especially Moses, his judicials, pat- 
 terns for our lives, political and social ; but we of 
 
30 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 the congregation, ministers and people, are fallible 
 and not altogether agreed, indeed with an im- 
 mense tendency to individualism, and as there are 
 many towns already in Massachusetts beside Bos- 
 ton, each with its congregation, and as every congre- 
 gation is theoretically independent of every other 
 and of all the rest, how will it be possible for all 
 these to be one society and to hold the faith in the 
 unity of the spirit and the bond of peace ? Where 
 religion is such an all-absorbing interest, how can 
 those who are not agreed about it live together? 
 Moreover, the religions of the Old England and of 
 the New England are rapidly diverging. What if 
 the claims of king and bishop over governor and 
 minister should be asserted and enforced ? Then, it is 
 a new country, and they are new-comers into it, with 
 scarcely any title except that they are there. Why 
 may not others come who are not and will not be 
 of the congregation, and yet wish to share its privi- 
 leges, or at least to sit down unpleasantly near ? The 
 congregation has already had a little experience of 
 some of these practical difficulties, but as yet their 
 trials had only begun ; and, at the time of which I 
 am speaking, they were full of courage and hope. 
 
 The church makes a good beginning in their 
 devoted ministry to the Indians, who are suffering 
 under a visitation of small-pox. The care and love 
 of the white man, as we are told, " wrought much 
 with them." The Englishman's God, they said, is 
 a good God. These settlers, unlike their fellow- 
 
HISTORICAL SERMONS. 3 I 
 
 Indians, did not leave them to die uncared for, and, 
 though greatly exposed, did not fall victims to the 
 disease. It is well worth recording, as indicating 
 the composition of the community even at that day, 
 that this work of charity was not confined to those 
 who were in immediate communion with the church. 
 Maverick of Winesemett, for example, though a non- 
 communicant, who must have lost his vote by the 
 legislation of 1631, was foremost in kind offices. 
 Himself, his wife and servants, went daily to them, 
 ministered to their necessities, buried their dead, 
 and took home many of their children. Along with 
 this wholesome charity, the work of the church in 
 the nurture and revival and conversion of souls goes 
 prosperously forward. Beside the care and watch 
 of those who have already been gathered in, there is 
 a considerable increase of the communicant body. 
 The coming of immigrants steadily enlarges the field 
 for the friends of independency as well as for the 
 gospel laborers. Some of the new townsmen are 
 still strongly attached to the forms of the English 
 Church and not attracted by Puritan simplicity, not 
 to say uncouthness. Others are scarcely prepared 
 for any form of Christian communion. 
 
 The lapses from Christian purity and integrity, to 
 which our earlv church records bear sad thou2:h not 
 very frequent witness, may perhaps awaken the sus- 
 picion that the outward advantages of church mem- 
 bership were a temptation to some to profess a 
 Christianity of which they had no sufficient experi- 
 
32 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 ence. Yet there can be no doubt that it was an 
 increasing congregation of sincere men and women. 
 The records show some thirty-seven additions in the 
 first three months of Mr. Cotton's ministry. 
 
 But the church could not long be allowed to con- 
 fine its energies to works of piety and love, the nurs- 
 ing of the sick, and the care of souls. There was 
 not only the Lord's Day with its double services, 
 there was also Thursday with its famous lecture and 
 its consequent half-time school. This lecture had 
 ceased to be preached before my coming to the 
 church, and I made a vain effort to reinstate it as a 
 union service for all Protestants. It lingered in that 
 way a little longer as a shadow of the past, and then 
 vanished, unless the Monday Lectureship, so called, 
 of our day be its reappearing. It is first named 
 soon after Mr. Cotton's coming, and may have been 
 a continuation of a similar meeting in Old Boston. 
 It seems to have been about equally devoted to the 
 things of Cccsar and the things of God. But, whether 
 on Thursdays or on the Lord's Day, the new teacher, 
 who was a famous expositor, drawing his answers 
 from the Scriptures in reply to the inquiries of the 
 magistrates, or prompted by what seemed to him the 
 necessities of the hour, sets in order the new house, 
 civil and religious. The ministry, he teaches, must be 
 maintained by weekly contributions. To live upon 
 the income of Church funds or from State bounties 
 is the beo-innino: of death. Each church must be 
 independent of the rest, and must demand a fresh 
 
HISTORICAL SKRMOXS. 
 
 33 
 
 profession of faith, even of those who come from a 
 sister church. A magistrate must not be deprived 
 of his office without just cause, and for no cause 
 must be arraigned as a public criminal. You may 
 vote, he taught, but be sure that you vote only for 
 certain men, — men fit to be voted for; and when, 
 on one occasion, the election which followed a 
 Thursday lecture did not content him, he caused it 
 to be reversed on the subsequent Thursday, and, by 
 putting in the right men, saved, so it is claimed, our 
 Boston Common, as we trust for all generations. 
 
 The apostle Eliot finds fault with the magistrates 
 for alleged unfair treatment of the Indians; and Mr. 
 Cotton is engaged by them to " reduce him," as their 
 phrase was, and he was persuaded to retract charges 
 which we may hope were unfounded. One is not 
 sorry to learn that Mr. Cotton's advice, w^hich was 
 sometimes uncalled for, was not always followed, as 
 once in their choice of a new governor, in spite of 
 his urging that the old incumbent should be con- 
 tinued in ofifice. That incumbent was indeed de- 
 serving of all confidence. But the republican spirit 
 must have its expression ; and why should Mr. Cot- 
 ton, who was not a very earnest republican, and who 
 had only then been made a freeman, assume so 
 much ? They will choose the old governor again 
 by and by, but not that year. They appoint a fast 
 in any time of anxiety and peril, as in 1634-5, 
 when Wilson is visiting the English Puritans, and 
 there are fears that he, with some new immigrants, 
 
34 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 may be detained and imprisoned. From time to 
 time all the ministers are called to meet with the 
 Boston church as a sort of council of State, as once 
 when two questions were proposed to them : First, 
 If a general governor is sent over from England, 
 what shall we do ? Second, Is it lawful to carry the 
 cross in our banners } The ministers replied : " As 
 to the cross in the banner, we are not ready to say. 
 That may be an idolatrous symbol or not. But as 
 to the governor, we are quite clear that we should 
 not accept him, not though we should be com- 
 pelled to fight." In a lull of more weighty matters, 
 Mr. Cotton shows from Scripture that women may 
 lay aside their veils in church, where they are not, by 
 custom of the place, the token of subjection. Mr, 
 Endecott feels compelled to take the other side ; and 
 the governor must interpose and end the discussion, 
 which waxes hot. 
 
 But the weighty matters soon came to the front. 
 You have already heard of Roger Williams and his 
 refusal to become the teacher of our congregation, 
 on the ground that its members had not sufficiently 
 separated themselves from the fellowship of the 
 English Church. Almost immediately after Mr. 
 Cotton's installation, Mr. Williams gives great of- 
 fence to the governor and assistants of Massachu- 
 setts by reiterating what he had formerly written to 
 the governor and council of Plymouth, touching 
 the invalidity of their title by King James's grant 
 and the need of compounding with the Indians. 
 
HISTORICAL SERMONS. 35 
 
 Three passages in this paper were especially annoy- 
 ins: to the masfistrates. 
 
 King James is charged with having told a solemn 
 public lie because he blessed God that he was the 
 first Christian prince who had discovered this land, 
 and again with blasphemy for calling Europe Chris- 
 tendom, and then Mr. Williams had applied portions 
 of the Book of the Revelations to King Charles in no 
 flattering manner. What he had written was prob- 
 ably only too true ; but, the governor having taken 
 advice from judicious ministers, Mr. Williams is 
 induced to submit and retract, but it was for the 
 last time. He was soon to get a surer footing upon 
 even more advanced, and firmer ground. He was 
 doubtless then on his way to his doctrines of soul 
 liberty and an extreme individualism, so extreme 
 that, for lack of what he deemed fit companionship, 
 the Lord's Supper could be no communion for him 
 save as he could observe it with his wife. 
 
 In the year 1635 the authorities of the colony 
 were much disturbed by what seemed to them the 
 erroneous and dangerous views of Mr. Williams 
 upon the functions of the magistrate as the defender 
 of the faith and the guardian of religious truth. 
 He must not said Mr. Williams, punish a breach of 
 the first table ; that is, he must not enforce the first 
 half of the ten commandments which enjoins the 
 pure worship of God. His business is with the 
 public morals and with offences against order, safety, 
 and decency, not with the soul's relations to God. 
 
36 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 He must not put an unregenerate man to his oath ; 
 for what communion has light with darkness ? If 
 these things are to be allowed, the magistrates 
 asked, appealing to the ministers and to our teacher 
 among the rest, how are we to protect ourselves 
 against heresy, apostasy, or tyranny ? Once and 
 again, in May and in October, Mr. Williams was con- 
 vented and called to account by the civil and relig- 
 ious authorities, but they were utterly unable to 
 " reduce him." This being the case, it was the 
 almost universal judgment, one minister only dis- 
 senting, that the continuance of such a heretic any 
 longer within the limits of the colony w^ould be 
 fraught with extreme peril to the Church of Christ. 
 Six weeks were allowed him in which to depart 
 beyond the jurisdiction of Massachusetts. I cannot 
 understand why any should be surprised at such a 
 sentence. We may admire Roger Williams ; but 
 why should we be scandalized because our fore- 
 fathers had not learned, any more than the rest of 
 the religious world, that the Church does not need 
 the defence of the civil arm, and that whether, as 
 now in France, it be Jesuit or atheist, the safe way 
 is to leave every man's cause to its own merits ? 
 
 The Puritans believed that in a fallen world the 
 State must control the utterance of human thought 
 as well as restrain human action. They left Eng- 
 land, not because they had learned that the utmost 
 freedom should be allowed in religious matters, but 
 because they believed that the particular restraints 
 
HISTORICAL SERMONS. 37 
 
 which king and bishops imposed upon them were 
 not sanctioned by Scripture. They had not thought 
 for a moment that a man miglit choose his own 
 church or choose to be of no church, or walk about 
 the roads and through the fields on Sunday, or re- 
 vert at his pleasure to Romanism. There must be 
 order in these to them altogether vital matters. 
 The people who could not conform in England 
 should leave Ens^land, and be suffered to co in 
 peace; and the people who could not conform in 
 Massachusetts must go back to England or do what 
 they had done, make a new home for themselves in 
 the wilderness. And perhaps they thought, not un- 
 reasonably, that Narragansett Bay was as good a 
 place to live in as Massachusetts Bay. 
 
 At all events, spite of all that our fathers had 
 suffered from the old order in the State, there was 
 a strong clinging to order of a very rigid sort, with 
 very little disposition to commit themselves to the 
 largest freedom. In answer to the propositions of 
 certain English peers made in 1634 to join the Mas- 
 sachusetts Colony, Cotton writes : " Democracy I do 
 not conceive that God ever did ordain as a fit gov- 
 ernment, either for church or commonwealth. If 
 the people be governors, who shall be governed? 
 As for monarchy and aristocracy, they are both of 
 theni clearly apj^rovcd and directed in Scripture, yet 
 so as God referreth the sovereignty to himself, and 
 setteth up theocracy in both." 
 
 Moving in this direction, a certain portion of the 
 
38 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 government were chosen for life in 1636; but this 
 arrangement soon came to an end, with the increase 
 of the troubles in England and the lessening pros- 
 pect of noble immigrants. A large religious free- 
 dom was rather the result of the emigration of 
 Englishmen to America than a part of its purpose; 
 and our fathers are to be admired rather for enduring 
 hardness themselves than for making the world easy 
 for others. They were probably quite right in the 
 opinion that Massachusetts was not large enough to 
 contain in that day the friends and the opponents 
 of Williams. It is worth noting that personally 
 they seem to have been on very friendly terms with 
 the daring innovator, and that, in its indirect results, 
 this controversy with Mr. Williams advanced the 
 interests of freedom ; for it was decided in First 
 Church that communicating with the Church of 
 England should be no disqualification for our own 
 religious fellowship. Some, who are in the habit of 
 complaining that Williams was banished, seem 
 hardly to have understood how little there was in 
 the constitution of the new community to have 
 made any other course likely. The church leaned 
 almost absolutely upon the commonwealth, which it 
 inspired and guided. Except in Boston, all persons 
 subject to taxation were compelled to contribute to 
 the support of the ministers. All who were able 
 must attend the authorized public worship. The 
 results of synods were embodied in laws which must 
 be obeyed. Persons and churches in excommunica- 
 
HISTORICAL SERMONS. 39 
 
 tion were without civil privileges. It was not the 
 day of moral suasion, and in all Christendom there 
 was no nation without an established church. It is 
 not too much to say that the Rhode Island settle- 
 ments in their endeavors to maintain order were 
 not quite independent of more conservative Massa- 
 chusetts. 
 
 In the month of March, 1636, Rev. Hugh Peters, 
 or Peter, as he writes his name, preaching to 
 First Church, proposes, among other things not so 
 useful, that they should take order for employment 
 of people, especially women and children, in the 
 winter time ; for he feared that idleness would be 
 the ruin both of church and commonwealth. Per- 
 haps tliis may be taken as the first trace of an em- 
 ployment society in our congregation. 
 
 But this year had not closed before our church 
 became the centre of a most painful religious agita- 
 tion, which in that day must needs involve the 
 State as well. The story, one may hope, belongs to 
 the past. The very phrases in which it was first 
 told are strancre to modern ears, and need to be 
 translated into the language of our day. .And yet 
 it is still profoundly interesting, as a chapter in the 
 history of man's deepest experience; and it is singu- 
 larly characteristic of the earliest New England life. 
 It may be possible, even at this day, to reach what 
 was vital and of abiding significance in this other- 
 wise painful story. What I am to relate would have 
 been impossible in any but a profoundly religious 
 
40 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 community, and to men and women whose thoughts 
 were much turned in upon their own minds and 
 hearts. It is an old and sacred saying that he must 
 die who hath looked upon God. There is a vision 
 of the Eternal and a persuasion of the Divine In- 
 dwelling which threaten our personal and individual 
 being. God becomes so truly all in all that we have 
 no work and ways and conduct and character that 
 we can call our own. It is a condition which, if it 
 is not the most perfect sanity, may become the 
 wildest insanity. God works in us to will and to 
 do; and this is interpreted to mean that God does 
 all, and that what is done is all right, not because 
 conscience says so, not because good men say so, 
 not because the law says so, but because God, who 
 dwells in us and we in him, does it. It is he who 
 makes us, and not we ourselves. We are his chil- 
 dren. We know it, we feel it. On such a day, in 
 such a place, in such a moment of exalted religious 
 feeling, we had the earnest of the Spirit in our 
 hearts. Not by any works, better or worse, poor at 
 the best, are we justified, — there can be no rest for 
 us in any such justification, — it is God that justi- 
 fieth ; who is he that condemneth } God knoweth 
 who are his, and he has revealed to us that we are 
 of that number; and though character and conduct 
 may change, God does not change. Man looks at 
 the works, God looks at the worker. 
 
 Such was the outcome of the deep religious life 
 of the First Church, as the year 1636 was drawing 
 
HISTORICAL SERMONS. 4 1 
 
 toward its close. Men called it " antinomianism," 
 because it seemed to set itself against law, and was a 
 magnifying of God's grace and presence in the soul 
 that misled the believer into speaking lightly of self- 
 control, and in unbalanced or undisciplined or pas- 
 sionate natures into the neglect of self-control. As 
 might have been expected, it was the infirmity of 
 noble and religious souls. In our religious history 
 the story of the antinomianism of First Church is 
 largely the tragic story of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, 
 and of the consequent civil strife stirred by her 
 brother-in-law, the Rev. John Wheelwright. Mrs. 
 Hutchinson came to Boston from England, in Sep- 
 tember, 1634 ; Mr. Wheelwright, not far from June 1 2, 
 1636. This lady had been an earnest and thor- 
 oughly sympathetic attendant upon Mr. Cotton's 
 preaching in Old Boston. She is described by Mr. 
 Winthrop as a woman with a ready wit and a bold 
 spirit, who brought over with her two dangerous 
 errors: first, that the person of the Holy Ghost 
 dwells in a justified person; second, that no sanc- 
 tification can help to evidence to us our justification. 
 Mrs. Hutchinson was not a woman who could hide 
 in her heart what she believed to be tlic divine 
 counsel. By herself, and in concert with her 
 brother-in-law, she strove to make converts, always 
 claiming tliat in her chief points of doctrine, if not 
 in all that seemed to proceed inevitably from her 
 principles, Mr. Cotton was of her mind, .And un- 
 doubtedly she could easily have sui)i)()rted her a>ser- 
 
42 
 
 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 tion by quoting his words, as she might have done 
 many unquahfied and unwise sayings of Martin 
 Luther to the same effect. She gave great offence 
 by holding and preaching to what we should call in 
 this day parlor-meetings, — gatherings of women, 
 numbering even in that small town some sixty 
 hearers. Mr. Wilson's ministrations seemed to her 
 so below the mark, so legal, or, as we should say, 
 ethical, that she was known to go out from them 
 and leave the church, — a great scandal in that day. 
 And her friends even proposed — and most likely, 
 save for Mr. Winthrop's opposition, would have pre- 
 vailed — to establish Wheelwright as the third minis- 
 ter and assistant teacher over the little church. 
 
 It came about at last that, with the exception of 
 Wilson and Winthrop, and one or two more, the 
 church in Boston were carried away by Mrs. Hutch- 
 inson's teachings. Well, you ask, what then ? What 
 harm could that do ? Was she not, as her own hus- 
 band, who should know, well said, a dear saint and 
 servant of God ; and were any the worse for sharing 
 her mysticism and refinements, and is it not the 
 commonest thing for those who have the time to 
 amuse themselves with theological ingenuities.^ Yes; 
 but remember that the Massachusetts of that day, 
 though not unthrifty or quite blind to this world, 
 was dead in earnest, exceedingly devoted to religious 
 things and persuaded of the harmfulness of false 
 and unscriptural teachings, and that an earnest re- 
 ligionist was not merely a celebrity, to be thronged 
 
HISTORICAL SERMONS. 
 
 43 
 
 and feasted and flattered and cast aside. Christen- 
 dom, too, had not been without sad experience of a 
 fanaticism which issues in frightful immoralities, and 
 pretends to serve God by destruction instead of ful- 
 filment. The prudent did not like this talk about 
 the filthy rags of our own righteousness and the 
 worthlessness of honesty and purity. It might be 
 according to the letter, but it was not according to 
 the spirit, and the examples of the Bible ; and they 
 had heard it, not only from heated preachers and 
 enthusiasts, but fi^om the lips of , the vile hypocrite, 
 Captain Underbill, in his seasons of real or pre- 
 tended penitence, when he went before the church 
 voluntarily or of necessity, and, as Mr. Winthrop 
 records, could scarcely be heard for his blubbering. 
 Our fathers were always anxious about men and 
 women who claimed to be perfect and believed 
 themselves to be absolutely under divine guidance. 
 So, as time went on, the State as well as the Church 
 was thrown into confusion and peril. The Boston 
 soldiers refused to march with Wilson for their 
 chaplain against the Pequots, because he was what 
 they called — and it was in that day very opprobrious 
 language — a legal preacher. 
 
 Things went on from bad to worse, until Wheel- 
 wright's preaching on one occasion awakened a not 
 unfounded apprehension of civil tumult, and led to 
 the disarming of many Boston citizens, his sup- 
 porters and petitioners in his behalf, and finally to 
 his own banishment, a i)unishment which in his 
 
44 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 cooler years he confessed to have been necessary. 
 The election of the governor turned absolutely upon 
 the theological question ; and Mr. Winthrop owed 
 his success at the polls to Rev. John Wilson, who 
 climbed a tree and made a speech in his behalf. Mr. 
 Cotton was almost swept away by the antinomian 
 tide, and, as it seems to me, would have lost his 
 head utterly, if he had not been steadied by the 
 sound sense of modest John Winthrop. The words 
 of the governor at the opening of the strife ought 
 to have put an end to it, and are greatly in advance 
 of much modern theology. " Withal he made this 
 request to the brother (which he said he did seri- 
 ously and affectionately), that, seeing these variances 
 grew and some estrangement withal from some 
 words and phrases which were of human invention 
 and tended to doubtful disputation rather than to 
 edification, and had no footing in Scripture, nor had 
 been in use in the purest churches for three hundred 
 years after Christ, that for the peace of the church 
 they might be forborne, — he meant person of the 
 Holy Ghost and real union, — and concluded that 
 he did not intend to dispute the matter." 
 
 It does not appear that Mr. Winthrop was any 
 less earnest than Mr. Cotton in his persuasion of 
 the Divine Indwelling, but he was certainly wiser 
 than Mr. Cotton in his understanding and use of 
 this vital persuasion. Happily, there were other 
 churches in Massachusetts besides the church in 
 Boston, or independency had been a sad failure. 
 
HISTORICAL SKRMOXS. ^c 
 
 The other churches had no right to command ; but 
 they were allowed, if not entitled, to advise. There 
 was but one Mrs. Hutchinson; and, host as she was 
 and singularly persuasive, she was drifting into specu- 
 lative novelties, and in due time the reaction came, 
 alas ! in a tide which swept her, as it seems to me, 
 not without cruelty and injustice, out of the church 
 and the commonwealth. She was brouo-ht first 
 before the General Court. They sentenced her to 
 banishment, and yet deferred the execution of the 
 sentence until the winter should have passed ; but, 
 proving incorrigible, she was brought to the Thurs- 
 day lecture in the little Boston house of worship, 
 first on the 1 5th of March. Her errors were enumer- 
 ated and condemned, and herself admonished, the 
 governor and treasurer of the commonwealth, being 
 members of our church, coming from the General 
 Court in Cambridge to join in the sentence. But 
 this proved insufficient, and she was summoned 
 again on the 22d of the same month; and, all hope 
 of her repentance having ceased, Mr. Wilson was 
 told to pronounce this judgment: " Anne, the wife 
 of our brother William Hutchinson, having on the 
 15th of the third month been openly in publique 
 congregation admonished of sundry errours held by 
 her, was on the 2 2d day cast out of the church for 
 impenitently persisting in a manifest lye then ex- 
 pressed by her in open congregation, the 15th of the 
 same month, 1638." 
 
 Our church does not, as it seems to me. make a 
 
46 P'IRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 good figure in this business. It was unquestionably 
 a necessity in those times to fine, disarm, and even 
 banish leading antinomians. So young a common- 
 wealth could not bear such internal conflicts, as 
 Puritan experience in Holland had already shown. 
 A few more months of such strife would have satis- 
 fied waiting and sympathizing friends in England 
 that Massachusetts could be no home for them, and 
 needed for its better government a strong arm of 
 some sort, if not that of Charles or of Laud. Un- 
 questionably, it was as necessary that Mrs. Hutchin- 
 son should go away as it is needful to separate one 
 who has been overwrought from the old neighbor- 
 hood and household. But it seems to me that John 
 Cotton, considering that he himself, spite of his nice 
 theological distinctions, was much implicated with 
 his parishioner, and that the congregation almost 
 without exception had been of her mind, and 
 that he had been much annoyed by Mr. Wilson's 
 reasonableness and moderation, might have recog- 
 nized in this sincere woman a spiritual and mental 
 exaltation which left her scarcely accountable. He 
 was always much too facile a man, and should never 
 have allowed the name of his friend to go down on 
 the church record with the brand of falsehood. Mr. 
 Winthrop was wiser in his first than in his final 
 dealing with the matter, and perhaps had this in 
 mind when late in life he declined to have part in a 
 similar severity, saying he had done too much of 
 that work already. 
 
HISTORICAL SERMOXS. 
 
 47 
 
 It was no way a necessary result of her banish- 
 ment ; but it is sad to remember that in 1643 an 
 inroad of Indians into the Dutch country brought 
 death to Mrs. Hutchinson and to all her household, 
 with the exception of a daughter eight years of age. 
 This child was afterward restored through the 
 agency of the General Court of Massachusetts, and 
 placed with friends in Boston. The punishment 
 inflicted upon Mrs. Hutchinson had its natural effect 
 in exaggerating her eccentricities of thought and 
 speech ; and we do not find that she ever made any 
 concessions. One does not like to think how this 
 most blessed life, which so abounded in the hearts 
 of these New England men and women, failed of its 
 proper issues for lack of wise guidance. It was gain 
 unspeakable to have attained such a deep- sense of 
 God ; and it would have been the part of a wise 
 piety not to put so mysterious an experience into 
 propositions, and then draw inferences from them 
 and quote texts in support of them. It had been 
 wiser so to receive and so to give the holy and sweet 
 light that all men would rejoice in it, and be the 
 better for it. It is not success to owe our escape 
 from fanaticism to a dulness of the religious sense. 
 Cotton and Mrs. Hutchinson and Henry Vane and 
 Wheelwright spake truly, when they said that none 
 other and no less than God dwells in us, if we will 
 suffer him, and that all our deep springs are in him, 
 and that the life which he would have us live is pos- 
 sible only because he lives in us. But they should 
 
48 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 not have failed to add that whom God calls he calls 
 to righteousness, and that a loving heart is the only 
 absolutely sure token that he who is Love dwells 
 in us. 
 
 Must the religious world always oscillate between 
 a fervid fanaticism and a tradition of piety, which is 
 only a saying of prayers, an assenting to creeds, and 
 an endeavor to live a decent life ? The church of 
 Boston did well to be profoundly moved by Mrs. 
 Hutchinson's living words, when she urged that the 
 gospel means not some addition to our theology, 
 nor yet some small repairs of character, but God in 
 us, fashioning thought and act into his perfect like- 
 ness. Minister and people, teacher and pastor alike, 
 should have labored together to add manhood, 
 knowledge, self-control, and all the fruits of the 
 Spirit to this great faith. The dry, dogmatic, literal, 
 formal church of Boston needed Mrs. Hutchinson's 
 mystic piety and her freer dealing with the old 
 affirmations. But they were left to exorcise as evil 
 a spirit which rather needed to be guided and oc- 
 cupied. In the highest view of the matter, it was a 
 failure, and yet one of those failures of the sincere 
 and devoted upon which we build arguments of 
 hope, and press onward to the things which are 
 before. 
 
III. 
 
 "THESE ALL, HAVING OBTAINED A GOOD REPORT THROUGH FAITH 
 RECEIVED NOT THE PROMISE : GOD HAVING PROVIDED SOME 
 BETTER THING FOR US, THAT THEV WITHOUT US SHOULD NOT BE 
 MADE PERFECT."— //t'<!'- xi. 39' 40. 
 
 WE have traced the story of our church to the 
 time when they could bear Mrs. Hutchinson 
 no loncrer. She has been defeated, and is gone into 
 the wiTderncss. It is one of the lessons of civil 
 history, that a defeated rebellion strengthens the 
 victorious government ; but the reign is rather a 
 supremacy of law than a reign of love, and instead 
 of peace and mutual confidence, we have a con- 
 strained and superficial quietness. Moreover, the 
 Church of Boston had sympathized too deeply and 
 widely with Mrs. Hutchinson to be soon at ease 
 after the whirlwind in which she had been separated 
 from them had passed over. The extravagances of 
 the Hutchinsonians increased, and seemed to justify 
 the sentence of expulsion ; and yet those wlio passed 
 this sentence may have reflected that oppression 
 makes even wise men mad. Mr. Cotton felt called 
 upon to deplore "his own and the church's indo- 
 lence and credulity," which had allowed such grave 
 errors to gain such a hold upon the community, and 
 
 4 
 
50 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 explained how he himself had been deceived. In a 
 sermon preached on a day of fasting and prayer on 
 account of the prevalence of the small-pox, he la- 
 ments the want of zeal in the professors of religion 
 and the general decay of piety. The life that should 
 have become godliness had been consumed in envy- 
 ings and strife. It was a time of repressions and 
 excommunications in all the neighborhoods and 
 churches. Moreover, the great enemy of man 
 seemed, so thought our fathers, to be especially 
 intent to work mischief amongst them, tempting to 
 crime. It must have been a very sad day in Boston 
 when Dorothy Talbye, driven to insanity by almost 
 insane religious teachings, was hung for murdering 
 her little daughter, in the hope, as she said, that she 
 might free her from future misery. She manifested 
 no penitence. She acted, she said, from a revela- 
 tion ; she only vainly begged to be beheaded, as less 
 painful and less shameful than hanging, whilst the 
 Rev. Hugh Peter, from Salem, exhorted the people 
 to take heed against being deceived by revelations, 
 and not to despise, as she had done, the ordinance 
 of excommunication. But aside from such deplor- 
 able confounding of madness with criminality, there 
 was at this time scarcely a shadow of freedom in 
 Massachusetts. For a few months in the year 1638 
 a law was in force by which excommunication for 
 six months carried with it a liability to fines and im- 
 prisonments. The churches were independent only 
 in name. One minister and some individual Chris- 
 
HISTORICAL SERMONS. 5 I 
 
 tians ventured to maintain that baptized persons 
 shall be adnMtted to the communion without a par- 
 ticular examination of their faith, and were com- 
 pelled to retract. A Mr. Britton undertook to 
 criticise the churches as over-doijmatic and exclusive, 
 and, because he had no money to pay a fine withal, 
 was openly whipped for his offence. 
 
 But thouo^h the Church of Boston meets with small 
 success in any endeavor which may have been made 
 to harmonize orthodoxy and toleration, and one 
 must keep a watch over the lips, and be careful not 
 to think aloud, the moral condition of the town is 
 carefully looked after in the administration of church 
 exhortations and discipline. The ministers, prompt- 
 ed by the General Court, protest in their sermons 
 against a growing extravagance in dress ; but very 
 little comes of it, because, as we are told, their own 
 wives are so deeply implicated in the prevailing 
 deeeneracv. Nevertheless, morals are coming to 
 the front, and the clergy are acting upon the per- 
 mission of the synod of 1637, and presenting the 
 grace of the gospel under a covenant of works. 
 With the theological scrupulosity of the day, they 
 were told that this might be done " under," but not 
 " in and by," such a covenant of works. 1 here is a 
 distinction here, even though you may not all be able 
 to see it. The church turns its attention, as the 
 record shows, to the traders, and tries to expound 
 the right and wrcMig of buying and selling ; not, of 
 course, exhausting so large a matter, but making a 
 
52 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 good, earnest beginning. Robert Keaine, brother- 
 in-law of Rev. John Wilson, founder of the Artillery 
 Company, was received in Boston Church, March 
 20, 1635, and had already been chosen four times 
 from Boston to the General Court. A shopkeeper 
 in our town, he had asked what seems to have been 
 the worth in money, and yet a very large price for 
 his goods, and had found purchasers willing to pay 
 what he asked; but first the Court and then the 
 church adjudge him exorbitant. Excommunication 
 was proposed and preached about by Mr. Cotton, 
 with a somewhat full discussion of the laws of buy- 
 inor ^.i-i(j selHnor. Mr. Keaine was brous^ht before 
 the assembly of Christians, and bewailed his cov- 
 etous and corrupt heart, not, however, without ex- 
 cusing himself in some particulars. An admonition 
 was finally accepted as sufficient, so far as the 
 church was concerned in the matter ; but the de- 
 linquent was sentenced by the Court to pay a fine 
 of / 100. He soon recovered his character and was 
 restored to favor, as one whose judgment, not his 
 heart, was at fault. About this time Edward Palmer, 
 for his extortion in taking /^i it,s. yd. for the plank 
 and W'Ood-work of Boston stocks, is fined five 
 pounds, and censured to be set an hour in the 
 stocks. The fine was remitted to ten shillings ; 
 but the remainder of the sentence w^as executed, so 
 far as appears, the Ipswich chronicler telling us 
 that "he had the honor to sit in them an hour him- 
 self, to warn others not to offend in the like kind." 
 
HISTORICAL SERMOxXS. 
 
 53 
 
 The church is scarcely ten years old, and must 
 begin its series of removals from one house of wor- 
 ship to another; but what would we not give to- 
 day for so much as a fragment of the first building? 
 No wonder it was worn out with such continuous 
 use ! They told me in the English Groton that the 
 rector's house in the Winthrop Parish was more 
 than three hundred years old; but here, in two 
 hundred and fifty years, the first things have all 
 vanished, and amongst them the rude structure 
 within whose rough walls and under whose humble 
 roof men and women had thought and felt and 
 preached and pra}ed and debated with such in- 
 tensity of life, as when, to take a sadly memorable 
 instance, on two successive Thursday Lecture days, 
 Mrs. Hutchinson and the theologians vainly try to 
 meet in those labyrinths of divinity, from ten in the 
 morning quite into the evening hours, and the longer 
 they debate the farther are they apart. In this first 
 building the Artillery Election sermon was preached 
 in 1638 by John Wilson, for the first and only time 
 during the period with which my sermons have been 
 occupied. But the house could not well have been 
 made to last, and it is outgrown and outworn, and 
 even then was rapidly falling into decay. So after 
 the usual, and, I believe, always inevitable discus- 
 sion as to the proper site, and the familiar inter- 
 position of Mr. Cotton, without wliom nothing 
 could be done, it was decided to place the new 
 building nearly opposite the head of what is now 
 
54 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 State Street. The church cost about ^i,ooo, the 
 old house meeting about three-fifths of the amount, 
 and the remainder being supplied by voluntary and 
 ready contributions. It was the home of the con- 
 gregation until it was destroyed by fire in 171 1. 
 The record in our hymn-book and under our church 
 tower is not quite correct, for the second house of 
 worship was not finished until 1640. In the next 
 year, under the order of the General Court, the 
 ministers agree upon a form of catechism to be 
 printed for general use, and there are evidences of 
 great care in moral as well as theological discipline. 
 It is pleasant to find it recorded that on a training 
 day at this time twelve hundred men were under 
 arms, and not one of them intoxicated or heard to 
 use profane speech. The utmost pastoral fidelity 
 characterized the Boston ministers, Mr. Cotton es- 
 pecially teaching that if old and faithful officers 
 had grown poor in the public service, they should 
 be maintained at the public cost, and not dropped, 
 as one Mr. Hathorne had proposed in the public 
 caucus. 
 
 The story which I have been telling you has thus 
 far been quite provincial in its character, — a village 
 tale, as you may be almost ready to say ; but it is 
 none the less the story of not a few who are soon to 
 share largely in the new career which in those days 
 was opening wide for Englishmen. It was a time 
 when the temptation to go back to England was 
 very great, — too strong, indeed, to be resisted, if 
 
HISTORICAL SERMONS. 55 
 
 duty as well as the desire for the old home seemed 
 to plead for a return. The tidings from the mother 
 country are as startling as they are encouraging. 
 There are enterprises in Church and State which 
 demand just such men as these New England 
 colonists. For ministers and laymen there is good 
 work to be done in the Old World, about which 
 they had been ready to despair. A revolution is 
 impending. The news comes fast. The Earl of 
 Strafford died upon the scaffold in 1641 ; Arch- 
 bishop Laud was at that time confined in the 
 Tower under an impeachment for high treason, and 
 after three years' imprisonment came out only to 
 be tried and executed. In 1642 the Royalists with- 
 draw from Parliament, and Charles raises his stand- 
 ard at Nottingham; whilst in 1643 the assembly 
 of divines gathers in Westminster, and Cotton, 
 Davenport, and Hooker receive an invitation to 
 visit England and sit in that synod, — three Inde- 
 pendents amongst a crowd of Presbyterians as 
 bigoted as any of the okl churchmen. Fortunately 
 Hooker dissuaded Davenport and Cotton, who were 
 inclined to go. The errand would have issued in 
 disappointment, and landed them in the midst of a 
 civil war which brought to the scaffold, at the time 
 of the Restoration, the famous Hugh Peter, who, 
 after ha\i ng been for seven years a New England 
 minister, had become a great promoter of the Com- 
 monwealth. Sir Henry Vane, too, a member of 
 First Church, was sacrificed at a later dav to the 
 
56 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 same terrible necessity ; but he parted from our 
 communion and town as early as 1637, i^ ^'"'^ midst 
 of the conflict with Mrs. Hutchinson, who had found 
 in him a most hearty sympathizer. Though he 
 had not felt justified as a thorough-going republican 
 in supporting Cromwell, the restoration of Charles 
 II. brought disgrace and death to one who was a 
 sincere and deeply religious man, and a great 
 helper of New England. 
 
 Meanwhile there was work enough for those who 
 remained in the new home. Virginia asks for 
 missionaries, — not being content with such minis- 
 trations as she had, — and with reason, unless Mr. 
 Winthrop had been misinformed as to the character 
 of the clergy of that colony. At Thursday Lec- 
 ture three are designated for this business, one of 
 whom, Mr. Thompson, undertakes the errand. He is 
 described as " a very melancholic man and of a crazy 
 body," but his spirits and his outward frame were 
 greatly helped by a very encouraging ministry in that 
 Old Dominion. The conflict in England increases 
 in bitterness, and First Church leads the way in 
 keeping a day of fasting in regard of the war between 
 king and Parliament, and the example is widely 
 followed by sister churches. The scrupulous must 
 have been somewhat relieved when they learned that 
 the Red Cross of England, which had been suspected 
 as an idol, and had given occasion to so much dis- 
 cussion, was borne aloft alike by Royalists and Round- 
 heads. All this stir in Ens^land was unfavorable to 
 
HISTORICAL SERMONS. 57 
 
 Massachusetts. It secured for her freedom of devel- 
 opment, but drained away her Hfe ; for you will under- 
 stand that the tide of emigration to New England 
 had not only ceased, but had begun to flow the other 
 way. The expatriation of patriotic Englishmen 
 ended from the day of the summoning of Charles's 
 fifth Parliament. Time would fail me to recite the 
 names of famous New Englanders who filled the 
 highest places in the army and navy under the Par- 
 liament or under Cromwell, and were raised to the 
 highest posts in the civil service, or reinforced the 
 rank and file in that day of earnest struggle. For- 
 tunately there was a deep reservoir to be drained. 
 At the end of ten years after Winthrop's landing, 
 nearly twenty-one thousand Englishmen had crossed 
 in three hundred vessels, at a cost of two hundred 
 thousand pounds sterling ; and as there were many 
 who must needs go back and do the work of the day 
 in England, so there were those who must needs 
 remain. And in their twofold capacity of statesmen 
 and of churchmen, and as custodians of ecclesiastical 
 and of practical Christianity, the people of Boston 
 were abundantly occupied. Their new house of wor- 
 ship from 1640 to 1650 was the scene of many ani- 
 mated and heated debates on week-days, as well as 
 a place of prayer and religious instruction on the 
 Lord's Day. 
 
 It seems to have been a great jDoint with our 
 fathers in this church to secure the attendance, at 
 their wor.^hij) and jircaching, of persons whom they 
 
58 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 deemed heretical and who did not wish to go. The 
 son and son-in-law of Mrs. Hutchinson were so un- 
 wise as to make their appearance in Boston in 1641, 
 and were presently called to account for reviling 
 the churches. The fines which were imposed upon 
 them could not be collected, because they had noth- 
 ing to pay withal ; but, besides being imprisoned for 
 a while, they were compelled to make a part of First 
 Church congregation during their enforced stay in 
 Boston. " They refused to come to the religious 
 assemblies except they were led, and so they came 
 duly." Somewhat later, in 1642, La Tour, from Aca- 
 dia, and his men, though "papists," as our fathers 
 were at pains to call them, came of their own accord 
 to our church meetings, perhaps from policy. Nev- 
 ertheless, this did not ward off a very warm debate 
 in the congregation in 1643 upon the propriety and 
 scripturalness of having any league and fellowship 
 with idolaters, — a discussion in which Jehoshaphat, 
 Ahaziah, Josiah, Pharaoh Necho, Amaziah, Solomon, 
 Abraham, and Lot fill a very large place. This same 
 year we find unwilling worshippers at First Church 
 in the persons of Samuel Gorton and some of his 
 adherents. Gorton was originally a London cloth- 
 ier, but became afterwards a Bostonian and an an- 
 tinomian, then a mystic theologian and leader of a 
 colony, besides being — whether with or without 
 sufficient provocation — a disturber of the peace. 
 Planted on a kind of debatable ground between two 
 settlements, he had already suffered a severe j^unish- 
 
HISTORICAL SERMONS. 59 
 
 ment at the hands of the authorities of Rhode Island, 
 and had made himself troublesome even to so indul- 
 gent a ruler as Roger Williams, He was, however, 
 finally taken prisoner and brought by our governor 
 to Boston. He, too, must go to the church, and he 
 is willing to hear Mr. Cotton preach if he may be 
 permitted to answer him. " So in the afternoon they 
 came, and w^ere placed in the fourth seat, right before 
 the elders. Mr. Cotton in his ordinary text taught 
 out of Acts xix. of Demetrius pleading for Diana's 
 silver shrines or temples. After sermon Gorton 
 desired leave to speak, which, being granted, he re- 
 peated the points of Mr. Cotton's sermon, and, coming 
 to that of the silver shrines, he said that in the church 
 there was nothing now but Christ, so that all our 
 orders, ministers, sacraments were but men's inven- 
 tions for show and pomp, and no other than those 
 silver shrines of Diana," with much else which rather 
 piques than satisfies our curiosity, and leads us to 
 think that, however troublesome he mav have been 
 as a ruler of men, he might have been put to good 
 use as a professor of theology. After the man- 
 ner of the times it was deemed necessary to punish 
 him and his associates with great severity, though 
 happily for the reputation of Massachusetts they 
 escaped the sentence of death, which some proposed. 
 Another French delegation appears in the persons 
 of Marie and others, who come for D'Aulncy, the 
 rival of La Tour. The)- are not inclined to public 
 worshi}), and are acquainted by the governor with 
 
6o FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 " our manner that all men either come to our public 
 meetings or keep themselves quiet in their houses ; " 
 so he invited them home to his own house, where 
 they remained until sunset, reading books in Latin 
 and French and walking in his garden. It is added 
 that " they gave no offence." 
 
 The church mind was much engaged in the last 
 half of this decade of years with so modifying and 
 qualifying independency that the different congre- 
 gations might have at once the privileges of freedom 
 and the advantages of some mild and moral control. 
 There must be a confederation at once of the colo- 
 nies and of the congregations. Independency was 
 threatened by Presbyterianism on the one hand and 
 by chaos and anarchy on the other. The issue of 
 the Cambridge Synod of 1646-8 was the acceptance 
 of the Westminster confession of faith and the set- 
 ting forth of New England Congregationalism as 
 the order of the churches. In this way the congre- 
 gations provided for something like united effort, and 
 put themselves into what might be regarded as the 
 best condition to meet the assaults which had already 
 been begun upon them, not only by Presbyterians, 
 but by the great company of the unchurched and the 
 unfranchised, — by this time the large majority of 
 the colonists. Only the church-member could vote ; 
 and the way into the church was barred. But there 
 were many engaged to open it,— Episcopalians and 
 moderate Calvinists, and men whose experience was 
 rather moral than spiritual, or who were unwilling to 
 
HISTORICAL SERMONS. 6l 
 
 be questioned as to their religious exercises. Peti- 
 tions upon this subject were multipHed ; appeals 
 were carried to England, and sermons were preached 
 in First Church in which the bearer of the petition 
 for enlargement, on his way to the mother country, 
 was likened to Jonas. These words of the Patriarch 
 Cotton, as our church historian, Emerson, tells us, 
 were considered oracular. It so happened that a 
 violent storm arose on the passage, and one of the 
 female passengers, distracted with fear, went to Mr. 
 Fowle, the bearer of the document, and by her cries 
 and entreaties prevailed on him to give up the obnox- 
 ious petition, which she instantly cast into the sea. 
 Mr. Fowle had, however, taken care to preserve the 
 original papers, which he published on his arrival 
 under the title of " New England's Jonas cast up in 
 London." By the help of fines and imprisonments, 
 and the preoccupation of Parliament with things 
 more pressing, the movement was stayed for the time. 
 But it was the first muttering of the tempest, and the 
 first premonition of the change which, step by step, 
 was to pass over New England, until in our day the 
 exemption of houses of worship is almost the last solid 
 vestige of the ancient order of the religious world. 
 Ecclesiasticism in that day was universal; but no- 
 where, perhaps, was it put to so severe a strain as 
 in New England. You might receive the privileges 
 dependent upon church-niembership at very little 
 cost in the sacramental communions of the Old 
 World, but on this side of the sea it was a serious 
 
62 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 business for man or woman to gain admission to a 
 church, and to retain the place which, after the most 
 careful consideration, had been accorded. Disci- 
 pline in those days was a reality. Any person who 
 stood excommunicated six months was liable, by a 
 law of 1638, to fine, imprisonment, or banishment. 
 This law lasted, indeed, only a year, but this was long 
 enough to show the mind of the community. 
 
 I ought not to pass over without some mention 
 the missionary work amongst the Indians in which, 
 with other churches, First Church was at this time 
 engaged. Wilson was earnest and successful in this 
 most difficult, but by no means unblessed enterprise. 
 Sagamore John, near Watertown, " began to hearken 
 after God and his ways." He was "kept down by 
 fear of the scoffs of the Indians," but on his death- 
 bed " sent for Mr. Wilson to come to him, and com- 
 mitted his only child to his care." Our pastor 
 shared largely with the apostle Eliot in the attempt 
 to Christianize and civilize the tribes around. We 
 read of an Indian lecture which was much frequented 
 by the natives, and the missionaries were greatly en- 
 couraged by the belief that they were bringing back 
 to the fold the remains of the ten tribes of Israel 
 scattered by the Assyrian conquest. Wilson was 
 probably the author of a book upon the Indian mis- 
 sion, published in London in 1647, and entitled 
 " The Day-Breaking if not the Sun-Rising of the 
 Gospel with the Indians of New England." Out of 
 this book grew, in 1649, an English society for pro- 
 
HISTORICAL SERMONS. 
 
 63 
 
 moting and propagating the gospel in the United 
 Colonies of New England; but already, Nov. 4, 1646, 
 by ordering that two ministers should be sent and 
 paid for going amongst the Indians every year, the 
 General Court of Massachusetts became the first 
 missionary society in Protestant Christendom. A 
 little earlier than this, that is, in 1645, Boston voted 
 to allow forever to the master fifty pounds and a 
 house, and thirty pounds to an usher of a free school 
 open to Indians as well as to whites. Free schools 
 there were in our town from the beginning, by vol- 
 untary contributions at first, as appears from a long 
 list of donations in 1636. These voluntary contri- 
 butions were succeeded by the enforced tax which 
 has continued to the present day. 
 
 Monday, the 26th of March, 1649, about noon, was 
 a sad time in the Church of Boston. It was John 
 Winthrop's last hour on earth. The townsmen 
 gathered in their silent way for his simple, solemn 
 funeral, Tuesday, April 3. But a little more than 
 sixty-one years of age, he was a very young old 
 man, and they needed his precious life. There 
 were many things in progress which he would 
 gladly have seen to the end. King Charles was 
 beheaded Jan. 30, 1649, but Winthrop had not 
 heard the tidings. We cannot resist the thought 
 that his spirit, wiser and gentler in age than even 
 in youth, would have brought in gentle counsels, 
 and have devised some milder way than the death- 
 penalty for the protection of the commonwealth 
 
64 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 aeainst the insanity of the Quakers, and so have 
 saved the names of Norton and Wilson from the 
 reproach which their share in the sad business has 
 brought upon them ; but that story belongs to the 
 next decade, when First Church will not stand 
 alone. 
 
 The increasing needs of the town could no 
 longer be met by a single religious society. Out 
 of this necessity and not out of a bitter and pro- 
 tracted theological controversy, as in the case of the 
 Third Church, sprang the Second Church, which was 
 destined soon to become a power in the community. 
 From the 5th of June, 1650. Cotton and Wilson are 
 no longer the only Boston ministers. Cotton's time 
 is short, only about a year and a half; but Wilson 
 has still a long service before him, and we leave our 
 church in their charge. Emerson tells us in his 
 history that in 1650 there were about forty churches 
 in New England, and seven thousand seven hundred 
 and fifty communicants. One thousand and thirty- 
 four children were baptized in Boston during Cot- 
 ton's ministry. Three hundred and six men and 
 three hundred and four women had been admitted 
 to the communion by the end of 1652, whilst seven- 
 teen persons had been publicly admonished, and five 
 excommunicated for irreclaimable errors. 
 
 I have brought down my story to a time when the 
 sufficiency of the Puritan method in gathering and 
 perpetuating a church began to be seriously ques- 
 tioned, if it could not be freely debated. This ques- 
 
HISTORICAL SERMONS. 65 
 
 tioning was doubtless stimulated by the intimate 
 connection between the Church and the State, and 
 the fact that to be a church-member was to be a 
 voter, if one desired to be. But this was not all. We 
 have here much more and deeper than the natural 
 wish of the majority to have some share in the gov- 
 ernment. In the Church of Puritanism there was 
 no place save for a very pronounced Christian expe- 
 rience, — no place for the child growing in wisdom 
 and stature, and yet with no deep sense of sinful- 
 ness ; no place for those whose religion is rather 
 moral than spiritual, and even that mostly of the 
 silent sort, not loving to give an account of itself. 
 The Puritans would have for their fellowship the 
 highest and purest and most mature, or nothing. 
 Roger Williams reduced this rule to its severest and 
 most absurd terms when he refused to hold com- 
 munion as a Christian with any one save his own 
 wife. The Puritan Church was not a place for the 
 nurture and maturing of Christians. What they 
 sought was quality, not quantity, — a few witnesses, a 
 few shining lights, not a multitude of the baptized and 
 the confirmed and the church-going and the prayer- 
 reading, with just the least tinge of Christianity. Now 
 precisely at this point, where this problem of church- 
 fellowship begins to be discussed under the breath, our 
 ancient congregation comes into contact with our 
 modern church life. It is a living question to-day how 
 to enlarge the Christian company without so depre- 
 ciating and diluting its membership that it will be 
 
 5 
 
66 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 little better than a baptized heathenism. That is 
 what we have been trying to learn. That is what 
 others have in mind, I suppose, when they speak of 
 " the godly discipline of the laity." Half-way cove- 
 nants, the relaxation of the demand for a statement 
 of religious experience by the proposed communi- 
 cant, the opening of the church to any who choose 
 to come without any questions or conditions, have 
 all been congregational experiments in this direction, 
 and they have not been successful ; on the contrary, 
 the wider the doors are open the fewer care to enter, 
 as if they felt that there is no treasure within. Slen- 
 der as the company of communicants may be in 
 what are called the orthodox churches, it tends to 
 grow smaller, even to a vanishing point, in what are 
 called the liberal churches. Upon this matter for 
 years now my own ministerial mind has been much 
 exercised, and I can state almost in a word the con- 
 clusion which I seem to have reached. We want a 
 church so simply, naturally Christian, that the young 
 may belong to it, the young in the years of opening 
 manhood and womanhood, and we want to see that 
 they belong to it and are placed in it with due and 
 fitting outward observance, their own confirmation 
 of their baptism. There is a tide in the religious 
 life for whose rising we are to watch. Make your 
 church not merely a choice collection of eminent 
 saints, but a school of Christian disciples, and re- 
 member, in holding your examinations for admission, 
 that the point is to see not how many can be kept 
 
HISTORICAL SERMONS. 67 
 
 out, but how many may be regarded as fitted to get 
 good from its loving discipline. My chief injunction 
 to a successor in this ministerial office would be : 
 Stand in the ways with the simplest of church cove- 
 nants, like this of ours, ih your hands, and invite the 
 young to come into the Christian congregation as 
 into a home whose light and love and memories and 
 examples shall make their every-day lives purer and 
 happier by an inward and divine necessity, and be- 
 cause they are enriched and enlarged, even as by the 
 spirit of Christ. No outward crowd any longer 
 clamors and petitions for church-membership as a 
 baptismal right ; but there are hundreds and thou- 
 sands who need to have the meaning of their bap- 
 tism interpreted to them, and to be taught the blessed 
 truth that they are indeed, as they have been sol- 
 emnly declared to be, God's children in a world 
 which is his as much as any other world created or 
 to be created. We need the old, earnest, serious 
 understanding of church-membership, and yet we 
 must cherish the thought that Christianity was made 
 for man, and is never rightly understood or preached 
 when it fails to get a response from the youthful and 
 glad as well as from the aged and stricken, from 
 those who are seeking what is best and most pre- 
 cious as well as from those who are burdened with 
 sin and sorrow. 
 
 In Salem, in the year 1638, "one Oliver his wife," 
 so we read, "was imprisoned for holding amongst 
 other opinions which were considered very danger- 
 
68 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTOxN. 
 
 ous, that all who dwell in the same town and will 
 profess their faith in Christ Jesus ought to be re- 
 ceived to the sacraments there, and that she was 
 persuaded that, if Paul were at Salem, he would 
 call all the inhabitants there saints." Some five 
 years after the poor woman was whipped, and had 
 a cleft stick put on her tongue for half an hour, 
 for reproaching the elders ; but did she not tell the 
 truth about the Church which ought to be and shall 
 be, — the church, not of human selection, but of 
 divine election, — the sons and daughters of God, of 
 whom saith the Prophet, " And thy children shall all 
 be taught of God, and great shall be the peace of 
 thy children " ? 
 
FOURTH HOUSE OF WORSHIP. 
 
 CHAUNCY PLACE. 
 1808. 
 
A 
 
 SERMON 
 
 PREACHED TO 
 
 THE FIRST CHURCH, 
 
 ON THE 
 
 Close of i\}tix Seconti Centurg, 
 
 29 AUGUST, 1830. 
 
 BY N. L. FROTHINGHAM. 
 
SERMON. 
 
 " Remember the days of old, consider the years of many 
 
 GENERATIONS." — Deut. xxxii. 7. 
 " I have considered the days of old, the years of ancient 
 
 times." — Ps. Ixxvii. 5. 
 
 'T^HE life of man is measured by years. The 
 more lengthened existence of communities 
 and states is counted in generations. Is it fanciful 
 to think that in estimating the comparative dura- 
 tion of each, a twelvemonth in one corresponds to 
 an ace in the other.'' Threescore and ten revolu- 
 tions of the sun fix the limits that leave to the 
 individual " no portion," or but a feeble one, " in 
 anything that is done under" its beams. And 
 threescore and ten of those periods, which are 
 ordinarily computed to mark the successions of 
 human life, are old age for a nation. None of the 
 kingdoms of Europe yet approach that longevity 
 of two thousand years, and most of them are youth- 
 ful in comparison with it. If it has ever been 
 surpassed by any of the ancient nations of Asia 
 or Egypt, it was only to see their institutions over- 
 thrown, their memory a ruin, their very speech 
 
SERMON. 
 
 71 
 
 changed, and the stranger and conqueror pressing 
 upon the remnants of their faculties and the decrepi- 
 tude of their strength. Thus it is that governments 
 and states and tribes flourish and pass away, as well 
 as the mortal man who mixes for a while his tran- 
 sient interests with them. The very land that we 
 till seems to demand occasional respites of desola- 
 tion. The great globe itself, if we may credit the 
 testimonies of history and the analogies of reason, 
 must have its alternations of ruin. For everything 
 there is a longer or shorter period, which we may 
 grow wiser by contemplating. What is gone is 
 always full of instruction for those who are them- 
 selves hastening away. Moses, who lived in the 
 early twilight of the world, commanded his tribes to 
 " remember the years of many generations ; " and 
 David, with whom the fame of his nation began, em- 
 ployed himself in considering the " days of ancient 
 times." 
 
 When we think of the broad circles of empire that 
 have spread themselves and faded over the earth, we 
 may be ready to look on the space which the annals 
 of our own community include as a span. But in 
 truth the two hundred years that it has already stood 
 are by no means to be accounted an inconsiderable 
 time. Especially when we reflect that it did not 
 grow up, like most others, from obscure and slow 
 beginnings, but started at once into active, indepen- 
 dent, intelligent life, — feeble, indeed, at first, through 
 the smallness of its numbers, but with nothing about 
 
72 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 it of the ignorance of childhood or the rashness of 
 youth. It was commenced on this side of the sea, 
 with all the improvement that ages had been working 
 out on the other. Without anything of the thought- 
 lessness of young and wild adventure, it was com- 
 posed of as sober and resolute men as ever staked 
 their all on a holy enterprise. Without anything of 
 fiction wrapt about its origin, its first words were 
 those of a noble history, and the eyes of the most 
 cultivated portions of Europe watched its growth 
 here in the wilderness. One is impatient of those 
 celebrators of the national independence who speak 
 as if our civil existence were scarcely to be dated 
 earlier than the declaration of that event. It is as if 
 one should date the deep foundation of England 
 herself from her last revolution, which would make 
 her half a century younger than we. The freest 
 spirits of the freest nation then known founded the 
 colony; and not a man of them but stood as erect 
 on his rights at his first landing as any of his 
 descendants have done since. Those rights were 
 never relinquished for a moment. The fact is de- 
 serving of more attention than it has received, that 
 in 1630 the full privileges of as free a charter as 
 could then be framed by those who gave up all for 
 that freedom were publicly transferred from the soil 
 of Great Britain to these poor shores in the West. 
 The liberty that was not permitted there was by 
 some strange concurrence, which we hardly know 
 how to explain, solemnly guaranteed here. And 
 
SERMON. 
 
 / 3 
 
 here it came to dwell. And from that day to this, 
 in all the ways of prudence and bravery, it has been 
 steadily maintained. 
 
 Two hundred years of such maturity are not to be 
 spoken of lightly. It is a space bearing a good pro- 
 portion to that which gave the most refined people 
 of antiquity all their glories of letters and art, and to 
 that which meted out to the mightiest people that 
 have yet risen on earth the most valuable portions of 
 their dominion. With us every year has been a 
 narrative of plain but vigorous life ; while a great 
 part of the history of nations is usually the fable 
 of their beginnings or the tedious tragedy of their 
 decline. 
 
 I am dwelling, perhaps, too long on a train of re- 
 flections which every one who feels his New England 
 parentage, having once begun it, must find it hard 
 to quit. As a child, however, of that honorable and 
 pious descent, I must yet add one thought more ta 
 so long a preface, and bless God that our land was 
 marked out as by a special Providence for the resi- 
 dence of just such men as came to look over the 
 waters after its rugged but safe asylum. Before they 
 established themselves in it, it was sought by the 
 ambitious, that here they might set up their arbitrary 
 establishments; but these soon went back to climates 
 more congenial to the growth of temporal dominion 
 and ecclesiastical pride. It was sought by the ad- 
 venturous and licentious ; but it repelled those with 
 the rough touch of its deprivations and dangers. 
 
74 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 The counsels of princes, the plans of the worldly- 
 wise, the efforts of the daring, all came to nothing 
 as they turned towards it. It was reserved in the 
 decrees of the Almighty for those only who were sus- 
 tained by an inflexible faith, and thus fitted for the 
 great work which they were commissioned to ac- 
 complish. We may dissent from some of the points 
 of that faith. We may wonder at some of them. 
 But it gave those who held it a strength that no 
 earthly principle could inspire. It gave them the 
 success for which every earthly motive was found 
 vain. It helped them sow the land, when it was but 
 just cleared of its forests, with those pregnant hopes 
 of learning and religion, which no zeal short of their 
 own could have made to grow. We are sitting un- 
 der the blessed shade, into which those germs have 
 spread ; and it would ill become us to find fault with 
 imperfections, without which the great work itself 
 might possibly have been left imperfect. A severe 
 education is often seen to be favorable to the indi- 
 vidual man, leaving on his mind an abiding and 
 salutary impression, a strong bent towards the 
 right, while it permits him to forget something 
 of the rudiments of its first instructions. The 
 case is not otherwise with states. Wlio can doubt 
 that New England owes the elements of her pres- 
 ent character, and the institutions that make her 
 peculiarly what she is, to the discipline of her Pu- 
 ritan ancestry, — though it may sometimes have 
 seemed stern like her coasts, and gloomy as her 
 
SERMON. 75 
 
 early fortunes ? Who can endure to think that, 
 instead of the deep principles of those thoughtful 
 men, we might have had laid as the foundations 
 of the country the rotten theories of irreligion and 
 misrule, or any of the shallow devices of modern 
 innovators ? 
 
 Two centuries have passed since this church was 
 gathered, — the first of the long line of churches in 
 this populous town. Its records are older than those 
 of the town itself, since it was formed before this 
 peninsula was settled, or even the name now given 
 to it was thought of. It was gathered under cir- 
 cumstances of peculiar affliction, when disease was 
 thinning the little company, that had scarcely yet re- 
 covered themselves from the weariness of the sea 
 and the desolateness of their new condition. In the 
 spirit of a considerate and courageous sorrow, its 
 first preparations were devoutly arranged. With 
 solemn but humble forms were those preparations 
 completed. Its first members belonged to a class 
 of people whom a high foreign authority has called 
 " the most remarkable body of men which the world 
 has ever produced." ^ The first name on its list is 
 that of one who, in any age, might be held up as 
 a model of a magistrate and a Christian man. Its 
 first covenant is distinguished only by its superior 
 dignity and simplicity from those which are most 
 commended at the present day. Its first assembly 
 was under the shade of a tree on the other side of 
 
 ^ Edinburgh Review, xlii. T,j7y ^.rt. Milton. 
 
76 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 Charles River. Its first house of worship was on this 
 side of the stream, and was built with mud walls and 
 a roof of straw. These were lowly accommodations. 
 Yet they corresponded well enough, not only with 
 their situation at the time, but with their sober de- 
 votions at any time. For they had so long felt their 
 minds constrained under high ceilings of chiselled 
 stone, that they were glad of the poorest building 
 which they could raise for themselves, and content 
 with the freedom even of the tall forests which 
 " were God s first temples." They had learned, too, 
 from their own excited minds an independence of 
 all outward state in religion. They needed none of 
 it in their intense communion with Heaven. Their 
 feeling of God's presence was too strong upon them 
 to admit of being aided by any magnificence that 
 belonged to this world. 
 
 Such were the beginnings of this church. They 
 might seem melancholy to us if they were not so 
 noble. They were like the beginning of the gospel 
 itself, — a voice in the wilderness, — a cry to repent, 
 but at the same time a promise of a kingdom of God 
 at hand. If the history of the church had not been 
 written already by one of its ministers,^ this would 
 not be the place to enter into any minute details 
 concerning its progress. They might have been 
 looked for a hundred years ago, when the first cen- 
 tury sermon was preached by Mr. Foxcroft, whom 
 several of my respected hearers can well remember, 
 
 1 The Rev. William Emerson. 
 
SERMON. 77 
 
 — SO fast do our generations crowd on one another. 
 They were not entered into then, and they could 
 now be made neither interesting nor manageable. 
 In the place of them, I will ask your attention to a 
 few general results, drawn from a comparison be- 
 tween the elder days of the church and the present ; 
 with the view of showing that while we should 
 honor what was well done then, we should be grate- 
 ful for our own superior privileges. It is natural 
 to celebrate the past. I bless God that we find so 
 much there to applaud and be grateful for. I would 
 that the praise were tenfold louder and more sincere 
 among us than it is, so far as filial respect, and the 
 most sacred remembrances, and the love of liberty 
 and truth demand it. But let the admiration be dis- 
 criminating. I would distinguish between the times 
 themselves and the men who lived in those times. 
 It is a distinction that is of the utmost consequence, 
 though perpetually overlooked by panegyrists on one 
 hand and cavillers on the other. We have to learn 
 more reverence perhaps than we yet feel for our 
 fathers and their compeers, — men whose most elo- 
 quent praises have after all been spoken on the other 
 side of the Atlantic. But it is quite another thing 
 to applaud the state of opinions and manners at that 
 period, — and a further extravagance still to depreci- 
 ate our own as contrary to them. The cry of degen- 
 eracy and defection has become too old to be worth 
 attending to. It was uttered from the beginning 
 in various tones of lamentation. " Either I am in 
 
78 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 an apoplexy," writes one,^ within seventeen years of 
 Governor Winthrop's landing, " or that man is in a 
 lethargy who doth not now sensibly feel the heavens 
 trembline over his head and the earth under his feet ; 
 so that little light of comfort or counsel is left to the 
 sons of men." Mr. Foxcroft in his century sermon 
 bewails " the shaking times," as he calls them, in 
 which he was born, and expresses his fears lest 
 " Boston should have the reproachful name of Lost 
 Town bestowed on it." Disregarding all these com- 
 plaints and evil prophecies, whether of ancient or re- 
 cent date, and in open dissent from those who would 
 bring us back to the religious opinions and usages 
 which we have forsaken, I will lay my finger on a 
 few points, which will prove to us that some advance- 
 ment has been made in the course of two hundred 
 years. " Remember," say some, " the days of old, 
 consider the years of many generations," — as if our 
 only safety was in the imitation of them. We reply, 
 " I have considered the days of old, the years of an- 
 cient times," and let us see to what purpose. 
 
 I. Two hundred years ago there prevailed a set of 
 scriptural impressions and interpretations, which our 
 better light has exposed, but which gave a strong 
 shade to opinions on government as well as faith, and 
 threw a sort of spectral influence on the ordinary 
 affairs of life. Rational and philosophical views of 
 the Bible were unknown in the land ; and yet the 
 Bible was compelled to speak in all natural and un- 
 
 1 Ward's " Simple Cobbler of Aggawam." 
 
SERMON. 79 
 
 natural ways on every subject of concern. The code 
 of Moses was thought to be a fit pattern for modern 
 legislation ; and the project of a theocracy, which is, 
 in plainer language, an administration of priests, was 
 seriously contemplated. The tribes of Judah and 
 Israel were supposed to offer suitable examples for 
 those who had crossed into a new world. The 
 oracles of the prophets were believed to be predic- 
 tions of what the passing and the coming days were 
 to fulfil. Questions of sudden emergency, and dif- 
 ficulties that belonged to their peculiar situation, were 
 settled by a reference to the Book of Kings or the 
 Song of Solomon. I find the famous Mr. Cotton^ 
 tasking his acute mind to prove that a liturgy is a 
 breach of the second commandment, which forbids 
 the making of any graven image. Happy would it 
 have been if such ideas of the Scriptures had been 
 confined to verbal disputes, and outward usages, and 
 designs that were never executed. But they had not 
 always so innocent an ending. It was unluckily 
 written in the Pentateuch, " Thou shalt not suffer a 
 witch to live." This law was enforced only fifteen 
 years after the founding of the colony ; and in the 
 same century broke out that fatal infatuation, which 
 we are unable to think of without horror and grief. 
 Nothing would be more unjust than to charge this 
 foolish cruelty upon our ancestors, as if the delusion 
 was peculiarly theirs. I charge it against the super- 
 stitiousness of the age. The executions in England 
 
 1 Way of the Churches of Christ in New England, 71. 
 
8o FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 for that imaginary crime were very far more numer- 
 ous than here ; and it was punished with death by 
 the authority of the most enhghtened tribunals 
 in Europe. It is not a hundred years since the 
 presbytery at Edinburgh denounced the repeal of 
 the penal laws against witchcraft as a national sin. 
 And even this tenacity of error does not seem to me 
 more strange than the words of a Scottish historian^ 
 published but the other day, who suggests that there 
 might have been " an actual appropriation of that 
 mysterious agency, which Scripture assures us did 
 once exist, and which no equal authority has ever 
 proved to be extinguished." It was not so slowly 
 that the men of New England learned wisdom. 
 
 II. Two hundred years ago the civil and religious 
 interests of men were entangled together. The 
 church stretched out its hand to the sword of the 
 magistracy, and the magistracy girt its brows with 
 the terrors of the church. This was no invention of 
 our fathers. It was what they had received from 
 theirs. They only did not wholly disclaim it. It was 
 an impurity and an abuse, which their spirit of liberty, 
 as it refined itself, was gradually to throw off. But 
 there it was, — the occasion of perpetual disorders 
 in their infant community. Theological disputes were 
 accounted matters for civil jurisdiction. The gov- 
 ernor and the pastor were seen either to withstand one 
 another, or to join in the exercise of a common sway. 
 
 1 Grahame's History of the Rise and Progress of the United States of 
 North America, vol. i. 465. 
 
SERMON. 8l 
 
 The church, while it excluded from its communion 
 all but the regenerate, — an exclusion which is still 
 considered by some to have been a very scriptural 
 and praiseworthy practice, — excluded also all but 
 its members from the freedom of the political body. 
 The rest had not the common rights of citizenship. 
 This tyranny was indeed early resisted, and one 
 synod after another decided in favor of their dis- 
 franchised brethren. I wish I could add that the 
 First Church was found true on that occasion to 
 the true cause. I wish there did not lie upon her 
 the reproach of bitter dealings with her more liberal 
 sister, the Old South, who nobly went off from her 
 at that time for liberty's sake. 
 
 III. Two hundred years ago there was no such 
 thing as toleration. In practice it was unknown, 
 save of a few mild spirits ; and even in open theory 
 it was condemned and derided. " He that is will- 
 ing," says a writer whom I have already quoted,^ 
 "to tolerate any religion or discrepant way of re- 
 ligion, besides his own, either doubts of his own, or 
 is not sincere in it. There is no truth but one, and 
 of the persecution of true religion and toleration of 
 false, the last is far the worst. It is said that men 
 ought to have liberty of conscience, and that it is 
 persecution to debar them of it. I can rather stand 
 amazed than reply to this. It is an astonishment 
 that the brains of men should be parboiled in such 
 impious ignorance." Another thus expresses him- 
 
 1 Ward. 
 6 
 
82 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 self :^ " The outcry of some is for liberty of con- 
 science. This is the great Diana of the libertines 
 of this age. I look upon toleration as the first-born 
 of all iniquities. If it should be brought forth 
 among us, you may call it Gad, a troop cometh, a 
 troop of all manner of abominations." Most of the 
 Puritans of this period thought it impossible that dif- 
 ferent sects should exist peaceably together in the 
 same community ; and even when oppressed them- 
 selves they exclaimed against universal toleration. 
 But in this they only took part in a general senti- 
 ment. Even the philosophic Lord Bacon thought 
 that uniformity in religious sentiment and worship 
 was essential to the support of government. Who 
 had taught them any better ? Where were they to 
 find any worthier example t Was not the whole 
 world in arms against those principles, which they 
 had come into a desert to enjoy } And was nothing 
 to be allowed for men who had made such dreary 
 sacrifices ? They had fled to the ends of the world, 
 that they might have a way of their own. They 
 invited none to share their " poor cottages in the 
 wilderness," where they were " overshadowed," as 
 their own beautiful language ran, " with the spirit of 
 supplication." They warned all who were not par- 
 takers of their own faith and feeling, to spare their 
 tranquillity and leave them to their retreat. We can- 
 not surely confound such men with vulgar persecu- 
 
 1 President Oakes's Century Sermon, 1673. Similar opinions might be 
 quoted from Higginson's Election Sermon, 1663; Shepard's Election Sermon, 
 1672 ; Cotton's " Bloody Tenent Washed," etc. 
 
SERMON. 83 
 
 tors. This would be injustice in any. It would be 
 irreverence and ingratitude in us. Look at Europe 
 as it was at that moment, instead of inveiehinof 
 against them. To say nothing of the circumstances 
 that banished them from the land which they never 
 ceased to love, James the First had, but a little while 
 before, burnt at the stake two of his subjects for 
 Arianism ; and it was a considerable time afterwards 
 that the great national edict of toleration in France 
 was revoked by a bigoted and profligate king. Do 
 not make it too hard against them, that they were 
 not further in advance of the rest of mankind, — that 
 they had not yet attained where none were perfect, — 
 that they sometimes exercised, out of a deep love for 
 what they deemed to be God's truth and their own 
 right, a small measure of that power which was em- 
 ployed elsewhere in the full insolence of despotism, 
 by the cunning, the conceited, the ambitious, and 
 the dissolute. 
 
 We have gone back two hundred years. Change 
 now the point of view. Come forward a short 
 space. Suppose the last of those self-denying men 
 who planted this colony to have rested from their 
 labors. See what was accomplished in the course of 
 that single generation, and you will need nothing 
 beside for their defence or their eulogy. They had 
 begun to build their own ships for their increasing- 
 commerce. They had stamped coin, which has 
 always been classed among the exercises of sove- 
 reignty. They had founded a university. They had 
 
84 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 seen many of the most Illustrious names in the 
 mother land, even those of prelates and noblemen, 
 associated with their spreading improvements. They 
 left all the interests of the country flourishing. Bos- 
 ton alone contained fifteen hundred families; and in- 
 telligent strangers who visited the provinces of New 
 England went back to tell of a state of order and 
 enterprise, of refinement and hospitality, equal to 
 their own, beyond the western waters. When was 
 ever a generation that did so much ? They have 
 left their monuments in the effects which they 
 wrought, in the institutions which they bequeathed, 
 in the prosperity which they established, in the 
 characters which they bore, in the examples which 
 they have made immortal. 
 
 I cannot conclude this discourse, already perhaps 
 too long, without calling up the memories of those 
 who have been ministering servants to our church in 
 the days that are gone. There will be time for little 
 more than to speak out their names, as their solemn 
 train passes before us. The first is Wilson. Asso- 
 ciated with nobles in the English realm, he came 
 here for religion's sake, to be installed teacher of a 
 church in the open air, just two hundred years ago. 
 Blessings on his meek head ! His zeal had no mix- 
 ture of sternness with it. He was a pattern of wis- 
 dom and gentleness, in an age that had great need 
 of it all. The next is John Cotton. His fame was 
 great in the colleges and congregations of his own 
 country, before he crossed over to this. Boston re- 
 
SERMON. 85 
 
 celved its name from the Eno^lish town in Lincoln- 
 shire where he formerly ministered, and our institu- 
 tions may ahiiost be said to have been moulded by 
 his extraordinary influence. Honor to so learned 
 and commanding: a man ! thoucrh the venerable 
 sweetness of his older colleague has more charms 
 for me than either his learning or command. Some 
 of his posterity are still worshippers with us, and the 
 children of his present successor are his direct de- 
 scendants in the seventh generation. Norton. He 
 had neither the soft, healing dispositions of the first, 
 nor the bright gifts of the second. But his attain- 
 ments entitled him to a better fate than to be thrown 
 into the whirl of political intrigues and disappoint- 
 ments, and to die of a broken heart. Davenport, 
 the patriarch of New Haven, and of such celebrity as 
 to be invited, together with Cotton, to the great as- 
 sembly of divines at Westminster. He gave to this 
 place but the feeble residue of his old age, and that 
 little was tormented with disputes, which his best 
 days would probably have done nothing to reconcile. 
 Let him pass in peace. Allen. His protracted 
 ministry seems to have been rather occupied with 
 silent usefulness than adorned wath any renown. 
 Oxenbridge, on the contrary, was honored during a 
 short career. He was struck with death in the very 
 act of conducting the services of the Lord's house. 
 MooDEY was the first child of New England who 
 officiated in this church. His benevolent and in- 
 trepid mind should now be commemorated the 
 
86 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 rather because the sour prejudices of his own times 
 did him wrong. Bailey and Wadsworth and 
 Bridge were men of a faithful heart, whom no 
 body of Christian behevers on earth need have been 
 ashamed to acknowledge. The labors of the dili- 
 gent FoxcROFT offer much to be commended ; 
 though we may well account it a serious exception 
 to the praise, that he admired the fanaticism of 
 Whitefield and censured the liberality of Tillotson. 
 With Chauncy a new era commenced. He viewed' 
 religion with naked human eyes, and not in unreal 
 visions, or through the discolored and distorting 
 medium of technical systems. He looked upon the 
 world, and was not afraid to bind up his hopes in 
 the common hopes of mankind. He looked up to 
 Heaven, and its throne was to him filled with the un- 
 clouded radiancy of love. He beheld the churches 
 agitated with a storm of religious excitement, and 
 he rebuked both the wands and the sea. None of 
 you need to be reminded of the excellent graces of 
 Clarke. The regrets for him are still warm, though 
 his amiable features have long been dust. He had 
 the virtues of Wilson with a better creed, and like 
 Oxenbridge, he w-as smitten, as he stood in the pul- 
 pit, by the angel of death. Emerson follows next. 
 There are many affectionate recollections among you 
 of his zeal as a minister and his extraordinary social 
 worth. You rejoiced but for a little w^hile in his mild 
 lio-lit. He was cut off in the midst of his active and 
 devoted course, but he has left the characters of his 
 
SERMON. ^J 
 
 children to praise him in the gate. Then, like the 
 shadow that his early promise has become, — scarcely 
 seen but to depart, scarcely speaking among you but 
 to expire, — passes the friendly Abbott, and closes 
 the line. 
 
 There is one more name, however, to which I can- 
 not refrain from giving utterance. It is that of him 
 who was all but yours, and who would have been 
 wholly so, perhaps, if one less worthy had not been 
 called to occupy his place, — it is McKean. I see in 
 your eyes how well you remember that ardent and 
 noble spirit. He was the friend of us all ; and I am 
 sure there is no one here who, if called by any cir- 
 cumstances to the island where he died, would not 
 inquire for the place where he rests, and piously re- 
 move from his green grave any coarse growths that 
 might make it unsightly. 
 
 Brethren, I have endeavored to fulfil a duty which, 
 at the return of a new century, seems to be demanded 
 by the living and the dead. I have " considered the 
 days of old, the years of ancient times." But who 
 can confine his imagination to the past .? A hun- 
 dred years more ! What have they in reserve to 
 show after their revolution is ended ? Nothing for 
 us. They will scarcely find the children of our chil- 
 dren alive. But may they have blessings to shower 
 down on the Church of God, whose date is not meas- 
 ured by centuries, and on the immortal cause of 
 human good ! 
 
THIRD HOUSE OF WORSHIP: "THE OLD BRICK.' 
 
 Site of Joy's Building, Washington Street. 
 1713- 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES 
 
 BY THE 
 
 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON, 
 
 UPON THE 
 
 ffi^ompletiotx of iTiiia ^tjunlirEti anti iFiftg ^cars, 
 THURSDAY, NOV. i8, 1880. 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 
 
 THE beautiful house of worship of the First Church 
 was decorated for the Festival with simple, but striking 
 and appropriate ornaments. Upon the front of the spire 
 on Berkeley Street, before it reached the height of the 
 roof, was a large draped surface, covered with American 
 and British flags arranged in glories, in a bordering of blue 
 bunting festooned with red and white rosettes. Across the 
 centre was the inscription " 1630 to 1880," and beneath 
 hung the old Pine Tree flag of Massachusetts. In the 
 interior of the church were two lofty banners, one on each 
 side of the chancel. The one on the left bore, in red Gothic 
 letters on a gold-colored ground, the names of the minis- 
 ters of the church, as follows: — 
 
 John Wilson 1630 to 1667 
 
 John Cotton 1633 to 1652 
 
 John Norton 1656 to 1663 
 
 John Davenport 1668 to 1670 
 
 James Allen 1668 to 1710 
 
 John Oxenbridge 1670 to 1674 
 
 Joshua Moody 1684 to 1697 
 
 John Bailey 1693 to 1697 
 
 Benjamin Wadsworth 1696 to 1737 
 
 Thomas Bridge 1705 to 1715 
 
 Thomas Foxcroft 171 7 to 1769 
 
 Charles Chauncy, D.D 172710 1787 
 
 John Clark, D.D 177810 1798 
 
 William Emerson 179910 181 1 
 
 John L. Abbot 1813 to 1814 
 
 N. L. Frothingham, D.D 181 5 to 1850 
 
 RuFus Ellis, D.D 1853 
 
92 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 The other, on the right, bore in similar colors the following 
 legend : — 
 
 From IVintkrop's " History of A^ew England^ 
 
 "July 5, 1632. The pastor of Boston, Mr. Wilson, a very sin- 
 cere, holy man, . . . told the Governor that, before he was re- 
 solved to come into this country, he dreamed he was here, and 
 that he saw a church arise out of the earth, which grew up and 
 became a marvellous, goodly church." 
 
 The front of the pulpit and choir was adorned with 
 wreaths of glossy green leaves and scarlet passion-flowers. 
 About the chancel was a profusion of tropical and flower- 
 ing plants in pots, making a little forest of bright colors 
 around the desk of the speakers. At the right of the 
 pulpit the communion-table was spread with the old his- 
 torical pieces of church silver, all of it given by former 
 ministers, deacons, and church-members, with the tall, em- 
 bossed cup, the gift of Governor John W'inthrop, conspicu- 
 ous in the centre. 
 
 In the evening the figures " 1630-1880" were shown in 
 gas jets above the main entrance. The chapel was deco- 
 rated with wreaths of green leaves and with flowers, and 
 on its walls were hung the portraits of many of the former 
 ministers, as follows : — 
 
 John Wilson . . . belonging to the Mass. Historical Society. 
 
 John Cotton ... „ „ Hon. R. C. Winthrop. 
 
 John Davenport . . „ „ Yale College. 
 
 Benjamin Wadsworth ,, „ Harvard University. 
 
 John Clark, D.D. . . „ „ Miss Esther C. Mack, Salem. 
 
 William Emerson . . „ ,, Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
 
 N. L. Frothingham, D.D. „ „ Mrs. N. D. Hubbard. 
 
 And a fine marble bust of Dr. RuFUS Ellis, belonging to 
 the society, occupied an appropriate place on its pedestal. 
 There were also hung on the walls other portraits, as fol- 
 lows : — 
 
 Gov. John Winthrop . . . belonging to Hon. R. C. Winthrop. 
 Gov. Thomas Dudley ... „ „ Hon. R. C. Winthrop. 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 93 
 
 The other pictures exhibited were — 
 
 A view of the head of State Street, belonging to the Massachusetts 
 Historical Society, painted by James B. Marston, April 19, 1801, 
 showing the First " Old Brick " Church (the third building of 
 the society). 
 
 A recent ideal picture belonging to Williams and Everett, painted 
 by W. F. Halsall, representing the arrival of Winthrop's fleet in 
 Boston Harbor. 
 
 An engraving of the Boston Massacre, March 5, 1770, showing the 
 Old State House and the First Church. [The frame of this 
 engraxing formerly belonged to Francis Rotch, Esq., owner of 
 the tea-ships, December, 1773.] 
 
 A small painting of the " Old Brick " Church that stood in Corn- 
 hill, now \Vashington Street. 
 
 A photograph of the church in Chauncy Place. 
 
 An engraving of the great Church of St. Botolph's, in Boston, 
 England. 
 
 A photograph of the Unitarian Chapel in Boston, England. 
 
 A photograph of the tower of St. Botolph's Church, in Boston, 
 England. 
 
 There were executed for this occasion four large draw- 
 ings of the several churches of the society, from the first 
 rude structure with mud walls and a thatched roof to the 
 present beautiful edifice; and a drawing of the Church of 
 St. Botolph in Boston, England, all of which were also 
 hung upon the walls. The pictures not belonging to the 
 society were kindly loaned by their owners. 
 
 The massive ancient communion plate was appropri- 
 ately displayed in a large glass case. 
 
 The committee were much assisted in their preparations 
 for the celebration by Messrs. Ware and Van Brunt, the 
 architects of the church. 
 
 Thursday had been selected amongst the week-days for 
 these services, in remembrance of the Thursday Lecture, 
 which had been brought over from the English Boston, 
 and had been preached in First Church even to the 
 
94 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 present generation, though its course is run and it is no 
 longer amongst the hving. It was the eighteenth day of 
 November, not without clouds and rain, followed, however, 
 by a clear cold evening sky. Two of the clock was the 
 hour assigned for the afternoon exercises, and by that time 
 a large company gathered, and the church was filled with 
 the congregation and their guests. The chancel had been 
 expanded into a platform, which was occupied by the 
 speakers and by Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson, a son of a 
 former pastor, with Mr. Justin VVinsor and Mr. Marshall 
 P. Wilder, the Rev. Drs. A. P. Peabody, Frederic H. 
 Hedge, and Edward Everett Hale. The services were 
 somewhat longer than had been provided for, but were 
 followed with deep interest by the audience to their 
 close, a little before six o'clock. A large number of our 
 guests remained with us through the evening, and took part 
 with the society in the further observance of the day in the 
 church and in the chapel, with music and a social reunion. 
 
 The services opened with an Organ Voluntary. 
 
 The Address of Welcome was then pronounced by 
 Hon. Nathaniel Silsbee, as follows : — 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen, — We are met together 
 to-day to commemorate the two hundred and fiftieth 
 anniversary of the establishment of this the " First 
 Church of Christ in Boston," by men few in num- 
 ber, who came from across the ocean to found both 
 civil and religious liberty. I have been requested 
 to say to you the introductory words of welcome, in 
 the place of the president of your Festival Com- 
 mittee, Mr. Nathaniel Thayer, to whose liberality 
 in connection with this church we are so much in- 
 debted, and whose absence we all regret. I now, 
 therefore, in the name of the committee, of your 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 
 
 95 
 
 minister, and of the parish, bid you each and all a 
 cordial welcome. The exercises will be conducted 
 by your minister, and, in addition to the religious 
 services, you will be addressed by eloquent men 
 familiar with the history of our Puritan fathers^ 
 and of those who have endeavored to walk in their 
 footsteps. May we not hope that the large number 
 of this congregation who have gone before us, and 
 whom we believe to be now in the spirit land, will 
 join in communion with us at this time } I ask 
 your attention to your minister, the Rev. Dr. Rufus 
 Ellis. 
 
 The minister of the church then offered the followincf 
 prayer : — 
 
 God over all, forever blessed ! we thank thee for 
 this day and hour; help us to bring unto thee 
 hearts of gratitude, and to pray unto thee a faithful 
 prayer. In the midst of years which have been 
 crowned with thy goodness we praise thy mercy 
 and thy truth. We consider the generations of 
 old, and our hearts say unto us. Did ever any trust 
 in thee and were confounded ? We thank thee 
 for good examples and brave testimonies, for the 
 faith which wrought righteousness and obtained 
 promises, for those who, being dead, yet speak. 
 Fathers and children, and children's children, in the 
 wilderness and in the place of habitations, in the 
 body and out of the body, thou hast made us to 
 be one family in thee, and thy care and love for 
 
96 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 thy household cannot be told. In this hour of 
 gratitude and solemn joy may the meditation of our 
 hearts and the answer of our lips be from the Al- 
 mighty and the All-merciful. Gathered into thy 
 presence and taught by thy Spirit, may our hearts 
 burn with a deeper love and a new desire to see the 
 coming of thy kingdom. Make this church a 
 glorious church ; may our eyes see the King in his 
 beauty and follow him in his faithfulness. Show 
 unto us more clearly the way of his divine life, and 
 guide and uphold us in his blessed footsteps. We 
 pray for all that love thee ; we pray that all may 
 learn to love thee, and that, loving thee, they may 
 love one another even as Christ loved us. O God 
 and Father of our -Lord Jesus! fashion our whole 
 being into his dear likeness, and help us with one 
 heart and one voice to pray as he hath taught us : 
 Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy 
 name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in 
 earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily 
 bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive 
 those that trespass against us. And lead us not 
 into temptation ; but deliver us from evil. For 
 thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, 
 for ever and ever. Amen. 
 
 Rev. Joseph T. Duryea, D.D., minister of the Central 
 Church, then read the thirteenth chapter of the First Epistle 
 to the Corinthians : — 
 
 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have 
 not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 97 
 
 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all 
 mysteries, and all knowledge ; and though I have all faith, so that 
 I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. 
 
 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though 
 I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth 
 me nothing. 
 
 Charity suffereth long, and is kind ; charity envieth not ; charity 
 vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up. 
 
 Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not 
 easily provoked, thinketh no evil ; 
 
 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth ; 
 
 Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, en- 
 dureth all things. 
 
 Charity never faileth : but whether there be prophecies, they 
 shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether 
 there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. 
 
 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. 
 
 But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in 
 part shall be done away. 
 
 When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, 
 I thought as a child : but when I became a man, I put away child- 
 ish things. 
 
 For now we see through a glass, darkly ; but then face to face : 
 now I know in part ; but then shall I know even as also I am 
 known. 
 
 And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three ; but the great- 
 est of these is charity. 
 
 The reading was followed by the singing of the Te Deum 
 in G by the choir of the church. 
 
 The minister then spoke as follows : — 
 
 " In this month of November, two hundred and fifty years 
 ago, the fathers and mothers of this congregation were 
 looking forward not without a reasonable anxiety, and yet 
 with a deep trust, to their first winter in their new and 
 almost wilderness home. To eyes that look upon the out- 
 ward appearance, it was the day of small things; to Him 
 who looks not upon the outward appearance, it was the day 
 
 7 
 
98 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 of great things, great faith, great hope, great love. We, 
 who in the good providence of God have come into their 
 places and entered into their labors, are not willing that 
 their confidence should be disappointed, and we have called 
 together our kindred and our neighbors to rejoice with us 
 and by seasonable speech to build us up to the measure 
 and stature of our high trust. They have kindly answered 
 our call, and it is my pleasant duty not to detain you with 
 any words of my own or to repeat what I have already 
 said to the congregation; but to pronounce the names of 
 some who are dear and familiar to you all, and with you to 
 wait upon their words. 
 
 " Happily I can call upon one who is in every sense my 
 brother, to tell you the story of this church. I have heard 
 of a very idle son of a very industrious father who was in 
 the habit of saying to his neighbors, ' You shall hardly 
 find two men who have done as much work as my father 
 and myself; ' and I am sure that you will agree with me 
 that it would be impossible to find two men in the Com- 
 monwealth who know as much about the history of our 
 church and State as my brother and myself Let me ask 
 the Rev. Dr. GEORGE E. Ellis to address you." 
 
 ADDRESS OF DR. GEORGE E. ELLIS. 
 
 We are commemorating the two hundred and 
 fiftieth year of the gathering and planting, by 
 exiles from England, of the First Church of 
 Christ on the viro-in soil of Boston. The First 
 Church, — a simple and august title, as distinctive 
 of primacy and of a fruitful parentage. Most 
 fitting it is that those " men and women " who 
 compose the special present membership of this 
 church should on this occasion be merged in this 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 99 
 
 larger company, comprehensive and representative 
 as it is of the offshoots and outgoings, in manifold 
 variety, of the original plant, in scion or graft, with 
 life from the vital sap. The old church welcomes 
 us all to-day, as to a home without walls. Still the 
 invitation which summons us is that of the First 
 Church, meeting in the fifth of its successive houses 
 of worship, — one for each of its half-centuries. A 
 question, leading deeper than we can now follow 
 it, naturally comes to us with this occasion and 
 observance. What is the bond of succession and 
 continuity, not to use the strong word identity, 
 which connects this existing religious fellowship, in 
 covenant, pastorate, and membership, in symbol, in 
 purpose, and in fact, with that ancient wilderness 
 church ? There are heirlooms, objects of outw^ard 
 sense, not without real sisrnificance of a rigfhtful in- 
 heritance. The original records of covenant and 
 membership are still here, unbroken, continuous, in 
 the distinctive qualities of church registers. These 
 sacramental vessels, beginning with the cup of com- 
 munion, the gift of the ever-honored and revered 
 first Governor and first signer of the covenant, and 
 gathering their additions, as votive offerings in life 
 or death from members in their generations, have 
 passed from hand to hand and lip to lip during the 
 months of all these years. The transfers and title- 
 deeds of sites of land sold or purchased for suc- 
 cessive edifices, legally recorded, assure the rights 
 of the present proprietors in the property of their 
 
lOO FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 predecessors. These, however, are relics and tokens 
 of things of sense, temporal and material. Through 
 eight generations of our fleeting race on earth has 
 been transmitted an inheritance in interests, ex- 
 periences, and hopes, which we trust still has its 
 witness here, concerned with what is spiritual, pass- 
 ing within the veil. The covenant stained into that 
 illuminated window, so calmly and sweetly worded 
 in our dear old English tongue, reminds us of a 
 more serious trust which has passed down through 
 this church of Christ. Are those whose inheritance 
 it is, bound by any living tie of sympathy, fidelity, 
 purpose of heart, consecrating aim in life, to those 
 who entered into that covenant '? 
 
 While so many are to speak to you, I must re- 
 strict myself to a single theme from a most fruitful 
 subject for retrospect and thought. Yet, when we 
 ask how this church of to-day assures its relation 
 of succession to that original First Church, we are 
 reminded that all that is of real import in the 
 question carries us back into a matter of larger 
 interest. Those who first entered into church cov- 
 enant here were not waifs, orphans from any pre- 
 vious Christian heritage. They called themselves 
 members of the Church of England, and claimed 
 that they were transplanting a root of it in the 
 wilderness. None the less they originated and in- 
 troduced here a method in church organization, a 
 mode and order of worship, and an administration 
 of discipline divergent from those of the Church 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. lOI 
 
 of England at the date of their coming. Their 
 system, soon called Congregationalism, is substan- 
 tially that adopted and approved by all Christian 
 fellowships in this country, save the prelatical ones, 
 Roman and Anglican. Why this change, this 
 novelty, this breach or schism, which, it is asserted 
 by many, put our fathers and ourselves outside the 
 true fold of Christ ? The question is made to be a 
 grave one, as it concerns their rectitude of avowal 
 and conduct. The pastors and chief members of 
 the church had been, till their coming hither, in 
 communion, by a qualified conformity, with the 
 Church of England ; and they afterwards, on 
 marked occasions, refused to regret or renounce 
 that communion. They insisted, in life and death, 
 that they were children and nurslings of that fold. 
 As the ocean-shores of their beloved home were 
 fadinof on their view from the deck of their 
 vessel, with aching hearts and tearful eyes they 
 tenderly apostrophized their "dear Mother Church," 
 tracing to it their gospel nurture, and asking that 
 the prayers of its assemblies might span the seas 
 for a benediction on their " poor cottages in the 
 wilderness." Yet, seemingly as if rejoicing to be 
 rid of some of its accustomed ways and usages, 
 they here turned their faces from it, and, as if by 
 silent accord, spontaneously, without debate, ex- 
 planation, or vindication, they dropped the surplice 
 and the service-book, the altar-rail and ritual, the 
 chant and the responses, and adopted other ways of 
 
I02 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 their own in their Sunday assembly. The Common 
 Prayer Book, litanies and ceremonies, vestry-men 
 and wardens, were disused. Not a line or word 
 of explanation, if ever such was written, remains to 
 us, accounting for this spontaneous, unchallenged 
 abandonment of a wonted method, and the adop- 
 tion of- a new one. Why was this } 
 
 Let me note here a fact curious and significant. 
 The very rarest volume — so rare that I know not 
 of a single copy — in all our treasured repositories, 
 shelves, and cabinets of relics, books, and papers, 
 gathered from the homes of our first generation 
 here, is the Book of Common Prayer, of previous 
 or contemporary editions. We do not find it in 
 the very minute inventories of the estates of the 
 earliest comers here ; when probated, these inven- 
 tories often containing lists of books by titles. 
 Neither the Library of the Historical Society nor 
 the Prince Library, amid the mass of tracts and 
 volumes of the first exiles, has in keeping a copy 
 of the Prayer-book. What is especially noteworthy, 
 we have the inventory, and a list of the books — 
 nearly two hundred — left by William Blackstone, 
 probated in the year of his death, one year before 
 his house and its contents were burned by the 
 Indians. He was the first English resident on 
 this peninsula, and also in orders as a minister of 
 the Church of England. Many of his books are 
 classed by size, without titles, and the Prayer-book 
 may have been among them ; but it is not men- 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 103 
 
 tioned, though we note on the Hst " 3 Bibles." 
 Governor Winthrop gave a copy of the book to 
 the infant college, lost when the precious old li- 
 brary was burned, Jan. 24, 1764. The governor, 
 however, mentions a copy of the book belonging 
 to his son, which came to a humiliating fate. It 
 seems not to have been lying, as we should say, on 
 the centre-table of a home, nor on a shelf with 
 the Bible, nor kept at hand in a bed-chamber, but 
 in a place " where was corn of divers sorts." " The 
 Greek Testament, the Psalms, and the Common 
 Praver were bound too-ether." The son " found the 
 Common Prayer eaten with mice, every leaf of it, 
 and not any of the two other touched." The hon- 
 ored governor notes this phenomenon as " a thing 
 worthy of observation," without any dismay or re- 
 gret, rather as if impressed by it as a special rebuk- 
 ing Providence. The editor of Winthrop suggests 
 as an explanation of the prodigy, that " the mice, 
 not liking psalmody, and not understanding Greek, 
 took their food from another part of the volume." 
 But a kindlier solution offers: The well-thumbed 
 pages of the liturgy, long and devoutly used by 
 somebody, had given a savory flavor to its leaves, 
 which the mice appreciated.^ 
 
 But what became of all the copies of the Book of 
 
 1 It is not literally the fact that " every leaf " of the Prayer-book was thus 
 nibbled, as the governor says ; for the mice stopped their ravages at the 
 " Order for the Visitation of the Sick." The Hon. Robert C. Winthrop has 
 in his possession the identical volume, as also another copy of the Common 
 Prayer, bound in with the Bible of Adam Winthrop, the father of the 
 governor. 
 
I04 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 Common Prayer once in the possession and in the 
 use of these exile members of the Church of Eno-- 
 land ? The book seems to have been as rare here 
 as the holly and the mistletoe. Had they no room 
 for it in their sea-chests, no place for it in their 
 hearts.? Did they leave it in their old pews for 
 those who were to worship in the calm and beauty 
 of the dear home shrines ? Another striking fact 
 of like significance presents itself to notice. In 
 all that are left to us of the letters, the diaries, 
 the sermons, and other writings of those first com- 
 ers, we should look in vain for a single quotation 
 of sentence or phrase from the felicitous and beauti- 
 ful devotional terms and expressions in prayer and 
 exhortation and collect in the liturgy, — a usage so 
 familiar with those who now worship with its pre- 
 cious help. 
 
 How are we to account for this spontaneous con- 
 sent to lay aside, this instant disuse of, the Church 
 manual ? The explanation is at hand for one versed 
 in the history of those exiles at home and on their 
 coming here. The first and leading members gath- 
 ered in this church had in their old homes been in 
 most intimate, tender, and heart-knitting relations 
 before their exile, held together by a fervent re- 
 ligious communion. Thus they laid their plans, 
 strengthened their purposes, toned their spirits in 
 sympathy and resolve for their stern enterprise. In 
 these confidential meetings and conferences, a book- 
 service would have been cold, constrained, and for- 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 
 
 105 
 
 mal to them, as in like circumstances it always 
 will be. Spontaneous, heart-prompted, heart-worded 
 prayers, with exhortations, w'ere the natural method of 
 their piety. Thus, in free, fervent breathings-forth, 
 to which the Spirit gave tone and language, they 
 were knit in fellowship for trial and sacrifice. They 
 reverted to the simple, primitive, apostolic method and 
 usage of the first companies of Christians, of which 
 they read in the Acts and Epistles of the Apostles, 
 before form, ceremonial, or ritual had come in as in 
 after times. Thus, free prayer became endeared to 
 them for its range and pitch and compass and fer- 
 vor, and adaptation to moods and circumstances. 
 When they left their homes and shrines, nature and 
 use — the experience of its blessing and strength for 
 them — made it their joy and solace. It is to be re- 
 membered that when they left their parish churches, 
 some of them having already disused form and cere- 
 monial, the Service-book had not become to them the 
 fond and almost idolized object, bedew^ed and con- 
 secrated by tender associations for those devoutly 
 educated by it in the last two and a half centuries. 
 Those of us not wonted to its use and esteem can- 
 not at times but stand amazed at the intensity of 
 regard now lavished upon the book, the dread and 
 jealousy of any tentative dealing with it, felt by its 
 fondest votaries. We have seen more than once a 
 large convention of bishops, ministers, and lay dele- 
 gates of our Episcopal denomination debating a 
 proposed change in it of a word or a phrase, and 
 
I06 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 then rejecting it as if it concerned a displacement 
 of the stars of heaven. 
 
 Our exiles had not so bedewed that book with 
 heart affections. It was to them, under the chang- 
 ing forms of much modification and construction, a 
 comparatively recent fabric of man's ingenuity, pref- 
 erence, and judgment, translated, selected, and dis- 
 posed from various materials of devotion. In their 
 view, the best portions of the book were its lessons 
 from the Scriptures, harmed rather than helped for 
 them by a forced and arbitrary arrangement by an 
 ecclesiastical year of festivals, fasts, and saints' days. 
 They preferred to select their Scripture readings for 
 themselves. They felt rather the restraints and stiff 
 formalities of the Service-book than its helps. It is 
 wholly unlikely that on their passage hither they 
 once had recourse to it on deck or in the cabin, in 
 their daily worship or their Lord's Day exercises. 
 So, without the Servdce-book, free of it, not caring 
 for it, they instituted here their social religious as- 
 sembling. The truth, simple and without just of- 
 fence to any one, may be spoken. Besides their 
 scruples against conformity with a ceremonial for 
 which they found no warrant in the Christian Scrip- 
 tures, the Prayer-book, rich as it was in chant and 
 collect, did not contain what they wanted. They 
 could not find within it so readily as they found 
 within their own burdened and longing hearts the 
 matter of devotion and petition which answered to 
 their condition, their straits and perils, their fervors 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 107 
 
 and dreads and ecstasies of experience in dismay or 
 trust. The Service-book, a copy in the hand of each 
 worshipper, trained, as the phrase is, "in finding the 
 place," and knowing when to stand, sit, or kneel, so 
 aptly suited to the calm and decorum and routine 
 uniformity of peaceful Sabbaths and well-furnished 
 churches, with chant and organ, surplice and chan- 
 cel and choir, did not meet the exigencies of wilder- 
 ness worship. The fact is a significant one, and 
 need not, in the recognition of it, involve any invid- 
 ious debating of the merits and uses of liturgies. 
 Renewals of the same experience are confessedly 
 met by Episcopal missionaries held to the use of 
 the book on our own frontiers, in sparse settlements, 
 and to groups of chance attendants summoned for 
 social worship. Within this very month we have 
 found the foremost minister of that communion in 
 its full convention pleading earnestly for liberty, — 
 on some occasions for free prayer and a more flexi- 
 ble service. Overwhelmingly was the petition re- 
 jected, the decision being that in every public service 
 of the church its ministers may offer no prayer other 
 than in the words of the book. 
 
 When, therefore, our exiles here, in disusing the 
 book and all the forms of ritual and prelacy, claimed 
 lovingly still to be in the lineage and membership of 
 their mother church, the explanation is obvious. The 
 Church of England was dear to them, as it stood 
 for the Church of Christ. Other than that it was 
 to them of no account. They had in thought the 
 
I08 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 divine pattern, deposit, and endowment, not the hu- 
 man mechanism and administration of that Church. 
 Through it the verities and sanctities of the Christian 
 faith, with all its spiritual vitality, had come to them, 
 baptizing their infancy and imparting to them its 
 sacramental blessing. From the doctrine of the 
 church, in believing and holy living, they in no 
 whit departed. They had labored and suffered 
 while at home to advance the reformation of the 
 nation's church, which, having been in progress for 
 nearly a century, had been arbitrarily arrested in its 
 working back to its scriptural pattern by State pol- 
 icy and priestly devices. They did not imagine that 
 their heritage in their mother church was perilled by 
 their rejection of some of the human inventions still 
 retained in its ceremonial and discipline, any more 
 than it was by the common repudiation of distinc- 
 tive Roman errors. Such graces and gifts as might 
 come from a special method of ordination to the 
 ministry the first pastors and teachers of the exiles 
 had received in England, and it was not thought of 
 sufficient importance that their successors should 
 cross the ocean to obtain them. At any rate, the 
 plea of the exiles that their disuse of form and cere- 
 mony did not sever their tie to their mother church 
 could be answered only by what would be from their 
 descendants but a harsh and ill judgment of the 
 Church of England. In effect it would be that the 
 signal quality, warrant, and glory of that church 
 rested in the mechanism of its service and ceremo- 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 
 
 109 
 
 nial, disposed by clerical, parliamentary, and royal 
 devices, rather than in its divine deposit of the sim- 
 ple gospel. It was with the Christian vine, and not 
 with its trellises, that our exiles knit in their trust and 
 life. That vine had kept its sap and vigor through 
 centuries of Roman domination and corruption, and 
 they believed that with a further purging it would 
 bring forth more fruit. 
 
 The Puritan mode of worship and service, severely 
 naked and unwinning as it was, met the occasion 
 and the time in its strain upon the austere and in- 
 tense fervors of spirit in thofe exiles. But with 
 softening and enriching experiences, it proved blank 
 and drear. It was suited to men stern and earnest 
 in their pitch and style of piety, — hardly nutritive, 
 winning, or wreathed enough for women, and inef- 
 fective, juiceless, and repulsive for children. The 
 " Milk for Babes," provided by the first teacher, 
 John Cotton, was highly concentrated, and not easily 
 assimilated for nutriment. 
 
 More upbuilding to those exiles than the reading 
 of the Service-book was an exercise which their 
 mother church had not provided for them, but 
 which, with the sermon, and more than the sermon, 
 was their nutriment in their solemnities. This was 
 " the opening," or the exposition, with comment, of 
 a passage of Scripture, still after the New Testament 
 pattern. Hundreds there were of the easy-going 
 vicars and curates of English parishes who would 
 have been utterly incapable of meeting the high 
 
no FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 demands and standard of our exiles for that ser- 
 vice. On the title-page of the English Bible is in- 
 scribed, "Appointed to be read in Churches." This 
 required the reading of a " Proper Lesson " from the 
 desk. To the Puritan this was like offerino: some 
 rich fruit to the eye or hand without indulging the 
 palate with its juice or flavor. " Dumb reading," 
 that was called. The Puritan wished the condiment 
 squeezed and pressed, for a lengthened, lingering 
 repast. Verse by verse, with light from the Hebrew 
 and Greek originals, with comparison and illustra- 
 tion by other texts, with exposition and improve- 
 ment, would the teacher penetrate to and open the 
 mines of wealth in the holy pages. Men and women 
 listened intently, with each thumb and finger in- 
 serted between the leaves, to follow the illuminating 
 way. John Cotton was midway on a second ex- 
 position of the whole Bible when his life closed. 
 
 So the instincts and cravings of their own hearts, 
 their circumstances and conditions, guided them to 
 the use of methods best suited to the quality of 
 their piety, while there was always a scrupulous care 
 to follow the way of Scripture. If we could enter 
 thoroughly into their confidence, we should find that 
 things which they disused had been abused, like the 
 Lord's Prayer as the reiterated Pater-noster, and 
 that what to us looks like self-will was to them the 
 constraint of conscience. So far from supposing 
 that they were alienating themselves from their 
 Christian heritage, they devoutly believed that they 
 
COMjMEMORATIVE services. Ill 
 
 were following the pattern of the primitive Apos- 
 tolic Church, after the simplicity of Christ. 
 
 I may not open the manifold leadings of the ques- 
 tion as to the rightful passing of the title and quality, 
 the honor and dignity, of that wilderness fellowship 
 to those who now constitute this First Church. Yet, 
 where so much has changed, the substance abides ; 
 the Scriptures, the Christian doctrine and rule of 
 life, still guide its services. A digest of the hun- 
 dreds of thousands of sermons preached by the 
 succession of its ministers, and the action of the 
 members on the religious movements and measures 
 of two and a half centuries here, would present, in 
 fair exhibition and review, the developments and en- 
 largements of our general religious history. Happily 
 the church long since relaxed the inquisitorial sever- 
 ity of its early discipline,, by which it held rigidly 
 to account each of its covenanted or baptized mem- 
 bers. Otherwise it would have to deal to-day with 
 a notable company among the living constructively 
 accountable to it. If words were used by their 
 signification, Catholic would be the fitting epithet 
 for this church now. It stands free of all sectarian 
 and denominational bonds, being closest in its rela- 
 tions with that unfenced brotherhood which claims 
 all the liberty wherewith Christ has made his dis- 
 ciples free, provided only that they are his disciples ; 
 for Christ is now, as always, its Head. No ecclesi- 
 astical process or tribunal can stand between its 
 minister and his flock, to question his teaching or 
 
112 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 the tenure of his office. Acting with the freedom 
 and the desire of adjustment to admitted tastes 
 and needs, and the desire to get all good from all 
 things, a modified Service-book has come into use 
 here, not, however, with any enforcement. Those 
 who worship here, in the course of a single year, 
 find that, according to the preferences of the offici- 
 ating minister, they engage in the original Puritan 
 method of devotion, or in parts or the whole of 
 the book. The question is asked. What would 
 your founders say about the grandeur and artistic 
 beauty of this edifice, its storied windows, its organ 
 and choir, the green boughs of its Christmas service, 
 the flowers of its Easter service, its furnaces, and 
 its cushioned pews ? If we care to answer, we 
 should say that the Puritans built the best meeting- 
 house which they could ; that each renewed edifice 
 improved upon the preceding one. We should point 
 to the fair palaces and beautiful homes, with all their 
 furnishings, and to the marts of mammon, where 
 was once a wilderness ; and we should plead that 
 the sanctuary may be holy, even if glorious and 
 lovely. 
 
 ■ Never in all its years of life and change was this 
 ancient church more vigorous and earnest and effec- 
 tive in all the offices and purposes of a Christian 
 church than it is to-day. Its debts are all due to 
 God ; none of them to man, except for high and 
 sacred service. Its peaceful relations with all other 
 churches, its devout and dignified ministrations, the 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. II3 
 
 fidelity and tenderness of its pastoral work, the un- 
 obtrusiveness of its presence in any other than its 
 appropriate sphere, the largeness and earnestness 
 and compass of its benevolent agencies, — these 
 make the present First Church the most fitting 
 memorial of the fathers in the fair city once then- 
 wilderness home. May its Divine Guardian lead it 
 on for the centuries to come, still standing as it was 
 planted,— "built upon the foundation of the apos- 
 tles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the 
 chief corner-stone " ! 
 
 The minister then said : " Of the first signer of our church 
 covenant and the first governor of this Commonwealth John 
 Winthrop, a name ahvays to be spoken gratefully and re- 
 veringly, it is recorded, April 3. 1634: 'The Governour 
 went on foot to Agawam, and because the people there 
 wanted a minister, spent the Sabbath with them and exer- 
 cised by way of prophecy.' I cannot say that there is here 
 any lack of ministers, but we have a liking in this church 
 for lay preaching when we know of what sort it will be; 
 and I am sure you will say that there is something in the 
 doctrine of heredity when you are listening, as I need not 
 ask you to do, to the Hon. ROBERT C. WiNTHROP. 
 
 ADDRESS OF THE HON. ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 
 
 It is no little relief to me, ladies and gentlemen, 
 to remember that, in promising to be with you here 
 on this occasion, it was expressly stipulated that I 
 should be held responsible for only a brief address. 
 There are those around me to whom this Church 
 must be peculiarly and justly precious, as being 
 
114 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 their own church, and the church of their fathers 
 and mothers, and of all who are most dear to them. 
 But I can speak under the inspiration of no such 
 associations, as I look back on my own long and 
 unintermitted relations to Old Trinity, and to New 
 Trinity, from infancy to old age, — relations never 
 more valued than at this hour. Nor can I forget 
 how recently I have returned from a protracted 
 session of the triennial convention of the general 
 Church to which I belong, — where I was freshly 
 impressed with the value of its organization, the 
 charms of its liturgy, the safe anchorage of its 
 creeds, and the broad range of its views and efforts. 
 And yet, my friends, in face of all these associa- 
 tions, and in full remembrance of all my religious 
 professions and ties, I can honestly say that there 
 is no connection in which I am more glad, or more 
 proud, to recognize my family name distinctly in- 
 scribed, than on yonder beautiful window of this 
 First Boston Church. That old covenant of 1630, 
 of which John Winthrop was the first signer, is one 
 under which any man might well be willing to live 
 and to die. For myself, certainly, I could desire to 
 have lived and died under no better and no other 
 covenant. And as to the old Governor himself, I 
 venture to say for him, in this sixth generation, that 
 he would have preferred that his name should be 
 perpetuated there, rather than on a dozen statues in 
 the city, or the State, or the national Capitol. Let 
 my name, he would have said, be remembered, if at 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 1 15 
 
 all, not so much for founding towns or common- 
 wealths or confederations, as for bringing the gospel 
 into the wilderness, and helping to advance the 
 kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. All else, with 
 him, was subordinate to that. 
 
 And certainly nothing could have been more sim- 
 ple, more solemn, or more comprehensive than this 
 covenant, for those who wished to associate them- 
 selves together in a Christian church. A recital of 
 all the thirty-nine articles would have added nothing 
 to its force or its felicity. I might have said thirty- 
 eight articles, as our American church omitted one 
 of the articles, at the same time that it so wisely 
 struck out from the Prayer-book the Commination 
 service and the Athanasian creed. If such a cove- 
 nant were drawn up, and subscribed and entered 
 into heartily here, to-day, for the first time, or in any 
 part of the world, at any time, by a company of sin- 
 cere and earnest believers, it could not and would 
 not fail to commend itself to the respect and confi- 
 dence and sympathy of all good people, let them 
 belong to whatever denominational church they 
 might. 
 
 But, let me hasten to say, there were peculiar 
 circumstances under which this little covenant was 
 adopted two centuries and a half ago, which give 
 it a significance, an impressiveness, and even a 
 pathos, which can hardly be exaggerated, and which 
 must never be forgotten, — least of all here on this 
 occasion. 
 
Il6 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 Let me recall for an instant the historical facts, — 
 e\'en at the risk of repeating what has been said, or 
 of anticipating what may be said, by others. Most 
 happily the account of the signing of this covenant, 
 in 1630, is preserved in all its details, as fully and 
 clearly as the signing of the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence in 1776, or of the credentials of tlie latest 
 missionary bishop at New York last month. Those 
 two original letters of Edward Winslow and Samuel 
 Fuller to Governor Bradford, contained in Bradford's 
 " Letter Book," — providentially rescued, eighty years 
 ago, from a grocery shop in Halifax, — as well as in 
 his " History of the Pilgrims," not less providentially 
 discovered, twenty-five years ago, in the Bishop of 
 London's library, — tell the whole story. 
 
 The men who signed this covenant on the 30th 
 of July, 1630, — after a long and perilous voyage 
 across the Atlantic, — had reached the shores of 
 New England about six weeks before. They had 
 left homes and altars, friends and, many of them, 
 their families, behind them, and had come to seek 
 that civil and relisrious freedom which had been 
 denied them in Old England. Meantime affliction 
 and suffering had already befallen them. They 
 were not, indeed, like the Pilgrims at Plymouth, 
 involved, at the outset, in all the rigors of a bleak 
 New England winter. The Pilgrims landed in De- 
 cember, on the shortest day of the year. The 
 Massachusetts colony, by a striking contrast, landed 
 in June, on the very longest. But they were still 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. I 17 
 
 without fixed habitations, — many of them encamped 
 at Charlestovvn in tents and booths. It was too late 
 to begin planting with any confidence of a crop on 
 an untried soil, and they were still without sufiicient 
 supplies of food to secure them from famine in the 
 winter. Fears and sorrows were, indeed, so multi- 
 plying upon them and around them, that they began 
 to feel as if the Lord's hand was against them. 
 Many were sick, many were dead. Governor Win- 
 throp's son Henry had been drowned soon after his 
 arrival. The Lady Arbella was pining at Salem 
 from the results of fatigue and exposure, under which 
 she was soon to sink into an unmarked grave, — to 
 be followed, alas, within a single month of her own 
 death, by her noble husband, Isaac Johnson, who 
 " tried to live without her, liked it not, and died." 
 But he was with her at Salem on the 25th of July, 
 1630, and there he had received from Governor 
 Winthrop, who was at Charlestown with the as- 
 sistants and the Massachusetts company, a letter 
 recounting their anxieties and afflictions, and de- 
 siring that all at Salem and Charlestown, and every- 
 where else in the colony, might hasten to humble 
 themselves before God, seeking him in his ordi- 
 nances, and beseeching him to withdraw his hand 
 of correction from them, and to direct and establish 
 them in His ways. 
 
 Out of this letter of the governor's to Isaac John- 
 son, read publicly after their Sabbath evening ex- 
 ercise at Salem, and made the subject of loving 
 
Il8 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 consultation by Winslow and Fuller of the Pilgrim 
 Fathers, as well as by the Salem church, which they 
 were visiting, came the appointment of the following 
 Friday (July 30) as a day of humiliation and prayer, 
 and for the entering into this covenant with the 
 Lord, to walk in all their ways according to the 
 rules of the gospel. 
 
 There was no Boston yet. But the day was 
 to be solemnized at Salem and at Plymouth, at 
 Dorchester and at Watertown, as well as by the 
 Massachusetts company at Charlestown. It was 
 a most memorable day in our history. All that 
 there was of Massachusetts, all that there was of 
 New England, was down on its knees on that 
 thirtieth of July before God. Church and State, 
 ministers and governors, — the whole colony, was 
 assembled before the Lord, acknowledging him as 
 their only refuge in tribulation, and dedicating them- 
 selves to his serv'ice. We can almost hear them, in 
 their little log meeting-houses, or in the larger hall 
 at Charlestown, or under the branches of the 2:reat 
 trees around them, rehearsing or singing some of 
 the verses of that marvellous 107th Psalm, which 
 seemed composed for them as much as for the chil- 
 dren of Israel : " They went astray in the wilderness 
 and found no city to dwell in : hungry and thirsty 
 their soul fainted in them : so they cried unto the 
 Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from 
 their distress : He led them forth by the right way, 
 that they might go to a city of habitation." That 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 119 
 
 was the day, my friends, and those the circumstances, 
 on whicli and under which yonder Httle covenant 
 was proposed, prepared, and signed by the four 
 representative men whose names you have embla- 
 zoned on your window. 
 
 I have but Httle doubt that Governor Winthrop 
 framed that covenant. It is entirely in keeping 
 with the discourse which he wrote and delivered on 
 board the Arbella during his long voyage. Nor is 
 it, let me add, in any degree out of keeping with his 
 farewell letter to his brethren of the Church of Eng- 
 land. There is not a word in it of alienation, or 
 separation, or non-conformity, or of what some good 
 people call schism. I do not altogether believe that 
 on that thirtieth day of July the governor had any 
 very distinct idea, in his own mind, to what it was 
 all to lead, or what was to be the permanent organi- 
 zation of religious worship in the colony he was 
 founding. There was too much trouble, too much 
 affliction, too much distress of all sorts, for any de- 
 liberate decision on such a point. It might have 
 quickened him to such a decision if he had learned, 
 as possibly he may have learned, that the latest 
 letters from London at that moment brought tidings 
 that Laud — the great foe of Puritanism — was in 
 high favor at Court, wielding all the authority of 
 Primate, and that five ministers of the English 
 Church had just been summoned before the High 
 Commission, of whom his friend John Cotton was 
 one. But it was enough for him, and for those with 
 
I20 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTOxN. 
 
 him, that they needed, and must have, the comforts 
 and consolations of religious association and relig- 
 ious worship, and that the covenanted mercies of 
 God must be invoked by humiliation and prayer. 
 
 Meantime, beyond all doubt, whatever they may 
 have intended or designed, that day, that service, 
 that covenant, settled the question that Congre- 
 gationalism was to be the prevailing order, and for 
 a long time the only order, in early New England. 
 Nor, let me add, have I ever doubted for a moment 
 that Congregationalism was the best and the only 
 mode of planting and propagating Christianity, in 
 this part of the country, in those old Puritan times. 
 But I said enough about that at Plymouth Rock, ten 
 years ago, and I have nothing to add or to alter. 
 
 Governor Winthrop was unquestionably a man 
 who cared more for faith than for forms, more for 
 religion than for ritual, more for prayer than for 
 prayer-books, and who held Christianity to be above 
 all churches. And, in that regard, there is at least 
 one of his descendants who does not reverence his 
 memory the less, and who humbly strives to culti- 
 vate his spirit. While I can make no pretension to 
 the lofty title of a Puritan myself, I may at least be 
 permitted — when so many disparagements are cast 
 upon that title in other quarters — to avow my 
 earnest admiration for the many grand qualities 
 which the Puritans displayed, here and elsewhere, 
 in spite of all their faults ; and for the glorious re- 
 sults they achieved for civil and religious freedom, 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 12 1 
 
 both in New England and in Old England. " It 
 was to this sect," says the historian Hume, ^' that 
 the English owe the whole freedom of their consti- 
 tution." " The Puritans," writes Hallam, " were the 
 depositaries of the sacred fire of liberty." " The 
 genius of Puritan England," says his latest and best 
 biographer, "was John Milton." That is glory 
 enough for them in Old England. 
 
 And if we desire to understand what Puritanism 
 has accomplished for New England, we have only 
 to look for ourselves, and see what New England 
 is. Not to any single, massive, material structure, 
 with its hallowed crypt and splendid choir, its vaulted 
 arches and long-drawn aisles and magnificent dome, 
 but to countless institutions everywhere, for relig- 
 ion, education, and charity, and to an intelligent, 
 industrious, and free people, living and multiplying 
 in the enjoyment of them all, we point proudly to- 
 day, in presence of this old First Church Covenant, 
 and in loving remembrance of those who signed it, 
 and say, " If you seek a monument of the Puritans, 
 look around you ! " 
 
 The minister then said : " I gather from the story of our 
 church that Governor Winthrop once owed his election to 
 the earnest efforts of the Rev. John Wilson, who climbed a 
 tree that he might be the better heard by the crowd. I can- 
 not claim to have rendered any such service to our honored 
 chief magistrate ; but I trust that he will none the less put 
 us in his debt, as the first governor was continually wont to 
 do. May I ask a word from His Excellency the Governor 
 of Massachusetts?" 
 
122 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 ADDRESS OF GOVERNOR LONG. 
 
 I rise only to bring to this delightful occasion the 
 greeting and kind wishes of the Commonwealth 
 which shares with you the honor of the name of 
 John Winthrop — at once the first governor of the 
 Massachusetts Colony and chief of the founders of 
 the First Church of Boston. If he were here in my 
 place, what eloquent expression might he not give 
 to the emotions that would stir in his heart at wit- 
 nessing the changes and the progress of two centu- 
 ries and a half, alike in the church he aided to found 
 and in the Commonwealth that still reveres his 
 memory and bears his impress ! Much as he would 
 find the present minister a man after his own heart, 
 he would hardly guarantee, I fear, the salary of 
 Dr. Ellis as he did that of John Wilson, the 
 first pastor. He might for a moment question the 
 architectural elaboration and tasteful magnificence 
 of this edifice, as compared with the fretwork of 
 leaves and sunshine, or later the mud w^alls and 
 thatched roof, under which he w^orshipped. But 
 (perhaps conciliated as soon as he saw the worthy 
 descendant of his own loins — who honors the ven- 
 erable and illustrious name he bears more even than 
 it honors him — giving the sanction of his voice 
 and presence here) anon his own great nature would 
 take in and expand to the grandeur of all this growth, 
 the seed of which he helped to plant. It would not 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 123 
 
 pain him, I am sure, that Church and State, over both 
 which his influence was once so great, have severed 
 connection and are independent of each other. He 
 would not think Mr. Peters, a minister of Salem, 
 was far out of the way, who, in 1636, "rebuked the 
 governour and plainly insinuated that if governours 
 would concern themselves only with the things of 
 Caesar, the things of God would be more quiet and 
 prosperous." He would certainly admit that the 
 Church is better employed than when it was rent 
 with schisms over technical points of doctrine, or 
 when it wrangled over mere theological terms that 
 have long since been as lifeless as the dead leaves 
 at which you may look as a student, but which fall 
 to dust if you touch them, and are only good for 
 fertilizing new crops. 
 
 The fact is, these anniversary celebrations — 
 which are now so frequent that our wittiest poet 
 has said that if we had a patron saint, it would be 
 St. Anniversary — are valuable, not so much because 
 we reproduce the past, which in its grim reality is 
 not always attractive, but because we idealize the 
 past, and so inspire the present and the future. 
 Remembering that first solemn covenant of this 
 church, which had but this one requirement, " To 
 walk in all our ways according to the rule of the 
 gospel, and in all sincere conformity to his holy 
 ordinances, and in mutual love and respect to each 
 other so near as God shall give us grace," Governor 
 Winthrop would find assurance that his church to- 
 
124 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 day Is all that was best in it two hundred and fifty 
 years ago. And if, passing from these portals, he 
 should walk the streets of Boston, or go over the 
 Commonwealth, it would rejoice him to find a better 
 Massachusetts than his own, the wilderness blossom- 
 ing like the rose, thrift, education, and plenty every- 
 where, and these shores an asylum not alone for a 
 Puritan congregation in search of fi-eer range, but 
 for all the children of men who seek larger liberty 
 and a better hope. What is true of the Church is 
 true also of the Commonwealth. The best thing 
 in each is its own orowth. The Commonwealth is 
 to-day all that was best in the Massachusetts Colony 
 of tw^o hundred and fifty years ago, expanded from 
 that day of small things to a grander growth, but 
 its veins still quick with the same blood, and its 
 advance inspired by the same high ideals of Chris- 
 tian virtue, education, and liberty, which have char- 
 acterized it more and more fi'om the beginning on, 
 but which have no more striking illustration than 
 in the history and in the men — the Winthrops, the 
 Cottons, the Chauncys, the Emersons — of the First 
 Church of Boston. To that church, in grateful 
 recognition of its contribution to the causes of re- 
 ligion, of good morals, of public virtue, of education 
 and patriotism, on this its two hundred and fiftieth 
 birthday, hoping that it is in the beginning of its 
 usefulness, and that two hundred and fifty years 
 hence as good words may be said of us as we can 
 now^ say of our fathers, I bring the acknowledgments 
 of the Commonwealth. 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 
 
 125 
 
 The minister then said : " After the excellent service 
 rendered by him to the city of Boston on the 17th of 
 September, his Honor the Mayor may well claim exemp- 
 tion from added duty in that way; but the church as well 
 as the city asks his presence when she celebrates her 
 anniversary, and it is not his habit to decline any reason- 
 able call. I ask a word from his Honor the Mayor of 
 Boston." 
 
 ADDRESS OF MAYOR PRINCE. 
 
 The Committee of the First Church of Boston, 
 charged with the arrangements of the commemora- 
 tive services in honor of its completion of two hun- 
 dred and fifty years of life, have kindly asked me to 
 be present and participate in these services because 
 of my official position as mayor of the city. It gives 
 me great pleasure to do so. No citizen of Boston 
 can fail to be deeply interested in this occasion. 
 No one who feels as he should in respect to our 
 civic history can fail of gratulation and sympathy 
 for the cause of this ancient societ}^ Its origin and 
 its whole history are closely interwoven with the 
 origin and history of Boston. The annals could 
 not be written without giving the story of the First 
 Church. When we look back and recall the cir- 
 cumstances under which this society was organized, 
 when we summon before our mental gaze its heroic 
 founders, — Winthrop and Dudley and Johnson and 
 Wilson and Bradstreet, — and all those grand old 
 Puritans who left country and home and friends, 
 the endearing scenes of childhood, the sacred graves 
 
126 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 of their fathers, the charms and attractions of civil- 
 ized life, for a barren wilderness, inhabited only by 
 savage beasts and men more savage, that they might 
 worship God in peace and according to the dictates 
 of conscience ; when we remember the hardships, 
 dangers, and suffering of the long voyage across the 
 stormy Atlantic ; when we recall their sublime for- 
 titude, their serene patience, their indomitable perse- 
 verance, their sincerity, piety, and faith, — we cannot 
 but feel for them admiration mingled with awe, and 
 a reverence which approaches veneration. It will 
 be noted that the first act of the Pilgrims as a body, 
 upon landing here, was to found a church. Before 
 they made homes for themselves, before they erected 
 dwellings, they organized and arranged to carry out 
 the leading object of their emigration, the free wor- 
 ship of God, and this society was gathered. At 
 first the cono^reoation assembled and held relisfious 
 exercises beneath the spreading branches of an oak- 
 tree. The quiet and peace of the then untenanted 
 land, the solemn calm of undisturbed nature in those 
 first days of colonial life, would seem to have been 
 in full harmony with the grave Puritan character, 
 and such place of worship, such a temple, well fitted 
 to the exalted nature of Puritan devotion. 
 
 The first meeting-house was of the simplest form 
 and rudest construction. It had no vaulted roof, no 
 groined arches, no lofty spires, no cathedral mag- 
 nificence, none of the pomp and glory of ancient or 
 modern church architecture. Its walls were built 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 1 27 
 
 of mud, as the Governor has just said, its roof was 
 merely thatched, but the prayers which ascended 
 therefrom were as sincere and devout as any that 
 the costliest minster or cathedral ever sent forth, 
 and doubtless were as acceptable. That first gath- 
 ering did more than establish a CJmrch, — it estab- 
 lished a State. It arranged all the civil as well as 
 the ecclesiastical concerns of the infant colony. It 
 regulated all the domestic matters of the society, or 
 " congregation," as the covenanters styled them- 
 selves. No one had voice or vote in the early days 
 touching public affairs, or in whatever affected pub- 
 lic interests ; no one could make the law, adjudi- 
 cate it, or execute it, who was not a church-member, 
 and none could be a church-member whose daily 
 life was not clean, decent, and holy. The order 
 admitting none to the freedom of the body politic 
 but such as were church-members was adopted in 
 1 63 1, and continued in force until the dissolution of 
 the government in 1684, although probably the 
 order was not rigidly enforced for some years pre- 
 vious to that date. It has been charged that this 
 exercise of power was oppressive, and that the Pil- 
 grims showed in their conduct here the same intol- 
 erance which drove themselves from the mother 
 country. This may perhaps be true in some re- 
 spects, but I think it may be demonstrated that the 
 action of the fathers under the circumstances was 
 justifiable because necessary for the maintenance of 
 their cause. They had made great sacrifices for 
 
128 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 religious liberty, and they were determined that it 
 should not be jeoparded, but protected by every 
 means against every possible danger. Religious 
 toleration was to be delayed to a more convenient 
 season, when Puritan principles would become so 
 firmly rooted as to defy the assault of all enemies. 
 Although the occasion does not allow the discussion 
 of the question, I have no doubt that Congregation- 
 alism was the only church form which could have 
 maintained the cause of the colonists, subdued the 
 wilderness, the savages and all the opponents of 
 Puritanism, ecclesiastical and lay, and laid the foun- 
 dations upon which was subsequently erected con- 
 stitutional liberty, civil and religious. If the English 
 Church just as it existed in England had been planted 
 here by the emigrants, and it had been firmly estab- 
 lished, the political and social condition of this 
 Commonwealth and the whole country might have, 
 and probably would have been, wholly different from 
 what it is now. Congregationalism means civil as 
 well as religious liberty : it is of the very essence of 
 freedom and independence. When we remember 
 that there was no religious liberty either in England 
 or in any other country when Puritanism arose, that 
 after the Reformation the power exercised by the 
 Pope was transferred to the temporal monarch, who 
 was the absolute ruler over the consciences of the 
 people, so that they must believe whatever he should 
 direct in respect to religion (which control, King 
 Henry said, in his letter touching the provisions of 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. I 29 
 
 the Act of Supremacy, " was no more than what all 
 Christian princes in former times assumed to them- 
 selves in their own dominions "), we can understand 
 how little religious liberty there was when the Puri- 
 tans emigrated, and we can also understand what 
 an important step was taken when they broke loose 
 from the powers controlling the church and asserted 
 the principles of Congregationalism. The assertion 
 of these principles must have created as much as- 
 tonishment in the mother country as, years after- 
 wards, the denial by the Puritan descendants of the 
 right of taxation without representation. Fortu- 
 nately, however, the colonists were too few in num- 
 bers, and the government of England too much 
 occupied with domestic matters, to pay much atten- 
 tion to any declaration of church rights in places so 
 far off, by parties so insignificant every way as these 
 non-conformists. The Puritans were for relioious 
 liberty, and on this account they w^ere the advocates 
 of civil liberty, since civil liberty must first exist as 
 the basis of religious liberty. 
 
 All honor to the Pilgrim Founders of the First 
 Church ! We prove the solidity and completeness 
 of their work by its durability. It has survived 
 perils and schisms and enemies of every character. 
 Its influence can never be wholly set forth or shown. 
 We trace its effect everywhere in the religious, social, 
 and political opinions and institutions of the country. 
 We owe to the declaration so briefly sketched in the 
 simple covenant under which this church was gath- 
 
 9 
 
130 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 ered much of that cathoHcity of spirit which now 
 pervades all religious sects, and that general recog- 
 nition of our common humanity which makes us, in 
 the words of the covenant, " entertain mutual love 
 and respect to each other," and moves us to be in- 
 terested in whatever concerns our race. We owe to 
 it that steadiness of faith with which New England 
 has ever resisted the materialism which would de- 
 stroy the spiritual nature of the soul, and that severe 
 strength of intellect which rejects the rationalism 
 which would deny to us inspiration. We owe to it 
 the fuller development of those great qualities which 
 have distinguished the Puritan character, and fitted 
 our fathers and their descendants for the great work, 
 political and social, they were called to perform. 
 Wisely the Pilgrims came here to establish the prin- 
 ciples set forth in the covenant. They could never 
 have found a fitting field for such purpose in the old 
 country. There not only the hostility of govern- 
 ment, but the opinions, prejudices, habits, and tra- 
 ditions of the people would have walled them in so 
 completely that no expansion or growth would have 
 been possible. A new and unpeopled country, where 
 all was free and unfettered as Nature made it, was 
 necessary for the planting and the harvesting. Puri- 
 tanism first developed in its full proportions here 
 in Boston, and to-day still affects the character and 
 habits of our people, influences their thought and 
 controls their action to an extent not entirely recog- 
 nized despite the great changes of time and circum- 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 131 
 
 stances. It was recently observed by one of the 
 New York papers, that Boston cannot long expect 
 to maintain its prominent position among the cities 
 of the country ; that she cannot hope to have the 
 same influence in the future which she has had in 
 the past ; that she must henceforth yield the lead to 
 communities actuated by other and broader ideas : 
 but I think we may dismiss all fears in this respect 
 while the spirit of Puritanism yet lingers with us, 
 to animate, invigorate, and guide our citizens, to 
 stimulate habits of industry and perseverance, to 
 foster the love of work, to maintain the desire 
 to reform, improve, and elevate. The Puritan has 
 been reproached for wanting those qualities which 
 are the grace of private life, and attach men to each 
 other. He is charged with that austerity which 
 hates even respectable amusements and pleasures, 
 with being " sour-visaged," There may be more or 
 less of truth in all this ; but acidity is not without its 
 value, for the sour leaven ferments the wheat, and 
 thus makes the wholesome bread, which is the staff 
 of life. May we long retain the leaven of Puri- 
 tanism ! 
 
 I congratulate the society on possessing this 
 beautiful house of worship. During its long life 
 of two hundred and fifty years it has occupied four 
 different locations and five different edifices, each 
 one more costly than the last, its fortunes advancing 
 with those of the city. All its history has been illus- 
 trious by devotion to the purposes for which it was 
 
132 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 organized, and by zealous advocacy of the cause to 
 which it was consecrated. Its work has been and 
 is now being successfully performed. Its long roll 
 of ministers has no name not honored and revered 
 for fidelity to duty, for piety and the practice as well 
 as the preaching of the Christian virtues. Let us 
 hope that it will continue to prosper in the centuries 
 which are to come as in the centuries that have 
 passed. 
 
 After the singing of the Jubilate in B, the minister said : 
 " The old Church of St. Botolph in Boston, England, owes 
 to our late parishioner, Edward Everett, more than to any 
 other man, the restoration of its chapel. To a son of Ed- 
 ward Everett we owe the earnest proposal out of which 
 sprang this fifth house of worship, our St. Botolph's, — the 
 realization, is it not, of John Wilson's beautiful vision, of 
 which the banner on my left reminds us. It was eminently 
 fit that descendants of John Cotton should be foremost in 
 both these enterprises. And you will be glad to know 
 that the son of Mr. Edward Everett, who is at once child 
 of the congregation, member of the church, teacher and 
 minister, has brought to us a Poem with which to grace 
 our anniversary. I ask your attention to Dr. WiLLIAM 
 Everett." 
 
 cotton in the pulpit at st. mary's. 
 
 "Mather's Magnalia," Book III. p. i6. 
 
 Where the chalky heights of England melt into her dreary fen, 
 Springs an ancient fount of learning, Cambridge, nurse of mighty 
 
 men : 
 Clustering spires and vaulted portals, velvet lawns to catch the sun, 
 Plashing conduits, cloistered arches, courts revealing, one by one, 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 
 
 ^33 
 
 Halls on halls and cells uncounted, where for many a rolling year, 
 All the noisy world excluded, Granta spreads her goodly cheer ; 
 Gathering idle monks by thousands, sunk in learned sloth and ease, 
 Heedless while outside their brothers faint with strife on earth and 
 
 seas. 
 Hush, vain babbler ! when did England battle with ancestral 
 
 wrong 
 And from Cambridge came no champion, bold and gentle, wise and 
 
 strong ? 
 When the roses' thorns were tearing through the darkness right and 
 
 left, 
 And the nation's crested leaders one by one in gore were reft. 
 Pure and clear her beacon streaming lit the path to new renown. 
 When the scholar's cap should lord it o'er the prince's bloodstained 
 
 crown. 
 When the friars of Rome gave order " Bind in chains the Word of 
 
 God," 
 Cambridge pealed her trump, and straightway snapped the foul 
 
 enchanter's rod ! 
 When o'er truth's new sun an instant bigots drew again the cloud, 
 Oxford fires saw Cambridge martyrs tread the way like monarchs 
 
 proud ; 
 And returning glory found her wing her eaglets for their flight, 
 Sing in Spenser's lute of wonder, gaze with Bacon's prophet sight. 
 Listen, ye who love our Boston, how in Cambridge spake of yore, 
 He who brought that name of beauty to the Massachusetts shore. 
 Sunday morning ! Tower and steeple, cliime confusing sweet 
 
 with chime. 
 Call all Cambridge out to worship, in the hot-souled Stuart time. 
 Through St. Mary's dark-browed portal see the motley gownsmen 
 
 press. 
 Blue and sable, white and scarlet, passions varied as their dress. 
 Now the pulpit rules the nation ; Roman rostra never saw 
 Crowds so bent to catch each echo, fired with frenzy, dumb with awe. 
 As the Stuarts' England gathered, week by week, intent to hear 
 Puritan or prelate searching all their souls with sacred fear. 
 Nor since Ridley freed his spirit was St. Mary's thronged as now. 
 Ne'er was expectation seated keener on each scholar's brow. 
 
134 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 Boston sends again her vicar, Cotton ; still our hearts retain 
 Memory of his rich oration, sweeter than an organ's strain ; 
 Golden from the vaults of learning, lustrous with the gems of wit, 
 Quaint conceits, and glowing pictures, richly woven, closely knit. 
 Many a time and oft we hummed him, till St. Mary's hummed 
 
 again 
 Like the Granta's roar in springtime, swirling o'er the affrighted fen. 
 When such preaching charms us, vainly London's playhouse calls 
 
 to see 
 Massinger's grim dens of horror, Fletcher's rosy halls of glee. 
 
 Scarcely from the white-robed trebles dies the psalm upon the air, 
 When o'er all the preacher rises lor the ancient bidding prayer ; 
 Bids them pray for all in honor, king and noble, knight and priest, 
 That the strength and hope of England may be hallowed and in- 
 creased ; 
 Bids them pray for all in Cambridge, blood and bone of Church 
 
 and State, 
 Every teacher, every pupil, every college, small and great ; 
 " And as bound in private duty I request your prayers as well 
 For our Protestant foundation. College of Emmanuel." 
 Then, as with the Paternoster all the prayers in one are said, 
 Raised is every cap, and buried in its square each gownsman's 
 
 head. 
 Now they settle on their cushions waiting for the rich repast 
 That .shall wake applause for Cotton loud as when they hummed 
 
 him last. 
 Then, as though the sultry noontide felt its clouds by lightning rent. 
 Leaps the text, the Baptist's warning, one short, dreadful word, 
 
 '' Repent ! " 
 Aye, " Repent ! " no gorgeous fabric, quaint conceit or wit is there, 
 Classic tale or strain poetic, sweetly floating on the air ; 
 But Jehovah's barbed arrow, flashing from his servant's string, 
 Piercing every sluggish conscience with its unrelenting sting ! 
 All the wrong that England suffers, cankered church and court 
 
 corrupt. 
 Finds its tawdry mantle shrivelled by that preacher's word abrupt. 
 All the sin that reigns unfettered, all the blood to heaven that cries, 
 That stern prophet's fixed index pomts to their unwilling eyes. 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 135 
 
 " Think not, ye that sit so careless, God hath left his house alone ! 
 Think not, ye that soil the sceptre, blood for blood shall not atone. 
 Vain the trump that felled the Popish fortress, vain the martyr's 
 
 doom. 
 If the Lambeth finger bind us heavier than the hand of Rome. 
 Aye, repent ! or if in England Pharaoh harden yet his heart, 
 God shall bid his outraged Israel from the faithless land depart ; 
 O'er a wilder sea than Edom's lovelier Jordans roll their streams ; 
 On a fairer Zion's summit, lo, a statelier temple gleams ! 
 First to you the word was spoken ; but since ye refuse to learn, 
 England brands herself unworthy, to the Gentiles, lo, we turn." 
 
 O'er the crowd the preacher gazes rapt, as when on Mars's height 
 Saul of Tarsus looked unflinching up to Pallas' temple white : 
 From the black and scarlet gownsmen comes no loud approving 
 
 hum ; 
 Stern resentment knits their forehead, sharp contrition holds them 
 
 dumb. 
 Go thy ways, thou daring Cotton ; Cambridge asks no word of 
 
 thine ; 
 Sunk in learned ease compliant, well content with Rimmon's shrine ; 
 Leave thy Gothic halls by Granta, leave St. Botolph's lofty tower ; 
 Set those names across the ocean, here where Laud hath lost his 
 
 power ; 
 And thy faithful word forever finds at length its due applause 
 In the hum of freeborn millions, ruled by Boston's gentle laws. 
 
 The minister said: "The churches of Massachusetts in 
 the former days recognized, in what they called the Cor- 
 poration, — that is, the Corporation of Harvard College, — 
 a right of eminent domain, and that it was their duty, 
 in case a minister was needed for tlie presidency, to sur- 
 render him upon the instant for the office, as befell this 
 church in the selection of Mr. Wadsworth. The Corpora- 
 tion comes no longer upon that errand. Indeed, I am almost 
 persuaded that to be a Congregational minister would be 
 a disqualification for the highest office in their gift. But 
 the President of the College does sometimes honor us with 
 his presence ; only when he comes he asks not us, but ours. 
 
136 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 But he is welcome upon any errand ; and should he ask 
 you now, as he will be very likely to do, to found a John 
 Cotton Professorship of Christian Theology, I trust that 
 you will at once subscribe the needful amount. Let me 
 introduce to you the President of Harvard University." 
 
 ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT CHARLES W. ELIOT. 
 
 Looking back with grave satisfaction over the 
 long, continuous life of this church, and of its kin- 
 dred churches, do we not survey the very springs 
 and sources of the peculiar character of the New 
 England people ? Do we not clearly see whence 
 this people has come ? Only the more instant be- 
 comes that question which of late years has been 
 much in all our hearts, — whither is this people 
 going? There cannot be many persons in this 
 company who have not already said to themselves 
 at this two hundred and fiftieth anniversary, Will 
 the First Church of Boston have a five hundredth 
 anniversary? or a four hundredth? I invite your 
 attention very briefly to three reasons for indulging 
 the confident expectation that it will. 
 
 I remark, first, that the instinct of worship is a 
 universal instinct of the race, — an instinct which 
 civilization refines and exalts, but has no tendency 
 to extinguish. The religious sentiment has always 
 been, and still is, the strongest power in the world, 
 — making war and peace, resisting vice, establishing 
 and overthrowing governments, fostering democracy, 
 destroying slavery, preserving learning, building ca- 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 
 
 '^Z7 
 
 thedrals, creating literature, and inspiring oratory, 
 music, and art. Unless we can count on the per- 
 manence of this religious quality or faculty in man, 
 we cannot count upon the permanence of any of his 
 attributes. Yet modern science teaches that race- 
 qualities change so slowly that the ordinary divi- 
 sions of time into years and centuries are not fitted 
 to express the rate of change. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to say that rapid change of 
 theological opinion may, and often does, go on from 
 generation to generation without producing any 
 effect upon the sentiments of religion, or upon the 
 real functions of a religious organization. The doc- 
 trines or dogmas taught now in this church bear but 
 a faint resemblance to those of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury; but the main objects of the church are, and 
 will ever be, the same that they were in 1630, — 
 namely, to worship God with prayer and praise, to 
 teach men their duty and urge them to do it, and to 
 carry their thoughts out of the monotonous round 
 of their daily lives, beyond the sea, above the sky, 
 to the dwelling-place of the Most High. Benjamin 
 Wadsworth, who left the pastorate of this church to 
 encounter many hardships and trials as President of 
 Harvard College, held some theological opinions 
 which are not current in these days. Thus, in a 
 sermon preached just after the First Church was 
 burnt, in 171 1, he says very simply: " 'T is of the 
 mere undeserved mercy of God that we have not all 
 of us been roaring in the unquenchable flames of 
 
138 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 hell long ago, for 't is no more than our sins have 
 justly deserved." And again, in a sermon entitled 
 " The Gospel not opposed but by the Devil and 
 Men's Lusts," he gravely remarks that " Nothing is 
 more trratinor, cutting^, and enrawinof to the Devil 
 than to have the gospel faithfully preached to men." 
 Doubtless this hearty belief in the unpleasantness 
 of the sensations which faithful preaching inflicted 
 upon the enemy of mankind was an effective in- 
 centive to many a worthy minister. But when Dr. 
 Wads worth, holding these now obsolete notions, 
 came to the practical matter of advising parents 
 how to bring up their children, as he did in his 
 sermon entitled " The Saint's Prayer to Escape 
 Temptations," he gave advice good for all time, 
 which the latest President of Harvard College will 
 gladly adopt as his own: as, for example, — teach 
 them the Scriptures ; charge them to live soberly, 
 righteously, and godliiy ; endeavor the preventing 
 of idleness, pride, envy, malice, or any vice what- 
 soever ; teach them good manners (a civil, kind, 
 handsome, and courteous behavior) ; render them 
 truly serviceable in this world, and so dispose of 
 them in trade or business, and in marriage, as 
 that they may be least liable to temptations, and 
 may probably be most furthered in virtue and 
 piety. 
 
 Let us then settle down upon an abiding faith 
 that the instinct of worship is an indestructible 
 element in man's nature, and that the religious 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 139 
 
 and ethical sentiments of mankind, which have 
 survived all the physiological, psychological, social, 
 and political changes to which the race has been 
 subjected, will exhibit no less vitality in the future 
 than they have in the past. 
 
 In the second place, I wish to point out that the 
 principle of associated action for the promotion 
 of a common object has been wonderfully de- 
 veloped in this country and in England during 
 the present century. Manufactures are carried on, 
 goods and i^assengers are transported, money is 
 lent, colonies are founded, hospitals, schools, and 
 libraries are maintained, by associations of men 
 who combine for one defined object, and employ 
 paid servants to do the common work. There is 
 hardly a conceivable philanthropic enterprise which 
 is not already the field of some benevolent society. 
 This facility of association being one of the chief 
 characteristics of our time, and a church having 
 become under the laws only an association of like- 
 minded men and women for the satisfaction of 
 their religious needs and the furtherance of good 
 works, it is inconceivable that the principle of as- 
 sociation, which is proving so valuable in every 
 other field of human activity, should fail to work 
 well when applied, as it is in every American 
 Protestant church, to the promotion of worship, 
 charity, and piety. To our faith in the perma- 
 nence of the religious needs and aspirations let us 
 then add the conviction that never in the history 
 
I40 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 of the world has it been so natural and easy as it 
 is now to satisfy those cravings by the fruitful 
 method of voluntary association. 
 
 Thirdly, let us gain confidence in the future of 
 the New England churches by contemplating the 
 prodigious changes of legal condition and external 
 circumstance through which they have already 
 passed in safety. To appreciate the magnitude of 
 these changes, we must recall the facts that suf- 
 frage in Massachusetts was long conditioned upon 
 church-membership, that towns could be fined for 
 neglecting to support the gospel, that for two cen- 
 turies attendance at meeting on the Sabbath could 
 be enforced by fine, that all corporations holding 
 lands within a parish were taxable down to 183 1 
 for the support of public worship, and that down 
 to 1835 the property of individual parishioners was 
 held liable for the debts of the parish. Never was 
 there a firmer or closer union of Church with State 
 than that which existed in Massachusetts in 1630, 
 and never has there been more complete separa- 
 tion of Church from State than that which exists 
 in Massachusetts to-day. Churches and ministers 
 have gradually been stripped of every peculiar 
 privilege and every adventitious support, until they 
 now stand upon this firm ground, — that they partly 
 satisfy an imperious need and an ineffable longing 
 of the human soul. It would have been happier 
 for the cause of religion if the disestablishment 
 of churches had proceeded as rapidly in Europe 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 141 
 
 as it has in Massachusetts. History then might 
 not have had to record that millions of educated 
 and liberal-minded men have been alienated from 
 religion by the habitual political attitude of the 
 established churches. Time to come can hardly 
 have in store for the New England churches changes 
 comparable in gravity with those which they have 
 already experienced. Their present legal condi- 
 tion is healthier, freer, more natural, and more 
 likely to be stable than any previous condition. 
 The minister is judged, like other men, by his 
 gifts, attainments, and character; and the church 
 is valued for the services which it renders to its 
 members and the community. 
 
 Two hundred and fifty years is a long life for 
 anything of human creation. There is not a writ- 
 ten political constitution in the world which has 
 even half of that age. Empires and republics 
 have come and gone, old dynasties have disap- 
 peared and new ones risen to power, within that 
 period. In our own little Commonwealth, not only 
 the external form of government has changed, but 
 the whole theory or essence of the political con- 
 stitution as well. There is not a single industry, 
 manufacture, or human occupation which has not 
 undergone fundamental changes in its processes 
 and its results within that time. But all these 
 years this venerable church has maintained its 
 original organization, and held stoutly on its way 
 through gladness and gloom, through sunshine 
 
142 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 and storm. Solemnly, resolutely, and hopefully 
 may it move on for centuries to come. 
 
 Does any one ask why universities, which must 
 inevitably be occupied chiefly with secular knowl- 
 edge, should feel any great concern for the per- 
 manence of religious institutions .f* I answer that 
 universities exist to advance science, to keep alive 
 philosophy and poetry, and to draw out and culti- 
 vate the highest powers of the human mind. Now 
 science is always face to face with God, philosophy 
 brings all its issues into the one word " duty," 
 poetry has its culmination in a hymn of praise, 
 and a prayer is the transcendent effort of man's 
 intelligence. 
 
 The minister said : " Massachusetts once took it very 
 hard that John Cotton, in some mood of discouragement, 
 thought of departing to New Haven ; and New Haven took 
 it very hard when the Rev. John Davenport was called to be 
 minister of First Church. Let it be our assurance that we 
 bear ho ill-will, but, on the contrary, cherish only honor and 
 afifection for that confederated colony and its noble Uni- 
 versity, that we earnestly desire to-day a word from Presi- 
 dent Porter, who, I am happy to say, does not need to be 
 introduced to our congregation." 
 
 ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT NOAH PORTER. 
 
 I have been speculating for some time as to what 
 feat of ingenuity the pastor of this church would 
 resort to in order to give any good reason for my 
 being here. I am sure I feel very much out of 
 place. The real reason, I am confident, was the 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 143 
 
 last which he gave, that I am not totally a stranger 
 to this congregation, nor to its pastor, in bonds of 
 Christian or fraternal fellowship. Some ten years 
 ago my reverend predecessor and myself, he then 
 being in office, were somehow or other impelled to 
 ask Dr. Ellis to come and preach for us. Some 
 two or three years afterwards I preached for him, 
 and no evil ever came of either, except that I am 
 now called upon to make a speech. And now I am 
 before you, what can I do with greater propriety 
 than to recognize the obligation — which has not 
 been adverted to — of the other New England 
 colonies to this First Church of Boston ? The First 
 Church of Boston was not, certainly, the first among 
 the churches in New England in point of time, but 
 it early held a prominence among them by reason 
 of the quality of the men w^ho were in it, and by its 
 position in this city, and its special relations to the 
 other colonies and their churches, which gives it 
 the highest place in the reverence and affection of 
 all loyal New-Englanders. Here the Rev. Thomas 
 Hooker and his company whiled away a year or two, 
 taking counsel and advice of Governor Winthrop 
 and the leading members of this church, before he 
 ventured off on his long journey toward the Connec- 
 ticut. That journey, which now takes us less than 
 four hours to perform, was to them a weary walk of 
 fourteen or sixteen days, as they proceeded toward 
 the west over the wooded hills, through the rough 
 wilderness, and along the swiftly descending valley 
 
144 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 of the Chicopee, till, finally, they were brought out 
 in safety upon those fair meadows of the Connecticut 
 valley, to which their hearts had been turning with 
 a longing which could not be repressed. And here 
 John Davenport, after in vain trying to convert the 
 members of this godly Commonwealth to his pecu- 
 liar notions of the relations of Church and State, 
 gave up the attempt in despair, and with the New 
 Haven Company took possession of the territory be- 
 tween the Connecticut and the Hudson rivers, in 
 which he sought to build a new Jerusalem, after his 
 own fashion, that should be four-square according 
 to the pattern in the Apocalypse, — moved perhaps 
 by its contrast with the pattern of the original 
 streets which he saw in Boston. The same John 
 Davenport, moreover, after trying in vain to realize 
 the New Jerusalem in New Haven, at the end of 
 some thirty-five years of his vain endeavor, and par- 
 ticularly after the Colony of Connecticut had ab- 
 sorbed the Colony of New Haven, came back to 
 Boston to renew again his first efforts as pastor of 
 this church for the two or three years which preceded 
 his death. Here also Roger Williams, after afflicting 
 this church in many ways and being afflicted by it, 
 after protesting and being protested against, gave up 
 in despair and went to Rhode Island, under compul- 
 sion and with a protest, seeking soul liberty for him- 
 self and using it freely afterwards in being a thorn 
 in the side of the greater colonies. In this way it 
 was that this First Church of Boston became the 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 145 
 
 mother, or the step-mother, of Connecticut, New 
 Haven, and Rhode Island. 
 
 These facts suggest the reflection that the pe- 
 cuhar influence of the settlers of the Massachusetts 
 Colony, represented so emphatically as they were 
 in the First Church of Boston, to the New England 
 life and the New England character, has not, in one 
 point, been so distinctly referred to as might be 
 desired. The early Bostonians and the Massachu- 
 setts emigrants, headed by the First Church and 
 represented in them, did not come here simply 
 because they were driven from England. They did 
 not resort to these shores solely to find a shelter in 
 the wilderness. Stern necessity, it is true, gave the 
 first impulse to their movement; but the movement 
 was also animated by the hope that they might here 
 establish the kingdom of God after a nobler pattern 
 than had hitherto been known elsewhere in this 
 wide world. They came, not simply to preach the 
 gospel with boldness, not to pray as they might, but 
 they also came to apply the principles of the gospel 
 to every kind of human institution, — to the school, 
 to the college, to the commonwealth, to all social 
 relations. It is true that out of this fair ideal many 
 of their errors and their failures proceeded, but it 
 is also true that the ideal itself should confer on 
 them immortal honor. The Puritans had this aim 
 ever in their minds. It was ever high and lifted 
 up before their eyes. Many of the methods which 
 they adopted for its realization, and in which they 
 
 10 
 
146 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 firmly believed, were mistaken, yet for all that the 
 ideal itself was grand and noble. 
 
 The covenant adopted by this church has been 
 often alluded to, and it could not be too often ex- 
 tolled, nor in terms of excessive praise. It seems 
 almost to have been given by inspiration, — the 
 language is so pure, the sentiments are so simple 
 and yet so fervent, the acknowledgment of the 
 great object of the Christian's trust is so incidental 
 and yet so comprehensive, and the recognition of 
 what might be called the whole catalogue of Chris- 
 tian duties is so wide reaching. You have asked 
 perhaps, some of you, why this covenant was accom- 
 panied by no creed or confession of faith. The 
 answer to that question is found in the more general 
 explanation that this was not the way of the older 
 Puritans. In the oldest time no church, with rare 
 exceptions, was founded on a written or a spoken 
 creed. Each pastor composed a catechism of doc- 
 trine for his flock, because each pastor was supposed 
 to teach his people with sufficient clearness and 
 authority, as of necessity to make them acquainted 
 with the orreat doctrines of the Christian faith. It 
 is not known just how or when, but the fact is 
 certain that after some three or four generations 
 this practice was gradually changed. I am not cer- 
 tain that the older practice was not the better, 
 for the reason that creeds change, necessarily, with 
 the philosophy of the times in which they are com- 
 posed; and it is scarcely possible that any man, 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 147 
 
 after a century had elapsed, should accept, in all its 
 forms of statement, the philosophical definitions 
 and the minutely specified relations between one 
 truth and another, of any creed which was held a 
 century before. I am not certain, even, but that if 
 the old Puritan fashion had been upheld with fidelity 
 and been applied as it might have been, the Congre- 
 gational churches of New England might have been 
 saved from that schism or division by which they were 
 so unhappily separated. Of one thing, however, I 
 am certain, — that when we read these early creeds, 
 and find in them statements that we condemn or dis- 
 approve or reject, or when we find in the early ser- 
 mons passages which offend us so much and offend 
 us rightly, we would do well to remember that in 
 the times in which they were uttered, and in the 
 thoughts of the men who uttered them, they did 
 not have precisely the same significance or call for 
 the same assent as they would require from us. In 
 other words, we ought to look back upon the teach- 
 ings of the past with something like a just and wisely 
 ordered historic imagination and historic sense, if we 
 would do justice to the good sense and sound judg- 
 ment and Christian feeling of those teachers and di- 
 vines who had a high place, at least, in the affection 
 of our fathers. Why should men not be tolerant of 
 the past as well as of the present 1 While we do not 
 hesitate to criticise the theology or to call in ques- 
 tion many of the explanations of Christian truth 
 which were then given, it would be narrow in us not 
 
148 FIRST CHURCH IxN BOSTON. 
 
 to expect that from one century to another the same 
 truths would be defended by better arguments, and 
 be presented in better definitions, and possibly en- 
 shrined in formulae of prayer and consecration supe- 
 rior to those of earlier times. No less than this, it 
 seems to me, is required of us when on an occasion 
 like this we desire with our inmost hearts to pay 
 the highest and sincerest homage to men who, from 
 one generation to another, have been loved and 
 honored, and who will continue to receive the re- 
 spect of all right-minded men. 
 
 So much for the past with its admonitory lessons. 
 What is before us in the future } Shall the Chris- 
 tian Church remain in the face of the scientific and 
 philosophic atheism that is now so boldly proclaimed 
 and so plausibly argued ? Shall it stand before an 
 historical criticism that would persuade us that the 
 supernatural Christ is soon to vanish out of history, 
 and ought therefore to be banished from the Chris- 
 tian's creed } Shall it continue in the face of the 
 insidious and the repeated proclamation, here and 
 there, that those bonds of duty which hold society 
 together are soon to be physiologically relaxed or 
 psychologically demonstrated out of their authority, 
 and thus be robbed of their sacredness and their 
 binding force } Shall we renounce Christ and the 
 living God, and resort to science and philosophy 
 for the defence of our faith ? Shall we rely largely 
 upon historical criticism, the study of which is con- 
 fined to the few ? Not in the least. The strong- 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 149 
 
 hold of the Christian faith is not necessarily in the 
 schools either of philosophy or of history, important 
 as these are ; it is in the heart of man, as it wakens 
 there those convictions which the intellect assents to 
 as spiritually necessary and true, and which, there- 
 fore, we are certain must remain and prevail. If 
 we in our Christian lives do but rise to a more con- 
 stant and a more vivid apprehension of the presence 
 of the living God ; if we shall emerge from each one 
 of these controversies and discussions with a con- 
 stantly increasing sense of his personality and his 
 loving providence ; if we learn to read and accept 
 the New Testament more and more for our per- 
 sonal guidance and our personal consolation, — we 
 cannot but attain a higher and a more assured faith 
 in Christ as the ground of our hopes and the joy 
 of our lives. The covenant of this church, which 
 has often been referred to, is too familiar for me to 
 recite ; let me repeat from modern literature another 
 covenant or another prayer which seems to match 
 it well, though it be phrased in a diction that 
 might have seemed strange to our fathers : — 
 
 " Strong Son of God, Immortal Love, 
 
 Whom we that have not seen thy face 
 By faith, and faith alone, embrace, 
 Believing when we cannot prove ! 
 
 " Thou seemest human and divine, — 
 The highest, holiest manhood, thou ; 
 Our wills are ours, we know not how, 
 Our wills are ours to make them thine. 
 
150 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 " Our little systems have their day, 
 
 They have their day and cease to be ; 
 They are but broken lights of thee, 
 And thou, O Lord, art more than they. 
 
 " We have but faith ; we cannot know ; 
 For knowledge is of things we see ; 
 And yet we trust it comes from thee, 
 A beam in darkness ; — let it grow. 
 
 " Let knowledge grow from more to more. 
 But more of reverence in us dwell. 
 That mind and soul, according well. 
 May make our music, as before." 
 
 May we not conclude that if our modern litera- 
 ture, amid all the misgivings which it derives from 
 philosophy and science, can express a faith like this, 
 in forms that both kindle and elevate the imagina- 
 tion, and if such worship can rise from the men of 
 this generation, we need never despair of the life 
 and growth of the Christian Church. Rather should 
 I say, we need never despair, in the presence of the 
 living Christ, that his Church will continue to shine 
 as the light and hope of mankind. 
 
 Then followed the singing of the 107th Psalm to the 
 tune of " China." 
 
 From Psalms, Hymns, & Spiritual Songs of the Old & New Testaments 
 faithfully translated into English Metre for the use, edification, & Comfort of 
 the saints in public & private, especially in New England. 
 
 From the Sth Edition. Printed by John Allen & Vavasour Paris, at the 
 Brick Shop near the Town House, Boston, 1695. 
 
 With thanks unto the Lord confess 
 
 because that good is he ; 
 Because his loving kindnesses 
 
 last to eternity. 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 151 
 
 So say the Lord's redeemed, whom bought 
 
 he hath from the enemies' hands, 
 And from the east & west hath brought 
 
 from south & northern lands. 
 
 In desart stray'd, in desart way, 
 
 no dwelling town they find. 
 They hungry were & thirsty they 
 
 their souls within them pin'd. 
 
 Then did they to Jehovah cry 
 
 when they were in distress ; 
 Who did them set at liberty 
 
 out of their anguishes. 
 
 In such a way as was most right 
 
 he led them forth alsoe. 
 That to a city which they might 
 
 inhabit, they might goe. 
 
 Oh that men praise Jehovah would 
 
 for his great goodness then. 
 And for his marvellous lovingness 
 
 unto the sons of men. 
 
 The minister said : " There is nothing like an anniver- 
 sary for bringing one's treasures into the light, and had 
 it not been for this feast I should not have known that 
 the minister of a famous Massachusetts church, the First 
 Church in Concord, is a descendant of Rev. John Wilson ; 
 I have found him out, however, and shall now ask a word 
 from the Rev. Grindall REYNOLDS," 
 
 ADDRESS OF REV. GRINDALL REYNOLDS. 
 
 The strains of the old psahn which we have heard 
 are very famiHar to me. Only a few days ago I was 
 reading the account of the two hundredth anniver- 
 sary of the settlement of the town in which I live. 
 
152 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 At that anniversary this very psalm was sung, line 
 by line, just as the fathers sung it. I thought then, 
 as I think now, that nothing so shows what a pro- 
 digious change and growth have come in all the 
 elements of prosperity and social life, as the fact 
 that two hundred and fifty years ago people could 
 sing the third verse of that psalm, " In desart stray 'd," 
 etc., and feel that it expressed truly their own expe- 
 rience. I suppose that I owe my connection with 
 this interesting occasion to two facts : first, that I 
 represent the oldest inland parish in Massachusetts, 
 the descendants of that body of people who first left 
 the tide-waters and pushed out into the true wilder- 
 ness country ; and second, and especially, that a few 
 drops of the blood of that plain, good, honored, and 
 useful man, John Wilson, your first minister, flow 
 in my veins. I count it a high privilege that some 
 real ties of association connect me with this time 
 and event. Before coming into this place I walked 
 into your chapel to look at the portrait of your old 
 minister. I saw the dark, thin face, touched with a 
 little of that melancholy, so often found in the coun- 
 tenances of the men of his generation, who suffered 
 so much and sacrificed so much for their faith. That 
 he was a stern Puritan, capable of putting down 
 any man or any opinion which he thought threat- 
 ened the kinQ:dom of God in this new world, is clear. 
 That he shared the weakness and superstitions of 
 the time, believing in dreams and omens and the 
 private gift of prophecy, we must admit, if we accept 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 153 
 
 the statement of Cotton Mather. That he was one 
 who had a strong, clear conscience, who can deny, 
 who remembers that he relinquished the pleasant 
 quiet of college life and study, that he gave up the 
 people whom he loved and who loved him, that he 
 left behind father and mother, brother and sister, 
 and wife too, and came to the wilderness rather than 
 be false to his convictions ? All these qualities he 
 shared with his brethren. They were part of the 
 common stock of the Puritan character. But what 
 was special to him, what made the core of his per- 
 sonal character, was that, as the same Cotton Mather 
 describes him, he was an apostle of zeal and love. 
 He was a man with an affectionate temper and 
 warm blood in him. It was no doubt this same 
 warm blood which led him, as the tradition has it, 
 to climb a tree and plead with the people for the 
 re-election of Governor Winthrop. It was this 
 which won Winthrop's warm, deep regard. It was 
 this warm blood and kindly heart which made, what 
 an elder of the church once said, true, that in the 
 whole congregation there was scarcely one man who 
 did not love and reverence John Wilson, and possible 
 for him to reply, not one whom John Wilson does 
 not love. There were, perhaps, greater men in the 
 colony intellectually than he. Probably John Cot- 
 ton had a more powerful mind, a deeper and finer 
 scholarship, and so a greater place as a theologian. 
 But John Wilson was a pastor, not simply in name 
 and by election, but in fact and in all the tendencies 
 
154 
 
 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 of his character. He was a man who took up into 
 his heart and sympathies all the joys, griefs, errors, 
 and needs of his people, — a man, as it was said, great 
 in discipline, who could comfort, guide, and, if need 
 be, admonish and exhort, — a man to build up and 
 strengthen in all s^ood elements of Christian life a 
 church, and to be justly remembered and honored 
 for so doing. 
 
 There is nothing more profitable, as I believe, than 
 this recalling and cherishing of a good past ; not 
 alone, as his Excellency the Governor had it, the 
 idealized past, but the real, stern, hard, conscience- 
 loving past, which has created good institutions and 
 built up great and noble life. In some countries, 
 no doubt, the past becomes almost an oppression. 
 Its memories hallow sometimes not only the good 
 but the bad equally, and so stand as a barrier in the 
 way of true progress. There is no such danger in 
 our State and country. Here the new triumphs. 
 Every eye is open to clearer light ; every mind is 
 expecting fresh progress in knowledge, in custom 
 of life, in revelations of truth, in all things. No 
 danger but we shall go forward ! No danger that 
 anything shall hamper or repress life, energy, hope, 
 liberty ! No danger at all ! Perhaps the rather 
 danger that we shall seek change for the sake of it. 
 The memory of the old steadies us. It gives us a 
 sober sense of that from which all real advance 
 comes ; that the good present and the hopeful future 
 have their roots in the noble past. It is good that 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 1 55 
 
 while the eyes are looking forward, and mind and 
 heart are expecting more light and better, our feet 
 should stand on the stable foundation of sound 
 righteous history and life. 
 
 But I must not linger. I offer you the greeting 
 and congratulation of the oldest inland parish to 
 that church which may be considered to be in some 
 way the spiritual mother of all old Massachusetts 
 parishes ; to that church which, seated by the rest- 
 less waters of Massachusetts Bay, has seen the corn- 
 fields and pastures of the little Trimountain peninsula 
 become the centre of a great material prosperity, of 
 a refined intellectual life, and, surely we must add, 
 of a lofty religious faith and character ; to that 
 church which, in all this wonderful advance, has 
 contributed its full share of moral power and influ- 
 ence ; to that church which to-day, in this beautiful 
 temple which it has reared, is preparing to do its 
 part to make the growth which the future has in 
 store pure, solid, righteous, and so enduring. 
 
 The minister said : " There is one of this company who 
 left us in very early childhood, and without giving any rea- 
 sons ; but we have always been ready to receive him back 
 to our fold, and rejoice always in his word and work. Not 
 only a baptized child of the church but a descendant from 
 the Rev. John Cotton, one of its first ministers, he kindly 
 recognizes our claim for a word, and I need not ask you to 
 give your attention to the Rev. PHILLIPS BROOKS, D.D." 
 
156 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 ADDRESS OF REV. PHILLIPS BROOKS, D.D. 
 
 I thank you very much for allowing me to say a 
 few words, and I will honestly try that they shall 
 be very few. I should like to say something of 
 the impression which this celebration of John Cot- 
 ton makes upon one of his descendants. My con- 
 nection with my very great grandfather is so remote 
 that I may venture to speak of him without hesita- 
 tion. I am so full of pleasure in life, and so full of 
 the sense that that pleasure is very much increased 
 by its being my happiness to live in Boston, that I 
 cannot but be grateful to him who had a great deal 
 to do with my living at all, and a great deal to do 
 with making^ Boston what it is for a man to live in. 
 I am not sure that he would accept of his repre- 
 sentative. I am not sure that if he saw me standing 
 here and speaking any words in his praise, and 
 knew exactly where I was standing, there might not 
 be some words rising to his lips that would show 
 that neither I nor you were wholly what he could 
 approve. He might say prelatist, he might say 
 heretic. He might call me by the first name, call 
 both of us by the second name ; and yet that criti- 
 cism, as we stand in the presence of his memory on 
 this commemoration day, would make absolutely no 
 difference. John Cotton, in the life into which he 
 has passed, now looks deeper and looks wider, and 
 we have a right to enter into communion with the 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 157 
 
 spirit of the man, and not simply with his specific 
 opinions or the ways in which he worshipped ; we 
 may claim him, at least, as one who would honor 
 our recognition of him, as one whom we are at 
 liberty to honor. It would be a terrible thing, it 
 would narrow our life and make it very meagre, if 
 we had no right to honor and to draw inspiration 
 from any men except those we agree with and who 
 would approve of us. As we look abroad through 
 history and around through the world, I think some- 
 times that our noblest inspirations and our best 
 teachings have come from the men who, when we 
 compare our views with theirs, are very far from us; 
 of whom, when we ask for their approbation of us, 
 we have to beg with very hesitating lips. And so 
 we may at least claim the privilege of John Cotton, 
 that he shall give us the inspiration of paying him 
 our honor. 
 
 And it seems to me that a man who stands, as 
 this man stands, at the beginning of the history of 
 a nation or a town, is an everlasting benefaction to 
 •the town or nation. It is an example that never 
 can be exhausted. The way in which Washington 
 stands at the beginning of the national history and 
 sends down a perpetual power, full of strength and 
 beauty, is the great typical American instance of 
 the way in which, at the beginning of the history of 
 every town, of every city, of every State, of every 
 institution, there will be these typical men. Our 
 Western States are gathering them now, just as our 
 
158 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 Eastern States gathered them two hundred years 
 aso ; and the earnest, faithful ministers, and the 
 consecrated men who are dedicating themselves to 
 the building up of institutions in our Western land, 
 are going to pass into that perhaps mythical, but 
 perhaps for that reason all the truer and more 
 genuine admiration, into which they who founded 
 our institutions two hundred and fifty years ago 
 have passed now. For his standing at the begin- 
 ning of our history and sending us his inspiration 
 perpetually, we thank John Cotton. 
 
 And I thank him, as a Church of England man, 
 as a man loving the Episcopal Church with all niy 
 heart, I thank him for being a Puritan. I thank 
 him for giving me a renewed assurance of that 
 which all history teaches me to believe, and that 
 which my knowledge of God would make me believe 
 if no illustration of it were written in history, that 
 God will not permit a church to become corrupt 
 and degenerate and unfaithful to its duties without 
 sending a man who shall bear testimony against 
 it and stir it to the regeneration of its life. The 
 Church of England has no men to thank to-day 
 more devoutly. Not her great scholars, her great 
 orators, her noble teachers, her splendid mission- 
 aries ! She has no men to whom she ought to be 
 more grateful to-day than to the Puritans who told 
 her in the seventeenth century how degraded her 
 life was becoming. 
 
 But when I recall the name of this church, it fills 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 
 
 159 
 
 me with still other feelings of gratitude. " The 
 First Church of Christ ! " I think there is infinite 
 suggestion, infinite poetry, in the thought of the 
 first church of Christ in any land. If a man feels, 
 as the disciples of Christ do feel, that all the earth 
 is his; if we believe that whatever elements of eood 
 the savage lands have brought forth they have 
 brought forth by the inspiration of his Spirit work- 
 ing even where his name has been unknown, and 
 that all these lands are waiting for the touch of the 
 Christ they cannot recognize to be quickened into a 
 life they have not guessed of yet, — then what shall 
 we think of that church which stands perpetually 
 bearing the proud record in its name, that it was 
 the first to bring the everlasting and universal 
 Christ into a new section, a new district of the 
 world.'' Here for the first time, when the First 
 Church of Christ was started, that became possible 
 which had been impossible before. No church can 
 stand here in Boston to the very end of time that 
 must not humbly owe and pay its debt of gratitude 
 to the First Church of Christ, that set his name 
 upon these hills and made the winds vocal with the 
 new ideas of his gospel. 
 
 The seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries 
 belong wonderfully together. The seventeenth 
 century was a time of deep religious conviction ; 
 the nineteenth century boasts itself of large toler- 
 ation. It is perfectly natural to find, as we look 
 into the history of the seventeenth century, that 
 
l6o FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 to deep conviction toleration was again and again 
 sacrificed ; and as we look into the history of the 
 nineteenth century, we can see we have not yet 
 obtained such a large and symmetrical manhood 
 that, one is not still sacrificed to the other, and find 
 aijain and asjain conviction sacrificed to toleration. 
 It would be a poor world to live in if it could get 
 to the end of itself in nineteen centuries, and there 
 were not others before us greater and better. That 
 is one of the elements by which the future centuries 
 will be made better; we must look to the combining 
 together in the same character of those elements 
 which have existed in different centuries thus far. 
 When absolute relio;ious conviction shall abide side 
 by side with earnest toleration ; when men shall be- 
 lieve with all their hearts, as they believed in tlie 
 seventeenth century, and at the same time be willing 
 that other men shall believe differently, as they are 
 now in the nineteenth century; when toleration 
 shall not be oppressed by conviction of religious 
 truth, and when private thought and belief with 
 regard to religious truth shall make men all the 
 more tender and jealous of the rights of other men's 
 consciences, — then there will come a century which, 
 combining the blessings of the seventeenth and the 
 nineteenth, shall make a nobler world to live in 
 than we have seen yet, — the time that has been 
 prophesied, but has not yet come, when mercy and 
 truth shall dwell together, when righteousness and 
 peace shall kiss each other. That our celebration 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. i6l 
 
 may help the coming of that day, I am sure is the 
 prayer of every one who joins in any of these com- 
 memoration services. 
 
 The minister said: "Harvard College was established 
 primarily that the churches of the Commonwealth might 
 not lack competent ministers, men in whose training for 
 their high service manhood and knowledge had been added 
 to faith ; and the bond between the College and the churches 
 was very strong. However it may be with the forms of 
 truth, we believe that in the spirit of truth College and 
 Church are still at one, and, feeling sure that our day would 
 be not without interest to the Theological Faculty of the 
 University, we have asked the Dean of that Faculty to favor 
 us with a word." 
 
 ADDRESS OF REV. PROF. C. C. EVERETT, D.D. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen, — An attempt has been 
 made by one of the speakers this afternoon, a very 
 impressive attempt, to make us feel how lono- two 
 hundred and fifty years have been. I think it would 
 be even more difficult to make us realize what two 
 hundred and fifty years of the life of a church mean. 
 Especially is this so in regard to a church which 
 has never been the instrument of any civil or eccle- 
 siastical power, but has always been a church of the 
 people and for the people. Think how many happy 
 homes its beneficence has made ; think how many 
 wandering souls it has rescued during these long 
 years ; think how many spirits have been uplifted 
 to calmer heights by its solemn worship ; and now 
 it stands to-day as fresh, as young, as ever, doing its 
 
 II 
 
l62 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 work as well as ever, giving us the promise of suc- 
 cessful labors in the years to come. But I think we 
 must fully realize, when we speak of the Church, that 
 in founding the Church, our fathers were also plant- 
 ing the State. They founded the churches which 
 were to spring into States ; and when we think of 
 this, we realize, as we do not always, the fact that 
 we have no mythical period to our history, — the 
 fact that all our history is so transparent and open 
 to us. We have no heroic age, veiled from us by 
 the shadows of awe, myth, and tradition. At the 
 same time, I wonder, when I think of it, how little 
 we miss this mythical heroic age. We have an 
 heroic age as noble as that of any other people, and 
 it needs no shadowy abode of myth, no veil of mys- 
 tery. Our fathers were heroic as those stern heroes 
 of olden story. They were wise as Arthur and pure 
 as Galahad. We find, also, that supernatural ele- 
 ment which gives so much of the charm to those old 
 heroic stories, for our fathers felt the very presence 
 of God with them, and every word and every act 
 sprang from this consciousness. They were but as 
 instruments in his hands. 
 
 Now, in an anniversary like this, when we celebrate 
 the great beginning which occupies our thoughts 
 to-day, we find ourselves face to face with these 
 heroes of the past, — our fathers. We find ourselves 
 face to face, also, with that great idea which was 
 their inspiration and which has been the life of our 
 nation ever since. For this transparency of our 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 163 
 
 history, that I spoke of, is marked in nothing more 
 than in this, — that the ideal element, which is so 
 often hidden in the lives of other peoples, which they, 
 perhaps, slowly come to realize themselves, — which, 
 perhaps, they never come to realize, — is ever present 
 in our history. Just as the history of the Hebrew 
 people is marked in this, that providential guidance 
 stands forth as in no other, and we read that " God 
 did " and " God said," so in our history this inner 
 providence, which is present in the history of all 
 peoples, makes itself manifest in every step. As we 
 look back, we find ourselves face to face with this 
 grand ideal, face to face with these heroic souls ; 
 and we cannot help reading the question in their 
 deep, earnest eyes, whether we have been true to 
 it and to them. If we have not, in vain is it that 
 we come to do them reverence. This ideal element, 
 as we have been told this afternoon, consists of two 
 parts, namely, of liberty and of religion. These 
 were not held by our fathers as I have named them 
 simply side by side. The ideal of religion was the 
 fundamental ideal. Liberty was for the sake of 
 that. It was not merely religious liberty they sought, 
 it was not merely liberty for religion, it was liberty 
 for the sake of religion. 
 
 Now, to this ideal of liberty I think w^e may fairly 
 say that we have been true. Our generation also 
 has shown itself heroic. When this ideal of free- 
 dom moved like a pillar of fire through the dark 
 night of war, the nation followed it with bleeding 
 
164 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 heart. But how is it in regard to religion ? I think 
 if we should lay before our fathers all our triumphs 
 of art, all our triumphs of civilization, all our dis- 
 coveries in science, they would still look from them 
 all and ask for that one thing needful. They left a 
 civilization dear to them as ours is to us, they left 
 it for this ideal of which I speak, and they would 
 still ask, " How is it with religion } Are you true, 
 also, to that.f*" And would they not miss in our 
 busy streets what they need most, in our training 
 schools what they need most, in our varied associ- 
 ations for varied business what they need most, — 
 something of this presence ? Certainly the religious 
 element does not fill the place in our common con- 
 sciousness that it did in theirs. And here one or two 
 considerations may be named : one is, that our fathers 
 were picked men. They were drawn, as by a sort 
 of magnet, from their contemporaries ; they came 
 here as leaven to introduce a new power or life. 
 No sooner were they here than the leaven was cov- 
 ered by the meal, poured in without measure as it 
 is being poured in now, and we need not ask our- 
 selves whether the whole mass be like that original 
 type, but simply whether the leaven be still working 
 at its heart. And then, again, you must allow me 
 to make a distinction in regard to religion. There 
 are two forms of religion, and though I shall place 
 one vastly higher than the other, I would have you 
 understand that both, in their measure, may enter 
 into the true and complete religion. In the one, 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 165 
 
 men seek God for what he may do for them. They 
 seek to make him, if I may so speak, their instru- 
 ment; at least, they seek from him temporal and 
 eternal prosperity and happiness. In the other, 
 men ask what they shall do for God. They seek 
 to make themselves his instruments and to do his 
 will. Now, of the two that I have named, it is the 
 first that makes the most parade. It is this that 
 builds most temples, it is this that lights most altar 
 fires, it is this that makes the idea of religion con- 
 standy prominent. The other is more quiet, it 
 makes less parade, yet it is the higher of the two. 
 One we may compare to the starlight : we go out 
 and we see only the stars, and we say, " How beau- 
 tiful they are ! " The other may be compared to 
 the sunlight : we go out into the world, not to say, 
 " How beautiful is the sun!" but " How beautiful is 
 the world ! " So the divinity of the one form of 
 religion says, " Come and do reverence to me ; " the 
 other says, " Go, do my will." Now, as I have said, 
 these two elements may together, each in its meas- 
 ure, be united in one perfect religion. Of the two, 
 it must be admitted that the first or lower form is 
 certainly much less prominent than it was in almost 
 any other period of the history of the world. It is 
 this that has been torn by criticism, that has been 
 attacked by so-called science ; it is this that has had 
 to bear the great brunt of the onslaught against the 
 religious experiences. But the great question for 
 us is whether there still remains, in its due propor- 
 
l66 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 tion, that higher element of religion, that element 
 of obedience, that element that seeks the will of 
 God. This our fathers had. It was this that drove 
 them to this wilderness : they came to do God's w'ill. 
 And the question for us to ask ourselves is w'hether 
 that spirit animates their children. Who shall an- 
 swer? Who, at least, shall dare say in the face of all 
 the triumphs of philanthropy, in the face of all the 
 triumphs of Christian charity, — who shall dare to 
 say that it does not ? And I would add, simply, 
 that the work that this religious faith has to do 
 to-day is very like that which it had to do in the 
 day of our fathers. We speak often of this First 
 Church as " the church of the wilderness." It was 
 pushed far in advance of the reach of the civiliza- 
 tion of the time into a new world ; and are not 
 new realms constantly opening before us now.'' Not 
 realms of the physical world, but realms of the in- 
 tellectual world ? Are not these great reaches of 
 science and civilization opening before us, and is not 
 the work of the Church now, what it was then, to 
 press on to occupy these new lands, and plant itself 
 in advance even, in this intellectual region, w'hich 
 is, so far as religion may be concerned, a wilderness, 
 — to plant itself there that the wilderness may blos- 
 som like the rose ? Long may this First Church of 
 Boston continue to do, as it is doing now, its blessed 
 work ! 
 
 The anthem, " Send out thy light" (Gounod), was then 
 sung by the choir. And the minister said : " Salem was 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 167 
 
 John Winthrop's landing-place, and though, as it is re- 
 corded, ' he liked it not,' he still landed there, and we 
 have had reason to be grateful that it has been the home 
 of so many noble men and women. Our own church has 
 been called Salem Chapel for the number of those whom 
 we have been glad to welcome from that City of Peace, 
 I am sure that you will be glad to hear one who will speak 
 for Winthrop's landing-place." 
 
 ADDRESS OF HON. ROBERT S. RANTOUL. 
 
 The lateness of the hour admonishes me to ad- 
 dress myself at once and without verbiage to the 
 purpose I had in view in accepting your kind in- 
 vitation to take part in this memorial. My object 
 was to ask a moment's attention to a few sentences 
 from a very remarkable letter of the period, — a 
 letter remarkable for its authorship, remarkable for 
 the times and circumstances which produced it, 
 and equally remarkable for the rare and admirable 
 spirit of tolerance which prompted it and breathes 
 through it. 
 
 No member of the Winthrop company — the 
 great Suffolk emigration of 1630 — was more justly 
 conspicuous than Sir Richard Saltonstall. He was 
 the first named of six original patentees of Massa- 
 chusetts Bay. He was a man of learning, of influ- 
 ence, of rank and parts. His name was often at or 
 near the head of lists of subscription for stock and 
 funds. Mather called him " that excellent knight." 
 Nobody of that whole company was more esteemed 
 
1 68 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 at home or on this side the water, and although he 
 remained in New England but a few years, he hap- 
 pens to have identified himself more thoroughly than 
 any other of the Winthrop company, through an 
 honorable progeny, with my own county of Essex. 
 I state these facts simply to show that Sir Richard 
 Saltonstall is as well entitled as any man of the 
 number to be ranked as the exponent, the spokes- 
 man, of the best thought and sentiment of the Puri- 
 tanism of Old and New England, and I read this 
 letter simply to show how far his own generous 
 mind, and how far the better minds of the times 
 on both sides of the water were impressed with a 
 healthy abhorrence of the extremes to which some 
 of our ancestors were inclined to carry their narrow- 
 ness and intolerance. He wrote from England soon 
 after his return there the following letter: — 
 
 "It doth not a little grieve my spirit to hear what 
 sad things are reported daily of your tyranny and 
 persecutions in New England, as that you fine, whip, 
 and imprison men for their consciences. Truly, 
 friends, this your practice of compelling any in mat- 
 ters of worship to do that whereof they are not fully 
 persuaded, is to make them sin, for so the apostle 
 tells us, and many are made hypocrites thereby, con- 
 forming in their outward man, for fear of punish- 
 ment. We pray for you and wish you prosperity 
 every way, and hoped the Lord would have given 
 you so much light and love there as not to practise 
 those courses in a wilderness which you went so far 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 169 
 
 to prevent. These rigid ways have laid you very 
 low in the hearts of the saints. I do assure you 
 that I have heard them pray in the public assemblies 
 that the Lord would give you meek and humble 
 spirits, not to strive so much for uniformity as to 
 keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. 
 I hope you do not assume to yourselves infallibility 
 of judgment, when the most learned of the apos- 
 tles confesseth he knew but in part and saw but 
 darkly." 
 
 The minister said : " When they speak of New England 
 and the Pilgrim Fathers and the Puritans across the ocean, 
 it is Plymouth, not Boston, that comes first from the lips. 
 And so we of Boston must still look as the younger to the 
 older, and ask a word of encouragement from a Plymouth 
 minister and man." 
 
 ADDRESS OF REV. G. W. BRIGGS, D.D. 
 
 Have compassion upon me at this late hour, and 
 I will have compassion upon you. In his desire to 
 get as near to the Pilgrims as possible in point of 
 time, my friend has asked me, as the oldest living 
 minister that has been connected with the church 
 which they formed, to respond for it to-day. Let 
 me make my few words a right hand of fellowship 
 from that older organization. Twenty-eight years 
 earlier than the First Church in Boston, the Plym- 
 outh Church was formed in the same simple way, 
 by the covenanting together of godly, truth-loving 
 men, probably in Elder Brewster's house, in Scrooby, 
 
170 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 in England. They were mainly gathered from the 
 common people ; like those who heard Jesus gladly, 
 those from whom apostles were made. Finding in a 
 little while that they would "be harried out of the 
 kingdom," or meet heavier punishment, they went 
 first to Leyden, and a few years later, in 1620, came 
 to Plymouth. After their first severe experiences 
 here, I can imagine with what intense gratitude and 
 joy they welcomed the earlier churches organized 
 upon these shores. They had suffered from wasting 
 sickness, nearly half of the first company going to 
 their graves in the first four months. They had an 
 experience of famine, so that men were sometimes 
 faint from the want of proper food ; and they could 
 offer only a bit of fish and a draught of cold water 
 to those who came to visit them. They were in per- 
 petual peril of attack from the native tribes. They 
 were disturbed by internal dissensions also. For 
 when these sons of God were gathered together, 
 Satan came also among them in the person of a 
 wily and false minister who purposed mischief. But 
 those true-hearted men unmasked him, and indig- 
 nantly drove him away to his own place. After 
 nine years of such perils, when the Salem Church 
 was formed, in 1629, how earnestly Governor Brad- 
 ford, with others not named, must have hastened to 
 greet it; and, though hindered by "cross winds" 
 as they went over the Bay, only reaching Salem late 
 in the day, they were in season to give their right 
 hand of fellowship with deep religious joy. And 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 171 
 
 when in the next year the churches in Boston, Dor- 
 chester, Watertown, were organized, each must have 
 seemed to them as a new star shining out upon the 
 night round about them, whose rising they hailed 
 with exceeding gladness as full of promise and 
 hope. 
 
 These stars differed from one another in various 
 respects, but they all had one common glory. All 
 of these organizations were created by a religious 
 inspiration, and devoted to the highest ends ; and 
 therefore they have survived. Other settlements 
 were attempted with lower aims. One was made in 
 Weymouth, in which men tried to live "by bread 
 alone," and it quickly died. Basing themselves 
 upon the eternal things, working for them, the Pil- 
 grim and Puritan settlements have lasted through 
 the succeeding centuries. What great things they 
 have wrought! A twofold glory belongs to Plym- 
 outh. In the cabin of the Mayflower the Pilgrims 
 created a government founded upon the eternal truth 
 of the divine rights of humanity, and not upon the 
 baseless assumption of the divine right of kings. It 
 has been eloquently said to-day that we need a re- 
 ligion that shall unite the faith of the seventeenth 
 century with the liberality of the nineteenth. The 
 prophecy, we may almost say the glory, of that union 
 belongs to the Plymouth Fathers. The liberality of 
 the nineteenth century spoke in the farewell charge 
 of Robinson, their minister, when the Pilgrims 
 started from Leyden. And the faith of the seven- 
 
172 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 teenth centur}' inspired those who so bravely crossed 
 the sea, and stayed through perils to build up here 
 the kingdom of God. 
 
 I leave the tempting theme. In 1630 the Pilgrim 
 Church must have given its right hand to this in all 
 the joy of hope. In thankfulness for what you have 
 done in these two hundred and fifty years, as well 
 as in the glad hope for coming centuries, as the rep- 
 resentative of that Pilgrim Church I give you its 
 right hand of fellowship again to-day. 
 
 The minister then said that a telegram had been re- 
 ceived from the President of the United States, and letters 
 from the Secretary of State, Hon. William M. Evarts, and 
 the Attorney-General, Hon. Charles Devens, acknowledg- 
 ing, but declining invitations to be present with us. Many 
 letters, some from Old Boston and others from friends in 
 our land, would have been read to the congregation had 
 time permitted. They will be found in the chapter of 
 correspondence. The services continued with the singing 
 of the following Hymn by Rev. CHARLES T. BROOKS : — 
 
 O God ! while generations flee 
 
 Like leaves before Thy face, 
 Through endless ages Thou wilt be 
 
 Thy children's dwelling-place. 
 
 Great Shepherd of the countless flock, 
 
 Where'er they rest or roam ; 
 Their cheering sun, their sheltering rock, 
 
 Their everlasting home ! 
 
 Our sainted fathers, where are they ? 
 
 They slept, they woke in Thee, 
 And here in memory's light, to-day, 
 
 They walk serene and free. 
 
COMMEMORATIVE SERVICES. 173 
 
 Roll back, O Time, thy ceaseless wave, 
 
 Bring round the day once more, 
 When first they trod, the fi:ee and brave, 
 
 This wild and wood-crowned shore. 
 
 In God's first temple here they stood, 
 
 His breath inspired the air ; 
 And through the green, o'erarching wood 
 
 Uprose their song and prayer. 
 
 \Mien days grew dark, they sowed in trust, 
 
 In patience, and in peace. 
 Assured that God, the wise and just, 
 
 Would give the' seed increase. 
 
 A large-armed tree, behold it now ! 
 
 God's word its living root ; 
 To children's children each broad bough 
 
 Brings healing, shade, and fi-uit. 
 
 O Thou who led'st our sires of old, 
 
 Their grateful children lead ; 
 Thy flock in shelter safe enfold, 
 
 In sunny pastures feed ! 
 
 Still guide our footsteps in the way 
 
 That climbs the morning height. 
 Thy law, O God ! our cloud by day, 
 
 Thy love our fire by night ! 
 
 The afternoon exercises closed with a most fitting bene- 
 diction by the Rev. JOHN H. MORISON, D.D. 
 
 After an interval of two hours, a large company gath- 
 ered in the church, to listen to a concert from the choir; 
 and then passed, by invitation, into the chapel for a social 
 gathering and collation. 
 
 The choir, whose services added so much during the 
 afternoon and the evening to the interest of the occasion, 
 was composed as follows: Miss Annie Louise Gage, 
 soprano; Mrs. Jennie M. Noyes, contralto; Mr. VV. H. 
 
174 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 Fessenden, tenor; Mr. Clarence E. Hay, bass; and 
 Mr. Arthur Foote, piano. The rendering of the fol- 
 lowing ancient New England Psalm was much enjoyed by 
 the company : — 
 
 PSALM LXXVIII. Maschil of Asaph, 
 
 Old Tune, — " Rainbow." 
 
 Give list'ning ear unto my law, 
 
 Ye people that are mine ; 
 Unto the sayings of my mouth 
 
 Do you your ear encline. 
 
 My mouth I 'II ope in parables, 
 
 I '11 speak things hid of old, 
 Which we have heard and known, and which 
 
 Our fathers have us told. 
 
 Them from their children we '11 not hide. 
 
 But shew the age to come 
 The Lord, his praise, his strength and works 
 
 Of wonder he hath done. 
 
 That th' age to come and children which 
 
 Are to be born might know 
 That they who should arise, the same 
 
 Might to their children shew. 
 
 That they upon the mighty God 
 
 Their confidence might set ; 
 God's works and his commandements 
 
 Might keep and not forget. 
 
 And might not like their fathers be 
 
 A cross, stiff race, a race 
 That set not right their hearts, not 
 
 Firm with God their spirit was. 
 
 The music, the gathering, and the banquet were all that 
 could be desired, and the guests of the church were many. 
 
■^ 
 
CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES AND 
 MEMBERS OF HIS CABINET. 
 
 Executive Mansion, Washington, Nov. i8, iS8o. 
 I regret that I cannot attend the very interesting commemo- 
 ration services to be held to-day in honor of the two hundred 
 and fiftieth anniversary of the completion of the First Church 
 i^ Boston. j^_ g_ j^^ygg_ 
 
 Department of State, Washington, Nov. i6, 1880. 
 My dear Sir, — I regret extremely that it proves to be not 
 in my power to attend the commemorative services on the ap- 
 proaching anniversary of the First Church in Boston. 
 
 Please convey to the committee my regrets, and, with my 
 thanks for the courteous attention of their invitation, 
 I am, with great respect, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 Wm. M. Evarts. 
 
 Department of Justice, Washington, Nov. ii, 1S80. 
 Dear Str, — I am exceedingly obliged for the invitation to 
 attend the commemorative services in honor of the completion 
 by the First Church in Boston of two hundred and fifty years, 
 and regret extremely that my engagements will necessarily com- 
 pel me to decline to be present upon so interesting an occasion. 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 Chas. Devens. 
 12 
 
178 FIRST CHURCH IX BOSTON. 
 
 ENGLISH LETTERS. 
 Frotn the Mitiister of ihe Unitarian Chapel in Old Boston. 
 
 2 Winter's Terrace, Boston, England, Oct. 20, 1S80. 
 
 Dear Dr. Ellis, — Permit me, on behalf of my congregation, 
 to present to you a small engraving of Boston, photographs of 
 our own chapel and school, Boston Church, and Dr. Cotton's 
 pulpit, — the latter being the best I could get, it being a very 
 difficult object to photograph, — and a small volume of tales. 
 
 " A Legend of Boston, by Anthony Oldbuck," was written by 
 the late Henry Harwood, Esq., Solicitor, and a member of my 
 congregation. It has been a sort of scramble to get them so far 
 ready for despatch. They required packing at ten minutes to 
 time of departure of train from Boston, so kindly excuse all de- 
 fects and untidiness. I trust they will reach you ere you leave 
 the Mersey, for they ought to arrive in Liverpool to-night at seven 
 o'clock. 
 
 It was my intention to write you at greater length, but I must 
 defer my epistle a few days. 
 
 All our friends here wish you and yours a very safe and pleas- 
 ant voyage to the New World. 
 
 Your letter is being read with deep interest. 
 Yours in haste, 
 
 W. S. Key. 
 
 From a Parishioner of St. Botolph^s. 
 
 Spilsby Road, Boston, Lincolnshire, Sept. 25, 1S80. 
 My dear Sir, — I am unexpectedly given, through a mutual 
 friend, the privilege of congratulating yourself and your church 
 on the completion of its two hundred and fiftieth anniversary. I 
 have the greatest possible pleasure in doing this, because I am 
 a genuine native of the old tow-n, and because it is only by the 
 merest accident that I am not an American, as my father and a 
 lot of Unitarian friends had once determined to go to Washing- 
 ton with my uncle, Pichey Thompson, author of the " History of 
 Boston ; " and I know very well that if I had been born in your 
 
CORRESPONDENCE. 1 79 
 
 great country I should have been attracted towards Boston, Mas- 
 sachusetts, for my impression is, that in all which concerns the 
 higher civilization of mankind your city is the foremost city in the 
 world. Liberty without license, freedom of thought without vul- 
 garity, and a sort of quiet " sticking to your guns " in matters of 
 opinion, combined with great refinement of expression (of course, 
 my experience of your Boston is only literary), seem to me to be 
 your characteristics, and I have, moreover, the vanity to believe 
 that some of these you derive from the old source. That the old 
 source has seen better days is a melancholy fact ; but that your 
 John Cotton should have partly sprung from it, and should have 
 inherited certain qualities from it, is a fact also which is the re- 
 verse of melancholy. I will not trouble you with any reference 
 to the Rev. John Cotton, or the Pilgrim Fathers, or the May- 
 flower, for I dare say you know more about them than I do ; but 
 I will say this, that whenever any of your citizens should wish to 
 pay a visit to the old town, I'hope there will always be one of my 
 name (and we are many) to welcome him. If yourself, for in- 
 stance, would like at all to preach in the Unitarian Chapel here, 
 the pulpit would be very much at your service, and the congre- 
 gation, which is small, might be enlarged for the occasion ; and 
 myself or my elder brother Charles would be most glad to see 
 and entertain you. 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 Thomas Wright. 
 To Mr. Rufus Ellis. 
 
 REPLIES TO TELEGRAM INVITING CLERGYMEN AND LAY- 
 MEN OF BOSTON, ENGLAND, TO THE CELEBRATION. 
 
 Boston Vicarage, Lincolnshire, England, Nov. 9, iSSo. 
 My dear Sir, — I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your 
 telegram of the 6th instant, inviting me, in the name of your 
 committee, to be present at the two hundred and fiftieth anni- 
 versary of the First Church in your city, and I have to thank 
 yourself and them for their courtesy to myself individually and 
 to the office which I have the honor to hold. 
 
l8o FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 By a singular coincidence, yours is the second invitation in 
 connection with New Boston which I have been obliged this year 
 to decline, — on the former occasion, through absence from home 
 at the arrival of the telegram ; and on this occasion, by pressure 
 of work at home and other reasons with which I need not trouble 
 you- 7'he clergyman of your church, however, whom I had so 
 lately the honor of seeing at my vicarage, will tell you how much 
 I desire (if the providence of God shall clear the way) to visit a 
 city so closely connected with this town where I have lived so 
 long, and a slight recollection of which long life I venture to send 
 with this letter ; and I remain, with much esteem, 
 Your faithful servant, 
 
 G. B. Blenkin, 
 
 Vicar of Boston, Canon of Lincoln. 
 
 Boston, Lincolnshire, Nov. 8, iSSo. 
 Dear Sir, — I feel extremely obliged and flattered by your 
 invitation to attend the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of 
 your church, but I am unable to accept it. 
 I am, dear sir, 
 
 Yours respectfully, 
 
 T. Wright. 
 
 Boston, Lincolnshire, Nov. 8, iSSo. 
 My dear Sir, — Permit me to thank you for the kind invita- 
 tion you have sent me through our worthy vicar to be present at 
 the jubilee to be held in commemoration of the two hundred and 
 fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of your church and the 
 renaming of 3'our town. 
 
 Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to be with you 
 on that occasion, but my business engagements forbid it. 
 
 I fully participate with you in the feelings of cordiality and 
 esteem that connect the old Boston with the new as members of 
 one family, and express a hope that these will long continue. 
 Believe me, my dear sir. 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 Charles Wright. 
 
CORRESPONDENCE. l8l 
 
 2 Winter's Terrace, Homcastle Road, 
 Boston, Lincolnshire, Nov. 7, 1880. 
 
 Dear Dr. Ellis, — Although compelled by pressure of busi- 
 ness to delay the writing of this letter until now, I must avail 
 myself of the present opportunity for discharging what I feel 
 is a duty, and trust my communication may reach you before 
 your celebration on the i8th instant. In the first place, I ought 
 to express the great pleasure my congregation and myself experi- 
 enced in being honored with a visit from yourself, Mrs. and Miss 
 Ellis. Our pleasure would have been increased tenfold had only 
 the time at your disposal allowed of our giving you a much more 
 fitting reception than we were really able to. Most assuredly, if 
 you could have remained amongst us over the Monday, we would 
 have given you a public welcome, — though in Old Boston we 
 don't move very quickly, or do very great things, such as "our 
 kin across the sea " do in New Boston, if I except the great 
 amount of bribery and corruption of which we are guilty at our 
 elections, and for which we are at this moment being most right- 
 eously castigated. 
 
 I would also have guaranteed you the largest congregation 
 my chapel is capable of holding, had you been able to preach in 
 my pulpit ; for, in spite of our natural sluggishness, we can, on 
 occasion, get up a little enthusiasm, and should have done so on 
 such an auspicious occasion as the visit of one who occupies the 
 exalted position of successor to the great and good Dr. Cotton of 
 historic fame on both sides of the Atlantic, and the bishop (par- 
 don the title) of a diocese very largely composed of churches and 
 professors of a liberal faith. However, in lieu of that reception, 
 I hope the small gift from my congregation may be accepted by 
 your own people as an earnest of the fraternal feeling we enter- 
 tain for our American cousins, or, as I ought to say in this case, 
 our sons and daughters. 
 
 Having learnt that you desired to take something from St. 
 Botolph's town for your people to look at, to read, or to listen to, 
 we thought a sketch of our town as it used to be would be ap- 
 preciated by those whose very existence as citizens of one of the 
 first cities in the United States is a fitting denouement of a drama 
 the first scene of which was acted here nearly three centuries ago. 
 
l82 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 A view of the old bridge, as it is possible it looked in those early 
 days of the seventeenth century, and a glimpse of the river, on 
 the bosom of which first floated that ship's freight of determined 
 Englishmen, together with the precious souls of their wives and 
 children, all alike sustained with one desire to be free, and des- 
 tined by an all-wise Providence to become the founders of the 
 greatest republic the world has ever known, we felt must be wel- 
 come to those who, in their veneration for all that was noble in 
 the past, we regard as the most conservative of men. 
 
 As from one congregation of free Christians to another, we 
 deemed a photograph of our own chapel and school would not 
 be inappropriate. The little volume of "Tales of Boston," writ- 
 ten by a former member of my congregation, and presented by a 
 present and the oldest member, Mr. Thomas Smalley Cooke, 
 aged eighty-six, it was thought would amuse, while the photo- 
 graphs of our church and Dr. Cotton's pulpit, as they were seen 
 but a few days ago by yourself and Mrs. and Miss Ellis, would 
 be a small memento of your visit you would be pleased to pos- 
 sess. Not for any intrinsic value the gift possesses do we ask 
 the citizens of New Boston, or those of them belonging to First 
 Church, to accept these things, but as a small token of the high 
 regard we have for them, and as an unworthy substitute for the 
 more substantial and unanimous mark of recognition which my 
 congregation think ought certainly to have been presented by 
 our town on the auspicious celebration of the two hundred and 
 fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of your city. Some of us 
 regret exceedingly that the lack of enterprise, good feeling, and a 
 broad sympathy here should have rendered it impossible to per- 
 form a great duty, but so it is. It is a pleasure to know that New 
 Boston possesses more of these virtues, and that its citizens will 
 make a practical display of their generous sympathy, one towards 
 another, at the approaching celebration. We one and all send 
 you and your fellow-citizens our warmest congratulations on the 
 attainment of your two hundred and fiftieth year of age. "We are 
 proud to know that the spirit of enterprise and manly endeavor 
 that inspired the founders of your great nation and beautiful city 
 was the spirit of true-born Englishmen ; and while the parent 
 stock here and there shows signs of decay, we are conscious she 
 
CORRESPONDENCE. 183 
 
 has given — unwittingly, we admit — some of her best life for the 
 foundation of other nations, the peopling of other continents, and 
 the advancement of civilization. Most sincerely do we pray and 
 hope that the next two and a half centuries of time may be as 
 prodigal of good results for your city and country as the last have 
 been ; and especially do we trust the great American people will 
 long continue to hold by those great principles of civil and relig- 
 ious freedom which have been instrumental in advancing the 
 United States of America to the very forefront amongst the na- 
 tions of the earth. With our united very best wishes for the suc- 
 cess of your gathering on the i8th instant, and for the continued 
 welfare of your great republic, believe me to remain, 
 Very cordially yours, 
 
 W. S. Key, Minister. 
 
 On behalf of the Unitarian congregation, Boston, Lincohishire. 
 
 P. S. Your excellent letter to me, written at Lincoln City, af- 
 ter being read with interest by my congregation, I handed to the 
 Congregational Body for perusal, with the expressed hope that 
 they would send you a fraternal greeting. I have not heard if 
 they intend doing so. 
 
 Many thanks to friends for cablegram just to hand by Vicar of 
 St. Botolph's. 
 
 I am requested to reply on behalf of Messrs. Wright and my- 
 self. We should have been delighted to accept your hospitality 
 on the i8th instant, but are detained here by Royal Commission 
 and other matters. 
 
 Canon Blenkin, I guess, will reply direct. 
 
 W. S. Key. 
 
 LETTERS FROM MINISTERS OF FIRST CHURCHES. 
 
 Plymouth, Mass., Nov. 8, iSSo. 
 Dear Sir, — Your invitation for me to attend the exercises 
 on the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding 
 of the First Church in Boston has been duly received, and it 
 
184 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 will afford me great pleasure to be present at the time and place 
 indicated. 
 
 Very sincerely yours, 
 
 E. Q. S. Osgood. 
 
 Salem, Mass., Nov. 9, 1880. 
 
 Gentlemen, — It will give me much pleasure to attend the 
 commemorative services in honor of the two hundred and fiftieth 
 anniversary of the First Church in Boston, Thursday, Nov. 18, 
 1880. 
 
 With many thanks for your cordial invitation, I am 
 
 Very respectfully yours, 
 
 F. Israel. 
 
 Lynn, Mass., Nov. 9, 18S0. 
 
 Dear Sir, — Your very kind invitation to attend the two hun- 
 dred and fiftieth anniversary of the First Church in Boston is 
 received, and in reply I would say that it will give me great pleas- 
 ure to be present at the commemorative services to be held in 
 honor of the occasion, unless some special duty should arise to 
 detain me at home. 
 
 I believe in such occasions. It seems eminently befitting, es- 
 pecially in this busy and fast age, to improve such an anniversary 
 by reviewing the lives and labors of the brave and good who have 
 gone before us. We have so much to do, to care for, to think, 
 read, and talk about in regard to what is going on in the wide and 
 wide-awake world around us, that there is great danger of our 
 forgetting the past and what is due to it from the present. ]\Iay 
 your review of these two centuries and a half furnish to you who 
 are most interested, and to all who shall read the reports of the 
 commemorative services, many lessons for study, reflection, and 
 improvement in all the years to come. "Tell ye your children 
 of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children 
 another generation." 
 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 W. Barton. 
 
CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 ■85 
 
 Yarmouth, Mass., Nov. 8, 18S0. 
 Dear Sir, — I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of 
 the invitation of the First Church in Boston to attend the com- 
 memorative services in honor of its completion of two hundred 
 and fifty years, and shall be happy to accept it. I shall be happy 
 to bear, in a quiet way, the congratulations of the ancient church 
 I represent — the seventh in the order of establishment in the 
 old colony — to her elder sister of the Colony of Massachusetts 
 Bay. 
 
 Respectfully and fraternally yours, 
 
 John W. Dodge. 
 
 Newbury, Mass., Nov. 8, 1880. 
 Dear Sir, — I have received the invitation of the First Church 
 in Boston to attend the commemorative services in honor of its 
 completion of two hundred and fifty years. 
 
 It would give me great pleasure to attend those services if other 
 engagements permitted. I am expecting to attend the National 
 Triennial Council of Congregational Churches in St. Louis this 
 week and next, and therefore shall probably be unable to accept 
 your kind invitation. 
 
 In behalf of the First Church in Newbury, I extend hearty 
 thanks for your courtesy, and regrets on my own behalf that I 
 shall be unable to accept your cordial invitation. 
 Very sincerely yours, 
 
 Omar W. Folsom. 
 
 Gloucester, Mass., Nov. ii, 1880. 
 Dear Sir, — I regret to say that it will not be convenient for 
 me to attend your commemorative services next Thursday. I 
 thank you very much for your kind invitation. I trust that your 
 venerable church will have to celebrate many, many such joyful 
 anniversaries ; and that, though the " First Church in Boston," it 
 is still very young compared with the age to which it is to live, 
 doing Christ's noblest work. 
 
 Yours respectfully, 
 
 J. S. Thomson. 
 
1 86 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 LETTERS FROM OTHER MINISTERS. 
 
 Medfield, Mass., Nov. 9, 1880. 
 Gentlemen, — I beg leave to return my grateful acknowledg- 
 ment of the honor conferred upon me by the invitation of the 
 First Church in Boston to attend the services commemorative of 
 the organization of that church, which are to take place on Thurs- 
 day, Nov. iSth, and to say that I shall be most hapjDy to be pres- 
 ent, if possible, on that occasion. 
 
 Bearing the name of one of the early ministers of that church, 
 the Rev. Charles Chauncy, who was the particular friend and 
 patron of my father, I shall feel it to be a duty as well as a privi- 
 lege to attend these services. 
 
 With great respect, I am, gentlemen, 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 Chas. C. Sewall. 
 
 HiNGHAM, Mass., Nov. 9, 18S0. 
 Dear Sir, — I am very grateful to you and your associates 
 for the invitation to attend the commemorative services of the 
 First Church in Boston on the i8th instant. Such occasions have 
 a special interest to those who honor the aim and revere the char- 
 acters of the men who planted our New England institutions. 
 
 My age and sickness in my family render it so very uncertain 
 whether I shall be able to leave home at the time, that propriety 
 requires me to decline with great reluctance your kind invita- 
 tion. 
 
 With great respect, yours, 
 
 Calvin Lincoln. 
 
 Sunday, Nov. 7, 18S0. 
 
 Gentlemen, — I esteem it an honor to be invited by the First 
 Church in Boston to the observance of its two hundred and fiftieth 
 anniversary. 
 
 It was my privilege fifty years ago to be a worshipper in my 
 father's pew in Chauncy Place, and I take pleasure in recalling 
 the faces that were lifted towards our minister. 
 
CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 187 
 
 I am not now so good a hearer as then, and on that account 
 must not take the place of some one whose ears will catch all 
 the good words of that occasion. May all things conspire to 
 bless your services ! 
 
 With loyalty to the First Church, I am yours truly, 
 
 Wm. G. Babcock, 
 
 , Pastor of Warren St. Chapd. 
 
 Boston, Nov. 6, iSSo. 
 
 Honored Sir, — Your kind invitation to meet you on Thurs- 
 day, Nov. 1 8th, at two o'clock, for the two hundred and fiftieth 
 anniversary of the formation of the First Church, has just been 
 received, and I am very much obliged to you for the same, al- 
 though, from my limited strength, I feel obliged to decline all 
 outside calls of this nature. 
 
 I have especial reasons for rejoicing with you in this anniver- 
 sary. My father and mother attended the First Church for a 
 great many years ; I was for a long while a member of the Sun- 
 day-school ; in 1848 I joined the church under Rev. Dr. Froth- 
 mgham, and I was at one time a student in theology with Rev. 
 Dr. Rufus Ellis : so that you see a large part of my life, that has 
 now reached about fifty years, has been interwoven with the his- 
 tory of your society ; and when I took my vows as a minister in 
 1854, Dr. Ellis was a prominent member of the Council, and 
 took an important part in the services of the day. 
 
 It is therefore with great regret that I feel myself forced to 
 stay away at the time of your rejoicing. 
 Very respectfully, 
 
 Caleb D. Bradlee, 
 
 Pastor of the Church at Harrison Square. 
 
 St. Paul, Minn., Nov. 12, 1S80. 
 Mr. G. W. Warren. 
 
 Dear Sir, — I thank you for the invitation to attend the ser- 
 vices of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of First Church. 
 I cannot come, but with a great multitude of Boston boys, now 
 
l8S FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 Western men, shall watch the newspapers with interest to over- 
 hear what you do and say in the mother church, so old and so 
 young. 
 
 Yours resjDectfuUy, 
 
 W. C. Gannett. 
 
 Danvers, Mass., nth mo. 9, 18S0. 
 Hon. Geo. W. Warren, — My thanks are due for the invita- 
 tion to attend the commemorative services on the two hundred 
 and fiftieth anniversary of the First Church in Boston. I regret 
 that I am not able to be present on an occasion of such interest 
 to Boston and the Commonwealth at large. 
 Very truly thy friend, 
 
 John G. Whittier. 
 
 St. Moritz, Upper Engadine, Switzerland, July 14, 1S80. 
 
 Dear Mr. Ellis, — Your invitation to attend the two hundred 
 and fiftieth anniversary of the First Church was received last week 
 at Lucerne. Accept my assurance that nothing would give me 
 greater pleasure than to accept it and say a hearty word as a lay- 
 man now and a child of the church into which in my youth I wms 
 admitted to membership. My memory lingers fondly over my 
 father,- — his long pastorate ; his devotion to his people ; his fidel- 
 it}'^ to the offices of his ministry ; his loyalty to the faith, as he 
 apprehended it ; his high aim as a teacher and servant of his 
 Master. I recall the day of his successor's installation, and re- 
 member some of the words he said on that occasion. Though 
 for many years my associations with the ancient church have 
 been interrupted by outward circumstances, let me say that my 
 sense of the present pastor's constancy and zeal is, as it always 
 has been, clear and strong, and my interest in the old church 
 steady as ever. May its future be as honorable as its past has 
 been ! More than that cannot be asked. 
 
 The occasion suggests thoughts which I might speak but shall 
 not attempt to write. My own pulpit ministry ends at about the 
 same age with my father's. It pleases me to think that the spirit 
 of it was approved by him in his latter years. 
 
CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 189 
 
 Thank you for your kind wishes respecting my health. It is 
 indeed better, and will, I hope, allow me yet to do some work in 
 a new field. 
 
 With cordial wishes for the success of your anniversary, and 
 remembrances to my old friends who may be privileged to cele- 
 brate it, I am 
 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 O. B, Frothingham. 
 
 Clinton, Mass., Nov. ir, 18S0. 
 
 Dear Sir, — Your invitation to attend the commemorative ser- 
 vices in honor of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the 
 First Church in Boston came duly to hand. 
 
 I regret to write that home duties will not permit me to be 
 present at the services the report of which I shall read with so 
 much pleasure. 
 
 For a year, during my preparation for the ministry, I was 
 superintendent of the First Church Sunday-school, under the su- 
 pervision of the then and now pastor. My work in the Sunday- 
 school, if of little value to teachers and pupils, was of much 
 benefit to myself in fitting me for the ministry, and I found in the 
 church another " lecture-room " to supplement those of the Divin- 
 ity School. 
 
 For the church and pastor I cherish grateful memories, and 
 am glad to have them thus happily called fresh to mind. 
 Truly your friend, 
 
 Charles Noves. 
 
 Boston, Nov. 6, 1S80. 
 My dear Sir, — I take pleasure in acknowledging your invi- 
 tation to the coming anniversary of the First Church. I accept 
 it in my own behalf and that of my society with hearty congratu- 
 lations upon the noble past record and the present flourishing 
 condition of this our elder sister church. 
 
 Most sincerely yours, 
 
 Edward A. Horton, 
 
 Pastor of Second Church. 
 
igO FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 Boston, Nov. 9, 1880. 
 My dear Sir, — Your kind letter inviting me to attend the 
 two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of First 
 Church has reached me just as I am getting ready to take the 
 cars for St. Louis. It is a great disappointment to me that I 
 shall not be able to be at the observances of so important an 
 occasion. Especially interesting to me would it be to be present, 
 owing to the relations of the First Church to the Old South in 
 their early history. I think I can say, in the name of all the Old 
 South people, that the daughter sends affectionate greetings to 
 the mother. It gives me much pleasure to have this opportunity 
 of saying that my relations with your present minister, Rev. Rufus 
 Ellis, D.D., have always been most pleasant. I desire also to 
 acknowledge his uniform courtesy and kindness to me, and the 
 kindness of his parishioners whom I have had the good fortune 
 to meet. 
 
 Necessarily in haste, very truly yours, 
 
 J. M. Manning, 
 
 0/J South Parsonage. 
 
 69 Newbury St., Boston, Nov. 9, iSSo. 
 Hon. G. W. Warren, — I thank your committee heartily for 
 the favor of an invitation to the anniversary exercises of the First 
 Church. It will afford me joy to participate in the exercises as 
 a listener in cordial sympathy with my brethren and nearest 
 neighbors in the communion of the Christian Church. 
 Yours fraternally, 
 
 Joseph T. Duryea, 
 
 Pastor of Centi'al Church. 
 
 Washington, D. C, Nov. 10, iSSo. 
 
 Dear Sir, — Your kind invitation to attend the two hundred 
 and fiftieth anniversary of the First Church in Boston was duly 
 received. 
 
 I regret being unable to attend the interesting services which 
 you will have on that occasion, but am grateful for your invita- 
 tion. My engagements here will keep me until next week, and 
 make it difficult for me to be present. 
 
CORRESPONDENCE. I9I 
 
 But I assure you of my hearty sympathy with you in the com- 
 memorative services, and of my best wishes for the future pros- 
 perity of the grand old First Church in Boston. 
 Truly yours, 
 
 C. A. Staples, 
 
 Pastor of First Cong. Church, Providence, R. I. 
 
 Providence, R. I., Nov. 9, 1880. 
 My dear Sir, — It gives me very great pleasure to accept the 
 invitation of the First Church to attend the commemorative ser- 
 vices on Thursday, Nov. i8th. 
 
 I am, with great respect, 
 
 J. Lewis Diman.^ 
 
 Brooklyn, N. Y., Nov. 17, 1880. 
 My dear Sir, — It is with bitter disappointment that I am 
 obliged, in consequence of a slight indisposition, to say that it 
 will not be in my power to attend the impressive anniversary ser- 
 vices of the First Church to-morrow afternoon. No occasion for 
 these many years has had such attractions for me, and, after re- 
 ceiving and accepting your kind invitation to be present, I had 
 fully purposed to be with you ; but my physician orders other- 
 wise, and I must submit. But I am sure you will permit me to 
 say how heartily my people and their minister rejoice with your 
 ancient church at such an hour as this. 
 
 ^ Feb. 4, 1881. As this little volume is passing through the press there 
 comes the sad intelligence that Dr. Diman died yesterday in Providence, 
 R. I., after a very short illness. He was before all the Congregational minis- 
 ters who are known as "orthodox," certainly in this neighborhood, in the 
 offer of an exchange of pulpits to a Unitarian clergyman- At his invitation 
 we took each the other's place, on Sunday, May 10, 1863, he officiating in 
 First Church and I in his house of worship in Brookline. Dr. Diman was a 
 frequent and most welcome preacher to our congregation, and the writer of 
 this note was just proposing to invite him to take his place for a Sunday 
 when the tidings came that he had been summoned hence. He is gone, but 
 his work remains. Somewhere, if not here, " man is immortal until his work 
 is done." — R. E. 
 
192 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 May the close of the two hundred and fifty years to come find 
 your successors as vigorous and earnest and happy as you all are 
 to-day! 
 
 Cordially yours, 
 
 A. P. Putnam. 
 
 Providence, R. I., Nov. 9, 1880. 
 
 My dear Sir, — It would give me very great pleasure to attend 
 the anniversary exercises of the First Church, on Thursday, Nov. 
 i8th, if my engagements on that day should permit. I fear, 
 however, that I shall be debarred the privilege. The occasion 
 must be one of the greatest interest, not only to the parish imme- 
 diately concerned, but to all of our New England churches, and I 
 shall certainly consider it a great loss to myself to be deprived of 
 the pleasure of engaging in the commemoration. 
 
 Thanking the gentlemen of the Committee of Invitation for 
 their kindness, I am 
 
 Very truly and faithfully yours, 
 
 A. WOODBURV, 
 Pastor of Westminsttr Church. 
 
 Portland, Me., Nov. 9, 18S0. 
 My dear Sir, — I am very sorry that I shall not be able to 
 leave home at the time of your church anniversary to which you 
 so kindly invite me, for Nov. i8th, as I should enjoy the occasion 
 and the meeting with the friends and brethren. 
 
 Very respectfully and truly yours, 
 
 Thomas Hill. 
 
 Letter from Orville Dewey, D.D. 
 
 Sheffield, M.\ss., Nov. ii, iSSo. 
 Dr. Dewey regrets that his health will not permit him to attend 
 the very interesting services to be held by the First Church of 
 Boston on the iSth of November. 
 
CORRESPONDENCE. I93 
 
 Boston, Nov. 9, 1880. 
 
 My dear Sir, — I accept with much pleasure the invitation 
 of the members of the First Church of Boston to join with them 
 in their commemorative services on Thursday, Nov. i8th. 
 
 To me the invitation is of special interest, because, in England, 
 of my having had, at one point and another in my earlier life, to 
 meet and judge that same stream of influence to escape which 
 the Puritans left Old England and made for the Bay of Massa- 
 chusetts. 
 
 I was born in a town from which, even because of his excel- 
 lence, Richard Baxter was excluded, as you certainly would think, 
 through the malicious operation of an act of Parliament. And it 
 happened to me, also, at a month old, to be baptized in that same 
 parish church at which once that great Christian was a minister. 
 In Boston, as also in Salem and Roxbury, two hundred years ago, 
 there was perhaps no name of a living Englishman which was 
 dearer than that of the Rev. Richard Baxter. And that popular- 
 ity was not without a good reason for it, apart from his having 
 been the great controversialist of his day, and the largest relig- 
 ious writer of his time, and the author, in particular, of "The 
 Saints' Everlasting Rest." 
 
 Two hundred and fifty years ! and spent — all of them — like 
 a tale that is told ! Puritan and Psalmist, both alike as to that 
 sense of life ! However, in Boston, life has, with earnest liv- 
 ing, turned to noble and enduring history. And the narrative 
 has another effect and probably a grander moral than any tale 
 ever had, told by an Eastern story-teller to fascinated listeners, 
 whether at the gate of a city or out among the tents. Magna est 
 Veritas et prcEvalebit, and because of what truth was in them, and 
 because of the manner in which, with more or less clearness and 
 certitude, they have lived by it from the beginning, it has hap- 
 pened to the people of Boston, under God, politically and largely 
 also in other ways, that at this present time " there is no speech 
 nor language where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone 
 out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world." 
 
 I wish you all joy in your coming commemoration ; and you 
 have good reason to feel it. 
 
 I am yours faithfully, 
 
 William Mountford. 
 13 
 
194 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 Florence, Italy, Dec. 13, 1880. 
 Dear Mr. Ellis, — Mr. Shattuck has kindly lent me his copy 
 of the " Register," with your sermon on your late anniversary oc- 
 casion, and the " Advertiser," with a report of all the doings. 
 Let me congratulate you, not only on the success, but on the high 
 tone of all the exercises. It must have been a happy and a proud 
 time. I especially enjoyed your brother's speech and your ser- 
 mon, with the closing paragraph of which I am heartily in sym- 
 pathy. Both the historical and the spiritual chords were nobly 
 struck, and their fine music will be heard far beyond the limits of 
 Boston and the boundaries of Unitarianism. A better use of 
 the occasion could not, in my judgment, have been made. I 
 hope that all the proceedings will be published and widely dis- 
 tributed. 
 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 O. B. Frothingham. 
 
 LETTER FROM HON. G. W. CURTIS. 
 
 West New Brighton, N. Y., Nov. 12, iSSo. 
 
 My dear Sir, — I am very sorry that it is impossible for me 
 to accept the cordial invitation of the First Church in Boston to 
 attend the celebration of its two hundred and fiftieth birthday. 
 
 As I think of its long and illustrious history, and of the pro- 
 found influence upon America and the world which the First 
 Church in Boston represents, I am glad to know that " time can- 
 not wither her," and that her prosperity and liberality still symbol- 
 ize the progressive Puritanism upon which America is built. Our 
 fathers, indeed, came from many countries, and were of various 
 faiths; but with all our differences of origin, and through all our 
 history, from the deposition of Andros to Bunker Hill, and from 
 the Declaration of Independence to the Proclamation of Emanci- 
 pation, the dominant power in American civilization has been the 
 genius of Puritan England. 
 
 May the First Church in Boston live and prosper, and may her 
 five hundredth birthday find her and her cause, like Milton's 
 
CORRESPONDENCE. jo^ 
 
 noble and puissant nation, " as an eagle mewing her mighty youth 
 and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam."^ 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 George William Curtis. 
 
 FROM FORMER PARISHIONERS. 
 
 350 Marlborough St., Boston, Nov. 9, iSSo. 
 Dear Sir, — I am obliged by your kind remembrance of me on 
 the commemorative occasion of the two hundred and fiftieth an- 
 niversary of the founding of the First Church, and if the infirmi- 
 ties of old age do not prevent me I shall have great pleasure in 
 being present with you. 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 Edward Reynolds. 
 
 Boston, Nov. 9, 1S80. 
 My dear Sir, — I have just received the card of invitation to 
 the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the First Church, 
 which it gives me much pleasure to accept. 
 
 As I was christened by the Rev. Mr. Emerson more than eighty 
 years ago, and as my interest has always been reverently cher- 
 ished for the old church, I shall certainly be present on the iSlh 
 instant. 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 Chas. Hickling. 
 
 RoxBURV, Cedar Square, Nov. 6, 18S0. 
 My dear Sir, — I feel highly honored in receipt of your invi- 
 tation to attend the commemorative services in honor of the First 
 Church. I have a right to feel an interest in the occasion, as 
 my father and mother attended said church, where I was christ- 
 ened, and also nine brothers and sisters. I am the only survivor 
 of the family. It will give me great pleasure to attend. 
 Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 
 
 S. Parkman Blake. 
 
196 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 Boston, Nov. ii, 1880. 
 To the Committee of the First Church, Boston. 
 
 Gentlemen, — Your official and cordial invitation to attend 
 the commemorative services of the First Church, having been 
 received, is gratefully acknowledged, and with great pleasure 
 
 accepted. 
 
 Most respectfully yours, 
 
 Lewis G. Pray. 
 
 FROM A DESCENDANT OF JOHN COTTON. 
 
 9 Arlington St., Boston, Nov. 9, 1880. 
 My dear Sir, — I am very much obliged for the invitation to 
 attend the commemorativ^e services in honor of the two hundred 
 and fiftieth anniversary of the First Church, and will thankfully 
 receive the admission ticket. As a lineal descendant of John 
 Cotton, the second minister of the church, and of Governors 
 Dudley and Bradstreet, who were among its first members, I feel 
 a great interest in the celebration. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 James W. Austin. 
 
 The Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company was represented by the 
 commander and staff, and had time permitted would have been heard from 
 on the occasion. 
 
 Boston, Nov. 15, 1880. 
 Hon. G. Wasjiington Warren. 
 
 Dear Sir, — Permit me to thank your committee, in behalf of 
 my command, for the invitation extended to myself and the offi- 
 cers of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company to be 
 present at the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary exercises of 
 your society on the i8th November. It will give us great pleas- 
 ure to accept your polite invitation. 
 
 John Adams, in his writings upon government, more than once 
 said that the four corner-stones of a State were " the town-meet- 
 ing, the school, the church, and the militia." 
 
 Three of these corner-stones, represented by the First Church 
 of Boston, Harvard College, and the Ancient and Honorable 
 
CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 197 
 
 Artillery Company, will meet at your anniversary after an exist- 
 ence of nearly two hundred and fifty years. 
 
 The first charter granted by the General Court of Massachu- 
 setts was to Harvard College, in 1636. The second, and for a 
 very long time the only other, was to the Ancient and Honorable 
 Artillery Company, on the 17th of March, 1638. 
 
 Lewis, in his " History of Lynn," says : " 1638, first Monday 
 in June, A. and H. A. Company organized ; between three and 
 four P.M. there was a very great earthquake." What connection, 
 if any, there may have been between these two circumstances I am 
 unable to say. Perhaps to typify the shock of arms, or to shake 
 our organization together so firmly that the march of time should 
 bring with increasing years no sign of weakness or decay. 
 
 Our first commander, Robert Keayne, was a member of the 
 Honorable Artillery Company of London. 
 
 He came to this country, it is thought, in 1634, and lived where 
 the Old State House now stands. He was a man of very strong 
 will, and he left one of the longest wills upon record. 
 
 He was received into Boston Church March 20, 1635-6. 
 
 He was a brother-in-law of the first pastor of your church, John 
 Wilson, by whom the first sermon was preached to our corps. 
 
 I find, by our company's history, that nearly all the pastors that 
 have been settled over your church have, in their time, preached 
 our annual election sermon ; and until 1868, with scarcely an 
 exception, our services were held in your meeting-houses. 
 
 Thus the relation between two of the " corner-stones " of our 
 old Commonwealth — the church and the militia — is very near; 
 and it seems appropriate as well as very pleasant to us who will 
 represent the latter, still young and vigorous in its wealth of 
 years, to join with you in this the two hundred and fiftieth anni- 
 versary of the former, your venerable and revered society. 
 
 It is the intention of our company to prepare a suitable box to 
 contain an account of our participation in the two hundred and 
 fiftieth anniversary of the settlement of our city and other matters 
 connected with the history of the corps, together with letters mis- 
 sive from distinguished writers upon the most important interests 
 of the day, the box to be opened one hundred years hence. 
 
 Should it be the wish of your committee, we would be pleased 
 
198 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 to deposit therein the memorial of your church history which I 
 understand is to be prepared. 
 
 In conclusion, let us fervently hope that the precepts taught by 
 the church may so permeate our beloved country that the active 
 services of the militia shall seldom be needed. 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 Chas. W. Stevens, 
 Conujiander A. and II. A. Company. 
 
 82 Water St., Room 10, Boston, Nov. ii, iSSo. 
 RUFUS Ellis, D.D., Pastor of the First Church, Boston, Mass. 
 
 Dear Sir, — My attention has been called to the proposed 
 celebration of the two hundred and fihieth anniversary of the 
 founding of the First Church. 
 
 We find that the founder of our company, Robert Keayne, was, 
 on the 17th day of March, 1638, ordered by Governor John Win- 
 throp to organize " The Military Company of the Massachusetts." 
 {^Previous to 1738 the name was changed to " Honorable Artillery 
 Company," same as the London Company, of which Robert 
 Keayne was a member before he came to this country, and again 
 in 1738 to Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company.) 
 
 On the first Monday in June, 1638, Rev. John Wilson, brother- 
 in-law of Robert Keayne, preached the first election sermon before 
 the company, and we suppose that he preached in his own meet- 
 ing-house. With hardly an exception, save eight years during the 
 Revolution, from 1638 to this time, the Artillery election sermon 
 has been annually preached, and, until the removal of the First 
 Church from Chauncy Place, was preached for the whole or a 
 very large part of the time in the meeting-house of the First 
 Church. 
 
 Thinking that the historic connection of our company with the 
 First Church may not have attracted your attention, I have taken 
 the liberty of referring to it ; and it might not be inappropri- 
 ate that our commander, officers' staff, and past commanders 
 should be present at your anniversary, and that your proceedings 
 be transmitted with our collection. 
 
 Very respectfully yours, 
 
 Edward Wvman. 
 
V ^^ X x/ 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 COVENANT OF FIRST CHURCH. 
 
 In the name of Our Lord yestcs Christ, and in obedience to his 
 holy will and divine ordinance, - — 
 
 We, whose names are hereunder written, being by His most wise 
 and good providence brought together into this part of America, in 
 the Bay of Massachusetts ; and desirous to unite ourselves into one 
 Congregation or Church under the Lord Jesus Christ, our head, in 
 such sort as becometh all those whom he hath redeemed and sanc- 
 tified to himself, — do hereby solemnly and religiously (as in his 
 most holy presence) promise and bind ourselves to walk in all our 
 ways according to the rule of the gospel, and in all sincere con- 
 formity to his holy ordinances, and in mutual love and respect each 
 to other, so near as God shall give us grace. 
 
 John Winthrop, Governor. 
 Thomas Dudley, D. Governor. 
 IsAACK Johnson. 
 John Wilson. 
 
 ROLL OF THE MINISTERS OF THE FIRST CHURCH. 
 
 John Wilson. Installed as teacher, Aug. 27, 1630; as pastor, Nov. 23, 
 
 1632. Died Aug. 7, 1667, aged 78. 
 John Cotton. Installed as teacher, Oct. 17, 1633. Died Dec. 23, 1652, 
 
 aged 67. 
 John Norton. Installed as teacher, July 23, 1656. Died April 5, 1663, 
 
 aged 57. 
 John Davenport. Installed as teacher, Dec. 9, 1668. Died Mar. 15, 1670, 
 
 aged 72. 
 
202 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 James Allen. Installed as teacher, Dec. 9, 166S. Died Sept. 22, 17 10, 
 
 aged 78. 
 John Oxenbridge. Installed as teacher, April 10, 1670. Died Dec. 28, 
 
 1674, aged 65. 
 Joshua Moody. Installed as assistant, May 3, 16S4. Died July 4, 1697, 
 
 aged 65. 
 John Bailey. Installed as assistant, July 17, 1693. Died Dec. 12, 1697, 
 
 aged 53. 
 Benjamin Wadsworth. Ordained Sept. 8, 1696; chosen President of Har- 
 vard College, 1725. Died Mar. 12, 1737, aged 67. 
 Tho.mas Bridge. Installed May 10, 1705. Died Sept. 26, 17 15, aged 58. 
 Thomas Foxcroft. Ordained Nov. 20, 1717. Died June 18, 1769, aged 72. 
 Charles Chauncy, D.D. Ordained Oct. 25, 1727. Died Feb. 10, 1787, 
 
 aged 82. 
 John Clark, D.D. Ordained July 8, 1778. Died April i, 1798, aged 42. 
 William Emerson. Installed Oct. 16, 1799. Died May 12, 1811, aged 42. 
 John L. Abbot. Ordained July 14, 1813. Died Oct. 17, 1814, aged 31. 
 Nathaniel L. Frothingham, D.D. Ordained Mar. 15, 1815. Resigned 
 
 March, 1850. 
 RUFUS Ellis, D.D. Installed May 4, 1853. 
 
 FORMER HOUSES OF WORSHIP. 
 
 The first house of worship was erected on State Street, corner of Devon- 
 shire, site of the present Brazer's Building, A.D. 1632. Upon the land in the 
 rear, now known as the Prince estate, were horse-sheds used by those who 
 rode to church. 
 
 The second was built on the present site of Joy's Building, on Washington 
 Street, then called Cornhill, A.D. 1640, and was consumed by fire, Oct. 2, 
 1711. Rebuilt on the same spot, A.D. 1713, and for many years known as 
 the "Old Brick," a very imposing structure. 
 
 The fourth was erected in Chauncy Place, A.D. 1808. Services were held 
 in it fpr the last time. May 10, 1S6S. 
 
 The corner-stone of the present house of worship was laid April 4, 1867, 
 and the house was dedicated Dec. 10, 1868. The church holds it free of debt, 
 and it may aptly be said to realize the vision of John Wilson. 
 
 THE COMMUNION PLATE. 
 
 The following is a description prepared by the late Rev. Dr. Frothingham 
 of the pieces of communion plate given to the church in the seventeenth 
 and eighteenth centuries. Other pieces have been given during the present 
 century, the whole service being composed of the gifts of church-members. 
 The church proper, or the body of conmiunicants, holds also charity funds 
 amounting in all to nearly $20,000. 
 
APPENDIX. 203 
 
 1. A silver basin for baptisms, with a coat of arms engraved on the rim, 
 and "J. Hurd" stamped in the cemre. 
 
 2. A flagon, with a coat of arms engraved in front, and an inscription under- 
 neath : "The Gift of the Hon'il"" William Dummer Esq. to the First Church 
 in Boston, 1726." 
 
 3. A similar flagon, with the inscription within an ornamented oval : " The 
 Gift of Deacon Thomas Waite to the First Church of Christ in Boston, May 
 
 15. I775-" 
 
 4. A tall embossed cup, with engraving and figures in relief, and this in- 
 scription written round the rim : "The Gift of Governor Jn° Winthrop to 
 y^ I' Church in Boston." 
 
 5. Three ornamented cups, lettered on the sides : " The Gift of Elder Joseph 
 Bridgham to the First Church in Boston, 170S." 
 
 6. A similar cup, with the inscription on the side : " The Gift of James 
 Everitt to the First Church in Boston, 1705." 
 
 8. A plain cup, with this inscription: "The Gift of a Friend R * H." 
 These letters, B) (C, also are faintly visible. Date, 1661, written on the 
 bottom. 
 
 11. Three large plain cups, inscribed, "The Gift of Jn? Oxenbridge." 
 
 12. A pair of cups, engraved on one side with a coat of arms, and on the 
 other with this inscription in an ornamented cartouche: "The Gift of Mrs. 
 Lydia Hancock to the First Church of Christ in Boston, Sept. 4, 1773." 
 
 17. A pair of tankards, lettered, "The Gift of Sam!! More to the First 
 Church in Boston, 1717." 
 
 18 Another tankard, a cartouche in front with the inscription : " The Gift 
 of Nathaniel Balston Esq. to the First Church of Christ in Boston, 1773." 
 On the handle are the initials, N. H. 
 
 19 Another tankard, with the inscription in an ornamented cartouche: 
 
 "The Gift of Madam Eliz : Welsteed to the First Church in Boston, I7q2." 
 
 W ^ ' -> 
 
 Initials on the handle, W. " E. 
 
 20. A pair of cans, with a coat of arms engraved on the front, and under- 
 neath the inscription : "The Gift of Deacon Jonathan Williams to the First 
 Church of Christ in Boston, at his decease, March 27, 1737." 
 
 21. A can, inscribed, "The Gift of John Forland to the First Church of 
 Christ in Boston, for the use of the Table, 17 17." 
 
 22. Two massy tumblers, enchased, with the letters, B "^^ C, one of them 
 bearing the date 1659 under the initials. 
 
 23. A vase, figured with birds and flowers, bearing on the bottom the ini- 
 tials, R. ^- E. 
 
 26. Four dishes, with the inscription round their rims : " Given bv Suviah 
 Thayer, in testimony of her respect for the First Church of Christ in Boston. 
 A.D. 1796." 
 
204 FIRST CHURCH KN BOSTON. 
 
 USHERS ON THE DAY OF COMMEMORATION. 
 
 S. Henry Hooper. John S. Tebbetts. 
 
 E. Pelham Dodd. Henry G. French. 
 
 Henry G. Hall Charles Pfaff. 
 
 Joseph W. Warren. Frederic B. Holder. 
 
 Charles H. Whiting. John F. Moors. 
 
 George R. R. Rivers. 
 
 ADDRESS AT THE LAYING OF THE CORNER-STONE 
 
 OF THE 
 
 FIFTH HOUSE OF WORSHIP OF THE FIRST CHURCH, 
 
 By Rev. RUFUS ELLIS, Minister of tlte Church, 
 
 April 4, 1S67 (Fast Day). 
 
 The First Church of Christ in Boston lays to day the corner- 
 stone of its fifth house of worship. 
 
 In the summer of the year of our Lord 1630, the fathers of the 
 congregation met under the sheher of a wide-spreading tree for 
 their first public act of worship ; and, for the space of about two 
 years, the company of disciples broke bread from house to house. 
 Upon the return from England of their first pastor, the Rev. 
 John Wilson, they erected a simple building of wood and earth, 
 not unlike the log-cabins of our Western world, and, until 1640, 
 sheltered therein the ark of God. This very humble sanctuary 
 stood on the south side of what is now known as State Street. 
 The congregation then passed first to a wooden, and afterwards 
 to a brick, meeting-house on the spot which is now covered by 
 Joy's Building, where they remained until the 21st of July, 1808, 
 when their pastor, the Rev. William Emerson, preached the 
 dedication sermon of the present house of worship on Channcy 
 Street, and the workmen commenced the demolition of what had 
 been known since 17 13, first as the Brick Meeting-house, and, 
 with the lapse of years, as the Old Brick Meeting-house. 
 
 It has been thought that the interests of the congregation 
 would be promoted by another removal. Therefore we are here 
 to-day, and have already asked the blessing of God upon our ' 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 205 
 
 new and serious undertaking. It is fitting that a few words 
 should be spoken concerning the trust which the God of our 
 fathers has committed to our keeping. 
 
 I need not remind you that, however little it may have cost 
 us, this inheritance was bought for us at a great price. Men 
 and women do not cross the stormy sea and found a city in the 
 wilderness and amongst savages, to keep holiday. The plant- 
 ing of this church was to our fathers a very serious business ; 
 the Christian congregation was to them the very heart of their 
 Commonwealth ; and, however much we may garnish their sep- 
 ulchres, and set up tablets to their memory, we really put them 
 to open shame unless we fill up what is behind of their honor- 
 able labors and patient endurance. And, if we will enter into 
 their earnest spirit, we shall make haste to say that our trust 
 fi-om them is twofold, that we have to keep, living and fresh and 
 growing in the world, two great traditions, — two and yet one, 
 for the two agree in one, — the tradition of Christianity and the 
 tradition of freedom in Christianity. Our fathers planted this 
 church because they were Christians, because their religion 
 was more to them than anything and everything else in the 
 world ; and they planted it in the wilderness, leaving their pleas- 
 ant English homes because they were Christians, according to 
 that word in Christ which is not bound. 
 
 Now, as of old, in laying this corner-stone, we repeat the old 
 baptismal words. We say, " In the name of the Father and the 
 Son and the Holy Ghost," and " Other foundation can no man 
 lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ," in whom we have 
 the absolute manifestation and the ever-abiding presence and the 
 ever-redeeming power of that God who is love, that God who in 
 the life of his Son has opened his whole heart to the world, and 
 completed in him all the religious and moral possibilities of 
 our humanity, so that no man can add anything unto him, or 
 take anything from him. Following this Dayspring from on 
 high, our fathers crossed the ocean. We have this day, and 
 we desire to have, no other guidance. We ask for no church 
 save the church of Christ and of his Holy Spirit, still and ever- 
 •more proceeding. The heart of humanity still saith, as ear- 
 nestly and affectionately as ever, nay, with ever-deepening 
 
206 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 enthusiasm, as the burden of civilization presses more and more 
 heavily, " Lord, unto whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words 
 of eternal life." 
 
 And even because this word from heaven was so altogether 
 suflficient, and so altogether blessed unto them, our fathers must 
 needs hold it as it was in the beginning, is now, and evermore 
 shall be, in freedom from all human devices, prescriptions, and 
 imaginations. They had heard the w^ord of the Apostle speaking 
 to them also in the latter days : " Stand fast therefore in the 
 liberty wherewith Christ hath made you free, and be not entan- 
 gled again in any yoke of bondage." He seemed to be saying 
 to them, in their peculiar circumstances and with their peculiar 
 temptations, " If you conform as of obligation to the rituals of 
 the outward church, Christ shall profit you nothing ; " and they 
 left their own houses, like the old patriarch, to walk with God' 
 in Christ, though they knew that his way would be in the 
 sea, and his path through the great waters, and that their feet 
 would be pierced with desert thorns. We believe that as adher- 
 ents to an unbound Christianity, a Christianity that hears none 
 but Christ, and is not careful to get any human indorsement of 
 its orthodoxy, we are the legitimate children of the fathers 
 of this' church. We believe that we stand, if not precisely where 
 they stood in that day, yet substantially where they would have 
 stood to-day, ready to follow the well-instructed scribe, spoken 
 of by our Saviour, who brings forth from the treasury things 
 new and old, to accept with them whatever was real and vital in 
 what is called their orthodoxy, all the old verities of Christian 
 history and Christian experience ; and yet equally ready to inter- 
 pret these verities according to that word of the Apostle which 
 bids us add knowledge to our faith, — in modern phrase, science to 
 religion, — and those greater words of Jesus, "Why even of your 
 own selves judge ye not what is right?" and "Sanctify them by 
 thy truth." 
 
 It is with profound satisfaction that we reflect that our liberty 
 also is an inheritance. Let me remind you of some striking 
 words of Mr. Edmund Burke, and lay claim to them as fulfilled 
 in us. " It has been," he says, " the uniform policy of our consti- 
 tution to claim and assert our liberties as an entailed inheritance, 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 207 
 
 devised to us from our fathers, and to be transmitted to our pos- 
 terity. This idea of inheritance furnishes a sure principle of 
 conservation, and a sure principle of transmission, without at all 
 excluding a principle of improvement. In what we improve we 
 are never wholly new ; in what we retain we are never wholly 
 obsolete. Always acting as if in the presence of canonized fore- 
 fathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and 
 excess, is tempered with an awful gravity. By this means our 
 liberty becomes a noble freedom ; it carries an imposing and 
 majestic aspect ; it has a pedigree and illustrating ancestors ; it 
 has its bearings and ensigns armorial ; it has its gallery of por- 
 traits, its monumental inscriptions, its records, evidences, and 
 titles." 
 
 We rebuild our church, if not our house of worship, on the old 
 foundations. Our church covenant is the fathers' covenant. We 
 have no desire, no purpose, to change a word or so much as a 
 letter of it ; but we do hope to gain a deeper interpretation, and 
 to come into a larger and better use of the truth which it seeks 
 to express. We hope to rear a building that shall shelter many 
 generations of Christian disciples, worshippers, believers, work- 
 ers ; a multitude ready to receive the truth as from time to time 
 it shall break forth, beautiful as the morning light, from the word 
 of God, ready to carry forward the special work of Christ as it 
 shall be discovered from time to time in this city of our affec- 
 tions, ready to meet Him in whom mercy rejoiceth against judg- 
 ment, and whose word can be believed, and whose law is fulfilled 
 only in love. 
 
 It is a custom of great antiquity to lay the corner-stone of 
 every j^ublic structure with religious observances. The historian 
 Tacitus tells us that silver and gold and the less precious metals, 
 all unwrought but in great profusion, were laid under the corner- 
 stone of the old Roman Capitol an offering to the gods of the 
 nations. Following the same spirit, but guided by a higher wis- 
 dom, and looking for a nobler habitation, we have begun our 
 work with prayer to God, and with these commemorative words ; 
 depositing also for the eyes of those who shall come after us, in 
 what we trust will be a very distant age, a few memorials of the 
 swiftly passing hour. 
 
2o8 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 We believe that our work has been well begun, and that it is 
 in the hands of men whom the Lord hath made wise-hearted to 
 devise and to execute, even as when the Hebrews fashioned the 
 tabernacle in the wilderness. May it go forward until we shall 
 raise the headstone thereof wiih shoutings, crying, " Grace, 
 grace unto it ! " May it go forward in all integrity and in all 
 charity, and in remembrance of the good word of old, " Except 
 the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it ;" and 
 to that Lord, the " King eternal, immortal, and invisible, the only 
 wise God, be honor and glory, through Jesus Christ, forever 
 and ever. Amen." 
 
 DESCRIPTION OF CHURCH AND CHAPEL WINDOWS. 
 
 The windows in the church, although exhibiting a variety in 
 treatment and handling, which greatly enhances their interest, are 
 all constructed upon the same principle, being of what is called 
 mosaic glass-work as distinguished from enamel painting. They 
 are elevated high above the eye, to avoid disagreeable cross- 
 lights. They are all filled with English glass, executed in Lon- 
 don, in accordance with the architects' sketches. Seven in the 
 church and two in the chapel are the gifts of members of the 
 society. The church windows, though the work of different 
 makers, all follow the same general design. A broad border sur- 
 rounds a central field of ornamental work, the upper part of 
 which is occupied by the half figure of an angel in a circle. 
 Near the bottom of each window is a figure, subject, or picture 
 extending across both the ornament and the borders. The 
 subjects of those in the body of the church are " St. John at the 
 Last Supper," by Messrs. Lyon & Co.; "The Syro- Phoenician 
 Woman," by Messrs. Saunders & Co. ; and "The Good Samar- 
 itan," executed by Messrs. Heaton, Butler, and Bayne. This 
 window is erected "In memory of John Eliot Thayer." The 
 window opposite this represents the Transfiguration, with the 
 three disciples in the foreground and above the figure of Christ, 
 in a glory of the form of a vesica piscis, with Moses and Elias. 
 This window was the gift of the late Mr. Turner Sargent. At 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 209 
 
 either end of the transepts are similar windows, but of much 
 greater size, being nearly twenty feet high. Those in the north 
 transept contain full-length figures, about the size of life, of St. 
 John and St. Paul. The subjects beneath are " The Women and 
 the Angel at the Sepulchre " and the " Departure of Paul from 
 Ephesus." The St. John window is erected " In memory of 
 Peter Chardon Brooks." The St. Paul window is erected " In 
 memory of Thomas Beale Wales." The south transept is occu- 
 pied by windows of similar size, containing, in the place of the 
 Apostles opposite, inscriptions relating to the history of the 
 church. On one is the ancient covenant under which the church 
 was gathered in 1630, signed by Governor Winthrop, Governor 
 Dudley, "and ninety others, men and women." Beneath is the 
 "Vision of the Man of Macedonia," — the carrying of the gospel 
 into Europe having been considered by the founders of this 
 church as the prototype of its introduction into America, the 
 text " Come over and help us " occurring in the original seal of 
 the Colony. The other window contains a list of the ministers 
 of the church during the two hundred and fifty years since its 
 foundation. Beneath are figures of the four Evangelists. These 
 four windows are by Messrs. Lavers, Barraud, and Westlake. 
 The other windows were furnished out of the funds of the so- 
 ciety, and consist for the most part merely of decorative work. 
 The great Rose, however, at the end of the church, over the 
 entrance, contains in the centre a figure of the Lamb, and about 
 it a choir of angels singing and playing upon various instru- 
 ments. In the north transept is also a small window, nearly on 
 a level with the eye, containing, in four compartments, the story 
 of the Prodigal Son. All these windows are the work of Messrs. 
 Clayton & Bell, also of London. 
 
 The two stained windows in the chapel are products of Amer- 
 ica, and have been given since the completion of the church. 
 Unfortunately the conditions of the light are not favorable to 
 the fullest development of their color. They are interesting 
 specimens of the ultra-mosaic system. It would be difficult to 
 find pictorial windows of a like importance, in which the brush 
 had been less sparingly used. The central composition of the 
 right-hand window, " In memory of Fanny Cabot Paine,"' repre- 
 
 H 
 
2IO FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 sents St. Christopher fording the stream with the infant Christ 
 on his shoulder. The effect is that of pale starlight. In the 
 execution of this window, the so-called " rolled " glass has been 
 almost exclusively employed. In both figures and ornament the 
 line alone has been employed to indicate form. This window 
 was set up in 1879. 
 
 The left-hand window, " In memory of Gurdon Saltonstall," 
 set up in 1880, is devoted to incidents in the life of David; the 
 central composition depicting him as he descends into the valley 
 to meet the Philistine giant and calling on the Lord for help. 
 This figure is carefully modelled by the "stippling" process. 
 The other figures and accessories are less elaborately treated. 
 
 The " antique " glass has been employed throughout, and is 
 of the richest description. The leadings are delicate and fre- 
 quent. Both windows were designed and supervised by Fred- 
 eric Crowninshield, and were executed by Donald McDonald. 
 
INDEX. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Abbott, Rev. John L., tribute to, 87. 
 
 Adams, John, 196. 
 
 Ainsworth, Henry, 15. 
 
 Allen, Rev. James, tribute to, 85. 
 
 Ancient and Honorable Artillery 
 
 Company, 196-198. 
 Antinomianism, account of, 39-4S. 
 Aspinwall, , chosen deacon at the 
 
 organization of the First Church, 
 
 14. 
 Austin, James W., letter from, 196. 
 
 Babcock, Rrj. William G., letters 
 from, 186. 
 
 Bacon, Francis ; Lord Verula7n, 82. 
 
 Bailey, Rez\ John, tribute to, 86. 
 
 Barton, Rev. W., letter from, 1S4. 
 
 Baxter, Rev. Richard, 193. 
 
 Blackstone, Rev. William, 102. 
 
 Blake, S. Parkman, letter from, 195. 
 
 Blaxton, , 15. 
 
 Blenkin, Rev. G. B., of Boston, Eng., 
 letter from, 179. 
 
 Boston, from whence it derived its 
 name, 84, 85. 
 
 Bradford, Gov. William, 116, 170. 
 
 Bradlee, Rev. Caleb D , letter from, 
 187. 
 
 Bridge, Rev. Thomas, tribute to, 86. 
 
 Briggs, Geo. W., D.D.., address of, at 
 the two hundred and fiftieth anni- 
 versary of the First Church, 169. 
 
 Britton, , whipped for criticising 
 
 the churches, 51. 
 
 Brooks, Rrj. Charles T., hymn by, 
 sung at the two hundred and fiftieth 
 anniversary of the First Church, 
 172. 
 
 Brooks, Peter Chardon, window in 
 the First Church erected in mem- 
 ory of, 209. 
 
 Brooks, Rev. Phillips, address of, at 
 the two hundred and fiftieth anni- 
 versary of the First Church, '156. 
 
 Brown, Elder Richard, his heresy re- 
 garding the Church of Rome, 18. 
 
 Burke, Edmund, quoted, 206. 
 
 Chalmers, Thomas, D.D., his popu- 
 larity as a preacher, 22. 
 
 Charlestown, Indian name for, 4. 
 
 Chauncy, Charles, D.D., tribute to, 
 86. 
 
 Clarke, John, D.D., tribute to, 86. 
 
 Coddington, , 16. 
 
 Common Prayer, Book of, its disuse 
 by the Puritans, and the reasons 
 therefor, 102, et seq. 
 
 Cooke, Thomas Smalley, 182. 
 
 Q.o\Xo\\, Rev. ]o\\r\, 5, ID, II, 19, 34, 
 52-54. 59. 61, 79, 109, no, 119, 
 132, 142, 153; birthplace of, 12; 
 pastor of Church of St. Botolph in 
 England, 21; accomplishments as 
 a scholar and preacher, 21, 22; 
 forced by his irregularities as a 
 Dissenter to fly to America, 22, 23 ; 
 example of his extreme Congrega- 
 tionalism, 23 ; becomes the teacher 
 of the First Church, 23 ; his famous 
 Thursday lecture, 32, 33; his re- 
 ply to the proposition of English 
 peers to join the Massachusetts 
 Colony, 37 ; his tendency towards 
 Antinomianism, 41, 44, 46; feels 
 called upon to deplore the same, 
 
214 
 
 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 and explains how he had been de- 
 ceived by it, 49, 50; invited to visit 
 England in 1643, 55! tiibutes to, 
 84,85, 156-158. 
 Curtis, lion. G. W., letter from, 194. 
 
 D'AuLNEY, , 59. 
 
 Davenport, Ren. John, 142, 144; in- 
 vited to visit England in 1643, 55 '■> 
 tribute to, 85. 
 
 Devens, lion. Charles, letter from, 
 
 177- 
 
 Dewey, Orville, D.D., letter from, 
 192. 
 
 Diman, Rro. ]. Lewis, letter from, 
 191. See also note. 
 
 Dodge, Rev. John W., letter from, 
 185. 
 
 Dudley, Thomas, 16, 18, 24, 29 ; one 
 of the first four signers of the cove- 
 nant of the First Church, 7 ; ac- 
 count of, 8. 
 
 Duryea, Joseph T., D.D., reads a 
 chapter from the Bible at the two 
 hundred and fiftieth anniversary of 
 the First Church, 96; letter from, 
 190. 
 
 ECCLESIASTICISM, in early New Eng- 
 land, 61, 62. 
 
 Eliot, Pres. Charles W., address of, 
 at the two hundred and fiftieth an- 
 niversary of the First Church, 136. 
 
 Eliot, Rev. John. 33 ; took temporary 
 charge of the First Church during 
 Wilson's absence in England, 17. 
 
 Ellis, Arthur B., xix, xx. 
 
 Ellis, George E. D.D., xviii, xx ; 
 address of, at the two hundred and 
 fiftieth anniversary of the First 
 Church, 98. 
 
 Ellis, Rufus, D.D , 113, 121, 125, 132, 
 135, 142, 143, 151, 155, 161, 166, 
 167, 169, 172; historical sermons 
 by, preached to the First Church 
 on the occasion of the two hun- 
 dred and fiftieth anniversary, 3-87 ; 
 bust of, 92 ; prayer by, 95 ; address 
 of, at the laying of the corner-stone 
 of the fifth house of worship of the 
 First Church, 204. 
 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 94. 
 
 Emerson, Rev. William, the historian 
 of the First Church, 61, 76 n , 204 : 
 statistics concerning the New Eng- 
 land churches up to 1652,64; tri. 
 bute to, 86. 
 
 Endecott, Gov. John, 34. 
 
 Evarts, Hon. William M., letter from, 
 
 177- 
 
 Everett, Prof. C. C, D.D , address 
 of, at the two hundred and fiftieth 
 anniversary of the First Church, 
 i6i. 
 
 Everett, Edward, 132. 
 
 Everett, William, poem by, read at 
 the two hundred and fiftieth an- 
 niversary of the First Church, 
 132. 
 
 Fessendex, W. H., 174. 
 
 First Church in Boston, annual meet- 
 ing of the proprietors held April 
 15, 1879, ^' > proceedings prelimi- 
 nary to the celebration of its two 
 hundred and fiftieth anniversary, 
 xi-xx; report of the committee ap- 
 pointed to consider measures for 
 the same, xi, xii ; the committee 
 of twelve appointed to make all 
 necessary arrangements, xiii ; re- 
 port of this committee, xiii, xiv ; 
 sub-committees appointed, xiv, xv; 
 account of its participation in the 
 celebration of the two hundred and 
 fiftieth anniversary of the settle- 
 ment of Boston, xv-xix; date of its 
 birth and story of its formation, 
 2,et seq.; its four founders, 7 ; their 
 purpose and ho])e, and the difficul- 
 ties by which they were met, 13 ; 
 the date and the manner of its 
 formal organization, 14; its inde- 
 pendence of the ritual, 14, 15; its 
 favorite tunes, 15; contribution of 
 a fund for the purpose of building, 
 20 ; location of the building erected, 
 20 ; withdrawal of the Charles- 
 town members, 21 ; character of 
 its religious faith, 24-26; impor- 
 tant ])eriod in its history, 2S-30 ; 
 its ministry among the Indians, 30, 
 
INDEX. 
 
 215 
 
 31, 62 ; its growth and religious 
 work, 31, 32 ; Thursday and its 
 famous lecture, 32, 33 ; the council 
 of ministers that was called, and 
 the two questions proposed for dis- 
 cussion, 34; the first trace of the 
 existence of an employment so- 
 ciety in, 39; the story of the Anti- 
 nomianism of, 39-4S ; the inculca- 
 tion of morals which followed, 51, 
 52 ; the erection of a new church 
 building, 53, 54; a day of fasting 
 kept on account of the war between 
 the king and parliament, 56 ; its 
 custom of obliging the attendance 
 at worship of heretics and others 
 not desiring to come, 57-60 ; the 
 commemorative services held upon 
 Its two hundred and fiftieth anni- 
 versary, 91-174 ; decorations of the 
 church building upon that occasion, 
 91-93 ; list of portraits and pictures 
 exhibited at that time, 92, 93 ; the 
 change from its Puritan character 
 to that of the present day, ill, 112; 
 the historical facts of the signing 
 of its covenant, 116, et seq ; the 
 debt which present generations 
 owe to its founders, 129-131 ; the 
 reasons for believing in its contin- 
 ued life in the future, 136, et seq. ; 
 its special relations to the other 
 New England colonies and their 
 churches, 143, et seq. ; why its cove- 
 nant was not accompanied by a 
 creed or confession of faith, 146; 
 copy of its covenant, 201 ; roll of 
 its ministers, 201 ; its former houses 
 of worship, 202 ; its communion- 
 plate, 202, 203 ; names of the ushers 
 on its commemoration day, 204; de- 
 scription of the church and chapel 
 windows in its present house of 
 worship, 208. 
 Folsom, Rev. Omar W., letter from, 
 
 185. 
 Foote, Arthur, 174. 
 
 Fovvle, , bearer of a petition to 
 
 England, 61. 
 Foxcroft, Rev. Thomas, the sermon 
 at the close of the first century of 
 
 the First Church preached by, 76, 
 
 78 ; tribute to, 86 
 Frothingham, Nathaniel L., D.D., 4, 
 
 202 ; the sermon preached by, on 
 
 the close of the second century of 
 
 the First Church, 69. 
 Frothingham, Rev. O. B., letters from, 
 
 188, 194. 
 Fuller, Samuel, 116, 118. 
 
 Gage, Miss Annie Louise, 173. 
 
 Gager, , chosen deacon at the 
 
 organization of the First Church, 
 14 ; his death, 16. * 
 
 Gannett, Rev. W. C, letter from, 187. 
 
 Gardner, , 24. 
 
 Gorton, Samuel, obliged to attend 
 the First Church, and after the ser- 
 mon allowed to criticise it, 58, 59. 
 
 . Hale, Edward Everett, D.D., 94. 
 
 Hale, //o7i. Geo. S , xiii-xv. 
 
 Hallam, Henry, quoted, 121. 
 
 Harwood, Henry, 178. 
 
 Hathorne, , 54. 
 
 Hay, Clarence E., 174. 
 
 Hayes, Pres. R. B., letter from, 177. 
 
 Hedge, Frederic H., D.D., 94. 
 
 Hickling, Charles, letter from, 195. 
 
 Hill, Rev. Thomas, letter from, 192. 
 
 Hooker, Rev. Thomas, 143 ; accom- 
 panies John Cotton in his flight to 
 America, 23 ; is invited to visit 
 England in 1643, 55- 
 
 Horton, Rev. Edward A., letter from, 
 189. 
 
 Hume, David, quoted, 121. 
 
 Hutchinson, Mrs. Anne, introduces 
 Antinomianism into the First 
 Church, 41 ; her banishment from 
 both church and commonwealth, 
 and the judgment pronounced upon 
 her, 45 ; her death, 47. 
 
 Israel, Rev. ¥., letter from, 184. 
 
 Johnson, Lady Arbella, 117; wife 
 of Isaac Johnson, 9; her death and 
 burial-place, 16. 
 
 Johnson, Isaac, 117; one of the first 
 four signers of the covenant of the 
 
2l6 
 
 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 First Church, 7 ; account of, 9 ; 
 family of, in EIngland at present 
 day, II ; his death and burial-place, 
 16. 
 
 Keaine, Robert, admonished and 
 fined for exorbitant charges in 
 trade, 52 ; founder and first com- 
 mander of the Ancient and Hon- 
 orable Artillery Company, 197, 198. 
 
 Key, HdZK W. S., minister of St. Bo- 
 tolph's, letters from, 178, 181. 
 
 La Tour, , 58. 
 
 Laud, William, Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury, 21, 22, 28, 55, 119. 
 
 Lewis, , his " History of Lynn " 
 
 cited, 197. 
 
 Lincoln, I\e7: Calvin, letter from, 186. 
 
 Long, Gov. John D., address of, at 
 the two hundred and fiftieth anni- 
 versary of the First Church, 122. 
 
 Lynne, Henry, whipped for slander 
 of the churches and government, 
 19. 
 
 Manning, Rev. J. M., letter from, 190. 
 
 Massachusetts, early religious dog- 
 matism of, 50, 51 ; unfavorable 
 effect of the strife in England be- 
 tween the king and parliament 
 upon, 56, 57 ; the General Court 
 of, was the first missionary society 
 in Protestant Christendom, 63 ; 
 early beginning of free schools in, 
 63 ; the union of Church with 
 State in 1630 and at the present 
 time, 140. 
 
 Mather, Rn: Cotton, 153, 167. 
 
 Maverick of Winesemett, his services 
 among the Indians, 31. 
 
 McKean, , tribute to, 87. 
 
 Milton, John, 121. 
 
 Moodey, Rev. Joshua, tribute to, 85. 
 
 Morison, Rez'. John H., D.D., 173. 
 
 Morton, , 24. 
 
 Mountford, Rev. William, letter from, 
 193- 
 
 New England Congregational- 
 ism, the occasion and birth of, 60 ; 
 
 the opposition thereto, and the peti- 
 tion sent to England, 60, 61 ; the es- 
 sence and value of, 128, 129. 
 New England, to what she owes the 
 elements of her present character, 
 
 74- 
 Norton, Rev. John, 64 ; tribute to, 85. 
 
 Nowell, Elder , 14, 16. 
 
 Noyes, Rev. Charles, letter from, 189. 
 Noyes, Mrs. Jennie M., 173. 
 
 Osgood, Rez\ E. Q. S., letter from, 
 
 183. 
 Oxenbridge, Rev. John, tribute to, 85. 
 
 Paine, Fanny Cabot, window in the 
 First Church erected in memory 
 of, 209. 
 
 Palmer, Edward, for extortionate 
 charges in making Boston stocks, 
 is fined and obliged publicly to sit 
 in same, 52. 
 
 Peabody, A. P., D.D., 94. 
 
 VQt&rs,Rev. Hugh, 10, 39, 123; ex- 
 horts the people against being de- 
 ceived by revelations, 50 ; is exe- 
 cuted in England at the time of the 
 Restoration, 55. 
 
 Plymouth Church, formation of, 169, 
 170. 
 
 Porter, Fres. Noah, D.D., address 
 of, at the two hundred and fiftieth 
 anniversary of the First Church, 
 142. 
 
 Pray, Lewis G., letter from, 196. 
 
 Prince, Mayor F. C, extract from 
 oration of, on the two hundred and 
 fiftieth anniversary of the settle- 
 ment of Boston, xviii ; address of, 
 at the two hundred and fiftieth an- 
 niversary of the First Church, 125. 
 
 Puritan Church, the, its character and 
 limitations, 64, 65. 
 
 Puritans, their opinions on matters 
 of Church and State, 36-39; ex- 
 planation of their intolerance, 81, 
 82; peculiarity of their church ser- 
 vice called "the opening," 109, 1 10; 
 tribute to their noble qualities and 
 deeds, 120, 121 ; motives which in- 
 spired their emigration to America, 
 
INDEX. 
 
 217 
 
 T45; their religious spirit, inquiry 
 as to whetlier the present genera- 
 tion possesses it in like degree, 
 163-166. 
 Putnam, Rrd. A. P., letter from, 191. 
 
 Rantoul, Hon. Robert S., address 
 of, at the two hundred and fiftieth 
 anniversary ofthe First Church, 167. 
 
 Ratcliffe, , 24. 
 
 Ratcliffe, Philip, whipped for slander 
 of the churches and government, 
 19. 
 
 Renan, Joseph Ernest, quoted, 27. 
 
 Reynolds, Edward, letter from, 195. 
 
 Reynolds, Rez>. Grindall, address of, 
 at the two hundred and fiftieth an- 
 niversary of the First Church, 151. 
 
 Richardson, Thomas O., xiii. 
 
 Rogers, Airs. Jacob C, xiii. 
 
 Sagamore, John, conversion of, 62. 
 
 Salem Church, formation of, 170. 
 
 Saltonstall, Gurdon, window in the 
 First Church erected in memory 
 of, 210 
 
 Saltonstall, Sir Richard, 167 ; his 
 letter written from England de- 
 ploring the intolerance of the Pu- 
 ritans, 168. 
 
 Sargent, Turner, 208. 
 
 Second Church in Boston, date of its 
 formation, 4; occasion of same, 64. 
 
 Sewall, Rev. Charles C, letter from, 
 186. 
 
 Silsbee, Ho7t. Nathaniel, delivers the 
 Address of Welcome at the two 
 hundred and fiftieth anniversary of 
 the First Church, 94. 
 
 St. Botolph, Church of, 6, 11, 20, 21. 
 
 Staples, Rev. C. A., letter from, 190. 
 
 Stevens, Charles W., Commander of 
 Ancient and Honorable Artillery 
 Company, letter from, 196. 
 Stone, Rev. Samuel, 23. 
 
 Talbye, Dorothy, hung for murder- 
 ing her little daughter, 50. 
 
 Thayer, John Eliot, window in the 
 First Church erected in memory 
 of, 208. 
 
 Thayer, Nathaniel, xiii, xiv, 94. 
 Thompson, , appointed as mis- 
 sionary to Virginia, 56. 
 Thompson, Pichey, 178. 
 Thomson, Rev. J.'s., letter from, 1S5. 
 
 Underhill, Captain , 43. 
 
 Unitarian, burning of a, for heresy in 
 England, 20. 
 
 Van Brunt, Henry, 93. 
 
 Vane, Sir Henry, 47 ; his fate at the 
 
 time of the Restoration, 55, 56. 
 Virginia asks for missionaries of 
 
 Massachusetts, 56. 
 
 Wadsworth, Rev. Benjamin, tribute 
 to, 86; selected as President of 
 Harvard College, 135; his theo- 
 logical opinions, 137, 138. 
 Wales, Thomas Beale, window in 
 First Church erected in memory 
 of, 209. 
 Ware, William R., 93. 
 Warren, Hon. G. Washington, xi- 
 XV ; address of, at the festival in 
 Faneuil Hall on the occasion of 
 the two hundred and fiftieth anni- 
 versa'y of the settlement of Bos- 
 ton, XV. 
 Wheelwright, Rev. John, the civil 
 
 strife stirred by, 41, 43. 
 Whittier, John G., letter from, 1S8. 
 Wilder, Hon. Marshall P., 94. 
 
 Williams, , Bishop of Lincoln, 
 
 5, 22. 
 Williams, Roger, 144; his claim to 
 have been unanimously chosen 
 teacher of the First Church, and his 
 reason for declining the office, 17 ; 
 protest of the Court against his 
 settlement over the Salem church, 
 19; he offends the Governor and 
 Assistants of Massachusetts, by a 
 paper impeaching the validitv of 
 their land grant, 34 ; the passages 
 especially annoying, 35 ; the rea- 
 sons for his banishment in 1635 
 from Massachusetts colony, 35, 36; 
 his banishment in accordance with 
 the character of the constitution of 
 
2l8 
 
 FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON. 
 
 the colony, 38; his refusal to hold 
 communion as a Christian with 
 any one save his own wife, 65. 
 Wilson, Rro. John, 33, 42-44, 52, 64, 
 92, 121, 122, 132, 202, 204; one 
 of the first four signers of the cov- 
 enant of the First Church, and its 
 first pastor and teacher, 7 ; account 
 of, 9-1 1 ; his independence of the 
 ritual at the organization of the 
 First Church, 14; his departure 
 for England, 16, 17; formal instal- 
 lation as pastor of the First Church, 
 21 ; pronounces judgment upon 
 Anne Hutchinson, 45 ; preaches 
 the first Artillery-Election sermon 
 in 1638, 53, 197, 198; his mission- 
 ary work among the Indians, 62 ; 
 author of a book upon the Indian 
 mission, 62; tributes to, 84, 152- 
 
 154- 
 
 Winslow, Gcni. Edward, 116, 118. 
 Winsor, Justin, 94. 
 
 Winthrop, Gov. John, xv-xvii, 11, 
 16, 18, 24, 4t, 43, 56, 92, 103, 113, 
 114, 117, 121, 122, 143, 198; one of 
 the first four signers of the cove- 
 nant of the First Church, 4, 7 ; ac- 
 count of, 8; his attitude towards 
 Antinomianism, 42, 44, 46 ; his 
 death, 63 ; reasons for believing 
 that he framed the covenant of 
 the First Church, 119. 
 
 Winthrop, Margaret, 10. 
 
 Winthrop, Hon. Robert C, 103, «. j 
 address of, at the two hundred and 
 fiftieth anniversary of the First 
 Church, 113. 
 
 Witchcraft, the persecution of, in 
 New England, to what due, 79, 80. 
 
 Woodbury, Kev. A., letter from, 192. 
 
 Wright, Charles, of Boston, England, 
 letter from, 180. 
 
 Wright, Thomas, a parishioner of St. 
 Botolph's, letters from, 178, 180. 
 
 Wyman, Edward, letter from, 198. 
 
 University Press: John Wilson & Son, Cambridge' 
 
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