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Sunday, November 14, 1852. BY WILLIAM I. BUDINGTON, PASTOR. CHARLESTOWN : M?KIM & CUTTER, 62, MAIN STREET, BOSTON ■ B. II. OE EE 1:M, Washington Street. 1852. .c Charlestown, Nov. 15, 1852. Rev. and Dear Sir, Having listened with deep interest to your Sermon, commemorative of the two hundred and twentieth anniversary of the organization of the church, and feeling desirous that the principles and instructions so happily set forth therein should be more widely disseminated, we would respectfully request a copy for the press. Very sincerely yours, To Rev. W. I. Budington. H. P. Sweetser. James Hunnewell. L. A. Huntington. Benaiah Webster. James H. Goodrich. Charlestown, Nov. 18, 1852. Gentlemen, I thank you for your courtesy in asking a copy of my Sermon for the press, and have hesitated only because it was prepared without a thought of publication, and seems to me unworthy of it. I accede to your request, however, in the hope that, imperfect as it is, it may serve in some humble measure to deepen in our hearts the sense of obligation to our Puritan Fathers. Respectfully your Friend and Pastor, W. I. Budington. Messrs. H. P. Sweetser, James Hunnewell, L. A. Huntington, Benaiah Webster, James H. Goodrich. BOSTON: PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SON, SCHOOL-STREET. SERMON. Prov. xvii. 6. — "The glory of children are their fathers." It is natural for children to honor their pa- rents. It is the dictate of that affection we call natural, because God has fixed it in our nature. He has also planted the sentiment of reverence in our hearts. We must have something to revere ; and, next to God, our Father in heaven, we fix our reverence upon the " fathers of our flesh." Such is the pre- ordained working of our human nature. We throw the mantle of charity over a father's faults, and refuse to contemplate them ; while, if our fathers have been distinguished for virtuous and noble deeds, we recount them frequently and with growing delight. This impulse of the filial heart is especially mani- fest among the Chinese, who cany their rever- ence for their ancestors so far as to pay them religious homage. It is, we are told, the stronghold of their superstition : they may perhaps be persuaded to forego the worship of their idols, but they bow the more reverently before the images of their fathers. The reason probably is, that this kind of worship finds a support, which others do not, in the affection- ate and reverential promptings of the heart. Just as nature teaches the father to love his son, so it prompts the son to honor his father. And thus God ordains that " the glory of chil- dren shall be their fathers." The truth, and not less the power, of this principle is seen in the experience of mankind. Great Britain, the standard-bearer of modern civilization, is not more distinguished by influ- ence among the nations of the earth, than by reverence for the history and institutions of a glorious ancestry. While France is a sea of change, England is a rock of stability; and one reason is, that England has a past she reveres, and France a past she hates. The Romans, undisputed masters of the ancient world, built temples to the founders of their city, and consecrated the hearths of their dwell- ings with their Lares, the deified representa- tives of their ancestors. The Jews also, if less idolatrously, were not less cordially, attached to the memory of their fathers : it is the last relic of their nationality, and makes them yet a people, "though scattered and peeled." On the other hand, a nation without an ancestry to reverence, and with no past to take pride in, is a nation without a glory, and tending fast to dissolution. We see a melancholy ex- emplification of this in distracted Mexico, — just now, we are told, tottering upon the verge of another revolution. It is our distinguished privilege to glory in an ancestry superior to that of any other peo- ple. This is not the language of extravagance and self-complacency : it is sober fact, sus- tained by undeniable history. No nation ever had an origin so virtuous and heroic as ours. The fathers of New England are emphatically 6 the glory of their children. Greece and Koine worked their way up from obscurity ; nay, worse, their foundations were laid in crime and blood. England emerges from barbarism, and her life is mingled for centuries with the history of piracy and the misery of subjection to foreign conquerors. But New England takes her origin from the ripened maturity of Old England. She sprang from the patriotism of a freedom-loving people, and the religion of a reforming church. Her roots strike into all that is purest and noblest and best in Eng- land, — into her two Universities, Oxford and Cambridge ; into the deepest piety of her min- istry, and into the liberty-loving spirit of the boldest and most uncompromising of her sons. Our Puritan Fathers are our glory. This it will be my purpose to show, with especial reference to our own church. This sabbath-morning is the two hundred and twentieth anniversary of the first meeting of this church as an organized church of Christ. I cannot allow it to go by without reminding you into whose labors you have entered, and what are the principles and obligations resting upon you as children of the Puritan Fathers. They are your glory ; 1. In respect to their character. Who were the Puritans ? We invite a rigid scrutiny into their character as Christians and as men. Not that we imagine they were fault- less, or that, along with their strongly marked virtues, there were not defects equally marked. But we maintain, that, tried by the spirit of their age, and seen in company with the men of their time, they deserve to be placed in the forefront of their generation, and to be held in everlasting remembrance by their children and mankind. As men in their relation to society, they were deserving of high consideration. They were men of property and education and standing. No other class of men would have been ade- quate to the task of founding a Christian Commonwealth in a distant and savage land. The amount of money alone spent in the colo- nization of New England altogether exceeds 8 common belief. It is computed that the pass- age of our fathers across the waters, the trans- portation of their first small stock of cattle, provisions for their sustenance till they could procure it from the land, the materials for their first cottages, their arms and ammunition, to say nothing of what was laid out by each indi- vidual and family, — these things alone cost nearly a million of dollars.* Several of the original patentees were men of handsome for- tunes, and all who bore any prominent part were possessed of property. Governor Dudley, writing home to the Countess of Lincoln, a few months after the arrival of Wintkrop's com- pany, says : "If any godly men, out of reli- gious ends, will come over to help us in the good work we are about, I think they cannot dispose of themselves nor of their estates more to God's glory and the furtherance of their own reckoning. But they must not be of the poorer sort yet, for divers years ; for we have found by experience that they have hindered, not fur- thered, the work. And for profane and de- * Mather's Magnalia, i. 64. 9 bandied persons, their oversight in coming hither is wondered at, where they shall find nothing to content them. If there be any endued with grace, and furnished with means to feed themselves and theirs for eighteen months, and to build and plant, let them come over into our Macedonia, and help us, and not spend themselves and their estates in a less profitable employment. For others, I conceive they are not yet fitted for this business." But there were men of learning as well as of wealth among the first colonists. The min- isters, who were the heart and soul of the whole enterprise, were most distinguished for learning, eloquence, and zeal. New England lias never had men of a higher culture and a riper wisdom than the first pastors of her churches. They had received the best educa- tion which Oxford and Cambridge could give, and were eminent as scholars and preachers at home, before coming to this land. In addition to this, there were among our fathers men of such a social standing, that they were able, by their influence at court, to obtain 10 the royal sanction and charter, without which all their sacrifices and toils would have been of no avail. There were not only titled gentle- men among them, but representatives of several noble families, who were disposed, not only to favor the Puritan cause, but also to suffer with it. Now, all these three influences were indis- pensably necessary to the colonization of New England. Had wealth and learning and social standing, or any one of them, been wanting, New England, such as it is and has been, could never have existed. The colonists brought with them, from the first, the costliest and best materials for founding a Christian Common- wealth. Churches went up side by side with their first rude cottages, and next to these rose the walls of Harvard College. But our fathers were still more distinguished as Christians than as men. Possessing, as they did, all that was necessary to make life comfortable and pleasant at home, they sacri- ficed all for Christ's sake and ours. I know the enemies of the Puritans have endeavored 11 to stigmatize them as precise, rigid, and aus- tere formalists. But there never were a class of earnest men, tlicre never was a style of Christian character, from the first ages down, which were not in like manner liable to be ridiculed ; and ridicule, confessedly, is no test of truth. Notwithstanding all that has been said, I believe it capable of the clearest demonstration, that the Puritan Fathers of Massachusetts united, with a decided mainte- nance of their conscientious convictions, a cha- rity towards those from whom they differed, as singular as it was sweet. The English lan- guage throughout does not contain a document more beautiful in itself, and more honorable to Christianity, than the letter published by Win- throp and his companions on leaving England, which they entitled their " Humble Request to their Brethren in and of the Church of England, for the obtaining of their prayers, and the remo- val of suspicions and misconstruction of their intentions." " We beseech you," they write, "by the mercies of the Lord Jesus, to consider us as your brethren, standing in very great 12 need of your help, and earnestly imploring it. And, however your charity may have met with some occasion of discouragement through the misreport of our intentions, or through the dis- affection or indiscretion of some of us, or rather amongst us (for we are not of those that dream of perfection in this world), yet we desire that you would be pleased to take notice of the principals and body of our company, as those who esteem it our honor to call the Church of England, from whence we rise, our dear mother ; and cannot part from our native country, where she specially resideth, without much sadness of heart, and many tears in our eyes ; ever ac- knowledging that such hope and part as we have obtained in the common salvation, we have received in her bosom, and sucked it from her breasts. We leave it not, therefore, as loathing that milk wherewith we were nour- ished there ; but, blessing God for the paren- tage and education, — as members of the same body, shall always rejoice in her good, and unfeignedly grieve for any sorrow that shall ever betide her; and, while we have breath, 13 sincerely desire and endeavor the continuance and abundance of her welfare, with the en- largement of her bounds in the kingdom of Christ Jesus." They conclude their letter with the following touching assurance and promise on their part : ""What goodness you shall ex- tend to us in this or any other Christian kind- ness, we, your brethren in Christ Jesus, shall labor to repay in what duty we are or shall be able to perform ; promising, so far as God shall enable us, to give him no rest on your behalf, wishing our heads and hearts were fountains of tears for your everlasting welfare, when we shall be in our poor cottages in the wilderness, overshadowed with the spirit of supplication, through the manifold necessities and tribula- tions which may not altogether unexpectedly, nor we hope unprofitably, befall us." With these sweet words of Christian charity, shaded by the utmost tenderness and clelicacj^ of feeling, our fathers left their brethren and their homes for their " poor cottages in the wilderness." Now, we ask, is this the lan- guage of fanatics ? Is it not rather the 14 language of men, who, knowing what Chris- tianity is, and maintaining their union with Christ the Head, cannot but live in charity with their brethren, " endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace " ? Let those who will, malign and ridicule our fathers ; but, while their writings survive, they will be the glory of their children. 2. And this, too, not alone in regard to cha- racter, but also in respect to their heroic enter- prise and endurance. Our fathers are our glory, not only as men and Christians, but as pilgrims and colonists. Let us transport ourselves back in imagina- tion two hundred and twenty years. On the morning we now commemorate, Nov. 14, 1632, our fathers were assembled, for the first time, as members of this church.* They met pro- bably on the very spot where we are now assembled, or in its immediate vicinity, under the shadow of a wide-spreading oak, or in the " Great House " near by. Let us imagine the * See Note A. 15 scene which lay in the gray and sombre color- ing of autumn, spread out around and before them. How impressive the contrast to that with which our eyes are familiar ! On the right rose the Town, or Harvard Hill, a sharp, conical summit, commanding a wide look-out upon the harbor and the surrounding country. Behind were the shadows of the stately forest, only here and there broken in upon, and extending back upon the main as far as the eye can reach. Before us, where Boston now stands, were three shaip hills, rising distinctly to view, and giving the name of Tri-Mountain to the Peninsula. On the right, the ascending smoke marked the spot where Blackstone, the first settler, was living alone ; and, on the slope of the hill, to the left, might be seen a cluster of little cottages, with a modest sanctuary of mud walls and thatched roof, built together in loving society, around the head of what is now State-street ; — and this was all that then existed of Boston. Else- where, let the eye range where it might, it met nothing but woods and waters. Nothing, do I 16 say? The red man perhaps might be seen, looking stealthily out from behind the trees upon these new and strange beginnings, or his light canoe occasionally shooting round some bend of the river. What a lonely and chilly scene must this have been on that fourteenth clay of November, 1632, to surround the fathers and mothers and little children so recently from pleasant homes in England, and now gathering, for the worship of God, in the borders of an unexplored wilderness ! How must their sense of loneliness have been deep- ened by the thought that a wide ocean of three thousand miles separated them from their homes, and the protection of their king ! If they looked round for neighborhood and help on this continent, how defenceless must their condition have seemed ! With the exception of similar beginnings at Plymouth, and a few trading posts to the eastward, New England was a wilderness, untraversed and unknown ; and, with exceptions still more inconsiderable, from the Spanish settlements of the South to those of the French at the North, the whole of 17 our country lay in the silence of nature ; her coasts unvisited save by the breaking waves, and her interior solitudes undisturbed save by the cry of the savage. Think now of the little band assembled on this spot! How sublime their courage and their faith ! They had observed Friday as a day of fasting and prayer, and organized a church of five and thirty members ; and now they were assembled to commit their hopes to God, and begin the life of a church which has come down to us, and will live, we trust, till the second coming of Him whose name it bears. Look, then, at the heroic enterprise of our fathers, in laying the foundations of their church on this narrow margin between the ocean and the forest, with nothing around them but the proofs of their poverty and defence- lessness, and nothing above them but the watching eye of God! Are not our fathers most honorable as pilgrims and as colonists ? and are not such fathers, in truth, the glory of their children ? 18 " Our Pilgrim Fathers sleep, the children too are dead ; But, o'er their ashes and their dust, the children's children tread : They worship where their fathers knelt, and on yon sacred spot, Not time shall e'er those olden days from off their memory blot. And now may we to future years our fathers' deeds prolong, — As firm as they to hold the right, and always shun the wrong ; And on yon spot a temple stand ; and, o'er their honored dust, May ages yet to come be told the pilgrim's faith and trust ! " 3. But, passing from what our fathers did in their enterprise and endurance as colonists, let us consider the institutions they founded. Our Puritan Fathers are our glory, as the authors of institutions which have grown with the lapse of time, and whose vitality promises a still wider and brighter future. They came here professedly to establish a Christian Com- monwealth, according to principles which should be made plain to them from the Word of God. They did not profess to know what the Providence and the Word of God had in store for them. They knew as little as did the Israelites, while following their sense of duty and the manifest guidance of God. They adopted the Bible, as at once their chart and their statute-book ; and they believed that it would lead them to the establishment of a 19 Christian Commonwealth, and change the wil- derness into a land of promise. What is the issue ? We, their children, entering into the inheritance bequeathed to us by our fathers, have, at the present day, a free church, whose simple constitution rests immediately upon the Bible ; a form of government emanating di- rectly from the people governed ; and a system of universal education by free schools. And these three things, a free church, a free go- vernment, and a free education, we have received directly from the wisdom and self- sacrifice of our fathers. They are the natural and necessary results of the principles con- tended for by the Puritans, and planted by them at the cost of fortune and life. Search the records of any and every people, and tell me the names of the States and their founders, whose institutions have, in two cen- turies, yielded fruit so abundant and so glo- rious. New England, to-day, challenges a comparison with the world for the intelligence of her sons, the purity of her churches, and the freedom of her institutions. Without the 20 aid of the State, she has established churches within reach of all her people ; and, with no other endowments than those of self-imposed taxes, she has made the streams of knowledge as numerous and accessible as the rivers which run through her valleys, and spring out of her hills. No people have ever grown more rapidly in all the elements of social happiness and political power ; nor have any people, accord- ing to their means, done more for the cause of education, humanity, and religion. And con- fessedly such as we are, we have been made by our institutions. Our wealth has not been the gift of a luxuriant soil, nor our commerce been forced upon us as the necessity of navigable rivers, floating to the sea a superabundant pro- duction. We are emphatically the growth of our institutions ; and these are the inheritance bequeathed us by our Puritan Fathers. Such fathers, founders of such institutions, are indeed the glory of their children. 4. There is another respect in which our fathers are our glory ; and this is the influence 21 they have had upon these United States, and so eventually upon the destiny of this continent. Starting, as our Puritan Fathers did, at so early a period in the colonization of this coun- try, they seem, in the very priority of their influence, to have been anointed by God to mould the character of our country. It is a difficult, and, to some extent, an invidious task to distinguish and separate the influence of New England from that of her sister colonies. Nor is it necessary. The people were kindred in character, and their tendencies alike. It is readily confessed, however, that the Puritan colonies, being of older growth, more compact and more homogeneous, took the lead, at first in giving liberty, and then in forming constitu- tions. Here began the Revolution ; and, with- out the sons of the Puritans, it would neither have been carried on nor consummated. Here, too, were found the germs of our State and Federal Constitutions. The churches of New England trained the people to the habits and spirit of self-government ; and I believe it a true genealogy to trace the republicanism of 22 our country to New England, and to her reli- gious as well as civil institutions. The chil- dren of the Pilgrims, now numbered by millions, and spread all over this fair land, early began to incorporate themselves with the growing life of the Middle States. Although New York was settled by the Dutch, Pennsylvania by the Quakers, Maryland by the Eoman Catholics, and Virginia by the English Cavaliers, a broad and deep stream of emigration from New Eng- land has mingled with all these fountains of nationality ; and everywhere, consciously or unconsciously, the influence of our fathers has been felt. We glory in this. It seems to us a great and signal honor, that Divine Providence should thus have led our fathers, as by a pil- lar of cloud and fire, out of their native land, to make them here the founders of an em- pire, — " Time's latest and her best." 5. Nor is this all. We glory in our fathers, in respect to the influence they have had upon the world. 23 Think what a change has transpired within two centuries in England itself, and in the public sentiment of mankind, in regard to the character and influence of Puritanism. When our fathers were feebly and painfully laying the foundations of this church, Charles the First was sitting securely upon the throne of England, bent upon crushing the cause of Puritanism, that the royal prerogative might the more easily supplant the ancient privi- leges of the English people. Hampden was in Parliament, vainly opposing the progress of arbitrary power. Cromwell, too, was in Parliament; or, rather, he had left it now, and, in despair, was turning his attention to agriculture. The two cousins, Hampden and Cromwell, were beginning to lay their plans to follow their Puritan brethren to New Eng- land. But the king intercepted the execu- tion of their design, not less to his own detri- ment than that of our fathers. The storm was just at hand, which swept England with the horrors of civil war, drove the monarch from his throne, and left Cromwell alone in the 24 chief magistracy of the Commonwealth. The second Charles, it is true, was ere long restored to his father's throne ; and the superficial ob- server might have thought he saw evidence, in the contempt felt and expressed for the Puri- tans, that now, at last, their place in history had been effaced for ever. But "the glorious revolution of 1688" proved that the Puritan spirit had not died out of England, and that the Puritans had not lived in vain. By a well- nigh unanimous confession, the praise is now awarded to the Puritans of having preserved the liberties of England. The character of Cromwell, too, is rising out of the mists of ob- loquy in which it has been so long enveloped ; and the compatriots of Cromwell, on both sides of the Atlantic, can no longer be despised. Puritanism has become a recognized force in history. It stands revealed, in the lapse of time, as the fountain of some of the purest and best fruits of modern civilization. It has blessed the world too much, and too many revering children stand up to defend it, to make it respectable or safe to assail the mem- 25 ory of either English or American Puritans. So much is modern society beholden to Puri- tanism, that the political economist has been forced to take it into account. It is an in- structive and pleasing fact, that, in a recent work upon this science by John Stuart Mill, — a work of standard authority, and in advance of all others, — the history of Puritanism is referred to as having modified the industrial habits and productive wealth of the people.* But time forbids us to dwell longer upon this subject. "We glory in our fathers for the place they occupy in history, and the influences for good they have mingled in the stream of hu- man affairs. Our Puritan Fathers are our glory, in respect to their character as men and as Christians ; in respect to their deeds as pilgrims and colo- nists; the institutions they founded, and be- queathed to us ; the influence they have had upon American character ; and, finally, the im- press they have made upon history and the welfare of mankind. * Vol. i. 211. 4 26 I will bring my discourse to a close, by de- riving from it a single lesson in regard to the filial affection and duty we owe this ancient church. Brethren and friends, you have a sacred trust committed to you, in the history and precious memories attaching to this church of your fathers. Its honor, its influence, and its character, are now in your hands. I have but one prayer and exhortation : it is, that you may be worthy of your ancestors, and faithful to the work they have bequeathed you. If time and money and sacrifices are demanded of you to sustain the character and influence of this church, remember what your fathers did and suffered. If this church ever fail to sustain her proper share in the labors and sac- rifices of Christ's universal church, it will be because the spirit of its founders and early members has expired in the hearts of you, their children. It is not only a church honored with early Pilgrim memories, but it is distin- guished as the oldest of the churches which have remained steadfast in the faith of the 27 fathers. This church has brought clown to us the self-saine faith which led our fathers across the waters, which sustained them in their life of toil and endurance, and which has been the faith of Christ's church in all the ages of her recorded history. While the first church in Plymouth, — we say it in sorrow of heart, — while that ancient and venerable church of the Pilgrim Fathers, — while the first church in Salem, and, alas ! the first church in Boston, originally one with ours, — while these have surrendered the doctrine of the Trinity and its associated doctrines, regarded, not less by our fathers than by ourselves, as essential to " the faith once delivered to the saints," — this church has retained her original belief, and is now the oldest Orthodox Congregational Church in Massachusetts.* But, let me remind you, it will be of no avail that we have retained the faith of our fathers, if we have lost their zeal for religion. If we are found wanting in the spirit of self-sacrifice ; if we love our money and our ease and our * See Note B. 28 reputation more than Christ and his cause ; if we put the world before religion, and not, as our fathers did, religion first, and all beside secondary ; if, in a word, we divorce the old religion of the Puritan from his old life of holi- ness, — it would be better for us, no doubt, to resign our religion too ; for the principles we profess will only serve to make our unfaithful- ness the more apparent and the more sinful. Eemember, brethren, every sabbath, as you go up to the House of Gocl, that there are sleeping beneath your feet* the poor remains of men, who, when alive, burned with the zeal of Paul for Christ and his church. Sleep, do I say ? Yes ! the buried seed-principles of their immortal bodies do sleep ; and the eye of their Kedeemer, we know, has been upon them, and will be upon them, until they shall "rise, fashioned like his glorious body." But their spirits live ! I love to think that the church, of which we compose but a small part, are living now : they have but removed their relation to the church above ! There they * See Note C. 29 are, standing before the Throne, perhaps in a cluster by themselves. First and foremost are the venerable founders of the church, now well-read in after-histories ; and around them, closely gathered, are many recently gone up from your side, with whose faces, as with the love of whose hearts, you have been familiar, and with whom it is still among your fondest hopes to spend your eternity ! On this clay of solemn ancestral commemo- ration, we call to mind, with tender recol- lections and kindling hopes, our departed members, the blessed dead. We thank God for the comfortable doctrine of the communion of saints ; we are not separated from them in thought, in feeling, in hope, or in destiny. Nor are they separated from us ! Perhaps they linger over the spot where they worshipped God, and were trained for heaven. Perhaps they are gazing upon us, even now, with in- tensest interest. Spirits of the blest ! we will be faithful to your memories ; and, stimulated by your exam- ple, we will be faithful, in our day and genera- 30 tion, to the Saviour whom you served, and whom we also desire to serve. I shall be pardoned, perhaps, if I read a few stanzas which I received last evening. They are dedicated to this church by Kev. W. S. Studley, the Pastor of the First Methodist Church, and were recently composed by him, after a perusal of its history. " God hath wrought wonders in the land Since first our fathers, stern and brave, ■ A saintly, yet heroic band, — For freedom crossed the stormy wave ; And, counting all things else but loss, Unfurled the banner of the cross. Through many a day of sore distress, Those pilgrim-heroes, sick and faint, And dwelling in a wilderness, Gave utterance to no complaint. By faith they felt their Avoes relieved : They knew in whom they had believed. Trusting in Him who once had said, — ' So shall thy strength be, as thy day,' Each lifted cheerfully his head, And went rejoicing on his way ; Conscious, to those whose hearts are pure, God's promises are ever sure. 31 Suck were the pilgrim-sires of old, Who worshipped on this sacred spot ; And, though two hundred years have rolled, Their holy deeds are not forgot : The fragrance of their memory still Lingers around dear ' Harvard Hill.' The sons of those old worthy sires, Who kept the faith 'gainst every foe, Still keep alive tke altar-fires Kindled two hundred years ago : Pure sacrifices still tkey bring To Christ, our Prophet, Priest, and King. God of our fathers ! let thy grace Not on our hearts alone distil ; But pour it out on all the race, Till men shall learn and do thy will : Then shall our children's children know And prize two hundred years ago." 32 NOTES A. The original Charlestown Church is now the first church in Bos- ton. It was formed in Charlestown, July 30, 1630, o.s. Soon after its formation, the members began moving across the river, and settling in Boston ; and, by November, the majority were there, and the Rev. John Wilson, their pastor, then removed like- wise. For two years the church embraced both sides of the river, and the people worshipped together in Boston. In November, 1632, the Charlestown members, amounting to one-fourth of the whole number, withdrew from their brethren, and began the pre- sent first church of Charlestown. Some considerable discussion has taken place as to which of the two churches takes precedence in age. The truth seems to be, that the original church of Charlestown and Boston was regarded as common to the settlers on both sides of the river. But, as the majority went to Boston, and carried with them their church-organization, their records, and their pastor, and inasmuch as the Charlestown members were formally dismissed, there can be no doubt that the Boston church are the legitimate successors of the original church. B. The oldest Orthodox Congregational Church in New England is in Windsor, Ct. It was formed in Plymouth, Old England ; the members entering into a church-covenant, and choosing their ministers, in the beginning of 1630, before coming to this country. They settled in Dorchester; and, in 1636, the majority removed to Windsor, and began the settlement of that place. The present first church of Dorchester was formed, after this date, of those who remained. C. The hill upon which the church is situated was the burying- place of many of the first settlers. Our town-records say : " The multitude set up cottages, booths, and tents, about the Town Hill. They had long passage. Some of the ships were seventeen, some eighteen weeks a coming. Many people arrived, sick of the scurvy, which also increased much after their arrival, for want of houses, and by reason of wet lodging in their cottages. Other distempers also prevailed ; and although the people were gene- rally very loving and pitiful, yet the sickness did so prevail, that the whole were not able to tend the sick as they should be tended ; upon which many perished and died, and were buried about the Town Hill." 6ur Jmitan lathers mtr §bu) : SERMON PREACHED IN COMMEMORATION OF THE 220TH ANNIVERSARY Uh' THE POUNDING OF THE FIRST CHURCH IN CHARLESTOWN, MASS. Sunday, November 14, 1852. BY WILLIAM I. BUDINGTON, l'ASTO R. CHARLESTOWN : M c K I M & CUTTER, 62, MAIN STREET, BOSTON: B. H. 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