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Gift of 190J

The Second Church in Boston

Committee of )aubltcatton«
STEPHEN M. CROSBY.
THOMAS VAN NESS.
FRANCIS H. BROWN.

THE MATHER CHAIR

THE SECOND CHURCH
IN BOSTON

Cottttnemorati\je g)et\)tces
HELD ON THE COMPLETION OF
TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS
SINCE ITS FOUNDATION

1649-1899

BOSTON
PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIETY
1900

Copyright, igoo
By the Standing Committee
OF
The Second Church in Boston.

C h2,lp

GEORGE H. ELLia, PRINTER
BOSTON

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

In order most fitly to commemorate the series of events
which have marked the organization, the continuance, and the
present life of The Second Church in Boston, the Com
mittee appointed by the Standing Committee have made a
permanent record of the services held on the 19th. and 20th. of
November, 1899. The place which this Church has occupied in
the history of Congregationalism, in education, in literature,
and in public affairs, the distinguished ministers who have
occupied its pulpit, the vicissitudes through which it has
passed, make its story most interesting. Upon the unanimous
adoption of their plans by the Proprietors and members of
the Society the Committee of Arrangements proceeded to
carry them out in a manner which merited and received the
cordial approval of all. The announcement of the programme
at once called the attention not only of the immediate mem
bers of the Church, but of the many friends, former parish
ioners, and descendants of the old families, and, still more, of
a numerous company who are ever interested in the ecclesi
astical and local history of the city. The exercises were held
in the meeting-house, and were attentively listened to, at every
session, by crowds which taxed the auditorium to its utmost
limit. For assistance in bringing the occasion to a successful
issue the Committee of Arrangements were indebted to many
persons who, by their public services, their advice, and in other
ways, took important parts. More than all, perhaps, did they
recognize the continued and devoted loyalty of every member
of the Parish, both man and woman, for the heartiest co-opera
tion in every way.
Before entering on the formal account of the celebration of
the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the

VI INTRODUCTORY NOTE
Church, it seems well briefly to outline its history and to recall
the succession of its devoted ministers. In the same connec
tion it will be interesting to study the evolution of the music
employed in its service, — a history which applies equally to
the musical forms of other Congregational churches of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This gradual devel
opment was brought out in the Puritan service of Sunday
evening, which is given elsewhere in this volume. For a
faithful and intelligent search through the records, and the
gathering of facts there and elsewhere, the committee are in
debted to Miss Mary Phillips Webster, of Cambridge.
The beginning of the Church dates from 1649, o'^^y nineteen
years after the first settlement of Boston, when Michael Powell
and six others signed the Covenant, — a document remarkable
for its absence of dogma and its emphasis of practical religion
and true Christian spirit.
The first preacher was the Rev. Samuel Mather, who, however,
soon left for England. After inviting several other ministers,
without success, the Church asked Mr. Powell to become their
teacher. He was not permitted to serve them in that capacity,
the all-powerful civil authorities interfering because he was
" illiterate as to academical education. He might have talents
and a fine spirit," they argued, " and still not be competent to
instruct the educated, explain the Scriptures, and convince the
unbelieving. ... If any exception should be made in the case
of Mr. Powell, by reason of his peculiar gifts, it might estabUsh
a dangerous precedent." A remarkable letter addressed by
Mr. Powell, to the " Governour and Magistrates " tells the
story and at the same time reveals the character of the man
who was most prominent in founding the Church and who,
though not permitted to become its minister, was allowed to
serve in the important position of Ruling Elder, where no doubt
his " peculiar gifts " and gentle and noble spirit were a great
influence in that little community whose members were striving
" to walk together as a congregation and church of Christ, in
all the ways of his worship, and of mutual love."
The first settled pastor of the church was Rev. John Mayo,

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INTRODUCTORY NOTE vU
who served from 1655 to 1672, — a man of whom his colleague
writes that he was " a blessing to his people, and that they two
— pastor and teacher — lived together in love and peace for the
space of eleven years."
This colleague was Increase Mather, who succeeded Mr.
Mayo as pastor. For more than sixty years this remarkable
man, — " the most powerful individual force in America," and
his no less celebrated son, Cotton Mather, occupied the pulpit
of The Second Church, and under such leaders the Society
could but grow and prosper and become a mighty centre of in
fluence in the community.
Very marked was the interest which both the Mathers took
in musical reform. Church music had sadly degenerated dur
ing the one hundred and fifty years which had elapsed since the
English Calvinists, returning from their exile in Switzerland,
had brought with them the Genevan Psalter, and had introduced
into London the habit of singing Psalms in unison. The Eng
land of Elizabeth was a land of singers. What wonder, then,
that the English people enjoyed taking part in the worship,
"singing together with one voice," that they finally refused to
tolerate the intricate anthems of the cathedral choirs, in which
the people could not join, and that, when they got the upper
hand, they pulled the organs to pieces and destroyed the part-
books ; but because they did these things it is a mistake to
suppose that the early Puritans were utterly unmusical. Intri
cate church music was to them papistical. It must be done
away with, like the detested " white surplices." Outside the
church they did not object to it as a means of recreation. In
deed, we find two such widely different men as John Milton and
Oliver Cromwell alike in their love for this art.
When the Puritans came to America, they brought the habit
of psalm-singing with them ; and, if they had been content to
use the words of Sternhold and Hopkins's version, all might
have been well. But instead of this they made a version of
their own, which, though more literal, was almost unsingable.
Worse still, they adopted the custom advocated by the West
minster Assembly of " lining " the Psalm ; that is, of having

VUI INTRODUCTORY NOTE
each line read by an officer of the church before it was sung, —
a practice originally made necessary by the scarcity of books,
but kept up long after there was a plentiful supply. These
two causes alone were enough to ruin the effect of the music
and make the art disliked by those who had never known any
thing better; but when we add that the tunes were handed
down by oral tradition, that no two churches sang them in the
same way, that each individual singer was at liberty to put in
extra turns and quavers, that there was no pretence of keeping
time, and that the notes were often so prolonged as to require
a pause to take breath, it is hard to imagine a worse state
of things, musically speaking. Reform was imperative, and
it was started by the ministers. In 1718 Cotton Mather,
the colleague and successor of his father, published a new
translation of the Psalms, called the " Psalterium Ameri-
canum," in which, by an ingenious arrangement of different
types and words in brackets to be omitted br retained at
pleasure, the Psalms could be adapted to tunes of different
metre. Three years later Thomas Walter, pastor of the church
in Roxbury and grandson of Increase Mather, published a
singing-book, which was recommended by Increase and Cotton
Mather, and many other ministers, and was the first attempt
at better music. The tunes were copied from Playford, and
were in three parts without words.
One of the rarest of the Cotton Mather tracts bears this
title : —
" The Accomplished Singer. | Instructions | How the Piety
I of Singing | with a | True Devotion may be | obtained
and expressed ; the Glor | ious God after an uncommon man
ner glorified in it, and His | people Godified. | Intended for
the Assistance of all that would | sing Psalms with Grace in
their Hearts; | But more particularly to accompany the |
Laudable Endeavours of those who are | Learning to sing by
Rule. . . . Boston : Printed hy B Green for S Gerrish, | . . .
172 1. 16 mo, pp. (4), 24."

INTRODUCTORY NOTE IX
The first singing-school was started about 1720, and singing
by note was thus introduced into the Boston churches. Dr.
Colman's society in Brattle Square probably being the first to
•employ the new method. This innovation, or rather revolu
tion, was stoutly opposed by the advocates of " the usual way."
Fiercely the battle of the singers raged, — the first of the many
musical contests in Boston. The leading ministers arrayed
themselves on the side of reform, many of them publishing
"spirited discourses" on the subject. In 1723 appeared a
tract entitled " Cases of Conscience about singing Psalms," in
which, among other propositions for consideration, is the fol
lowing : " Whether they who purposely sing a tune different
from that which is appointed by the pastor or elder to be sung
are not guilty of acting disorderly and of taking God's name
in vain, also by disturbing the order of the sanctuary." This
tract shows the importance attached to the question, and the
rude and even childish pettishness by which the Puritans of
that day sometimes manifested their individuality and inde
pendence. Cotton Mather had the largest private library on the conti
nent, — a fact which must have been appreciated by his colleague
and successor, the Rev. Joshua Gee, who was a brilliant, scholarly
man, and which may have suggested to him the plan of found
ing a Church Library for the use of the ministers. We are
able to give the details of this scheme in his own words, copied
from his Register Book.
Mr. Gee writes, " In a conversation with the late venerable
Dr. Cotton Mather, sometime in the summer of the year
MDCCXXVIL, I proposed to him the forming a library for the
Church under our Pastoral Care." He then gives in full a paper
entitled " A Proposal for a Church Library," and after this the
list of subscribers, headed by Dr. Mather, who, however, "died
before this subscription was compleated."
The Library thus started survived even the trying days of the
Revolution. In 182 1, though many books had been lost, there
remained 123 volumes, 50 of which were of small value. In
1827, just a hundred years from the time when the plan for the

X INTRODUCTORY NOTE
library was first proposed, " at the request of Mr. Ware, who
stated that efforts were making to build up a library for the
Theological School at Cambridge 'to be deposited in the
building recently erected,' the Church 'voted that the pastor
be authorized to select such volumes as he may think proper
from its Library, and make a donation of them to the Library of
the Theological School, with the proviso that the minister of the
Second Church shall always have free use of the library of the
Theological School.' "
Little need be said of Mr. Gee's colleagues, the Rev. Samuel
Mather and the Rev. Samuel Checkley, the latter of whom suc
ceeded him as minister. Mr. Checkley was followed by Dr.
John Lathrop, who served from 1768 to 1816, during which
time the church passed through many and momentous changes.
Dr. Lathrop was a firm patriot, whose sermons did much to
strengthen the people in resisting oppression and in gaining
for them the reputation, from a British point of view, of being
"a nest of hornets." The Second Church was among the
heaviest sufferers by the war. The earliest mention of their
trials at this period is found in the following brief notice, copied
from the list of deaths in volume vii. of the church records :
"Mch 5, 1770, James Caldwell, shot by the inhumane sol
diers." When the scattered congregation returned to the city
after its evacuation by the British, they found their Meeting-
House on North Square in ashes. In this crisis the New Brick
society came to their aid. The New Brick Church, at the
dedication of which Dr. Cotton Mather had said, " There is not
in all the land a more beautiful house built for the worship of
God than this," became their home, the two societies uniting
permanently in 1779.
Following Dr. Lathrop came, in 18 17, the Rev. Henry Ware,
Jr., whose ministry lasted till 1830. His name is the synonym
for saintliness wherever known ; and in him the cause of peace,
of freedom, of temperance, of education, and of charity, found an
earnest advocate and a diligent worker. Ralph Waldo Emer
son followed Mr. Ware in 1829, and continued a litde over
three years,— a period of great intellectual and spiritual en-

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

XI

joyment and comfort to the people. In 1833 the Rev. Chandler
Robbins was ordained, — a man of the purest Christian char
acter, of profound learning, a tender pastor, a respected mem
ber of the community, a learned and accurate historian, to
whom, through his forty years of service, the Church was
indebted for loyalty to its interests through many trying cir
cumstances. The Rev. Robert Laird Collier was installed in
1876, and resigned in 1879. Then came the Rev. Edward A.
Horton in 1880, followed by the Rev. Thomas Van Ness in
1893, the last two ministers being still alive.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

PAGB

Introductory Note  v
Prelimtnarg proterttngB.
Action of the Proprietors  3.
THE Anniversary Committee  3
(fCommtinorattbe Sei&icts.
Service of Sunday Morning, November 19, 1899.
Programme  8-
Historical Sermon by Rev. Thomas Van Ness . . 9
Address by Rev. Edward A. Horton  20
Address by Wilmon W. Blackmar  29
Unveiling of Memorial Gifts  20-32
George H. Eager Window, — The Ministers' Me
morial; William Wilkins Warren, Window, —
Courage and Charity; John W. Leighton
Mosaic, — Truth ; Frederic W. Lincoln Tablet.
Acceptance of Memorial Gifts on Behalf of the
Church by Stephen M. Crosby  33.
The Memorial of Ralph Waldo Emerson, — Sunday Afternoon.
Programme  35
Remarks by Miss Rebecca D. Homer  37
Readings from Mr. Emerson's Writings .... 37
Address by Walter P. Eaton  38
Unveiling of the Bust by Miss Alice L. Higgins . 46

XIV TABLE OF CONTENTS

A Puritan Service, — Sunday Evening.

PAGE

Programme  48
Psalms and Anthems from the Psalter and Hymn
Books of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Centuries  48
Chorus from "Judas Maccabjeus "  54
Address by Rev. Elvin J. Prescott, First Church,
Salem, 1629  55
Rev. James Eells, First Church, Boston, 1630 . 58
Rev. Eugene R. Shippen, First Church, Dor-
' CHESTER, 1630  65
Rev. James De Normandie, D.D., First Church,
Roxbury, 1631  71
Rev. George A. Gordon, D.D., Third Church,
Boston, 1669  77

Service of Monday Moming, November 20.
Programme  83
Meeting of the Second Church Branch of the
Women's National Alliance  83
What Women have done in the United States since
the Founding of The Second Church in Boston :
In Literature, Mrs. Mary P. Wells Smith, 84
Education, Mrs. Emily A. Fifield . . 100
Philanthropy, Mrs. Kate Gannett
Wells  ug
Theology, Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer . 120

TABLE OF CONTENTS XV

Monday Evening.

PAGB

Programme  145
The Influence of the Second Church in America, 145
Opening Address by Stephen M. Crosby . . . 148
On American LiTEitA.TURE, Rev. Francis Green
wood Peabody, D.D  153
In Religion, Rev. Edward Everett Hale, D.D., 164
Mendelssohn's "Hymn of Praise"  145

Sermon by Rev. Thomas Van Ness, November 26,
1899  176

^ppenlju;.
The Mather Chair  191
The Mosaic-Truth  191
The Ministers' Window  192
The Warren Window  193
The Lincoln Tablet  193
The Emerson Bust  194
The Robbins Tablet  194
Paintings  i95
Flags and Decorations  196
A Street in Old Boston  197

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGB
The Mather Chair  iii
The First Covenant  vi
Inscription on the Front of the Meeting-House . xi
Memorial Windows, Etc. :
The Ministers' Memorial  20
Courage and Charity  22
Truth  26
Memorial Tablets :
Frederic W. Lincoln  30
Rev. Chandler Robbins, D.D  34
The Emerson Bust  46

PRELIMINARY PROCEEDINGS.

PRELIMINARY PROCEEDINGS.

AT the Annual Meeting of the Proprietors of The
-^*- Second Church in Boston, held in May, 1898,
attention having been called to the fact that the next
year would mark the two hundred and fiftieth anniver
sary from the foundation of the Church, the following
action was taken : —
Voted, That a Committee of five be appointed by the
Moderator of this meeting, with himself as one, to con
sider a plan and to fix the precise date for celebrating, in
1899, the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of this
Church, and to report the same at a future meeting of the
Proprietors and members of the Society to be called by
said Committee.
At the Annual Meeting of the Proprietors in April,
1899, the chairman announced the appointment of the fol
lowing persons to constitute this committee: the Rev.
Thomas Van Ness, William M. Bunting, James N. North,
Francis H. Brown, and Stephen M. Crosby. The Com
mittee reported that they had duly considered the matter,
and had outlined a plan to submit to the Proprie
tors, which comprised a two days' celebration ; and they
fixed as a convenient date for the event Sunday and
Monday, the nineteenth and twentieth days of November,
1899. This date was selected because the exact day of the
organization of the Church is unknown. It has been deter
mined that the Church came together some time in 1649,
and that the first Meeting-House, erected in North Square,

4 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
was completed and in use in June, 1650. At a later
day the Committee was increased by the appointment of
Wilmon W. Blackmar, Charles H. Bond, and Lament G.
Burnham. Still later the Minister's Auxiliary Committee
was asked to take a part by caring for the financial
matters. This Committee was composed of William M.
Bunting, Chairman, Franklin F. Raymond, Secretary and
Treasurer; Edmund T. Pratt, Charles H. Bond, Ephraim
B. Stillings, Charles Darrow, Elmer A. Lord, Daniel H.
Lane, Ralph M. Kendall, and Frank W. Downer.
The following action was then taken : —
Voted, by the Proprietors, That it is desirable to hold a
service on the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the
establishment of The Second Church in Boston, sub
stantially on the plan outlined and presented at this meet
ing, in commemoration of its foundation and continuance
to the present day.
Voted, That the Committee who have had in charge the
preliminary consideration of the subject of a celebration
be authorized to make suitable arrangements and carry
out such service as, in their judgment, may seem desirable.
Voted, That they be authorized to expend such sums as
may be placed in their hands for the purpose, and that it
be discretionary with them to enlarge their committee,
and to appoint subsidiary committees, as they may deem
best. The programme, as recommended by the Committee,
was also adopted by the Proprietors in the form in which
it was finally carried out.
Several members of the Parish expressed the wish to
unite with the Church the names of members of their
households, who had passed away, by the gift of valuable
works of art. These proposals were gratefully accepted,
and the reception of such memorials was assigned to the
morning hours of the first day.

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 5
With the same feelings of devotion the younger members
of the parish wished to give the Church a memorial bust
of Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of its early ministers ; and
the reception of this gift was assigned to the afternoon.
For the evening a Puritan service was proposed, in
which, together with appreciative words from the minis
ters of five of tbe earliest churches of the Massachusetts
Bay Colony, a musical service was to be held, which
should mark the progress of the Art from the forms of
the earliest days of the community down to those of the
present. The morning of the second day was to be occupied by
the Second Church Branch of the Women's National
Alliance in the discussion of the topic "What women
have done since the Founding of The Second Church."
In the evening it was intended that addresses should
be made by carefully chosen speakers on the subject
" What The Second Church has done in this Community."
The following sub-committees were appointed : —
On Memorial Gifts and Decorations, Francis H. Brown,
W. W. Blackmar; on Printing and the Press, W. M.
Bunting, L. G. Burnham; on Reception, J. N. North,
W. M. Bunting; on Correspondence and Invitations,
S. M. Crosby, L. G. Burnham ; on Music, Thomas Van
Ness, J. N. North, C. H. Bond.
The musical part of the Commemorative Services was
under the care of the conductor and musical director of
the Church, Mr. H.' G. Tucker, to whose skill and untiring
devotion the Committee were indebted for the entire
success of this portion of the celebration. He was ably
seconded by the choir of the church : Mrs. Marian Titus,
soprano, Mrs. Louise Bruce Brooks, contralto, Bruce W.
Hobbs, tenor, Wirt B. Phillips, bass.

COMMEMORATIVE SERVICE.

COMMEMORATIVE SERVICE.

THE Morning Service on the 19th. of November
was opened by a voluntary on the organ. The
First Service in the Book of Worship was used at this
morning exercise, and the following programme fol
lowed : —
J^istorttal Serm0n  Rev. Thomas Van Ness.
Sbliress  Rev. Edward A. Horton.
atibress  Wilmon W. Blackmar.
?Sn&eiItn0 of iW«mortaI ©iftg
In memory of {a) George H. Eager, (Window) " Ministers'
Memorial."
{b) William Wilkins Warren, (Window) " Courage and
Charity."
(c) John W. Leighton, (Mosaic) "Truth."
{d) Frederic W. Lincoln, Corinthian Tablet.
Acceptance of IKletnortal (gfftg .... Stephen M. Crosby.

HISTORICAL SERMON.
BY THE REV. THOMAS VAN NESS.
" These all having obtained a good report." — Heb. xi. 39.
T CAN appreciate somewhat Paul's feelings when
he sat down to write an historical letter to his
kinsmen, which should so speak to them of their
past that by the recollection of the glorious deed
of Hebrew prophets, statesmen, and citizens their
own faith would be increased and their own courage
sustained. How select ? What emphasize ? What
omit? A multitude of faces, forms, and events,
crowd before his imagination, each asking, demand
ing, that it be marked off as of special importance.
Palestine was a small country, the Jewish people,
in comparison with their neighbors, a feeble folk ;
yet no Assyrian, Roman, or Persian historian had
such a wealth of material from which to draw, so
many inspiring personalities about whom to write.
Paul first lays down his definition of faith, " The
evidence of things unseen." Then, step by step, he
passes on to prove his statement, putting before the
mind's eye such a stately procession as the world
has never known. Abraham emerges from the
past, then the patriarchs, Isaac and Jacob, then
from Sinai's awful heights descends the great law
giver. Back of him is seen Joseph, the boy, and
Joseph, the man, who, through rectitude and pu-

IO THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
rity, is raised to the power of a Pharaoh ; then Noah ;
then Joshua. So the record sweeps on, becoming
more dramatic as it proceeds, until it begins to be
impossible longer to single out individual instances.
Then Paul in his thought gathers together all the
past generations, saying of them, " Through faith
they subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness,
quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of
the sword; out of weakness were made strong,
waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies
of the aliens. They had trials of cruel mockings
and scourgings, of bonds and inprisonment. They
were tempted, slain with the sword. Destitute,
afiiicted, tormented, they wandered in deserts and
mountains, in dens and caves of the earth. All
these obtained a good report, for they endured as
seeing the invisible."
Almost in Paul's words I might sum up the gen
erations that have lived and died in the past two
hundred and fifty years, and who, by their faithful
ness and loyalty, have made this Second Church in
Boston what it is to-day. Back and beyond you this
morning, you who are to be seen with the actual
eye, are those nameless hundreds, those uncounted
thousands, wives, husbands, fathers, mothers, grand
fathers, great-grandfathers, who are thronging for
ward for recognition ; loved ones who have recently
passed from earth ; and not far from them older
parishioners who saw and knew Sumner, Andrew,
Webster, and Lafayette, and those, too, who were
on speaking terms with Parker, Motley, Channing,
Howe, and Longfellow. Then, back of them, those

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY II
whose garb and manner are strangely unfamiliar,
those who helped make constitutional history, who
because they had freemen's blood in their veins
sympathized with and helped forward the struggle
for liberty, — friends of Otis, of John Adams, of Paul
Revere, men who pledged their lives, their fortunes,
and their sacred honor to a loved cause ; for they
esteemed the reproach for liberty's sake greater
riches than the pleasures to be enjoyed under a
king's tyranny. Still back of them, the men and
women who slowly, toilfully, worked to build up the
old town of Boston, who Sunday after Sunday.
through sunshine and rain, through snow and
storm, wended their way to the Old North Meeting
House, and there in the stern lessons taught from
the pulpit obtained a reason for their own lives
and a warning against cowardice, sloth, and unfaith
fulness. Yes, faith is the evidence of things unseen ; and
it was because those of whom I speak had such
faith that they endured as seeing the invisible.
It was because they had such faith that they believed
God's kingdom could be founded upon earth, and
that they were the divinely chosen instruments to
establish that kingdom.
Certain historians, who look at things purely
from the outside, say that The Second Church was
established because the seating capacity of the
First Church had been outgrown : others affirm it
was founded when the news reached Massachusetts
of the execution of Charles I. and the setting up of
Cromwell's commonwealth ; but these are extrane-

12 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
ous reasons. They fall into place as coincidences,
not as cause.
" Being called of God to enter into church fellow
ship together."
There you have the cause in the first covenant
of this church. Michael Powell, James Ashwood,
Christopher Gibson, and their four friends actually
beHeved themselves "called of God" to do this
thing as much as did ever Abraham when he went
forth from Chaldea to establish the worship of God
among the Canaanites.
" We here freely this day," so the covenant goes
on to declare, " do avouch the Lord to be our God
and ourselves to be his people," and " to cleave
to him and to one another in him."
It is not compulsion, you see. No presbytery,
synod, bishop, or pope, demands that a Second
Church be started in the little colony. No ! it is a
layman's movement, a people's church, a demo
cratic organization. The stamp once placed upon
it by those seven Puritan founders, every year that
follows only makes deeper, more indelible that
impression. " We here freely this day do this
thing." Those words fitly express what was true
the Sunday after the church was founded ; and the
next Sunday and the next Sunday and every Sun
day even unto this day.
Is it any wonder that a church so founded should
always stand for political liberty, for intellectual lib
erty, for social fellowship, for religious democracy ?
" Everything produces after its kind," says the
author of Genesis. It does not, therefore, take an

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 3
uncommon prophet to predict that such an organi
zation, such a church, will be found on the side of
learning over against superstition ; will be found to
uphold the spiritual interpretation of the Lord's
Scriptures rather than the formal and literal inter
pretation ; will be found on the side of the people
rather than on the side of the king ; will join forces
with the patriots and not with the Tories ; will up
hold the cause of union and a united republic, and
not the cause of disunion and secession ; and
through its sons and daughters, whether known or
unknown, whether occupying the executive chair
of this great city or speaking only from the centre
of the domestic circle, whether instructing youth
from a Harvard professor's desk or simply instruct
ing the child at home, will always throw its influ
ence on the side of freedom, progress, justice, and
security for all.
I am not, therefore, surprised, as I turn one by
one the pages of the history of The Second Church,
to read what I there find. I am not surprised to
learn that as early as 1774 Lathrop, from this pul
pit, said, "Americans, rather than submit to be
hewers of wood or drawers of water for any nation
in the world, would spill their best blood " ; nor does
it seem strange that the British general, in speaking
of The Second Church, should call it " a nest of
traitors." I should have been much more surprised
if I had not so learned, or if I had read that the
pastor of The Second Church was given a vote of
thanks by the British ministry because of his sub
serviency and the cowardly acquiescence of his

14 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
flock in all the unjust measures of Lord North. I
should have been disappointed and chagrined if
that layman whose memory we are soon about to
honor had flinched or wavered in the right course
when the destinies of Boston hung upon his execu
tive action in those dark days of 1863 and 1864.
No ; now and again there has been an arrest of
movement, a hardening of form and tradition, a
something almost like a stultification of that origi
nal Second Church covenant ; but, whenever such
has been the case, there have arisen some laymen
or some coterie of the members, or some minister,
like him whom we shall recall and honor this after
noon, who by a brave word against creed or by a
courageous sermon against the tyranny of tradition
has brought the Second Church back to its right
ful position in the path of progress.
It is the spirit, the life force of a church about
which we are anxious to know, not the particular
forms that spirit has taken on. It is for that rea
son I have so far said nothing of the outward and
visible sign of the church as a structure, as a build
ing. Let me now say, merely as a matter of rec
ord, that the first meeting-house was at the head of
North Square. It was built of wood and completed
in 1650. It remained in continuous use until the
fire of 1676 destroyed it. Then, with commendable
zeal on the part of the people, a new building was
erected ; and this second building was the one de
stroyed by the British in 1775.
After the evacuation of Boston, when the mem
bers of The Second Church returned to their homes,.

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 5
they found in the place of their loved sanctuary a
heap of ruins. In their disappointment and dis
tress they were invited to worship with the
Society of the New Brick on Hanover Street.
The New Brick Society was an offshoot through
the New North of The Second Church. In a sense,
therefore, it was a union of parts. Dr. Lathrop as
sumed charge of the reunited organization in 1779,
continuing in the ministry almost exactly fifty years.
He died January 14, 18 16, deservedly beloved and
honored. The following year Henry Ware, Junior, was in
stalled as pastor. Perhaps his best known work
for the community is his temperance work. In an
age when drinking was a universal habit, it
needed moral courage to stand out so boldly, and
champion an unpopular cause. How new and
startling were his words on this subject may be
judged from the fact that his " Discourse on Tem
perance," put on sale in this country, had a most
extensive circulation ; and the twelfth thousand was
prepared to meet the demands in London. There
are persons still living who remember the funeral
services at Harvard University held over the body
of Mr. Ware in 1843. Some time in 1829 the Col
lege had elected him to the chair of pulpit elo
quence and pastoral care, though he did not enter
at once upon his professional duties, but spent the
best part of a year travelling through Europe, giv
ing the care of his pulpit into the hands of Emer
son, who in March of 1829 had been installed as
Mr Ware's colleague.

1 6 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
Although the ministry of Ralph Waldo Emerson
did not cover the full space of four years, yet the
time was long enough for the people to discover
his clear discernment of truth, subtlety of reason
ing, and candor of speech, which in after life gave
him world-wide fame. It was under the Rev.
Chandler Robbins, Mr. Emerson's successor, that
the resolution was formed to erect a new church
edifice on the old site.
While the work of rebuilding was in progress,
the society availed itself of an invitation to worship
under the roof of the Old South. In courteous
recognition of the hospitality extended to it at the
time The Second Church presented to the Old
South a silver cup, which appears upon its com
munion table, and which bears this inscription : —
THE OLD SOUTH CHURCH,
IN MEMORY OF HER
CHRISTIAN HOSPITALITY
TO THE
SECOND CHURCH,
1844.
The new church building was completed and
dedicated in 1845. There are many still living
who remember the services of dedication, — remem
ber, too, the sad, the disheartening years that
follow. It will not do for us to judge those times, to say
that a grave mistake was made in erecting so ex
pensive a building in a part of the city from which
The Second Church families were steadily moving.

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 7
I do not know. I only know the outcome. In
1849 the church had to be sold to another relig
ious society ; and its members were forced to find
a new home in the Freeman Place Chapel, which
stands to-day in the rear of Hotel Bellevue on Bea
con Street. In 1854, by a happy union with the
Church of the Saviour, the able and beloved minis
ter of The Second Church found himself once more
the pastor of a strong and united band of worship
pers ; and for something like eighteen years the
Rev. Chandler Robbins faithfully served as minister
in the Bedford Street building. Then once again
came the need of change. The Bedford Street
Church was carefully taken down, its stones brought
here to Copley Square, and the present building be
gun. As near as two buildings can be one, it may
be said that this structure is the Bedford Street
Church ; for the very stained glass windows, the
pews, the pulpit, even the organ, and much of the
interior furnishings in this church on the dedica
tion day, September 17, 1874, were those of the
former church edifice.
And now, if we desire to take a typical period,
an action, a form, or symbol which shall best epito
mize the spirit continuously animating this Second
Church, what shall be selected ? What better than
an event which in itself shows supremely the love
of liberty in the people's hearts and at the same
time the moral courage of their minister? What
more comprehensive than that moment when the
independence of the little colony weighs in the bal
ance over against the desire of a king ? Here are

1 8 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
the royal commissioners, backed up by military
force, demanding, in the name of Charles II., the
surrender of the charter: here, on the other hand,
are the deputies to the General Court, about to be
instructed as to their vote. What is to be the out
come? The minister of the Second Church, the
Rev. Increase Mather, pushes his way to the
crowded Town Hall, and makes a speech which
electrifies all who hear it. " I hope," he says,
" there is not a free man in Boston that can be
guilty of such a thing. We shall sin against the
God of heaven if we do this thing."
When Mather sat down, and the vote of the
meeting was taken, it was unanimous against sub
mitting to the king.
When I first came to Boston some seven years
ago, a quiet, cultured gentleman, a member of our
Standing Committee, called my attention particu
larly to the work of the Mathers, Increase and Cot
ton. " It was a magnificent epoch in our history,"
he said, " and some time or other a commemorative
inscription or tablet should bear witness to what
father and son did for Massachusetts and for The
Second Church." In our further talks about the
Mathers he made not only their characters better
known and appreciated by me, but unconsciously
his own as well. Would that he were here now to
look upon this window, which so fitly carries out
his thought and with such dignity and beauty
teaches the lesson of moral courage and fidelity to
civic duty !
When Paul sat down to write that eleventh

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 9
chapter of Hebrews, the furthest thing from his
mind was the idea of self-glorification or personal
fame. In him there was burning a desire to make
better known to his kindred the great and good of
the past, through whom the Lord had wrought
great glory. Yet such is the law of virtue that
while he, who will glorify himself, shall be forgot
ten, yet he who for righteousness' sake is willing
to be debased and held in small esteem shall live
in men's hearts forever and ever. Therefore it is
that, try as Paul will, the eleventh chapter of
Hebrews commemorates not Barak or Samson or
Jephthah or any of the others whom the apostle
sought to wrest from oblivion, but commemorates
Paul himself. So, too, though the name be hidden
in an obscure line, though the blaze of sunshine
fall on the face of Increase Mather, though in
strong, bold letters the list of ministers be written
so that all may read, yet, nevertheless, the law of
virtue cannot thus be evaded ; and he who rightly
and fitly is brought to remembrance by this window
is he who so unselfishly and modestly labored to
bring others to our mind — none other than our
loved, our revered friend, George H. Eager.
" Though a good life hath but few days, yet a
good name endureth forever." So it is written in
the very nature of things.
Mother, daughter, you who through your devo
tion have made this window to the memory of the
ministers a reality, believe me, it is like a palimpsest
of old, which bears upon its surface not only the
message in view, but as well the message of a sim-

20 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
pie, lofty life, quietly and honorably lived, and leav
ing to you as the most priceless heritage a name
kept forever unspotted from the world.
Seeing we are compassed about with such a cloud
of witnesses, let us run with patience the race that
is set before us. And let us not be weary in well
doing ; for in due season we shall reap, if we faint
not, until we all come to the unity of faith, unto the
perfect man, unto the measure of the fulness of the
stature of Christ.

ADDRESS.
BY THE REV. EDWARD A. HORTON.
A REASONABLE question may arise in our
-^^ minds. The Second Church in Boston is
commemorating to-day its two hundred and fiftieth-
anniversary. Back at the beginning stands the
serious-faced figure of the Puritan. Before he left
England, he and his allies assailed the churches and
broke the frescoed windows. In the wrath of the
white heat of his reforming spirit he smote for God,
for progress, for man, according to his light and
with the heavy accent of his moral conviction. Do
we wisely to-day establish memorials somewhat of
the character that were destroyed when The Second
Church was founded? Ay, truly; for the great
trait in the Puritans was the possibility of growth.
I believe that the Puritan of two hundred and fifty
years ago would be glad to witness the scene of

S^tm/:^/i£/M'/.^/^.y,<//anf/7f/»^<i/Jriff:u'^^Ynmf'fi,^->P4-

THE MINISTERS^ WINDOW

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 21
to-day. This is our way now of ennobling and lift
ing higher the benefits and truths of organized
religion. To the Puritan in his time destruction,
deprivation, and concentrating one's gaze upon the
essentials of religious faith and doctrine seemed
the great duty. Were he living now, his method of
religious progress would be enrichment and beauty.
It is a personal privilege and responsibility as
well as a public duty to make mention here to-day
of two gifts to this ancient society. When I came
to Boston in 1880, wondering what the future had
in store for me, so bold as to assay that which had
been planned for me, my heart was strengthened
and my mind guided greatly by valorous men who
pledged themselves generously to stand by their
chosen leader. The two tributes which have been
offered this morning find sympathetic echo in my
soul. I see George H. Eager here to-day. I feel
the tender influence of his gentle yet firm charac
ter : he was patient and wise. I behold the familiar
presence of Mr. Lincoln, — sagacious, loyal, public-
spirited, — a man knowing clearly that, when you
have summed up all the glories of modern civiliza
tion and have omitted the religious element, you
have left a fatal defect. To all this tribute my
mind gives hearty response.
And now we pay attention, loving and true, to
the memories of two more loyal sons of The Second
Church. Upon my right is a piece of art, — the flower of
consummate art and deathless love. The figure of
Saint Martin may not represent to you — that is.

22 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
to most of you — a familiar figure. Born in the
fourth century near the Danube, his parents were,
as we term them, ignorant heathen. But, early, his
soul responded to the missionary call. He was
converted; and, from that pledge of allegiance to
the Christ and the gospel so early given, he ran a
bright and victorious career, far outstripping his
father so famous in martial renown.
The scene represented in this window is that of
an actual event which has come down the centuries
as a part of true history. A youth went to Saint
Martin poor and forlorn, naked and in need. He
listened to the tale: he was moved to sympathy;
and, taking his sword, he cut in two his mantle, and
gave the youth one-half. This is the picture as it
appears. Yet I wish to recall (and let the fact
shine out henceforth and forever from the window
to those who may hereafter see it) that our man of
valor was a soul of breadth. He became a bishop
of France, and never feared to accept his responsi
bilities. When heretics were pursued and burned,
he went to the other bishops, and begged that these
offenders might be given to him. He hoped in his
truly Catholic and Christian keeping he might help
them, and by gently reproving them of their errors
win them to the fold. His request was denied.
The heretics were killed by the sword and fagot. I
like to think how that act of Saint Martin redounds,
not simply to his memory, — to his glory, but it is
the type of broad, inclusive souls from century to
century. The other figure in this particular window

-/^//^>*y/^«f/^^,^:^;^.ypfe//;/:'^^^^^

THE "WARREN WINDO^A^

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 23
emerges through the mist of uncertainty, — Dorcas,
— a name that embodies to us in this century the
substance of good will, charity, and kindliness. The
affluent, loving helpfulness of the Dorcas societies
has gone out through the land.
All women have been kindled by that little rec
ord in acts of the woman named Dorcas, whose
memories brought tears to her associates. That
passage has kindled many a candle to cast its
beams of compassion round the world. Dorcas, the
example of charity, of loving heart, of sympathetic
atmosphere, of hand that does not dole out bene
factions, but clasps the object of attention with a
thrill of sisterly recognition, — Dorcas is the second
figure. Now what significance has this window with
reference to him whom we to-day remember, the
source, the incentive, the motive, of this gift, — Will
iam Wilkins Warren ? Much, very much.
Mr. Warren has not been from us so long but
that many in these pews this morning have felt the
throb of joy as they recall the friendship they had
for him. William Wilkins Warren was a man
with special privileges. The good Lord put a
scope of opportunity about him, and he recog
nized it. He knew he was a steward; and phil
anthropy unloosed his purse, broadened his heart,
led him to generous plans. But that window
does not simply mean courage and charity. A
brute can be courageous. Saint Martin had
enthusiasm for humanity, a consecrated purpose.
Mr. Warren took unto himself these ideas and

24 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
tendencies, and embodied them in his life. For
that reason we place a memorial here, as some
thing not only betokening love, but quality of
judgment. I need not recall, in a presence like this, the
characteristics which made Mr. Warren the source
of true eulogy when he passed away. He was a
lover of those refinements of life which we call
civilization. Across this square, at the Art Museum,
there is placed that gift from him which will enable
the walls, for a long time to come, to bear testimony
to canvas blossoming into beauty and stones setting
forth incarnate life.' I believe, if he could look
down, he would rejoice at a testimonial like this.
Did I say Saint Martin was conspicuously broad
and inclusive ? So was our friend. He loved
to see the good in other churches. He fellow-
shipped with men and women who had high aims
and motives, and allowed no mental differences and
doctrinal divergences to interfere with his sense
of brotherhood and large fellowship.
The flag of our country kindled in him respon
sive loyalty and plaudits. He had traversed this
earth along many pathways, familiar and unfamiliar ;
but amid all this variety of experience he never
became dulled to home appreciations. He was
compact to the last in honor to his native land and
firm in his confidence as to its future. He main
tained respect for the ordinary, typical citizen, and
declared adhesion to the ideals of this republic.
Back from these wanderings and observances he
came to the ballot box of the people, the civic

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 25
kings, back to the circles of scholarship, without
any superciliousness or affected superiority. Nay,
with a heart full of love, genuine love, of the
American life, the American spirit, and the Amer
ican opportunities, which are being worked up con
stantly into higher types.
He was, finally, religious : he embodied Christian
ity in his daily life. He listened to the Sermon on
the Mount. He believed in organized religion and
the support of churches. A more faithful parish
ioner I never had. The stream of his daily testi
mony was full of the richness which comforts the
minister and steadies him for the contest in the
many vicissitudes of life.
Let that window, in all its beauty, stand not
only for the figures, historic and religious, so finely
portrayed there, but because we seem to see within
the light of them, absorbing their radiance and
giving it out as he did in his life, our beloved
William Wilkins Warren, — not dead, for he yet
speaketh. After the singing of the anthem, "My Soul doth
magnify," and an organ postlude, during which the mosaic
tablet behind the pulpit was unveiled, Mr. Horton con
tinued : —
You have all, friends, had a brief glimpse, and
seen the beauty and penetrated somewhat the
significance of this memorial tablet in mosaic
above the pulpit. It represents Truth. But
truth comes to us in different aspects, and the
successful artist has recognized that fact. Here is

26 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
Truth, with the key: science understands that
interpretation. The theologian catches the mean
ing issuing from that symbol, — to probe, to knock
at doors that seem solid, to soar upward to the
heights of the sky or downward into the depths of
the geologic world. Science has unlocked many a
door, and that has come about because in mah
God has planted the irrepressible and onward-urg
ing love of truth.
There is a sword, too, which in Scripture hath
somewhat been symbolized by Saint Paul, — the
sword of the spirit ; not the cleaver and hewer of the
battlefield, but the sword of an indomitable pur
pose, which in youth responds to a call from the
high heavens, is determined to make character,
help lift up the world, and keep an untarnished
record of ideal loyalty. The sword represents the
practical embodiment of truth in laws, institutions,
character, in whatsoever perpetuates itself genera
tion after generation, though the thinker, the scholar,
the scientist, the theologian, come and go.
Then there is the flaming emblem, the torch.
That is significant of truth's illuminating power.
What is it that we should fear most in this world ?
Ignorance, darkness, superstition! Truth is the
gas-jet in the bank at night, more potent than many
policemen. The torch of truth is handed from
generation to generation, enlightening religion,
politics, and literature. Let the spirit indicated
sustain this pulpit in finding and translating eter
nal life, appealing to all noble springs and high
motives. That should be the universality of a
pulpit like this, over which our memorial is placed.

f /, J> '// ./.U../y ¦ /i/^f//W.^//j;/j!i,/^.iu/.0-r/f /r/.////,,//!u

TRUTH

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 27
In memory of whom is the tablet placed here?
In remembrance of my friend and yours, — my loyal,
sturdy parishioner, John W. Leighton. It is very
fitting that a tablet of this significance should be
placed to his memory. If there was one thing
he liked, it was daylight, clearness, frankness,
outspoken sentiment. He preferred substance to
form ; action rather than profession. The love
of truth that leads to many manifestations some
times savors of impetuosity and rashness, of things
not always altogether agreeable. I would like to
find a reformer, for instance, that you would call a
courtier in the parlor or banquet hall. What the
world needs is nuggets of gold, which can be made
up into ordinary usage, into things which are avail
able. The love of truth gives strength, — sometimes
rugged, granite power ; but it is strength, it is never
weakness. Men may like what I say or they may
not like it. They may fancy the utterances of the
outspoken man or not : but there is one thing they
can never say of the man who keeps true to the
conviction of his mind : they cannot assert that he
is mean, that he is equivocal, that he manages men
with hypocrisy. I would rather have that charac
ter of mind than the ability of those who deftly
thread the devious intricacies of insincere diplo
macy. Mr. Leighton was independent, self-reliant. He
was honest. He had the treasure-house of in
tegrity : men could rely on his word. And, as he
passes away, we think of the essential man. That is
the tribute which I know he would crave, simply

28 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
that he was honest, trusty, and true. I cannot con
ceive of my friend Leighton caring for a tribute
of this kind, simply as a formal and ecclesiastical
matter. I knew him thoroughly, and I am disposed
to speak right to the mark ; but I do believe that it
would rejoice his soul, could he see this gathering
and this tablet, and realize that such a typical
representation of truth, sincerity, earnestness, gen
uineness, was placed in the church where he loved
to attend, — as his friend Warren did, — anxious for
any message that would quicken to true life ; no
one more appreciative of the direct utterance of
man to man. He believed in everything that might
build up the character, and rejoiced in the prosper
ity of the church. He gave his money, his time,
his advice, for the welfare of this time-honored
society. And now, turning back to the memorial window,
it is my precious privilege to speak through old
friendship, and to say that this window is given by
the wife of Mr. Warren. She does not need any
visible presentation to remind her of the more than
fifty years of happy life they had together ; but she
shares his spirit, and they together, as it were, set
this beautiful significant work of art in the walls of
The Second Church, for the good of youth, for the
help of pure worship, and for the hallowing of these
sacred courts.
This mosaic tablet is given by the wife and
daughter of Mr. Leighton, in the same grand, loyal
spirit to the family and to the church. They have
all done this, not from any personal pride or satis-

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 29
faction, but that here, as congregations come and
go, this emblem may help the preacher carry his
message to the people, enrich and round out the
spirit of devotion; appealing, amid service and
sermon, to deep things, and enforcing by rich sym
bolic loveliness the truths of religion.
So may these symbols quicken all that is good
and noble for centuries within the courts of The
Second Church in Boston.

ADDRESS.
BY WILMON W. BLACKMAR.
A S we assemble here at the close of this the
nineteenth century to celebrate the two hun
dred and fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of
this church, and look back through the long vista
of years, recalling with pride and thankfulness the
names of the illustrious laymen who have been
connected with it, we must in justice and in truth
place prominently in the foremost rank of these the
name of Frederic Walker Lincoln.
No wonder he was patriotic, public-spirited, and
devoted to all good causes tending to elevate and
benefit his fellow-men; for in his veins ran the
blood of those glorious men who carved from a
mighty wilderness the great republic which, as the
peer of any nation in the world, is our proud inheri
tance to-day.
With Abraham Lincoln, our martyred President,

30 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
he traced his lineage to the Lincolns who settled
in Hingham about 1637. His grandfather. Captain
Amos Lincoln, when a youth of nineteen, took
sides with the colonists against the aggressions of
the mother country, and was one of the famous
Boston Tea Party which emptied the cargoes of
the offending ships into the harbor; and, standing
firmly by the consequences resulting from this and
other defiant acts of the inhabitants of rebellious
Boston, he enlisted in the patriot army, and on the
battlefield of Bunker Hill and on many another
field made sacred by the blood of free men he
fought for independence. After this was won, he
returned to the pursuits of peace, and, as one of
the leading mechanics of the city, helped to build
yonder State House.
Captain Lincoln married the daughter of Paul
Revere, and therefore our late associate was the
great-grandson of that famous patriot.
True to his glorious lineage, he gave himself
freely and unselfishly with a rare public-spirited
devotion to so many good causes and institutions
in his State and city that a mere recital by me
of the names and descriptions of those with
which he was identified and the offices he held
during his long and most active life would con
sume most of the time allowed me to-day.
I need not say in this presence, to you who
knew him so well and loved him so tenderly, how
honest, patriotic, unselfish, devoted, and capable he
was. His long and honorable service in political,
financial, charitable, and religious organizations is

-u//M-m.Vf^/MU/:'//auMd£l-mM/!m/-/i

THE LINCOLN TABLET

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 3 1
a guaranty that he possessed these sterling quali
ties in the highest degree.
Whether as mayor, president of a bank organized
to protect the savings of the wage-earners, or over
seer of the city's poor, he did his varied duties
thoroughly and well. A manly man, with the deli
cacy and tenderness of a gentle woman, he admin
istered charity to the worthy poor ; but with a hand
of iron, when mayor of Boston, he crushed out the
draft riot which threatened destruction and dis
grace to his beloved city. For this patriotic action
he was made a member of the Military Order of the
Loyal Legion, which organization, with its colors
draped, appeared as mourners at his bier.
We remember with pride and satisfaction his
great service to the State in her halls of legislation,
on her important boards and commissions ; his
devotion to our city during his unprecedented
seven full years of service as its mayor; and his
honorable connection with the great financial and
charitable institutions with which his name has,
from his early manhood, been so prominently as
sociated. But here in the church he loved, and as a member
and officer served so faithfully, we remember him
with a peculiar sense of gratitude, love, and admi
ration. Baptized in and buried from this church ;
as child and man, for more than eighty years closely
identified with its every interest; for thirty years
superintendent of its Sunday-school ; for forty-four
years a member of its Standing Committee and
its faithful treasurer; in prosperity and adversity

32 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
always the same faithful, hopeful, patient guardian
of its interests ; — pastors came and went ; death and
other causes radically and often changed the Con
gregations, — but, ever faithful at his post, during all
these years stood Frederic Walker Lincoln ; and to
him more than to any other one man is due the
fact that the dear old Second Church in Boston
has survived to celebrate this its two hundred and
fiftieth anniversary.
In the name and at the request of his wife and
children I have the honor to present this memorial
of Frederic Walker Lincoln to The Second Church
in Boston. And, as the signal lights shone forth
from the Old North Church to start his great
grandsire, Paul Revere, on his perilous ride to
warn of danger and encourage to heroic action his
fellow-countrymen, so may this tablet with its mod
est but complete recital of a life well spent in ser
vice to this city and State be always an ever-living
signal light in this church, to start our youth upon
and encourage them to follow those glorious paths
which lead to the freeing, uplifting, and helping of
their fellow-men.

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 33

THE ACCEPTANCE OF THE MEMO
RIAL GIFTS.
BY STEPHEN M. CROSBY.
A ND now, friends, there remains only for me, as
'^ ^ the senior officer of the Church, and in the
same spirit of love and tenderness, and with the
most hearty concurrence in all that has been said
in memory of our departed friends, to accept in the
name and behalf of The Second Church in Boston
these beautiful gifts. They become henceforth a
part of the heritage of this church, a part of its
treasures. Like the history of its past and like the
story of these lives, which henceforth becomes a
part of its history, they will be a portion of what is
to be bequeathed to those who in long succession,
we hope, are to follow and worship here.
I am gratified personally that this duty falls to
me, for, in a somewhat protracted term of service
in this society, it has been my good fortune to be
associated intimately with every one of these noble
men in the various duties which have devolved
upon our committee ; and I stand here to bear per
sonal testimony to-day to the faithfulness, the de
votion, the often self-sacrificing readiness with
which they gave of their time, their ability, their
substance, if only this old church which they loved
so well might be benefited and helped, and the
purposes for which it stood might be strengthened.
Those four men typified as well as any four mor-

34 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
tals may the special characteristics which this
church in its long history of two centuries and a
half has stood for and which these memorials are
supposed to represent, — Patriotism, Courage, Char
ity, Truth. These were all manifested in their
lives, in their words, and in their actions, simply,
earnestly, and well, as they went about their work
in the city. Every one made his mark in the
sphere in which he was called to labor, and each
left behind him a memory which can be fitly and
properly commemorated here.
But it seems to me that, after all, the true benefit
to this church will not be attained, and the memory
of these men will not accomplish what it should,
unless these memorials shall stand for something
better than that, unless they shall stand as an in
centive, as a direct, intentional, and powerful coer
cive force, to urge and stimulate the men and
women who sit in these pews to-day to the same
faithful, earnest work which these men have done.
Not only in the memory of the past are we to glory.
We are also to glory in the fact that their memory
urges us to actions in the future which shall carry
forward the work which they so long and so well
maintained, which shall firmly plant still farther
in the future the standard round which they so
bravely rallied. " Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime ;
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time."

THE ROBBINS TABLET

THE EMERSON MEMORIAL SERVICE.

THE Afternoon Service was conducted by the Young
People's Fraternity of the Second Church in co
operation with the Young People's Union of Massa
chusetts. The following is the order of exercises : —
©tgan Folnntarg, "Hymn of Praise," Mendelssohn.
H. G. Tucker
Solo, " With Verdure Clad," Creation . . . Miss McKay
?lSIorti0 of ?!S5eIcome .... Miss Rebecca D. Homer,
President of the Fraternity
l^gmn, " The Light pours down from Heaven," Lowell Mason.
ILitorgg (leader and members responsively).
What are the principles of our Union ?
Truth, worship, service.
What does Jesus say of truth ?
" Know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
How may we know of the truth ?
" Revelation is not sealed ;
Answering unto man's endeavor.
Truth and right are still revealed."
How shall we worship God ?
" God is a Spirit : they that worship him must wor
ship him in spirit and in truth."
Shall we pray to God ?
" What are men better than sheep or goats.
That nourish a bUnd life within the brain.
If, knowing God, they lift not hands in prayer ? "

36 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
What does Jesus say of his mission ?
" I came that they might have life, and that they might
have it more abundantly."
Is salvation thus dependent upon helping others ?
" Heaven's gate is shut to him who comes alone :
Save thou a soul, and it shall save thine own."
For what, then, do we unite ?
In the love of truth we unite for the worship of God
and the service of man ; and, as his followers, we
accept the religion of Jesus, holding, in accordance
with his teaching, that practical religion is summed
up in love to God and love to man.
3Reattnfl0 from ^mtean'a SKKritings, Herbert A. Wadleigh
3Lort'0 Prager.
Solo, " Promise of Life," Cowen  Miss McKay
^bbregji  Walter P. Eaton,
President of the National Young People's Religious Union
Unfaefltng of ISuat  Miss Alice L. Higgins,
Superintendent of the Sunday School
dlosing J^gmn, " God bless our Native Land " . . No. 321
Benebtction. The Lord watch between me and thee when we
are absent one from another. Amen.

REMARKS.
BY MISS REBECCA D. HOMER.
'"T^HE large congregation gathered here, notwith-
¦*¦ standing the dreary weather, makes the privi
lege of welcoming you doubly pleasant.
Many famous men have been connected with
this society, and this morning we have been doing
honor to some of its prominent ministers and lay
men ; but, of all the names that have been upon our
lips, there is none which stands for more wide
spread influence, through words spoken and writ
ten, than the name of Ralph Waldo Emerson, our
former minister. As a loving tribute to one whose
thoughts have reached throughout our land and
upon whom we, as a society, love to think we have
a nearer and more personal claim, the young
people have deemed it a pleasure and a privilege
to present a bust of Emerson to this church.
Our Young People's Fraternity extends a hearty
welcome to this large congregation, and invites all
to unite in the service which is to follow.
At this point selections from Mr. Emerson's essays
were read by Herbert A. Wadleigh, a member of the
Fraternity.

38 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON

ADDRESS.
BY WALTER P. EATON,
President of the National Young People's Religious Union.
¦1X7ERE it possible to characterize the mental
power of Emerson in a single phrase, it
might be that he makes one think, and that he
carries one away, in mind and soul, by his passages
of great and pathetic eloquence.
Youth is the time when the mind is most eager
to grasp new ideas of life and conduct, the time
when the heart is most readily moved by poetry
and eloquence. Hence it is that Emerson's appeal
is so strong to young people everywhere. Accord
ingly, it is most fitting that his memorial to-day
should be given and dedicated by the young people
of the only church which he ever graced as pastor, —
The Second Church of Boston.
It is my own good fortune to be allowed on this
occasion to pay my tribute to his memory, to give
some hint of that which he has done for me, some
faint suggestion of that which he can do for other
young men and women. Such a man as Emerson
is many-sided, has infinite aspects. The attitude
of mind, for instance, which led him, in 1832, to
resign from the charge of this Second Church, is
rich matter for an essay or a sermon. A man who
would not pray publicly from his pulpit, nor ad
minister the Lord's Supper to his congregation,
because he felt such acts to be, for him, insincere

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 39
and formal, and who sacrificed his chosen life-work
rather than perform them; a man "who broke
his own pedestal to destroy the idolatry he saw
about him," — has that in his character well worth
our consideration. It is not so much with Emer
son, the man, that we must concern ourselves to-day :
it is with the written works he has left behind ;
and, again, with but one feature of those works, —
their peculiar message to young people. That
message is, perhaps, the most vital and lasting
worth of Emerson's literary remains : it is of that
message I shall speak.
I can well remember my own first plunge into
the works of Emerson. It came about, like most
of the good things in our reading, in a haphazard,
al'most truant fashion. Many a time I had been
advised by friends, zealous of my moral well-being,
to read his essays ; and I had always refused. We
must not be driven to morality and love of the
spirit, or we rebel. Such love must come of its
own accord, catch us by surprise, and startle us
into acceptance by its sudden nearness and appeal.
Thus it came to me. I chanced to read one day
of an incident in Emerson's life. He had been
lecturing in some out-of-the-way town, giving to
his small audience the wealth of his thought and
eloquence. After he had finished his lecture, the
village Socrates came up to him, and said, " Mr.
Emerson, I don't agree with the ground you took :
can you prove to me that you are correct ? " Emer
son arose. " Sir," he answered, " I never argue
these high questions : if I have given to one mem-

40 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
ber of this audience a deeper thought, a loftier
aspiration, I am satisfied. Good-night."
Those were stirring words, — words that no young
man with a drop of blood in his veins could well
resist. I turned to Emerson gladly then, for I no
longer feared to find in him mere Sunday-school
morality. I turned to him, and opened on this pas
sage : —
" To believe your own thought, to believe that
what is true for you in your private heart is true for
all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent con
viction, and it shall be the universal sense ; for the
inmost in due time becomes the outmost, and our
first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of
the last judgment. ... A man should learn to detect
and watch that gleam of light which flashes across
his mind from within, more than the lustre of the
firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses
without notice his thought, because it is his. In
every work of genius we recognize our own rejected
thoughts: they come back to us with a certain
alienated majesty. Great works of art have for us
no more affecting lesson than this. They teach us
to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-
humored inflexibility, then, most when the whole
cry of voices is on the other side. Else to-morrow
a stranger will say, with masterly good sense, pre
cisely what we have thought and felt all the time ;
and we shall be forced to take with shame our own
opinion from another."
Here, surely, was no mere moralizing, but prac
tical good sense, the good sense of keen psychology ;

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 4 1
and good sense made strangely appealing by a cer
tain flavor of eloquence. The "alienated majesty"
of my own rejected thoughts, spoken how often by
another, came vividly before me, and startled me into
new self-consciousness, awakening in me the majesty
of those thoughts I had not rejected, arousing a
passionate longing to speak henceforth according
to my nature, not according to the dictates of this
or that man or woman or custom. I read on : —
" Trust thyself : every heart vibrates to that iron
string. . . . Let a man know his worth, and keep
things under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or
skulk up and down with the air of a charity boy, a bas
tard, an interloper in the world which exists for him.
But the man in the street, finding no worth in himself
corresponding to the force which built a tower or
sculptured a marble god, feels poor when he looks
on these. To him a palace, a statue, or a costly
book, have an alien and forbidding air, much like a
gay equipage, and seem to say like that, ' Who are
you, sir ? ' Yet they are all his, suitors for his no
tice, petitioners to his faculties, that they come out
and take possession. The picture waits for my
verdict : it is not to command me, but I am to settle
its claim to praise."
" Discontent, — that is the first step in progress,
the first hint of the better life. Mankind is happy
with a drum and cymbals till some master comes to
play for them on the violin ; and thereafter the drum
sounds less and less pleasant to their ears, for they
have heard a more perfect music. So the young
man or woman who comes to Emerson all unaware

42 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
as yet that he has a peculiar nature of his own, a
young man or woman who takes his opinions second
hand, who finds his greatest ambition and highest
happiness in successful conformity to custom and
pink-tea leadership, will find, in the essays he reads, a
note of doubt, — a note that will grow and swell in
volume if allowed its way, until it changes entirely
the youth's ideals, placing the emphasis on character
and spirit."
Character and spirit, — those two things are
Emerson's insistent message to young men and
women, — a message needed no less in 1900 than in
1832. For every man must grow through the stages
of the past. The babe must be taught what the
Stone Men knew; the boy learns the chivalry of
the Middle Ages ; and the youth on the threshold
of manhood has the choice of the best ideals of life
his own age affords. But it is always a choice :
there is always the question to be decided, — not.
What shall I do for a living? What profession
shall I learn ? but. What sort of a man shall I make
of myself? What ideals shall I follow? In this
decisive period we all have flashes of the truer light :
we all of us realize, even as we worry over the cut
of our winter suit or rejoice that So-and-so has
invited us to her dance, that only as we are faithful
to the deeper promptings of our natures are we of
real worth in the world. It is hard to keep this
realization always in the mind, it is hard to keep
the true light clear before the eyes. It is at this
hour that Emerson brings to us the greatest help
and counsel.

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 43
We all have friends, and perhaps some of them
are with us now, who thoughtlessly base their esti
mate of acquaintances on trifling peculiarities of
dress or deportment, or who withhold their approval
because a person does not entirely carry out the
requirements which the society of the day demands.
Is it not safe to say that such critics seek the shadow
rather than the substance ? With what tonic effect
these words of Emerson must appeal to their more
thoughtful, sober sense !
Could any one come away unmoved from this frag
ment of verse, so simple and straightforward that
it reaches, perhaps, a pathetic dignity unattained
by any of Emerson's more ambitious poetry ? —
" You shall not love me for what daily spends ;
You shall not know me in the noisy street ;
Where I, as others, follow petty ends ;
Nor when in fair saloons we chance to meet ;
Nor when I'm jaded, sick, anxious or mean :
But love me then and only when you know
Me for the channel of the rivers of God
From deep ideal fontal heavens that flow."
Character, firmness, lofty independence, — that
is the constantly recurring note. " Know thyself :
every heart vibrates to that iron string." Know
thyself first ; for thus only can you truly know others,
can you truly estimate their worth in the world.
Only as a young man hears the ring of his own God-
given manhood has he the least right or the faintest
title to pass judgment on the meanest of his fellows.
Only character is worth while. This is Emerson's
message to young men and women. It is a message

44 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
for to-day as well as for yesterday, and for infinite
to-morrows. While his message is this, it is some-
thing more besides. Self-reliance, character, — these
are not always enough, noble and necessary though
they be. A something more is needed, which is
spirituality, — a wholesome cheerfulness and trust.
One of the greatest results of an undergraduate
course at Harvard is the birth of mental freedom,
the development of individual thought and judg
ment. But too often Harvard College does not
confer with these the equal blessings of cheerfulness
and faith. She sets free the intellect : she does not
breathe life into the spirit. She breeds character
without ambition, strength without heroism. The
young man who is a cynic because he has sought
an answer, but found none, is more worthy of
respect, to be sure, than the young man who has
not sought at all. His epigrams, though they give
the sneer to what is most sacred in life, are better
to hear than the everlasting gibber of the youth
who aspires to be known as a " sport." Yet such a
man is not heroic. Such a man can kindle no fire of
enthusiasm, can possess no glad contagion of spirit.
To such a young man Emerson brings a further
message, — the message of spiritual hope and fervor,
of the bravery of the soul. He has well described
himself and his own mission to youth in his essay
on " Success."
" 'Tis cheap and easy to destroy," he says. " There
is not a joyful boy or an innocent girl buoyant with
fine purposes of duty, in all the street full of eager
and rosy faces, but a cynic can chill and dishearten

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 45
with a single word. Despondency comes readily
enough to the most sanguine. The cynic has only
to follow their hint with his bitter confirmation, and
they check that eager courageous pace, and go home
with heavier step and premature age. . . . Yes, this
is easy ; but to help the young soul, add energy,
inspire hope, and blow the coals into a useful flame ;
to redeem defeat by new thought, by firm action, —
that is not easy, that is the work of divine men."
That divine work of inspiration, of planting hope
in the life of the spirit, is also of Emerson's mission
to America. Know thyself, discover your character
and worthy tendencies, and then trust them with
implicit faith ; keep your ideal always before you ;
live the "strenuous life"; be heroic in your own
sphere, however humble. No man lives in vain !
Every man has a soul to answer for, an uncommon
work to do.
Finally, it is Emerson's mission constantly to re
iterate in young and eager ears these words : " Trust
thyself " : every heart vibrates to that iron string.
Accept the place the Divine Providence has found for
you, the society of your contemporaries, the con
nection of events. Great men have always done so,
and confided themselves childlike to the genius of
their age, betraying their perception that the Eternal
was stirring at their heart, working through their
hands, predominating in all their being. And we
are now men, and must accept in the highest spirit
the same transcendent destiny.
Surely, these are words of inspiration, a strain of
the grandest heroism. Surely, the mild-faced, quiet

46 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
man who spoke them was as true a hero as the capt-
urer of cities or the sinker of fleets, — a hero of the
spirit. Surely, the young people of that congrega
tion who once listened to his lofty thought and
looked up to his sunny countenance do naught
amiss in giving us back again his features for a last
ing recollection. As we look upon his face, here in
marble, may each young heart hear once again his
counsel ! —
'' Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of
principle." The bust of Emerson, which had been draped with the
American flag, was unveiled by Miss Alice L. Higgins,
the Superintendent of the Sunday School, who said : —
We have come in this century to feel that all
things have history ; nothing springs into being at
a word, but somewhere has been a flash of concep
tion, a period of development leading up to the
glad moment of fulfilment.
Even so has it been with this memorial, which
some four years ago, it became the earnest wish of the
young people of this church to give to their church.
Perhaps no one knows better than I the cost of
this memorial in the coin of loving service and
glad self-sacrifice.
You have heard why it is peculiarly the privi
lege of the young people here to remember Emer
son. His voice in that pulpit preached the gospel
of individual character before he preached it to a
listening world.

RALPH WALDO EMERSOH

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 47
Far back in the past was the first church of this
society dedicated by those who felt themselves ser
vants of Almighty God. To-day has this church
been anew dedicated by those who feel themselves
children of an all-loving Father. Long may it
stand ; and while it stands may this memorial re
main, given by the young people in memory of the
spirit and character of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The bust of Mr. Emerson was made by the well-
known sculptor, Mr. Sydney L. Morse, of Buffalo, N.Y.

A PURITAN SERVICE.

THE evening of Sunday was devoted to a Puritan
service, and included addresses by the ministers of
five of the oldest churches of the Massachusetts Bay
Colony. The music of the evening was rendered by a select
choir of sixteen voices, a string orchestra and flute, under
the direction of H. G. Tucker, and in the final number by
a chorus of forty voices from the Handel and Haydn
Society. Miss Mary Phillips Webster selected quotations
and rendered valuable assistance in arranging the musical
programme. It was intended to show the gradual devel
opment of church music from the sixteenth to the nine
teenth century.

A PURITAN SERVICE.
" Either at moming or evening, there may be sung an hymn, or such
like song to the praise of Almighty God in the best melody and music
that may be conveniently devised, having respect that the sentence of the
hymn may be understood and perceived." (Queen Elizabeth's Injunctions
for the Guidance of the Clergy, 1559.)
"The people are everywhere exceedingly inclined to the better part.
The practice of joining in church music has very much conduced to this.
For, as soon as they had once commenced singing in public, in only one
little church in London, immediately not only the churches in the neighbor
hood but even the towns far distant began to vie with each other in the
same practice. You may now sometimes see at Paul's cross, after' the
sermon, six thousand persons ... all singing together and praising God."
(Bishop fewel's Letter from London to Peter Martyr at Zurich, Mar. 5, 1 560.)

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 49
®Ki ^untirebtl). Original tune, 1552; Kethe's words, 1561.
From Sternhold and Hopkins, 1588.
(To de sung by all the people in unison without accompaniment.)

'T.. J^Jj_.. <."-"^^^dJ°»

^^¦.¦J^Jd.i^„..-".i„ A^

$

¦no.

^

" All people that on earth do dwell
syng to the Lord with cheerefull voyce
Him serue with feare his prayse forth tell ;
come ye before him and reioyce.
The Lord ye know is God indeede,
without our aide he did vs make ;
We are his flocke. He doth vs feede,
and for his sheepe he doth vs take.
O enter then his gates with prayse,
approch with ioy his courts vnto ;
Praise, laud, and bless his name alwayes,
for it is seemely so to doe.
For why ? the Lord our God is good,
his mercy is foreuer sure ;
His truth at all times firmely stood,
and shall from age to age endure."
abbreas  Rev. Elvin J. Prescott,
Minister of the First Church in Salem. {Founded 1629.)
" Conceming singing of Psalms, we allow of the people's joining with
one voice in a plain tune, but not of tossing the Psalms from one side to
the other with intermingling of organs." (Confession of Puritans, 1571.)

50 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
" If God give you a spirit of Reformation . . . what will the end be ?
Comfort and blessing. . . .
" Therefore I beseech you in the name of God, set your hearts to this
'work.' And if you set your hearts to it, then you will sing Luther's
Psalm. That is a rare Psalm for a Christian ! " (Speech of Oliver Crom
well at the Opening ofthe Second Protectorate Parliament, 1656.)
nutlet's pgalm. (Psalm 46.) Sternhold and Hopkins, ed. 1630.
( To be sung in unison without accompaniment.')
I. " The Lord is our defence and aide,
the strengthe whereby we stand ;
When we with woe are much dismaide,
he is our help at hand.
2. Though the earth remoue we will not feare,
though hills so high and steepe.
Be thrust and hurled here and there,
within the Sea so deepe.
3. Not though the waves doe rage so sore,
that all the bankes it spills ;
And though it ouerflow the shore,
and beat downe mightie hils ;
4. Yet one faire flood doth send abroad
his pleasant streames apace.
To fresh the Citie of our God,
and wash his holy place.
5. In midst of her the Lord doth dwell
she can no whit decay ;
All things against her that rebell
the Lord will truely stay.
7. The Lord of hosts doth us defend,
he is our strength and tower ;
On Jacob's God we doe depend.
And on his mightie power."

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 5 1
Colossians III.
" Let the word of God dwell plenteously in you, in all wisdome teaching
and ezhortjng: one another in Psalmes, Himnes, and spirituall songs, sing
ing to the Lord with grace in your hearts."
James V.
" If any be afiiicted, let him pray, and if any be merry let him sing
psalmes." (Title-page of Bay Psalm Book, 1640.)
Pgalm 23, from Mather's Psalterium Americanum. 17 18.
(Set to " Low Dutch Tune," unaccompanied. From Bay Psalm Book, ed.
1698. Each line read or lined out by an officer of the church before being
sung.) I. My Shepherd is th' Eternal God;|| I shall not be in
[Sng] want : ||
2. In pastures of a tender grass || He [iEber] makes me to
lie down : || To waters of tranquilities || He gently car
ries me, [^long.JII
3. My feeble and my wandering Soul || He [femtllg] does
fetch back again ; || In the plain paths of righteousness ||
He does lead [^nt) suftie] me along, || because of the
regard He has,|| [lEber] unto His Glorious Name.||
4. Yea, when I shall walk in the Vale || of the dark [tftsmal]
shade of death, || I'll of no evil be afraid, || because thou
[e&er] art with me.|i Thy rod and thy staff, these are
what II yield [tongtant] comfort unto me.
5. A table thou dost furnish out || richly [for me] before my
face. II 'Tis in view of mine enemies ;|| [^nt t^en]
my head thou dost anoint || with fatning and perfuming
Oil : II my cup it overflows.!
6. Most certainly the thing that is || Good, with [most feintl]
Benignity,! This all the days that I do live || shall [gttll
ani] ever follow me ; || Yea, I shall dwell, and Sab-
batize, || even to length of days, || Lodg'd in the House
which does belong || to [|&im to^io's] the Eternal
God. II
^litirega  Kev. Eugene R. Shippen,
Minister of the First Church in Dorchester. (Founded 1630.)

52 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
3Hitre08  Rev. James Eells,
Minister ofthe First Church in Boston. (Founded 1630.)
" For Man may justly tuneful Strains admire,
His Soul is Music, and his Breast a Lyre.
Music, the mighty Artist, Man can rule,
So long as that has Numbers, he a Soul."
(Quoted by Thomas Walter in his "Sermon on Regular Singing.")
^Paalm 119 .... From Walter's Singing Book (172 1).
(Recommended by Increase and Cotton Mather ; sung in three parts,
unaccompanied. )
12. Bless'd art thou, O ETERNAL God ; ||
Thy Statutes [tfjetefote] teach thou me. ||
13. I all the Judgments of thy mouth ||
have with my lips declar'd [afiroab]
14. I in thy Testimonies way, II [as m«t]^]
as in all wealth, rejoyce.
15. I'll on thy Precepts meditate ; ||
and I'll regard [fait]& care] thy Paths." Psalterium Americanum.
" Down starts the Bass with Grave Majestic Air,
And up the Treble mounts with shrill Career,
With softer Sounds in mild melodious Maze
Warbling between, the Tenor gently plays
And, if th' inspiring Altus joins the Force
See I like the Lark it Wings its towering Course
Thro' Harmony's sublimest Sphere it flies
And to Angelic Accents seems to rise." Dr. Mather Byles.
SJerinrne. A favorite Fuguing tune.
Daniel Read, Philo-Musico, 1793.
(From The American Singing Book, 1793; with accompaniment of strings
and flutes.)
" While Shepherds watched their flocks by night.
All seated on the ground.
The Angel of the Lord came down.
And glory shone around."
^JjbtegB  Rev. James De Normandie, D.D.,
Minister ofthe First Church, Roxbury. (Founded 1 631.)

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 53
" in the singing seats
Of the meeting-house, — bass-viol, flute,
And tuning-fork, and rows of village-girls,
With lips half open ; treble clashed with bass
In most melodious madness." Lucy Larcom.
©enmarfe .... From Lock Hospital Collection, ed. 1809.
( Used by Handel and Haydn Society of Boston at their first meetings ; small
organ, strings and flute.)
" Before Jehovah's awful throne.
Ye nations bow with sacred joy.
Know that the Lord is God alone 1
He can create and he destroy.
His sov'reign power without our aid
Made us of clay, and form'd us men :
And when like wandering sheep we stray'd,
He brought us to his fold again.
We are his people, we his care.
Our souls, and all our mortal frame ;
What lasting honours shall we rear,
Almighty Maker, to thy name ?
We'll crowd thy gates with thankful songs.
High as the heavens our voices raise
And earth with her ten thousand tongues
Shall fill thy courts with sounding praise.
Wide as the world is thy command.
Vast as eternity thy love,
Firm as a rock thy truth must stand.
When rolling years shall cease to move." Isaac Watts.
John Wesley.
aWrega  Rev. George A. Gordon, D.D,,
Minister of the Third {Old South) Church. {Founded i66g.)

54 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
" But let my due feet never fail
To walk the studious cloister's pale
And love the high embow'ed roof,
With antique pillars massy proof.
And storied windows richly dight
Casting a dim religious light ;
There let the pealing organ blow
To the full-voiced quire below
In service high and anthems clear,
As may vrith sweetness, through mine ear,
Dissolve me into ecstacies,
And bring all Heaven before mine eyes." John Milton.
Cljorua, " Judas Maccabaeus," By Handel.
(The music of this Oratorio was advertised for sale in the " Boston Cen-
tinel," Feb. 23, 1807, as "by Mr. Handell"; full organ, strings and flutes,
with chorus.) " O Father, whose almighty pow'r
The heav'ns and earth, and seas adore !
The heart of Judah, thy delight.
In one defensive band unite
And grant a leader bold and brave,
If not to conquer, born to save."
Clonfltesational l^gmn. " America."
(Organ, orchestra, chorus and people.)
" Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old . . . Forget not."
(John Milton).
" I have witnessed the growth of their faith, I have seen the advance
ment of their virtue, I have known their perseverance in good works. To
them I say, Go on, and the Lord go with you in peace and strength. . . .
And when the day shall have arrived that these temples have mouldered, and
all earthly worship ceases, — then — it is my hope and prayer that we shall
be found side by side in the worship of eternity. . . . God bestow upon you
the choicest of spiritual blessings. . . . May the spirit of Christ dwell in you
richly with all wisdom ; and the peace of God which passeth all under
standing abide among you and sanctify you always." (From Farewell
Address of Henry Ware, Jr., Oct. 4, 1830.)
JSemttttfon  Rev. Thomas Van Ness,
Minister of The Second Church in Boston. (Founded 1649.)

ADDRESS.
BY THE REV. ELVIN J. PRESCOTT,
Minister of the First Church, Salem.
Friends of The Second Church in Boston, — I come
to you to-night to bring you the greetings of the
old First Church of Salem. Last night I stood
before the little old First Church building in
Salem, showing it to some friends. This morning
I took the train and went down to Hingham and
preached in that which is the oldest church build
ing now occupied in America, and to-night I come
here to bring the greetings of the oldest organized
religious society in America, upon your two hun
dred and fiftieth anniversary ; and really, friends
I do not know whether I belong to this century or
to some other !
As I look back over the past and consider our
theme, — " Our Debt to this Same Past," — it seems
to me that the key-note of our thoughts might be
the strength of character that these men brought
into our land. God never undertakes to do a great
work without beginning in seemingly small ways.
He sows a tiny seed, and from that seed there
grows a mighty plant. One would hardly have
realized, had he lived in the early days of Puritan
ism in England, that those men who sailed over to
America, so few of them, were to lay the founda-

56 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
tion not only of a church, but of a mighty country
and a mighty democracy. There was a mighty
country to be settled, there were great forests to be
cleared. There was to be established here a re
public, a democracy, such as the world had never
seen. What was needed ? The one thing needed
more than anything else was men, — strong, noble,
and inspired men, men of strength of character.
And if our Puritan ancestors were sometimes re
garded as cold externally, if they were cold in their
Puritanism, if the history of the inner life counts
for anything, we are told that in that inner life they
were warm-hearted. They were tender and loving
in their homes, showing that strength and ten
derness could be combined. So it seems to me
that in Salem, in Boston, in Dorchester, in these
towns of Massachusetts Bay, there was laid the
foundation of that great strength of character
which was not alone to give democracy in religion,
but in government as well. That is one of our debts
to the past.
But there is another side to this question. We
are not only to ask, What is our debt to the past,
what do we owe these men ? But what shall we do
to pay that debt ? If these men studied those great
principles and carried them into effect, so that the
results have been what they are, then on such an
occasion as this it is well for us to ask. What shall
be done to pay that debt? If two hundred and
fifty years ago there was a religious movement in
Boston which resulted in the establishment of this
church, as two hundred and seventy years ago there

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 57
was such a movement in Salem, the question at the
close of the nineteenth century is : What is going
to be the future of that church ? What is going
to be the future of our religion, the outcome of
this strong old Puritanism.? The Puritan minister
stood as a man of God. He was the man that in
terpreted to the best of his ability the spirit of the
divine life that entered his heart. The modern min
ister, his follower, stands as the interpreter of that
life as it appears to him in the present, — in science,
art, literature, and in all phases of modern life.
More than that, he stands as did his older brother,
as the inspirer to his congregation, to take his in
terpretation and make it a living reality in the
community. This has been therein the work of the
Christian minister. This is his work to-day as
ever. If we are to pay our debt to the past, the
minister of to-day, the church of to-day, needs the
inspiration, the fire, the benediction, that shall enter
his heart and inspire it with religious zeal and
earnestness to carry on this w;ork that these men
have so nobly and gloriously started. I believe
that every milestone in the progress of the Chris
tian Church means that we see this duty more
clearly. We are holding this service to mark this
two hundred and fiftieth milestone, from which we
take a new step toward better things. That is the
way we are to pay the debt to the past, and in that
spirit I come to you with the greetings bf the First
Church of Salem.

58 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON

ADDRESS.
BY THE REV. JAMES EELLS,
Minister of the First Church in Boston.
My Friends of The Second Church, — I find it diffi
cult to put in words how very glad I am, and how
great a privilege I regard it, to be here on this
most interesting anniversary. Before venturing
to come, I took counsel with your older sister,
the First Church of Boston ; and, looking at me
earnestly, she said : " Tell her that I remember
those long, lonely years before she came, and how
glad I was when she came, and what a joy it has
been to work with her. Tell my sister. The Second
Church, how I rejoice with her at this time." And
then she grew serious and a little more earnest,
and said, " Be sure and tell her that our work is
not yet done." And so I come to bring you her
greetings. Our work is not yet done, and the
First Church will be glad to know that your work
is going on with greater and fairer spirit than even
in the past.
By the request of your committee, I am to speak
of " Our Inheritance from the Past." I desire very
briefly to take one phase of this subject which
often receives too scant notice.
We inherit formative forces, not their appli
cations; potentialities, not their embodiments.
Which truth frees us from the necessity of claim
ing only such things as seem to be most in accord

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 59
with our present or so nearly in accord as to be
made to appear quite so with a little patronizing
apology. For many things of the past we have
no word but that of sweeping denunciation or
righteous scorn. But that may lose for us the
deep and eternal worth of those very things.
Abiding verities underlie the phenomena of every
age. We may forfeit the worth of the verity when
we refuse the phenomenon. Let me show you
what I mean, for this is really my theme.
I do not forget that I am speaking to some
whose ecclesiastical, if not personal, ancestors were
parishioners of the two mighty Mathers. Nor can
I forget the prominent part which these two men
took in the prosecution of witchcraft. Here is our
first item. After this excitement had passed, the
Rev. Cotton Mather was called upon by the gov
ernor to justify what had been done. The result
was a book entitled " The Wonders of the Invisible
World, being an Account of the Tryalls of Several
Witches lately Executed in New England." This
book was published in 1693, while as yet he was
the colleague of his father in the ministry of this
church. It thus sets forth the prevalent notion
concerning witches: "The New Englanders are
a people of God, settled in those which were once
the Devil's territories; and it may easily be sup
posed that the Devil was exceedingly disturbed
when he perceived such people here. The Devil,
thus irritated, try'd all sorts of methods to over
throw this plantation. . . . But all these Attempts
of Hell have hitherto been Abortive. Wherefore

6o THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
the Devil is now making one Attempt more upon
us; an Attempt more Difficult, more Surprising,
more snarl'd with unintelligible Circumstances,
than any that we have hitherto Encountered. . . .
He has drawn forth his most Spiritual ones to
make an Attacque upon us. We have now with
horror seen the discovery of Witchcraft. An
Army of Devils is horribly broke in upon the place
which is the Centre of our English Settlement, and
the houses of the good People there are fill'd with
the doleful shrieks of their Children and Servants
tormented by Invisible Hands with Tortures alto
gether Supernatural." Increase Mather, eight
years before, had written of spectres seen, houses
haunted, storms stirred up, all (to him) the un
doubted work of demons.
Another amazing thing is the definiteness of
the relation of these people to God. To men who
believed so profoundly in the work of spirits, it
was of supreme importance that the influence of
the Good Spirit should be so thorough and so con
sistently recognized as to leave no loophole for the
entrance of any least abomination. Believing them
selves to be under the direct and immediate control
of God, that control must be evidenced in what
ever happened. Such happenings, small or large,
became for them providential. The author of " The
Wonder-working Providence of Zion's Savior in
New England " affirms therein that God " standeth
not as an idle spectator beholding his people's ruth
and their enemies' rage, but as an actor in all ac
tions to bring to naught the desires of the wicked.

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 6 1
having also the ordering of every weapon in its first
produce, guiding every shaft that flies, leading each
bullet to its place of settling, and each weapon to
the wound it makes." Nothing could be more
definite than that. Into the care of this Provi
dence they put themselves austerely, simply, grimly.
God's commands they obeyed to the letter. For
him they would live and die; and their defence,
when under question or censure, was the defence
of Cotton Mather after the witchcraft frenzy, that
God had assumed all the responsibility for that pro
ceeding. They carried this idea into everything.
The General Court, in 1654, decreed that "those
who have manifested themselves unsound in the
faith, or not giving due satisfaction according to
the rules of Christ," could not teach in the public
schools, — an order which caused much discomfort
and trouble. But there was nothing else to be
done. Colleges and Latin schools were founded
for the express purpose of educating young men
for the ministry. The General Court also records,
" To the end that the body of the commons may
be preserved of honest and good men, it was
ordered that for time to come no man shall be ad
mitted to the freedom of this body politic but such
as are members of some of the churches within the
limits of the same." It was their maxim that an
orderly and peaceful government must be founded
upon religion, and they knew of no other way to
accomplish this. There was no lawyer in the com
munity for years, but they needed none. Their law
book was the Bible. Their statutes were those of

62 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
God revealed and committed to Christian magis
trates for administration. This rigor is explained
when we see on the Records of the Massachusetts
Company that " the propagating of the Gospel is
the thing we do profess above all to be our aim in
settling this plantation."
Lastly, I must open that dark page of persecu
tions, when men and women were expelled and
punished for believing contrary to the majority.
Mistress Ann Hutchinson threw the little commu
nity into a ferment of excitement by her adherence
to the covenant of grace instead of the accepted
covenant of works. As everything was definite in
those days, she and her followers left nothing to
the imagination in their practices. And Mistress
Ann Hutchinson was driven forth remorselessly
into sickness, privation, exposure, and ultimate
murder, for her " damnable heresies." Roger Will
iams, because he had " broached and divulged newe
and dangerous opinions against the auchthoritie of
magistrates," was ordered to " depart out of their
jurisdiction MTthin sixe weeks nexte ensueing." The
Baptists were persecuted almost beyond human en
durance — whipped, imprisoned, fined, reviled, ban
ished — because they assailed the " standing order,"
made " infaunt baptisme a nuUitie," pronounced all
members of churches " unbaptized persones," and
denied them valid ministry and ordinances. The
Court, therefore, judged it " necessary that they be
remooved to some other part of the country or else
where," to set up their " free school for seduction
into wayes of error." But by far the most tragic

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 63
and sad of these struggles was the treatment of the
Quakers. What need to recount the story of Mary
Dyer and George Fox, of the hangings on Boston
Common, of the floggings at the tail of an ox-cart
creeping through the village streets.? It is all
dreadful, pitiful, shameful. But is there nothing
for us other than sorrow that such things could
ever be, or the wish to forget and apologize for
them? Have we no inheritance from these dark
things ?
When men nervously shut their windows in the
gathering gloom of night-fall, shuddered when the
wind howled in their great square chimneys, and
blanched if the gaze of an ancient dame were fixed
upon them, I take it to have been merely the per
version of the noblest truth. I believe it to have
been that day's crude, dramatic, unconscious but
powerful witness borne to the truth that matter is
interfused with spirit; that this life of ours and
all the reaches and affairs of it are dominated by
spirit ; that matter has no essential obstacle to the
influence of God. Their doctrine of special provi
dence is a corollary to this same truth. When they
declared so narrowly and with such bigotry that
none but church members could teach school or
vote; when they insisted upon the most trivial
things as the direct action of Deity; when they
made the Bible the literal rule of their faith and
practice, and fell into such absurd mistakes in so
doing, — I find in it the great, burning desire of all
earnest, conscientious men, — that God, and Right
eousness and Truth shall be the very foundation of

64 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
all statecraft and community intercourse. I do not
care for their " Blue Laws," nor do I inherit them.
They were practices, not potentialities ; but I fear
lest in sweeping them out of doors I lose also the
inheritance of loyalty to God which they betoken.
I fear, in laughing at their absurdities, I be guilty
of being laughed at for my shallowness. When
they sternly, savagely drove from among them those
who did not share their beliefs, I do not find merely
cruelty nor intolerance. Rather it is the rough but
supreme recognition of the community idea, — that,
if one member suffer, all the members suffer, that
the sin of one darkens the fair lives of all, that no
full righteousness can prevail if sin is permitted.
They purified their lives by expelling the turbid
element. It was expulsion rather than reformation.
We shall be vastly poorer if out of our inheri
tance we leave this truth of the recognition of the
indwelling, incoming God, if we forget that we be
long to the community, and that instead of expel
ling the sinner we should strive as never before to
expel the sin, with the same relentless, uncompro
mising severity. This sombre, sober, materialistic
life of ours is all sun-shot with the glory of the pres
ent God, not by the demons of witchcraft. And we
inherit the beautiful riches of God, who " fulfils him
self in many ways, lest one good custom should cor
rupt the world." Standing here on the threshold
of a new era of better living, and newer, more hope
ful years, what wealth can you take with you like
the belief that this matter-of-fact, hurrying, familiar
world is all God's, through and through, and there-

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 65
fore spirituality is not an idle dream ; that this
community lays its just claim upon your faith and
hope and charity, emphasizing that claim by insist
ing that ye cannot be perfect and entire until the
community lacks nothing? Into this vast, this win
ning, this magnificent inheritance may we all go, as
some time into the joy of our Lord.
" Ah ! from the old world let some one answer give :
' Scorn ye this world, their tears, their inward cares '.
I say unto you, see that your souls live
A deeper life than theirs !
" Children of men 1 not that your age excel
In pride of life the ages of your sires.
But that ye think clear, feel deep, bear fruit well.
The Friend of man desires."

ADDRESS.
BY THE REV. EUGENE R. SHIPPEN,
Minister of the First Church in Dorchester.
/^NE of the first sermons preached by Increase
^-"^ Mather had for its text, " Pray for the peace of
Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee."
That sermon was in 1661, in his home church in
Dorchester, three years before his installation as
minister of this your church. Let that text be my
salutation this night as you celebrate your quarter
millenial anniversary. May peace rest upon this
church, and prosperity make here its abiding home !

66 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
That is what we of Dorchester would wish for you.
With that wish for your successful future are joined
our congratulations for your honorable past. The
First Parish in Dorchester has a distinct share in
that past, and we rejoice with you in your anniversary
celebration as kinsmen. Men and women trained
to godliness in the Dorchester church in the early
days gave their strength to this church of yours
when most it was needed. In our church records
there is entry after entry " dismissed to joyne unto
the new church at Boston " (your church being called
the new church until the formation of the Third
Church). Some of these records relating to the
Second Church antedate your own extant records.
Aron Way, William Ireland, ThankfuU Baker, Ma-
halaleel Munings are among the names of Dor
chester members dismissed to Boston. Dorchester
blood thus flows in the veins of this aged but active
religious body.
Personal ties in this way created were strength
ened as the years went on by the bonds of spiritual
fellowship. The two churches were one in their
attempt to create a theocracy. They were one in
their espousal of the cause of independence. They
were one in their gradual loosing of the chains of
Calvinism. They are one to-day in proclaiming
the simple religion of Jesus.
Our records bear early witness to the intimate
relations between the two churches. Frequent were
the days of thanksgiving and humiliation jointly
observed. One of the most significant and inter
esting of the special days observed by the churches

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 67
of Boston and neighborhood was that set apart in
December, 1659, "on y'= behalf of o' native Cuntry
they being at this time in such an unsettled way of
government being w*out p'tector & w*out parla-
ment only y^ power remaining in y' army & they
alsoe being devided." *
But for one reason above all others the Dor
chester church claims a share in your history : we
gave you the Mathers. Six of them, perhaps more,
have preached in your church, three of whom (I
might almost say four) were your settled ministers.
Richard Mather, the founder of the famous family,
was minister of the First Church and Parish in
Dorchester from 1636 to 1669. Of his labors in
his parish and in the colony I need not here speak.
Distinguished as he was in his day and generation,
it was his happy fate to give to posterity, and
especially to this church, sons, and, through them,
grandsons to shed even greater lustre on the name.
As the quaint inscription upon his head-stone in
the Old Dorchester Burying-ground reads : —
Diuinely Rich & Learned Richard Mather
Sons like Him Prophets Great Reioiced this Father.
Three of Richard's sons are associated with your
church, Samuel, the oldest, was the first minister
of this church. Though not actually settled, and
so not appearing in the list, he was yet the first
minister called to the pastorate of The Second
Church, and, as a matter of fact, served most ac
ceptably as the minister for several months, until
his return to England.
* Records of the First Church at Dorchester, p. 32.

68 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
Another son, Eleazar, is in the Dorchester rec
ords thus distinguished in a note by the scribe:
" Preached at Boston North," that being one of the
popular titles of The Second Church. We know,
however, that he was settled over the church at
Northampton, its first minister, so that his services
here must have been only occasional. There is a
melancholy interest connected with Eleazar Mather
in that he was the father of the hapless Mrs.
Williams, of Deerfield, killed by the Indians.
The sixth son of Richard Mather, Dorchester
born and bred, was Increase Mather. In the
annals of the Protestant ministry there are few
more illustrious names. For over half a century
minister of this church, for sixteen years President
of Harvard College, the first to receive its honor
ary degree of Doctor of Divinity, Increase Mather
was in his day perhaps the chief citizen of Boston,
and the leading spirit in New England.
Three years before he became your settled Min
ister, he supplied on alternate Sundays for one
winter the pulpit of this church ^.nd his father's
church in Dorchester. A very special interest
Dorchester had in him, therefore. Under date of
March 22, 1664, the following entry was made in
our Dorchester church records. Let me read it
from the precious volume itself, which our senior
deacon with many warnings and much misgiving
has allowed me to bring here : -^
" The day above said ther was a letter read sent
to y= Church from y' last gathered Church at Bos-

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 69
ton wherin was manifested & declared ther purpos
for to p'ceed to ordaine M' Increase Mather to y=
office of a teacher unto that Church, alsoe ther
desier is y* y'= Church of dorchester would send
some messengers for to assist & be p'sent at that
work." *
Of Cotton Mather, the most famous member of
the family, and of Samuel, your ministers, time
does not allow me to speak ; nor, indeed, was their
connection with Dorchester such as to give me
special reason for so doing. I think, however, I
have made out my case, showing that through the
transplanting of members, the unbroken spiritual
fellowship of two hundred and fifty years, and in
the gift of the Mathers, we of the Dorchester First
Church and Parish have a special right to rejoice
with you, and reason for a special interest in your
historic retrospect.
One word in .conclusion. The Puritan Church
produced God-fearing men of the highest character.
They, in turn, gave to the church of God their
supreme devotion. If the church producing the
men and the men serving the church had great
faults, it was simply because their pattern was
great. I, for one, should like to see the spirit of Puri
tanism rise phoenix-like from the ashes of history.
Better intolerance than indifference. Superstition
were a lesser evil than a negative liberalism. Other-
worldliness is at any rate nobler than worldliness.
But the spirit of Puritanism is not involved in
* Manuscript Records, p. 59.

70 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
its faults. I see in it religious reverence, personal
dignity, and " militant sincerity." Its essence is
embodied in the lines with which I close, — an ode
written by a former member of the Dorchester
church. Thou living Truth and vital Power !
We cling unto thy changeless breast.
The phantoms of a mortal hour.
And find immortal life and rest.
Our fathers spoke their thought of Thee
In words austere, with lips aglow.
And told in prayer, on bended knee.
The mystic tale of human woe.
We, children of a later hour.
Seek in soft speech and gentler tongue
To veil the splendor of thy power.
And do thy brooding love no wrong.
Our fathers caught with straining ear
The echoes of the Sinai storm ;
And we a rarer music hear, —
The worship of the Life new-born.
But guard us, O thou living Lord,
If, lost our silken lines among.
We miss the high, heroic chord
That through their manly accents rung.
Shone on their brows the fervid beam
Of truth, in human symbols given ;
Oh, guard us, lest earth's tender sheen
Shut off that grander light of heaven.
Eliza Thayer Clapp.

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETPI ANNIVERSARY 7 1

ADDRESS.
BY REV. JAMES DE NORMANDIE, D.D.,
Minister of the First Church in Roxbury, 1 63 1 .
A MONG my books is a small volume printed in
¦*¦ ^ London in 1639, in which it is stated that
Boston is a pleasantly situated town about two miles
north-east of Rocksborough ; and of Rocksborough
much is said of its beauty and richness, its fine
houses, herds of cattle, great orchards, impaled corn
fields, and a beautiful stream flowing through the
town. That is Stony Brook, which sometimes has
flowed altogether too much.
When we recall that this was only nine years
after the first settlements, we see how rapid the
growth was in spite of all the difficulties which
beset the colonists in clearing the forests, in severe
winters, and from hostile natives.
Now the general features in the doctrines, modes
of worship, social customs, and laws in these early
churches here represented were much the same.
There was the same solemn, strict, and universal ob
servance of the Sabbath. There was the same
interest in the pulpit and the pews in long sermons
and prayers, the same sense of judgment for every
calamity and of providence for every success.
In all the enterprises, dangers, privations, and
promises of building up a new country, the church
of the Puritans was a most conspicuous feature.
The covenant was no unmeaning form, — to walk

72 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
together by the grace of God, and to watch over one
another for good. The spiritual watchfulness in
these early churches knew no lapse. No papal in
quisition was ever keener than the Puritan's search
for heresy or for sin, but a tender love and sym
pathy went with it. The atmosphere of every
home was well known, and every lapsing brother
or sister was brought to the open confessional or
banished the settlement. On the Rockesburgh
Hill, hard by the first little rough meeting-house,
about 20 x 30 and 1 2 feet high, stood the stocks,
guardian of peace and terror of evil-doers, where
the offender had to stand in full view of the elect.
The Church Records make strange reading to us ;
but there was no hesitation in the Minister about
putting down in black and white the praises or the
transgressions of his flock. But we see the sins
make a small part of the volumes. Here comes out
the stern hope of the church about erring brethren :
" And we have come to hope that the full proceed
ing of discipline will doe more good than theire sin
hath hurt." And here is their watchfulness over
the morals of trade : " The wife of William Webb,
— she followed baking — & through her covetuous
mind she made light waight, after many admoni-
shions flatly denying that after she had weighed
her dough, she never nimed off bitts from each
loaf, which yet four witnesses testified to be a com
mon, if not a practis, for all which grosse sins she
was excommunicated. But afterwards she was
reconciled to the church, lived Xianly, and dyed
comfortably."

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 73
While in such records and religious experiences
these churches were, I take it, much the same, the
First Church in Rockesburgh was distinguished
from the others apparently by two interests. Its
care for the young was most marked. Here, as far
as any records can be found, was the first Sunday-
school in the New World ; but its work is hardly
that which would commend itself to the members
of our Young People's Religious Union.
In the first church book, under date of lo month,
6, 1674, it is written, "This day we restored our
primitive practice [showing it had been an earlier
custom] for the training up our youth, — first,
our male youth, in fitting season stay every Sab
bath after the evening exercise in the Public meet
ing-house, where the elders will examine their
remembrance that day [of the sermon] any fit
poynt of Catechise. Secondly, that our female
youth should meet in one place, where the elders
may examine them of their remembrance yesterday,
& about Catechise, or what else may be con
venient." Then Eliot was beset to do something for the
education of the young. It was a care never out of
his mind. At one of the meetings of all the min
isters of this neighborhood he exclaimed with great
fervor : " Lord, for schools everywhere among us.
That our schools may flourish. That every mem
ber of this assembly may go home and procure a
good school to be encouraged in the town where he
lives. That before we die we may be so happy as
to see a good school encouraged in every plantation
of the country."

74 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
It was out of this interest that the old Roxbury
Latin School was established under the care of the
First Church, after the type of those schools then
so famous in England, and called "grammar
schools," because grammar was the key of lan
guage, — that mysterious power by which soul
speaks to soul. Cotton Mather says of the issue of
this school that Roxbury has afforded more scholars
first for the college and then for the public than
any town of its bigness, or, if I mistake not, of
twice its bigness, in all New England. And still
to-day, after two hundred and fifty years, it remains
unique and distinguished as one of the best fitting
schools for our neighboring university.
The other feature of the First Church was the
missionary work of the apostle Eliot among the
Indians. So far as I can recall, the other churches
here represented had no interest whatever in this
work. I am not sure that any word can be found
in their early history referring to it.
And so at a later period, when the anti-slavery
times came, there is but one of these same churches
which has a public word to say about that, — the
courageous and godly ministry of Nathaniel Hall, of
the First Church in Dorchester.
There can be little question that the Puritans as
a class cared nothing about the Indians. They
believed they were the children of the Devil.
They had no confidence that the Indians could be
civilized or converted, and very early they had a
proverb that the only good Indian was a dead
Indian. And it is true that a large part of the

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 75
American people still feels so toward the remnants
of the race lingering along the fringe of our West
ern civilization. Just as the race is about to disap
pear, the awakened heart of the nation begins to
take a better attitude.
But Eliot believed the Indians were the lost
tribes of Israel, and that in their language he would
find some traces of the Hebrew, which he firmly
believed was the language of heaven, in which by
God's own voice the Old Testament had been
given to men, and which would be forever the lan
guage of the redeemed. So he began that wonder
ful missionary life, as all true missionary work be
gins, in the love of humanity; and no human
labors were ever more earnest, devoted, and self-
sacrificing. In his home, at the foot of the hill on which the
church stands, — the same site still marked by the
most commanding old Puritan House of God in
New England, — he had an evening school for the
Indians ; and during the week, or when he could
have a spare Sunday for longer journeys, wherever
the Indians could be gathered in wigwams, under
spreading trees, down along the Cape, all through
Western Massachusetts, and up to the borders of
New Hampshire, there Eliot was to be found.
No difficulties too great. No thought of self came
to the surface. Every personal comfort was sur
rendered, every sacrifice was gladly borne. And
then he would come back, and through the long
night, by his tallow candle, give himself to the
translation of the Scriptures into their language

76 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
with a diligence and love which shames almost
all records of scholarship.
His missionary zeal was not less than Saint
Paul's, his charity as sweet and abundant as Saint
Francis of Assisi, and his whole life a testimony
that the call to saintliness has not ceased and the
possibility of it has not died out. The First Church
of Roxbury has great reason to be proud of his
ministry and to cherish his memory; and it still
tries to carry on his work of converting the sur
rounding and unchurched heathen.
Nearly twenty years have passed since it cele
brated the anniversary which gathers you together
here this evening. We rejoice in your record as
in our own, — that you, as we, were led into that
movement which under Channing came to some
of our churches with a new and richer spiritual life.
It is an interesting fact in the history of religion
that the flourishing condition of one church is only
a help to all others ; and, when the spiritual life of
one languishes, its baneful influence is felt in a
weakening will. We bear our best greetings to
you in grateful memories of all the life of this
church has meant to the community for two hun
dred and fifty years, and join our prayers with yours
for only increasing Christian activities and useful
ness for centuries without end.
These churches have a noble history to encour
age them ; and now, looking not to the past, but to
the future, the serious question is. What shall we
do to increase our mission ? The real value of a
church is not in its past, but in its zeal and abihty

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 77
to minister to the religious needs of to-day. We
are not like the fathers by wearing the gown and
bands, or by subscribing merely to their doctrines,
but by their zeal for the truth, by their love for
humanity, and by a deeper faith in those few great
spiritual realities which have ever been and must
ever be the refuge and support of the human soul.

ADDRESS.
BY REV. GEORGE A. GORDON, D.D.,
Minister of the Third Church in Boston.
"XX/HEN in a large family — a family of five — a
lovely sister has arrived at the interesting
age of eighteen, it is in order for the older sisters to
bid her welcome to the great world of womanhood ;
and they do so by telling her what very great
things are before her, and for what great things she
is indebted to them. Afterward, the younger sister
comes, shy, lonesome, green in her immaturity, and
stammers out her welcome.
This church has reached an interesting period
in its existence, and its older sisters have bidden
her welcome ; and I think they have reminded
her of her debt to them. And now it is my turn
to tell you how much love and sympathy and
hearty congratulation there are in the heart of the
Third Church, your younger sister, for you of the
Second Church.
There are a great many things that are uncertain

78 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
in human affairs and in church affairs, but there
is one thing pretty certain ; and that is that the
record of Dr. Sewall of fifty-six years as pastor of
the Third Church will not be broken by the pres
ent incumbent, and I should say with nearly the
same certainty that the record of Increase Mather
of sixty-two years as incumbent of this pulpit will
not be broken by Mr. Van Ness. I am sorry for
this, for I think that you are far better off under
his ministry than you would be under that famous
and rather grim old man.
The thing that lies in my heart to say to-night
is a word of congratulation over the treasure of
your two hundred and fifty years of history. It is
a treasure, taken as a whole, — an inexpressibly pre
cious treasure. I am not going to repeat the
names of the old gentlemen. Many of them were
tyrannical, and, it seems to me, not very good, on
the whole ; but the period covered by your life as an
ecclesiastical organization is a great period. It is
full, as I have said, of precious treasures; and I
wish to indicate two or three lines along which that
treasure may come mightily to the support of your
life here to-day.
In the first place, your history is wisdom. Men
with no history are fools, and so with churches.
There were brave men before the days of Aga
memnon, and there were thinkers before the preach
ers of to-day arrived, believers in God, seers into
the heart of reality, devout men, great-hearted lov
ers of their kind ; and the sense that the past has
seen the things that you have seen and grasped

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 79
them and wielded them for the benefit of mankind,
is, I think, of inexpressible value in sobering the
intelligence and enlarging the mind of the progres
sive people of to-day.
And there is a peace about that Puritan life,
owing to the depth of its faith and the greatness
of the truth in which it dealt, which, I think, all
our churches should remember. The Puritan spoke
of God and divine sovereignty and divine decrees
and eternal righteousness and heaven and hell,
the great issues of the moral battle in this world.
The people were held in the grasp of great truths,
and this was the foundation of their peace. You
go out to sea in a yacht, and it is all very well when
the weather is fine ; but let a north-east storm spring
up, and the jumpings and the tossings of your
yacht will make those on board very uncomfortable ;
whereas, if you are on a great Atlantic liner in that
very storm, you can feel under you a steady keel.
Our people to-day are going through life on little
bits of yachts, cat-boats even ; and in consequence
there is hurry and bluster and fume and fury in their
lives. What they want is the great elemental
truths that the Puritan spoke and believed, — God,
as we may apprehend him to-day, sovereignty as we
may apprehend it to-day, universal righteousness,^
heaven, hell, all the great things that still surround
us and constitute our moral and spiritual environ
ment, and that appeal to our life as they did to the
old Puritan. We must remember that in many
respects what James Russell Lowell said is true,
when we think of the elevation of the Puritan ideal

8o THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
and the strenuousness of the Puritan devotion to
his ideal measured against ours : — " We are scarce
our fathers' shadows cast at noon."
Then there is what I call the sentiment of his
tory, which becomes life, profound, tender, true, in
fluential, victorious, in the movements of to-day.
You take this Bible. Every morning that your
pastor reads the lesson from it, the accent of eight
generations of serious and high-minded men and
women is there. You sing the hymns that have
been sung by a great body of suffering, brave,
rejoicing people through all these years. Your
worship, your faith, your church organization, are
steeped through and through with humanity. To
open your imagination to this is to allow the high,
tender, human soul of history to enrich and sweeten
and gladden your life. When the Bible says, O
God, our fathers' God, does it not add something
to our faith in God ? Does not God take on hue
and color and power and majesty, as he comes
through the atmosphere of our great human parent
age, just as the sun is glorified as it comes up
through the rich morning atmosphere or as it goes
from us through the gates of evening ? It is some
thing to have God : it is something more to have
our fathers' God and our mothers' God, — God
glorified through the humanity of two hundred and
fifty years. It is a mighty possession.
I think often of the first three churches of Bos
ton, — The First Church, The Second Church, and
The Third Church. They constitute an ecclesiasti
cal aristocracy. I think of them as three ocean

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 8 1
liners going from the same port. The First
Church started a little ahead, taking a course of its
own. The Second Church started next, and took a
course of its own. The Third Church sailed last
of the three, in rather rough water, and took a
course of its own. Each has been sailing on its own
course, through sunshine and through storm,
through pleasant weather and through severe weath
er, ever since ; and, as they get toward mid-ocean,
perhaps, they are out of sight of each other. They
have been often out of sight of each other, and prob
ably an accurate historic chart would show how far
their courses had been apart and how little they had
seen of each other for the last century. But even
then the same ocean is under the keels of all three,
and the same sky with its everlasting guiding lights
is over all three ; and the heart of each trusts the
deep below and the deep above. And may we not
hope that as they converge in their courses toward
the same port, — and they are bound for the same
port, — they will come more and more within
sight of each other again? And is not this meet
ing a sort of flag thrown out to show that they
are beginning to sight each other again, that their
courses are really converging ? Let us hope that for
the remainder of the voyage the water may be good,
and the health of the passengers good, the wisdom of
the captains good, everything good. And, when we
come to the close of this dispensation, may we touch
some great, eternal reality, not unfittingly symbolized
by the port of peace, where the three stately liners
shall anchor side by side. God bless you, men and

82 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
women of The Second Church in Boston. God
bless your leader and those he leads. And take, I
beg you, into your hearts the large, thankful, con
gratulatory, loving greeting of your younger sister
and neighbor. The Third Church of Boston.

THE WORK OF WOMEN.

THE morning of Monday, November 20, was allotted
to the Second Church Branch of the Women's
National Alliance, and the following programme was fol
lowed : —
©tjgan Foluntatg.
f^gmn 133, Colchester, 1685.
SlSeltotne bg t|)e ^reatbent  Mrs. E. H. Brigham
Prager  Rev. Thomas Van Ness
l^gntn 166, Coronation, 1793.
Subject : What Women have done, in the United States, since
the Founding of The Second Church in Boston :
En 3Ltteratare  Mrs. Mary P. Wells Smith
En lEtutiation  ' . Mrs. Emily A. Fifield
Solo, selected  Mrs. W. H. Prior
In pi)ilantl)ropg  Mrs. Kate Gannett Wells
In Sj^eologg  Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer
J^gmn 21, Bethany.
iSeneitrtion  Rev. Edward A. Horton
At the close of the exercises an informal reception
was held in the church parlor, to which all present were
cordially invited.

WHAT WOMEN HAVE DONE IN LIT
ERATURE IN THE UNITED STATES
SINCE 1649. BY MARY P. WELLS SMITH.
'"p^HE Second Church of Boston was founded in
-'¦ 1649. Girls were not admitted to the public
schools of Boston until 1 789, one hundred and forty
years later, when they were permitted to go half the
year, in summer only. Writing was not considered
a necessary accomplishment for "females," even in
the early part of this century. Not one woman in
a dozen could write her name at the Revolutionary
period. The Puritan estimate of literary women is
illustrated by the account in John Winthrop's His
tory of New England of Mr. Hopkins, "Governor
of Hartford upon the Connecticut," who brought to
Boston his wife, "a godly young woman and of
special parts," who had lost her reason, Winthrop
says, "by occasion of giving herself wholly to read
ing and writing." " If," he adds, " she had attended
to her household affairs, and such things as belong
to women, and not gone out of her way and calling
to meddle in such things as are proper for men,
whose minds are stronger, she had kept her wits,
and might have improved them usefully and honor
ably in the place God had set her."
The love-letters of Margaret Winthrop to her hus-

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 85
band, the vivid narrative of her captivity by Mrs.
Mary Rowlandson, the lively account of her perilous
journey from Boston to New York by the sharp
quill of Madam Sarah Knight, and other writings
which have been preserved, show that our Puritan
foremothers were far from destitute of native ca
pacity. But overpowering indeed must have been
the literary impulse in a woman's soul impelling
her to authorship under the prevailing adverse
conditions. The marvel is, not that the first cen
tury of our period shows so few authoresses, but
that it records any. Yet the first person to publish
a volume of verse in New England was a woman,
Mistress Anne Bradstreet, the pioneer American
authoress. Married at sixteen and the mother of
eight children, Mrs. Bradstreet's days could hardly
have been those of literary leisure. But her poems,
published in London in 1650 under the title "The
Tenth Muse lately sprung up in America, by a
Gentlewoman in those Parts," compare favorably
with others of her time. She prefaced them with
these apologetic lines : —
" I am obnoxious to each carping tongue,
Who says my hand a needle better fits.
A Poet's pen all scorn I should thus wrong.
For such despite they cast on Female wits.
If what I do prove well, it won't advance.
They'll say it's stolen, or else it was by chance."
She closes with,
" Men can do best, and women know it well.
Pre-eminence in all and each is yours,
Yet grant some small acknowledgment of ours."

86 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
Either her seemly humility or her social position
disarmed criticism, for Cotton Mather graciously
said that her poems " afforded a grateful entertain
ment unto the ingenious" ; and Nathaniel Ward, in
his poetical preface to the posthumous volume of
her poems, makes Apollo exclaim, on being pre
sented by Minerva with Mrs. Bradstreet's book : —
" I muse whither at length these girls will go.
It half revives my chill, frost-bitten blood.
To see a woman once do aught that's good ;
And, ehode by Chaucer's boots and Homer's furs.
Let men look to't lest women wear the spurs.''
The time distracted from Mrs. Bradstreet's lit
erary labors by her eight children cannot be deemed
lost, when we know that their descendants include
such illustrious names as William Ellery Channing,
Joseph S. Buckminster, Richard H. Dana, and
Oliver Wendell Holmes ; and we can well believe
that the Rev. John Norton, in his " Dirge for the
Tenth Muse," did not exaggerate when he wrote
of her, —
" Her breast was a brave palace, a Broad-street
Where all heroic thoughts did meet.
Where nature such a tenement had ta'en.
That other souls, to hers, dwelt in a lane."
Jane Turrell, daughter of the Rev. Benjamin Col-
man, wrote verse, collected after her early death at
twenty-seven by her husband in a volume called
" Memoirs of the Life and Death of the Pious and
Ingenious Mistress Jane Turrell." Elizabeth Fer
guson, of Philadelphia in 1756, when seventeen

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 87
years old, translated the whole of " Telemaque "
into blank verse, as a consolation under a disap
pointment in love. It was never published, was
perhaps discreetly "hushed up" among her friends.
A literary phenomenon difficult to explain was
Phillis Wheatley, a negro slave brought from Africa
when eight years old, and sold in the Boston slave
market. A volume of her verse published in 1773
has been pronounced " a very respectable echo of
Pope." Elizabeth Singer Rowe was also an es
teemed poetess of this generation, favorably alluded
to by Sewall as " Philomela." Her name seems
to close the list of pre-Revolutionary authoresses,
unless we accept the pleasant tradition which
makes Mistress Vergoose the immortal benefactress
of childhood.
Women shared in the general awakening of the
American intellect born of the Revolution. The
first woman in this country to devote herself to
a literary life was Hannah Adams. Obtaining her
education alone, chiefly from reading books in her
father's shop, she brought out in 1784 her first
book, " Views of Religious Opinions," followed by
a History of New England, History of the Jews,
etc. She ranks with Belknap and Abiel Holmes
as a leading historical writer of the period. We
realize the deprivation suffered by a woman of
literary tastes in her time, when told that all her
life Hannah Adams looked eagerly forward to
Heaven as a place where her thirst for knowledge
might be gratified.
Abigail Adams little dreamed of ranking among

88 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
the "black swans," as she says literary women are
considered, though she quotes with approval a
"generous writer," who says, "To woman's natural
perfections add but the perfection of acquired
learning, what polite and charming creatures would
they prove ! " Her letters reveal a woman of ster
ling ability, and are invaluable as a domestic pict
ure of the times, an inner history of the Revolution
possible only to the pen of a bright woman. Her
friend Mrs. Mercy Warren, by whose Plymouth
fireside many political plans originated, when sev
enty-seven years old, wrote the first history of the
Revolution, especially important as the work of a
contemporary. The first novels written in America were by
women. Mrs. Susanna Rawson wrote "Charlotte
Temple," a melancholy tale, wet by the tears of
countless readers. Mrs. Rawson also felt obliged
to appease male critics with the usual servile apolo
gies, in these lines : —
" Know you not that woman's proper sphere
Is the domestic walk ? To interfere
With politics, divinity, or law
As much-deserved ridicule would draw
On woman as the learned, grave divine
Cooking the soup on which he means to dine.
Or formal judge, the winders on his knee.
Preparing silk to work embroidery."
Mrs. Tabitha Tenney wrote " Female Quixotism ;
or. Extravagant Adventures of Dorcasina Sheldon,"
a satire on the romanticism then prevalent among
young women, which had great vogue. It must

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 89
be remembered that fiction had its birth in Eng
land but little prior to this time, with Richard
son's " Pamela." Another early novel was " Eliza
Wharton," by Hannah W. Foster. In it, as the
taste of the time demanded, the " tear of sensibil
ity " oft shone in the eye of the hero, as he " with
ardor pressed to his lips" the hand of the ever-
blushing heroine. To this era belongs also Sarah
Morton, styled by her friend Robert Treat Paine
" the American Sappho."
The fruits of the admission of girls to the public
schools were soon manifest. In the last decade of
the eighteenth century were born Eliza Leslie,
Maria Brooks, or " Maria del Occidente," as
Southey named her, Caroline Oilman, Sarah J.
Hale, Emma Willard, Hannah F. Gould, Lydia H.
Sigourney, and Catharine Sedgwick. With these
honored names feminine authorship in America
fairly begins. Eliza Leslie was apparently the pi
oneer writer for children, with her stories " For
Emma," " For Adelaide," etc. She wrote bright
satiric sketches for Grahams and Godey s, those
popular precursors of the modern magazine swarm,
and edited " The Gift," the best among the annuals
then so fashionable. She also wrote "The Be
havior Book," a work so replete with sound sense
that young girls might still learn things worth
knowing from its perusal, even if they found some
of its teachings slightly antiquated, as where Miss
Leslie advises young ladies, when walking with
their superiors, "always to go a little behind."
Many a noble woman was trained on the " Be-

90 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
havior Book." Caroline Oilman wrote much and
acceptably in the Rose, a magazine established
and edited by her in Charleston, to which she later
added the Rosebud, one of the first weekly ju
venile papers in the country. Sarah J. Hale's un
flagging industry made her the prototype of the
modern literary worker. She edited Godey s
Ladies' Book, wrote tales, poems, and books, and
published " The Woman's Record " and " Sketches
of all Distinguished Women from the Beginning till
A.D. 1850," two books indicating that the apolo
getic period for literary women was passing.
Emma Willard found time from her educational
labors to write books of travel, text-books, and
poems, including one not yet forgotten, " Rocked
in the cradle of the deep." We can but think
fondly of Hannah Gould's natural, graceful poems,
so dear to childhood.
The two leading names of this period, however,
for years ranking first among American author
esses, were those of Miss Sedgwick, and Mrs. Sig
ourney, " the American Hemans," as it was the
fashion to call her. Mrs. Sigourney published fifty
volumes. Her poems seldom appeal to modern
taste ; and we are reminded in perusing them of
Mrs. Dodge's saying, that " Pegasus generally feels
inclined to pace towards a graveyard the moment
he feels a side-saddle on his back." But a melan
choly sentimentality was the literary fashion of her
time. Every one wrote pensive odes "To Tears,"
" To Memory," " To Melancholy," " To Twilight."
J. G. Percival wrote an ode of eighty-two lines,

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 9 1
in one of the annuals " To Consumption," begin
ning, "There is a sweetness in woman's decay."
Mrs. Sigourney's poems had immense popularity,
and their pure, devout spirit helped many souls. In
time-embrowned " Friendship's Offerings," it is her
poems that we oftenest find scored by the faded
pencil-marks of long since vanished hands.
It is unnecessary to mention " The Linwoods "
and the other well-known works of Miss Sedgwick,
eminently stories with a purpose. She aimed di
rectly to help and improve the world; and her
cheerful, sensible tales exerted a wide and always
wholesome influence. Two literary phenomena of
the early century were the Davidson sisters, whose
juvenile efforts were published, and even won
Southey's praise. There is a hectic flush on the
poor little verses, and we are not surprised that the
young poetesses laid down their lyres forever at the
ages of sixteen and fourteen. Other authoresses
born early in the century were Caroline Lee Hentz ;
Ann S. Stephens, a noted magazine writer and
editor; Frances Sargent Osgood; Ellen Sturgis
Hooper, who wrote for the Dial " I slept, and
dreamed that life was beauty " ; Louisa J. Hall, who
wrote " Down hill the path of age ? Oh, no " ; Amelia
Welby; Emily Judson, better known as "Fanny
Forrester " ; Mrs. Parton, or " Fanny Fern," whose
pungent squibs originated a wave of vegetable
pseudonyms ; Mrs. Whitcher, the inimitable " Widow
Bedott " ; the voluminous Mrs. Southworth ; Louisa

92 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
Tuthill; Elizabeth Ellet, author of "American
Women in the Revolution " ; Delia Bacon, made
famous by the Baconian - Shakspere controversy;
Caroline M. Kirkland, whose keenly observant
tales of Western life are still enjoyable for native
humor and as pictures of what already seems an in
credible past, the West, of which Dickens's " Ameri
can Notes " and Mrs. Trollope's diatribe were
hardly caricatures ; and Susan Warner, author of
those immensely popular tales, " The Wide, Wide
World " and " Queechy." We mark a notable
change of ideas in reading Miss Welby's poem,
" The Old Maid." After our tenderest sympathies
have been roused for this unfortunate, who has
outlived all making life worth while, it is a shock
to the modern mind to read, " It is her thirtieth
birthday." In 1802 was born a woman who left an impress
on the world, — Lydia Maria Child, a notable writer
as well as a woman of delightful personality.
" What a wealth would it bring to the narrow and sour.
Could they be as a Child but for one little hour ! "
Passing briefly by her excellent stories, " Hobo-
mok," " The Rebels," in which appeared the famous
speech of James Otis, often quoted as by Otis him
self, " Philothea," and the rest, we note that again
was a woman a pioneer. Mrs. Child wrote the first
book against slavery in this country, her " Appeal
for that Class of Americans called Africans." Hig
ginson says that the perusal of this "wonderfully
clear, convincing book," with Miss Martineau's

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 93
kindred work, made him an Abolitionist. Undis
mayed by the decline in literary prestige and profit
caused by this publication, Mrs. Child moved to
New York in 1 841, to edit with her husband the
National Anti-slavery Standard. Incidentally, she
wrote her " Letters from New York." She was a
leader in juvenile literature, not only in her books
for children, but in her popular Juvenile Miscel
lany. Her useful life extended late into the
century, and she was occupied in its last years by
compiling " Looking towards Sunset."
Another woman whose helpful life nearly covered
the century was Elizabeth P. Peabody, to whose
writings we chiefly owe the introduction of the
Kindergarten System in our country, and to whose
" Recollections " we are indebted for a closer view
of Channing. With George Ripley she was the
business manager of the Dial.
To the early part of the century also belongs the
great name among American literary women, that
of Margaret Fuller D'Ossoli. Born when feminine
scholars were almost unknown, her education was
the product, not of the inadequate schools of her
time, but of arduous solitary labor, impelled by an
innate thirst to know. She was ranked as equal
friend and co-laborer by Emerson and the other in
tellectual leaders. She wrote editorials and literary
reviews, as yet unsurpassed, for the Tribune under
Greeley, helped introduce the study of German
literature in the country, was the first editor of the
Dial, and a leader in the Transcendental move
ment, that glorious New England renaissance, the

94 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
revival of the life of the spirit. Her Boston con
versations may safely be pronounced the remote
beginning of the woman's club movement. In
writing of these proposed conversations to Mrs.
Ripley, she said, —
"The advantages of a weekly meeting for conver
sation might be great enough to repay attendance
if they only supplied a point of union to well-edu
cated and thinking women in a city which, with
great pretensions to mental refinement, boasts at
present nothing of the kind, and where I have heard
many of mature age wish for some such place of
stimulus and cheer."
These conversations, on such topics as the His
tory of Religions, the Fine Arts, the Influence of
Women, Ethics, Education, etc., opened a new
world to women. To know the literary world of
Miss Fuller's time, turn over the pages of the New
York Mirror, edited by N. P. Willis, and note the
nauseating strain of compliment to women, the
doubtless well-meant but almost insulting tone of
condescending patronage. " To our fair and ever-
gentle countrywomen is mainly to be attributed the
success of the Mirror," purrs the editor. " The
ladies are all constancy and devotion. We would
rather cater for the edification of one fair and gentle
spirit than for a host of the bearded and coated
tribe." He says of Mrs. Oilman's Southern Rose,
" It unfolds its blushing and graceful buds in
Charleston." With infinite contempt Margaret
Fuller tossed behind her these meaningless compli
ments, demanding that a woman's work be judged

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 95
purely on its merit as work. The writings she left
are no measure of her literary rank. What she was,
not what she wrote, has made her name a stimulus
and inspiration to American women.
A sign of the times was the Lowell Offering
published by the factory girls of Lowell, originating
in Lucy Larcom's home, her first poems appearing
in it. A collection from its pages, published in
London in 1849, was well named "Mind among
the Spindles." Women's minds in America were
indeed awakening, not only among the spindles,
but behind the needle and the broom.
There is still with us one who can say of the
incredible changes our century has brought in
woman's opportunities, " All of it I saw, part of it I
was," — Julia Ward Howe. As lecturer, as edi
tor with Dr. Howe of the Commonwealth, as a
writer, she has borne noble part in uplifting, not
only her sex, but humanity. It was her high privi
lege to voice the patriotism of a nation in her
glorious " Battle Hymn of the Republic." Now,
" eighty years young," her recent delightful volume
of " Reminiscences " shows unabated mental force.
Her contemporary, Harriet Beecher Stowe, was
inspired to write the powerful story " Uncle Tom's
Cabin," which wrought so mightily for the freedom
of a race, which, translated into all languages, dram
atized in many forms, is still, like John Brown's
soul, " marching on," pleading for the down-trodden.
A little later were born such well-known writers
as Maria Lowell, Caroline Cheseborough, Caroline
A. Mason, Ednah D. Cheney, Elizabeth Stoddard,

96 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney, Mrs. Lippincott, or " Grace
Greenwood," Alice and Phoebe Cary, Lucretia P.
Hale, Caroline H. DaU, Lucy Larcom, Rose Terry
Cooke, Margaret Preston, Julia Dorr. Some of
these writers are still working on with that un
diminished mental power which is the surest wit
ness of the spirit's unending life.
By the time we reach the thirties, the list swells
perceptibly ; and we have such familiar names as
Helen Hunt Jackson, Celia Thaxter, Charlotte
Fiske Bates, Mrs. Piatt, Emily Dickinson, Harriet
McEwen Kimball, Edna Dean Proctor, Louise
Chandler Moulton, Marion Harland, Augusta
Evans, Mary L. Booth, Margaret Sangster, Mary
Mapes Dodge, Helen Campbell, Mrs. Croly, or
"Jennie June," Rebecca Harding Davis, Jane G.
Austin, Amelia Barr, " Gail Hamilton," - Olive
Thorne Miller, Kate Sanborn, Kate Field, Nancy
Priest, author of "Over the River," Elizabeth
Prentiss, author of "Stepping Heavenward,"
Amanda Douglas, Harriet Prescott Spofford,
Mrs. Annie Fields, Katherine Wormeley, Eliza
beth Cary Agassiz. Now, too, was born Louisa M.
Alcott, the story of whose brave life struggle, as
told by Mrs. Cheney, has inspired many young
women. She revolutionized juvenile literature, and
won that sweetest fame, the faithful love of child
hearts. Said a little girl in Colorado lately, " When
I go to heaven, after I have found the family, I
shall hunt up Miss Alcott."
It is instructive to note, with each added decade,
how surely woman's intellectual achievement has

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 97
kept pace with her educational opportunities, and
how the ranks of writers swell as we go on. Pre
cisely half a century ago, in 1850, was held the
first Woman's Rights Convention, and that agita
tion begun which even its opponents must admit
has immeasurably changed for the better the
position of women. At this time, too, girls first
received a high-school education. It is not strange
that in this last half-century the list of successful
writers has grown, until it is impossible even to
mention the names of those upon whose work we
should delight to dwell, did time permit. Among
such names readily occurring to us are Elizabeth
Stuart Phelps Ward, Constance Fenimore Wool-
son, Maria Pool, Miss Woolsey, Mrs. Burnett,
Mary Hallock Foote, Mary H. Catherwood, Mrs.
Holley, or "Josiah Allen's Wife," Mrs. Custer,
Mrs. John and Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer,
Mrs. Burton Harrison, Anna C. Brackett, Sarah
K. Bolton, Harriet W. Preston, Emma Lazarus,
Alice Williams Brotherton, Sarah O. Jewett, Mary
Wilkins, Alice Brown, Kate Douglas Wiggin,
Edith M. Thomas, Agnes Repplier, Margaret
Deland, Miss Murfree, Laura S. Richards and
Maud Howe Elliott, Alice Morse Earle, Anne H.
Wharton, Sarah Mac Lean Pratt, Anna Bowman
Dodd, Elizabeth W. Latimer, Katharine Lee
Bates, Eliza Orne White, Clara Erskine Clement,
" Eleanor Putnam," the Goodale sisters, Ruth Mc-
Enery Stuart, Lillian Whiting, Kate Tannatt
Woods, Louise I. Guiney, Alice Stone BlackweU,
Helen M. Winslow, Charlotte Perkins Stetson,

98 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
Grace Ellery Channing, Molly Elliot Seawell,.
Mary Johnston. The list of women who are doing
good literary work in various lines extends in
definitely. Colleges have so recently been opened to women
that the fruits of university education are not yet
garnered ; but in every magazine and publisher's
list the names of new and hitherto unknown au
thoresses greet us, attached to work that would
once have assured the writer's fame. One is
sometimes tempted to look wistfully back to Han
nah More's time, when Dr. Johnson and his
friends ranked literary effort by a woman with the
phenomenon of a dog walking on his hind legs!
Would the editors of the Atlantic Monthly to-day
accept " Coelebs in Search of a Wife," or the
editor of the Christian Register eagerly jump at
"Thoughts on the Manners of the Great"? It
took so little to give a woman literary repute then I
But, as Tennyson said to George Eliot, " Every
body writes so well now ! "
Women first venturing to act as reporters for
the press encountered the inevitable ridicule at
tending women pioneers in any new field of effort ;
but now many newspapers employ bright young
women on their staff, and journalism is accepted as
another activity open to women. There is great
literary activity everywhere among our women.
The phenomenal development of women's clubs
in the last quarter of the century is a sign of the
times not to be overlooked. There are now two
thousand women's clubs in the United States, di-^

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 99
vided among thirty States, bringing a degree of
intellectual culture within the range of most women,
and, through women thus aroused to intellectual
pleasures, benefiting whole communities. The fol
lowing is only one instance of such influence. But
a few years ago there was no public library in
Montgomery, Ala., and almost no private ones, this
dearth at the capital auguring even worse depriva
tion throughout the State. Now Alabama has fifty
women's clubs ; and their State Federation at Mont
gomery is sending out travelling libraries into the
obscurest nooks of the State, books eagerly received
and read. " Into almost colorless lives, barren of
any diverting interest," says a recent report, " come
these books, with a revelation of broader thinking
nobler ambition, greater worlds, and perhaps, best
of all, a harmless recreation."
In concluding this hasty review of woman's liter
ary effort from the beginning of our country's his
tory, we may ask. How much of this mass of writing
will survive the test of time ? Little, if any. But
the same is true of all writing of the period.
Happy the century that produces even one book or
poem that lives ! Yet this labor has not been lost.
The writers have, in remarkable degree, been
women of noble personaHty, helping the world in
many ways besides with their pens. Their writ
ings have been pure and good, breathing high
aspirations. Each in her way has distinctly helped
give this old, young world of ours its needed
push on and up, and every woman achieving
anything of worth has helped open the way for

lOO THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
younger workers pressing on behind. At the end
of our century women at last share full intellectual
opportunity. Their effort has at least borne this
fruit: women have achieved a standing place.
They face the twentieth century, ready to begin.

WHAT WOMEN HAVE DONE IN
EDUCATION.
BY MRS. EMILY A. FIFIELD.
¦f TT'HEN the committee invited a woman to
" ^ speak on such a mighty subject as " What
Women of the United States have done for Edu
cation during the Last Two Hundred and Fifty
Years," they could not have realized what an op
portunity it would afford to occupy the whole
morning, to the exclusion of every other speaker.
The temptation is great to do more than general
ize, so many are the delightful and interesting by
paths of history and reminiscence leading from the
central topic of education.
The regulation history of the United States up to
to-day contains little about the work of women in
any department, but we all know that they have had
a hand in affairs, all the same ; and, when the his
tory of the next century is written, both women
and education will begin with capitals.
The subject naturally divides itself into two
periods, before and after 1800. There is little of
tradition or history to tell of the first. During the

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY IGI
colonial times, women as well as men were helping
in the struggle for daily bread, and later in laying
the foundations of the republic.
Warfare with Indians, clearing wild forest lands,
the establishment of industries and constant devo
tion to material conditions, with no art and no
literature to beautify and uplift their lives, but every
thing done under the shadow of a stern theology, —
this is the story of the colonial period.
Yet the Colonial epoch is called the heroic period
of our annals ; and during these years the free church,
the free school, the town meeting, became distinctive
institutions. Some one has said, " Without the
training of such institutions, successful colonial re
sistance would have been impossible ; and, without
New England, this training would not have been."
It was the Puritan spirit which awakened the sen
timent of independence, and the pioneer work of
New England which secured that independence.
John Adams declared the five elements of New
England civilization to be " free labor, a free church,
the district school, town meeting, and training day " ;
and these, carried to all parts of our country, have
been the foundations of American education and
citizenship. In Massachusetts as early as 1647 schools had
been begun in nearly all the towns, but other States
varied ; and in New York as late as 1806 there were
only private schools, no college, no academy, and no
public schools. The teachers of the schools were
men. All of them were scholars, and most of them
had been clergymen. Yet younger children must

I02 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
all have been taught by women, as from the earliest
days we read of the dame school, already an Eng-
lish institution.
" The good dame, as she knits or sews or spins,
listens to each child in turn as he calls the letters
in their order. She tells him stories from the Bible,
and strives with moral precepts to bring him up in
the fear and admonition of the Lord."
Such was Sarah Knight, who came to Norwich,
Conn., in 1698, and moved to Boston early in the
eighteenth century. As a famous schoolmistress,
she obtained the title of Madam. She is described
as a " woman of considerable distinction." A many-
sided character, she possessed to an unusual degree
great energy and good education. She wrote poetry
and diaries, speculated in Indian lands, and at dif
ferent times, kept a tavern, managed a shop of
merchandise, and cultivated a farm. In 1705 she
opened a school for children, and under her instruc
tion Dr. Franklin and Samuel Mather secured
their first rudiments of education. She was highly
spoken of by Dr. Cotton Mather as a " woman of
good wit and pleasant humor." This same Madam
Knight in 1704 made a journey on horseback from
Boston to New York to claim some property be
longing to her husband. A perilous journey like
this, of six days, was a tremendous undertaking for
a lone woman a hundred and ninety years ago, when
even men would not start on a journey of a few miles
without asking for prayers before they set out ; and
the diary of her travels is to-day considered of im
portance and interest, as giving a picture of the times,
the manners, and the condition of the country.

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY IO3
As population scattered, women were more gen
erally employed to teach neighborhood schools for
a few weeks or months at a time. For example, in
Northfield, Mass., which in 1721 was far out on the
frontier, the first teacher was Mrs. Elizabeth Field,
the wife of the village smith. She had a class of
young children twenty-two weeks in the warm sea
son at fourpence a week. While teaching, she
made shirts for the Indians at eightpence each,
breeches for her husband's brother at a shilling and
sixpence a pair, and cared for her four young chil
dren. This is history.
But women were not formally recognized as
teachers until after the Revolution, and the educa
tion of women was very generally neglected. To
quote Mrs. Abigail Adams, one of the most highly
cultivated women of her time " at the close of
the century, female education in the best families
went no further than writing and arithmetic, and
in some few instances music and dancing."
It is true that the standard of education was not
high even for men. The twenty-five colleges in
the United States in 1800 were little more than
high schools, the graduates were few in number,
and there were no libraries.
George Ticknor, writing of these early years, said
that good school-books were rare even in Boston.
A copy of Euripides could not be bought at any
bookseller's, nor a German book be found in the
college at Cambridge.
The academies, however, added to the educa
tional advantages then to be obtained, and from the

I04 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
establishment of Dummer Academy in 1761 to the
present day have fulfilled an important mission.
By the end of the century these academies were
to be found in almost every State, both North and
South. Among these was a school in Hingham
founded by Madam Sarah Derby, who died in
1 790, leaving the land and ample provision for the
school, which in 1797 was incorporated by act of
the General Court as Derby Academy.
As early as 1 745 the Moravians had established
schools for girls in Pennsylvania and North Caro
lina, and the Penn Charter School of Philadelphia
admitted both sexes on equal terms. In New Eng
land among the earliest schools for girls was Dr.
Dwight's Young Ladies' Academy at Greenfield,
Conn., and the Medford School near Boston ; but
it was fifty years after the Revolution before girls
acquired equal privileges with the boys in the
schools of the larger towns. The Revolution gave
a new impulse to many concerns, and public sen
timent was changing regarding the education of
women. A protest of feeling against the immense
disparity between the education of boys and girls
had already begun.
With the dawn of the nineteenth century three
stars of the first magnitude shone out of the morn
ing sky, and the story of girls' schools in the
United States became interwoven with the lives of
three women whose names and work have become
historical. Mrs. Emma Willard, who is considered a pioneer
in the education of women, taught first a young

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY I05
ladies' school in Vermont, and in 182 1 founded
the Troy Female Seminary, which was a great
advance in the scope and conception of the acad
emies of that day. This school was an unparalleled
success, and has educated more than five thousand
pupils. Among other things Mrs. Willard introduced
the study of physiology, and so great was the
innovation that at the examination or commence
ment, the entire audience, shocked at the indeli
cacy of teaching such a subject to girls, rose and
left the room. At her school also occurred the first
public examination of a girl in geometry, for Mrs.
Willard attached great importance to the study of
mathematics. In the year after the opening of the Troy Acad
emy, Miss Catherine Beecher at Hartford began
her higher school for young women, which for ten
years was so successful that it attracted pupils
from all over the Union. As teacher and author.
Miss Beecher was for forty years an influential
spirit in educational matters.
At the same time Mary Lyon, whose name
should always be held in honor, was teaching in
New Hampshire, and hoping for a school which
should be to young women what a college was to
young men. Together with Miss Zilpah Grant,
she taught a school at Derry, N.H., and then one
at Ipswich, Mass., and at last, in 1837, by patient
self-sacrifice and persistent devotion, founded Mount
Holyoke Seminary, the first chartered institution
to hold permanent funds for the education of
women.

I06 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
As the colleges owed their origin to the desire
of the people for learned ministers, so these schools
were religious schools, with systematic Bible study
and a devotional spirit pervading all the work.
Beyond this, however, these schools were designed
to give a solid, extensive, and well-balanced English
and classical education, — for culture, and not for
accomplishments. It has been said that it is to these early semi
naries that the historian must look to account for
the great moral reforms of the century, which took
so deep a hold on New England life. Not only
did Mary Lyon send out Harriet Newell and Mrs.
Judson as missionaries to the heathen, but from
these schools came the strongest workers against
intemperance and slavery. From them, too, was
scattered the idea of the higher education of women
all over the country, and from them went out
hundreds of teachers into the little school-houses of
the land.
As the colleges produced men of courage, trained
intelligence and intellectual force, fit to be statesmen
and leaders in national affairs, so these schools
filled an illustrious part in the development of the
moral and intellectual powers of the women of the
day. A little later in the century, two other stars
appeared of wonderful brilliancy. One of these
was the rare conversationist, reformer, and phil
anthropist, as well as teacher, Margaret Fuller,
whom Emerson, Channing, and James Freeman
Clarke have each honored with a Memoir. As a

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY I07
teacher of languages in Boston and as principal of
the Green Street School in Providence, R.I., Mar
garet Fuller was regarded as unusually excellent;
but her great work in teaching was the conversa
tion classes for women held in Boston, in which
philosophical and social subjects were studied and
discussed, and which have been regarded as the
beginning of the modern movement in behalf of
women's rights. She was a leader in introducing
to Americans a knowledge of German literature
and philosophy, and there is no doubt of the im
press she made upon her generation.
Quite different was Maria Mitchell, who yet
gained a world-wide reputation as teacher and stu
dent. While teaching school in Nantucket, she
assisted her father, one of our early astronomers,
making • careful observations by herself and devot
ing time to the examination of nebulas and comets.
In 1847 she discovered a comet, for which dis
covery she received a gold medal from the King of
Denmark. In 1865 she became Professor of Astron
omy at Vassar College, later received the degree of
LL.D. from Dartmouth and Columbia, and was the
first woman to be elected to the Academy of Arts
and Sciences. Professor Mitchell was prominent
in movements tending to elevate woman's work,
being President of the American Association for
the Advancement of Women. Like Mary Somer
ville in England, she was an outpost in a new field
for such advancement.
In a similar way, at a later day. Professor Ellen
Richards, the first woman student at the Massachu-

I08 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
setts Institute of Technology, has led the advance in
woman's work in the chemical laboratory, and made
it apparent that there is a sphere for women in the
study of Household Art and Domestic Science.
If this paper were written to tell what has been
done for women instead of by them, it would now
be the time to speak of the great work of Horace
Mann and other men of his period; but it must
suffice to say that each year saw some social barrier
and some prejudice swept away from the educa
tional pathway, and that both men and women by
their efforts and example contributed largely to this.
From this time distinguished educators came, like
Leonids, each leaving its trail of light.
In 1852 Mrs. Carl Schurz came to the United
States, and founded among the Germans in Wis
consin a kindergarten, — " a school for young chil
dren conducted on the theory that education should
be begun by gratifying and cultivating the normal
aptitude for exercise, play, observation, imitation,
and construction," the function of education being
to develop the faculties by arousing voluntary ac
tivity. The name was given by Friedrich Froebel,
who introduced this method of training in rooms
opening on a garden. Mrs. Schurz was herself " an
adept in the theory, and expert in practice by at
tending con am,ore Froebel's own lectures and kin
dergarten in Hamburg."
Through Mrs. Schurz, Elizabeth Peabody be
came acquainted with the kindergarten idea, and at
length went to Europe to study the system for her
self. She was one of the earliest as well as one of

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY IO9
the most persistent advocates of its merits, and was
the pioneer in Boston, opening a school in 1859,
which was maintained for many years. Miss Pea-
body's whole life was given to education. To her is
due much of the highest religious, intellectual, and
moral influence of Boston, as well as the wide-spread
knowledge of Froebel's system.
The kindergarten was a new influence, a new in
stitution in American education, and the interest
being communicated to other cities, they, too, be
came centres for the work.
In 1870 Mrs. Kriege and her daughter, straight
from the training school founded by Froebel,
opened what has been called the first true kinder
garten. A year later Miss Boelte, afterward Mrs.
Kraus-Boelte, was made director of a kindergarten
in New York. In this school Miss Susan Blow was
a pupil, and on her graduation opened a kinder
garten in St. Louis, and became a prominent leader
among kindergartners.
The first kindergartens in the United States were
private, but they were soon undertaken for the poor
and uncared for, and the work of women in the
charity kindergartens of San Francisco, Chicago,
Philadelphia, and Boston, has been immense in
applying the best influences and the best teaching
to the neglected classes. In this direction the
remarkable work of Mrs. Quincy Shaw should be,
of course, well known to all here. " In 1877 she
started four schools among the poor at her own
expense. The year following she opened fourteen
more. All were among the laboring and poorer

no THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
classes, all free, and all an individual charity. The
work extended to Cambridge, and included about
thirty schools, at an annual expense of from thirty
thousand to fifty thousand dollars."
This alone was a colossal enterprise to be carried
on by a woman, but Mrs. Shaw's interest in educa
tion has not been confined to the kindergarten. It
has been almost equally shown in all forms of
manual training. In this branch of education the
whole country is continually indebted to her for
the training of teachers, and for the experimental
investigation and trial of methods, which must
always depend upon private sources.
Another name comes always to our lips in con
nection with the benefactions of Mrs. Shaw, — the
name of Mary Hemenway, who in many ways
advanced the cause of education. Mrs. Hemen-
way's efforts and gifts were directed to secondary
rather than to primary education. Through her
generosity and public spirit the teaching of sewing
and cooking was introduced into public schools, and
her last great work was the development of the
Swedish system of gymnastics and the establishment
of a Normal School of Gymnastics for the training
of teachers. In 1878, having saved the historic
Old South Meeting-house from destruction, she
projected a plan for the encouragement of the study
of American history among young people ; and
from this has grown the Old South educational
work, which has gained such proportions.
It was Mrs. Hemenway who inspired John Fiske
and James Hosmer to undertake the historical

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY I I I
work which will be of such great value, and her
lifelong interest in American history led her to
give large support to archaeological expeditions and
explorations in the South-west, and to work among
the Zufii Indians.
All this was related to her educational work, for
the underlying motive for her interest and enthu
siasm seemed always to be patriotism, — the devel
opment of the children, that America might be
honored by having only loyal, upright, physically
and mentally strong citizens.
The generosity and devotion of these women
have only been equalled by that of Mrs. Leland
Stanford, of California, who has so lately given her
immense fortune to the Leland Stanford Univer
sity, making it of surpassing usefulness to the
whole country. Thus women have not expended all
their interest upon children. They have shown
that they believe in the highest culture for all, for
women as well as for men.
First, as has been seen, came the girls' acad
emies, some of which remain. This secondary
training greatly increased the demand for more ad
vanced education. Refused admission to most of
the established colleges, women sought to found
others for themselves. Thus the colleges wholly
for girls came into existence, — Georgia Female
College at Macon, a Wesleyan College in Ohio,
the Mary Sharp College in Tennessee, and Elmira
College in New York, while later came Vassar,
Smith, Wellesley, and Bryn Mawr. Of these, one
was founded by a woman, Sophia Smith. The

I 1 2 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
same demand which has produced these colleges
for girls has opened the doors of some of the older
colleges to women, Oberlin and Antioch being the
pioneers in coeducation.
Oberlin was the college where Lucy Stone strug
gled so heroically for an education, where she was
allowed to graduate, but not to read her own essay,
and where many years after she triumphantly made
an address, although still a woman ! To-day, of
three hundred and forty-five colleges and universi
ties reporting to the National Bureau of Education,
and exclusive of those for women alone, two hun
dred and four are coeducational. Of the fourteen
hundred students now in Leland Stanford Univer
sity, five hundred are girls.
Contemporary with the founding of Smith and
Wellesley, an organization was formed by progres
sive women in Boston, whose aim was to aid in the
more thorough education of women.
Arrangements were made with Harvard College
for examinations similar to those already accorded
to women by the Edinburgh, Oxford, and Cambridge
Universities. After five years' experience, instruc
tion was provided, as well as examination ; and the
organization was incorporated as the Society for
the Collegiate Instruction of Women. Of this cor
poration, Mrs. Elizabeth Agassiz, always to be re
membered in a wonderful family of educators, has
been until within a few days the President; and
this Harvard Annex, as it was called, has now
become Radcliffe College.
There are in our country many educational

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY I13
institutions supplementary to the regular school
and college, such as the Chautauqua University,
the Correspondence University of New York, and
others similar.
One of these deserves special place in this paper.
The Society to encourage Studies at Home was
founded in 1873 by Miss Anna M. Ticknor, for
the purpose of inducing women to form the habit
of devoting some part of every day to systematic
and thorough study. At one time nearly two hun
dred women gave their services in the instruction by
correspondence, each taking some specialty. Each
pupil being furnished with lists of books as well as
with printed directions, and constantly communi
cating with the head of her department, uniformity
was secured, while each student was treated in
dividually with regard to her special needs. Many
thousands have availed themselves of the opportu
nities afforded by this society.
The Association of Collegiate Alumnae merits
recognition also, its object being to unite the
women who are college graduates in practical edu
cational work. Its members are doing more or
less special and graduate work in social and sani
tary science, in study of occupations for women,
local histories and health statistics and other sub
jects covering a wide range of investigation.
Much could be said of women serving as trus
tees and as presidents of colleges, and filling such
positions with marked ability and success.
After all, is there really any better educational
work done in the United States than the common

I 14 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
work of the ordinary women teachers of little chil
dren ? Is not theirs the formation agency, which
preserves and elevates and starts on the way to
perfection those who shall make our country the
great and happy nation it may be ? This, too, has
been a growth. In spite of Miss Beecher and
Mount Holyoke, women teachers were few and
were most indifferently regarded till the middle of
the present century. As late as 1845, in some of
the New England States, not more than a dozen
women teachers were employed ; while to-day the
great preponderance of such teachers is most
marked, averaging 90 per cent, of the teaching
force. These teachers, trained side by side with
boys in school, graduating from the same college
and normal school, have the same lofty ideals, the
same professional enthusiasm as men, and perform
equally well the duties they assume. All honor to
the women who are making for the next century
the story of what women have done for education !
As we look back over this meagre chronicle of
the events of two hundred and fifty years, how
short the time appears, and how great the changes.
In the beginning, girls were not thought worthy
of being admitted into the day-school with the
boys. Now the daughter of the family as generally
enters college as the son.
The century, that began by saying that women
do not need to be educated to be happy wives and
good mothers, closes by declaring that, the more
and better knowledge a woman has, the better wife
and mother is she.

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY I 1 5
Matthew Vassar said, " As the mothers of a
country mould the character of its citizens, deter
mine its institutions, and shape its destiny, the
duty and necessity of the thorough training of all
their faculties seems unquestionable."
For this education the women themselves have
made every effort, against tradition, prejudice,
scepticism, ridicule, superstition, and the terrible
apprehension that they would desert their own
sphere for that of men. Time and common sense
prevailed, and it has become the ruling idea of the
American people that all shall have the opportu
nity for being educated into the highest type of
manhood and womanhood. Men and women alike
are working toward this end in the most steadfast,
unrelenting way. For women the opening college
doors, the professional schools, the fellowships and
endowments, all show the increasing belief in their
capabilities and their needs ; and almost the best
work of women has been to show that the highest
education has not taken away the grace and charm
of womanhood or tempted them to abandon do
mestic life or to attempt occupations for which they
are not fitted. With reverent gratitude to the
women of the past, who have done so much for
education, and who have made it possible for a
woman to speak of it in such a place and time as
this, an imperfect tribute comes to an end.

Il6 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
WHAT WOMEN HAVE DONE IN
PHILANTHROPY.
BY MRS. KATE GANNETT WELLS.
TN the time assigned me, I can but indicate lines
of feminine philanthropic work, within the last
two hundred and fifty years. Its progress has
been steadily made from the basis of individual to
that of organized work. No clearer distinction
between the past and present activity is presented
than this.
The philanthropic work of women began in tend
ing the graves of the Plymouth Bay settlers, in
caring for the frail, consumptive lives of our fore-
mothers and forefathers, and in placing the burn
ing coal in the foot-box stoves which kept the
parishioners' feet warm during the long Sunday
sermons. I like to think of those foot-stoves as
probably the first objective proof of woman's phi
lanthropy on church lines. Next to that came the
slow development of the sewing circle ; and now by
your beautiful window representing Saint Dorcas
you have dared to commemorate the gratitude of
the church militant to the domestic, womanly im
plement of the needle.
The church sewing circle grew into prominence
among Congregationalists long before its era began
with Episcopalians, who were the seceders from
Cotton Mather's authority. But it is always to be
remembered that Congregational New England
women were the first to maintain their separate ex-

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY I 1 7
istences from men as working forces, which to my
mind indicates that it is easier to work out one's
freedom in thought from dogma than from social
conventions of long-established dignity. Does not
this supposition account for the slow progress of
organization among women, and also for the fact
that the Women's Board of Missions, Orthodox
Congregational, antedated all other church philan
thropy undertaken on a large scale ?
Minute research may reveal where sprouted in
the United States the first sewing circle and hospi
tal work of women. But at the North probably
the first conspicuous result of organized sewing
was visible in the garments made by Boston
women for the soldiers under General Braddock,
when our great-great-grandmothers offered their
services with needle and thread and scissors to the
town authorities.
Certainly from this time women's activities for
others began to move on co-operative lines ; while
at the South philanthropy still was conducted on
personal terms, though far back run the honorable
records of the brave French Huguenot women of
the Carolinas. Certainly, no Northern women ever
displayed more steady purpose in alleviating distress,
in managing large numbers of dependants, in or
ganizing work and supplies, than did the mothers,
wives, and daughters of Southern planters, the evils
of slavery being greatly lessened by their philan
thropies. Among them Eliza Pinckney was no
table, also was the first American woman who
utilized the products of her own industry into a

Il8 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
national business over one hundred and fifty years
ago. She not only took care of her husband's and
father's estates, but introduced reforms in agricult
ure, especially in the cultivation of indigo, which,
until she raised it, was unknown in this country,
and which, through her agency became an enor-
mous Southern product, though later it was sup
planted by cotton. She stands out from among
the colonial and Revolutionary women in this man
ner of business philanthropy in contrast with Cath
erine Schuyler and other Northern and Southern
women, whose intense personal family life enabled
their husbands to place their whole strength at the
disposal of their country. Such domestic intensity
must, however, be again contrasted with the house
hold life of to-day, which has had its drudgery les
sened by machines, inventions, bake-shops, etc., that
have permitted women to have leisure for outside
occupations. Between the later typical Northern and Southern
women should be put the Quaker women, who
with the Quaker men made the great success and
energy of the Central West, when they migrated
thither from the South, after the invention of the
cotton gin and Nat Turner's rebellion had caused a
reaction in favor of slavery. Next to the group
of Revolutionary women came these self-denying
Quaker women, who housed the huge yearly gath
erings of their faith and also made the abolition of
slavery their philanthropic cause.
As we approach the beginning of the nineteenth
century, we find in Boston the clearest traces of the

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY II9
coming era of organization. The historic reason
for this lies in the two different influences which
moulded Northern and Southern life. At the
South, State government was in the line of Nor
man influence, to which can be directly traced
Calhoun's later attitude of belief in State sov
ereignty. Transfer that theoretical position to
woman's limited activities, and we have the years
in which each one's house and plantation was the
orbit in which she moved.
I know my historical leaps are wide, but my
present moments are few. To return to my argu
ment, at the North, — in New England, surely, —
government was produced through an association
of townships. Therefore was it natural that there
women should first enter upon organization on the
basis of association. From individual care for the
individual fatherless and widowed people to sewing
circles in the church, there came in 1800 organized
care for them outside of church lines ; and thus the
Boston Female Asylum became the fourth chari
table society of Boston and the first founded by
women. Woman had broken away from theologic
control, and aspired to plant her deeds of benevo
lence on a city's needs.
In 18 1 6, the sewing circle idea still dear to her,
she founded the Fragment Society, which exists
to-day, with its warm friendliness, its bounteous
suppers, and its Bible reading. In the same year
was established the Widbws' Society, in connection
with which we join the beloved name of Ann Will
iams, who is yet with us to be honored; and in

I20 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
1847 came the Needlewoman's Friend Society,
still beneficent and large in its operations. From
those days onward, till within the last twenty years,
philanthropy was conducted through increasing
church enterprises. The sewing circle of ladies be
came converted into a gathering of cutters, while
others did the sewing, and the sale of garments
supervened. Church philanthropy thus began to
be conducted on a business rather than on a char
itable basis, though now the Needlework Guild of
America spreads its charity abroad, reaching in
dividuals, however, only through garments given
first to an organization.
Then opened the business of fairs ; and shop
keepers entered their protests at these amateur
transactions, which lessened their receipts. Fairs
still remain, and hard to find is the woman who has
neither the hardihood to make for a fair table, nor
to buy at one.
There are two shining contrasts to this consolida
tion of philanthropy on church lines. They are, —
you all know them, — first, the Sanitary Commission.
which made it right to sew and pack on Sundays.
The result of its formation was the arousing of a
spirit of patriotism North and South which brought
the whole womanhood of the country into two
opposing camps for the one object, — to relieve
distress. That Commission was the harbinger of
the peace which should never again be broken by
sectional animosities. The other contrast is that
of the anti-slavery organization whose work reads
like idyls of self-sacrifice and glowing friendships.

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 121
Begun in individual acts, largely continued in that
way, it yet spread out into organization, above and
under ground, and helped at least to bind woman
to woman in stronger bonds than those of creed.
With all the loving service of that Commission,
there was another healing charity exclusively
feminine. The first hospital and dispensary for
women was established by Drs. Elizabeth and
Emily BlackweU and Dr. M. E. Zakrzewska in
New York City, its charter being obtained in 1854.
It was first opened in 1857, women physicians only
in attendance. In 1854 also, in consequence of a
journey of Dr. Zakrzewska to Philadelphia to obtain
funds for her " New York Infirmary for Indigent
Women," there was established in the Quaker City
a hospital by women, for women, in connection with
the Pennsylvania Medical College for Women. In
1859 Dr. Zakrzewska organized a hospital depart
ment in connection with the New England Female
Medical College in Boston, which was soon given
up, and the New England Hospital for Women and
Children in this city organized in 1862. To these
hospitals is related a long retinue of philanthropies :
the training of nurses and attendants ; the support
ing of convalescent homes; the caring for unmar
ried women and their babies ; district nursing ; diet
kitchens; cooking-schools; domestic service reme
dies ; etc. All have grown naturally out of the
first woman's hospital. All are organizations for
women, conducted by women. What individual in
itiative started has been maintained and strength
ened by organization. Therefore, next to fairs in

122 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
the stage of development should be put hospital
work: only let it be remembered that, while we
Protestant women were struggling out of the little
whirlpools of individual philanthropy. Catholic
women were serving humanity in organized sister
hoods, and were far ahead of us Protestants in con
centrated philanthropies.
Very, very slowly in this country came individual
— still less, organized — ¦ prison work. What there
is to-day is done conjointly with men, though the
Reformatory Prison for Women in Massachusetts
was under a woman, Mrs. Ellen C. Johnson, long
its honored superintendent, her administration being
one of rare financial and reformatory success. A
joint commission of men and women, however,
superintended it. Alongside of these dawning
institutions crept in organized work by visiting the
poor outside of church districts. Then was it that
philanthropy showed itself free from sectarianism.
More and more has the visiting become the work of
women, first through the Provident Institution, and
then through the Associated Charities, established
in 1879. Women have had much to do (and not
able among them in this direction is Mrs. James T.
Fields) in bringing philanthropy into the service of
civil polity in this the first conscious, broad attempt
to unite all the helpers of a city in a concerted, per
manent enterprise for the benefit of all.
From this time onward the record of service to
others was almost in ways of competition at North
and South and West, each place having its salient
features of achieving the same end. As a psycho-

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 23
logical problem, it is interesting to note that ortho
dox women turned to rescue work for so-called un
fortunate women sooner than Universalist or Uni
tarian women, who have, on the other hand, first
developed educational philanthropy- But I must
not touch on education : that department was as
signed to-day to another most fitted to deal with
it. The coming ages alone will show whether all
education is philanthropy or all philanthropy is
education. The next stage in philanthropy among women,
its possibility largely growing out of the spirit of
co-operation, is the club movement, beginning with
the New England Club and the New York Sorosis,
which I claim for philanthropy, as it also may be
partly claimed for education. I will not enlarge
upon it, for its enormous moral impulse in uniting
the capacities of womanhood for work is as well
known as its increasing tendency to labor for the
benefit of others rather than for its own intellectual
or social pleasure.
Most fitting is it that a Southern woman should
be president of the Federation of Clubs, a move
ment of all women, and that a Western woman
has been president of the International Council,
since empire moves westward.
In connection with the club movement, most
honorable mention should be made of the organiza
tion of the Working-girls' Clubs. They, too, are
becoming national in their interchange of purposes
and convictions.
What would Dorothy Hancock have done if, when

124 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
she wished to send her maids to milk anybody's cow
on Boston Common, there had been no maids to
summon, as they had gone to a Federation meet
ing? These clubs are lessening the imaginary so
cial differences in occupation, and are the organ
ized refrain of Burns's song, " A man's a man for a'
that," as man is the generic term for the beautiful
species, woman.
With the club movement should also be correlated
that of the college settlements, a wide-spreading
uprising of the better self in education. The dis
tinctive adjective was soon dropped as too narrow;
but the open spirit that actuated it remains, as it is
culture offering itself to all the various opportunities
of philanthropy working through education, the first
large distinct recognition by women of this union
of forces. With the organization of clubs and
college and social settlements we enter upon the
extension of philanthropy into State and national
aspects, since the Sanitary Commission as a national
work expired with the war.
In such national woman's work should be ranked
first, at least in magnitude, the Woman's Christian
Temperance Union. The " earnest, impetuous,
inspired" praying bands of 1873-74 have become
the unions, " firm, patient, and persevering." The
home has been the starting-point and the focus,
the cause and result, the means and the end, for
which its millions of members work for others by
thousands of agencies. Less in extent, but noble
and valiant in service, are the Young Women's
Christian Associations and the Women's Unions

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 25
and Exchanges (such as we here are familiar with
on Boylston Street, incorporated in 1880), having
for their aim, irrespective of religious tests, the
purpose of fellowship among women and the pro
motion of practical methods for securing their
educational, social, and industrial progress.
Such unions are eminently philanthropic, are
spreading all over the country, are liberalizing creeds,
and are to be reckoned with as one of, if not the
broadest application of the theories of philanthropy
to practical dealings with life.
And, if woman's love for the beautiful was the
irresistible impulse that drove her into artistic
philanthropy, certainly the higher requirements
which are now demanded for all art work, from
patchwork quilts to china painting, embroidery
and tapestry, have added to woman's income ; and
anything that does that is philanthropy.
Around these larger philanthropies of the unions
cluster groups of independent centres, employment
bureaus and industrial schools.
Within fifteen years another division of philan
thropy has been set off. Summer playgrounds, va
cation schools, women's gymnasiums, country weeks
and picnics, flower missions,-^ almost all have been
started by women, for v/omen and children. Some
are independent organizations offered by women,
others are connected with previously established
agencies for doing good, some are working under
city or school control ; but all are bringing to the
summer season glad hosannas of joy that vacation
has come, and country pleasures are to strengthen

126 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
mind and body. This radiant work, too, is brighten
ing into national repute as one playground sends
its joyous echoes far out into another. Women
can't help caring ever to make children happy.
This great various playground work can be
counted as the crowning joy of her motherhood
of hospitality.
Lastly, we come to the legislative division of
philanthropy. Under this are included the pro- and
anti-suffrage organizations ; for whether or not one
is a suffragist the work is a woman's work, begun
by the pro-suffragists on as honest lines of philan
thropy as ever actuated any woman to work for
another, and has become national. Also, all the
work that women are now doing in the service
of the State, city, town, on various State and city
boards and committees. None of it is paid, but
it is done gladly as woman's contribution to her
country's needs. There is scarcely a large institu
tion anywhere which does not count women among
its managers on an equality with men. Surely, the
bygone days of home usefulness alone have bloomed
into a great beauty of wide, beneficent action. This
legislative national stage of philanthropy embraces
Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and all other women.
The first National Council of Jewish Women was
held in November, 1896, in New York; and their
convention revealed a large number of helpful facts
in their renderings of philanthropy. And what
shall be said of the immense moneyed contributions
of women ? They cannot be computed, for they
cannot include the amounts of that self-denial which

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 27
has made it possible for the widow's mite to be
reckoned On as financial aid. The widow and
Helen Gould are alike philanthropists ; yet it was
but fifty years ago, said Mrs. Robinson, in her book
on Lowell life, that women first spent their own
money earned by themselves.
Philanthropy, begun in the individual ministra
tions of the women of Plymouth Bay, widened into
church work of sewing circles and visiting the sick,
from that into channels of raising money for the
needy by fairs, and of gradual working outside of
credal connections into helping the city or town
poor. Then came the fuller development of organ
ization, until national associations were welded
together out of local ones, these, in turn, circling
the globe with their international forces, like the
International Council of Women. With all the
ardor and imagination that have gone into the com
pounding of these philanthropic relations has been
coupled the forethought by which women have
brought legislative aid to assist them, and have
themselves become the nation's councillors.
Would that I had time to note the hundreds of
women who have been leaders in effecting these
marvels !
Let me mention seven, as they serve to show the
evolution that has slowly been working its way
toward something forever to be better than what
has been, no matter how great was that past.
Anne Hutchinson, — I name her first, as standing
for philanthropy through spiritual forces ; Catherine
Schuyler, as the type of those women who thought

128 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
by serving their home best they served their coun
try most; Eliza Pinckney, who taught that to
increase the industries of a Nation was philan
thropy; Lucretia Mott, who brought freedom to
the slave ; Dorothea Dix, who by knowing how to
manage legislatures brought relief to the insane;
Mary Hemenway, who gave her wealth to foster
philanthropy by increasing practical applications of
education and to strengthen patriotism; Frances
Willard, whose temperance included the prohibition
of everything which did not conduce to the highest
welfare of State and home.
Each of these women with their countless hosts
of followers, who chose as exemplar that woman
whose methods they liked best, worked from the
internal development of her soul to the external
marshalling of her strength for the varied forms
of philanthropy. Not one ever forgot she was a
woman because she was a philanthropist. None
ever laid aside the basic principle of individualism
in the scope for organization. The personality
of each has passed into the nation's keeping, since
each was true, first unto herself, and then accom
plished her purposes by subordinating self unto the
good of all.
From the individual to organization, from one's
church to one's country, has the quest of philan
thropy hastened ; and Increase Mather, Ralph
Waldo Emerson, and Thomas Van Ness, each
says that the woman whom he knew best, best
served the Lord.

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 29

WHAT WOMEN HAVE DONE IN
THEOLOGY.
BY REV. ANNA GARLIN SPENCER.
'nr^HE contribution made by women to the church
¦^ life of thought and of effort in America since
this Second Congregation of Boston was formed
cannot be sketched, even slightly, without allusion
to two events which preceded that one ; namely, the
arrival of Anne Hutchinson from England in 1634
and the beginning of her ministry in Boston shortly
after, and the first synod, or "Assembly," of the
Church in New England, which was held in New
ton in 1637. Anne Hutchinson, whom Governor
Winthrop, who did not like her, called a " woman
of a ready wit and a bold spirit," believed that " the
power of the Holy Spirit dwells in every believer,"
and that the inward revelations of the Spirit were
of supreme authority ; and she therefore felt no
need for ecclesiastical sanction for her preaching.
Winthrop tells us that she held " two dangerous
errors: first, that the person of the Holy Ghost
dwells in a justified person ; and, second, that no
sanctification can help to evidence to us our own jus
tification." Whether her errors of theology or her
sex had most to do with her persecution by the
" teaching elders and magistrates" of New England
we cannot now say, but her sex furnished a conven
ient weapon against her continued ministrations.
We read that the Newton Assembly of 1637 was
"attended by all the teaching elders throughout the

130 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
country and many new come from England," and
that it spent the first days of its deliberations in
defining and condemning over "eighty erroneous
opinions now taught in the Colonies," and that it
placed prominently among these the peculiar tenets
of Mrs. Hutchinson and her followers. This, we
are told, " offended some from Boston," who de
parted to come no more. The last day of this As
sembly was given wholly to the discussion of the
question of women's preaching, and of the rights of
the laity, especially of those differing from the ma
jority of the Church in points of doctrine. The
following " Resolve " was passed : " That, though
women might meet, some few together, to pray and
edify one another, yet such a set assembly, as was
then the practice at Boston, where sixty or more did
meet every week, and one woman, in a prophetical
way, by resolving questions of doctrine and ex
pounding Scripture took upon her the whole
exercise, is agreed to be disorderly and without
rule." That is to say, it was decided that it was
proper to hold a small "female prayer-meeting,"
but that a congregation of women met to listen to
one woman was an unlawful body.
The power of the woman against whose preach
ing this " Resolve " was aimed cannot be denied ;
for we are told that the dispute between her fol
lowers and her opposers " impressed its spirit into
everything." It interfered with the levy of troops
for the Pequot War; it influenced the respect
shown to magistrates, as when in this first As
sembly some of the Boston delegates boldly de-

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY I3I
clared that " magistrates had no place in a meeting
of Church members, and they should not yield
obedience to them in religious concerns " ; it even
entered into the distribution of town lots, the
assessment of rates, and other secular affairs. So
that we read of a formidable number of men
" ordered disarmed " because of this religious dis
pute, nearly sixty of them " men of Boston, beside
goodly numbers belonging to Salem, Newberry,
Roxberry, Ipswich, and Charlestown." The order
in the Colony Record reads as follows : —
" Whereas the opinions and revelations of Mr.
Wheelwright and Mrs. Hutchinson have seduced
and led into dangerous errours many of the people
here in New England, insomuch as there is just
cause of suspicion that many of these upon some
revelation may make some sudden irruption upon
those that differ from them in judgment, for pre
vention of this it is ordered that ' these men,' etc.,
be disarmed."
The great Cotton and Sir Harry Vane supported
Mrs. Hutchinson, as well as many others of impor
tance, besides the " Mr. Wheelwright " who was her
brother, and whom Governor Winthrop speaks of
with some contempt as " a sometime silenced
preacher of England." It is claimed that at one
time all but five members of the Boston Church
were her followers. But this did not save her from
" severe dealings " ; and she was, as we all know,
"publicly admonished," and finally "banished from
the Massachusetts Colony." Her admonishment
consisted of a lecture "lasting from ten o'clock in

132 TIIE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
the morning until eight at night," which was inter
spersed with her own replies, in which, as Win
throp says, " she held her own, and carried her sons
with her, so that they had to be admonished also."
As it had already been clearly shown that her
" husband was wholly influenced by her," it would
seem that this first woman minister of America
was held in high esteem by the members of her
own household. Her banishment from Massachu
setts gave a great help to Rhode Island in the di
rection of " soul liberty ; " and her preaching laid an
important foundation for the sect of Quakers, who
were, and still are, the finest expression of woman's
influence in theology and in the religious life
which the Christian Church has shown. When in
1656 the Quakers first made their appearance in
New England, it was in the persons of two women,
Mary Fisher and Ann Austin ; and there was great
excitement when the news of their arrival reached
the ears of the General Court. That body ordered
" a day of humiliation to seek the face of God in
behalf of our native country in reference to the
abounding errours, especially those of the Ranters
and Quakers." The two women were cast into
prison until the shipmaster could return them to
Barbadoes ; but they were but the first of a mighty
host of heretics against whom many peculiar and
severe penalties were aimed, not only by the Gen
eral Court of Massachusetts, but by the authorities
of Connecticut and New Haven. Among these
Quakers of greatest note were Annie Burden and
Mary Dyer, the latter hanged on Boston Common

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 33
in 1660, and declaring with her latest breath, "In
obedience to the will of the Lord I came, and in
His will I abide faithful to the death."
Some of the early Friends, or Quakers, behaved
in a strange manner, it is true, testifying by un
seemly words and deeds to their sense of spiritual
direction by " the inner light." But the sect from
the first placed men and women on an equality, and
all classes of every social grade as well, and can
boast of many godly and effective preachers of both
sexes. Among these we may give high place to
Sybil Jones, the minister to souls in prison, of
American as Elizabeth Fry was of English birth ;
and to our own Lucretia Mott, the Benjamin
Franklin and William Lloyd Garrison combined
among American women. Lucretia Mott was not
only a perfect union of domestic virtue and social
helpfulness, but she was one of the greatest leaders
of either sex in the application of rational thought
to religious concerns. Of the foundation of the
" Hicksite," or Unitarian, branch of the sect of
Friends, she said, " At twenty-five years of age,
surrounded by a little family and many cares, I felt
called to a more public life and devotion to duty,
and engaged in the ministry in our society, receiv
ing every encouragement from those in authority
until a separation from us in 1827, when my con
victions led me to adhere to the sufficiency of the
light within us, resting on truth as authority rather
than taking authority for truth." When the Free
Religious Society of America was formed, in the
attempt to unite men and women for the study of

134 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
Truth and the unity of religious Faith under all
differing symbols of religious dogma, its chosen
motto was " Truth for Authority, not Authority for
Truth " ; and it thus linked its purpose with
Lucretia Mott's simple creed, as it claimed her for
one of its original and official members.
There are now about three hundred and fifty
women preachers in the Society of Friends. As the
years have gone on since this old Second Church
was founded, the sects have multiplied and increased
in our America; and the entrance of women into
their recognized and public service has been in in
verse ratio to the ecclesiasticism of the body and in
almost exact proportion to its Congregationalism (or
democracy) of polity. As in the old Assembly of
1637 the rights of the laity and the separation of
Church and State were most insisted upon by those
who supported Mrs. Hutchinson in her right to
give " two lectures a week with an attendance of'
eighty or more persons," so, in the course of history
since that time the claim of the church body to be
the seat and source of church power has been inti
mately bound up with the entrance of women into
positions of trust and leadership in the administra
tion of church affairs. We will briefly consider
the growth of women's initiative in church matters
as related to the different sects in their gradations
from a hierarchy to a democracy.
The Roman Catholic Church has a recognized,
honored, and most useful place for consecrated
womanhood, and, it must be remembered, first gave
women a social career in the early days of the

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 35
Christian Church. But it must be a celibate
womanhood, removed from all the ordinary duties
and offices of the mother sex. The Protestant
Episcopal Church has increasingly given to women
a field for distinctive work by the establishment
of two deaconess orders and fourteen sisterhoods
and a religious Order of Widows. The General
Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church of
1889 provided that every candidate for the office of
deaconess, before she is set apart, shall have had
" an adequate preparation for her work, both tech
nical and religious, which preparation shall cover
the period of two years"; and in 1890 the Grace
House Training School for Deaconesses was es
tablished in New York. The deaconesses of this
Church, although devoted to philanthropic work
for the most part, are a great source of strength
to their denomination. The Methodist Episcopal
Church, of which Susanna Wesley has been called
" the real founder," owes its introduction into this
country to a woman, Barbara Heck, as much as,
if not more, than to its first preacher in America,
Philip Embury ; for Mrs. Heck, landing in New
York in 1760, with Mr. Embury, who was her
cousin, and feeling deeply concerned because he
did little or nothing for the first five years of his
residence to hold together and increase the Wes-
leyans who came with them, herself started the first
" class meeting " by a " lively testimoney against
card playing," which consisted of burning the cards,
and insisting that Embury enroll herself and four
other persons as a regular " class." It was she

136 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
who furnished the plans for the first Methodist
chapel, which took the place of the old "rigging
loft," which was the original home of the Wes-
leyans in this country. In spite of these facts,
however, and notwithstanding the freedom of
prayer and speech always allowed women in the
class meetings, the class leaders are all men ; and
women are as yet denied full ordination to the
Methodist pulpit. Women, however, were at one
time " licensed " as " exhorters " by the Methodist
Episcopal Church ; and under that name some
women achieved great power as evangelists. But
when those licenses were revoked, and the semi-
ministerial class abolished, the logical next step
of ordaining these women who had already " veri
fied their credentials " was not taken. The move
ment to remove the sanction of the Church from
the class called " licensed exhorters " was not
aimed against women preachers, but rather against
illiterate men, and in the interest of a more digni
fied, learned, and united preaching class. It was
applied, however, in a way to do great injustice to
women, and has given the demand of the Method
ist women for official recognition in the ministry
of their Church a sting of protest against actual
wrong which has no such basis in fact in any other
communion. The Primitive Methodists have always used
women preachers as evangelists, especially among
the more depraved classes, and this was one of the
points of difference between them and the main
body which caused the separation ; while the Ger-

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 37
man Methodists, or " United Brethren in Christ,"
have ordained many women elders and some women
" circuit riders " of the original Methodist style.
The German Lutheran Church has discussed the
question of women's preaching, in a synod held in
1 89 1 and later several times, and decided that
women must not teach in the Church at all, either
in the pulpit or the congregation. Yet those who
witnessed the vigor and ability of the German
Lutheran women at their denominational congress
at the World's Parliament of Religions, and marked
the large number and well-organized variety of
their special women's activities, realized that some
effective " teaching " is already done by the
women of that Church; and as early as 1849 this
Church introduced the Order of Deaconess into
this country, and America has now at Philadelphia
the finest " mother-house " in the world for the
training and work of the Lutheran deaconesses.
The Presbyterian Church, although for many
years excluding women from all voice in church de
votion or government, has for some time allowed
them to take part in prayer-meetings, and even
sometimes to speak at regular meetings and synods
on missionary or philanthropic topics ; and at a
synod of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, held
in 1889, it was voted by a majority of ninety-three
to twenty-four that the ordination of a woman as
deacon is " in harmony with the New Testament
and the Constitution of the Apostolic Church."
Of the congregational bodies, although the Calvin
ist Baptists exclude women from the ministry.

138 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
the Free Baptists are conspicuous in their official
recognition of women preachers, the General Con
ference of that body haying adopted in 1886
the following resolution : " That intelligent, godly
women, who are so situated as to devote their time
to the ministry, and desire to be ordained, should
receive such indorsement and authority as ordina
tion involves, provided there are no objections
other than the matter of sex." The number of
Free Baptist women ministers is large, and growing
all the time.
The Trinitarian Congregational body, although
giving official recognition to the first ordained
woman minister in America, Antoinette Brown
BlackweU, early in the fifties, and although opening
its college at Oberlin, even to its Divinity Depart
ment, " both to women and negroes," in days when
both classes were equally excluded from most halls
of higher learning, and although its system of church
government has made it possible for each church
to choose freely its own minister and mode of
ordination, has never given the welcome to women
preachers that the Free Baptists have extended.
The opening of the Hartford Theological Semi
nary, however, and the general employment of
regularly sanctioned women missionaries in foreign
lands, and the almost universal welcome given
women who bear special messages of social
betterment to leading pulpits of the Orthodox
Congregational body, all show a strong movement
within it toward full equality of opportunity to men
and women.

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 39
The Unitarian Congregationalists, in setting up
housekeeping for themselves, did not much enlarge
the sphere of feminine service in the church,
having refused as late as i860 to admit women to
the theological school at Meadville, and even now
shutting out its daughters " who would prophesy "
from the training of the Harvard Divinity School,
except under difficult conditions. Ten years after
its refusal to admit Olymphia Brown, Meadville
opened its doors to women students with fuU and
generous privilege; and considerably more than
twenty women have been graduated there, and
achieved successful work in the ministry.
The Universalist denomination was the first to
admit women to exactly equal training for the
ministry, and naturaUy has to-day the largest
number of women preachers " in good and regular
standing " of any sect except the Friends, having
over sixty in 1895. The Unitarian pulpits, how
ever, have had occasional ministration from many
noted women, who are, like Julia Ward Howe,
"born preachers," but not exclusively devoted to
church work. And perhaps such occasional preach
ing has given as much impetus to the sect in which
it has been most conspicuous, and has as well illus
trated the newly developed moral and intellectual
initiative of women, as the more regular ministra
tion of women in some other sects.
The duties of the Christian ministry, as they
have been interpreted and practised by women in
our country, have proved compatible with high
devotion to famUy life and successful administration

140 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
of household affairs, and many of our best known
and ablest women ministers have been wives and
mothers; while in the Unitarian ministry, especially
where young and single women have entered upon
the work of church leadership, they have often pre
vented any possible criticism or misunderstanding
on the part of the socially fastidious or conserva
tive by following the example of the apostles and
" going out two by two." In that way two women
friends have often not only served their church with
a double ministry, but, by making a refined and at
tractive home life for themselves, demonstrated the
social safety and dignity possible in the ministerial
profession. And, where a young single woman has
undertaken a church leadership alone, it has often
been with the help and protection of her mother or
sister or some older friend, who stood to her life and
work in the relation of the "minister's wife" to the
man preacher in charge of a parish.
The office of a " teaching elder," to use the fine
old phrase, has already proved especially congenial
to women of the idealizing faculty, and also to those
gifted in social organization. In those simpler
forms of church order in which the sacramental
service is supplanted by the teaching function, and
the ministrations of a friend and helper and in
structor are alone required, there has been found
a noble field for their devotion. The ministerial
profession has proved also more harmonious with
the domestic and social relations of a completed
womanhood (one including wifehood and mother
hood in its range of experience and duty), than has

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY I4I
either the law or medicine or a business career, as
these are ordinarily practised. For the ministry,
like art, literature, and other forms of teaching,
profits rather than loses by periods of quiet reflec
tion in pauses of active work, and thus falls in well
with the periodicities of the married woman's life.
Moreover, the cumulative power of personal influ
ence (which is the distinguishing feature of the
" teaching elder's " work) suggests long residence in
one place, regular duties performed near the home,
and a slow development of public service, all conso
nant with the best interests of family life. As ordi
nary pastoral work is more and more seen to be
merely a part of teaching, and as the services of the
few great preachers (among whom doubtless will be
always found some women) are more and more con
served for the benefit of the whole church body by
a better business administration of church affairs,
the place of the cultured but not extraordinary
woman in the profession will be doubtless much en
larged, and in consequence the relation of the
pastoral office itself to other forms of teaching and
philanthropic work better outlined.
Finally, mention must be made of the part
women have played in the birth of new sects dur
ing the last two hundred and fifty years. The
Shaker sect, as is well known, is the outgrowth
exclusively of a woman's leadership, " Mother Ann
Lee," of England, in 1770, as a member of the
Society of Friends, professing to receive a special
revelation which declared her the "Christ of the
female order," her followers receiving her as " God

142 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
revealed in the character of mother, the bearing
Spirit of all creation." In 1774 she took nine of
her disciples to America, and began in New York
State the community life which has been such a.
marked feature of the Shakers' faith. The essen
tial doctrines of this sect, human brotherhood
reaching to a complete community of goods, non-
resistance, non-participation in secular government,
strict celibacy, and perfect chastity, and the remark
able pecuniary success of the Shaker settlements,
together with the strength of devotion which has
bound so many men and women together in so
strait a way of life, prove great power in the origi
nal impulse started by " Mother Ann." The es
sential difference in social and domestic ideals
between the Shaker sect, founded by a woman, and
the Quaker sect, so largely the fruit of woman's in
fluence, on the one side, and those of the Mormon
sect and of the Oneida Communists, which were
the outgrowth of purely masculine leadership, on
the other side, suggest to the student of compara
tive sex-development some curious points of inves
tigation. The Salvation Army, like its prototype,.
early Methodism, is quite as much the outgrowth
of woman's devotion and initiative as of man's, and
is a remarkable itistance of a union of husband and
wife in a movement of world significance. And
although this movement is not American, but
English, the branching sect now identified wholly
with American life is led by that most engaging
and persuasive of women preachers, Mrs. Balling-
ton Booth, quite as much as by her loyal husband..

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 43
The Spiritualist sect is marked by especially femi
nine features, some, of course, not of the highest
type of sex-differentiation, since, whatever may be
the substrata, the outward manifestations of that
faith are intimately associated with certain nervous
conditions in which women (and men of semi-
artistic and semi-invalid temperament) show the
most striking powers of sensitive response to out
ward influence. The latest religious sect called
" Christian Science," was founded by a woman, and
is especially American, and now in its first flush of
youthful enthusiasm.
The official work of women in the Church, how
ever, either as ministers or as sect-makers, is not
the chief contribution of women to church life and
activity during the two and a half centuries. The
great work of women in this particular has been
accomplished in the lay membership of the Chris
tian Church, in the moulding of its standards and
ideals as conceived and realized in the personal
life, and in the practical achievements of the
Church as an uplifting social force. The great
body of the Christian Church is of the mother-sex.
The great sacrificial services of the Church have
depended in large measure upon women for their
fulfilment, if not for their initiative. In the sorry
record of the sins and weaknesses and failures
of the Church, women have had large share ; and in
its high usefulness they can claim — in numerical
force, at least — a larger portion than can men.
The great question now is, not. What are women
free to do in and for the Church ? but. How can we
secure and keep any m,en ui it to do anything ?

144 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
It is an absurdity and one still witnessed, so slow
is human growth, to withhold any place in the
church offices from women, since they are the great
constituency and dependence of the religious body,
and have now opportunities of training for all re
sponsible positions of leadership. But the great
and pressing problem in the more enlightened
portions of the religious body is that of winning
back to the support of this time-honored institution
(which we cannot yet believe outgrown) the active,
earnest, and general devotion of the best and wisest
men. Such men as Winthrop and Endicott and
Dudley and Willoughby, and the Plymouth worthies,
and all the greatest men of Massachusetts Colony,
— these gave the vigor and force of the church
life in the days of history this old Second Congre-
gfation has witnessed and of which it has been a
part. If our descendants are to celebrate the five
hundredth anniversary Of the founding of The
Second Church in Boston, there must be deeper
devotion and more universal allegiance to the
Church on the part of men than there is now.
The present problems in religious concerns force
the conviction upon the thoughtful that the Church
as an institution must be changed radically, in some
as yet unknown ways, in order to fit it to a social
order which has already changed radically from the
conditions surrounding the Puritan of New Eng.
land. To many of us it is clear that the peculiarly
practical and flexible genius of womanhood "has
come into its kingdom " of moral and intellectual
initiative in the Church "for such an hour as this."

THE INFLUENCE OF THE SECOND
CHURCH IN AMERICA.

THE service of Monday evening was devoted to ad
dresses on the influence of The Second Church in
America. As a part of the service of this evening, the
conductor and choir of the church rendered the " Hymn of
Praise " of Mendelssohn, assisted by the soloists and mem
bers of a chorus whose names are given below.*
The Order of Service of this evening, as originally pro
posed, is given in full. The addresses by his Excellency
Governor Wolcott and President Eliot were necessarily
omitted. The chairman of the Standing Committee pre
sided, and introduced the speakers.
f^gmn of Praise, Op. 52 . . Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy,
(For Orchestra, Chorus, and Soloists.)
Symphony.
Maestoso con mote, Allegro, Allegretto un poco agitato, Adagio religloso.
* Conductor, Mr. H. G. Tucker. Soloists: Mrs. Marian Titus, soprano; Miss Bertha
W, Swift, soprano; Mr. B. W. Hobbs, tenor; Mr. J. H. Ricketson, tenor. Organist, Mr.
G. W. F. Reed. Orchestra of thirty players, Mr. isidor Schnitzler, principal. Chorus:
soprano: Miss Mary B. Anderson, Miss ^Louise Baum, Miss Eleanor M. Colleton, Mrs.
R. G. Harris, Miss Mara V. Hastings, Miss Alice Hutchinson, Miss Edith G. Mason, Miss
M. deV. MitcheU, Miss Bertha W. Swift, Miss E. P. Syer, Mrs. Marian Titus, Miss E. M.
Tuckerman, Miss Grace E. White; alto: Mrs. M. A. Brewer, Mrs. Louise B. Brooks, Miss
Mary E. Burroughs, Miss Jennie Hayes, Mrs. H. C. Lewis, Mrs. Edith MacGregor Woods,
Miss L. T. Murphy, Mrs. Fanny Holt Reed, Mrs. H. K. Sanborn, Miss Louise Schroeder,
Mrs. Anna von Rydingsvard ; tenor: Mr. Stephen Alta, Mr. C. F. Atwood, Mr. L. E. Black,
Mr. E. P. Boynton, Mr. Charles Chase, Mr. Henry B. Coughlan, Mr. James F. Harlow,
Mr. B. W. Hobbs, Mr. H. M. Murdough; bass: Mr. George M. Brooks, Dr. A. N.
Broughton, Mr. Charles H. Hillman, Mr, C. W. Cole, Mr. Hobart E. Cousens, Mr. G. W.
Dudley, Mr. John S. Kilby, Mr. W. B. Phillips, Dr. Mark W. Richardson. Orchestra
selected by Mr. Carl Behr.

146 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
Cantata
(Chorus and Soprano Solo).
" All men, all things, all that has life and breath, sing to the Lord.
Praise thou the Lord for his great loving-kindness."
Entrotitictarg iSematfeg  Stephen M. Crosby.
aiiUresg. " The Influence of The Second Church in America."
(a) " In Government." His Excellency Roger Wolcott,
Governor of Massachusetts.
2Cenor Salo. " Sing ye praise."
Kecttati&e. " He counteth all your sorrows."
dfjatUS. "All ye that cried unto the Lord."
JSttet ant fiCftorxtg. " I waited for the Lord."
atilJrcgg. " The Influence of The Second Church in America."
{b) " In Education." Charles W. Eliot, LL.D.,
President of Harvard University.
SEcnor Snlo.
" The sorrows of death had closed all around me. But, said the Lord,
come, arise from the dead, awake thou that sleepest, I bring thee
salvation."
ISecttattbe. " Watchman, will the night soon pass ? "
Soprano 2Reittati6e. " The night is departing."
Cj^orag. "The night is departing. The day is approaching. Let us cast off
the works of darkness. Let us gird on the armor of Light."
attxegg. " The Influence of The Second Church in America."
if) " In Literature." Francis G. Peabody, D..D.,
Plummer Professor of Christian Morals
in Harvard University.
©fferinfl.
dljotale. " Let all men praise the Lord."

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 47
IBttet. (Soprano and Tenor.) " My song shall be alway thy
mercy."
^Itbregg. " The Influence of The Second Church in America."
(d) " For Religious Independence."
Rev. Edward Everett Hale, D.D.
Cljorug. " Ye nations offer to the Lord glory and might. Oh, give thanks to
the Lord."
Congregattonal J^gntn. " America."
Beneitttion. ©reaijen ^men.

OPENING ADDRESS.
BY STEPHEN M. CROSBY.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Members and Friends of
the Society of The Second Church in Boston, — I
have the honor, in behalf of its lay members, to
welcome you cordially to participate in the glad
and thankful celebration of this evening.
The distinctly religious and devotional exercises
in commemoration of this two hundred and fiftieth
anniversary of the foundation of this Society have
been most successfully carried out ; and we are met
this evening to close the series on the secular side
of our history by considering the development and
progress in governmental, political, educational,
literary, and religious liberty which has marked these
two and a half centuries, and toward which this
ancient church has, in this vicinity at least, con
tributed in no small degree.
It has been given to but very few organizations
in this country to be able to maintain a coherent
and continuous existence through such a lengthy
period as we may proudly claim ; and, curiously, it
is only such as have their foundation in the re
ligious element in human nature that have been
thus preserved.
Political and social combinations, however
powerful, arise, culminate, change, and disappear ;
but that principle within all men which holds them

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 49
to their dependence upon God, which forces them
to a recognition of the eternal verities of life and
the possibility of the life to come, forms a bond of
union which reasserts itself in generation after gen
eration, with ever cohesive and effective force.
So when seven brethren in 1649 — the settlement
of Boston not yet twenty years old, and their sister
Church, the First, only seventeen years old — met,
probably not in an " upper chamber " (there were
not many, if any, " upper chambers " in those days),
but in some convenient log hut, and united them
selves in a covenant, and did "avouch the Lord to
be our God and ourselves to be his people ... to
cleave to him and to one another in him," they
laid the foundation of their church so simply, yet
so deep and strong, that eight successive genera
tions of men have builded and rested thereon, un
dismayed by vicissitudes, uncorrupted by prosper-
ity. Men in those days gathered around the church
as the central focal point, lavished their labor on
the construction of its edifice, defended it with
their guns from hostile, savage attack, builded their
homes near it, and found in its worship almost their
only relief and recreation from the hard, continuous
struggle of their daily lives. Their minister was to
them the oracle of God. He was their counsellor,
instructor, guide, and leader.
It was in a century of immense upheaval and
unrest that this little society was born. That
year, 1649, had just witnessed the beheading of
Charles I. His son Charles II. was in exile, and

150 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
the redoubtable Cromwell was rapidly paving the
way by his victories for the short-lived Common
wealth of England. During the first half -century
of the existence of The Second Church the colonies
of New England, and especially that of Massachu
setts, were subjected to constant restrictions and
encroachments upon their chartered rights, met by
the colonists with persistent though often unavailing
opposition. Finally, in 1683, Edward Randolph, a
bitter enemy, was sent by the king to demand of
Massachusetts a surrender of its charter, and to
enforce obedience if compliance was denied.
Then The Second Church, in the person of In
crease Mather, its pastor, and one doubtless of the
bravest, — if not the bravest, — clearest-headed, ablest
men in the colony, came to the front; and, during
the five years of oppression and tyranny which fol
lowed, he was the leading spirit in stimulating and
encouraging the people to protest, appeal, and re
sistance, until in 1688 he was sent to England bear
ing the address of the "churches," mind you, not
of the " Good Government Clubs," the " Citizens'
Reform Associations," or any other such second-
rate substitutes of modern times, but of all the
" churches," of which our neighbor, now known as
the " Old South," was by that time one, to " solicit "
at the foot of the throne the royal "clemency and
protection." How successful he was in this mis
sion the history of the time and of Massachusetts to
this day bears abundant evidence.
Again during the war of the Revolution The
Second Church, led by another of its pastors.

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY I5I
John Lathrop, was so prominent in fomenting re
sistance to British authority that General Howe
dubbed it a " nest of traitors," and permitted
its meeting-house, the " Old North," to be torn
down. Coming down to our own times, we find Frederic
W. Lincoln, who for sixty years served this church
and congregation in various official capacities, while
War Mayor of Boston, in the dark and trying years
of the Rebellion, enforcing order, stimulating the
patriotism of the citizens, quenching the draft riots
as they were quenched in no other city of the
Union, and steadying and upholding by counsel
and assistance not only Governor Andrew, but
even President Lincoln himself.
But it is not my province to enlarge upon any of
the themes which are to be presented to you this
evening. So much only I feel authorized to say, to
explain that, when the influence of The Second
Church in America, in government, is named, we
make no idle boast.
And here we are called to meet the first disap
pointment which in any way mars the hitherto
triumphant success of our celebration. His Excel
lency the Governor and the honored President of
Harvard University, both of whom take a great
interest in this occasion and promised to be pres
ent, are at the last moment detained by illness in
their respective homes. Governor Wolcott's father
was many years a member of this Society, and a
member of its Standing Committee ; and the son
remembers still with affection and interest his con-

152 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
nection with the services of the Church. Twice
a day on Sunday was then the rule. Are there
many of these young men, from whom a possible
future governor may be taken, ready to cheerfuUy
assume such duty now ? It is to his ExceUency, as
to us, a source of great regret that he cannot be in
his place with us this evening.
This same great pastor of ours. Increase Mather,
found time amid his other occupations to be for
sixteen years the President of Harvard College. It
has been wittily said of him " that, when not busy
caring for his church or shaping the politics of the
colony, he would step over to Cambridge and take
charge of Harvard College."
The presence this evening of Dr. Eliot, who
stands conspicuously to-day as the exponent of
progressive educational movement, not only in
Massachusetts, but in the whole country, would
have brought in close touch again these venerable
institutions whose proud records seem to have a
common starting-point.
But, if we are deprived of the pleasure we antici
pated from the addresses of these gentlemen, the
rest of our programme will be undisturbed, and a
brilliant part of it will be Mendelssohn's " Hymn of
Praise," one of the magnificent musical creations
not often heard. Under the lead of our accom
plished Musical Director, with his excellent choir
and briUiant instrumental and vocal assistants, we
shall listen to a rendering of this work which may
make us almost think it would have been enouo-h
to have the joy of our hearts expressed only by
these glorious symphonies and songs.

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 53
But we have closer ties with Harvard CoUege
than merely to have furnished it with a President.
Samuel Mather, our first minister, was a tutor and
the first " Fellow of the College " ; Increase Mather
received its first degree of Doctor of Divinity; John
Lathrop was for nearly forty years a member of its
Corporation ; Henry Ware, Jr., was one of its pro
fessors ; and Emerson received his training at its
Divinity School. So, when we would speak of the
influence of The Second Church upon the literature
of the two and one-half centuries of its existence,
we turn naturally to our "foster sister," I may
almost call her; and she responds to-night in the
presence of Professor Francis G. Peabody, D.D.,
whom I now have the honor to present to you.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE SECOND
CHURCH ON AMERICAN LIT
ERATURE.
BY REV. FRANCIS G. PEABODY, D.D.
/^NE of the most striking coincidences which
this occasion recalls is found in the relation of
The Second Church in Boston to the history of
American literature. If we divide the two hun
dred and fifty years which we now commemorate
into two periods, and distinguish the New England
of colonial days from the New England of the mod
ern age, we are led at once to recall two names
which represent by pre-eminence the literary life of

154 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
these two periods; and both of these names are
those of ministers of this venerable church. Cotton
Mather was the incarnation of the spirit of Puri
tanism, — of its strenuous and self-searching con
science, of its prodigious theological activity, of its
theocratic view of government, and of its credulous
literalism. Emerson was the prophet of the mod
ern American spirit, — of its buoyant idealism, its
indifference to tradition, its sense of destiny, its con
fident optimism, its touch of humor, and its freedom
in the truth. If one would interpret that strange
phase of intellectual progress which is represented
by New England in the first half of the eighteenth
century, with its mingling of great learning and
great credulity, of deep humility and vast self-con
fidence, of dominating ecclesiasticism and awaken
ing democracy, he must study it in the voluminous
writings of Cotton Mather. If one would know
how the character of modern American life was de
veloped in the first half of the present century,
how it happened that cheerfulness, courage, candor,
self-confidence, and hopefulness, came to be so in
wrought among our national instincts, he will find
these traits expressed in their most alluring form
in the writings of Emerson.
What an extraordinary contrast, both of literary
achievement and of personal character, is presented
to us in these two pastors of The Second Church !
Mather was turbulent and combative, a perplexing,
oscillating, often grotesque character. Emerson
was singularly self-contained and incapable of con
troversy, consistent in character, and restrained and

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 55
studied in his literary art. For no less than forty-
four years Mather was minister of this church, and
was concerned throughout that period with every
political, social, and theological issue about him.
In less than three years Emerson found it neces
sary to his peace of mind to withdraw from your
ministry into the secluded concentration of his re
flective life. Mather published no less than three
hundred and eighty-six works, dealing in the most
discursive fashion with every variety of human in
terest ; and, not content with this enormous pro
duction of printed works, he labored for twenty
years on a vast and unpublished commentary of
Scripture, and sighed for yet other worlds to con
quer. " Is there no possibility for me," he writes
in his diary, " to find ye time that I may contrive a
system of the sciences, wherein they shall be saved
from vanity and corruption ? " The complete writ
ings of Emerson, on the other hand, might be in
cluded in the dimensions of a single work of his
versatile predecessor. He left but a few score of
essays, addresses, and poems, reiterating in ever-
recurring and yet ever-varying expression, like the
suggestion of a fundamental musical motif his
tranquil interpretation of an ideal world. Mather,
in his relation to social reform, was aggressive, self-
confident, and omniscient. He fulminated against
slavery, pleaded for peace, discoursed on temper
ance, encouraged Christian missions, advocated in
oculation, accepted the Newtonian astronomy, and
set aside one day in each week to ask himself,
" What special subjects of affliction or objects of

156 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
compassion may I take under my practical care,
and what shall I do for them .? " Emerson's atti
tude toward social reform was tranquil and dis
passionate. He was for the most part silent in
meetings, and his voice, as the prophet wrote of
the Messiah, "was not heard in the street"; but,
when the thoughtful student of the present day
looks for the justification of his social hope, he
lifts up his eyes to the calm teaching of Emerson,
as to the hills from whence cometh his help. " He
who would help himself and others," said Emer
son, as if thinking of the impetuous and domineer
ing philanthropy of Mather, " should not be a
subject of irregularity and interrupted impulses
of virtue, but a continent, persisting, unmovable
person, . . . men who have in the gravity of their
nature a quality like that of the fly-wheel in a mill.
... It is better that joy should be spread over all
the day in the form of strength than that it should
be concentrated into ecstasies full of danger and
followed by reaction."
Here are the polar opposites of personality;
Mather with his self-accusing, self-examining
doubts, his quick indignations and fiery retorts,
Emerson with his unclouded calm amid the mis
representations of the Pharisees, as though he had
heard the great word, " Father, forgive them, for
they know not what they do." Mather, in his per
sonal appearance, was full-robed, fuU-wigged, full-
lipped, with heavy chin, as one combating the
spirits of flesh and sense: Emerson was frail and
spare, with searching eyes and gentle mien, as

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 57
though he needed no deliverance from any burden
of the flesh to wear the spiritual body of the
resurrection. Mather's interior life is a constant
drama of temptation and inconsistency. He
watches himself in thought and deed, and fines
himself for any lapse from virtue. For days he
withdraws into meditative ecstasy, and renounces
all the vanities and evil courses of the world, only
to be led again into irritability or envy or scorn.
1 heard one of our young athletes once describe
the special qualities essential to success in the
modern science of football. The youth, he said,
who would distinguish himself in the position of a
" centre rush " must be possessed by a high quality
of patience ; that is to say, this philosopher of ath
letics went on, the " centre rush " must watch and
wait for the opportunity, which will soon be given
him, to " slug " his opponent. Cotton Mather was.
qualified for this position in literary athletics. He
restrained and humUiated his soul for brief in
tervals, only to smite with renewed vigor the evil
or the evil-doer which for the moment confronted
him. With entire justice he wrote of himself in
one of his moments of self-abasement : " In my re
marks on the folly and baseness continuaUy ex
pressed by our absurd and wicked people, I do not
always preserve that meekness of wisdom which
would adorn the doctrine of God, my Saviour. I
will ask wisdom of God for the cure of this dis
temper." Emerson, on the other hand, as one of
his biographers remarks, has little to say "of the
horrid burden and impediment on the soul which

158 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
the churches call sin." His personal life seems
swept by no disturbing passion. His experience
flows with the even movement of a full, deep
stream. When he preaches, it is as one who im
presses chiefly " the reality of religion" with " an in
definite charm of simplicity and wisdom." When
he withdraws from his ministry, it is with no stormy
scene or wrestling of spirit, but with entire serenity
and unruffled good-will. " Every man," he writes,
"hath his own use." "I cannot give you," he
says again, " one of the arguments you earnestly
hint at ; for I do not know what arguments mean
in reference to an expression of thought." It is
difficult to imagine what Cotton Mather could
have said to a person who made such a reply. To
attack such an unresisting medium would be as if
one should assail the atmosphere, only to find it
tranquilly flowing back with perfect elasticity, and
inviting one to breathe it anew.
So stand these two opposite types of literary dis
tinction in the history of The Second Church in
Boston. It is as if the past and the present stood
face to face. It is impossible to imagine a rever
sion of literature or theology to the type of Cotton
Mather. It is almost equally impossible to imagine
any future evolution of literature or theology which
shall carry us far from the iUuminating aphorisms
and the comprehensive theism of Emerson. Cotton
Mather was, as one of his most observing biog
raphers has remarked, a Puritan priest who was un
aware of the fact that " Protestantism can have no
priesthood." Emerson, on the other hand, was re-

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 59
pelled by even that vestige of sacerdotalism which
he discovered in the administration of the Lord's
Supper, and gave himself wholly to the part of a
prophet of the Eternal.
Yet what strange affinities appear in these remote
and contrasted types 1 Both of these men, in their
literary achievements, were distinguished by origi
nality, candor, and courage.
Cotton Mather was in many ways as sympathetic
toward unfamiliar and even unpopular thought as
Emerson. Precisely as Emerson's intellectual sym
pathy crossed the sea and found companionship
among the German philosophers, so Mather, in
what was probably the first contact of the American
mind with Germany, corresponded with the Ger
man professor and philanthropist, Francke, and
learned from him of what he called " the warmth
from the fire of God which flames in the heart of
Germany." With the same spirit in which stu
dents from Harvard University migrate to the Uni
versity of HaUe in pursuit of the higher learning.
Cotton Mather two hundred years ago desired to
import the higher scholarship of his time to our
seat of learning. " I will make a present," he wrote,
" into our poor coUedge of certain books that are of
great improvement and influence in the famous
Frederician University, and of a tendency to correct
the present wretched method of education here."
Even the literary style of the two men, though as
different as diffusiveness and artificiality are from
compactness and precision, show a kinship in orig
inality, independence, and self-mastery. In both

l6o THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
there is complete subordination of form to thought,
and perfect liberty from constraint and self-display.
" There has been," says Cotton Mather, as if de
scribing the writing of Emerson, " a deal of ado
about a style, so much that I must offer you my
sentiment upon it. There is a way of writing
wherein . . . the writer pretends not to reading. Yet
he could not have written as he does if he had not
read very much in his time ; and his composures
are not only a cloth of gold, but also stuck with as
many jewels as the gown of a Russian ambassador."
And for himself he says : " I can truly say that I
have studiously set aside that care of embellishing.
I have dropped a world of what some would call
ornaments which, while I was writing, offered them
selves to my mind."
Both of these men, moreover, the priest and the
prophet, were at one in their supreme devotion to
the religious life. To Mather, it is true, religion
was beset by dogmatic tests and Biblical literalism :
to Emerson religion, as he wrote, was to come " full
circle," to show the identity " of the law of gravita
tion with purity of heart," and to prove " Duty to
be one thing with Science, with Beauty, and with
Joy." Yet the prophet of religion has no funda
mental controversy with its priest. " It is an office,"
Emerson himself says, " which is coeval with the
world." " A man enamoured of this excellency be
comes its priest or poet." Wherever, then, a true
priest, in however mistaken forms, has truly served
his altar, there the true prophet finds a work which,
as the greatest of prophets said, he comes " not to

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY l6l
destroy, but to fulfil." It is Emerson, not Mather,
who says of the Christian religion : " Two inesti
mable advantages Christianity has given us : first,
the Sabbath, the jubilee of the whole world ; and,
secondly, the institution of preaching, ... to cheer
the waiting and fainting hearts of men with new
hope and new revelation."
Finally, these two great names in the history of
literature unite in indicating to us the natural limits
and the legitimate place of the preacher in the
modern world. For the universal genius of a
Mather and his priestly authority in all spheres of
life, the pulpit no longer offers an opportunity.
Indeed, it may almost be said that there is no place
in the modern world for omniscience and self-asser
tive learning, equally at home in history, science,
reform, administration, and preaching. The spe
cialization of modern life has set stern limits
around each vocation ; and few men are foolish
enough to risk that saying which was spoken of
the distinguished Whewell, that " science was his
forte, and omniscience his foible." On the other
hand, it is equally evident that the proper sphere
for the great work of Emerson did not lie within
the limits of the pastoral ofifice, and that one of the
chief services of The Second Church to the world
was in giving to its young minister an easy escape
from the preacher's calling. It was not merely a
failure to modify a special form of worship which
determined his change of career. He had at
bottom a view of life and of duty which in any
event would have soon led him to withdraw. His

1 62 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
sermons are marked by few of those great qualities
which were so soon the fruit of his seclusion and
independence. His transition to Concord was as if
a caged bird had found the liberty of the woods,
and had at once soared and sung.
Do such admissions, however, indicate that the
office of the minister is either inadequate or super
fluous or subordinate.? On the contrary, they give
to the ministry precisely that limitation and defini
tion which establishes its place in the varied life of
modern society. The pulpit is not the throne of a
theological dictator like Mather, nor the medium of
a spiritual philosophy like that of Emerson. It is
no more an indictment of the preacher's function
to observe that it was inconsistent with Emerson's
solitude of soul than to observe that it is no longer
possible to unite the duties of minister of The
Second Church with the duties of the President
of Harvard College, as Increase Mather united
these duties for seventeen years, and as Cotton
Mather much desired to unite them. Let us accept
with gladness the special task which distinguishes
the Christian ministry from these great representa
tives of the history of literature. There is a point
in which the functions of the priest and of the
prophet meet, and create a work less ambitious
than these which we have traced, but not less es
sential for the common good. It is the work of the
Christian pastor, the shepherd of the religious life,
who, when he putteth forth his sheep, goeth before,
and the sheep, knowing his voice, follow him.
We turn once more to the records of The Second

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 63
Church, and many such faithful, humble-minded
pastors stand before us. Let us recall but one of
them. Henry Ware, Jr., was, as compared with the
massive learning of Mather or the spiritual insight
of Emerson, an insignificant person in the history
of literature. From the point of view, however, of
The Second Church, he was nearer than either of
his greater associates to the ideal of a Christian
pastor. He was not an accomplished scholar or a
thrilling preacher. His literary contributions are
no longer read, and, with perhaps a single excep
tion, were never widely read. If, however, the
formative influences of the successive preachers of
this church could be now identified among the
saints in heaven, a full proportion of profound
changes of human character in the history of this
people would be traced to the simple, unaffected,
sincere piety of the ministry of Henry Ware.
Let us not deceive ourselves as we trace the in
fluences on literature which this church has been
permitted to exert. These effects of a church are,
after all, accidental and occasional. Sometimes the
literary achievement may overshadow the preacher's
office, as in the case of Mather. Sometimes it may
repel from the preacher's office, as in the case
of Emerson. Meantime, amid the world of litera
ture there still remains an opportunity, more
humble in its pretensions, more ephemeral in its
reputation, but quite as creative and transforming
in its effect, for the faithful pastor of a faithful
flock, — the true priest, who finds in forms their
spiritual symbolism, the true prophet, who preaches

164 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
truth which is eternally real to him. Among the
great words of the scholars and the poets there is
still a place for that word which is made flesh in
the pastor's life, and which dwells among us, with
its example and leadership, full of grace and truth.

In introducing Dr. Hale, Mr. Crosby said : —
And now it is my great pleasure to present to you one
whom we all know and recognize as the Nestor of our
faith, one who is an appreciative and charitable critic of
the past, full of confidence in the present, and equally full
of hope and trust in the great power and sweetness of the
future, one who needs no introduction, Edward Everett
Hale.

ADDRESS.
BY THE REV. EDWARD EVERETT HALE, D.D.
npHE religious history of a church like this is
written in the lives of the thousands on
thousands whom it has trained and of those whom
they have trained, — of hundreds of thousands.
And this means in their eternal lives.
Clearly enough, the visible expression of that
history is made most distinctly for you and me, in
the lives and the work of the official servants of
such a church, — of the men who have preached in
its pulpit, have counseUed its members and been
counselled by them. The lives and work of men

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 65
who have christened their children, and have
seen them grow up into men and women, are an
exponent of what was the quality and intensity of
the Christianity of their time. It is one of the
simple miracles of our Congregational order that
a body of God-loving and intelligent people do
choose from men like themselves an official servant,
who is at once teacher and learner, helper and
helped, one sent and one sending. He is leader
and led. They choose him because they think he
is near to God, and can help them see God and
hear him. They ask him to do so, and they help
him to do so. He teaches them, and they teach
him. Like master, like man; like preacher, like
hearer. The congregation makes the man, in a
thousand subtle agencies, as the man by a thou
sand makes the congregation.
The history of this church presents several lives
to us of such men, who have filled notable places in
the larger history of the world. It records many
other names of preachers, of whom, as the Book of
Ecclesiasticus would say, there is no memorial, but
of whom, all the same, the work was solid, so that
they need no memorial. I wiU not try — what
would be a pleasant thing to do — to recall from
forgetfulness some of these names. There is no
dishonorable name on the long record, though
there are forgotten names. But I can and will say
something, first, of the lives of the Mathers in the
first century of your history, and then of the lives
of two men in this century who are not forgotten
and cannot be.

1 66 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
Increase Mather and Cotton Mather, the father
and the son, were the ministers of this church for
more than two generations. In that period Boston
was wholly changed. At the beginning here was
a little village, of perhaps five thousand people,
unknown to the world. At the end of it the com
merce of Boston was larger than that of Scotland
and Ireland combined, and her dealings were with
almost every port in Europe. The Mathers and
their people were doing their best, in all this time,
to infuse a Divine Life into such human affairs. I
could easily spend the evening in briefly describing
thousands of forms of generous activity in which
they led and pushed, coaxed and goaded Boston
into a life ideal, and not material, — life to the glory
of God, and not the glory of Mammon or Baal
or Dagon.
In more than a thousand of such efforts, one
of the Mathers made a horrible mistake, which is
always remembered against him, the younger of
the two. But then and there he was acting from
a noble motive, and even that Salem witchcraft
misery was an effort to carry forward the " will of
God " as he supposed God's will to be.
Simply, — and this is all-important, — the Mathers,
father and son, meant that God should rule this
world, the devil should not, and that man should
not, except by God's order. They really meant
that the people around them should live to God's
glory, and not for their own petty profit or pelf.
In their mistakes and in their successes they
stand thus for the genuine Puritan theory that

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 67
religion must not -be parted from daily life. God's
glory first, God's glory second, God's glory all the
time. This means, in our language. Public Spirit. It
means public spirit as distinct from private com
fort or private wealth. It means God's will in the
whole of the community, — at the town dock, in
the public schools, in the nursery, on Cornhill, or
on the Common. It means this in contrast with
what is meant by a " religious administration " which
is conducted by companies of priests who keep
outside the world and occupy themselves with
trumpets and bells and incense and processions
and altar covers and other ordinances of service.
It means a church of the people, carried on by the
people and carried on for the people.
Of all this you can find no better types than the
two Mathers. The subjects of their sermons are
what we should call pre-eminently secular ; that
is, they are subjects of the time when they are
spoken. Earthquakes, murders, piracy, schools,
government, charters. General Courts, — whatever in
later times the daily press discusses, these men
discuss in The Second Church and at the Thursday
Lecture. In the course of such work for Monday, Tuesday,
and Wednesday, they fell foul, alas ! of the Salem
witchcraft. They did not create it, but it found
them. The father. Increase Mather, opposed the
madness of the affair with all his might. But
Cotton Mather, the son, held, alas! a brief
for the other side. He was now only thirty

1 68 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
years old. As a young man, he had years before
written a book on " Invisible Wonders." It is not
a whit more absurd than the absurd books which
absurd people read and write to-day. In that book
he had granted the existence of people possessed
by evil spirits, just as similar writers do to-day,
just as the Bible does. When the Salem prosecu
tions came on, he would not and did not disdain his
earlier words. That devilish pride of consistency
held him to what had been written ; and so he is
charged to-day, in history, with bringing on the
catastrophe. Appleton's Cyclopaedia says, coolly,
the prosecutions were abetted and mainly carried
on by Cotton Mather; and afterward, when our
poor old Judge Sewall confessed in penance his
shame and error. Cotton Mather — yes, for thirty
years more of life — would not own that he was
wrong. This shows cowardice, it shows weakness, it
shows the accursed danger of books, it shows per
sonal narrowness. But it is hard to call it inten
tional wickedness. And it does show also what I
called the Puritan determination, that God shall
rule, his wiU shaU be done — shall — on earth as
in heaven. Alas that they construed his will so
badly !
Now we must not say that it was right for Cot
ton Mather to use the pulpit for temperance, for the
slaves, for suppressing street profanity, for health,
for education, for inoculation, and then turn and say
that he ought not to have interfered in the witch
craft trials. All we can say is that he ought to

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 69
have judged right in such matters, and that he did
judge wrong.
For which, perhaps, I ought not to ask you to for
give him. We know so much, and it is so certain
that we are always right, that we find it hard to for
give him that he was in this case wholly wrong.
But we will remember that for the nearly forty
years of his ministry he was working against slav
ery, against intemperance, for the schools, against
the devil, and that he was trying — in a stupid way,
if you please — to make others do so. He forced
inoculation upon Boston, with the help of Boylston,
when half the medical profession and the most of
the town were against him !
He has been judged before now, and the verdicts
are on record. We cannot change them if we
would. Certainly, of the high award of that Infi
nite Tribunal where justice and mercy always
meet together, — the tribunal which assigned to him
long ago his duties and his place in larger worlds
than this, — I can say nothing. No ! I have not
enough, thank God, of the impiety of the theolo
gians. But on that other estimate which mankind should
place on him, I have sometimes pondered. I have
fancied what might happen if we had now a perma
nent tribunal of great statesmen, great jurists, great
men, who, after a century and a half, might have
the duty of revising the somewhat ephemeral judg
ments of our lower courts. May we imagine, per
haps, such a court — James Martineau, Benjamin
Harrison, and the Baron de Staal — intrusted yes-

170 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
terday with such a revision of the Mather verdicts ?
May I imagine the counsel for the poor man there
with his brief, and the chief justice questioning him ?
" What do you say, sir, about this miserable
witchcraft business ? " " Oh ! we say as little as
we can, may it please the court. We say that,
when he was almost a boy, he had abridged the
science of the time, which was all wrong. We say
that then he had not courage enough nor sense
enough to oppose the science of his day. But
we find no wilful selfishness nor moral obliquity
in that stupidity. We admit ignorance and stu
pidity." " Note that, Mr. Clerk. Ignorance and stupidity
are admitted."
" Yes, my lord, ignorance, obstinacy, and stupid
ity. But in asking for a revision of the world's
judgment, if the court please, we offer this little
memorandum of Benjamin Franklin's.
" Oh, Ben Franklin ! There was integrity and
courage, backward sense and forward sense. What
does Franklin say ? Read the note, Mr. Clerk, if it
is not too long."
And the clerk reads : " Benjamin Franklin to
Samuel Mather. There was a book of your
father's, ' Essays to do Good,' which I read in boy
hood.* If I have been, as you seem to think, a
useful citizen, the public owes the advantage of it
to that book."
" Does Ben Franklin say that ? Do you note that,
gentlemen, — all the use that he has been to this
*Passy, May 12, 1784.

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 171
world, — all of it ? That is a great deal. AU this
electrical science born from Franklin's discoveries,
all this practical education suggested by Frank
lin's benevolence, all these public libraries, fostered
even in their infancy by him, all these devices for
human comfort, all these refuges for orphans, these
schools and colleges for men, and, above all, peace
between England and America, the statesmanship
of that great treaty which made friends of the two
empires which should never be enemies, — all this
work, which makes Franklin Franklin, all this is
due to one book of this poor criminal. Cotton
Mather. " Gentlemen, really, I think, we must not be too
hard on the conservative obstinacy in youth of a
badly taught young man."
The simple truth is, if anybody cares, that the
witchcraft horrors sprang from the folly and mad
ness of the theory then held as to written Script
ure, — the theory in which Cotton Mather had been
bred, "A witch shaU surely die." Those are the
words in this Bible. If such words are the present
voice of the present God, — and Cotton Mather
had been taught that they were, and believed they
were, — why, he was compelled, and the Danvers
judges were compeUed, to follow,— fated to the
horrid plunge they made with him.
Now it is not hard to see that the memory of an
influence so horrible did its blessed work in a hun
dred years. That fatal error wrought out the truth,
which The Second Church of later times has done
its share in proclaiming since, that the whole word

172 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
of God cannot be carved in stone, — no, nor
chained upon paper. Remember that " God made
known his ways unto Moses," not his words, — " his
acts unto the children of Israel." The word is
nearer. The word is very nigh thee, — in thy heart
and in thy mouth.
Yes, the letter killeth. The letter of Moses
killed those fifty witches at Salem. But the Spirit
giveth Life ; and the Spirit gives us at last such men
in our pulpit as Henry Ware, as Waldo Emerson.
Only one hundred and one years after the Salem
witchcraft Henry Ware was born. From the hills
of his birthplace, Hingham, you can see the blue
line of Salem, five-and-twenty miles across the bay.
One century, — enough to make the difference be
tween the Salem of the witchcraft and the Salem of
Bentley and Lowell and Cabot, the men of the India
trade and of the constitution of Massachusetts.
There were men at Ware's christening who had
heard Cotton Mather preach, I suppose.
And the difference — morally, spirituaUy, yes,
and physicaUy and socially — is like the difference
between the planet Mars and the planet Terra, if
that be the name they give us in Mars.
The religion taught and preached in that century
by such men as Cotton Mather and his successors,
by the two Eliots at the North End, by Jonathan
Mayhew at the West Church, by Oliver Everett in
the New South, and by Charles Chauncy at the
First Church, is a sort of religion which from such
men as Cotton and Mayo and Increase and Cotton
Mather, evolves such men in less than three gener-

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 73
ations as Henry Ware and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
For Ware and Emerson both grew up in these
conditions of the Puritan religion of the Bay.
In their time, as I happen to know, the world
tried to think that these two prophets were far
apart. In truth, as we know, they were both exponents
of the central gospel of all religion, — " Where ye go,
preach, saying. The kingdom of God is at hand."
" God is here. God is now." It is the religion
of Pope Pius on the Seven Hills. It is the religion
of the miner who is kneeling by his child's bed
side in the Montana hills to-night. The centre of
all religion, the only religion worth the words it
speaks, the religion of our own Unitarian Church,
which is " the Church of the Holy Spirit."
Yet with these ears I have heard Henry Ware
discuss that puzzle of the definition of Person, —
what Person is and what it is not, — which seems at
once such a riddle and such a fascination to men as
young as he was. And / suppose that the hearers
supposed that he supposed that he was in antago
nism to Waldo Emerson ; and yet it is certain that at
that same moment Emerson was saying some word
which was making more clear to some dazed,
puzzled child of God that God is here, that God is
now, that he and God are one, if he will.
Personal religion ! That I also partake of the
divine nature, that God is with us, — Emanuel. Not
God with him, not God with one prophet or two ;
but that, if we seek him, surely we shall find him, if we
seek for him with all our hearts. Here is the religion

174 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
of Emerson, the religion of the Wares, the religion
of Channing as of Martineau, of Swedenborg, as of
Whitefield and Wesley, and George Fox and Jacob
Boehme, the religion of Owen Feltham and De Sales
and Saint Francis, the religion of every mother
who ever taught her boy to say " Our Father," of
every child who lisped the word so taught him, —
the religion for which the Saviour died, for which
Paul was beheaded and Peter crucified, the re
ligion in which David sang and Isaiah spoke, the
religion in which God said, " I am," to Moses, and
the whole world replied, " Thou art."
Of all prophets speaking the English language
in our time, it has been given to Ralph Waldo
Emerson, the minister of the Second Church, to
make this proclamation with most persuasive power,
" The reign of God is here," the kingdom of God
is at hand.
In that miner's camp in Montana the well-worn
volume of the " Essays " lies behind the powder-
horn. In the cupboard of the starving student in
Paris, where, alas! there is no Bible, there is the
essence of the Bible in these same " Essays." In
the cabinet of the Emperor of Russia lies the trans
lation of Emerson. And under the shadow of the
mainsail, in the heat of the summer sun, as at this
moment your cousin rounds Cape Horn, he is at
this moment reading his Emerson. Here are lines
which go out to all times. Here is the word which
goes to the end of the world.
Blessed be the church, and honored, whose pulpit
is proud to echo the Eternal Voice, even as it was

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 75
spoken by such men. Thanks to the God who has
led it out from the worship of stones or of the
carving upon stones, from any idolatry of any
letter, into the fulness of life, into the very free
dom of Christ himself. The letter kUleth, but the
Spirit giveth Life; and, for the future, prayers
and hopes. How blessed a thing this is, that we
should be called " the children of God " !
After the chorus following Dr. Hale's speech, Mr.
Crosby asked the congregation to join in the national
hymn, "America," in the spirit of enthusiasm and
thankfulness that should mark those who felt the duty of
their obligation to the generations whose labors, priva
tions, and sacrifices had made possible the glorious
America which we possess, and that the congregation
should adopt a custom of the fathers, and rise and turn
their faces to the choir.
A benediction was pronounced by Dr. Hale.

SERMON.
BY THE REV. THOMAS VAN NESS.
November 26, 1899.
Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth
unto those things which are before, I press forward toward the mark
for the prize of the high calling of God. — Phil.
TF any man had a right to look back with pride
and pleasure upon his past life, that man was
Paul. As he sat there in his prison at Rome,
writing letters to the various infant churches in
Macedonia and Asia Minor, what more natural
than to indulge in reminiscences, to tell of his
wanderings, his imprisonment, his remarkable ex
periences on sea and land, or his audience with
King Agrippa, with Festus ? Surely, any one with
such a record might well have been pardoned if he
had written about himself and drawn from his per
sonal career lessons of God's care and providence.
What I particularly like about Paul is that he
does not boast, is not puffed up or carried off his
feet, as we say to-day, by a sense of his own impor
tance. He does not dwell on what he has accom
plished ; for every achievement is but a prelude to
something better, higher, further off. Therefore,
he has no time to talk of past deeds. As soon as a
project is brought to a successful issue, Paul puts
it out of his mind, " forgets it," as it were, so that
he may bend all his energies to pressing forward

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 77
toward something else, and thus eventually win the
prize of the high calling of God.
You see two boys at coUege. One impresses
you as much brighter and quicker than the other,
possessed of more native ability. Concerning him
you predict great things, a briUiant future. Fif
teen or twenty years pass, and you need to revise
your judgment. The young man from whom you
expected so much, it is true, leads an honorable
life, but beyond that, little more can be said of him ;
while of the other you are forced to say that he is
steadily growling in influence, and will undoubtedly
make an indelible mark upon the world.
How does it happen that your judgment was
so in error.? Had the second youth any special
faculty which you failed to note? No, the dif
ference between the two young men was the
difference between possessing vision and no vision.
The one upon whom you counted was satisfied
with the conventional standards, measured himself
by those around him, by their acquisitions, did not
care to become anything more. The other youth
in early life had put before his mind an ideal, per
haps unattainable, but, nevertheless, a continual
incentive to renewed exertion. Because of that
ideal he was never quite satisfied to rest on what
had been done, but, like the apostle, was ever
reaching forth and pressing on, — in short, was de
veloping and becoming more noble, strong, and
influential. " What position does he hold ? " " To whom is
she related ? " " How much is he worth ? " By

178 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
these questions and the answers which they elicit
we try to fix the place of a man or a woman in
society or the business world. If we really desire
to know the relative standing of people, it would be
much better to inquire concerning their ambitions
and their aspirations. What are his desires.?
What his ideals ? Has he a vision .? Does he
reach forward and press on toward some goal .? If
so, then of that particular person we cqn safely
predict an ever expanding, never failing life.
Average abilities conscientiously used often be
come the most effective ; for it is a fact which all
history goes to prove that capacity grows out of
desire, or, as Lowell puts it, in an exaggerated line,
" Perhaps the longing to be so
Helps make the soul immortal."
Yes, the desire, the longing, to be something has
undoubtedly conferred earthly immortality on more
than one whose name is now written on the death
less roll of fame.
For the last two weeks we have been standing
in the blaze of glory which shines down from the
pathway of our memorable past. As a church, we
have a record, a history, which gives us, deservedly,
the right to be proud and self-congratulatory ; but
now the question comes. What is to be our temper
of mind toward that past and the achievements of
our forefathers .? Are we to be contented with the
position attained, or does that past stimulate us to
renewed effort .? In other words, have we desires
and ambitions or have we not.? Is there some

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 79
vision continually beckoning us on and upward,
such as the vision of our Puritan ancestors, —
a vision of a regenerated earth, of a new common
wealth, of the coming of the kingdom of God ?
On this first Sunday of a new church century it
behooves us to ask this question, and to pause for
its very serious consideration. A certain well-
known official, who for the last three years has
been much in the public eye, recently made a plea
for what he calls the strenuous life, — the life of
daring and doing. He is trying to awake the
American youth to the fact that struggle, fight,
work, are essential, not simply in order to achieve,
but in order to exist at all, in order to keep from
decay and death.
The strenuous life ! But that is what Paul was
preaching, — yes, and living. As he so clearly
points out, all 6ne's toil and work will come to
naught if there is not in mind some definite goal.
A definite goal I This at once gives singleness
of purpose. It reduces effort from a complex to a
simple thing. You see many people pressing for
ward to-day, but in zigzag directions. Conse
quently, the result of their work is scattering, in
effective. To keep this church in the future from dissipat
ing its energy, it is needful for us to concentrate
effort, to have a plan, a purpose, a mark toward
which we shall move, as has the swimmer making
for the shore or the runner in a race. At once this
wiU give to aU our thought and all our work a
unity of effect, and amazingly increase our power.

l8o THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
So much settled, the question comes. In what
direction shall we move .? What shall be our ulti
mate goal ?
What better than that which our Puritan ances
tors put before themselves as the one thing worthy
of accomplishment ?
If there is an historical fact well settled to-day, it
is the purpose which animated our Puritan fore
fathers, the reason why they left England and came
to this bleak and desolate coast of New England.
They came here, not as did the French Jesuits to
Canada, because their hearts were aflame with a
desire to save souls, nor like missionaries, because
they had some special creed or doctrine which they
wished to preach to every living creature on the
face of the earth ; but they came because they had
a certain theory of government, a certain rule of
conduct, a certain very definite idea of life. They
were intent upon establishing here a Puritan com
monwealth, "a Church without a bishop, a State
without a king." To put it in a sentence, they
wanted to establish here the kingdom of God.
It is foreign to the point, and a remark worthy
only of a cynic, to say that they established more
nearly the kingdom of the devil. I am not now
talking of what they did or did not accomplish. I
am simply trying to make clear what was their aim,
their one great desire.
Can we put before ourselves a better, a more
worthy object?
Suppose for the moment you agree with me that
to try to establish here in New England, in Massa-

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY l8l
chusetts, in Boston, the kingdom of God, is an aim
quite worthy enough for which to strive. See how
that at once simplifies our future church policy.
Hereafter we can listen with respect and sym
pathy to far-off missionary appeals for help, to those
who believe our chief duty is to spread the gospel
in Japan, in the hiUs of India, in Hungary, among
the Molokains of the Trans-Caucasus; but to one
and all such appeals we can kindly, but firmly, re
turn the answer : " This is not our direct work, not
the especial thing for which we were founded. We
wish you God-speed in your efforts ; but we must
not scatter our energies, cannot turn aside to do
your particular work. Our duty is to reach forth
and press onward toward our own special goal."
This, too, separates our pulpit from those given
over to the promulgation of some particular creed,
some particular doctrine, and, as a consequence,
will keep us from theological controversy and ec
clesiastical strife. " No," we can say to our more
zealous denominational friends, " our chief work
is not, as you think, to combat wrong doctrine,
to show the exact difference between Orthodoxy
and Unitarianism, to define the belief which each
member must have, to point out the existing errors
in Presbyterianism or Lutheranism. Speculation,
phUosophy, metaphysics in a way are implied
in the very fact that we are a church; but,
as a church, we were not founded to preach
some certain theory of the universe. If we did,
then that theory in time might pass away, as did
the theory of the universe preached by Cotton

1 82 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
Mather. Or, if we maintained some particular type
of metaphysics, then that, too, in time would be
come obsolete, as have the metaphysical systems of
the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. No, The
Second Church was founded, as its original cove
nant plainly states, because its incorporators desired
God to dweU among them and to acknowledge
them as his people, and, further, so that God's king
dom and grace might be advanced by them.
Again, then, we can say, as did they : —
We desire God to dwell among us ;
We pray that by the character of our lives he may own us as
his people ; and
We resolve that God's kingdom and grace shall be advanced
by us.
Having now set before ourselves this original aim
and object of our forefathers, having definitely in
mind the task that is set us to do, let us each indi
vidually say, in the language of Paul, " Forgetting
those things which are behind and reaching for
ward unto those things which are before, I press
forward toward the mark for the prize of the high
calling of God." . . .
The practical member, right here, very, naturally
asks, " But in what way do you think The Second
Church in Boston can best advance God's kingdom
and grace ? "
The question deserves a direct answer; but, be
fore we attempt to answer it, let us look at one or
two things connected with our late celebration.
Did you notice — but, of course, you must — how,

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 83
not by premeditated action, but by a sort of in
tuitive feeling, aU the speakers singled out three
epochs in the life of the church. Those three epochs
are connected with the names of three ministers, —
Increase Mather, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and
Henry Ware, Jr.
For what did those three men especially stand ?
Increase Mather was not as great a preacher as his
son ; Emerson was one of the poorest pastors ; and
Henry Ware, Jr., could not rank with Lathrop as a
controversialist, nor, indeed, with those who came
after him as a public speaker. Why, then, by com
mon consent, are these three ministers singled out
from all the rest as representative ? What did they
say or do which the world does not wish to forget ?
for, if we can find that out, then we may be sure
that those same characteristics will be needful in the
future, and must be embodied in any policy of the
church, if it is to be successful.
I think you will agree once again with me, when
I say that Increase Mather is not remembered to
day for his preaching, — for much of it was rubbish ;
nor is he remembered by his books and literary
productions, — for those books are consigned to the
upper shelf and never read. But he is remem
bered with respect and admiration because of his
courage, of that highest kind of courage, — moral
courage. Let any one of you put yourself in his place, and
ask what, under the same circumstances, you would
have done in those momentous days when the in
dependence of the Massachusetts Colony hung in

184 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
the balance, and you will realize more vividly the
amount of soul bravery it required on Mather's
part to risk his position, his infiuence with the
ruling powers, his very life, as he did, for the civic
formation of his native town.
Then come to Emerson. What was the distinct
note in his preaching ?
You had your answer first in the address given
last Sunday by the young man who represented
the National Religious Union, and afterward, on
Monday, in the closing remarks of Edward Everett
Hale. Mr. Eaton said, and said truly, that through
Emerson he came to know himself. In that essay
on Self-reliance are these words : "Never imitate:
abide in the simple and noble regions of your life.
Obey your heart, and you shall reproduce the fore
world again."
In picking up my own volume of Essays, I find
that back in 1879, just twenty years ago, I came
across that very passage ; and it revolutionized my
whole inner life, so that since then I have never
consciously imitated any one in speech, thought,
action, or way of looking at events. I make this
personal confession simply as added testimony.
Yes, Emerson helps to give us confidence in our
selves and our own thoughts, — makes us appre
ciate how noble and God-like we are. His is dis
tinctly a message of cheer. When you have once
read his essay on Compensation, you feel from then
on, no matter what be taken, no matter what your
losses, that you are not utterly bereft; for some-

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 85
thing else of equal virtue and profit has been
slipped into the vacant place, and that you may
still enjoy.
Cheer and hope! I think those two words char-
acterize the message of Emerson, — cheer and
hope. Do you think the time will ever come when
men and women wUl not want to be cheered and
inspired to greater things ? or when they will not
want to be lifted up above the humdrum common
level by a great hope, which whispers to them of
their immortality and kinship with the Eternal
God? And what of Henry Ware, Jr. ? What especially
distinguished his pastorate from the others? We
are told that during the time he was minister The
Second Church knew a distinct revival, and at
tained as great strength as during the best period
of the Mathers. How was this revival brought
about ? I think I am able to say, after reading his
memoirs given me by that dear old parishioner,
Mrs. Burdett, now some ninety-three years of age,
who knew Mr. Ware very intimately.
I find, among other characterizations, this, which
I believe correct : " Mr. Ware had an entire sympa
thy with and love of mankind under all circum
stances and conditions, with all degrees of cultiva
tion, and with every variety of moral character.
This had much to do with his power of exercising
influence over all classes of men." " Mr. Ware,"
says another writer, " was the embodiment of sym
pathy. When with him, all sorts and conditions of
men forgot their differences, and were made one
in a common fellowship."

1 86 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
There you have the secret in those last words.
Mr. Ware was able to establish a common feUow
ship. In a period when social differences were ac
centuated, at a time when class distinctions divided
men into various little cliques, Mr. Ware broke
down such arbitrary differences, and through
Christian fellowship united all his people on the
one great plane of human brotherhood.
Courage, cheer, feUowship, — for these three
things do we especially remember Mather, Em
erson, and Ware. These are the characteristics
which they contributed to the stream of Second
Church life, and these are the things which must
still be embodied in the teachings and articles of
The Second Church if it desires to go successfully
forward into the twentieth century.
Now we are ready to answer the question of the
practical man who asks in what way we think this
church can best advance God's kingdom and grace
here in Boston.
First, we should say, in not limiting our interests
or subjects of consideration to those things which
simply affect our own personal life and prosperity,
but in being interested in every civic matter which
makes for a healthy municipality. This pulpit, the
members of this church, must be awake to the
duties of citizenship. As a church, we must work
for good government, for an honest administration,
for a clean and intelligent democracy. This means
an interest in our public schools, in our libraries
and art gaUeries, in our highways and common
parks, in our water supply and gas supply, in our

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 87
philanthropic and charitable institutions. Not
now, as when Increase Mather lived, does a king
threaten our liberties ; but none the less are those
liberties in peril from political wire-pullers and con
scienceless corporations. Read how almost impos
sible it is for the City of New York to once again
get back under its own control the Battery Park,
and you wUl understand what danger there is lurk
ing on every side to destroy the people's rights.
Again, we wish to raise up laymen and ministers
with the courage of their convictions, who, if needs
be, are wiUing to stand in the legislative hall or in
the council chamber, and boldly say, as did Increase
Mather, when an iniquitous measure is likely to be
passed, " I hope there is not a freeman in Boston
that can be guilty of such a thing."
This pulpit in the coming years, if it follow
in the true line of progress, must be dedicated
to affirmations, not negations. As in Emerson's
day, it must affirm that God is, that he is here
and now in our souls, that we are God's sons
and daughters, and have within ourselves infinite
possibilities. The gospel sounding forth from Sun
day to Sunday needs to be shot through with hope
and cheer, — an immortal hope, a cheer because of
what we can do, what we are, and what we are to
become. Because of the message thus delivered,
every man should leave this building with a more
buoyant step than when he entered, and with a
higher opinion of his own capabilities, — yes, with
a higher, a loftier conception of his feUow-man and
of the God-like qualities of his nature.

1 88 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
Lastly, because of the feeling of fellowship that
is thus engendered, every man and every woman
entering our doors should feel that here earthly
distinctions of station, wealth, culture, and official
position are ignored, — that for a short hour, at
least, we meet on an equal footing.
Social fellowship, my friends, is what we are re
quired to emphasize. A republican form of gov
ernment cannot long outlast the dying out of the
democratic spirit. Patriotism, therefore, as well as
religion, bids us lay aside all earthly differences,
and as a church unite in a common brotherhood
where the sorrows of each are the sorrows of all,
and where the joy of each may be shared by all.
What more need I say, except to tell you that I
believe you will thus reach forward and press on
toward the establishment of God's kingdom in this
city, and that you wiU all help to make The Second
Church a centre of courage and cheer, a place filled
with the sunshine of hope and Christian fellowship.
Last week taught me how fully you are already in
fused with the spirit of co-operation and kindly feel
ing. I say it augurs well for the future of a church
when something like three hundred people can be
brought together, — singers, ushers, speakers, pa
tronesses, musicians, helpers, and assistants, all har
moniously uniting in a five days' celebration and
carrying out the various exacting details without a
single jar or feeling of rancor or jealousy. Such a
voluntary blending of parts shows that our religion
is something more than theory. It is exemplified
in our every-day actions.

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 89
WiU it be said that I have narrowed the channel
of progress and limited to local bounds the work
this church ought to do ?
I grant that in certain directions I would so limit
our efforts, but only because I am anxious that we
gain in intensity and have singleness of aim. . . .
Here is a light-house keeper. A certain amount
of oil is intrusted to his care. What shall he do ?
Divide it so that it may be enough for many little
flickering lights, or keep it intact in his one lamp,
and then, courageously mounting the steps of the
tower, place his one lamp in the focus of the lens,
so that its light may stream forth to illuminate the
darkness of a treacherous coast.
To us has been intrusted this time-honored in
stitution, this Second Church, which, like a tower
of strength, stands forth in the community. What
shall we do with our power, with our light, with the
Uluminating oil ? Divide it or concentrate it ?
Let us with Saint Paul say, " This one thing I
do." From our point of vantage we will flash forth our
signals. God's in the heavens.
Man is his child.
There is a harbor of refuge.
Courage !
In time it may be reached.
Possibly some tired and disheartened mariner on
the sea of life, seeing that signal, may take new
courage. In the night of storm and darkness, in
the time of trouble and sorrow, he may not know

190 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
whither he is drifting, and all faith in the goodness
of things, in the heavenly harbor, may have died
out ; but just at the moment of his worst discour
agement and despair, through the gloom and fog of
his unbelief, there may stream forth our light of
faith and cheer. That message will be understood.
It will bring to his heart new hope, new determina
tion. Because of our signals he, with others, will
once again steer in the right direction and event
ually reach the harbor of peace, where with the re
deemed he shall know the joy of those who look
upon the face of the Father and hear the words.
He that overcometh shall inherit all things, and I
wUl be his God and he shall be my son.

APPENDIX.

THE Mather Chair, a picture of which forms the
frontispiece to this volume, is believed to have be
longed to Cotton Mather. It stood for many years in the
Hanover Street Church, and, while not intentionally
included in the bill of sale of the building, remained in
the Church on the removal of the Society. It was sub
sequently bought back from the purchasers of the build
ing by Mrs. Elizabeth Means and other Ladies of the
Parish, and was restored to its proper place. It bears
this inscription : —
THIS CHAIR belonged TO THE
second CHURCH, BOSTON,
DURING THE MINISTRY OF THE
REV. COTTON MATHER, D.D.,
WHOSE PASTORATE ENDED
FEBRUARY 13, 1 7 28.
The art decorations which the Society now possesses
are here described, and the inscriptions thereon given : —
The mosaic. Truth, erected by the wife and daughter
of Mr. John W. Leighton, who was born in Eliot, Me.,
February 26, 1825, and died in Brookline, October 6,
1897. A strong friend of the Church, and deeply inter
ested in its welfare.
It is a glass mosaic, four by eight feet in size, and is a
symbolic figure of Truth with sword, torch, and key.
The tablet is set in a massive frame of bronze. This is

192 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
the first figure in Tiffany favrile glass mosaic erected in
the New England States.
It is thus inscribed : —
THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE.
PRESENTED IN MEMORY OF
JOHN WILLIAM LEIGHTON
BY HIS WIFE AND DAUGHTER.
ERECTED A.D. 1 899.
The Ministers' Window, a memorial of Mr. George
Henry Eager, who was born in Northboro, Mass., Novem
ber 18, 1833, and died in Boston, January i, 1897. Mr.
Eager was a highly respected citizen, business man, and
friend, and warmly attached to The Second Church. For
many years he was a faithful member of its Standing Com
mittee. His interest in the church was strongly shown
by his preparation and publication of an epitome of its
history, which appeared in 1894.
The Inscription on the window is as follows : —
PROTEST OF INCREASE MATHER AGAINST THE
SURRENDER OF THE
COLONY CHARTER TO THE ENGLISH COMMISSIONERS
A.D. 1683-84.
John Mayo. John Lathrop.
Increase Mather. Henry Ware, Jr.
Cotton Mather. Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Joshua Gee. Chandler Robbins.
Samuel Mather. Robert Laird Collier.
Samuel Checkley. Edward Augustus Horton.
Thomas Van Ness.
ERECTED IN THE 250TH YEAR OF THE
FOUNDING OF THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON,
TO COMMEMORATE ITS MINISTERS,
AND PRESENTED IN LOVING MEMORY OF
GEORGE HENRY EAGER
BY HIS WIFE AND DAUGHTER, 1899.

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 93
In the window, Mather is shown standing, addressing
the commissioners who are seated at the table. In the
costumes a strong contrast is noticed between the rich
dress of the Englishmen and the Puritan simplicity of the
Colonists. The upper parts of the window are filled
with a beautifully designed canopy, in which Gothic and
Renaissance details are intermingled in the style of the
intermediate period.
The Warren Window, commemorative of Mr. William
Wilkins Warren, an honorable, upright merchant of
Boston, a faithful member of The Second Church, a wise
and generous benefactor of charitable organizations, a
patron of art. He was born in West Cambridge, Mass.,
April II, 1814, and died in Boston, January 23, 1890.
Tbe window has for its subject on one side the story
of St. Martin of Tours, dividing his garment with the
naked youth ; on the other, a figure of Dorcas with two
of the orphans whom she cherished. The artist is Mr.
Frederick Wilson of the Tiffany studios.
The window bears these words : —
ST. MARTIN.
HE THAT DOETH THE WILL OF GOD ABIDETH FOREVER.
DORCAS.
LOVE IS THE FULFILLING OF THE LAW.
IN LOVING MEMORY OF
WILLIAM WILKINS WARREN
WHO PASSED TO THE HIGHER LIFE
JANUARY 23, 1890.
ERECTED BY HIS WIFE.
The LINCOLN Mural Tablet is severely, but beauti
fully classic in design, and is a pedestal upheld by two

194 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
Corinthian pillars. It is a memorial of the Hon. Frederic
Walker Lincoln, and bears this inscription : —
IN MEMORIAM
FREDERIC WALKER LINCOLN
FEB. 27, 1817-SEPT. 13, 1898
A FAITHFUL MEMBER OF
THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON.
SUPERINTENDENT OF SUNDAY SCHOOL
1846 TO 1876.
TREASURER OF THE CHURCH AND
CHAIRMAN OF THE STANDING COMMITTEE
1851 TO 1895.
DEACON 1883 TO 1898.
THIS TABLET IS ERECTED IN
LOVING REMEMBRANCE
BY HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN
He that foUoweth
After righteousness and mercy
Findeth life,
Righteousness, and honor.
The Leighton, Eager, Warren, and Lincoln memorials
were designed and made by the Tiffany Art and Decora
tive Company, under the supervision of Mr. Edwin
Stanton George.
The Emerson Bust, made by Mr. Sidney Morse of
Buffalo, N.Y., was given to The Second Church by the
members of the Young People's Fraternity. It has been
placed on a temporary support in the western transept,
but at an early day will have an artistic pedestal, with an
appropriate inscription.
In addition to the works of art which were dedicated on
the occasion of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary it
is fitting to mention the Tablet which was given to the

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 95
Society, in 1891, by Mrs. Maria Louisa (Robbins) Davis,
the daughter of the Rev. Chandler Robbins, D.D., who
was installed as Minister of The Second Church in 1833,
resigned his pastorate in 1874, and died in 1882. The
Tablet occupies a conspicuous place at the right of the
pulpit, and is reproduced in photogravure in this book.
I know that
my
Redeemer liveth.
IN MEMORIAM
REV. CHANDLER ROBBINS, D.D.
181O-1882
THE FAITHFUL CHRISTIAN MINISTER OF
THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON FOR 41 YEARS
1833-1874 AND
MARY ELIZA FROTHINGHAM
WIFE OF
REV. CHANDLER ROBBINS, D.D.
182I-187O
Blessed are the dead which die in
the Lord; for they
rest from their labors, and their works
do follow them.
A.D. 1891.

On the occasion of the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anni
versary, the following paintings were loaned to the Soci
ety by the Massachusetts Historical Society, and occupied
prominent positions on the walls of the Church : —
Portrait of Increase Mather, who was born in Dorchester,
June 21, 1639; Minister of this church, 1664-1723; died
August 23, 1723. Painted by Van dek Sprjtt, 1688.
Portrait of William Welsteed, born 1695 ; Minister of

196 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
the New Brick Church, 1727-53; died January 7, 1753.
Painted by Copley.
Portrait of Joshua Gee, born in Boston, June 29, 1698 ;
Colleague of Cotton Mather, 1723 ; Minister, 1728, till
his death. May 23, 1748. Painted by Smibert.
Portrait of Mrs. Anna Gee, wife of the Rev. Joshua
Gee. Painted by Smibert.
Portrait of His Excellency Thomas Hutchinson, Gov
ernor of the Province of Massachusetts ; born September
9, 1711 ; died June 3, 1780; an attendant of this Church.
Painted by Truman, 1741.
Portrait of John Lathrop, born May 17, 1740; Minister
of The Second Church 1768-1816; died January 4, 1816.
Painted by Williams, 1808.
In addition, the Committee were indebted to the family
of the Rev. Henry Ware, Junior, for a loan of the por
trait of their father. He was born in Hingham, Mass.,
April 21, 1794; was Minister of The Second Church
1817-1830; and died at Framingham, Mass., September
22, 1843. Painted by Frothingham.
By the kindness of General W. W. Blackmar and
of the Wardens of King's Chapel, the committee were
able to display in front of the gallery of the Church
a series of flags, namely : — that of the United States
of the present day, together with the sea colors of
New England in use as early as the end of the seven
teenth century; the British Union Jack of 1707; the Pine
Tree flag of New England ; the Grand Union flag raised
by Washington at the camp at Cambridge, January i,
I TJ^ ; other early flags of New England ; and the flag of
New England sent by King James II. with Governor
Andros in 1686.

A STREET IN OLD BOSTON.

A HAPPY thought of the Ladies of The Second Church
resulted in an entertainment (preliminary to the regular
religious celebration), which, in its way, fitly illustrated and
expressed the secular side of Boston — its customs, manners,
and architecture — since its foundation in 1630, and ehcited
great interest as well as much applause from the general
pubhc. This entertainment consisted in faithfully reproducing, in
Copley Hall, many of the old buildings in Boston of the early
Puritan, Provincial, and Revolutionary times, some of them
famous in story and song, and all of them quaint beyond
expression. In fact, the large Hall was transformed into a
veritable street, its sides lined with the semblance of houses,
each of which was believed to represent a certain distinct
period or style of architecture.
In each building was an exhibit of colonial furniture, wares,
and curiosities, with many interesting or useful articles which
were offered for sale. The attendant ladies were dressed in a
manner befitting the time in which they were supposed to be
living. The various periods represented gave an opportunity
for a variety of costumes, running all the way from the rich
brocades of the stately dame, with powder, paint, and patches,
to the quiet garb of the sedate Puritan maiden.
The old street in Boston was in charge of a Committee
called the "Auxiliary Aid" (composed of the wives of the
present and former members of the Auxiliary Committee of

198 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
gentlemen), ably seconded by the ladies whose names are
given below in connection with the diflerent buildings repre
sented. The musical entertainment was under the charge of Mrs.
Charles H. Bond ; and for the presentation of the minuet by
her little prot^g^s the Committee were indebted to the kind
ness and services of Mrs. William S. Butler.
The following buildings were represented in the historical
festival : — •
EARLY PURITAN PERIOD, 1649-1666.
The William Blackstone House. This is believed to have
been the first residential building in Boston, and was situated
on Beacon Hill, not far from the junction of the present Chest
nut and Walnut Streets.
Ladies in Charge. — Mrs. Frank W. Downer, Mrs. E. T. Pratt,
assisted by Miss Gertrude S. Sands, Miss Gertrude D. Reuter, Miss
Clara S. Hall, Miss Helen C. Pray, Miss Mildred Williams, Miss
Ethel McKenny, Miss Irma Bradshaw, Miss Maud H. Hunt,
Miss Helen Johnson, Miss Margaret Miller.
The Old North Meeting-house. — No small part of the
early history of Boston is connected with this ancient edifice.
The first building was begun in 1649 in Clarke's Square, or, as
it was later known, Frissell's Square and, for the past hundred
years. North Square. It was occupied in 1650, burned in
1675, and replaced by the building represented in the Old
Street in 1676. In all probability it was a fair copy of the
ancient building.
It was provided with bell and clock. The bell was rung at
five o'clock in the morning, at one o'clock (the hour for closing
the market), and at nine o'clock in the evening. The town's

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 1 99
powder was stored here for a long time. From the very begin
ning this meeting-house was a stronghold of political liberty ;
for, as is well known, the Mathers — Increase and Cotton —
preached from its pulpit, and their influence largely moulded
the thought and customs of the early colony. It was also from
this pulpit that Lathrop preached his memorable sermons in
1774. Attention was drawn to him and to his congregation by
his patriotic utterance when, on a certain Sunday, he declared
that " Should the British administration determine fully to exe
cute the laws of which we complain, we have yet to fear the
calamities of a long civil war.'"
Strong, frank, treasonable words, these ; and it is not strange
that General Howe gave willing assent to the desire of " cer
tain evil-minded men of the king's party to pull down the old
North Meeting-house." That was an end to the " nest," no
doubt ; but the traitorous hornets came back so stingingly that
on the seventeenth day of March, 1776, General Howe himself
with his royal army was quite glad to say good-by to Boston.
The Old North Meeting-house was never again rebuilt.
The land on which it had stood was sold for ;^2io in 1786 to
the minister, the Rev. John Lathrop, who built for himself a
fine residence there. A block of brick houses now occupies the
ancient site.

THE COLONIAL PERIOD, 1666-1692.
The Mayo-Mather House.— The first regular Minister of
The Second Church was John Mayo, who was ordained in
November of 1655. Although he held the office of Pastor for
nearly twenty years, yet little is now known of his personality
and work. The records of the Church give us one item, how
ever, conceming his funeral, which in a few words illustrates.

200 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
unintentionally perhaps, something of the customs of former
days. It is said, "The whole cost of the Rev. John Mayo's
funeral was ten pounds four shillings." Of this amount nearly
four pounds were spent for wine, and five pounds fifteen shill
ings for gloves. It is hardly likely that Mayo himself occupied
the house which afterward in connection with Mather bore his
name ; nor is it probable that Increase Mather lived in this
mansion, except, possibly, in the closing years of his life.
After the disastrous fire of 1676, many excellent buildings
were erected; and it seems reasonable to suppose that the
Mayo-Mather house was put up in the latter part of the seven
teenth century, when a better and more substantial type of
architecture commenced to prevail.
Ladies in Charge. — Mrs. James N. North, Mrs. Otis H. Luke, Mrs.
F. F. Raymond, Mrs. Frank Hervey, Miss Bessie North, Miss
Blanche Ware, Miss Alice Meserve, Mrs. Otis Smith.

THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD, 1692-1775.
The Old Feather Store, built by Thomas Stanbury in
1680, stood on the corner of North Street and Dock Square,
fronting upon three sides. In the early part of the eighteenth
century it was so close to tide-water that the prows of vessels
moored in the dock would almost touch the building. The
architectural style was quite common in the Netherlands and
in the old trading towns of England. The upper stories
projected some two feet over the lower story, giving a con
siderable increase of space to the upper chambers. The build
ing was of wood, the frame being of hewn oak, and the outside
walls of rough cement. In this cement there were imbedded
bits of broken glass and fragments of junk bottles. The date,
1680, was placed upon the principal gable, on the westerly

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 20I
front. From its peculiar shape the boys in the neighborhood
called the building " The Old Cocked Hat," and by that name
was it popularly known for years afterward.
Nearly every variety of trade was carried on in the building.
The Simpsons kept here a feather store ; though before that,
according to Snow, " the leading apothecary shop of the town
was at 'The Old Cocked Hat,'" and was kept by the Green-
leaf family. The old feather store was demolished in the
year i860.
Ladies in Charge. — Mrs. D. H. Lane, Mrs. L. G. Burnham,
Mrs. C. H. Bond, Mrs. E. B. Stillings, Mrs. Charles A. Gleason.
The Peter Faneuil House. — This house, a fine old stone
mansion, stood on the Beacon Hill side (now Tremont Street),
opposite the King's Chapel Burial Ground. The lot formed
the south part of Governor Bellingham's estate. " The deep
court yard," says Miss Quincy, " was ornamented by flowers
and shrubs, and divided into an upper and lower platform
by a high glacis, surrounded by a richly wrought iron railing.
The edifice was of brick, painted white ; and over the entrance
door was a semicircular balcony." It is doubtful whether
Miss Quincy is right in her statement that the house was of
brick, as from papers in the Massachusetts archives we learn
that it was spoken of as being built of stone.
The Faneuils were French Huguenots from La Rochelle.
Peter Faneuil, the giver of the historic hall which bears his
name, was born in 1700. He was the wealthiest Bostonian of
his day. He lived in a style worthy of his position as a
prince among merchants. He had five negroes to wait upon
him, and " drove out in a coach with Enghsh horses." His
cellar was filled with good wine, beer, Cheshire and Gloucester
cheeses, and other tempting and palatable foods. He lived

202 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
only forty-two years, dying suddenly, in 1742, of dropsy. The
Faneuil mansion was also the home of Governor Phipps.
Ladies in Charge. — Mrs. William M. Bunting, Mrs. Ralph Miles
Kendall, Mrs. E. Bertram Newton, Mrs. Elmer A. Lord.

The Benjamin Franklin House. — The old house here
represented was a quaint specimen of an order of buildings
common in the Provincial period. Josiah Franklin, the father
of Benjamin Franklin, was a native of England. He became a
respectable soap boiler and tallow chandler in Boston. Ben
jamin was born on January 6, 1706. His early youth was
spent in learning how to make tallow candles for his father ;
and " in his leisure moments," we are told, " he was engaged
in throwing rubbish into the mill-pond." After his father's
business became distasteful to him, he entered his brother's
printing-office on Queen Street. In 1691 the town granted
liberty to Josiah Franklin to erect a building near the South
Meeting-house, and on this spot on Milk Street the renowned
philosopher was said to have been born. Franklin himself,
however, bore testimony to the fact that he was born on the
corner of Union and Hanover Streets, where his father then
carried on his business. It is doubtful whether or not the
father of Benjamin Franklin removed from Milk Street pre
vious to January 6, 1706, the date of the doctor's birth.
Ladies in Charge. — Mrs. D. W. Ensign, Mrs. Arthur Chesterton,
Miss Sarah King, Mrs. E. P. Wilcox, Mrs. C. P. Bonney, Mrs. J. P.
Selinger, Miss Kraus.
REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD, 1775-1789.
The Green Dragon Tavern. — The Green Dragon Tav
ern, perhaps the most famous hostelry in Massachusetts, was

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 203
one of the first substantial brick buildings erected in Boston.
It was located on Union Street, not far from Hanover Street.
A stone tablet on the present business block, 80-86 Union
Street, marks its ancient site. It was probably built not far
from the year 1680, and was used as an inn about 1695.
On St. George's Day, 1706, Governor Joseph Dudley, who
had come to town guarded by the troops with their swords
drawn, dined here in state, and then proceeded to the Town
House. In 1709 the birthday of Queen Anne was celebrated by a
¦"treat" given here by the Council to the Governor. This en
tertainment cost the Honorable Councillors the sum of five
shillings apiece.
Undoubtedly, if the secret history of the Revolution were
written, it would show that its initiatory movements were
largely planned within this Tavern. Paul Revere tells
us that he was one of a Committee of Thirty organized to
watch the movements of the British. " We held our meetings
at the Green Dragon Tavern, and swore not to reveal our
transactions to any except Hancock, Adams, Warren, Otis,
and Church."
The " North End Caucus," having its headquarters at the
Green Dragon, was most instrumental in the " tea plot." An
old song of theirs ran as follows : —
" Rally, Mohawks ! bring out your axes !
And tell King George we'll pay no taxes
On his foreign tea.
His threats are vain : he need not think
To force our wives and girls to drink
His vile Bohea.
Then rally, boys, and hasten on
To meet our chiefs at the Green Dragon."

204 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
Ladies in Charge. — Mrs. Thomas Van Ness, Mrs. Renton Whid-
den, Mrs. Quincy Kilby, Miss Helen Paine, Miss Anna Royce, Miss
Peckham.

The King's Head Inn. — On the north corner of Fleet
and Ship Streets, near Scarlet's Wharf, Major Thomas Savage
had his house and garden in the early days of the colony.
After his death, in 1682, the King's Head Inn was located
here. It was burned in 1691, but rebuilt of wood, and con
tinued a large and flourishing hostelry until the beginning of
the Revolution, when it was converted into barracks for the
marines, and then taken down for fuel.
Ladies in Charge. — Mrs. William H. AUine, Mrs. Homer V.
Snow. The Home of General Joseph Warren. — Dr. Joseph
Warren, in the latter part of 1770, leased a house belonging to
Joshua Green, which stood on Hanover Street, about opposite
the head of Elm Street. The site is now occupied by the
American House. Warren continued to live in Hanover Street
until the time came when he gave his undivided attention to
the preparation for the coming struggle with the mother
country. As all know, he was one of the Revolution
ary heroes killed at the battle of Bunker Hill, 1775. The
Warren house may be considered a type of the residential
architecture in the years just preceding and during the Revo
lutionary period.
Ladies in Charge. — Mrs. E. B. Kellogg, Mrs. E. P. Jones, Mrs.
Viola Paine.

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 205

NEO-CLASSIC (OR EMPIRE PERIOD), 1789-1815.
Tontine Crescent (Franklin Street). — The Tontine Cres
cent was the first attempt in Boston at building residences in
blocks. The houses were arranged with skill and good taste,
the long line of the crescent being broken in the centre by an
archway thrown over an entering street, since called Arch
Street, and the sky line being judiciously varied by the
superior elevation of the centre building, the second story of
which was used as the home of the Boston Library, now in
Boylston Place. For many years the Massachusetts Histori
cal Society occupied the upper story of this building.
Mr. Charles Bulfinch, the well-known architect, was the
designer of the Crescent. The houses were of ample size,
and were for half a century among the most desirable in
Boston. The Tontine Crescent was, probably, begun some
where in the year 1794. The growth of the city just at that
time was not sufficient to warrant the erection of such ex
pensive dwellings. Heavy mortgages, followed by forced
sales, reduced Mr. Bulfinch almost to the verge of bankruptcy.
Ladies in Charge. — Mrs. E. A. Grozier, the Misses Delano,
Miss Edith Brown, Miss Blanche Stevenson, Miss Alice Daniels,
Clarence Miller, Miss Maria Clarke, Miss Fanny Johnson.

EARLY AMERICAN PERIOD, 1815-1859.
The Lamb Tavern. — The present Adams House stands on
the ground formerly occupied by the Lamb Tavern, sometimes
styled the " White Lamb." Colonel Doty kept at the sign of
the Lamb in 1760, though there are records of the tavern's
existence in 1746. The Lamb was an unpretending building

206 THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON
of two stories, but of good repute in Old Boston. In the early
part of this century it was conducted successively by Laban
Adams, for whom the house was named, — father of W. T.
Adams, "Oliver Optic," — and by A. S. Adams. The first
stage to Providence, advertised July 20, 1767, put up at the
sign of the Lamb.
Ladies in Charge. — Mrs. Hatherly Foster, Mrs. Eugene G. Ware,
Mrs. Louis R. Lincoln, Mrs. George O. Wales, Mrs. C. A. Abbott,
Miss Mabel Mawhinney.
On the evening of Wednesday, November 15, musical
selections were offered by Miss Cutter's orchestra and by Mr.
Walter S. Hawkins, soloist. During the evening of Thursday
Ye Old Towne Choir, composed of students of the New Eng
land Conservatory of Music, gave solos and quartettes, with
instrumental selections by a stringed quartette. Mr. Clarence
Miller acted as Town-crier. This was followed by a minuet
dance by a group of children in the style and dress of the
Revolutionary period, under the care of Mrs. William S. Butler,
preceded by a recital of " Grandma's Minuet," by Miss Mabel
Patten. The dancers were Mabel Patten, Lillian Kaufman, Mabel
Prince, Helen Kilmurry, Coy Prince, Fern Foster, Lillian
Goldstein, Dora Levine. Miss Laura M. Hawkins acted as
accompanist. For the use of a grand pianoforte during the rehearsals for
the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary, and at the services
themselves, the committee were indebted to Messrs. Chicker-
ing & Sons of Boston.
The general design and the details of construction of The
Old Street in Boston were carried out by Lee L. Powers &
Company of Boston.

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