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SERVICES 

AT THE CELEBRATION 

OF THE 

Ctijo l^unnreD ann jftftietl) ainmtemri? 

OF THE ORGANIZATION 

OF THE 

FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE, 

February 7 — 14, 1886. 



SERVICES 

AT THE CELEBRATION 

OF THE 

OF THE ORGANIZATION 

OF THE 

First Church in Cambridge. 

February 7 — 14, 1886. 



CAMBRIDGE : 

JOHN WILSON AND SON. 

SSnibirrsttg ^rrss. 
r886. 



fl4 



'of 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Preliminary Proceedings ii 



Sermon by Rev. Alexander McKenzie, D.D., in the 

Shepard Memorial Church, Feb. 7, 1886 .... 27 



llftcmoon ^cruice in tl)c J'irsit ^ads;!) Cljurcl). 

Introductory Address by Hon, Charles Theodore 

Russell 63 

Address by Rev. Alexander McKenzie, D.D 68 

Address by Hon. William E. Russell 80 

Address by Hon. Oliver W. Holmes, Jr 88 

Address by Rev. Frederic H. Hedge, D.D 92 



©tiening ^croicc in i\)t ^^cparb |Scmorial (Hljttrtl). 

Address by Rev. Edward H. Hall 99 

Address by President Charles W. Eliot iii 

Remarks by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes on read- 
ing HIS Hymn 120 

Address by Hon. Horatio G. Parker 122 

Address by Rev. Nathaniel G. Clark, D.D 127 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Letter from Hon. Robert C. Winthrop 133 

Letter from Charles F. Adams, Jr., Esq 134 

Letter from Rev. George Leon Walker, D.D. ... 135 

Letter from Rev. George L. Prentiss, D.D 137 

Letter from Rev. Kinsley Twining, D.D 137 

Letter from Rev. Lyman Abbott, D.D 138 

Letter from Prof. Egbert C. Smyth, D.D 139 

Letter from Samuel James Bridge, Esq 139 

Letter from Rev. John W. Dodge 140 

Letter from Rev. William Orr 140 

Letter from Hon. James M. W. Hall 141 

Letter from William H. Whitmore, Esq 143 



Sermon by Rev. Edward H. Hall, in the First Parish 

Church, Feb. 14, 1886 149 



PRELIMINARY PROCEEDINGS. 



PRELIMINARY PROCEEDINGS. 



At a meeting of the Parish Committee of the 
First Parish in Cambridge, held Dec. 14, 1885, the 
following vote was passed: — 

" That, in behalf of the First Parish, we cordially invite 
the Shepard Congregational Society to unite with us in 
a celebration of the approaching two hundred and fiftieth 
anniversary of the setdement of our common ancestor, 
Thomas Shepard." 

To this the following reply was received : — 
" At a meeting of the Prudential Committee held 
Dec. 20, 1885, it was voted 'that, in behalf of the 
Shepard Congregational Society, we cordially accept 
the invitation of the First Parish to unite with them 
in a celebration of the approaching two hundred 
and fiftieth anniversary of the settlement of our 
common ancestor, Thomas Shepard.'" 

In pursuance of the above correspondence, the 
Committees of the two parishes met in the vestry 
of the First Parish Church, Dec. 30, 1885, and de- 
termined upon the general plan of the celebration. 



12 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

leaving all the arrangements in charge of a special 
Committee to be appointed by the two pastors. 

At the hands of this Committee the plans were 
gradually matured, and it was finally decided that 
both churches should be open for the celebration, 
and that commemorative services should be held in 
the afternoon and evening, with a social gathering 
and collation between. The day chosen for the com- 
memoration was that mentioned by Governor Win- 
throp as the date of the assembly held at Newtown 
for organizing the church under Thomas Shepard. 
This was Feb. i, 1636; of which the two hundred 
and fiftieth anniversary, allowing for the change 
from old style to new, would be Feb. 11, 1886. As 
it was found impracticable to observe the exact 
anniversary, the following day, Feb. 12, 1886, was 
selected in its stead. 

These plans were carried out with entire success, 
despite the cloudy skies. Rain fell in torrents from 
morning till night, yet both churches were filled by 
eager congregations. Opening services were held 
in the afternoon in the First Parish Church, fol- 
lowed by a social gathering and collation in the 
commodious chapel and anterooms of the Shepard 
Memorial Church, where the invited guests were 
hospitably received by members of the two congre- 
gations. The celebration was brought to a close 
by evening services in the Shepard Church. 



[Form of Invitation.] 

1636 Eije jFirst Cjjurc!) in Camijritige* 1886 



To 

Sir : 



You are invited to participate in the Celebratioii of the 



Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniverfary 

of 

The Organization of the Firfl Church in Cambridge, 

U7ider THOMAS SHEPARD, February -^ 1636. 

Commemorative Services will be held on Friday, February 12, 1886, in 
the Firjl PariJJi Church at three 0'' clock, and in the Shepard Afemorial 
Church at half-pajl /even 0'' clock, P. M. Between thefe fervices there will be 
a Social Remiion in the Chapel of the Shepard Memorial Church. 

Cordially yours, 

EDWARD H. HALL, 
f. T. G. NICHOLS, 
ARTHUR E. fONES, 

Committee of the First Parish. 

ALEXANDER McR'ENZIE, 
GEORGE S. SA UNDERS, 
CHARLES W. MUNROE, 
Conifnittee of the Shepard Congregatiotial Society. 

Cambridge, Massachusetts, 
January, 18S6. 

Please reply to J. T. G. Nichols, M.D., Cambridge. 



H 



FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 



COMMITTEES. 



Cri)airma:n of l\)t Pag. 
HON. CHARLES THEODORE RUSSELL. 



GENERAL COMMITTEE. 



FIRST PARISH. 



Rev. E. H. Hall. 
Dr. J. T. G. Nichols. 
Mr. Francis L. Chapman. 
Mr. John S. Gannett. 
Mr. J. A. Henshaw. 
Mr. William T. Piper. 
Mr. W. W. Newell. 
Rev. Dr. F. H. Hedge. 
Mr. Justin Winsor. 
Mr. Epes S. Dixwell. 
Mrs. F. L. Chapman. 
Mrs. M. E. Simmons. 
Mrs. Henry W. Paine. 
Mrs. William Read. 



President C. W. Eliot. 
Mr. William M. Vaughan. 
Mr. Franklin Perrin. 
Mr. Arthur E. Jones. 
Prof. Francis G. Peabody. 
Mr. John Holmes. 
Mr. Charles Deane. 
Mr. A. A. Whitney. 
Mr. Charles C. Read. 
Mr. A. M. Howe. 
Mr. Walter S. Swan. 
Miss Julia E. Watson. 
Mrs. Franklin Perrin. 
Mrs. W. S. Swan. 



SHEPARD congregational SOCIETY. 



Rev. Alexander McKenzie, D.D. 
Hon. Charles Theodore Russell, 
Hon. James M. W. Hall. 
Prof. Asa Gray. 
Prof. E. N. Horsford. 
Hon. Horatio G. Parker. 



Mr. Caleb H. Warner. 
Mr. George S. Saunders. 
Mr. Charles W. Munroe. 
Mr. Francis Flint. 
Mr. George B. Roberts. 
Mr. Charles F. Stratton. 



Hon. S. S. Sleeper. 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. 1 5 



SPECIAL COMMITTEES. 



(Jlomtnittce of ^rranigcmmtsi. 

Rev. E. H. Hall. Rev. Alexander McKenzie, D.D. 

Dr. J. T. G. Nichols, Sec. Mr. Charles W. Munroe. 

Arthur E. Jones, Esq. Mr. George S. Saunders. 



©tt InuitatiottS ant) printing. 

Rev. Mr. Hall. Rev. Dr. McKenzie. 



@n finance. 

Dr. Nichols. Mr. Saunders. 



@n |ttu$ic anb CTollation. 

Mr. Jones. Mr. Munroe. 



€^ommtttcc of flatitcjf to l)anc ti)c pircctton of tl)t (HoUation. 

FROM THE FIRST PARISH. 

Mrs. M E. Simmons. Mrs. F. L. Chapman. 

Mrs. Henry W. Paine. Mrs. Franklin Perrin 

Mrs. William Read. Miss Julia E. Watson. 

FROM THE SHEPARD CONGREGATIONAL SOCIETY. 

Mrs. Alexander McKenzie. Mrs. J. Henry Thayer. 
Mrs. George S. Saunders, Mrs. Francis Flint. 

Miss Irene F. Sanger. Miss Sarah Ropes. 



l6 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 



USHERS. 

AT THE FIRST PARISH CHURCH. 

A. M. Howe. Edmund A. Whitman. 

Samuel A. Eliot. Henry A. Nichols. 



at the shepard memorial church. 

George H. Cushman. William E. Saunders. 

George E. Saunders. George B. Henshaw. 

Charles S. Hanks. Robert T. Osgood. 



At a meeting of the Executive Committee held 
on Saturday, Feb. 20, it was voted that the thanks 
of the two parishes be communicated to the sev- 
eral gentlemen who had taken part in the servi- 
ces, and that copies of their addresses be requested 
for publication in permanent form. It was also 
determined to print the sermons preached in the 
two churches on the Sundays preceding and follow- 
ing the anniversary. 



[Programme of the Services.] 

1636. 1886. 



ORDER OF SERVICES 



AT 



3ri)e CtDO 2?untireti anti jfiftietl) ^^nnibersarp 



OF THE ORGANIZATION OF THE 



First Church in Cambridge, 



Under THOMAS SHEPARD, February ^ 1636. 



11, 



FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1886. 



FIRST PARISH CHURCH, 

AT THREE O'CLOCK, P. M. 



I. ORGAN VOLUNTARY. 



II. ANTHEM. 
Psalm cvii. 8; cxlv. 15, 16. — Garrett. 
Praise ye the Lord for His goodness, and declare the wonders that He 
doeth for the children of men. 

The eyes of all wait on Thee, O Lord, and Thou givest them meat in 
due season. Thou openest Thine hand, and fillest all things living with 

plenteousness. 

— • — 

III. READING OF SCRIPTURES. 
Rev. George W. Briggs, D.D. 



IV. PRAYER. 
Rev. Charles F. Thwing. 



V. ANTHEM. 

Psalm xxvii. 8, 11, 16. — Smart. 

Hearken unto my voice, O Lord, when I cry unto Thee. Have mercy 

upon me and hear me: for Thou hast been my succor; leave me not, neither 

forsake me, O God of my salvation. Oh, tarry thou the Lord's leisure. Be 

strong, and He shall comfort thine heart, and put thou thy trust in the Lord. 



VI. PSALM 91. 

From Sternhold and Hopkins. — Tune : " Dundee." 
'E that within the secret place 
of God most high doth dwell, 
Under the shadow of his grace 
he shall be safe and well. 



H' 



Thou art my hope and my stronghold, 

I to the Lord will say ; 
My God he is, in him will I 

my whole affiance stay. 



He shall defend thee from the snare 

the which the hunter laid, 
And from the deadly plague and care 

whereof thou art afraid. 

For why? O Lord, I only rest, 
and fix my hope on thee ; 

In the most high I put my trust, 
my sure defence is he. 



VII. INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. 
Hon. Charles Theodore Russell. 



VIII. ADDRESS. 
Rev. Alexander McKenzie, D.D. 



IX. ADDRESS. 
Hon. WilliAxM E. Russell, Mayor. 



X. ANTHEM. 

Psalm c. i; ciii. 8-13. — Martin. 

Oh come before His presence with singing. 

The Lord is full of compassion and mercy, long-suffering and of great 
mercy. He will not alway be chiding, neither keepeth He His anger forever. 
He hath not dealt with us after our sins, nor rewarded us according to our 
wickednesses. 

For look how high the heaven is in comparison of the earth, so great is His 
mercy toward them that fear Him. 

Look how wide also the east is from the west, so far hath He set our sins 
from us. 

Like as a father pitieth his own children, so is the Lord merciful to them 
that fear Him. 



XL ADDRESS. 
Hon. Oliver W. Holmes, Jr. 



XII. ADDRESS. 
Rev. Frederic H. Hedge, D.D. 



XIII. PRAYER. 



XIV. PSALM 1 06. 

From Sternhold and Hopkins. — Tune : " St. Martin's. 

PRAISE ye the Lord, for he is good, 
his mercy lasts alvvay : 
Who can express his noble acts, 
or all his praise display .'' 

They bless&d are that judgments keep, 

and justly do alway : 
With favor of thy people. Lord, 

remember me, I pray. 

Save us, O Lord, thou art our God, 

we do thee humbly pray ; 
And from among the heathen folk, 

Lord, gather us away. 

That we may triumph and rejoice 

in thy most holy name : 
That we may glory in thy praise, 

and sounding of thy fame. 

The Lord, the God of Israel, 

be blessM evermore : 
Let all the people say, Amen, 

praise ye the Lord therefore. 



XV. BENEDICTION. 



SHEPARD MEMORIAL CHURCH, 

AT HALF-PAST SEVEN O'CLOCK, P.M. 



I. ORGAN VOLUNTARY. 
Mr. W. M. Richardson. 

11. ANTHEM. 

" Oh, sing unto the Lord." 

in. READING OF THE SCRIPTURES. 
Rev. David N. Beach. 



M' 



IV. PRAYER. 

Prof. Francis G. Peabody. 

— * — 

V. PSALM 23. 

From Sternhold and Hopkins. — Tune : " Marlow. 

"Y Shepherd is the living Lord, 
nothing therefore I need : 
In pastures fair with waters calm, 

he setteth me to feed. 
He did convert and glad my soul, 

and brought my mind in frame. 
To walk in paths of righteousness 

for his most holy Name. 
Yea, tho' I walk in vale of death, 

yet will I fear no ill : 
Thy rod and staff do comfort me, 

for thou art with me still. 
And in the presence of my foes 

my table thou shalt spread : 
Thou shalt, O Lord, fill full my cup, 

and wilt anoint my head. 
Through all my life thy favour is 

so frankly shew'd to me. 
That in thy house forevermore 

my dwelling-place shall be. 



VI. ADDRESS. 
Rev. Edward H. Hall 



VII. ADDRESS. 
President Charles W. Eliot. 



VIII. READING OF LETTERS. 

From Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, Charles Francis Adams, Jr., Esq., Samuel J. 
Bridge, Esq., Rev. George L. Walker, D.D., Hon. James M. W. Hall. 



IX. HYMN. — The Word of Promise, 

(by supposition) 
An Hymn set forth to be sung by the Great Assembly at Newtown, Mo. 12. i. 1636. 

[Written by Oliver Wendell Holmes, eldest son of Rev. Abiel Holmes, eighth pastor of 
the First Church.] 

LORD, Thou haft led us as of old 
Thine Arm led forth the chofen Race 
Through Foes that raged, through Floods that roll'd, 
To Canaan's far off Dwelling-place. 

Here is Thy bounteous Table fpread, 

Thy Manna falls on every Field, 
Thy Grace our hungering Souls hath fed, 

Thy Might hath been our Spear and Shield. 

Lift high Thy Buckler, Lord of Hofts ! 

Guard Thou Thy Servants, Sons and Sires, 
While on the Godlefs heathen Coafts 

They light Thine Ifvael's Altar-fires ! 

The falvage Wildernefs remote 

Shall hear Thy Works and Wonders fung ; 

So from the Rock that Mofes fmote 
The Fountain of the Defart fprung. 

Soon fliall the flumbering Morn awake. 

From wandering Stars of Errour freed, 
When Chrift the Bread of Heaven ftiall break 

For Saints that own a common Creed. 

The Walls that fence His Flocks apart 

Shall crack and crumble in Decay, 
And every Tongue and every Heart 

Shall welcome in the new-born Day. 

Then fhall His glorious Church rejoice 

His Word of Promife to recall, — 
One sheltering Fold, one Shepherd's Voice, 

One God and Father over All ! 



X. ADDRESS. 
Hon. Horatio G. Parker. 



XL ADDRESS. 
Rev. Nathaniel G. Clark, D.D. 



XII. HYMN. 

By the Rev. Abiel Holmes, D.D. 
Tune : " St. Ann's." 

GREAT God ! Thou heard'st our fathers' prayer, 
When, o'er the ocean brought, 
They, with a patriarchal care, 
A sanctuary sought. 

Hither Thy guidance led their feet, — 

Here was their first abode : 
And here, where now their children meet, 

They found a place for God. 

Thy flock, Immanuel, here was fed, 

In pastures green and fair; 
Beside still waters gently led, 

And Thine the shepherd's care. 

Here may the church Thy cause maintain, 

Thy truth with peace and love, 
Till her last earth-born live again 

With the first-born above. 



XIII. PRAYER. 



XIV. BENEDICTION. 

The Honorable Charles Theodore Russell will preside over these 
Coi/imemorative Exercises. 




THE FOURTH MEETING-HOUSE, ERECTED 

ON WATCH-HOUSE HILL, 

IN 1756. 



SERMON 

BY 

Rev. ALEXANDER McKENZIE, D.D., 

IN THE 

Feb. 7, 1886. 



SERMON. 



That he might present it to himself a glorious Church, 

NOT having spot, OR WRINKLE, OR ANY SUCH THING ; BUT 
THAT IT SHOULD BE HOLY AND WITHOUT BLEMISH. — Ephe- 

sians v. 27. 

TT was with this verse that this church was 
^ formed. The words express the purpose of 
Christ who " loved the Church, and gave himself for 
it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the 
washing of water by the word." Into this divine 
purpose Thomas Shepard and his friends had en- 
tered. They had crossed the great and wide sea 
" for the sake of the Name." Let me read to you 
his words, as we have them still in his "little 
booke": "And so the Lord after many sad storms 
and wearisome days and many longings to see the 
shore, the Lord brought us to the sight of it upon 
Oct. 2, Anno 1635, and upon Oct. the 3d we arrived 
with my wife, child, brother Samuel, Mr. Harlaken- 
den, Mr. Cooke, etc., at Boston, with rejoicing in 
our God after a longsome voyage, my deare wive's 
great desire being now fulfilled, which was to leave 
me in safety from the hands of my enemies and 



28 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

among God's people, and also the child under God's 
precious ordinances." 

Where this company would make a home they 
did not know. It was very convenient for them, 
that at the time of their coming the church which 
was here, in Newtown, was about to change its 
place. I read again from the " little booke " : " My- 
selfe and those that came with me found many 
houses empty and many persons willing to sell, and 
here our company bought off their houses to dwell 
in until we should see another place fit to remoove 
unto, but having bin here some time diverse of our 
brethren did desire to sit still and not to remoove 
farther, partly because of the fellowship of the 
churches, partly because they thought their lives 
were short and remoovals to near plantations full 
of troubles, partly because they found sufficient 
for themselves and their company. Hereupon there 
was a purpose to enter into church fellowship, 
which we did the yeare after about the end of the 
winter." 

On the first day of February, in the year of the 
Lord 1636, their desire was fulfilled. I must now 
read, without abridgment, the account given by a 
man who was undoubtedly present when this was 
done. In the journal of the first Governor of the 
Colony it is written: — 

" Mr. Shepard, a godly minister, come lately out of 
England, and divers other good christians, intend- 
ing to raise a church body, came and acquainted the 
magistrates therewith, who gave their approbation. 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. 29 

They also sent to all the neighbouring churches for 
their elders to give their assistance at a certain day 
at Newtown, when they should constitute their body. 
Accordingly at this day there met a great assembly, 
where the proceeding was as followeth. 

" Mr. Shepherd and two others who were after to 
be chosen to oflfice, sat together in the elders seat ; 
then the elder of them began with prayer, after this 
Mr. Shepherd prayed with deep confession of sin, &c. 
and exercised out of Eph. v. that he might make 
it to himself a holy, &c. and also opened the cause 
of their meeting. Then the elder desired to know 
of the churches assembled what number were need- 
ful to make a church, and how they ought to pro- 
ceed in this action. Whereupon some of the ancient 
ministers conferring shortly together gave answer, 
— That the scripture did not set down any certain 
rule for the number, three (they thought) were too 
few, because by Matt, xviii. an appeal was allowed 
from three, but that seven might be a fit number; 
and for their proceeding they advised, that such 
as were to join should make confession of their 
faith, and declare what work of grace the Lord had 
wrought in them, which accordingly they did, Mr. 
Shepherd first, then four others, then the elder and 
one who was to be deacon (who had also prayed) 
and another member; then the covenant was read, 
and they all gave a solemn assent to it. Then the 
elder desired of the churches, that if they did ap- 
prove them to be a church, they would give them 
the right hand of fellowship. Whereupon Mr. 



30 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

Cotton (upon short speech with some other near 
him), in the name of the churches, gave his hand 
to the elder, with a short speech of their assent, and 
desired the peace of the Lord's presence to be with 
them. Then Mr. Shepherd made an exhortation to 
the rest of his body about the nature of their cov- 
enant, and to stand firm to it, and commended them 
to the Lord in a most heavenly prayer. Then the 
elder told the assembly that they were intended to 
choose Mr. Shepherd for their pastor (by the name 
of the brother who had exercised) and desired the 
churches that if they had anything to except against 
him, they would impart it to them before the day 
of ordination. Then he gave the churches thanks 
for their assistance, and so left them to tli£ Lord." 

In this simple, reasonable, reverent manner this 
church entered upon a career which has already 
continued for two hundred and fifty years. It was 
the union of men and women who were of one 
character and purpose, and who were living to- 
gether, in a covenant which expressed their devo- 
tion to Christ and their " mutual love and respect 
each to other," after the rational method of the New 
Testament, and with the approval and fellowship 
of the churches which were around them. The 
form of their covenant has not been preserved. It 
was probably the same with that of the First Church 
in Boston. That is the covenant under which we 
are living now. It is thought that it was written 
by Governor Winthrop. Concerning it and its 
adoption across the river, the present distinguished 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. 3 1 

representative of that name has recently said : " That 
old covenant is one under which any man might well 
be willing to live and to die. . . . Beyond all doubt, 
that day, that service, that covenant, settled the 
question that Congregationalism was to be the pre- 
vailing order, and for a long time the only order, 
in early New England. Nor, let me add, have I 
ever doubted for a moment that Congregationalism 
was the best and the only mode of planting and 
propagating Christianity in this part of the country 
in those old Puritan times." 

" Those old Puritan times " ! What were they ? 
Our eminent historian has written : " Civilized New 
England is the child of English Puritanism. The 
spirit of Puritanism was no creation of the sixteenth 
century. It is as old as the truth and manliness of 
England." England was remote from Rome, and 
its people had another history, another language, 
and another temper. To the authority and tenets 
of the Papacy they never rendered so abject an 
allegiance as their neighbors on the mainland. 
They had been trained in the ways of liberty and 
manliness out of the Book which is light and life. 
The Bible had been given them in Saxon, and in 
their own tongue had been read in their churches. 
The Norman brought in more of the ways of 
Rome, but required only a divided allegiance to the 
southern power. " The Morning Star of the Ref- 
ormation " rose over England when John Wycliffe 
appeared. He was born in 1324, Martin Luther in 
1483. The germ of the sixteenth century was in 



32 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

the fourteenth. The people were tired of the inter- 
lopers from the Continent, and the abuses which 
came in with them. Wycliffe taught them to hate 
the doctrine which they taught and represented. 
His writings were read by the people with such 
effect that it was said every other man was a 
Lollard. The reform of religion was in the air. 
Persecution, which was severe, could not silence 
the people, or overcome the demand for purer 
teaching and purer teachers. But, in any event, 
England could never be easy under foreign control. 
Henry VHI., with the consent of Parliament, made 
himself the " Defender of the Faith," and the Head 
of the Church. That was in 1534. The clergy and 
the people favored this change and the reforms 
which came with it. It was some advantage to 
have the Church freed from Papal control, and 
placed under an English King. Beyond that, little 
was gained by this movement. Tyranny and op- 
pression remained very much the same. Ecclesias- 
tical affairs were in the hands of the King and 
the nobility. They ruled, and the people were 
expected to submit. To enforce this were explicit 
statutes, and enough martyrdoms to prove their 
force. There were some who refused to submit. 
They demanded more than had been gained. They 
wanted a larger reformation. From the nature of 
their demand they were called Puritans. They ob- 
jected to the Romish rites which had been retained, 
and especially to the vestments, which seemed to 
them a relic of the superstition which had clothed 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. 33 

the priest with supernatural authority and power. 
It was not the government to which they objected, 
but that which it stood for. Their sons did not 
throw the tea overboard because it was tea, or resist 
the Stamp Act because it put a bit of paper on their 
goods. What did the thing mean, and what did it 
portend ? If it was a small thing to resist, it was 
a small thing to insist upon. It was neither, and 
they all knew it. Men who were eminent among 
the clergy protested against the remains of a sys- 
tem from which the Church and the land ought to 
be free. 

I need not trace the course of events under 
Edward VI., and the reforms which opened prisons, 
destroyed images, removed altars and candles, re- 
stored preaching to its place, and put the English 
Bible in every church ; or under Mary, who wrote 
her name and the record of her reign in blood. 
Elizabeth granted a measure of reformation, and be- 
yond that demanded conformity, — the conformity 
which had been refused, — conformity to the eccle- 
siastical statutes and practices which, as the Puri- 
tans held, had no sanction in Scripture and no 
defence in reason or right. With all her might she 
tried to enforce her will. Clergymen were thrust 
from their places, and many were sent to prison for 
refusing to do what they could not do. The Court 
of High Commission was set up, and the cruelty of 
the English Inquisition turned against as good men, 
as loyal, as patriotic, as England ever knew. In 
Italy or Spain this might have accomplished its 



34 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

intent. In England it was as powerless as the sea 
which battled with its cliffs. Presently men came 
to think that the very constitution of the Church 
was wrong. They compared it with the New Tes- 
tament, and found no warrant for it. They soon 
demanded a reconstruction of the Church after the 
original models. But they retained the idea of a 
national church, independent like the nation, and, 
like the nation, including all the people. The steps 
in the progress of Puritan thought are distinctly 
marked. They protested against the Papal control 
and the men who would enforce it. Then, against 
Papal doctrines also. Then, against Papal usages. 
Finally, against the Papal theory which made the 
Church subordinate to the State and obliged to sub- 
mit to its behest. Freed from an Italian pope, they 
denied the authority of an English pope, though he 
was their crowned king. Liberty, Reform, Purity, 
Religion, were their conjoined and successive words. 
The Puritans proposed to remain in the Church, 
and there to work for its improvement. To what 
they deemed wrong they would not conform, but 
they would not leave the Church. There were 
some who could wait no longer. They believed 
in " Reformation without tarrying." They with- 
drew from the Church, its organization and its 
ceremonies, and in private houses maintained wor- 
ship and observed the ordinances of religion after 
the way which seemed to them " more excellent." 
They had little to guide them but the New Testa- 
ment, and to that they committed themselves and 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. 35 

their hope. As early, perhaps, as 1567, there was 
"the Privye Church in London," which described 
itself as " a poor congregation whom God hath 
separated from the churches of England, and from 
the mingled and false worshiping therein used." 

In 1568, or about that time, Robert Browne, a 
young man of good family, became a scholar at 
Corpus Christi College in Cambridge, where he was 
amons: the stronorest Puritan influences. Declining 
a Cambridge pulpit, he was drawn to those who 
were " verie forward" in seeking a reform in the 
Church, and after months of study and prayer he 
joined with others of a like mind in the formation 
of a Church without the Church. That was, proba- 
bly, in 15S0, and is thought to have been the first 
permanent Congregational Church founded since 
the Apostles rested from their work of church estab- 
lishment. The after career of Browne is not to his 
credit. He suffered, but was not improved. " Com- 
mitted to thirty-two prisons, in some of which he 
could not see his hand at noonday," he finally de- 
serted the cause which he had furthered, accepted 
a place in the Church he had renounced, fell into 
bad habits, and finally died, eighty years old, ten 
years after Separation had enthroned itself on Ply- 
mouth Rock. Charity trusts that he was insane. 
A sharper judgment declares that he lacked " the 
desperate self-respect which prompted Judas to 
hang himself." His name is disowned. No one 
consents to be called after him. But his work, in 
changed forms, proved better than the man. He 



36 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

had worked at the beginning, and was not needed 
for the completion. 

In 1593 Sir Waiter Raleigh expressed the fear 
that there were nearly twenty thousand Brownists 
in England. But this meant resistance, oppres- 
sion, cruelty. For aiding the movement many were 
heavily fined and imprisoned. Thacker, Copping, 
Barrow, Greenwood, Penry, and many others, were 
put to death. It was of no avail. The English 
blood was up. The English spirit had been fully 
awakened. Steadily, secretly, the work of liberty 
and purity moved forward. Something was hoped 
from James. The Puritans appealed to him for a 
truer Sabbath, a shorter liturgy, better music in 
the churches, and for ministers of uprightness, who 
should combine ability, fidelity, and integrity. The 
King granted them an interview at Hampton Court, 
and replied to them in terms which they could 
understand. " If this be all your party have to say, 
I will make them conform, or I will harry them out 
of this land, or else worse." That was in 1604. 
He could bluster, if he was a fool. He could be 
cruel. " I hear our new King hath hanged one 
man before he was tried. 'Tis strangely done." 
Reform seemed more distant than ever. There 
was nothing good to be looked for in England. 
Was there any hope beyond its shores ? Some 
thought so, and crossed to the Low Countries. 
Some concealed themselves and waited. The Sep- 
aratists remained separate. They were not the 
adherents of Browne, who had long before gone 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. T^J 

back to the place from which, for a little, he had 
emerged, nor should his ill-omened name be afHxed 
to them. They had their own teachers, and over 
the open Bible were doing their own thinking, and 
standing to it. One of their congregations was in 
Nottinghamshire, in the village of Scrooby. The 
story of that company of freemen is familiar: the 
names of Clyfton, Robinson, Brewster, Bradford, 
the removal to Amsterdam and Leyden, and finally 
the voyage across the wider sea, where they found 
a sanctuary and a home. It was a brave history to 
make, and well do they deserve the world's homage 
who made it. 

Yet in 1620 only a few of the Puritans were Pil- 
grims. But their principles were growing. The 
contests with James during his troubled reign in- 
creased the force of the people as against the de- 
mands of the King. The spirit of men had grown 
bolder, and their thoughts had gone deeper into the 
reason of things. Four years before James disap- 
peared, the Court of High Commission had renewed 
its tyranny, and the Puritans were again made to feel 
its cruelty. The minds of many looked far into the 
West. Buckingham sought to beguile men whom 
he could not suppress, and hindered their action by 
the hopes he created. By degrees they came to see 
that all this meant nothing. More and more there 
was talk of making a new England. John White, 
rector of Trinity Church in Dorchester, on the Chan- 
nel, proposed to the ship-owners to found a settle- 
ment on these shores, that the sailors who came here 



38 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

might have a home when they were not at sea, and 
that their spiritual interests might be cared for when 
they were far from the churches. Not very much 
came of the project, which perhaps meant more than 
was avowed. Soon men of means were planning a 
colony here. They obtained the charter under which 
Massachusetts lived for fifty-five years, and other 
ships sailed " into the West as the sun went down." 
Naumkeag was settled and became Salem. The 
charter said nothing of religious liberty. It is prob- 
able that the colonists knew they could secure it by 
sailing westward three thousand miles, and that the 
government thought it could be prevented however 
far away. Four weeks from the arrival at Naumkeag, 
the colonists gathered themselves into a church, as- 
senting to a covenant and ordaining their minister. 
It does not appear that they had intended to leave 
the Church of England. But they had come " to 
practise the positive part of church reformation, and 
propagate the Gospel in America." It was almost 
inevitable, it was certainly desirable, that they should 
become a Congregational church. They were qual- 
ified for it and called unto it. They appear to have 
contemplated this, at least, and to have provided for 
it. One who has searched among their goods has 
written that the Book of Common Prayer " seems to 
have been as rare here as the holly and the mistle- 
toe." They were back at the beginning of things, 
where there was only one book. 

The spirit of purity and liberty continued to move 
in England. In 1629 John Winthrop and eleven 



2 50Tri ANNIVERSARY. 39 

others entered into an agreement at Cambridge, " in 
the word of a Christian and in the presence of God, 
... to inhabit and continue in New England." 
They brought their charter, and with it the govern- 
ment of the colony, when they came in the Arbella 
to Salem in 1630. Before the winter of that year 
seventeen vessels had crossed from the old world to 
the new, and a thousand persons had come in them. 
With the arrival of Winthrop and his company 
came the establishment of another Cono^reo^ational 
church, which was to be the centre of their life. 
The church was at Charlestown, and was afterwards 
the First Church in Boston, in whose house the old 
covenant can now be read, where it glows in the 
window. 

It was necessary that the colony should have the 
means and ways of livelihood. It must have a sub- 
stantial basis. There must be money, business, 
commercial relations, a secure financial support. 
For this discreet provision was made. But these 
things were merely incidental. They had not come 
to make money. John Winthrop, the first Gover- 
nor here, has left us his record of the reasons which 
justified this undertaking : " It will be a service to 
the Church of great consequence to carry the Gos- 
pell into those parts of the world." " All other 
churches of Europe are brought to desolation." 
" The whole earth is the Lord's garden." " The 
{fountains of Learning & Religion are soe corrupted 
as most children are perverted." " What can be a 
better worke, & more honorable & worthy a Chris- 



40 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

tian, then to helpe raise & supporte a particular 
Church while it is in the Infancy, & to joyne his 
forces w"" such a company of faithfuU people, as by 
a timely assistance may growe stronge & prosper." 
" It appeares to be a worke of God for the good of 
his Church, in that he hath disposed the hartes of 
soe many of his wise & faithfuU servants, both min- 
isters & others, not onely to approve of the enter- 
prise but to interest themselves in it, some in their 
persons & estates, other by their serious advise & 
helpe otherwise, & all by their praiers for the 
wealfare of it." 

Who were the people who came to found these 
settlements? Many were of the substantial middle 
class of England, possessing the virtues of English- 
men, strengthened by the free spirit which was the 
glory of their time, and has proved its renown. 
Concernino: the leaders in the Puritan cause I can 
use no better words than Dr. Palfrey's : " The Puri- 
tanism of the first forty years of the seventeenth 
century was not tainted with degrading or ungrace- 
ful associations of any sort. The rank, the wealth, 
the chivalry, the genius, the learning, the accomplish- 
ments, the social refinements and elegance of the 
time, were largely represented in its ranks." " The 
leadino; emig^rants to Massachusetts were of that 
brotherhood of men who, by force of social consider- 
ation as well as of intelligence and resolute patriot- 
ism, moulded the public opinion and action of 
England in the first half of the seventeenth century." 
The Puritans read the Bible and obeyed it. Reason 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. 4 1 

and conscience bowed to its authority. They sought 
to fashion their personal and public life by a rigid 
application of its words. But " in politics the Puri- 
tan was the Liberal of his day." By as much as he 
asserted the principle of obedience towards God, did 
he set bounds to the authority of men, and assert the 
supremacy of the manhood which he held under his 
charter as a child of God, belonging to his kingdom. 
It was freedom in obedience which he cherished. 
He had the independence of the planet, which claims 
a large orbit, but never dreams of breaking from the 
central sun. I am glad to close this account of the 
Puritans with the words of one who by integrity and 
liberty belonged with those who helped to lay the 
foundation of this house for a Puritan church, and 
who delighted to worship in it: "They will live in 
history, as they have lived, the very embodiment of 
a noble devotion to the principles which induced 
them to establish a colony, to be 'so religiously, 
peaceably, and civilly governed,' as thereby to 
incite the very heathen to embrace the principles 
of Christianity." 

I have thought it best to trace again the rise and 
advance of the Puritan movement, that we might 
know how it came to pass, and what it meant, that 
this church was established here, two hundred and 
fifty years ago. For it was as a part of a great en- 
terprise that this church was founded. Its history 
is a page in the history of the times which we have 
been reviewing. It is not till we mark its place that 
we know its meaning. 



42 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

Into this illustrious assertion and maintenance 
of purity and liberty Thomas Shepard was born. 
James I. had been two years the king. " In the 
yeare of Christ 1605, upon the 5 day of November, 
called the Powder treason day, & that very houre of 
the day wherein the Parlament should have bin 
blown up by Popish priests, I was then borne." The 
father's consternation at the plot was expressed in 
the name which he gave his son. William Shepard, 
like the father of John Harvard, was a tradesman. 
He was apprenticed to a grocer, one of whose 
daughters he married. He was prosperous in his 
business, and " toward his latter end much blessed 
of God in his estate and in his soule." He " was a 
wise prudent man, the peacemaker of the place." 
As there was no good preaching in Towcester, he 
removed to Banbury that he and his household 
might be " under a stirring ministry." The boy was 
very early separated from his home and exposed to 
much hardship. His mother died when he was four. 
His stepmother treated him harshly, and a Welshman 
who kept a free school in Towcester was extremely 
cruel to him. He used to wish that he was a keeper 
of beasts rather than a schoolboy. His father died 
when he was ten, and an elder brother became both 
father and mother to him. The love of his mother 
for this her youngest child had been exceedingly 
great. Long afterwards he wrote of this to his own 
son, and remembered that she " made many prayers 
for me." He remembered, too, his own strong and 
hearty prayers for his father's life, and the covenant 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. 43 

with which he sealed his entreaties, " as knowine I 
should be left alone if he was gone." With these 
early religious impressions upon him, he came under 
a better teacher, who awakened his desire to be a 
scholar. At fourteen, though " very raw and young," 
he was admitted a pensioner at Emmanuel College. 
Here he found new perils. He became proud of 
his attainments, neglected his religious duties, and 
strayed into bad company and evil ways. He felt 
remorse and shame, as was natural, but it was the 
searching preaching of the master of the college 
which persuaded him to seek a better life. The 
way was not easy, but at length " the Lord gave me a 
heart to receive Christ." 

The Puritans were strong and vigilant in Cam- 
bridge and he felt their influence. He left college 
with a high reputation for scholarship and with the 
honors of the University, and with new purposes and 
desires. His life was beginning. But what should 
he do next ? He had been under Puritan trainino: 
from his boyhood onward. He received deacon's 
orders in the Established Church, but not without 
scruple, and was appointed a lecturer. This was a 
Puritan office, designed to furnish preachers where 
there was no proper ministry. The appointment 
was for three years. In the town to which he was 
sent he could find but one man who had any godli- 
ness. But his labor was rewarded, especially in the 
chief house, where he won to himself his steadfast 
friend, Roger Harlakenden, whose mortal part was 
afterwards laid in the old burying-ground yonder. 



44 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

The young minister was not allowed to do his work 
in peace. He was charged with being " a non-con- 
formable man, when for the most of that time I was 
not resolved either way." After his three years, and 
a little more, had expired, he was summoned before 
Laud, the Bishop of London, — "our great enemy," 
Winthrop calls him. The Bishop was more angry 
than was becoming to his sacred office, and his sen- 
tence was more explicit than paternal : " I charge 
you that you neither preach, read, marry, bury, or 
exercise any ministerial functions in any part of my 
Diocess ; for if you do, and I hear of it, I '11 be upon 
your back and follow you wherever you go, in any 
part of this kingdom, and so everlastingly disenable 
you." This far-reaching denunciation was fitted to 
have some effect in one direction or the other upon 
the " prating coxcomb." With the King harrying 
him and the Bishop upon his back, the young 
preacher must either move or fall. Trained through 
his boyhood and his youth, at his father's house and 
the college, in a Puritan school, they were now 
driving him into the Pilgrim university, the large 
and open world. The Puritan made haste slowly: 
it was a trait of his character. But the Puritan did 
not go backward or sidewise. In this Thomas Shep- 
ard was a Puritan. He spent a few months with the 
Harlakendens, while his spirit burned within him as 
he saw more clearly "into the evil of theEnglish cer- 
emonies, crosse, surplice and kneeling." Then the 
Bishop " fired me out of this place." He accepted an 
invitation to Yorkshire reluctantly, though glad to 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. 45 

get away from Laud. He became chaplain to the 
family of Sir Richard Darley, where he was kindly 
treated, — very kindly, inasmuch as the knight's kins- 
woman became his wife, with the consent of the 
household whom he had made his friends. She was 
our first Margaret Shepard. 

But another ecclesiastic showed a desire to get 
rid of him, and he came to Northumberland, where 
he might preach in peace, " being far from any bish- 
ops." There his study and thought made him more 
discontented with the character and condition of the 
Church to which he still belonged. He removed 
again, and was silenced again. Then he " preached 
up and down in the country, and at last privately in 
Mr. Fenwick's house." While he was thus beino; 
loosed from church and country, divers friends in 
New England asked him to come over to them, and 
many in Old England desired him to go, and prom- 
ised to accompany him. He resolved to accede to 
these requests. His reasons are on record in his 
" little booke." He saw no call to any other place 
in Old England. The Lord seemed to have de- 
parted from England when Mr. Hooker and Mr. 
Cotton were gone, and the hearts of most of the 
godly were set and bent that way. He was con- 
vinced of the evils in the EnQ-Hsh Church. " I saw 
no reason to spend my time privately when I might 
possibly exercise my talent publikely in N. E." "My 
dear wife did much long to see me settled there in 
peace and so put me on to it." He sailed with his 
wife and child late in the year 1634. They encoun- 



46 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

tered a violent storm, and were nearly lost. But 
with difficulty they reached the land again. Then 
his child died, and the stricken father dared not be 
present at the burial, lest he should be arrested. 
He wondered if he was resisting the will of God. 
He feared that he had gone too far in separating 
from the " Assemblies in England." He spent the 
winter in Norfolk, with his expenses defrayed by 
Roger Harlakenden. He could not preach in public, 
but he was busy with his pen, writing what we can 
read to-day. In the spring he went up to London, 
where he evaded the officers for a time. It became 
clear to him that he should come to New England, 
and in August he sailed once more, with his wife 
and a second son, his brother, Harlakenden, and other 
precious friends. It was in the ship Defence, " very 
rotten and unfit for such a voyage." There were 
fears that they might be forced to put back. But 
through many storms they were carried safely, and 
on the 3d of October, 1635, they reached Boston 
harbor, and received a loving welcome from many 
friends. On the second day after their arrival, Shep- 
ard and his family came over to Newtown, where he 
found Hooker and Stone, whom he had known in 
England. In the following February this church 
was organized, as we have already seen. 

We are much favored in having the Autobiogra- 
phy of our first minister, wherein there is so full an 
account of the private and inner life, as well as the 
public career and experience, of this representative 
man. We can see into the soul and through the 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. 47 

life of a young Puritan minister, and know from the 
one what the many felt, suffered, dared, and wrought 
out with courage and endurance. The man is in 
the pages over which his fingers moved. I know of 
no other Puritan book in which you can so plainly 
feel the warm blood, as with all its ache and hope it 
sent its currents up and down the life. 

The new comers enjoyed for some months the 
society of the good people who had been here since 
1632 and 1633, ^^'^^ were about to seek the wilds of 
Connecticut. Very pleasant must that intercourse 
have been. I think that we can see why Shepard 
was so long delayed in England. He needed the 
discipline and education which he gained in the 
years of his waiting. But besides that, his arrival 
here was so timed that he could take up the work 
which Hooker was laying down, ^nd the new church 
could enter into the place out of which the old was 
called. 

The Shepard company numbered some sixty per- 
sons, as nearly as I can determine, and they at once 
entered into public affairs. When the selectmen 
were chosen, very soon after their coming, the first 
name on the list was Mr. Roger Harlakenden. A 
few of the old families remained when their neigh- 
bors had gone, but the town passed into new hands, 
and a new church established itself in the meeting- 
house. There were strong men in that temple : men 
of large heart, of vigorous mind, with a robust con- 
science and an inviolate purpose. They gave them- 
selves to the beginnings of church and state in a 



48 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

new world, knowing how well they builded. They 
and their neighbors had walked with scholars. The 
Bible which is now in our churches was first printed 
in 161 1. Shakespeare died in 1616, Bacon in 1626, 
Herbert in 1632. They made books, though their 
work was less to create a literature than to found a 
church which would be the patron of letters, and 
would train a people to read and think, and in due 
time to write. Between 1630 and 1647 nearly a 
hundred university men joined this colony. Of 
these a good share came to our side of the river. 
What can we say better than that here the College 
at once followed the Church ? Before this year closes 
we shall read again that famous page in Cambridge 
history. But even now we may tell with honest 
pride why the College was " appointed to be at 
Cambridge." One writes that this was " a place 
very pleasant and accommodate." Another: "They 
chose this place, being then under the Orthodox 
and soul-flourishing ministry of Mr. Thomas Shep- 
ard." Another : " It was with a respect unto the 
enlightening and powerful ministry of Mr. Shepard, 
that when the foundation of a colledge was to be 
laid, Cambridge, rather than any other place, was 
pitched upon to be the seat of that happy seminary." 
Newtown was called Cambridge, but the river did 
not exchange its royal for the classic name. 

It is instructive to gather up the testimony of his 
time regarding our first minister. He was thirty 
years old when the church was formed. We have 
one picture of his appearance in the words of a 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. 49 

stranger who listened to him, and described him as 
" a poore, weake, pale-complectioned man." From 
the same hand we have an account of the preaching. 
The man heard the sound of a drum which called 
people to the meeting, and resolved to hear Shep- 
ard preach. " Then hasting thither hee croudeth 
through the thickest, where having stayed while the 
glasse was turned up twice, the man was metamor- 
phosed, and was fain to hang down his head often, 
lest his watry eyes should blab abroad the secret con- 
junction of his affections." The preacher was able, 
by the Spirit of the Lord, " to take such impression 
in his soule ... as if he had beene his Privy Coun- 
sellor." There is abundant testimony to the power 
of his preaching. Language almost beggars itself 
in the attempt to describe him, — " the holy, heav- 
enly, sweet-affecting and soul-ravishing minister," 
" this soul-melting preacher," " that gracious, sweet, 
heavenly-minded and soul-ravishing minister, in 
whose soul the Lord shed abroad his love so abun- 
dantly that thousands of souls have cause to bless 
God for him." His successor in house and parish, 
the matchless Mitchel, said of the influence of 
Shepard upon him while he was in college : " Un- 
less it had been four years living in heaven, I know 
not how I could have more cause to bless God with 
wonder than for those four years." He was the 
minister here for thirteen years. During all the 
time the church was in its first meeting-house. 
The new house was rising beside his dwelling 
when the voice ceased in the "silver trumpet, 

7 



50 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

from whence the people had often heard the joyful 
sound." 

" His name and office sweetly did agree : 
Shepard, by name, and in his ministry." 

" Oh Christ, why dost thou Shepherd take away, 
In erring times when sheepe most apt to stray ? " 

They who had honored and loved him carried out 
the form which had been overmuch tossed about on 
land and sea, and laid it to its rest in their God's- 
acre. The stone they placed above it has disap- 
peared, and no man knows where the grave was. 
He has no monument, save this tablet in the wall, 
and the stone in the city cemetery which bears his 
name and the names of those who have followed 
him through this ministry into the glory beyond. 
But he has many memorials : his name is on this 
house and on the society which holds it for the 
church. It is on school-house and street. It is in 
the influence of his life, which has remained and re- 
newed itself in the two centuries since he went up 
on high. He left his " best silver tankard " to his 
son Thomas, but with his own hand he wrote the 
lines, the draft upon the future and God's provi- 
dence, which brought to his church the tankards 
and the cups with which we still keep the sacra- 
ment he loved and renew the covenant in which 
he lived. He gave his velvet cloak to his beloved 
friend, Samuel Danforth. But he left his affection 
and his charity, his faith and his devotion, his truth 
and his spirit, to the church which he baptized in 



25OTII ANNIVERSARY. 5 I 

its infancy, and trained in its youth for a man- 
hood which should know the power of an endless 
life, that through all our generations we might be 
covered with the strength and beauty of his char- 
acter and service. He is entitled to the reverence 
which we render to him now. Increasing years can 
only increase the honor in which his name is held. 

He was well born. He was trained in hardship 
for a work which was to be hard. He came by slow 
and prudent steps to the high ground on which he 
stood to make up his life. He believed before he 
spoke. He felt before he sought to make others 
feel. In a deep experience he found the truth which 
he read, and in the force of what he had proved he 
preached. He had the earnestness which attends 
personal conviction and assurance. He healed him- 
self and then longed to heal others. He believed 
in the Saviour because he had himself been saved. 

Yet he did not rest in what he had gained. He 
was a studious man. He took great pains in pre- 
paring himself before he would address his people. 
He stored his mind, and gave himself time on Satur- 
day afternoon to " get his heart into a frame fit for 
the approaching Sabbath." The report has come 
down that he rarely preached a sermon but that 
some one, stirred by his teaching and appeal, cried 
out, " What must I do to be saved ? " 

He was in a position in which his influence would 
be widely felt. There were men of mark in his 
congregation, through whom his words would reach 
far beyond the walls of the humble sanctuary. He 



52 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

had offered in himself and his ministry an attraction 
to the new College upon which so much depended, 
in which was invested so much of sacrifice and hope, 
and he fulfilled the desires of those who had trusted 
in him. He was a founder, an overseer, and a friend. 
Out of this happy seminary, one has written, " there 
proceeded many notable preachers, who were made 
such very much by their sitting under Mr. Shepard's 
enlightening and powerful ministry." Henry Dun- 
ster, the first President, was then a member of this 
church, and among the students were three men 
who were afterwards Presidents of the College, and 
William Hubbard, Samuel Mather, William Ames, 
Samuel Phillips, and Jonathan Mitchel, — strong 
men, prominent and useful in Church and State. 
All of his sons who lived to manhood became min- 
isters, and rendered high service in their calling. 
If we could trace all the influence of Mr. Shepard 
upon individuals, we should enhance the respect in 
which we hold him. 

Not alone in his spoken words was he a teacher 
of men. " He left behind him divers worthy works." 
His books show his learning, the acuteness of his 
reason, the fertility of his imagination, the depth of 
his sincerity. The master-mind of Jonathan Ed- 
wards drew very largely from Thomas Shepard in 
illustration of the Religious Affections. His writ- 
ings are substantial and interesting, even in these 
days of books. They gained high commendation. 
They will always be worth reading. We might 
learn from him the true nature of the Sabbath, and 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. 53 

gain a spiritual idea of heaven, and derive many an- 
other lesson in practical life. The three solid vol- 
umes which now bear his name are entitled to a 
place where the scholar and the Christian sit among 
their teachers. 

But his work was even broader than this. " By 
his death," says the old chronicle, "all New Eng- 
land sustained a very great loss." He was a good 
counsellor. The churches had a strong guardian in 
him, and there were times when his judgment and 
sagacity and firmness were needed. Against those 
who would disturb and imperil the churches he was 
vigilant and bold. The synod which put down the 
Antinomians and Ann Hutchinson met with this 
church, and was opened with one of his heavenly 
prayers. Here met, too, the famous synod of Timo- 
thys and Chrysostoms and Augustines, as Higginson 
called them, by which was formed the " Cambridge 
Platform," upon whose broad principles our churches 
have so lons; been established. In this foundation 
work Mr. Shepard had been engaged before, and he 
brought his wisdom to the orderly deliberation of 
the wise men who gathered in our meeting-house, 
the new "Jerusalem Chamber." He was a most 
useful man, as minister and citizen. He did not for- 
get that the missionary spirit and intention marked 
the coming of the Puritans to these shores. They 
saw around them the people into whose country 
they were entering, people without the knowledge 
which they believed to be indispensable to a good 
life in this world or any other, and they held it both 



54 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

a duty and a privilege to give what they had them- 
selves inherited, what their fathers had received 
from the hands of strangers. They began at once, 
in a simple way, to teach the principles of religion. 
In 1644 the General Court passed an order pro- 
viding for the instruction of the Indians "in the 
knowledge and worship of God." Here was the 
first Protestant missionary society. John Eliot of 
Roxbury became the Apostle to the Indians. In 
closest fellowship with him was Thomas Shepard. 
Eliot's first missionary station was in Cambridge, 
at Nonantum, where an Indian church was organ- 
ized in 1 65 1. Shepard could not preach in the 
Indian tongue, but he wrote tracts which Eliot 
translated, and he furthered in many ways the en- 
terprise which was after his own heart. In 1647 
we find him at Yarmouth, a member of a council 
which healed a sad breach in a " bruised church," 
at once, with his friend Eliot, taking advantage of 
the time for " speaking with and preaching to the 
poor Indians in these remote places about Cape 
Cod." In the same year he sent to London a long 
tract, entitled, " The Clear Sunshine of the Gospel 
Breaking forth upon the Indians in New England." 
The efforts of Eliot, Shepard, Dunster, Gookin, 
and other men, and the generous provision of the 
College in behalf of the Indians, make a bright page 
in the history of those earnest and hopeful days. 
The name of " Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck, Indus," 
starred the year after his graduation, has a lonesome 
and pathetic look in the College Catalogue. But it 



25OTII ANNIVERSARY. 55 

is the sign of a generous purpose, more fully real- 
ized in the many Indians who, in the sunshine 
which illumined this church, beheld the Lisiht of 
the world. 

It is plain that Thomas Shepard was a man of 
large industry, of broad sympathies, of learning, 
ability, devotion, piety, — who made his short life 
long by fidelity, brought the training of the old 
world to the service of the new, and used his 
knowledge of the ways of God for the largest good 
of man. A good summary of his life is found in 
his own question and answer : " What is the best 
and last end of man ? — To live to God." 

He was a man raised up of God for his day and 
for his work. He fulfilled his course. But he had 
illustrious associates, and his life ran in the deep 
channels which God had cut through the rocks. 
He shared in the grandeur of the cause, a part of 
which he was. The triumph of the cause is the 
p^an of the soldier. A boulder from the moun- 
tains of Switzerland marks the grave of Agassiz 
at Mount Auburn. A stone from the heart of the 
Puritan heights of the two Englands should stand 
at the grave of Shepard. 

But no account of our first minister should fail 
to make full recognition of those who shared and 
enriched and guided his life. To Margaret Shep- 
ard we owe a continual thankfulness. She was, 
indeed, a wife " fitted for me ; . . . a most sweet, 
humble woman, full of Christ, and a very discern- 
ing Christian ; a wife who was most incomparably 



56 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

loving to me, and every way amiable and holy, and 
endued with a very sweet spirit of prayer." It 
was a painful life which she had while they were 
driven from place to place. It was a brave thing 
which she did when she urged him to seek another 
country. It was a stout heart which kept its 
patience and faith through shipwreck and hardship. 
Unspeakable was her joy and assurance when in 
her chamber she entered into covenant with the 
new church, from which she was so soon to be 
translated. Not the least of the things which we 
admire in the young minister is the tenderness 
with which he speaks of " My deare wife Mar- 
garet." Nearly two years afterward he brought 
back to Cambridge and into his own home the 
eldest daughter of Thomas Hooker. Again was 
he blessed with one who could adorn and assist 
his life : " She was a woman of incomparable meek- 
ness of spirit, ... of great prudence to take care 
for and order my family af¥a3Tes. . . . She loved 
God s people dearly. . . . She loved God's word 
exceedingly. . . . When she knew none else so as 
to speake to them, yet she knew Jesus Xt. and 
could speake to him." After eight years and a 
half of this weeded joy and helpfulness, he was 
again left alone. " In 1647 he once more married. 
Again there was a Margaret Shepard. But not for 
long. The call was next for him. But so excellent 
she was, that in due time, amid the rejoicing of the 
parishioners and the songs of students, she became 
Margaret Mitchel. Let us honor the women who 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. 57 

helped to make the young church what it was, and 
whose influence is still upon us and our house. 
In every generation, as in this, there have been 
daughters worthy of the mothers. 

In the commemoration of this time our minds 
are at the beginning. Here, therefore, I pause, 
with the name of Thomas Shepard in our ears, and 
the man in our hearts. I shall not tell asain the 
story of our church since he ascended from its 
pastorate. It has been said and written. The work 
of the Puritans was faithfully carried forward in the 
New England. In their freedom they kept their 
integrity, and achieved here what they had designed 
there. There was no change of purpose. Meridi- 
ans are on the map, not on the earth ; men draw 
them, God leaves the surface whole. The original 
intent, which had grown in breadth as it had mul- 
tiplied its years, went steadily onward in its pur- 
chased opportunity. In this purpose and movement 
this Puritan church bore its part, vigorously and 
prominently. In this large way our history must 
be read. A late historian in England, whose pen 
has rested too soon, has written with his accustomed 
carefulness, that " the history of English progress 
since the Restoration, on its moral and spiritual 
sides, has been the history of Puritanism." That 
history has been made in both Englands. The 
principles and methods of the beginning remain. 
We seek the same end by the same way. The 
Bible, the Church, the Sabbath, the grace of our 
Lord Jesus Christ, have still our reverent confi- 



58 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

dence. The commandments and promises are still 
in our hearts, the staple of our thoughts, the warp 
and woof of our word and work. Ten men have 
succeeded the first minister. Five sanctuaries have 
followed that in which the church first assembled. 
The sixty are now six hundred ; but three thousand 
men and women have belonged to this household 
of the ancient faith. The record of these busy 
years is written in human lives, and far beyond our 
gates. The record is on high, increasing " with the 
process of the suns." This is no place for boasting. 
But we who are here to-day may gratefully believe 
and say that this church has done a good work, has 
kept faith with its founders, has carried forward 
their designs, has widened their thought and en- 
larged their endeavors, and that with augmented 
power and purpose it looks down the opening 
centuries. 

I turn back to those into whose labors we have 
entered, to repeat the words of the saintly man who 
for forty years was our minister, and to include him 
and the two who came after him in the ascription 
wherewith he greeted those who had been before 
him : " It becomes us, then, my brethren of this 
generation, to rise up to-day and call them blessed." 
It is a fine history which is behind us. The career 
of this church is one of which we who review its 
two hundred and fifty years may be thankful and 
proud. We who have come so late into its work 
may justly claim that few churches have made a 
more honorable record. We should be glad that 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. 59 

we are connected with such a church as this, with 
such a history, and such men at every stage of it, 
with such length of days, with such a part in the 
life of the town which has grown about it, and such 
a share in the advance of the Commonwealth over 
whose birth and infancy it watched in love and 
prayer, — in such essential union with the grand 
advance of Liberty and Purity among all who speak 
our English tongue. It is cause for giving God 
thanks, that one is permitted to write his name 
underneath the ten who have been the ministers of 
this church. Of all its pastors, but one has ever 
left it that he might be the minister of another 
people. It is a church which deserves the loyalty 
of all who belong to it or grow up in its nurture. 
It has proved itself worthy of our steadfastness, 
devotion, generosity, affection. Its stability should 
be our stabilit}^ and firmness of character should 
be fostered by firmness of allegiance. The reason 
of it, its origin, its history, its work, should be known 
by all of us, and taught to our sons and our sons' 
sons. The years are before us. The making of 
them is in our hands. All the memories inspire 
us. Our history is strength. Our opportunity is 
incentive. The day is rich in hope. As we stand 
around the name of Thomas Shepard, let us join 
our hands and make strong our hearts, while we 
lift up our voices with his, and make our prayer to 
Him who " loved the Church, and gave himself for 
it ; that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the 
washing of water by the word, that he might present 



6o FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

it to himself a glorious Church, not having spot or 
wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be 
holy and without blemish." 

In that divine purpose we rejoice, while we rise 
to its fulfilment, even here upon the earth ; and 
here, on this hallowed ground, in sure anticipation 
of the day which is to come, when the Church, 
enlarged and glorified, 

" Shall be 
Triumphant in the sky." 



ADDRESSES 



IN THE 



FIRST PARISH CHURCH. 



;^fternoon ^erbire 



FIRST PARISH CHURCH, 



INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. 

BY HON. CHARLES THEODORE RUSSELL. 

Speaking beside Plymouth Rock in 1820, Mr. 
Webster said : " Let us not forget the religious 
character of our origin. Our fathers were brought 
here by their high veneration for the Christian 
rehgion. They journeyed by its hght and labored 
in its hope. They sought to incorporate its prin- 
ciples with the elements of their society, and to 
diffuse its influence through all their institutions, 
civil, political, or literary. Let us cherish these 
sentiments." 

Inspired by these sentiments, never more tersely 
and fittingly expressed, responding to these grateful 
and pious injunctions, we, the children of the fathers, 
have met to commemorate an act of theirs, apostolic 
in character, simple in form, sublimely grand and 
far-reaching in result. Two hundred and fifty years 



64 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

ago there gathered here, In the " New towne," ahnost 
within " the sounding aisles of the dim woods," a 
notable body of Christians, statesmen, and scholars. 
They asserted no title beyond that of conscientious 
followers of the meek and lowly Jesus. But they 
called no man master. In the faith and light re- 
vealed to them in the Word of God, they came 
together in Christian equality, with due and appro- 
priate form and order, by prayer and mutual cov- 
enant, unitedly to consecrate themselves to the 
service of their Maker. 

How they accomplished their purpose I can best 
state in the words of Governor Winthrop : " Mr. 
Shepherd, a godly minister, come lately out of 
England, and divers other good Christians, intend- 
ing to raise a church body, came and acquainted 
the magistrates therewith, who gave their appro- 
bation. They also sent to all the neighboring 
churches for their elders to give their assistance, 
at a certain day, at Newtown, when they should 
constitute their body. Accordingly at this day there 
met a great assembly, where the proceeding was as 
f olloweth : — 

" Mr. Shepherd and two others (who were after 
to be chosen to office) sat together in the elders' 
seat. Then the elder of them began with prayer. 
After this Mr. Shepherd prayed with deep confes- 
sion of sin, etc., and exercised out of Ephesians v. 
that he might make it to himself a holy, etc. ; and 
also opened the cause of their meeting, etc. Then 
the elder desired to know of the churches assem- 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. 65 

bled, what number were needful to make a church, 
and how they ought to proceed in this action. 
Whereupon some of the ancient ministers, confer- 
ring shortly together, gave answer : That the 
Scripture did not set down any certain rule for 
the number. Three, they thought, were too few, 
because, by Matthew xviii., an appeal was allowed 
from three ; but that seven might be a fit number. 
And, for their proceeding, they advised that such as 
were to join should make confession of their faith, 
and declare what work of grace the Lord had 
wrought in them, which accordingly they did. Mr. 
Shepherd first, then four others, then the elder, and 
one who was to be a deacon (who had also prayed), 
and another member. Then the covenant was read, 
and they all gave a solemn assent to it. Then the 
elder desired of the churches that if they did approve 
them to be a church they would give them the right 
hand of fellowship. Whereupon Mr. Cotton (upon 
short speech with some others near him), in the 
name of their churches, gave his hand to the elder, 
with a short speech of their assent, and desired the 
peace of the Lord Jesus to be with them. Then 
Mr. Shepherd made an exhortation to the rest of 
his body about the nature of their covenant, and to 
stand firm to it, and commended them to the Lord 
in a most heavenly prayer." 

With this simple statement of the event, the 
commemoration of which has brought us here, my 
duty ends. It is for others whom you have selected 
to trace its evolution, estimate its influence, and 

9 



66 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

declare its results. And yet I shall hardly meet 
my whole introductory duty if I do not allude to 
one later incident in the church's history which 
gives shape to our celebration to-day. For nearly 
two centuries the current of this history ran smooth 
and full, until dark clouds arose, the rains de- 
scended, and the floods came, and the swollen 
and angry waters found peace only in two channels, 
each of which claimed to be the genuine, original 
stream. 

In 1829 the theological and somewhat intolerant 
discussions and divisions which agitated and dis- 
tressed our New England churches reached this 
ancient church and parish, and culminated in con- 
flicts and separations of no little bitterness. 

I do not care to enter at all upon the history of 
this sad controversy. It is enough to say that, 
however much we may deprecate its asperities or 
intolerance, we must ever respect the deep and 
earnest convictions under which it became inevi- 
table, and the manly courage with which all its 
exigencies were met. 

To-day we look back upon it through the mellow- 
ing influences of a half-century, and a more tolerant 
spirit, as the sun looks upon the ocean, to draw 
from it and spread abroad whatever is sweet, pure, 
and wholesome, while it leaves all that is salt and 
bitter in the depths below. In the words of Lord 
Macaulay, we believe " it is now time for us to 
pay a decent, a rational, a manly reverence to our 
ancestors, not by superstitiously adhering to what 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. 67 

they in other circumstances did, but by doing what 
they in our circumstances would have done." 

To-day we meet, not in organic union or in doc- 
trinal or dogmatic agreement, but in mutual char- 
ity and love ; the two branches, each jealous of its 
rights and privileges, in joint convention assembled, 
for the special and grateful purpose of recognizing 
and honoring our common ancestry. In this we 
abate no jot or tittle of our respect for those earnest 
and conscientious men and women whose action of 
a half-century ago we may almost seem to reverse. 
If we write over the first or later pages of our 
history, " Blessed are they which are persecuted 
for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of 
heaven," we shall not detract from its glory, or its 
consistency, if we inscribe its last page to-day with 
" Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be 
called the children of God." 

And so I bid you welcome, from whatever church 
you come, to our festival to-day. Come, and come 
all, and help us each, that in all its exercises it may 
be high and holy ; in its influences sweet, loving, 
and hallowed ; in its results blessed of God. 



68 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 



ADDRESS. 

BY REV. ALEXANDER McKENZIE, D.D. 

Mr. PREsroENT, Brethren and Friends : 

Once before I have spoken in this house. It was 
in response to the Latin summons of President 
Walker, and to his expectation of an Oration in lin- 
gua vernacula. The theme of that Commencement 
keeps itself before me to-day. " The rationale of 
success " was found by the men whose success we 
now commemorate. It consisted in the men. The 
distinguished banker whose character has recently 
been the subject of sincere eulogy said, " I am not in 
the habit of being connected with things that fail." 
That meant more than discernment ; it implied the 
habit of not letting things fail. That was a trait 
of the Puritan character ; it was strongly marked 
through the endeavor which created that name. If 
the spirit of Puritanism is " as old as the truth 
and manliness of England," the enterprise is ac- 
counted for and its result explained. English man- 
hood, renouncing foreign control, asserted itself and 
refused to fail. It was by no single step that these 
men reached the high ground upon which they built 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. 69 

their house. The spirit which was in them had 
moved forward steadily, but with the deHberation 
which made it unnecessary to recede. The love 
of liberty and right, the courage and heroism, the 
fondness for adventure, the passion for progress, the 
faith in man, — the traits which had been displayed 
in many a contest with a king and many a battle 
with a stranger, — retained their life and were the 
dominant forces. I have not said the fear of God, 
for that encompassed and controlled their thought 
and action. England should be proud that she 
reared such sons. They should be grateful that they 
grew up in her nurture. The story of our inherit- 
ance has been written by the hand of our townsman 
in the glass which looks down the long aisle of St. 
Margaret's, hard by the monuments of men whose 
fame is our possession, — 

" The New World's sons, from England's breasts we drew 
Such milk as bids remember whence we came. 
Proud of her Past, wherefrom our Present grew, 
This window we inscribe with Raleigh's name." 

It is instructive to mark the sturdy advance of the 
Puritan's thought and purpose. With everything 
he gained, or failed to gain, he demanded more. 
He changed nothing which he had said ; he had 
no plan for compromise. What he learned he re- 
membered, and he learned something more which 
he added to it. He protested against men, tenets, 
usages, and the constitution of things to which 
these belonged. Holding fast to his desires, he 



70 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

determined on seeking a country, making a country, 
where he could have what he had said that he must 
have. He had all his thinking in his hand when 
he pushed off from the Old England to the New 
England. 

The same gradual advance of knowledge and 
intention is found in the man who is first in our 
minds in these services. In his boyhood he learned 
the alphabet of Puritanism. In his birthday, and 
the associations with it which he was not allowed to 
forget, was the augury of his career. Puritanism 
trained him in his homeless childhood, taught him 
in the University, repeated its lessons one by one, 
setting them in his retentive memory, till he had be- 
come such a man that those who knew him best 
thought him worthy of a place in the better England 
where he should teach what he had been taught. 
The confidence of men like Roger Harlakenden and 
John Bridge in the learning and character of this 
young Puritan, not thirty years old, is strong testi- 
mony to his excellence. Laud and the others had 
thought him worth silencing. Those who knew 
him better broke his silence, and changed one 
who might have been a priest into a prophet. He 
became a leader of men, a master-builder. 

There is something sublime in the little company 
assembled two hundred and fifty years ago in the 
rude sanctuary of Newtown. They stood among 
their augmented purposes, making their common 
confession and covenant. Their cause had not 
failed ; they had attained to that which they had 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY 



71 



sought. They had graduated from school, and were 
setting their education to its destined uses. The 
beginning of all which was to be was within that 
narrow room. Expansion, application, were to come ; 
but they had learned the elements of the highest 
learning. It was a new day; but they had not 
broken with the past. The great names of antiquity 
were theirs; they read the old books which we 
are studying ; the stories of ancient heroism were 
familiar. From the centuries that are hardly far- 
ther from us than from them, we are drawing little 
which they had not secured. Name the large events 
of the world's life, and see how few of them belong in 
our modern times. English history was their own ; 
they had been born into it. By look and language 
they were Englishmen, and in mind and heart. They 
knew what we know. They retained, not all they 
would have liked, but all they needed. A short 
voyage, seven or eight weeks, would carry them to 
royal palaces and universities and to the newly 
made graves of scholars and heroes. The small 
ships which brought them here were large enough 
to bring the choicest treasures of English life. The 
best things can be transported. Three thousand 
miles of water need not break the continuity of a 
substantial thought or a substantial truth. There 
was rare wealth in that gathering on that February 
day. 

It had been brought into a large and fruitful place. 
One who was here about 1634 has left us his im- 
pression in words but recently given to us : — 



72 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

" Whatsoever the earth in England or France doth 
either nourish or produce, though it may not at this 
present be found in New England, yet being trans- 
ported or planted will thrive and grow there to more 
than an ordinary perfection." 

This was promising so far as grain and grapes 
were concerned. The peril was that it might prove 
a land where all kinds of opinions would grow as 
well as all kinds of grasses. That danger was soon 
upon them, and was averted with a strong hand, — 
too strong, we ma}^ think who are enjoying what 
they created and defended. But the peril was great. 
To them it was far more serious than it can seem to 
us. They had become exiles for a definite purpose, 
and had bought at a hea\y price all which they 
possessed. Dissension meant destruction, and they 
struck it down. It was a time when men wore no 
gloves. A man does strike hard when it is for his 
home and countr}^ They had not desired a land 
where everybody could have his own way, but where 
they could have their way, which they accounted 
God's way. It might well be that others should 
believe differently, and desire other ends by other 
means. For all such persons the world was open ; 
the fair fields of Narragansett were at the south, 
and there were broad forests at the north. They 
asked but a little place, a narrow strip along the un- 
planted sea. Why should they not possess in quiet- 
ness what it had been so hard to get ? There are 
pages in our early history which we read in sadness ; 
they were written in tears. But never had the early 



25OTH AXXR-ERSARY. 73 

annals of a great people so little which must be re- 
gretted, so few tilings which grateful descendants 
could not readily forget. Beside the British and 
Continental history of their times, the record of the 
New England Puritans is an unsullied scroll. 

They were safely here, but their work was only 
begun. All their manhood was needed for the task 
they had undertaken. William Wood wrote in 1634 : 
" He must have more than a boy's head, and no less 
than a man's strength, that intends to live comforta- 
bly. . . . All New England must be workers in some 
kind." They accepted their dut}' in a large and 
brave spirit. Was ever the work of colonists laid 
out upon so large a scale, or so rapidly carried for- 
ward ? They were ready to sing, as we shall sing 
to-niorht, — 

'•' Here is Thy bounteous Table spread ; 
Thy Manna falls on every Field." 

But they sung as they worked, not alone as they 
worshipped. We look to see what they did, be- 
yond keeping themselves alive. It is surprising to 
find in how much they anticipated our doings. Yet 
why not ? We are but a little older, and they were 
ver\' old. The needs of a man and of society have 
not greatly changed in these few years which we 
call so many. They were mature men who ad- 
dressed themselves to the problems of colonial life. 
They knew whatever was known. Not as appren- 
tices, but as masters, they laid their hand upon their 
work. The best thinsfs we have are our inheritance 



74 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

from them, and some things have been lost. Free 
churches and free towns were their creation without 
precedent, and their bequest without conditions. 
The Republic was under their roof. They guarded 
against the dangers of liberty by placing it in the 
hands of men who were qualified to use it. They 
believed that in a government by the people, the 
people must be good enough to govern. Their test 
does not commend itself to us. It could not be em- 
ployed now. If the State could endure it, the Church 
could not. But it was a natural thought for them. 
It was meant to secure a public administration which 
should carry out the purpose of their coming hither. 
They were careful into whose hands they put the 
power in a time when they could not afford to make 
a mistake. We are working at the matter now. 
Shall we ever get beyond their axiom that the good 
man is the good citizen ; or their confidence that 
under the rule of good men there will be good laws, 
wisely and justly enforced ? They did not believe 
in the natural right of a man to vote ; but they be- 
lieved in the natural right of a man to be good, and 
close upon that came the ballot. 

We are spending money by millions of dollars, 
year by year, in the effort to make good citizens. 
We know that in this we cannot move too rapidly. 
They laid the foundation and then built the house. 
It was the rational way. We are trying to get the 
stones under the house which has already risen to 
the third story. It is slow work, but it must be done. 
They sought the purity of public and personal life. 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. 75 

We call it reforming, when we seek the same result ; 
with them it was forming. If one could not " see 
a drunkard, hear an oath, or meet a be^orar " in their 
time, they knew the worth of that which we are pain- 
fully striving for, and they meant to preserve it. 
They made great account of education. The " old 
Schoolmaster in Cambridge," in the " faire Grammar 
Schoole," gained the favor of the colonial muse, and 
has lived in a deserved renown. 

" 'T is Corlet's pains, and Cheever's, we must own, 
That thou, New England, art not Scythia grown." 

A Stone marks the place where the first school- 
house stood ; but the name of Corlet should be in 
all our schools, as it is upon one of them. The 
" faire Grammar Schoole " was by the side of the 
" Colledge " — the College. In their hearts there was 
but one. They set the proud name of the renowned 
University of England upon their forest college, and 
they made the college worthy of the name. Hardly 
shall we have dispersed from these gatherings before 
the college bell will ring its two hundred and fifty 
strokes, and summon us within its rejoicing. Then 
we shall hear and tell ao^ain the storv of its foundino: 
in the love of learning and the knowledge of its power. 
We are extending knowledge, multiplying schools ; 
ranging the heavens, exploring the earth, and search- 
ing the mind and work of man. All this they tried 
to do. We are proud of the pre-eminence of the 
University ; but if gratitude failed, justice would 
compel us to remember that they brought their few 



76 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

books, their shillings and silver spoons and cotton 
cloth, their wisdom and religion, to the setting up 
of a college among these scattered hamlets. It is a 
Puritan minister who sits among his books before 
the hall yonder, which treasures the name and 
memory of the men who, trained here in good learn- 
ing, gave their lives to save the country into which 
their villages had grown. John Harvard's College 
wrote upon the wall over against their names a sen- 
tence from the Book he read and taught, and it is 
his blessing on the day which sends his scholars 
into the world ; and it cut in stone upon the front 
of the Law School words which guided the law- 
giver from whom we have the Commandments of 
God. These are things which last. " Time is the 
great enemy," one said. Time is the great friend of 
that which has the power to live. Cherishing and 
enlarging our schools, let us remember that the 
fathers founded them. 

We are coming, very late, to consider the men 
whom we have dispossessed, their rights and their 
interests. It was the earliest care of the fathers. 
Before they were here, they thought out what they 
would do for the natives in these wilds. At once 
they began to teach them. The Indian College 
witnessed to their desire. Preaching stations and 
preachers, churches and books, the Indian Bible, 
marked the missionary design. I do not forget 
the darker days, the conflicts, the killings, — the 
efforts of the red man to repel the white, the bloody 
self-defence. But they never meant this. It was 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. 77 

with a pure design that they sought the savages 
and tried to win them to better ways. One does 
not hke to think upon the later Indian wars, 
Indian treaties, Indian wrongs. At last the slum- 
bering sense of justice has awakened. We are 
taking up the work of the first comers, and the 
right will prevail, and some restitution will result. 
It is well. But let us remember that they who 
were here so long ago meant it for good to those 
who were here before. 

They believed in the right and in liberty. It 
must not be overlooked by us who have so lately 
contended against oppression, that there was not a 
slave born in Massachusetts after 1641. 

I have alluded to the leading features of their en- 
terprise and labor. How vast their plans were, and 
how well were they worked out ! They had lofty 
principles, from which they would not swerve when 
they became exacting. They were men, and their 
times were hard, — winters were long upon this 
coast, — but they cherished the virtues. The ten- 
derest affection breathes in John Winthrop's letters, 
and the fragrance of spikenard is in Thomas Shep- 
ard's memories of his Margaret. Nor did they part 
with this which was human and sweet when they 
went out into the cold and stood among the snows. 
A colder generation was to come after them ; the 
narrower conditions of their birth and childhood 
showed themselves in the character of men born here. 
But the warmth of their English homes was upon the 
first Englishmen. They had brought the best of all 



78 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

they had, and they had brought themselves, to become 
larger men and women. We do not need to compare 
them with others or to translate them into our times. 
They were great, and they did grandly what they were 
set to do, what then most needed to be done. There 
is no call to canonize them ; still less is there a call 
to criticise them. We have entered into their labor, 
and should know what it was. 

They founded institutions ; they did not believe 
in isolation. They built themselves into the town, 
though they were freemen ; and into the church, be- 
cause they were Christians. Every man kept his own 
conscience in the sight of God, but every man had 
regard unto his brother. They held a high idea of 
manhood, and they did their best to make it a real- 
ity. In all they purposed or hoped for, they rec- 
ognized the highest authority and truth. The Lord 
was in their mind and heart. They had his com- 
fort in privation, his guidance in perplexity. They 
knew that the strength of the hills was his, and upon 
his might they depended. They believed that they 
had his commandments and promises, and to these 
they gave unfaltering heed. They sought his glory 
and the extension of the kingdom which is an ever- 
lasting kingdom. The loftiest intention in the lar- 
gest confidence dignified their work. They felt the 
power of an endless life, and they wrought for the 
centuries, the ages. We are celebrating the found- 
ing of a church of Christ. What thought of man has 
been higher or more enduring than that ? Their 
Newtowne has lasted, and their college and their 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. 79 

church. The work of their hands has been estab- 
lished upon them. John Bridge looks from his gran- 
ite pedestal upon the two churches which boast a 
common lineage, and far within the college gates, 
and rouses John Harvard from his open book to 
tell him that it was a good thing to bring Thomas 
Shepard to the New England; and John Harvard 
answers, Veritas. 



8o FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 



ADDRESS. 

BY HON. WILLIAM E. RUSSELL, MAYOR. 

Mr. Ch-\iiol\x. Ladies axd Gentlemex : 

I KNOW that the sfood citv of CambridQ-e, that for 
two hundred and fiity years has walked hand in 
hand with this old church, through trials and suf- 
fering, wars and pestilence, yet always forward, is 
glad to be present to-day at this anniversar}'-, bearing 
love to her younger sister, and the respect, reverence, 
and gratitude of a people deeply indebted for her 
Ions: life of usefulness. 

In 1636 our little town, poor, distressed, its people 
" straitened for want of land," with food so scarce 
that " many eate their bread by waight, and had 
little hope of the earth's fruitfullnesse," deserted by 
the governor, failing in the purpose of its founders, 
but filled with " quickening grace and lively affec- 
tions to this temple worke," rejoiced in the founding 
of this church, that brought to it prosperity and 
happiness, and was to be its strength and very life. 
" God's glory and the Church's good " bound Win- 
throp, Dudley, and their associates "in the word 
of a Christian " to embark for the Plantation of 



25OTH AXyiVERSARY. 8 I 

New England. '■' God's glonr :,:._ :r.e Church's 
good," sought by Shepard and his little band in the 
planting of this church, became the strong founda- 
tion upon which our town was builded. Others 
had sought to make here a fortified town, a mart 
of commerce, the seat of govemm.ent; but they 
f ailed. Perhaps, as Mather says of the early settle- 
ments north of Plyr: :. -these attempts being 
aimed no higher ' advancement of som.e 

worldly interests, a ..:.-. a:., series of disasters con- 
founded them, until there was a plantation erected 
upon the nobler designs of Christianit}'." Certainly 
it is no injustice to our nrst founders to sav that 
not till this church was _ : -^ -.as Xewtoviiie 

permanently established. 

Others to-day will tell, berrer than anv vs-ords of 
mine, the ston.- of the birth and life of the First 
Church of Cambridgre : in the tellinsr thev cannot 
fail to give much of the histor}' of our dry. The 
late venerable pastor of this church has pictured 
to us, with all the rich beaut}- of his poetic mind, 
that Cambridge Church Gathering cf 1636. An- 
other pastor has r"^::'.: ; > :.:;;' :..'/: :i:ren its life 
to the time when he c:. er and mjide it. 

Surelv it is not for me :o 2:.ean m delds where all is 
han-ested. Rather let me express the deep debt the 
cit}^ owes to the church, and o5er her homage and 
thanks to the old Purirar. spirit that has always 
been the life ;: ';::"; :!., :[\ : : :\ :,:.'. :' : cirv. 

For years :' ^ ;. / "vn were one, but 

the church was :l:a: >_::c. v_:uv its members were 



82 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

freemen, and none other had any voice in town 
affairs. In town-meeting the affairs of the church 
were settled. There repairs were ordered on the 
meeting-house, grants of land made to the church, 
and votes often passed that show how carefully 
and naturally, while the church was the town, the 
town looked after the interests of the church. The 
old chronicles constantly speak of " the people of 
this church and towne." Ever the church before 
the town, ever the " spirituall blessings " before the 
" outward things." So were they true to the pur- 
pose of their coming, and so building stronger than 
they knew. As the years passed on, and the church 
and town waxed strong, their affairs became more 
separate and distinct. Yet the church was always 
ruling and leading the town, and the town loyally 
following in her footsteps. Age and separation did 
not lessen the influence of the church. I know full 
well, sir, that a father's threescore years and ten 
must separate him a little from the life of his son ; 
yet I venture to say that reverence for the gray 
hairs and ripe years, the recollection of tender 
care in childhood's days, filial love and gratitude, 
make the threescore years and ten a more potent 
influence over the younger life than when the 
father's will was the child's action, and he direc- 
ted every footstep. So was it, so may it ever be, 
with this church and town, — the child that she 
nurtured and guided, and always followed with love 
and blessing. 

Let me say a word of the great prosperity that 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. 83 

came to the town upon the establishing of this 
church under " the holy, heavenl}^ sweet-affecting, 
and soul-ravishing Mr. Shepard." First came the 
College, with a grant from the General Court six 
times as great as had been given for protection 
against the Indians, — planted here because of "the 
enlightening and powerful ministry of Mr. Shep- 
ard." Then to the town, now a seat of learning, 
was given her present classic name. Soon sprang 
up, under Master Corlet, the first grammar school 
in New England ; here Stephen Daye established 
the first printing-press ; here was printed the first 
Bible printed in America; and here, under John 
Eliot, was begun " the first Protestant mission to 
the heathen in modern times." The limits of the 
town were extended till they reached from the 
Charles to the Merrimac River, a distance of over 
thirty miles, or a mile for every twenty cattle and 
every five ratable persons in 1647. The "great 
bridge " was built to Brighton, and other signs 
showed the new life the church had brought. 
Many of these are perhaps the " outward things " 
of the town's prosperity. Better for the town were 
the faith and the Puritan spirit that Shepard and 
his company planted in its people. 

Restrained by tyranny of Church, oppressed by 
authority of State, the Puritans abandoned ease and 
honors at home to lead serious lives in a wilder- 
ness where they might found a " Church without a 
bishop" and a "State without a king." "I'll be 
upon your back," said Bishop Laud to Shepard, 



84 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

"and everlastingly disenable you." It was bishops 
on the backs of Puritans that gave to us this Com- 
monwealth and Nation. " Everlastingly disenable " 
Shepard ! No, but everlastingly enable him to 
perpetuate his name and virtues in the hearts of 
a God-fearing, liberty-loving people ! The Puritans 
hated the union of Church and State; but here 
they founded a more perfect union, — a Church 
not dependent on the State or sustained by its 
authority, but a Church that was its very life. We 
care not so much to-day for the distinctive doc- 
trines of their faith as that they had faith, not so 
much for the scruples of their conscience as that 
for conscience' sake they dared to suffer, not so 
much for their suffering as that in spite of it 
they never yielded. They came here, brave, deter- 
mined, serious men, taught in oppression's school 
to love liberty, firm in the faith they would have 
died to uphold. That was the stuff from which 
to make Commonwealths that were to last. In 
prayer and faith they founded our little town ; by 
prayer and faith, through this church, they kept 
alive the Puritan spirit. 

We smile at the austerity of the old Puritans, 
their long faces and mournful manners ; but we 
forget that their work was no holiday pastime. 
They were not seeking how easiest to live, but how 
best to live for " God's glory and the Church's 
good ; " they were Church-building, nation-building, 
— establishing institutions to last as long as men 
fear God and love liberty. If such serious work 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. 85 

had not made them serious men, it would utterly 
have failed. 

What does Cambridge owe to this Puritan spirit ? 
What does she not owe to it? I fancy that if 
Shepard, Dudley, Dunster, and Sir Harry Vane 
could revisit to-day the scene of their labor, they 
would marvel at the fruit it had brought forth. 
They would find a University whose vigor and 
greatness had exceeded their fondest hopes ; a city 
whose wealth is counted in millions, where they left 
thousands, and whose people would seem to them 
in number almost as the sands of the sea. But to 
them these would be the " outward things." I think 
they would ask : " Is there here freedom of con- 
science to worship God? Is there tyranny of 
Church or oppression of State? Is there fear of 
God and love of liberty ? As life has become to 
you easier to live, has character grown less sturdy ? 
Are men still ready to suffer for conscience' sake 
and die for love of country ? " 

What answer should we make ? I would turn to 
the records of our town and city. I would show 
that in 1765, four generations after Sir Harry Vane 
was urging the largest liberty among the Puritans, 
our town w^as leading in the struggle that worked 
our independence. October 14 of that year, in 
town-meeting, was made the first formal protest 
against the memorable Stamp Act; and it was 
ordered to " be recorded in the Town Books, that 
the children yet unborn may see the desire that 
their ancestors had for their freedom and happi- 



86 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

ness." Then came the tax on tea, and instantly 
the vote of this town that "we can no longer 
stand idle spectators," but will join Boston in any 
measures " to deliver ourselves and posterity from 
slavery." The spirit of Shepard and Vane and 
Dudley was speaking through Appleton and Sted- 
man, Adams and Hancock. Yes, and soon under 
yonder elm were gathered men still ready to 
suffer for conscience' sake and die for love of 
country ; few, ragged, half armed, united in defy- 
ing the strongest nation of the world. Yet when 
Washington found in them the old Puritan spirit, 
he knew there was a force within his grasp that 
could "marshal the conscience" of his country to 
achieve her independence. 

A short century more passes ; there comes a 
struggle for human liberty, a call again to patriots 
and Puritans. And Cambridge, first in the whole 
nation, offers her children, under the lead of a 
grandson of a Revolutionary hero ; and our old 
University, charged with being backward in these 
great agitations and with being forgetful of the 
Puritan spirit, — though her accuser is himself an 
answer to the charge, — sends forth her sons to 
die for the principles this old church has ever 
taught. 

I have said enough. I hardly think if Shepard 
were with us, he would say that the prayers and 
faith of our pious founders had been forgotten, or 
that, after eight generations, we had proved untrue 
to the spirit of his ministry. 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. 8 J 

This is the word the city bids me say to-day. 
Shepard and Mitchel, Dudley and Dunster, — all 
have passed away ; but each, " though dead, yet 
speaketh." 



FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 



ADDRESS. 

BY HON. OLIVER W. HOLMES, JR. 

Six hundred years ago a knight went forth to 
fight for the cross in Palestine. He fought his bat- 
tles, returned, died among his friends, and his effigy, 
cut in alabaster or cast in bronze, was set upon his 
tomb in the Temple or the Abbey. Already he 
was greater than he had been in life. While he 
lived hundreds as good as he fell beneath the walls 
of Ascalon or sank in the sands of the desert and 
were forgotten. But in his monument the knight 
became the type of chivalry and the church militant. 
What was particular to him and individual had 
passed fi-om sight, and the universal alone remained. 
Six hundred years have gone by, and his history, 
perhaps his very name, has been forgotten. His 
cause has ceased to move. The tumultuous tide in 
which he was an atom is still. And yet to-day he 
is greater than ever before. He is no longer a 
man, or even the type of a class of men, however 
great. He has become a symbol of the whole mys- 
terious past, — of all the dead passion of his race. 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. 89 

His monument is the emblem of tradition, the text 
of national honor, the torch of all high aspiration 
throuo^h all time. 

Two hundred and fifty years ago a few devout 
men founded the First Parish of Cambridee. While 
they lived, I doubt not, hundreds as good as they 
fell under Fairfax at Marston Moor, or under Crom- 
well at Naseby, or lived and died quietly in England 
and were forgotten. Yet if the only monuments of 
those founders were mythic bronzes such as stand 
upon the Common and the Delta, — if they were 
only the lichened slates in yonder churchyard, — 
how much greater are they now than they were in 
life ! Time the purifier has burned away what was 
particular to them and individual, and has left only 
the type of courage, constancy, devotion, — the au- 
gust figure of the Puritan. 

Time still burns. Perhaps the type of the Puri- 
tan must pass away as that of the Crusader has 
done. But the founders of this parish are commem- 
orated, not in bronze or alabaster, but in living mon- 
uments. One is Harvard Collesfe. The other is 
mightier still. These men and their fellows planted 
a congregational church, from which grew a demo- 
cratic state. They planted something mightier even 
than institutions. Whether they knew it or not, 
they planted the democratic spirit in the heart of 
man. It is to them we owe the deepest cause we 
have to love our country, — that instinct, that spark, 
that makes the American unable to meet his fellow- 
man otherwise than simply as a man, eye to eye. 



/-' 



90 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

hand to hand, and foot to foot, wrestling naked on 
the sand. When the citizens of Cambridsfe forget 
that they too tread a sacred soil, that Massachusetts 
also has its traditions which grow more venerable and 
inspiring as they fade ; when Harvard College is no 
longer dedicated to truth and America to democratic 
freedom ; then, perhaps, but not till then, will the 
blood of the martyrs be swallowed in the sand and 
the Puritan have lived in vain. Until that time he 
will grow greater even after he has vanished from 
our view. 

The political children of Thomas Shepard we 
surely are. We are not all his spiritual children. 
New England has welcomed and still welcomes to 
her harbors many who are not the Puritan's de- 
scendants, and his descendants have learned other 
ways and other thoughts than those in which he 
lived and for which he was ready to die. I confess 
that my own interest in those thoughts is chiefly 
filial ; that it seems to me that the great currents of 
the world's life ran in other channels, and that the 
future lay in the heads of Bacon and Hobbes and 
Descartes rather even than in that of John Milton. 
I think that the somewhat isolated thread of our 
intellectual and spiritual life is rejoining the main 
stream, and that hereafter all countries more and 
more will draw from common springs. 

But even if we are not all of us the spiritual chil- 
dren of Thomas Shepard ; even if our mode of ex- 
pressing our wonder, our awful fear, our abiding 
trust, in face of life and death and the unfathomable 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. 9^ 

world, has changed; yet at this day, even now, we 
New Englanders are still leavened with the Puritan 
ferment. Our doctrines may have changed, but the 
cold Puritan passion is still here. And of many a 
man who now hears me, whether a member of his 
church or not, it may be said as it was said of Thomas 
Shepard by Cotton Mather: "So the character of 
his daily conversation was a trembling walk with 
God." 



92 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 



ADDRESS. 

BY REV. FREDERIC H. HEDGE, D.D. 

Mr. President and Friends : 

This friendly meeting, this coming together, of 
two religious societies having a common origin, 
but long sundered by an old ecclesiastical feud, re- 
minds me of a similar passage of Christian history 
which occurred in Syria some fifteen hundred years 
ago. The Meletian schism had divided for eighty- 
five years the great church of Antioch. To heal 
that schism the venerable Meletian bishop (his name 
was Alexander), on a high festival, led his flock to 
the place of worship of the opposite (Eustathian) 
party, took part in their exercises, and then led both 
parties back to his own church, where both united 
in a joint celebration of the day. 

But what I have to say on this occasion relates 
to nothing so remote. I shall not wander into dis- 
tant centuries, but confine myself within the limits 
of our own, and within the limits of our own town. 

I propose to speak of the old meeting-house from 
which both our societies emanated. 

I call it meeting-house, not church. We did not 
say churcJi in those days except when speaking 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. 93 

of Christ Church yonder; that (an exceptional phe- 
nomenon in these parts, not always in running 
order) we called the church, but ours was simply 
meeting-house. 

The old meeting-house, then, stood very nearly 
where the Dane Law School now stands, opposite 
the head of Dunster Street. Its true front was 
toward the west ; and on that side a substantial 
tower, springing from the ground and boldly pro- 
jecting from the main edifice, was surmounted by 
a belfry and a graceful spire capped with the 
customary gilt weathercock. 

But the principal entrance was on the south, 
facing the pulpit. The auditorium was nearly 
square, — the best shape for acoustic purposes. It 
had three galleries. The eastern, before the erec- 
tion of University Hall with its chapel, was allotted 
to the students and teachers of the College ; the 
west gallery was free; that on the south was occupied 
by the choir. The ground floor was divided into 
square pews, having seats which could be raised 
on hinges to afford standing-room during prayer. 
When the prayer ended they were let down with 
a slam which marked with portentous emphasis 
that stage in the services. 

Organ there was none ; the music was supplied 
by a redoubtable bass-viol, supplemented by some 
wind instruments and a volunteer choir. The 
hymn-book used was Tate and Brady's. In the 
latter part of Dr. Holmes's ministry this was com- 
muted for Watts's Hymns. The change was re- 



94 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

garded as a bold step, but due to the demands of 
a progressive age. 

I would like to speak more fully than time will 
permit of our minister Dr. Holmes. An able man, 
a learned man, — learned especially in the line of 
ecclesiastical history, whereby he was able to cor- 
rect some misstatements in Southey's " Book of the 
Church," and to win from that author, I believe, 
an acknowledgment of error, — a man who inspired 
respect, dignified but kindly, grave but not without 
some touch of the humor that sparkles in the 
writings of his son. 

Two scenes connected with the old meeting- 
house are indelibly impressed on my memory. 

One occurred in my childhood, during what is 
known as the War of 1812. 

A military company drafted from Cambridge, 
their term of service having expired, marched into 
town on a Sunday afternoon during divine service, 
with drum and fife affronting the sacred traditions 
of the Puritan Sabbath. They halted in front of 
the meeting-house, filed into the western entrance, 
ascended the stairs with measured tramp, the music 
not ceasing till they had taken their places in the 
free gallery. It was in the midst of the " long 
prayer." And the prayers were long in those days, 
or seemed so to the youngsters who listened, or 
perhaps did not listen. I have often wondered how, 
amid all that racket, Dr. Holmes could command 
his thoughts sufficiently to proceed with his prayer. 
But he did proceed. The " long prayer " had its 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. 95 

epic requirements, its systematic process ; to have 
stopped in the middle would have been chaos. 
Our elders, I think, resented the disturbance. That 
the soldiers should come to meeting to render 
thanks for their safe return, was right and proper ; 
but the drum and fife were unsabbatical to a fault. 
We children, on the other hand, agreed in the wish 
that such episodes might be repeated. 

The other scene occurred in 1824, on occasion of 
Lafayette's visit to this country as the nation's guest. 

During Commencement week the College always 
took possession of the meeting-house for their cus- 
tomary exercises ; notice being given to pew-holders 
to remove their hymn-books and cushions, to protect 
them from academic abuse. Lafayette occupied a 
conspicuous seat on the platform on Commence- 
ment Day and the day following, at the meeting of 
the <S> B K Society. Edward Everett, then in the 
prime of early manhood, was the orator on that 
occasion. His personal beauty, his perfect grace, 
the charm of his wonderful voice, enhanced the ef- 
fect of a speech which, as it was the first, so it was 
in some respects the best of his public orations. 
At its close he addressed himself to Lafayette. He 
related the story of the Frenchman's offer of his 
services to this country at the breaking out of the 
Revolution, of the inability of our commissioners 
abroad, for want of means or credit, to furnish a 
vessel which should convey him hither. " ' Then ' 
[I quote the words of the orator], exclaimed the 
youthful hero, ' I will provide my own.' And it is 



96 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

a literal fact that when all America was too poor 
to afford him so much as a passage to her shores, 
he left, in his tender youth, the bosom of home, of 
happiness, of wealth and rank, to plunge in the dust 
and blood of our inauspicious struggle." 

The effect of this passage and the whole perora- 
tion, recalling memories of the Revolutionary War 
and the nation's chief, was such as I have never 
seen equalled. The immense assembly, filling the 
building to its uttermost capacity, was fused in one 
emotion. Tears were in every eye; the tumultu- 
ous applause, again and again renewed, verged on 
madness. 

Mr. Everett won many oratorical triumphs in 
after life, but none comparable to that. Said a 
contemporary of mine not long since, " It is some 
consolation for being old to have witnessed that 
scene, to have heard that speech." 

The old meeting-house is gone ; and the old 
feud, let us hope, is forever extinct. The history of 
ecclesiastical feuds which originate in theological 
differences is very instructive. It shows us on what 
subtile questions, insoluble by human intelligence, 
the controversies for the most part have turned; 
how a pale abstraction has set the world on fire, 
how Christendom has been rent by a vocable. And 
it admonishes us, in the words of an English divine, 
that " while we wrangle here in the dust, we are 
fast hastening to that world which is to decide all 
our controversies, and that the only safe passage 
thither is by peaceable holiness." 



ADDRESSES 



SHEPARD MEMORIAL CHURCH, 



13 



(Ebcnin^ ^crbice 



SHEPARD MEMORIAL CHURCH. 



ADDRESS. 

BY REV. EDWARD H. HALL. 

I HAVE been much interested to-day in noticing 
how many different lines of thought can be sug- 
gested by a single theme. Some of our hearers, 
it is true, less devoted than we to the memory of 
our colonial ancestry, may insist that our speakers 
have all been saying, in different ways, one and the 
same thing, — namely, that the Puritans were perfect. 
To them it may seem that we have been claiming 
for our forefathers all that is best in the country's 
history, and charging all that is worst upon their 
foes ; tracing back all obstacles in the way of our 
prosperity to hatred of Puritan principles ; tracing 
back all religious and civic virtue and even all 
national institutions to half a dozen little meeting- 
houses built on these New England shores. 

toFa 



lOO FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

Well, they have a right to smile. Many ele- 
ments go into the making of a nation, and the 
Puritans, in this case, did not contribute them all. 
There are many kinds of virtue in the world, and 
the Puritans had no monopoly in this line. That 
they were not paragons of all possible excellences 
we are quite ready to confess. At the same time 
there seems to me little danger that our glorifica- 
tion of the Puritans, in these days, will do any harm. 
We are none too prone to pay honor to our an- 
cestors. On the contrary, we have been quite too 
forgetful of them. Every such commemoration as 
this surprises us by the heroic names which it 
rescues from oblivion, and the vast amount of 
popular ignorance which it reveals. I have little 
doubt that some of those sitting before me now 
have just discovered for the first time that they 
are themselves descended from one or another of 
these ancient worthies. When the statue of John 
Bridge was placed upon our Common, three or four 
years ago, many of us had to ask each other, 
" Who was John Bridge ? " — only to find in the end 
that we were direct descendants of that stout old 
Puritan ; too honorable a man to be forgotten by 
any of his grandchildren. There is little danger, 
then, in these anniversaries, whatever the hero- 
worship to which they lead. The Puritans did 
not possess all the virtues, it is true ; but they 
represented, what is much more to the purpose, a 
very definite and positive type of virtue, which we 
are not likely to overrate. I have heard many in- 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. lOI 

discriminate eulogies of the Puritans, I have heard 
many very fulsome eulogies of the Puritans, I have 
heard many partial and false eulogies of the Puri- 
tans; but I have never heard their actual or char- 
acteristic traits too highly extolled. 

And now I find myself, too, led into a special 
line of thought, — one which I am very grateful to 
those who went before me for not infringing upon, 
and which I trust my successors will not feel them- 
selves wronged if I pursue ; namely, the effect upon 
a religious faith of being transported from its home 
to foreign shores. A learned and orthodox Ger- 
man historian goes so far as to declare, in speaking 
of the Jews, that none of the historic religions has 
ever flourished in its own home. None, as he 
expresses it, seems able to conquer its native soil. 
Judaism must fly from its Chaldaean birthplace and 
be brought into contact with Egyptian worship 
before beginning its real career; Christianity, in 
turn, must abandon Jerusalem and Judaea before it 
can find full expression ; Mohammedanism must 
be driven from Mecca before it becomes conscious 
of itself. Without urging upon you any such 
sweeping philosophical generalization, let me call 
your attention to the unquestionable changes which 
came over Protestantism on crossing the seas to 
this Western Continent. Not insisting that Protes- 
tantism found its full development only in America, 
or that the only true Puritanism is New England 
Puritanism, we can certainly claim that our Prot- 
estant faith took to itself fresh shape and vigor 



I02 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

here, such as was possible only under these Western 
skies. 

We are wont to think of the Puritan movement 
as having some distinctive form impressed upon it 
from the start. On the contrary, when it came to 
these shores, nearly a century after its birth, it had 
assumed no definite form whatever. It had been 
purely tentative and experimental, taking various 
names and shapes, but retaining neither of them. 
In Scotland, to be sure, it had adopted the form of 
Presbyterianism from the start ; but in England it 
had been known by many names, each being rejected 
in turn as inadequate. At first, naturally enough, 
it appeared simply as a revulsion from episcopal 
jurisdiction, and contented itself with merely assert- 
ing its absolute freedom from ecclesiastical control. 
At this stage it bore the insignificant title of 
Brownism. Early in the seventeenth century it 
took to itself the more definite name of Indepen- 
dency. At about the same time those who had 
left the English Church, in order to distinguish 
themselves from those who remained behind, ac- 
cepted the name of Separatist. It was among the 
band of Separatists, setded chiefly in Holland, that 
the first movement to America began, which resulted 
in the settlement at Plymouth. 

But, meantime, among the non-conforming clergy 
there was by no means entire sympathy with these 
movements. On the contrary, there was great dis- 
trust of them, and extreme distaste for both the 
methods and the aims of the Separatists. The name 



250TH ANNIVERSARY. 103 

of Puritan became obnoxious to some of the Puri- 
tan clergy themselves, and something like an anti- 
Puritan reaction sprang up among them, purely in 
consequence of the radicalism of the Independents. 
The Non-conformists distrusted the Separatists, 
and the Separatists the Non-conformists, while 
both together repudiated the Brownists. Both John 
Cotton and John Robinson are on record as pas- 
sionately disavowing all sympathy with Brownism. 

When the Puritans came to Massachusetts, then, 
they had outgrown each former name, and had found 
as yet no new one. What should the new name he? 
and what, in general, the worship and polity of the 
New England churches .f* 

So far as forms of worship are concerned, we 
find the Massachusetts churches falling quietly 
into the simple rites already adopted in Holland. 
Messengers from Plymouth, where these rites had 
been already adopted, were present with words of 
counsel at the organization of the first church in 
these parts, that at Salem. Some of our own min- 
isters. Hooker and others, had already visited 
their brethren in Holland, and learned their ways. 
Moreover, they were all agreed that the Scrip- 
tures were to be their supreme authority on every 
point; and in the New Testament they found no 
ritualistic worship, no bishops as distinct from 
ministers, no church officials except pastors and 
elders, teachers and deacons. Hence the plain 
and unecclesiastical worship which has come down 
to this day. 



I04 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

But, meantime, another question arose, which the 
Plymouth colonists had not been called upon to 
meet : What was the relation of the new churches 
to each other ? It must be remembered that so 
far as precedents were concerned, the founders of 
the Massachusetts Colony had no alternative before 
them but Presbyterianism on the one hand, and the 
absolute independence of the churches on the other. 
Naturally, they might have been expected to favor 
Presbyterianism, which was in the ascendant then 
among the English Non-conformists, and continued 
so until Cromwell's influence brought Indepen- 
dence into favor. At the Assembly of Divines 
held at Westminster about ten years after the 
departure of the Massachusetts Colony (1643), only 
a handful of the members, a dozen at most, were 
Independents, the rest being Presbyterian. By 
their action, so far as the Westminster Assembly 
could determine the question, Presbyterianism be- 
came the established religion of England. Nor 
was this form of religion by any means without 
its advocates in Massachusetts. The minister of 
Hingham was charged with Presbyterian leanings. 
A little party of Presbyterians were heard of at 
Newbury. Others were petitioning the Court 
for recognition. But Presbyterianism found no 
favor in the free air of New England. On the 
contrary, our New England ministers, through 
their letters to friends at home, seem to have 
done most of the fighting in favor of Indepen- 
dence in England. 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. IO5 

Was it, then, Independence that established itself 
in New England ? Not quite. This name, too, 
had lost something of its charm, and was gradually 
giving way to another. Not consciously. The 
actors in such events rarely know the work in 
which they are engaged, and there is nothing to 
indicate that our Puritan fathers knew that they 
were establishing a new church polity. It came 
about through the pure force of circumstances. 

In the strangeness of the new situation and the 
common sense of danger and of need, the little 
congregations longed for each other's sympathy. 
The instinct of companionship and fellowship drew 
them closer and closer together. They were afraid 
of heresies and false doctrines, too, and were deter- 
mined to present a united front against antinomi- 
anism, familism, anabaptism, or any other form of 
schism. Still another influence operated to pro- 
duce unity of action. As none but church-members 
were freemen, and none but freemen were church- 
members, they found themselves taking counsel 
together upon all the affairs of their several com- 
munities, matters of state to-day and matters of 
church to-morrow. Before they were aware of it, 
therefore, they came into very close ecclesiastical 
relations with each other. It was soon understood 
that no new church should be founded without the 
consent and participancy of the older churches. 
No pastor could be ordained without a coming 
together of elders and delegates to express their 
sympathy and offer the right hand of fellowship. 

14 



I06 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

I say, this came about only by degrees. Some 
churches, sensitive of their rights, resisted every 
step towards community of action. At first each 
church ordained its own pastor without consulting 
its neighbors or asking their fellowship in the mat- 
ter. When the church at Newtown was founded, 
in the august presence of the Massachusetts magis- 
trates and clergy, the visitors were informed that 
the church had chosen Thomas Shepard as its 
pastor, and proposed soon to install him. Water- 
town had the reputation of always refusing to "send 
its messengers to any church gathering or ordina- 
tion," or to ask for any delegates to its own. Salem, 
in its anxiety for the liberties of the churches, 
objected even to the ministers' gathering at each 
other's houses. Boston and Salem botli took alarm 
when it was proposed to call a synod for considering 
church matters. But this hostility seems to have 
given way by degrees to the necessity of organiza- 
tion and the desire for mutual sympathy. The ties 
between the churches grew stronger and stronger. 
By and by this new relationship was ready to an- 
nounce itself and take a distinctive name. At a 
synod held in our own church during the ministry 
of Thomas Shepard, — a synod which, although not 
quite so protracted as the great Council of Trent, 
yet continued its session year after year (i 646-1 648) 
till its work was done, — this step was finally taken 
and the new name appeared. 

And now, what is this new church order of which 
I am so mysteriously speaking, and this new name un- 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. 107 

heard till now ? It is Congregationalism. If I read 
the history of those times aright, in that clause in 
the Cambridge Platform which speaks of Congrega- 
tional c/mrckes, adding in parenthesis " the term 
hidependent we approve not," we have the first ofH- 
cial publication of a name and polity with which in 
these latter years we have grown so familiar. 

I do not say that this was the first time the name 
Congregational was ever used. We find it here 
and there in the writings of Hooker, Cotton, and 
others, as if it were a term just coming into vogue, 
though not yet a recognized term. So far as ap- 
pears, John Cotton had more to do than any one 
else in bringing it forward just at the time it was 
needed. In Winthrop's Journal, covering the reli- 
gious as well as civil history of the first nineteen 
years of the colony, the word hardly appears at all, 
and was evidently not then in familiar use. Nor 
do I mean to say that the principles involved in 
Congregationalism were wholly new. On the con- 
trary, they had been advocated now and then from 
the first days of the Puritan movement. Even 
Browne, whose name had become such a terror 
among the Puritan clergy, seems to have favored 
some sort of fellowship among the Independent 
churches. The idea was by no means a new or 
strange one. But some hour there must be when 
such an idea, however long cherished, comes to 
practical development and demands for itself a 
name ; and this hour, as it seems to me, arrived 
when the Synod of 1646 met at Newtown. 



I08 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

What then was meant by Congregationalism ? 
Its distinction from Episcopacy is clear. Epis- 
copacy speaks of the church; Congregationalism, 
of the churches. Presbyterianism, again, while de- 
nying episcopal power, lodges the same authority 
in a presbytery, or body of pastors and elders ; Con- 
gregationalism, on the other hand, lodges all au- 
thority absolutely in the congregation. Where, 
then, lies its distinction from Independency, or 
Separatism, or Brownism, with all of which bod- 
ies historians usually identify it, and all of which 
acknowledge the independence of the individual 
congregations ? It lies in its recognition of the 
fellowship of the churches. Independency (the 
sheer logical outcome of Protestantism, perhaps) 
is exactly what its name indicates, — an assertion 
of the absolute independence of each congregation ; 
Congregationalism seeks to add to this an explicit 
provision for the association and united action of 
the churches through councils and synods. ■ The 
individual church remains as free as before. It is 
still recognized as the sole source of ecclesiastical 
power ; but it feels also the fine instinct of brother- 
hood, bred in it through its early years of exile 
and suffering, and delegates part of its authority 
to the whole fraternity of churches. 

Congregationalism, then, is Independency touched 
by the spirit of fellowship. I do not claim that this 
is the only true form of religious polity. I do not 
claim that it is the only form suitable to our repub- 
lican institutions. According to our modern ideas. 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. IO9 

religion takes naturally many shapes, and will al- 
ways do so. I claim simply that of all the forms 
of Protestantism this is the most purely American. 
I claim that this is the form which Christianity 
naturally took on these Western shores ; that it was 
with the nation from its birth, growing out of its 
earliest necessities and accompanying it through 
all the stages of its earlier development. I cannot 
assert that it has always remained exactly what it was 
at the beginning ; that it has not altered its form or 
its faith during these two centuries and a half. It is 
not for me to deny, nor yet to apologize for these 
changes. It is not for me to say whether Thomas 
Shepard, could he revisit to-day these earthly scenes, 
would recoQ:nize the buildins: in which we are now 
gathered, its dazzling lights, its organ, its stately 
arches, its architectural splendor, or even the form 
of worship and of doctrine within, as in very truth 
his own. It is not for me to say in which of the 
two halves into which that First Church of Cam- 
bridge has been broken, Thomas Shepard would 
have felt himself most at home. 

I only ask whether, on the whole, Congregation- 
alism has not redeemed its promise. Has it not un- 
derstood the New England life, of which it was one 
of the earliest factors? It has planted the germs 
of our religious and our civil institutions ; it has 
covered New England with schools, and has es- 
tablished nearly all its colleges. Better yet, it has 
adapted itself constantly to the nation's growth, has 
opened itself to the influence of advancing religious 



I lO FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

thought, and is able to appear to-clay under the 
form of two rehgious bodies, widely differing in faith, 
yet standing side by side and hand in hand at the 
grave of a common ancestor. 

Who will say that a church which identified itself 
with the beginnings of our American institutions, 
and which has attended the republic at every step 
of its growth, has not much work to do in the future 
in securing the ends of freedom and truth for which 
our nation exists ? 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. Ill 



ADDRESS. 

BY PRESIDENT CHARLES W. ELIOT. 

I WISH to confess, in the first place, that I made 
a grave error when I advocated, in the Committee 
of Arrangements, a morning celebration of this 
anniversary. To this proposal Dr. McKenzie ob- 
jected that the men of his congregation could not 
well attend in the forenoon, and that it would be 
a serious charge and trouble to provide a mid-day 
meal for so large a number of people as might 
assemble. How much the better Puritan he was, 
I discovered a few days later, when I came, in the 
records of the Great and General Court, upon the 
following enactment, passed Oct. i, 1633: "And 
whereas it is found by common experience that the 
keeping of lectures at the ordinary hours now ob- 
served in the forenoon to be divers ways prejudicial 
to the common good, both in the loss of a whole 
day, and bringing other charges and troubles to the 
place where the lecture was kept; it is therefore 
ordered that hereafter no lecture shall begin before 
one o'clock in the afternoon." Fortunately my 
unhistorical recommendation did not prevail. 



I I 2 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

It is proper that a representative of Harvard 
College should take part in these commemorative 
exercises. The College owed its foundation to the 
non-conformist ministers who came hither with the 
first emigration. It was founded, as Thomas Shep- 
ard said, that " the Commonwealth may be furnished 
with knowing and understanding men, and the 
churches with an able ministry." For the first ten 
years of the life of the College three fifths of its 
graduates became ministers in the established Con- 
gregational Church of the colony, and for a whole 
generation more than half of its graduates entered 
that ministry. Two hundred and fifty years have 
wrought a great change in this respect. Instead 
of more than half of the graduates becoming Con- 
gregational ministers, not more than six per cent 
become ministers at all; and this small contingent 
is scattered among a great variety of denominations. 
In 1654 Henry Dunster, the first President of the 
College, was indicted by the grand jury and turned 
out of office because he had become a Baptist; 
now the two oldest professorships of Divinity are 
held in peace by Baptist ministers. When I came 
hither to the collation this afternoon there walked 
beside me a birthright Quaker who is the Dean 
of the College Faculty. I fear that Governors 
Dudley, Endicott, and Winthrop, and Ministers 
John Wilson and John Norton would not have 
been pleased to see a Quaker in charge of the 
College. I fear that if the young minister John 
Harvard should now visit his posthumous child. 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. II3 

the College, with his ideas of 1636 undeveloped, he 
would wish at first sight that the institution bore 
some other name. 

There has been a tone of exultation and triumph 
in our celebration, as if we thought that the Puri- 
tans exulted and triumphed. I do not think they 
did. They were terribly straitened, and were full 
of fear and anxiety. They saw nothing of the 
great and happy future. What they knew was that 
their lives were full of hardship and suffering, of 
toil and dread. Even their own precious liberty, 
for which they had made such sacrifices, seemed 
to them in perpetual danger from oppressors with- 
out and heretics within. How crushing must have 
been the constant sense of their isolation upon the 
border of a vast and mysterious wilderness ! The 
Puritans were a poor and humble folk. Thomas 
Shepard was the son of a grocer in a small English 
village. John Harvard was the son of a butcher 
in one of the most obscure parishes of London. 
There were very few men among them of birth or 
station. In the early years they were often pinched 
for food. What must they not have suffered from 
this bitter climate ! They lived at first in such 
shanties as laborers build along the line of new 
railroads in construction, or in such cabins as the 
pioneers in western Kansas or Dakota build to 
shelter them from the rigors of their first winter. 
They had nothing which we should call roads or 
bridges or mails. Snow, ice, and mud, and the 
numerous creeks and streams isolated the scattered 

15 



114 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

villages and farms, and made even the least com- 
munication difficult for half of the year. We are 
apt to think of the men who bore these hardships 
as stout and tough, and to waste no pity on them, 
because we cannot help imagining that they knew 
they were founding a mighty nation. But what of 
the tenderer women ? Generations of them cooked, 
carried water, washed and made clothes, bore chil- 
dren in lonely peril, and tried to bring them up 
safely through all sorts of physical exposures without 
medical or surgical help, lived themselves in terror 
of savages, in terror of the wilderness, and under the 
burden of a sad and cruel creed, and sank at last 
into nameless graves, without any vision of the 
grateful days when millions of their descendants 
should rise up and call them blessed. What a 
piteous story is that of Margaret Shepard, married 
young to non-conforming Thomas, braver than he, 
confirming his faltering resolution to emigrate, sail- 
ing with him for these inhospitable shores, although 
very ill herself, and dying here within a fortnight 
of the gathering of the church over which her hus- 
band was to preside ! Let us bear her memory in 
our hearts to-night. 

But I dwell too much on physical hardships. 
The Puritans had other fears and anxieties. They 
dreaded the exercise here of English royal power. 
They watched with apprehension the prolonged 
struggle of the Catholic with the Protestant powers 
in Germany, giving thanks for mercies vouchsafed 
to the churches of God whenever the Protestants 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. II5 

obtained a substantial success. But worst of all, 
they did not feel sure of themselves. They were 
not always confident that they could hold to their 
own ideals of life. Within ten years they had 
serious doubts about the success of their civil and 
religious polity in the few settlements they had 
made. In 1639 "the 4th of the 2d month was 
thought meet for a day of humiliation, to seek the 
face of God, and reconciliation with him by our 
Lord Jesus Christ, in all the churches. Novelties, 
oppression, atheism, excess, superfluity, idleness, 
contempt of authority, and troubles in other parts 
to be remembered." John Pratt, of Newtown, 
must have given expression to a very common 
feeling when he wrote in an apologetic letter to 
the Court of Assistants these words: "Whereas I 
did express the danger of decaying here in our first 
love, I did it only in regard of the manifold occa- 
sions and businesses which here at first we meet 
withal, by which I find in my own experience (and 
so, I think, do others also) how hard it is to keep 
our hearts in that holy frame which sometimes 
they were in where we had less to do in outward 
things." 

The Puritans did not know from day to day what 
should be on the morrow; and this uncertainty 
only makes their heroism seem greater. Examine 
the list of evils against which they prayed on the 
4th of the 2d month in 1639, and consider what 
they would think of the state of our generation in 
regard to the same subjects. " Novelties ! " Is 



Il6 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

there any people on earth fonder of novelties than 
we ? The American people is the only people I 
have ever lived among which takes the statement 
that a thing or a project is new as a recommenda- 
tion. We like and welcome novelties. "Oppres- 
sion ! " They were in constant fear of oppression 
exercised by King and Church. That form of op- 
pression we have escaped from, only to find our- 
selves compelled to be on our guard against another 
form, — the oppression, namely, of bewildered and 
misled majorities. " Atheism ! " There are many 
excellent persons within these walls to whom the 
word atheists would have been applied by the men 
who ordered this fast. I do not believe that Gov- 
ernor Dudley or Governor Endicott would have 
tolerated the opinions of the most orthodox person 
here present. We all know that to-day there are 
millions of men of the Puritan stock whom the 
Puritans would have called atheists and treated 
as such. " Excess ! Superfluity ! " Think what 
they meant by these words. To their minds these 
evils had already invaded their society. This order 
was passed only nine years after the landing of the 
Winthrop colony. They had been through great 
sufferings from hunger, cold, and disease. They 
tried to regulate prices and consumption. They 
prohibited slashed clothes, large sleeves, laces 
whether of gold, silver, or thread, embroideries, 
long hair, and cakes and buns in markets and 
victualling-houses. They laid heavy taxes upon 
sugar, spice, wine, and strong waters, because they 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. II7 

held these things to be unnecessary indulgences. 
What would they think of our way of living? of 
our women's apparel, our church decorations, and 
our houses full of bric-a-brac? We who are in 
danger of having our intellectual and spiritual life 
buried under the weight of our luxuries and trivial 
possessions may well reflect upon the Puritans' 
idea of excess and superfluity. " Idleness ! " They 
prayed against idleness ; yet it is said of them that 
they worked sixteen hours a day, and for recreation 
laid stone-walls. The notion that eight hours make 
a working day they would probably have accounted 
a mischievous whimsey. " Contempt of authority ! " 
Our social system would seem to them full of dan- 
gerous license and pestilent toleration. 

Neither the civil nor the religious polity of the 
Puritans succeeded. It was impossible to constitute 
a state on the basis of church membership ; it was 
impossible to make life all duty without beauty. 
The society which they strove to found was an 
impossible one; for in their social aims they ignored 
essential and ineradicable elements in human nature. 
The Crusaders did not succeed, and the infidels still 
hold Jerusalem. The Puritans did not succeed, 
with all their sacrifices and struggles, in realizing 
the ideals which they had at heart. Wliy, then, do 
we so honor them ? It is not simply because they 
were stout-hearted. Many a soldier of fortune, many 
a free-booter or robber chieftain, has been stout- 
hearted too. It is because they were stout-hearted 
for an ideal, — not our ideal, but theirs, — their ideal 



Il8 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

of civil and religious liberty. Wherever and when- 
ever resolute men and women devote their lives 
and fortunes not to material but to spiritual ends, 
there and then heroes are made, and, thank God, 
are made to be remembered. The Puritans thought 
to establish a theocracy ; they stand in history as 
heroes of democracy. 

We cannot help asking ourselves if we, their 
descendants, may possibly be remembered two hun- 
dred and fifty years hence for any like devotion to 
our own ideals. Have we ideals for which we 
would toil and suffer and if need be die ? The 
Civil War gave one answer to that question. But 
I believe that in peace as well as in war our nation 
has shown that it has ideals for which it is ready to 
bear labor, pain, and loss. I believe that no people 
ever sees clearly those steps in its own progress, 
those events in its own life, which future generations 
will count glorious. Yet I think we can discern 
some moral ideals towards which our generation 
strives. We strive towards a progressive improve- 
ment of human condition, an amelioration of the 
average lot. We begin to get a realizing sense of 
that perfect democratic ideal, — " We are all members 
one of another." The gradual diminution of the 
exercise of arbitrary authority in the family, in edu- 
cation, and in government is another ideal towards 
which we press. We have come at last to really 
believe that he that would be greatest among us 
must be our servant. Finally, I think that we are 
working upward towards a truer and more beautiful 



25OTII ANNIVERSARY. II9 

idea of God, and that these very times may be 
remembered in later generations for the furthering 
of that better conception. We no longer think of 
God as a remotely enthroned monarch, who occa- 
sionally intervenes in the affairs of men, or even as 
the Lord of Hosts. More and more we think of 
him as the transcendent intelligence and love, in 
whom we and all things, from instant to instant, 
" live and move and have our beins:-" 



I20 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 



REMARKS 

BY DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

ON READING HIS HYMN. 

If we would sing this hymn in the spirit in which 
it is supposed to have been written and sung in the 
year 1636, we are to forget the scenery that sur- 
rounds us and imagine ourselves with them in the 
borders of the great untried wilderness. All the 
abodes of wealth and comfort which make this city 
beautiful must melt away and disappear like the 
baseless fabric of a vision. 

All these stately edifices, monuments of the en- 
lightened liberality which has made Cambridge, 
leaning on the arm of her great commercial sub- 
urb, Boston, the educational and literary metropolis 
of the continent, must vanish from before your 
eyes. 

You are in the edge of an unexplored forest. 
The bear, the wolf, and the far more welcome moose 
are your not infrequent visitants. The red man is 
lurking in the wild woods, armed with silent but 
deadly weapons. You have met with these few 
godly men, who have come to lay the foundations 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. 121 

of a church which may perish from earth by exter- 
mination, or may abide until the second coming of 
Him in whose name it is founded. Perhaps some 
voices are tremulous ; for who knows that the song 
may not be broken in upon by that fearful war-cry 
which those who have once heard can never 
forget ? 

Let us thank God for all those mighty changes 
which have transformed the wilderness into our 
goodly heritage, and join our voices in singing to 
his praise — 

The Word of Promise. 

[See Programme, page 22, for Hymn.] 



122 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 



ADDRESS. 

BY HON. HORATIO G. PARKER. 

Mr. Chairman : 

I HAVE observed, in assemblies of this nature, that 
those who are called upon to speak among the last 
are expected, as perhaps their chief duty, to indorse 
all that has been said by the earlier speakers. 

I wish therefore now, lest I should hereafter for- 
get it, to fully indorse alike all that was said in the 
other church this afternoon and all that has been 
said here this evening, in praise and commendation 
of Thomas Shepard and those who upheld his hands 
and helped and cheered him in his labors two hun- 
dred and fifty years ago, as well as those who, when 
he fell in the furrow, took up and carried forward 
the work so well begun, as being every word true, 
according to my best recollection. I will go fur- 
ther, and say that as to all that has been this day 
said in favor of those good and great men, and their 
purposes, works, and deeds, neither I nor, I am fully 
confident, any one present, has any recollection to 
the contrary. 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. I 23 

Being asked by our Pastor to say a word here to- 
night, I desired to do so, if I could say anything of 
interest to any one who should stay long enough to 
hear me. The question was what that anything 
could or should be. It cannot be education, morals, 
freedom, or patriotism, appropriate as either of them 
would be, for they all will have been already spoken 
of so much better than I can speak of either of them. 
It must be something so common that every one 
will say it is proper, so just that every one will say 
it is true, so natural that no one will say it is new, 
or I had better not try to speak at all of those good 
men whose name and modest fame passing centu- 
ries seem only to make us the better remember 
and revere. 

While so thinking, I had in my hand the story of 
a nun who having spent years in a nunnery had 
been liberated by those whom we might term the 
Puritans of the day of Luther, and was again at 
home with father, mother, family, and friends. She 
was asked if she saw any changes. " Yes," she 
said, " I see changes, but they are the changes of 
life. Where I have been the past ten years, the only 
changes were those wrought by the slow but sure 
finger of decay and death. I see the mother's hair 
is silvered, her cheek is whitened ; but here is a home 
of taste and comfort, with well-trained and comely 
daughters. She would not turn back these changes 
of life if she could ; they are her love and cheer. 
The father's shoulders are bended, and his hair is 
frosted ; but the forest has fallen and given place to 



124 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

blooming orchards and fields of bending grass and 
grain, while the bounding boys have become lithe 
and sturdy men, his pride and stay. They are the 
changes of life ; you are all the happier and the world 
the better for them." 

I thought the nun had suggested to me what all 
would agree was the peculiar credit and honor of 
the Puritan. As you view his course while he 
lived, and trace the effect of his teachings and life 
down through the centuries, you say the changes 
the Puritan produced upon the face of the land, 
upon men and women, upon society, government, 
and all human institutions, were all the changes 
of life. Nothing has perished of all he put his 
hand to. 

We admit many changes ; and if they are not all 
what the Puritan planned, wished, and hoped for, 
still he infused the life and proclaimed the freedom 
which have produced them. 

How he favored education, that constant ener- 
gizer in society, and with his scant means estab- 
lished institutions to promote it that have con- 
stantly advanced in character and influence, has 
been already so well told that nothing can well 
be added. 

The Puritan knew that government is a necessity 
for man, and almost his first step was to put himself 
under its authority; still with the conviction that 
that government must improve and keep pace with 
the growth and needs of a thinking, growing, inde- 
pendent people. 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. I 25 

The Puritan had his faith, — a faith he was true 
to, and a behef which he abided by and loved. He 
insisted upon individual opinion and private judg- 
ment; but he never reached the conclusion, some- 
what prevalent to-day, that man had no obligation 
to faith, no duty as to belief, — for the Puritan saw 
neither light nor life in believing nothing. You 
know, Mr. Chairman, that I would not criticise him 
for this. 

The Puritan believed in and strove for the mate- 
rial development of the country he dwelt in. He 
would open and cultivate it, and bring the parts of 
its wide-spread domain together by ways and chan- 
nels of trade, travel, and communication. It would 
not surprise us to learn that Thomas Shepard 
wrought with the members of his parish upon these 
roads about us. And why not ? One of the most 
gifted of modern New England divines has said that 
the roads of a country are a fair indication of its 
civilization and progress. 

The Puritan, too, encouraged trade, commerce, 
and adventure. At the close of the Revolution the 
country was poor, and trade and commerce lan- 
guished. Puritan energy and Puritan industry, 
however, soon brought prosperity and plenty out of 
feebleness and want. 

But the Puritan did not busy himself in the larger 
and public affairs of life alone. He knew of no 
duty of common life to any one that was not a duty 
to himself. He helped the poor, he ministered with 
his hands to the sick and distressed, he loved and 
cared for children and youth. 



126 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

These busy life-workers of two hundred and fifty 
years ago have gone. Their works do testify of 
them that they wrought only for the cheering and 
healthful changes of life ; and we know that though 
their personal presence is lost to us, it is the angel 
of life, not of death, that has found them, and that 
they in these common duties of energetic life found 
the gate of heaven. 

They are no longer of us. We know not whether 
they know or know not of and about us. But we 
know of them ; and could they hear us, we might 
well greet them. Hail and cheer, bright spirits ! 
Hail and cheer, grand spirits ! Now, as two hun- 
dred and fifty years ago, the prize is still before 
you, — a life never ending, a kingdom of glory. 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. 127 



ADDRESS. 

BY REV. NATHANIEL G. CLARK, D.D. 

There is little occasion for me to add anything 
to what has been already said so wisely and so well 
of the Puritans. Yet after the very kind refer- 
ence of the chairman to my connection with For- 
eign Missions, it may not be deemed improper for 
me to allude to the missionary purpose which en- 
tered into their motives in coming to this country. 
This purpose finds expression in the original char- 
ters of the Plymouth and of the Massachusetts Col- 
onies. In the charter given the latter, it is expressly 
said that "to win and incite the natives of that 
country to the knowledge and obedience of the only 
true God and Saviour of mankind and the Christian 
faith, in our royal intention and in the adventurer's 
free profession, is the principal end of the planta- 
tion." The seal of the colony had as its device the 
figure of an Indian, with the words of the Macedo- 
nian cry, " Come over and help us." The mission- 
ary purpose, therefore, entered largely into the 
thoughts and plans of the early colonists. The 



128 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

Plymouth and Massachusetts Colonies were great 
foreign missionary enterprises, — the first in modem 
times. They were not unmindful of their trusts. 
In 1636 the Plymouth Colony had enacted laws to 
provide for the preaching of the Gospel among the 
Indians ; and ten years later a similar act was passed 
by the Massachusetts Colony. In the same year 
John Eliot began his labors at Nonantum. The 
first translation of the Bible into a heathen language, 
in modern times, was made in this colony and 
printed here at Cambridge. 

The object of a foreign mission is twofold, — the 
conversion of the native population, and the intro- 
duction of Christian institutions and of a Christian 
civilization. The first was realized here so far as a 
native population could be reached ; and before the 
close of the century thirty villages of Christian In- 
dians were reported, and churches organized, con- 
taining not far from three thousand members. In 
the wars that followed, the Christian Indians were 
scattered, regarded as disloyal by their own people, 
and looked upon too often with unjust prejudice by 
the colonists. Yet the labors of Eliot and the May- 
hews were not forgotten. Cherished in many a 
Christian home during the next century, they stirred 
the heart of Brainerd, of Sergeant, of Jonathan Ed- 
wards, and later of the mother of Samuel J. Mills. 
The original missionary purpose, never wholly lost, 
was to come forth anew at the opening of this cen- 
tury in the organization of the American Board 
of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and in the 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. I 29 

other great missionary enterprises which characterize 
our time. 

The second part of missionary work, the estab- 
lishment of Christian institutions, was to have here 
the grandest and completest illustration the world 
had ever seen. Two distinct elements entered into 
it, — loyalty to Christ and the best culture of the 
time. Never before, save in the immediate neigh- 
borhood of the great universities, had there been 
brought together so large a number of university 
men in proportion to the population, as in the Mas- 
sachusetts Colony ; and especially here at Cambridge. 
According to Professor Dexter, in his admirable pa- 
per on " The Influence of the English Universities on 
the Development of New England," not less than 
sixty graduates of Cambridge and Oxford came into 
this colony between the years 1630 and 1639, the 
larger part of whom settled in Cambridge and in its 
immediate vicinity. These men had shared in the 
awakened intellectual life and power of the seven- 
teenth century, — that grandest period in English 
history. They brought with them advanced ideas 
of Christian life and of human freedom. These 
were the two elements essential to the best civiliza- 
tion, — Christian ideas in their simplicity and purity 
on the one hand, and on the other, cultivated men 
to set them forth. Here we have the secret of that 
power which has made New England what it is, and 
given it its influence in our national history, — an 
influence felt from the Aroostook to the Golden 
Gate. 

17 



130 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

Some years ago, in crossing the Atlantic, I had for 
a fellow- voyager a distinguished Western politician, 
a man who had served several terms in Congress 
and was not unwilling to serve his country in a 
higher position should it be offered him. He was 
therefore very careful and guarded in his statements, 
lest anything should be turned to his prejudice in 
his future career. Yet he did not hesitate to say, 
" You people of New England govern this country. 
We can vote you down in Congress, but somehow 
or other you always get the mastery." This witness 
was true! The best thought of the time, joined to 
the best culture, has prevailed and does prevail in 
this country, — determining its intellectual life and 
the character of its institutions. The Church of 
Christ first, the press and the school next in order 
of time, yet in closest connection, — Christian ideas 
and Christian culture. So was it here in Cambridge ; 
so be it always and everywhere. 

In the same spirit we are now carrying on For- 
eign Missions in all parts of the globe. We send 
the most cultured men and women we can secure, 
and we introduce the ripened thought of the time. 
The difference between the work of to-day and that 
of the early colonists in this country lies in this : 
then the field was a vast country, with but a scanty 
population ; in our modern missions we have vast 
countries, and vast populations also. But the two 
missionary elements are the same, — loyal devotion 
to Christ and cultured mind. The missionary pur- 
pose of the Massachusetts Colony waits its full real- 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. I3I 

ization when the Christian civilization of this country 
shall serve as a base for the evangelization of the 
world. Our fathers planned more wisely than they 
knew. Here were to be developed Christian insti- 
tutions which in their beneficent results to the mil- 
lions that were to occupy a continent were to be 
the admiration of mankind, and to give a prestige 
to the Christian name. 

If I were a prophet, or the son of a prophet, I 
would like to lift the veil that hides from our view 
the next two hundred and fifty years, to show you 
the triumphs of Christianity in every land and clime, 
— how Christian institutions and Christian homes 
have become the common heritage of mankind ; 
how art and science and philosophy and literature 
have laid their tribute at the feet of Christ. 

" Then sliall His glorious Church rejoice 
His Word of Promise to recall, — 
One sheltering Fold, one Shepherd's Voice, 
One God and Father over all! " 



LETTERS. 



Many letters were received from gentlemen who were 
invited to attend the celebration, and some of them are 
here given : — 

Boston, Feb. 5, 18S6. 

Rev. Edward H. Hall, Rev. Alexander McKenzie, Dr. J. T. G. 
Nichols, and others, Committee. 

Gentlemen, — Accept my sincere thanks for your obliging in- 
vitation. Most gladly would I represent my venerated ancestor, 
as has been suggested to me, in celebrating the anniversary of 
a church at whose organization he assisted two hundred and 
fifty years ago. It would have delighted the old Governor's 
heart to know that the flock which the excellent Shepard gath- 
ered and fed so devotedly, almost in a wilderness, should increase 
and multiply, century after century, until no single fold would 
hold them. 

I do not forget that the great Thomas Hooker preceded Shep- 
ard. Both were of that Emmanuel College in old England out of 
which came so much of the best Puritanism of New England. 

Your church was organized in a memorable year of the Mas- 
sachusetts Colony. The First Church in Cambridge and Harvard 
College date alike from 1636, and they have gone along side 
by side, in prosperity and honor, to the present day. Harvard 
has given not a few pastors to your church, and your church 
or churches — from Thomas Shepard to the well-remembered 



134 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

and highly valued Dr. Abiel Holmes, and their numerous suc- 
cessors — have furnished devoted friends and supporters to the 
College. 

May the time never come when Religion and Education shall 
cease to be thus harmoniously associated in raising up sons who 
shall be worthy of their fathers ! 

Regretting that I cannot be with you on this interesting 
occasion, I remain 

Very faithfully yours, 

Robert C. Winthrop. 



Boston, Feb. 9, 1S86. 
Rev. Alexander McKenzie, Cambridge, Mass. 

My dear Sir, — I fear that, after all, I shall not be able to 
take part in your approaching anniversary. 

This I especially regret, as yours is the third of the four 
churches in which I have a strong hereditary interest which has 
recently celebrated some memorable event in its history ; and at 
not one of those celebrations have I been able to be present. 

First came the quarter-millennium of the Boston Church ; and 
John Cotton was one of my progenitors. Next was the bi-centen- 
nial of the old Hingham Meeting-house, which was dedicated 
during the pastorate of John Norton, whose daughter married 
John Quincy of Mount Wollaston. Now comes the Thomas Shep- 
ard quarter-millennium ; and Thomas Shepard was an ancestor of 
John Quincy. Next, and last, will be the quarter-millennium of 
the church at Weymouth, of which William Smith was forty-nine 
years the pastor ; and William Smith married the daughter of 
John Quincy. 

I had accordingly intended to take part in next Friday's com- 
memoration ; it would have been to me a sort of family affair. 
Cotton Mather speaks of Thomas Shepard as a "silver trumpet," 
and again as " one whose life was a trembling walk with God." 
Whatever I might have contributed to your celebration would 
have been as a descendant of that Thomas Shepard, speaking, 
two centuries and a half after he began his labors, to the society 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. I 35 

of which he was the first pastor. The life of the church of Cam- 
bridge now covers ahnost two thirds of the whole period that has 
elapsed since the discovery of America. He who presided over 
the gathering of that church left behind him no quickly fading 
memorial. He wrought his life into a thing of permanence. 

Will the work that Thomas Shepard's descendants are en- 
gaged in last as long as his work has now lasted ? It does not 
seem to me that we are building exactly in the spirit in which 
Shepard's generation built ; indeed, our generation is engaged 
rather in an eager race with Mammon than in a "trembling walk 
with God." The year 2136 may record a different verdict. It 
may be that the edifices — political, intellectual, moral, and ma- 
terija — into which we are now, consciously or otherwise, working 
our lives, will then stand a comparison as regards strength and 
permanence with those into which the founders worked their 
lives in 1636 ; and should they stand such a comparison it will 
be well for us. Meanwhile, what we may do they actually ac- 
complished. This, our present, is their future ; and that, at least, 
is secure. A generation which founds political and religious in- 
stitutions still flourishing in vigorous life and usefulness after two 
hundred and fifty years have passed over them has done a con- 
siderable work. Such a work Shepard's generation did ; and 
the neighboring University, — which, Cotton Mather records, was 
planted at the door of the Cambridge Church mainly through its 
pastor's instrumentality, — no less than the church itself, seems 
likely to remain for many generations a living witness to the fact. 
So far as Thomas Shepard and his immediate congregation are 
concerned, time has recorded a verdict which cannot now be 
reversed. 

I remain, etc., 

Charles F. Adams, Jr. 



Hartford, Conn., Feb. 10, 1886. 
To THE First Church in Cambridge. 

Dear Brethren, — I have received your courteous invitation 
to participate in the celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth 
anniversary of your venerable organization. 



136 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

This invitation, extended to me as representative of the church 
first organized on the soil where your own has since for two 
and a half centuries occupied the ground, would certainly be 
accepted by me did not something more deterrent than the wil- 
derness which once stretched between Cambridge and Hartford 
interpose to prevent. 

For the relationship of these two churches used to be warmer 
than mere association with the same spot of ground only would 
imply. Family ties united the first pastors of these churches, 
and many of their early members also. Father-in-law Hooker 
and Son-in-law Shepard on several occasions traversed the wide 
forest spaces on horseback in household interchange. One of 
the more tender of the touches which occasionally light up the 
rather majestic and sombre record of Pastor Hooker's life is that 
passage of his letter wherein he speaks of his grandson " little 
Sam," son of your Samuel the saintly, as sleeping in the same 
bed with him here in Hartford, and as having " such a pleasing, 
winning disposition that it makes me think of his mother almost 
every time I play with him." 

And not the pastors only, but delegates of these two churches 
also, met on many occasions in those far-off days to consult 
about the less or more important matters of common welfare, — 
Ann Hutchinson's heresies. Congregational Platforms, Hartford 
Church quarrels, and the like. 

These old memories are revived, and the old intercourse in a 
sense renewed, by your invitation to join with you in the holiday 
occasion of your present festivities. 

Unable on account of present illness to do this, let me present 
you the memorial volume of a celebration similar to your own 
commemorated three years ago by the First Church of Hartford ; 
and let me extend to you, in this church's name, a hearty con- 
gratulation on your arrival at the same happy occasion in your 
own history. 

With best wishes for the altogether enjoyable progress of your 
anniversary procedures, I am 

Very truly yours, 

George Leon Walker, 

Pastor First Church, Hartford. 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. 1 37 



New York, Feb. 10, 1SS6. 
Rev. Alexander McKenzie, D.D., Cambridge. 

My dear Friend, — Many thanks for the invitation to parti- 
cipate in the celebration of your two hundred and fiftieth anni- 
versary. I wish very much that it were in my power to be present ; 
for the commemorative services, I am sure, will be very interest- 
ing and instructive. What an eventful moment in the annals of 
American faith and piety was the coming of Thomas Shepard to 
New England ! His name has been familiar to me from boy- 
hood. When some nine or ten years old, I began to read Presi- 
dent Edwards on the Religious Affections ; and nothing in the 
book impressed me so much as the extracts from Shepard's 
"Parable of the Ten Virgins," given in the notes. How they 
would strike me now I cannot say ; but they struck me then as 
full of the " marrow of divinity." 

What a pity it is that as yet we have no adequate history of 
New England religious thought and church life in the seventeenth 
century ! But such a celebration as yours will at least do much 
towards collecting and sifting the requisite materials, so far as 
they are still in existence. The Presbyterian Church and all 
the churches of the country owe a vast debt of gratitude to such 
fathers of New England as Thomas Shepard. 

I trust your celebration will be at once delightful and 
edifying. 

Ever most truly yours, 

George L. Prentiss. 



New York, Feb. u, 1886. 

My dear Dr. McKenzie, — Your invitation to be present at 
the celebration to-morrow of the two hundred and fiftieth anni- 
versary of your church awakens in my mind a flood of recollec- 
tions and emotions. 

I very much regret that the pressure of engagements here will 
prevent me from the personal enjoyment of what will be, I have 
no doubt, the great celebration. 

18 



138 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

It seems to me that your church has been a signal illustration 
not only of prosperity in the large sense, but of God's readiness 
in our day to fulfil the promises made to his people. It must be 
an immense happiness to you and to all your flock that after two 
hundred and fifty years of various history you can look back and 
say truthfully, without boasting, that at no period in your whole 
career have you been stronger, or had a more vigorous vitality, 
or been in better, if as good, condition to do the full work of a 
church. 

Had I known sooner of your plans, I might have arranged 
mine so as to be with you. 

May God's blessing be with you in the future, as it certainly 
has been in the past ! 

Yours truly, 

Kinsley Twining. 



New York, Feb. 9, 1S86. 

My dear Dr. McKenzie, — I thank you very much for the 
invitation to be present at the two hundred and fiftieth anni- 
versary of the organization of the First Church in Cambridge 
next Friday. I wish the founders of the church had possessed 
the foresight to organize a week later, for then I could have 
been with you. On that day I hope to be in Boston. As it is, 
I must content myself with sending to you, or rather to the 
church, my heartiest congratulations on its two hundred and 
fifty years of service, and on the progress in moral life and in 
religious thought which has marked that two hundred and fifty 
years, and which the First Church has certainly done its share 
in promoting. 

Yours very sincerely, 

Lyman Abbott. 



250Tn ANNIVERSARY. 139 



Andovek, Mass., Feb. ii, iSS6. 

Rev. Edw.vrd II. II.ALL, D.l)., J. T. G. Nichols, M.D., and others, Com- 
mittees of the First Parisli and of the Shepard Congregational Society. 

Gentlemen, — I very much regret that previous engagements 
make it impracticable to accept your invitation to participate in 
the celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of 
the organization of the First Church. The occasion is of great 
and wide intrinsic interest, and the proposed method of observ- 
ance impresses me as peculiarly appropriate and attractive. May 
the skies be as propitious as the day is rare and the celebration 
welcome ! 

Very truly yours, 

Egbert C. Smyih. 



Magnolia, Clay County, Fla., Feb. 6, iSS6. 
Dr. J. T. G. Nichols, Cambridge, Mass. 

I have received the invitation of the Committees of the First 
Parish and the Shepard Congregational Society to the com- 
memorative services of the First Church in Cambridge to be held 
on the 1 2th instant. 

I regret that my absence in Florida will deprive me of the 
pleasure of attending the proposed reunion on that interesting 
occasion, especially as my ancestor, John Bridge, was the first 
deacon of that church, and was instrumental in persuading the 
Rev. Thomas Shepard to come to the New World, as is shown 
by his letter in which he says : " Divers friends went before ; but 
John Bridge writ me to come." It is very pleasant to see that 
after the lapse of two hundred and fifty years the memory of 
Tliomas Shepard is to be so ai)propriately honored. 

Very respectfully your obedient servant, 

Samuel James Bridge. 



140 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 



Yarmouth, Jan. 29, 1886. 
Rev. Dr. McKenzie. 

Dear Brother, — My eye has fallen on the notice of the 
celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of your 
church, and it has called up a fact in the life of Mr. Shepard to 
which your attention may not have been called. In preparing a 
history of the church in Yarmouth a few years ago, I found that a 
council was called here in the latter part of 1647 to heal a long- 
standing difficulty. The most distinguished ministers of the Ply- 
mouth Colony were invited, together with John Wilson, of the First 
Church, Boston, Thomas Shepard, Cambridge, and John Eliot, 
of Roxbury. The result was very satisfactory, and the breach 
that threatened to destroy the church was healed. It was made 
the occasion by Mr. Shepard of some good work among the 
Indians of this region. 

These churches were relatively more important than they are 
now ; and this circumstance indicates that the relations of the 
ministers of the two Colonies were closer than might have been 
supposed from the distance between them at that day. 

I will send by this mail a copy of my sermon in which notice 
is taken of this episode in the life of Shepard. It may have 
a little interest to you just at this time to trace the history of 
one of the earliest of the churches of the old Colony, which I 
hope will celebrate its quarter-millennial in 1889. 

Yours truly, 

John W. Dodge. 



Cambridge, Feb. 4, 18S6. 

To Rev. Edward H. Hall, Rev. Alexander McKenzie, J. T. G. 
Nichols, M.D., etc. 

Gentlemen, — I received your cordial invitation to partici- 
pate in the celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary 
of the organization of the First Church in Cambridge. I ap- 
preciate this invitation and the spirit which suggested it, for 
which I return my sincere thanks. I am sorry, however, I can- 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. I4I 

not attend. I tender you my congratulations for your success 
in the past and my wishes for your progress in the future. 

Gentlemen, your celebration will invoke the spirits of those 
men who founded these Colonies, and placed their impress not 
only on New England but on all North America wherever the 
English language is spoken. These men had but one fault, but 
they had many virtues. Their assiduity in religion as they 
understood it, their perseverance and courage, their industry 
and frugality, their honesty and simplicity of life, and — last, 
not least — their purity of morals should serve for the admira- 
tion and model of men. 

Then let their fault be buried with them in the grave, but 
let their virtues be taught to generations unborn. And may 
all peoples serve God according to the light and grace that 
he imparts until the time come when " there will be but one 
fold and one Shepherd." 

Yours very respectfully, 

William Orr- 



Cambridge, Feb. 4, 1886. 

My dear Mr. McKenzie, — In acknowledging the receipt of 
your kind invitation to participate in the exercises commemo- 
rative of the founding of our church, I much regret to say that 
absence in the South will prevent my attendance on that very 
interesting occasion, and I must content myself — as I shall do 
when the next two hundred and fiftieth anniversary occurs — by 
" being with you in spirit " only. 

These occasions, so frequent of late in civic celebrations, 
possess double value and interest when of an ecclesiastical 
character ; and while they emphasize the fact that Church and 
State were intended by the founders of this Commonw^ealth to 
have always an independent existence, yet they prove that simul- 
taneous with the State was established the Church, and that it 
was never intended to divorce the religious influence of the latter 
from the former. 



142 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

Indeed, it is a fact worthy of our serious consideration that the 
men of State in those days were the men of Church ; and it was 
recognized as a fundamental principle in the selection of rulers 
that they only were fitted to rule who had first learned obedience 
to God, and that no morality could long exist in a community 
which ignored the importance of loyalty to Jehovah, the Supreme 
Ruler of the universe, and the importance of a religious basis in 
all education of the young, — a fact most opportunely brought 
into prominence in these days by the vigilant President of our 
College. 

If history teaches anything, it is that godliness is profitable 
and essential to national vigor and prosperity. 

We do not wonder that such men as Harvard and Dunster 
and Shepard and their associates made the religious factor so 
prominent in all civil and educational affairs. They did not 
overestimate its importance ; and hence the Church, the School, 
the State, were bound together by a common fellowship of prin- 
ciple, and whatever assailed either of them became a common 
enemy. 

If the youth of those days were compelled to listen to such 
doctrines, it was a force like that of the pure air of heaven we 
are obliged to breathe, the healthful sunlight we must receive, 
the mother's love we are constrained to feel in every fibre of our 
being, and the care of a Heavenly Father we are forced to enjoy 
in the seedtime and harvest. 

Nor can all the culture which our institutions of learning afford 
possibly be a substitute for that ethical teaching which has for 
its sole foundation the Word of God as revealed in the Scriptures 
of the Old and New Testaments. 

If these anniversary occasions accomplish nothing else than 
to voice anew these old-fashioned but reliable and sturdy truths, 
we may find ample reward in them. If they fail in this, they 
become mere memorial services, where men and women meet 
only to muse over the somewhat antiquated inscriptions on their 
fathers' gravestones. 

I rejoice in the jDrosperity of these two churches, now so hap. 
pily brought together ; and as we celebrate that event with which 
" our common ancestor, Thomas Shepard," was so intimately 
identified, let his words come with fresh conviction. Writing to 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. I43 

Richard Mather at the time the council was called to found the 
Dorchester Church, he says, " 'T is not faith, but visible faith, 
that must make a visible church and be the foundation of a 
visible communion." 

To each of these churches may the message come from the 
recording angel : " I know thy works and charity, and services 
and faith." 

Trusting that this may be our mutual experience, and with 
renewed regrets that I cannot be with you, I remain 

Very truly yours, 

James M. W. Hall. 



Boston, Feb. 10, 1SS6. 
Dr. J. T. G. Nichols. 

Dear Sir, — As I find that I shall probably be unable to 
attend the Church Anniversary on Friday, I venture to enclose 
some historical notes which may be new and interesting. 

I am a descendant of Francis Whitmore, who, with his wife 
Isabel, daughter of Richard Park, was a member of the First 
Church. In 166S he was one of the three appointed to attend 
to the spiritual wants at the Farms ; and his house and farm were 
on the dividing line when Lexington was set off from the mother 
town. Of his five sons, all have descendants of the name living. 
His second son, John, was a deacon at Medford ; and his de- 
scendants are now gradually returning to this vicinity, — in fact, 
I believe one is a citizen of Cambridge at present. I hope many 
of the other early settlers of Cambridge will be represented at 
your meeting. 

I submit the following memoranda in regard to your first 
minister : — 

Thomas Shepard says in his Autobiography that his first wife 
was Margaret Tauteville, a kinswoman of Sir Richard Darley of 
Buttercramb, Co. York, at whose house he was engaged as 
chaplain. As there are descendants of this marriage, through 
his son. Rev. Thomas Shepard of Charlestown, whose daughter 



144 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

Anna married Daniel Quincy, I presume some interest will be 
felt in an effort to identify the estimable lady. 

In Dugdale's "Visitation of Yorkshire in 1665 " (published 
by the Surtees Society), I find on page 87 a pedigree of the 
family of Stoutville of Humanby in Dickering Wapentake. It 
covers only four generations, the then head of the family being 
Robert Stouteville, aged 31, married, and having three children. 
The first of the line there recorded is Charles Stouteville, who 
died about 1622, having by wife Anne, daughter of Bryan Robin- 
son of Boston, Co. Line, two sons and three daughters. Two of 
these daughters married, respectively, Thomas and John Acklam, 
of Drinho, Co. York ; and the third, Margaret, is called the wife 
of Shepheard. 

The coincidence of names is almost certain proof ; and I can, 
moreover, explain the way in which Margaret Estoteville was a 
kinswoman of the Darleys. 

Foster's "Visitations of Yorkshire " shows that Richard Dar- 
ley and his son William were settled at Wistow, Co. York. 
Richard, son of William, settled at Buttercramb, a place about 
twelve miles from the city of York. He was the father of 
Richard, who was born in 1570, and who was the patron of 
Thomas Shepard. This Richard (or Sir Richard, as Shepard 
terms him) married Elizabeth, daughter of Edward Gates of 
Seamer, Co. York. Her grandmother was Lucy Knevet ; and 
Anne Knevet married Nicholas Robinson of Boston, Co. Line. 
A marriage of cousins brought the relation closer, as Lady Dar- 
ley's uncle married Elizabeth Robinson. On the Robinson side, 
Charles Stouteville was own cousin to Mrs. Elizabeth (Robinson) 
Gates. 

Thus, as the annexed table shows. Lady Darley was connected 
by marriage closely with the Robinsons ; and Margaret Stotevile 
was within the range of kindred. They were cousins' cousins. 

We may well imagine that as Margaret Shepard's grandfather 
was a younger son, and Mrs. Gates represented the senior line, 
there would be a tendency for the junior branches to turn to- 
wards that line. 

Family ties seem to have been strong in those days. Numer- 
ous intermarriages strengthened these bonds. Thus Lady Dar- 
ley's aunt married John Alured ; and their daughter married 



25OTII ANNIVERSARY. 1 45 

Francis Darley, own cousin to Sir Richard. A daughter of Sir 
Richard married an Alured, as Shepard records. 

I think we may safely say that Shepard's wife has been iden- 
tified ; that she was well connected ; and that the fact that her 
grandfather, Bryan Robinson, was of a good family in old Bos- 
ton is not without interest to her descendants to-day. 

The " Visitation of Lincoln," printed in Vol. IV. of the " Gene- 
alogist," shows some confusion in the Robinson pedigree ; but in 
this record, as well as the " Yorkshire Visitations," the fact that 
Nicholas and Bryan Robinson were brothers is clearly shown. 
Possibly further investigation would show some other line of 
connection between the Darleys and Estotevilles ; but I submit 
that the present is sufficient to bear out Shepard's words. 

Charles Knevet = Nicholas Robinson = Florence Yerforth. 

of Boston, I 

Co. Line. 



Sir Henry Gates == Lucy. Anne = Nicholas. Bryan = Margaret 

I I Fitzvvilliam. 

Edward Gates = Eliz. Cave. Henry = Elizabeth, Anne = Charles 



only dau. 
and heir. 



Estoteville. 



Sir Richard = Elizabeth Gates. Margaret = Rev. Thomas Shepard. 

Darley of 
Buttercramb. | 

As to Shepard's ancestry, we know from his Autobiography 
that he was born in Towcester, Northamptonshire, Nov. 5, 1605, 
being the third son of William Shepard, who was born in Foss- 
cote, near Towcester. It seems, also, that his paternal uncle, 
unnamed, lived at Adthrop, — a little blind town adjoining 
Fosscote. It is now called Abthorpe. 

Having had occasion some years ago to make some genea- 
logical inquiries in England, I obtained through Colonel Chester, 
our ablest antiquary, the Shepard record from Abthorpe. 

It seems that " the little blind town " is now of more im- 
portance ; and its church record includes Fosscote. 

The earliest record is that of Richard Shepherd, who had 
by wife Anna children Cicely, Thomas, Samuel, and Richard, 

19 



146 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

between 1583 and 1595. Later on, Thomas, Michael, and William 
Shepherd appear, — from 1615 to 1630; and the name (spelt 
Shephard, Shepherd, or Sheppard) continued down to 1700. 

Although we cannot identify Shepard's grandfather and 
grandmother, with whom he lived in Fosscote in 1608 (unless 
the latter be the widow Margaret Shepherd, buried Dec. 31, 
1616), we find in these entries full confirmation of his state- 
ment as to his ancestry. Undoubtedly a search at Towcester 
would give more facts ; and I hope this will not be overlooked in 
the future. 

In conclusion I would remind you that the New England His- 
toric, Genealogical Society has some manuscripts of Shepherd's 
in regard to church-members never yet printed. Then there is 
the list printed in Rev. Mr. Newell's Address in 1846, and 
Shepard's Autobiography, — accessible only in the rare volume 
issued in 1832 by Rev. N. Adams. 

I would respectfully urge upon you to arrange for a committee 
to prepare a memorial volume containing all these matters, and 
whatever else can be gleaned relative to the early history of your 
church. I will gladly assist ; and I am confident that such a 
book will find sufficient patronage from those who are interested 
in the subject. 

Hoping that these notes will be acceptable as pointing out new 
sources of information, I remain with much respect, 

Yours very sincerely, 

William H. Whitmore. 



SERMON 



BY 



Rev. EDWARD H. HALL, 



IN THE 



Feb. 14, i^ 



SERMO N. 



The Lord our God be with us, as he was with our 
FATHERS. — I Kings viii. 57. 

^1 7E have just taken part, with a sister church, in 
* ^ an interestino^ commemoration. Two cen- 
turies and a half ago, as we are reminded, occurred 
the first gathering of our church and congregation ; 
and while the memories awakened by this anniver- 
sary are still fresh in our minds, it seems pleasant to 
review, at somewhat greater length, the incidents of 
that far-off occasion. This is no new theme. One 
of my predecessors in this pulpit, whose ministra- 
tions here are still so fondly and reverently remem- 
bered, went over the same ground, forty years ago, 
with a thoroughness and historic fidelity which leaves 
little for another to do. A more striking picture of 
the beginnings of religious life in New England 
could not well be given than was sketched for us by 
Dr. Newell, Feb. 22, 1846, in his "Discourse on 
the Cambridge Church-Gathering in 1636." 

Still, whether already described or not, these old- 
time occurrences, in which well-known places and 



150 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

scenes appear in absolutely unfamiliar garb, have a 
charm for us not yet outworn. In their quaintness 
and simplicity lies a perennial beauty. Let me 
then, without further preface, carry you back once 
more to that moment, two hundred and fifty years 
ago, when the pastors and magistrates of the Mas- 
sachusetts Colony assembled here to establish their 
eleventh church. Governor Winthrop's detailed de- 
scription of that event has been placed before you so 
lately that I need not repeat it.-^ Let us try to recall 
the scene this morning, speaking, first, of the place ; 
second, of the church ; and third, of the pastor. 

First the place. The little hamlet in which this 
great event occurred was confined, as you know, 
within very small territorial limits. The spot where 
this edifice stands was quite outside the town, which 
occupied a narrow strip between what is now Har- 
vard Street and the river, bounded very nearly by 
what are now Brattle Square and Holyoke Street. 
Within these lines was planted what had been in- 
tended as the principal town of the Massachusetts 
Colony. But capital cities did not grow to order in 
those days, any more than now. Massachusetts has 
two striking proofs of this fact. In a little village 
of perhaps one thousand souls, among the hills of 
Worcester County, is to be seen to-day a wide 
grass-grown avenue, with side streets at right angles, 
which local tradition declares was laid out early in 
the century, when it was confidently expected that 
R., being the exact geographical centre of the State, 

' See Introductory Address of Hon. C. T. Russell. 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. I5I 

would finally, by imperious necessity, become the 
capital city. Our own village affords the second 
illustration. Within a year after Governor Win- 
throp's arrival in New England, he set himself, in 
company with several of the Assistants, to select a 
site for a fortified town, to serve as the residence of 
the colonial magistrates. Fearing the Indians ap- 
parently much less than they feared their more civil- 
ized foes who might attack them from the sea, they 
turned their steps inland, and after tramping through 
Roxbury and Watertown in their search, finally chose 
this spot as best meeting the requirements of a me- 
tropolis, and agreed among themselves to build their 
houses here the following spring (1631). Before 
that time, however, their plans had changed. Per- 
haps the distance from, the sea (as one of the early 
chroniclers suggests) seemed on second thought a 
disadvantage rather than a safeguard ; perhaps the 
families already settled in Charlestown and Boston 
were reluctant to remove, even at the solicitation of 
the governor. In any case, the result was that Gov- 
ernor Winthrop, after erecting a house here, took it 
down and rebuilt it in Boston, while Dudley, the dep- 
uty-governor, was the only official to carry out the 
original plan. After many heart-burnings and some 
serious misunderstandings between the Governor and 
his deputy, the purpose was finally abandoned, and 
Boston secured the coveted honors intended for 
another place. The little settlement on Charles 
River, however, did not wholly lose its metropolitan 
character. For some time the " Courts of Assistants " 



152 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

met here, though at irregular intervals ; the annual 
election of governor and magistrates was repeatedly 
held under the trees of our common ; a canal be- 
tween the settlement and the river was built at public 
cost, and a tax was levied (in 1632) on all the planta- 
tions of the Colony " towards the making of a pally- 
sadoe about the new Town." Indeed, our village 
can hardly be said to have had any individual char- 
acter at first. It had not even a special name, but 
was called, as we see, simply the new town (with a 
small n), which appellation grew gradually into New- 
town (with a large N), to be supplanted by its present 
title when the citizens finally took things into their 
own hands and determined upon their own name. 

Little of the Cambridge of to-day, with its match- 
less informality of angles and lines, could be seen in 
the primitive settlement. The eight original streets 
ran at exact right angles with each other, and the 
rules for building were laid down with a punctil- 
iousness befitting an official and fortified residence. 
Two or three of the earliest chroniclers praise its 
admirable regularity. " Newtowne," says one (in 
1634), "is one of the neatest and best compacted 
Townes in New England, having many faire struc- 
tures, with many handsome contrived streets." By 
early votes of the town, houses were to range even 
and stand just six feet from the street, roofed care- 
fully with slate or board. No tree was to lie across 
the highway for a day, or else the tree was forfeited. 
All stubs of trees were to be taken up within the 
"town gates," — the town gates being three structures 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. I 53 

which hardly resembled those of Quebec, probably, 
but which gave a certain additional dignity to the 
town, and which seem to have stood (in 1636) near 
Linden Street, Ash Street, and the site of this church. 
Outside the town proper ran the palisade already re- 
ferred to, extending, probably, a mile and a half, per- 
haps with a trench outside, and enclosing one thou- 
sand or more acres, for pasture, cultivated land, and 
commons. 

It is interesting to remember that it was in the 
same year of the church-gathering which we cele- 
brate, though a little later, that the act was passed 
by the Court which was to change so entirely both 
the aspect and the character of this little palisaded 
village. In 1636, ^400 were appropriated towards 
the establishment of a school or college, which in 
1637 it was determined to found in Newtowne. Still 
a year later (1638), in consonance with this new order 
of things, the name of the town was formally changed 
to Cambridge. So, with the establishment of Har- 
vard College, the Cambridge which we know began 
its actual existence. All before this was purely 
preliminary. 

And as the town had a double birth, so had the 
church, to which we turn our attention next. No 
New England settlement remained long without a 
church and pastor. In this case, as the existence of 
the town was decreed by public act, so an entire con- 
gregation was transferred into the place bodily, by 
order of Court, from another settlement. August 
14, 1632, says the record, "the Braintree company 



154 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

(which had begun to sit down at Mt. Wollaston) was 
removed to Newtown ; " and on the 30th of the 
month, to calm the hard feeling towards the Gov- 
ernor on the part of Deputy-Governor Dudley, who 
found himself oliRcially alone at Newtowne, it was 
ordered that " the Governor should procure them a 
minister at Newtown and contribute somewhat to- 
wards his maintenance for a time." This happened 
in 1632, and in 1633 Thomas Hooker, whom the 
company already regarded as belonging to them, 
arrived, and was at once installed as their pastor. 
Hooker was one of the most noteworthy of our early 
preachers ; one whom Cotton Mather, in his annals, 
calls the Luther of the movement of which John 
Cotton was the Melancthon ; and who is described 
(somewhat more attractively than most of the grim 
Puritan clergy) as one " in whom everything was 
full of life : life in his voice, in his eye, in his hand, 
in his gestures." 

Before Hooker's arrival the little meeting-house 
had been built, and provided with what no other 
meeting-house in the Colony could boast, a bell, 
and the first ministry began most prosperously. 
Within a year, however, the new pastor grew impa- 
tient of his narrow stockaded quarters, and made up 
his mind to remove his congregation to the more fer- 
tile reQ:ion of Connecticut. It was a fundamental 
mistake, he declared, for the colonists to have set 
their towns so near each other; and Newtowne 
offered no accommodation for their cattle, and cer- 
tainly no chance to grow. Some have conjectured 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. I 55 

that the real reason was not so much want of space 
as a growing jealousy between the two leading 
preachers, Cotton and Hooker, each of whom felt 
himself entitled to the first rank in the Colony. In 
any case, the fact was, that, after sturdy resistance 
on the part of the Governor and Court, permission 
for the removal was at last granted, and, three years 
after the first organization of the church, both pastor 
and people pushed through the forests, carrying the 
pastor's wife in a litter, and milking their cows as 
they went, to Hartford, Connecticut. Thus the first 
church organization, being transferred elsewhere, 
became extinct in Newtowne. 

Meantime, however, before Hooker's removal, an- 
other company of colonists had providentially arrived 
from England, and, finding an entire settlement 
about to be vacated, purchased the houses at once, 
and established themselves in this place ; at first, as 
they thought, for temporary occupancy, but, as it 
finally proved, for a permanent home. It is worth 
while to notice, as showing that Cambridge held its 
own in the end as against the superior charms of 
Hartford, that Hooker afterwards offered strong in- 
ducements to his successor, Shepard, to follow him 
into the more attractive regions of Connecticut, but 
without success ; and that, a little later still, Jona- 
than Mitchel, on entering the ministry, being so- 
licited at the same time (1649) to become Hooker's 
successor at Hartford and Shepard's successor at 
Cambridge, preferred the latter, and became the 
second pastor of this church. 



156 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

Although in this way one church disappeared and 
a second came into being, there appears to have 
been no break in the reHgious services here. If the 
dates are correctly given, the two congregations 
must have worshipped together for some weeks, the 
two pastors perhaps officiating in turn ; as, four 
months before Hooker's departure, the new church 
was ready for organization, and the event occurred 
in which Governor Winthrop was a participant, and 
which he deemed worthy, as we have seen, of such 
minute description/ 

Whatever more is needed to bring this scene 
vividly before us has been added by Dr. Newell in 
the discourse to which I have alluded, where he 
sketches with rare felicity all the famous historical 
personages who made that gathering so memorable : 
John Winthrop himself with his oldest son, Thomas 
Dudley, Sir Henry Vane, John Cotton and John 
Wilson, Richard Mather, Hugh Peters, and others. 

Turning from this attractive picture, however, let 
us inquire to-day, more prosaically, into the exact his- 
torical and religious significance of the scene. Here 
is a plain little meeting-house, with hardly any token 
of its religious uses ; here is a church called into 
existence by the simple consent of magistrates and 
elders, and the offering of the right hand of fellow- 
ship ; here are long prayers and exercisings, with 
deep confession of sin and personal confessions of 
faith. All this is something new in the annals of 
the Christian Church. What, I ask, is its historic 

^ No mention of Hooker is maie in Winthrop's account. 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. I 57 

significance ? Where does it belong in the develop- 
ment of Christian worship ? Where did these rites 
come from, and to what do they point in the future ? 

The building itself has its significance, when 
compared with the cathedrals or parish churches to 
which many of the worshippers had been accustomed 
in their native land. This special building stood in 
the midst of the settlement, on the corner of what 
are now Dunster and Mt. Auburn Streets. We 
have no description of it. In comparison with the 
mud walls and thatched roof of its Boston sister, the 
log frame, with roof of slate or boards (according to 
the town ordinance of four years before), though 
probably far less picturesque, no doubt looked to 
our ancestors much more dignified and stately. A 
still further advance in church architecture was made 
when meeting-houses were surmounted (as at Hing- 
ham) by a four-square roof terminating in a belfry, 
a style reached in Cambridge some years later, in 
repairing the first edifice. The interior, if we look 
into it, we find as simple and unecclesiastical as the 
exterior. There is no altar, no choir, nothing even 
that in older countries would be called a pulpit ; 
only a desk, with seats before it for deacons and el- 
ders, and rows of benches beyond, for men on the 
one side, and for women on the other. 

Indeed, it is plain at once that we have to do here, 
not with a church, but with something quite differ- 
ent. It is a meeting-house : a place, that is, where 
the people of the town shall gather for all common 
purposes, — six days to arrange their secular affairs. 



158 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

on the seventh to worship God. In the Plymouth 
Colony, the meeting-house (built nearly ten years 
before) was also a fort, the roof being a thick flat 
platform, with six four-pound cannon mounted on 
it ; the worshippers, on Sunday, assembling by beat 
of drum, and marching three abreast, with musket 
on shoulder, to their martial meeting place. In 
Newtowne, as elsewhere, the meeting-house was the 
town-house, where the church-members (the only 
voters) met for council once a month at least; at 
first, all freemen, afterwards (1634-35) only chosen 
delegates or " townsmen." 

Turning now from the external to the internal 
affairs of our little church, we find it, in common 
with the other churches of the time, engaged in a 
very interesting work. It is, quite unconsciously to 
itself, initiating a new order of worship. As I have 
dwelt upon this point in another place, I will only 
remind you here that the Massachusetts colonists 
belonged to that party among the Puritans who had 
cherished to the very last the hope of carrying out 
its reforms within the English Church. Nor was 
this expectation by any means so chimerical, or this 
attitude towards the church so half-hearted or ir- 
resolute, as at first thought appears. When we con- 
sider that during the entire reign of Queen Eliza- 
beth the reform party within the church constituted 
probably, in spite of royal displeasure, quite half 
the clergy, — when we remember that at a convoca- 
tion held in the beginning of her reign (1562) the 
proposal to set aside surplices, give up kneeling in 



250Tn ANNIVERSARY. 1 59 

prayer, the use of organs, and the sign of the cross at 
baptism, was lost by a vote of 58 to 59 (deans and 
archdeacons being among the minority), — when 
we consider that at the accession of James I., after 
the intolerance and persecution of Elizabeth's reign, 
nearly one thousand of the English clergy pre- 
sented a petition asking for extensive changes in 
the church service, and that a radical reform was only 
prevented by the King s intolerance and obstinacy, 
— when we remember (to come nearer home) that 
John Cotton preached for twenty years as an avowed 
Puritan in the parish church in Boston (England), 
and for some time before leavinsf the church had 
discontinued the liturgy and vestments, and denied 
the authority of bishops, — we realize what good 
reason there was for hope, through that entire cen- 
tury, that the church would itself take in hand all 
needed ecclesiastical reforms. At the time of the 
settlement of Massachusetts the animosity between 
the Puritans who had left the church and those who 
remained behind was very strong. When Winthrop 
and his party set sail from England, they declared in 
their well-known address to " the rest of their breth- 
eren in and of the Church of England " : " We es- 
teem it an honor to call the Church of England, 
from whence we rise, our dear mother, and cannot 
part from our native country, where she specially 
resideth, without much sadness of heart." John 
Cotton, writing from this country to a friend in 
England, declared with some indignation that he 
was no Brownist, and pronounced even the name 



l6o FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

Independent as " too strait," and " no fit name for 
the way of our churches." Sixteen years later (1646) 
Winthrop speaks in strong disapproval of those in 
England who " went under the name of Indepen- 
dents, to whom such a vast liberty was allowed." 

Nearly all the first pastors of the Massachu- 
setts Colony, we must remember, were ordained 
clergymen (or lecturers) of the Church of England. 
Thomas Shepard made his first open renunciation 
of Episcopacy in entering upon his pastorate here. 
John Cotton, as we have seen, served for twenty 
years under the Bishop of Lincoln as vicar in the 
English Church of Boston, and before leaving his 
flock "conferred with the chief of the people and 
offered them to bear witness (still) to the truth he 
had preached and practised amongst them ... if 
they conceived it any confirmation of their faith and 
practice." Hooker's ministry in the Church of Eng- 
land was much shorter ; but when it was found that 
the Bishop of London threatened to suspend him, a 
petition was presented by forty-seven " conformable 
ministers of the neighboring towns," praying for his 
continuance at his post. 

The establishment of Protestantism in the Massa- 
chusetts Colony, then, represents the period when' 
the Puritan party in the Church of England, after 
having loyally held its place through three hostile 
reigns, had been at last driven from its allegiance. 
What new form of church government and wor- 
ship should they adopt ? In England at this mo- 
ment those who could not go all lengths with the 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. 161 

Separatists were inclined to lodge the power taken 
from the bishops in the hands of a presbytery or 
board of ministers and elders. If England at any 
time during the reign of Charles I. had renounced 
Episcopacy, (as it seemed on the eve of doing,) it 
would have become Presbyterian. Were the Ameri- 
can Puritans of the same mind ? Or would thev, 
on reaching American soil, where no state power 
restricted their action, and where a pure Indepen- 
dency had already established itself, overcome their 
repugnance to these sectaries, and adopt their forms 
of worship ? 

Nothing is more interesting than to see how this 
question worked itself out. It was done with very 
little friction, by perfectly natural and unconscious 
steps. Away from England, of course the old party 
names lost much of their horror. What was to for- 
bid their turning, as the Independent churches had 
done, directly to the Scriptures, and shaping their 
new worship by the apostolic model } Already in 
Holland, as some of their own number knew, this 
had been long practised. Already in Plymouth it 
had taken root in New England soil. Without dis- 
cussion or dispute, therefore, (so far as the records 
show,) the first pastors were ordained to their new 
office by the laying on of hands by the brethren of 
the church, liturgies, surplices, and organs disap- 
peared from their Sabbath service, and the appoint- 
ment by each congregation of elders and deacons' 
was accepted as a sufficient substitute for bishops 
or presbyters. 



1 62 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

Thus far, they were acting as purely independent 
bodies, and every step looking towards the associa- 
tion of churches into anything like the one Church 
whose power they had finally renounced, seemed 
likely to be hotly resented. And so at first it was. 
But circumstances are stronger than theories. The 
common sense of loneliness and of danger drew 
these pioneer churches into close alliance. In all 
exigencies they learned more and more eagerly to 
seek each other's sympathy and counsel. The iden- 
tification of church with state, whereby the members 
of the several churches found themselves constantly 
acting together in both the civil and the religious 
affairs of all the communities, accustomed them to 
concerted action. And so it happened that, in spite 
of constant protests from individual towns, jealous 
of their rights, there grev/ up by mutual consent a 
certain affiliation of the churches, and mutual con- 
cern in each other's welfare, which, however familiar 
to us to-day, was then something new in the world, 
and indicated the dawning of a new church polity. 
There is no space here to trace its steps of develop- 
ment. It is interesting for us, however, to remem- 
ber that the first announcement to the world of this 
new order of religious government, and, indeed, the 
first recognition on the part of the churches them- 
selves of the fact that they had committed them- 
selves to a common polity, was directly associated 
with our own church and its first pastor. The hour 
comes when every new movement, just becoming 
conscious of its own identity and its own purpose. 



25OTII ANNIVERSARY. 1 63 

takes to itself a name of its own. That moment 
came when the synod of Cambridge, assembhng in 
our little meeting-house on Dunster Street, declared 
that the New England churches were not Indepen- 
dent, but Congregational. 

So sprung up a new Christian order, — an order 
in which the individual churches, while preserving 
their individuality and claiming each congregation 
as the source of all ecclesiastical power, yet con- 
sented to invest the assembled churches with cer- 
tain authority over the several parts. It had been 
evolved, as we have seen, out of the practical exi- 
gencies of the situation. It had no justification in 
any previous traditions of church policy. It was 
very illogical, and showed in the statements and ar- 
guings of its own platform an uneasy consciousness 
that it was striving to combine things inherently 
incompatible. The churches were independent, yet 
they were not ; each parish claimed the absolute 
right of controlling its own affairs, yet delegated part 
of its authority to councils or synods. With every 
new generation and at every new juncture down to 
the present day, Congregationalism has been forced 
to state its principles anew, and decide afresh just 
how much authoritv resides in the council and how 
much in the congregation. With the unity and ag- 
gressive power of an established church it has cer- 
tainly never shown itself able to compete. 

Yet, logical or illogical, it was, as we have seen, 
very spontaneous, and it has proved itself singularly 
adapted to its work. In the new life of the West- 



164 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

ern Continent during those early centuries, if not 
throughout the nation's entire life, it was exactly 
what was needed. What it lost, as compared with 
Episcopacy or Presbyterianism, in sheer working 
power, it gained in elasticity and freedom. It has 
proved strong enough to hold together its scattered 
forces through the simple sentiment of brotherhood ; 
it has proved supple and free enough to adapt itself 
to the growth of democratic institutions and the 
spread of new religious thought. Congregational- 
ism, it must be understood, is the name, not of a 
doctrinal system, but only of a religious polity. It 
means, not believing certain truths, but governing 
churches in a certain way. The name belongs to- 
day to the liberal as well as to the orthodox churches 
which have issued from the Colonial stock ; churches 
which, however widely they have separated in doc- 
trine, have held with equal jealousy to the primitive 
Congregational idea. 

And now we are inclined to ask just what was 
the humble ceremonial which took the place, in our 
Puritan meeting-house, of the stately worship to 
which those pastors and worshippers had been ac- 
customed. Where and how did these simple rites, 
which have come down almost unmodified to us, 
originate? 

The absence of a liturgy was almost a foregone 
conclusion. The liturgy was the distinctive feature 
of the mother church, it is true, but English Puri- 
tans had long tired of it. At the very formation of 
the English Church, a powerful party, including 



250Tn ANNIVERSARY. 1 65 

bishops and clergy as well as laity, had protested 
against preserving any portion of the Romish ritual ; 
and from that hour there was a spoken or unspoken 
protest within the church against all liturgical forms. 
Church music fell under the same disapproval, and 
for the same cause. Under Queen Elizabeth, as far 
back as 1586, a pamphlet was addressed to Parlia- 
ment, praying that " all cathedral churches may be 
put down, where the service of God is grievously 
abused by piping and organs, singing, ringing, trowl- 
ing of Psalms from one side of the choir to the 
other, with the squeaking of chanting choristers, dis- 
guised in white surplices." The prejudice against 
organs as part of the Romish ceremonial began, as 
such passages show, long before our ancestors' times. 
For a long time, as you know, there was no music 
whatever in our New England churches, unless the 
singing of Psalms without accompaniment could 
be called music ; and many now living can remem- 
ber when the bass-viol and violin, which for some 
strange reason were thought less idolatrous than the 
organ, were still heard in our country churches. 
The first American organ was built in 1745. 

The most marked feature of the new worship, how- 
ever, was the preaching. Where all else was simple, 
here was something formidably artificial and elabo- 
rate. Knowing as we do the insignificant place 
which preaching holds in most ritualistic services, and 
the short exhortations to which our early preachers 
must have been wont in the English Church, we 
cannot help asking how it was that they fell at once 



1 66 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

into such new and strange ways. What was the 
source of the Puritan sermon ? 

It came about evidently as a reaction against that 
very neglect of preaching to which I have just al- 
luded. Till that time preaching had never held an 
important place in the Christian Church, while in 
most ages it had been shamefully neglected. Great 
pulpit orators there have been in the Catholic Church 
from time to time, but through the periods of Cath- 
olic supremacy as a whole, until the influence of 
Protestantism began to be felt, we hear little of 
preaching. The cathedrals or large parish churches 
were ill adapted to it, while at the same time the 
mass of the clergy were too ignorant and untrained 
for any such service. For many ages nearly all 
the sermons or homilies used by the priests were 
written for them. In the sixth century (529) a 
church covenant enacted : " If any presbyter be 
unable to preach, the homilies of the sacred fathers 
are to be read by the deacons." In the Middle 
Ages large collections of these homilies, arranged 
by Sundays, were almost universally employed. 

The English Church, as our fathers knew it, had 
inherited, with the rest of its ritualistic patrimony, 
much of the Catholic sentiment about preaching. 
The church prepared its collections of homilies at 
once. Its preachers seem to have been for some 
time few and poor. According to one authority, 
" not one beneficed clergyman in six at the beginning 
of Elizabeth's reign was capable of composing a ser- 
mon." The Bishop of Bangor declared that he had 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. I 67 

but two preachers in all his diocese. In a certain 
county, we are told, " not a sermon was to be heard 
within the compass of twenty miles." " In the large 
town of Northampton, somewhat later, there was not 
one preacher, nor had been for a considerable time." 
It was calculated in 1586, after the Church of Eng- 
land had been in existence nearly thirty years, that for 
ten thousand parish churches there were then only 
two thousand preachers ; so that, if persons would 
hear a sermon, they must go five, seven, or even 
twenty miles, and be fined \2d. beside, for being 
absent from their own parish church. Indeed, so far 
from trying to remedy this state of things, the church 
encouraged it. Preaching was looked upon as the 
main device for spreading false opinions. Queen 
Elizabeth declared that " it was good for a church to 
have few preachers," and acted accordingly. When 
James I., on his accession, met the Puritan clergy to 
hear their complaints, the Bishop of London fell 
upon his knees, and begged his Majesty "that all 
parishes might have a praying (rather than a preach- 
ing) ministry ; for preaching is grown so much in 
fashion that the service of the Church is neglected. 
Besides, pulpit harangues are very dangerous. He 
therefore humbly moved that the number of honiilies 
might be increased, and the clergy be obliged to 
read them instead of their own sermons, in which 
many vented their spleen against their superiors." 

That there should be a revolt against this condi- 
tion of things as soon as the Puritan clergy were free 
to act for themselves, is not astonishing. That this 



1 68 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

reaction should go so far, that the scorned and ne- 
oflected sermon in the far Western Continent, with 
nought to hinder and abundance of time for spiritual 
recreation, should take upon itself somewhat colossal 
dimensions, is only in accordance with human nature. 
With the extraordinary characteristics of the Puri- 
tan sermon, you are all familiar. The hour-glass be- 
came a regular part of the pulpit furniture, and the 
congregation always expected to see it turned once 
at least before the preaching ended. Thomas Shep- 
ard speaks in one of his sermons of certain hearers 
who " sit in the stocks when they are at prayers, and 
come out of the church when the tedious sermon 
runnes somewhat beyond the hour, like prisoners 
out of a jaile." The literary structure of these dis- 
courses was as unexampled as their length. Start- 
ing with numerous grand divisions of his theme, the 
preacher advances first to various subdivisions ; under 
each subdivision meets objections from fancied dis- 
believers with their appropriate replies; passes on 
then to the so-called Uses of his theme, which Uses 
are subdivided perhaps into reproofs, exhortations, 
comfort, and choice ; then sums up the doctrine that 
he has been unfolding to his hearers ; and finally 
urges upon them, under many heads, its personal 
applications. In the shortest of my predecessor 
Shepard's sermons that I can find (" The Saint's 
Jewel"), are three divisions of his text, — viz. a lov- 
ing appellation, a gracious invitation, and an argu- 
ment for investigation, — followed by three Reasons 
for the doctrine ; — these followed by four Uses ; 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. 1 69 

under Use two, thirteen Objections with Answers ; 
under Use three, two general subdivisions, ^ith two 
Objections and Answers, one Exhortation and one 
Warnino-; under Use four, six di\dsions : — followed 
by five Considerations, and five Helps ; — the whole 
being concluded by two Reproofs. 

In all this we find, I think, in spite of its forbid- 
ding form, a tremendous earnestness, at whose quaint 
expression we allow ourselves to smile, yet which we 
feel was the natural outgrowth of the apostolic fer\-or 
of an apostolic age. The contemporaries of our 
Puritan preachers, however, judged these effusions 
differently, and found in them the material for in- 
finite merriment and ridicule. To give you this 
outside view, let me quote the following passage 
from Robert South, an English divine who was born 
just as Shepard and his companions arrived upon 
these shores (1633). and who was himself a direct 
and brilliant result of the fresh impulse given by the 
Puritan movement to English pulpit orator}-. 

" First of all," he says (in a sermon called " The 
Scribe Instructed"), these new lights "seize upon 
some text, from whence they draiv something (which 
thev call a doctrine), and well may it be said to be 
drawn from the words ; forasmuch as it seldom nat- 
urally fiows from them. In the next place, they 
branch it into several heads, perhaps twenty or 
thirty, or upward. Whereupon, for the prosecution 
of these, they repair to some trusty concordance, 
which never fails them, and by the help of that, they 
range six or seven scriptures under each head; 



lyo FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

which scriptures they prosecute one by one, enlar- 
ging upon one for some considerable time till they 
have spoiled it ; and then, that being done, they pass 
to another, which in its turn suffers accordingly." 

But preaching was not the sole form which this 
new-born zeal for holy discourse assumed. Each 
church had not only a pastor, but also, if fully 
equipped, a teacher, — a provision based, like all 
their other appointments, on apostolic authority, but 
which it proved impossible in the end to maintain. 
The original intent was apparently that the pastor 
was to preach the sermon, the teacher, also fully 
trained for the ministry, to expound the Scriptures, 
either before or after the sermon. Sometimes the 
preacher of the morning service became the teacher 
of the afternoon ; and, in general, although the dis- 
tinction was long insisted on as purely scriptural, the 
two offices seem to have been gradually blended, and 
the teacher eventually disappeared. This church, 
for some reason, seems to have satisfied itself from 
the beginning with a pastor only. 

A still more curious result of this return to apos- 
tolic authority, joined with the unappeasable hunger 
for the spoken word which seems to have seized our 
Puritan ancestry, was the office of prophesying. 
The Epistles of Paul have much to say about 
"prophesying," which in those days of the church 
seems to have been the name for any earnest, spon- 
taneous speech. It meant probably almost exactly 
what we mean by extempore preaching. Our Puri- 
tan fathers, eager apparently to multiply the occa- 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. 171 

sions for sacred oratory, recognized in this a distinct 
office from preaching or teaching. Prophesying 
meant scripture exposition with exhortation, and was 
a privilege accorded in cases of exigency, as when 
the pastor was absent, or distinguished strangers 
were visiting a church, to certain of the more gifted 
laity. Governor Winthrop tells us of visiting Aga- 
wam, and spending the Sabbath with the people, as 
they were without a minister, and "exercising by way 
of prophecy." He tells us also that his own pastor, 
Mr. Wilson, on returning to England, " commended 
to his people the exercise of prophecy in his absence, 
and designated those whom he thought most fit for 
it, viz. the Governor, Mr. Dudley, and Mr. Nowell." 
Some idea of what it meant to attend church in those 
days of " prophesying " may be got from an account 
given in a private letter from Amsterdam in 1606, 
describing the order of Sabbath services among the 
English Puritans there, apparently in the absence of 
the pastor: " I. We begin with prayer; after, read 
some one or two chapters of the Bible, and give the 
sense thereof, and confer upon the same ; that done, 
we lay aside our books, and, after a solemn pra3^er 
made by the first speaker, he propoundeth some text 
out of the scripture, and prophesieth out of the same 
by the space of one hour or three quarters of an hour. 
After him standeth up a second speaker, and proph- 
esieth out of the said text, the like time and place, 
sometime more, sometime less. After him the 
third, the fourth, the fifth, etc., as the time will give 
leave. Then the first speaker concludeth with 



172 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

prayer, as he began with prayer, and with an exhor- 
tation to contribute to the poor, which collection 
being made, is also concluded with prayer. The 
morning exercise begins at eight of the clock, and 
continueth unto twelve of the clock. The like course 
and exercise is observed in the afternoon, from two 
of the clock unto five or six of the clock. Last of 
all, the execution of the government of the church 
is handled." 

This account of the peculiar religious customs of 
two hundred and fifty years ago would be incomplete 
if I were not to add one point more, to show the ex- 
treme length to which, at the very first, the revulsion 
from Popery carried these pious worshippers. In 
the mother church, basely following Romish ante- 
cedents, marriage was an ecclesiastical sacrament. 
The Puritan, on the contrary, declared it a civil con- 
tract. Was there any passage in scripture, he asked, 
which made marriage part of the minister's function ? 
Then the minister must not perform it. It must be 
done by the civil magistrate as a secular rite. No 
marriage by a minister is found on record in New 
England before 1686. Strangely enough, burials 
came under the same category. What warrant in 
scripture for burying the dead with religious rites ? 
Nay, would not such an observance encourage the 
Popish mummery of prayer for the dead ? Funerals, 
accordingly, were without scripture, psalm, sermon, 
or prayer. The bell was tolled, friends carried the 
remains quietly to some churchyard or roadside en- 
closure, and silently laid them away. The reason 



25OTH ANNIVERSARY. I 73 

for this seems to us absurd ; yet, when we compare 
the tender simplicity of such a rite with the profes- 
sional formalities and elaborate display attending 
many a modern funeral, who will say that we have 
not something still to learn from the Puritan ? 

I should be sorry if my brief allusion to Thomas 
Shepard suggested any feeling towards him on my 
part but that of hearty admiration and reverence. 
His autobiography, one of the most interesting per- 
sonal memorials which remain to us of that period, 
reveals a nature of singular transparency and sim- 
plicity, deeply sensitive, profoundly conscientious, 
absolutely consecrated to its high calling. All the 
early allusions to him, which are many, confirm this 
impression. Cotton Mather, in his Magnalia, calls 
him the Pastor Evangelicus. A contemporary 
writer, quoted in full by Dr. Newell in his " Farewell 
Sermon upon Leaving the Old Meeting House," 
speaks of Shepard as a " poore, weake, pale-com- 
plectioned man," but with a power of speech which 
made deep impression on the soul. Winthrop, as 
we have seen, in his account of the founding of this 
church, speaks with enthusiasm of his " heavenly 
prayer." His sermons, though se\'ere of course in 
their theolos^v, and cumbrous in construction, after 
the fashion of the time, yet show a thoroughly prac- 
tised hand, and great intensity of conviction, with 
touches here and there of what would no doubt seem 
to us, if our ears were more attuned to the prolixity 
of seventeenth-century speech, great pungency and 
directness. Altogether, he appears to us, in the 



174 FIRST CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE. 

dimness of distance, a fine combination of delicacy 
and strength, nobly fitted to head the list of pastors 
of this First Church of Cambridge. 

How this saintly spirit of the olden time would 
regard us, his descendants, could he revisit these 
earthly scenes, it is not easy to conjecture. Unless 
his sturdy Puritan instincts had died out within him, 
we may well doubt whether he would have found 
anything, either in the city whose foundations he 
helped to lay, or in any of the churches to which his 
labors here have given birth, of which he could fully 
approve. Yet one thing we cannot doubt would have 
given him pleasure, — that the memory of his beau- 
tiful ministry, after two hundred and fifty years had 
passed, had power to heal the differences between 
his spiritual children, and bring them together after 
long separation in an act of filial reverence. 



THE END, 



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