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G-ift of

19l.l>

THE TWO HUNDRED AND
FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY
OF THE FOUNDING OF
THE OLD SOUTH CHURCH
IThird Church, 1669] IN BOSTON

Cjje S^inisittxs
THOMAS THACHER 1670
SAMUEL WILLARD 1678
EBENEZER PEMBERTON 170(3
JOSEPH SEWALL 1713
THOMAS PRINCE 1718
ALEXANDER GUMMING 1761
SAMUEL BLAIR 1766
JOHN BACON I
JOHN HUNT ) ^^'^
JOSEPH ECKLEY 1779
JOSHUA HUNTINGTON 1808
BENJ. B. WISNER 182 1
SAMUEL H. STEARNS i834
GEORGE W. BLAGDEN i836
JACOB M. MANNING 1867
GEORGE A. GORDON i884

THE TWO HUNDRED AND
FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY
OF THE FOUNDING OF
THE OLD SOUTH CHURCH
[T/iirrf Church, 1669] IN BOSTON

IMPRINTED FOR THE OLD SOUTH SOCIETY
BY THE PLIMPTON PRESS

COPYRIGHT, 1919
BY OLD SOUTH SOCIETY

ChZ)

r

^
^

IMPTON PRESS ¦ NORWOOD ¦ MASS ¦ n .S .A

THE SERVICES in recognition of the two hundred
and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Old
South Church were held on Friday evening. May 2,
1919, Sunday morning and evening, May 4, and
Sunday morning and evening. May 11. A part qf
Dr. Gordon's address at the service preparatory to
Communion Friday evening. May 2, is included in
this volume. It was in the nature of an intimate
talk with the members of the church, but will have
equal interest for the many past members who are
likely to see this permanent record. The Memorial
Communion Service was celebrated Sunday morning,
May 4, preceding which Dr. Gordon preached, his
subject being "A Cloud of Witnesses." In the even
ing of the same day the choir of the church, augmented
by a chorus of twenty voices, under the direction of the
organist, Mr. Wry, rendered Mendelssohn's " Hymn
of Praise." The Associate Minister, Mr. Butler,
gave an appropriate address. Sunday morning,
May 11, Dr. Gordon delivered a historical discourse
covering the history of the church to the time of his
installation. He has extended this discourse for
purposes of publication so as to present in brief form
and yet adequately the salient points in the history
of the church. At the request of the Church Comr

[vi]
mittee the Reverend Albert E. Dunning, D.D. has pre
pared a paper upon the pastorate of Dr. Gordon
from his installation to the present time which follows
the historical discourse in this volume. At the evening
meeting, May 11, greetings were given by the Governor
of the State, the Mayor of the City, and the Reverend
Dr. Park, minister of the First Church, Boston. The
address was delivered by President Richard C.
Maclaurin, LL.D.
Many letters were received by Dr. Gordon and by
the officials of the church from churches and individ
uals, conveying greeting and congratulations. While
none of these are included in this volume, although
worthy of publication, a formal acknowledgment is
here made with a heartfelt expression of appreciation
for these evidences of fraternal fellowship, most cor
dially reciprocated by the ministers and members of
ihe Old South Church and Congregation.
Committee of Publication
OF THE Church and Society

YEARS AND ASPIRATIONS
LEAD me. Lord, through all my days.
In Thy great and wondrous ways.
Lift my heart to grander hours.
Hold me with Thy heavenly powers.
Of the Past may I still keep
Things divine both high and deep.
Morning light and evening glow
That have ever blessed me so.
Memories that ever shine;
Friends unseen but friends still mine;
Service sweet in high reward;
Spirits blest in dear regard.
Tender sympathies and tears,
Precious store of noble years;
Visions wide on pathways wild,
Chastened thought again a child!
Trust in Thee that surer grows;
Human love that fears no foes;
Faith that to Thy heart belong.
Worlds now lost in woe and wrong.
Show me. Lord, Thy word of grace —
Christ, Thy glory in his face;
That I through my fleeting hour,
, Serve Thy kingdom in Thy power.
George A, Gordon (April, 1909)

CONTENTS PAGE
The Preparatory Address  i
The Communion Sermon  9
Mr. Butler's Address  17
The Historical Discourse  26
I. THE founders  28
n. colonial leaders   38
in. THE church in the revolution  5l
IV. THE CHURCH AND THE CIVIL WAR  66
V. LATEST HISTORY  79
The Ministry of George A. Gordon  85
The Governor's Address  107
The Mayor's Address  ii3
Dr. Park's Address  119
President Maclauhin's Address  127

THE PREPARATORY ADDRESS

A

.T the Service Preparatory to the Communion on
Friday, May 2, Dr. Gordon took as his text, Hebrews
13:8, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and to-day,
and forever."

THE PREPARATORY ADDRESS
I HAVE often had the thought occm" to me when
in Egypt, going up the Nile, looking at all
the broken glories of Egyptian art, would the
ancient Egyptians know their own home if they were
to return to it, those of the earlier dynasties, six,
five, four thousand years ago? Memphis gone,
buried under the sand; Denderah in ruins, Abydos
the same; the Temple of Luxor hardly recogniz
able; the mighty Kameik a wreck; the hundred-
gated Thebes utterly vanished. Then the culti
vation on either side of the Nile, the immense
productivity which those people never knew.
Would they not ask, "Is this our own ancient
home?" How could they teU? Everything changed,
monuments broken, smashed, — wreckage every
where. What is there to guide them to a sense
that, after aU, this is the land that they loved?
To be sure, there is the silent, mysterious desert on
either side; but then, desert is desert everywhere,
and this may not be their desert. One thing,
the river, is the same; the same in ebb and in
flood; the same in fertilizing power; the same with
its even flow; the same in the music of a thousand
generations in its onward movement; the same in

[4]
the white hght of the morning, in the blazing heat
of noon, sind in the weird, yellow light of the even
ing when everything seems to fade into mystery.
The river tells them that this is the old land, the
veritable land where they hved, toiled, loved, died.
In the same way we wonder if the Puritans of
three, four, five, six, seven generations ago were to
return to Boston, would they know their ancient
home? Physically, everything is changed. Then
this was a struggling village, now it is a metro-
poUtan city; streets then were lanes in which cows
wandered, the whole region where we live was
under water; modes of living, of communication,
of conducting business, afl changed, the whole
method of our life revolutionized. Would they not
be strangers in the old town of Boston?
In the intellectual sphere, what changes! In
tellectually theirs was a simple life. Think how
many great poets, great thinkers, great scientists
have arisen since their day, and how much has been
done by them to change our world; and think what
science itself and the science of history have done
in the letting in of aU the great minds of aU peoples,
so that the educated man to-day is a product of
the higher minds of the whole race. Would not
this place seem strange to them intellectually?
Could they find their way in it?
Religiously, what changes they would seel Would
they know the Old South Church? There is that
piano — would they like that? And the singing

[5]
led by yoimg women — would they not think that
an innovation not to be tolerated? The great
organ of the church — would they not look upon it
as an instrumentahty of the devil? And those fine
pews with their cushions — would they not think
them parlor seats in a train de luxe moving toward
the kingdom of heaven? And no sexton with his
stick to prod sleepy people and keep them awake
during the sermon 1 Then the shortness of the ser
mons, — not an hour and a half hke those of the
olden time! Might they not well ask, "Is this
Boston? Is this the Third Church of Boston? Are
we in the same world in which we died?"
There is one thing that would give them a sense
of home — "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday,
and to-day, and forever." When we say that the
supreme loveliness of his person is the same, the
glory of his teaching about God and about man is
the same, the depth and the splendor of his friend
ship for human souls are the same, his sacrificial
life and death are the same, and his confidence
in the things of the Eternal World is the same, those
old Puritans in this strange town of Boston, in this
strange intellectual and reUgious world, would say,
"After all, we are at home"; and glistening eye
would answer ghstening eye on the part of those
noble men and heroic women; iUumiuated face
would answer illuminated face. They would feel
that after all and amid aJl changes and revolutions,
physical, inteUectual, and reUgious, they were at

[6]
home with us in the fellowship of the Lord Jesus.
He is the River of Life running through history.
We interpret the Absolute Spirit not by sub-human
forms, but by the power of humanity, and by
humanity at its best, by the Lord Jesus, the Supreme
Man. They and we walk together in Him, wor
ship the same God and Father of the world. There
is the ground of unity. . . .
I have tried to find in the history the date of the
first Friday evening meeting. Meetings were held
usually on Thursday, and occasionally on Tuesday;
but there came a time, April 12, 1741, not far
from two hundred years ago,^when a vote was taken
to have an additional lecture on Friday evening,
so long as the desire of the people shall be for that
lecture. We are holding to-night a service, there
fore, that has a continuous history in the Old South
Church of one hundred euid seventy-eight years.
I do not think that all of our membership of a
thousand know that there is a meeting here to
night, so multifarious are the cares of modern good
people; but I am sure you will regard it as a part
of your duty during next year's service to call
attention to this Friday evening meeting and to ask
the members if they stiU desire it, — if they have
that desire out of which the meeting arose one
hundred and seventy-eight years ago. Do the
people StiU have the same faith, the same love, the
same objects to five for, the same sense of sin and
temptation, the same sense of the tragic world, and

[7]
do they stiU wemt the pastors, — there were two
ministers, and they were to give the lectures, —
as the vote says, to give them the Friday evening
lecture? Now this is a prelude, giving you in the beginning
of our celebration just a glimpse of the old-time
stress and strain, labor and sorrow, high ideals and
bitter failures, undiscouraged wills; a glimpse of
this company of brave men and women ever press
ing on to the greater future, emd keeping the church
aUve for the generations to come. They loved the
Lord and they loved the church; and I should hke
to be sure that our people not only love the Lord,
but love the church. They love what they get in
the church; a more grateful people no ministers
ever had, or a more friendly; but that is not the
point. The Church never would have hved two
hundred and fifty years if the men and women of
Boston in successive generations had not loved it.
Teach your children to love it; love it yourselves;
be not satisfied with simply being grateful for what
you get; put your hfe into it, and make it a monu
ment of the soul of your family, and your individual
soul, as it is the silent and grand monument of all
these generations of noble men and women.
The greatest splendor in the heavens is the star
Sirius. One cannot look upon it without awe; such
an unimaginable distance, and yet imapproached
in its brilliancy, even to the naked eye. It is seen
through the Syrian atmosphere, through the various

[8]
and multifeirious European atmospheres; aU the
continents look at it through different atmospheres;
yet aU the while it is the same blue, transcendent,
unapproachable fire. So our Lord Jesus is seen
through aU the varying atmospheres of the world,
intellectual, social, rehgious, and in aU the genera
tions of time, but is always the same splendor, the
same incomparable glory; and because He
is there, all those who love Him
are one forevermore.

THE COMMUNION SERMON

HE Memorial Communion Service on Sunday morn
ing, MayU, was largely attended by past and present
members of the Church. Dr. Gordon's hymn, " Years
and Aspirations," written on the occasion of the
twenty-fifth anniversary of his installation, was sung
fry the Congregation. The choir hymn was "Thou
art, 0 God, the life and light," set to an arrangement
from Mozart by Mr. Samuel Carr, who played the
accompaniment. The historic Communion Silver added
much to the beauty and dignity of the service.
The subject of Dr. Gordon's sermon was "A Cloud
of Witnesses."

THE COMMUNION SERMON
SOMETIMES it seems to one that the hfe of the
spirit is solitary in the extreme, as when this
planet at night, shrouded in cloud, buffeted
with storm, pelted with haU, climbs its weary way
among the infinite spaces. Again, we become aware
of the glorious fellowship in which the life of the
spirit is hved, as when this planet, the atmosphere
having become clear and serene at night, travels
forth with an endless fellowship of shining worlds
above, beneath, round about. It is to the sense of
fellowship in the hfe of the spirit that the text
speaks. "Therefore, seeing we are compassed about
with so great a cloud of witnesses." The social
life in God; that is the meaning of the text; all
souls in Him, and all souls capable, through Him, of
hving in one transcendent fellowship.
Imagination is the bugler of the mind. One
moment you see no army, — nothing but the bar
racks in the city, apparently empty, — nothing but
the tents in the field, apparently silent and deserted.
Listen to the notes of the bugler; in response, forth
come the multitudes of men falling into line, an
army coming from the invisible, in response to that
II

[12]
high cafl. Such is the life of the soul when it is
lived truly. Those who have been tempted as we
are and have triumphed, those who have sinned as
we have sinned, and been forgiven, those who have
been bereaved and have found the great consolation,
those who have been troubled with a thousand
troubles and have discovered a dwelling of peace,
those who have struggled and failed, and struggled
again, and won gloriously, are waiting for the
bugler's notes to come forth a great army, to pour
their inspiration and their love into our hves.
How shaU we know the Lord Jesus? Two thou
sand years of time separate his life from ours;
how shaU we know him? Only as imagination,
guided by the material given in the gospels and in
the New Testament, ordered, restrained, and sent
forward in its working by fact and by experience
of those who hved with Him, only as imagination
thus working, legitimately, and with trustworthi
ness, brings, as it wiU bring, into the field of our
vision the great Master, as he lived in Galilee,
as he went from viUage to viUage, and from town
to town in Gahlee, as he spoke by the sea, from
the land, and from the boat in which his disciples
were with him, as he traveled and grew weary on
his journey, and as he went to the great city where
he was to die. His person, his aspect, his be
havior, his developing character, his sublime spirit,
the speaker, the wonderworker, the sufferer, the
man who gave his life and who triumphed over

Ci3]
death, — aU this may come back a great, vivid,
glorious reality, but only as we employ the re
ligious imagination. Take that power away, and
there is no more sense of Christ in us than there
is in an animal by our side. We cannot cherish
and we cannot chasten this power of imagination
too fuUy in aU the humanities, as weU as in our
whole faith.
In the second place, let me remind you of the
greatness of the past. Science has revolutionized
our modern world; apphed science has changed the
mode of our hving, the mode of our business, of
our travel, of our intercommunication, and of a
hundred other things; and it has clothed with new
power many professions that minister to the tem
poral life of man. For aU this we are thankful,
infinitely thankful; but tins does not imply that
we are bigger than they who went before us. Ours
is largely the greatness of privflege; those who went
before us had the greatness of nature; native,
original, creative power.
The past is great, immeasurably greater than any
present generation. We are but the front wave,
breaking on the beach, with the great silent sweU
and the Almighty push of the sea behind it. Do
not let us forget this in our dehght in our own age,
in our thankfulness that we are bom when we are
bom and set to do our work in this present time;
do not let us forget the majesty of the past; no
man can be great who ignores it. Do not let this

Ci4]
church forget the seven generations that have gone
before. CaU them up in imagination; strong men
and tender, although they could be severe; patient,
high-bred, beautiful women; all equal to the struggle,
the duty, and the difficulty of life, making this church
a centre of the civihzation then in the Colony and a
voice of thunder and power in the crises through
which town and Colony passed. CaU them up as
the background of your own life, and when you
come here to worship, let it not be in your own
name only and those of your feUow-worshippers,
but in the name of the mighty dead. How wide,
deep, rich, reverent, tender should our worship be,
and how thriUed with the high humanities of the
past and touched with the graces that bloomed on
men who were like rock and on women, sad-faced
but sweet, who ennobled the church in their day
and generation.
Finally, let this grow into a habit of our life;
not one service in which we hold in dear, reverent
memory the disciples of the Lord Jesus who have
preceded us in the faith and feUowship of this
church; let it become the habit of our mind, the
mood of our heart, so that we shaU perpetuaUy
five in the atmosphere of a goodly feUowship. I
ask you to open the windows of your life, and let
aU the beautiful faces look in upon it; let the past
of your own life, as it runs back into the mystic
past of other lives, greet, elevate, chasten and
ennoble aU your days.

[15]
Let me end as I began, with the two aspects of
life so real and so completely complementary; the
soUtary, the inviolable individuahty; that hfe that
we Uve alone with God, its duty, its accountabihty,
its suffering, its discipline, its unsharable existence.
Then the other, the divinely ordained feUowship.
You have often at sea, as I have, when the sun had
gone down £md the twUight was deepening into
the darkness, felt the utter, almost insupporteible,
loneliness of your httle ship on the wide, wide sea.
You have gone below and thought upon the gloomy
isolation tUl you got tired and sick at heart, and
before turning in, you have gone on deck once
more, to see the whole starry hosts out to bid
you welcome and to teU you that the very law by
which aU these Ughts are ruled in perfect order
is gripping your ship, holding it on its victorious
way. We are in awful truth individual, ^d we are
divinely joined in a feUowship across the contem
porary world, across the whole breath of history
and the whole sweep of the universe. We, with
aU other souls, hve and move and
have our being in God.

MR. BUTLER'S ADDRESS

lT the Choral Service, Sunday evening. May 4, Mendels
sohn's "Hymn of Praise" was sung by the choir and
a chorus of twenty voices, under the direction of Mr.
Wry. The Associate Minister, the Reverend Willis
H. Butler, made the address.

MR. BUTLER'S ADDRESS
THE service which we are enjoying this even
ing may not seem an altogether appropriate
manner of observing the Two-hundred and
Fiftieth Anniversary of a Church which was founded
by Puritans. It is popularly supposed that along
with everything else that is beautiful, the Puri
tans had no love for music. This, however, is not
strictly true. Some of the leading Puritans, not
ably John Milton, were not only lovers of music,
but were skiUed musicians. It was not music itself
which the Puritans so violently opposed. In their
minds music was associated with two institutions
which to them were equaUy detestable, the Es
tablished Church and the theatre. The vigor of
their attack agaiost what they quaintly caUed
"curious music," by which they meant artistic
singing, antiphonal chanting and the use of organs,
is readily explained by their determined attitude
to exclude from their services of worship every
thing that suggested the ritualism of the Church of
England. The congregation in Colonial days was famihar
with perhaps a half dozen tunes to which the psalms
19

[20]
were set and sung week after week in rotation, re
gardless of their length. A half hour was required
for the lining out and singing of some of the longer
ones. The position of Precentor was not an enviable
one. Judge SewaU, who led the singing in the Old
South Church, made the foUowing entry in his
diary under the date February 28, 1718: "I set
York tune and the congregation went out of it
into St. David's in the very second going over.
They did the same three weeks before. This is the
second sign. It seems to me an intimation for me
to resign the Precentor's place to a better voice.
I have through the divine long suffering and favor
done it for 24 years and now God in His providence
seems to caU me off, my voice being enfeebled."
It was about this time (1720) that the contro
versy about singing by note or singing by rule
arose and threatened to destroy the peace and
unity of many a church. Most of the ministers
advocated a much needed reform in the matter of
Church music, but the more conservative brethren
objected on the ground that the new style of sing
ing came from Rome, that it would lead to the
Church of England, and that it would result in the
introduction of organs. They declared that the
old style was more solemn, therefore much more
suitable and becoming. Speaking of the proposed
change, one objector remarked, "It looks very un
likely to be the right way, because that young people

[21]
faU in with it: They are not wont to be so forward
for anything that is good."
After many sermons had been preached and tracts
written on this subject the controversy ended in
the introduction of new tunes and this led to the
forming of that New England institution, the sing
ing school, in which young people met to practice
the unfanuhar tunes. Those who had learned to
sing were assigned special seats in the meeting
house, and so the choir came into existence, but the
practice of lining out the psalm continued untU the
choir, in some churches, impatiently refused to wait
for the Deacon to finish reading the line before they
started to sing it.
The woful prophecy that musical instruments
would soon foUow the introduction of new tunes
was speedily fulfilled. The violonceUo, or bass
viol, caUed in those days "The Lord's fiddle,"
was the first instrument to be used. Violins were
forbidden on the ground that they were too sug
gestive of dance music, but as a compromise
measure they were aUowed in some meetinghouses
provided they were played wrong end up. By
some strange casuistry, which reminds one of the
days of the Scribes and Pharisees, a violin played
it an inverted position ceased to be a violin and
became a smaU bass viol I
Our Puritan forefathers appear to have been
pecuharly prejudiced against the organ. In lyiS
an organ was sent from England as the gift of

[22]
Thomas Brattle to the Brattle St. Church in Boston.
For nine months the instrument lay unpacked in
the porch of the church to which it had been pre
sented, as the members could not conscientiously
accept it. It was finaUy transferred and set up in
King's Chapel.
From an article pubhshed in the Commercial
Gazette, Oct. 7, 1822, we learn that "a large and
elegant organ, imported from London in the Ship
London Packet by the Old South Society, is now
erecting in their church: it is said to be much
superior to any ever imported into this coimtry."
But even at this rather late day it was not without
some misgivings that the step was taken, the minister,
Rev. Benjamin Wisner, reluctantly giving his con
sent. Mendelssohn's "Hymn of Praise" was first sung
in i84o at a festival to commemorate the 4ooth
anniversary of the invention of the art of printing.
It is interesting to note that the first book that
was printed in this country was the Bay Psahn
Book in i64o, on the press that was set up in Cam
bridge in 1689. Notwithstanding its defects, this
metrical version of the Psalms met a real need and
was at once adopted by nearly every church in
the colony, and went through many editions.
Near the close of his life, Rev. Thomas Prince,
regretting that the book should, "on account of
the flatnesses in diverse places be whoUy laid aside,"
undertook a fresh revision, striving "after a yet

[23]
nearer approach to the inspired original, as weU
as to the rules of poetry." This version was in
troduced in the Old South Church the Sunday
foUowing the death of Mr. Prince in 1768 and
continued in use until 1786.
When one thinks of the service that is held to
night in this bmlding with its superb organ, its
choir, and the music to which the Psalms are sung,
one cannot fafl to be impressed with the contrast
presented by the old Meetinghouse on Wash
ington Street in which this church worshipped for
one hundred and forty years. The spirit of rever
ence, without which no worship is acceptable to
God, was there. Notwithstanding the simphcity
of the forms which he used there never
was a more devout worshipper
than the Puritan.

THE HISTORICAL DISCOURSE

s

UNDAY morning. May 11, Dr. Gordon delivered a
historical discourse, taking as his text " The Memory
of the just is blessed."
The devotional exercises included the hymn "Give
ear ye children to my laws," sung by the Congregation.

THE HISTORICAL DISCOURSE
"the memory of the just is blessed"
Proverbs lo, 7
HISTORY as a mighty, conscious force is
declared in the noble words of this ancient
Hebrew proverb. There are the souls of
the just, worthy of human remembrance, and there
is the just memory by which they are remembered.
These two forces, the just who are worthy of re
membrance, and the just memory by which they
are held in remembrance, are the channels of the
chief moral and rehgious influences in the world.
Without them it is difficult to see how God himself
could obtain adequate access to the human mind;
without them history in the highest sense would be
impossible. In this mighty order of conscious history, ten
derly, reverently, gratefuUy we place the Old South
Church today. I shaU give a rapid sketch of the
church from its founding in 1669 to the close of the
pastorate of my immediate predecessor in 1882;
it is a long story but a thrilling one.
27

[28]
I. The Founders
X HE Third Church of Boston, afterward known
as the Old South Church, was organized in May,
1669. That we may gain a more vivid idea of
that far distant time let us recaU that when the
Third Church in Boston was founded Shakespeare
had been in his grave only fifty-three years; Bacon
forty-three years; Hugo Grotius, the Dutch states
man and jurist, twenty-four years; Descartes, the
great French phflosopher, nineteen years, and
Ohver CromweU eleven years. At that time the
landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth was only
forty-nine years in the past; now it is nearly three
hundred. When the Third Church of Boston was
organized John MUton was hving in London, at
the age of sixty, with five more years of life before
him. John Dryden was thirty-eight, John Locke
thirty-seven, Spinoza thirty-six. Sir Isaac Newton
twenty-six, Leibnitz twenty-three, and Demiel De
Foe, the wizard of the world's chfldhood, was a
boy of ten. Thus the immediate historic back
ground and the great world figures in composition
with the vigorous men who founded this church
make a picture of extraordinary impressiveness, a
picture, too, rich in prophecy concerning the future.
The First Church of Boston was founded in
i63o and for the ensuing twenty years was the only
church in the town. In i65o, by the hearty con
currence of the First Church, the Second Church

[29]
was founded. These two churches were the sole
Puritan guardians of the religious life of the town
for the next nineteen years, and they would have
continued for some years longer to be the sole
ministers to the rehgious hfe of the community had
not a sharp and irreconcUable difference of opinion
originated in the membership of the First Church.
We came into existence as a church by the agency
of a family row; a. good, clean row, as we shaU see.
What was the trouble? The Rev. John Norton,
one of the ministers of the First Church, died in
1 663; the Rev. John Wilson, his coUeague, died
in 1667. These were eminent men; they were
graduates of Cambridge University, England,
thoroughly trained, cosmopohtan in mind, in cul
ture; they were ministers of the Anghcan com
munion who had been driven from that communion
for conscience' sake. They came to Boston and
in due time were chosen the ministers of the First
Church. They died, as I have said, one in i663, the other
in 1667. The First Church, bereaved of teacher and
pastor, turned in search of ministers worthy of
those whom they had lost. They speedfly found
one minister in a young man, bom in i632, the
Rev. James AUen, who was chosen and settled,
so far as we can discover, vdthout difference of
opinion. The church then fixed its eye upon a
prominent man, the Reverend John Davenport,
minister of the First Church in the colony of New

[3o]
Haven. The colony had been founded by him and
others, and for thirty years he had rendered iUus-
trious service there; he was an eminent man and
a godly. The majority of the members of the First
Church wanted Mr. Davenport to be their minister;
the minority objected on three groimds. Their
first objection w£is that Mr. Davenport was too
old; he was seventy; his work was practicaUy
done. Why should he be invited to come to Boston
to begin a new work when unequal to it? The
course of events proved that thus far the dissenters
were right, for Mr. Davenport hved only fifteen
months after his instaUation as minister of the
First Church of Boston. The second ground of
objection was that Mr. Davenport had not been
properly dismissed from his church in New Haven.
The third objection was the most serious; it was
on the question of baptism.
Baptism is a hght affair with us, I regret to say;
it was a matter of the profoundest concern to
Christians at that time, for if not absolutely
universal the general behef weis that Christian
baptism was necessary to salvation. Hence the hor
rible doctrine, sometimes held as a logical conse
quence, — of the damnation of unbaptized infants.
In regard to this quarrel about baptism, there
are three points in the controversy. First, members
of the church in fuU communion are those who have
been baptized and who have been the subjects of
regenerating grace, who are conscious that the

[3i]
Holy Spirit has changed their hearts from darkness
to hght emd from enmity to God to the love of
God; these alone are members of the church in
fuU communion. It was universaUy recognized
that members of the church in the highest sense
of the term are those who are conscious of spiritual
renewal, and who make that confession, with what
ever fears and uncertainties, as their veritable
state of heart. About this there was no contro
versy. The children of such persons were universaUy
regarded as included in the covenant of grace.
When the parents, such as I have described, were
dismissed, the children were dismissed with them.
When parents, such as I have described were ad
mitted into feUowship in a new church by letter,
their children were admitted wdth them; they were
chfldren of regenerated parents, and as such were
baptized and belonged so far to the church. There
was no difficulty about that second position; it
was universaUy admitted.
The trouble came with the third generation. The
chfldren of those chfldren, provided they did not
go on and experience reUgion, become converted,
conscious subjects of the Holy Spirit, entering intO'
fuU communion with the church of Christ; pro
vided they did not, but remained simply members.
of the church by baptism, what is to be done with,
their children? Are they to be baptized? "No,"
said the conservatives, with Mr. Davenport at their

[32]
head. "Yes," said the liberal men; "these chfldren
are not pageui chfldren." Here we have on our
hands the fight.
In anything that concerns famfly life, in any
serious difference over the chfldren of the church,
there is sure to be war. No man is wfld enough
to go about and say of the babies that they are
not good-looking; unless, indeed, he is wifling to
become one of the most xmpopular of men.
Mr. Davenport was cafled, the minority to the
contrary notwithstanding. Their opposition con-
tiauing, the First Church at length caUed a councfl
of the ministers and messengers of four neighboring
churches to give advice as to the treatment of its
dissenting brethren. They met, reviewed the case
piously, deplored the division, but advised that
the dissenting brethren be dismissed, that they
might found another church.
Thereupon twenty-nine men petitioned the First
Church for letters of dismission for themselves and
their famflies, that they might unite in a new church
feUowship, according to the advice of the councfl.
A meeting of the First Church was caUed to con
sider this request. The first thing done at the meet
ing, after the reading of the petition, was to exclude
the petitioners; they had no business there. Some
of theh wives remained, hoping to acquaint their
good husbands with what took place in the meet
ing; but they, too, were excluded. After their vrith-
drawal the Church proceeded to renew its cafl to

[33]
Mr. Davenport, and apparently no action was taken
at that meeting on the petition of the dissenters.
Their request for dismission was repeated several
times, both before and eifter the instaUation of Mr.
Davenport, but was never granted. At a meeting of
the First Church in March, 1669, it was formaUy
denied by vote, and at the same meeting the re
quest of the dissenting brethren for the calling of
another councfl was also refused.
"The dissenting brethren met to seek the Lord
to direct and guide them in considering what the
Lord cafled them to do in this their present distress."
The only thing possible seemed to be to cafl a
councfl of several churches for advice. This they
did. This second councfl made three attempts to
meet the ministers and brethren of the First Church
in conference, but each time their overtures were
rejected. They then reviewed the action of the
first councfl, reviewed the case between the First
Church and its dissenting brethren, and advised
that the latter might use their Christian liberty
to unite in another church feUowship, seceding
from the membership of the First Church.
The case was next reviewed by the magistrates.
Seven of them expressed their approval of the for
mation of a new church by the dissenters. The
Governor and five others expressed disapproval.
The Governor, by the way, and two of the five were
members of the First Church. The dissenters won
again on the third trial by a majority of one.

[34]
The matter was next taken up by the General
Court at two sessions thereof. Here, at the session
of 1671, two years after the formation of the Third
Church, the vindication of its friends was complete,
a large majority voting that they should be judged
innocent and unduly calumniated and misrepre
sented, although seventeen deputies dissented.,
Looking back upon it, we see that the quarrel
was a noble one. Both were right, both wrong;
each held a half-truth complementary to the half-
truth held by the other. The First Church was
absolutely right in claiming that the members of
the church should be men and women who were
conscious disciples of the Lord Jesus and under the
power of a great resolve to live in thought, in feel
ing, in action under the sovereignty of his Presence.
No church can last long unless founded upon that.
The religious life of the members of the church is
fundamental. They must be conscious disciples of
Jesus in inteUect, in heart, in wfll, desirous of ever
greater submission of their personality to his Divine
Presence. That was a great contention by our mother
church, but the next contention, that of the people
who formed the Third Church, was equaUy vital.
Christianity is a social affair; it includes the famfly,
society; it is a biological force. There was the
great truth to which those men and women bore
witness two hundred and fifty years ago. Chris
tianity is a biological force, and chfldren of Chris-

[35]
tian parents are bom hopeful members in the King
dom of God, and should never be aUowed to know
themselves as other than disciples of Jesus; dear,
accepted sons and daughters of the Lord God
Almighty. As I read the story I am immensely impressed
with the stem character and the independence of
the founders of the church. They almost lean back
ward, they are so independent. They remind me
of the two Scottish Highlanders lost in a smaU
boat off the West coast of Scotland. They knew
not what to do. One stood at the outlook, and the
other resorted to prayer, saying, "0 Lord, if you
wiU oidy lead our httle boat out of this fog to the
land, we shaU be forever beholden unto you."
Just then the other cried, "Stop! I see the land.
Let us not be beholden to anybody."
Pale and shadowy these men and women appear
after two hundred and fifty years; but they were
remarkable men and women. The dignity, the
patience, the sweetness of the women, their fine
self-control, and the heroic courage and rugged
integrity of the men impress one greatiy.
Thomas Thacher, the first minister of the Third
Church, was bom in Somersetshire, England, the
son of a vicar in the Enghsh Church. He was
bom in 1620, and at the age of fifteen came to
this country. It has been interesting to me to note
that the first minister of this church was an im
migrant, as the sixteenth minister was an immigrant.^

[36]
I have felt happier, less lonely, since I knew it.
Whatever contempt the intervening generations
might have for the class to whom I belong, I could
shake hands with Thomas Thacher. You have aU
heard of Thacher's Island, off Cape Ann. That
Island was named in recognition of the salvation
from disaster of two kinsmen of Thomas Thacher's
when the ship on which they safled was wrecked
in a storm off Cape Ann. Thacher's Island should
always recaU the first minister of the Third Church
of Boston. Thomas Thacher served as minister
to the church in Weymouth for twenty years; he
joined the First Church of Boston in 1667. After
the tumult arose, he, hke a wise man, asked for a
letter of dismission to the church in Charlestown.
He was independent of the quarrel, and when the
Third Church was organized he was selected to be
its first minister and was ordained in February,
1670. He was a physiciem, as weU as a minister.
We cannot teU much about his preaching; we know
that he was greatly revered. One clear and memor
able thing has come down to us, about this first
minister of the Old South. He was a man greatiy
gifted in prayer. The fervor and power of his soul
in prayer impressed everybody; he thus poured
new life into the little community whose beloved
leader he was for eight short years and a half.
He died at the early age of fifty-eight. An in
ventory of his estate was taken and you wfll be
interested to note two items in that inventory;

[37]
he left a slave maid and a slave young man — as
parts of his estate. What a strange thing it is to us,
living today, to think of a minister of Christ owning
slaves! What a strangely affecting glimpse that is
into a social order that has happily passed away!
Many of you have been in Westminster Abbey;
you have spent hours and days in that mausoleum
of the great dead of a thousand years of English
history; you have wandered about and read the
inscriptions, one after the other; you have said
that without knowledge, without sympathy, with
out historical imagination those inscriptions are as
blank and dumb as the hieroglyphics vrritten on
Egyptian tombs, obehsks and pyramids; that with
knowledge, sympathy, historical imagination you
can raise the dead through a thousand years, put
them in their environments, see them at their
separate tasks and aU together working, the great
generations and the generations of the great in
succession, tfll they have evolved the richness and
power and hope of the British empire of today.
The church register of the Old South Church is a
mere blank hieroglyph if we come to it without
knowledge, without sympathy, without piety, with
out the gift of historic imagination; but if we come
with these faculties the dead hve again; we see the
Founders at their task, manfuUy performing it,
buflding for us and for afl generations that have
intervened between them and us. As we behold
them, our minds are fifled with admiration and

[38]
reverence. They buflded better than they knew;
they founded better than they knew; they so
founded that what they founded has existed for
two hundred and fifty years. And with simflar
faith, simflar love and simflar devotion we can
help to make the church they founded two hundred
and fifty years ago prophetic of a life in the future
for a thousand years.

S

II. Colonial Leaders

AMUEL WILLARD, altogether the greatest
minister of the church throughout the Colonial
period, was bom in i64o, graduated from Harvard
CoUege in 1669, became minister of the church in
1678, and untfl his death in 1707, a period of twenty-
nine years and five months, was an acknowledged
leader throughout New. England. In 1701 he be
came vice-president of Harvard Coflege and served
in that office imtfl his death, declining to be made
president because he would, in that case, have been
obliged to leave his parish and take up his resi
dence in Cambridge. Twenty months before he
died he baptized one of the most gifted and famous
of American statesmen, Benjamin Franklin. This
quivering little mass of flesh hardly a day old was
carried across the wintry street on the 6th day of
January, 1706, to be baptized by Samuel WiUard,
the parents evidently thinking that the mid-winter
climate here was less to be dreaded than the torrid
climate in the other world.

[39]
Samuel Wfllard was preacher, lecturer, adminis
trator, and in every function uncommon; he was
leading citizen as weU as leading minister. For
the last nineteen years of his life he gave a monthly
lecture to which not only the thoughtful people
about here came, but students of divinity and
thoughtful persons from aU parts of New England.
Twenty years after his death these lectures were
pubhshed in a volume which it is an athletic feat
to lift and carry. For many years this book was
one of the chief sources of nourishment for the
theological student. I advise you to examine it,
and consider the nourishment upon which students
and others were fed to support them in their faith
in those days.
There are three striking, dramatic incidents in
the ministry of Samuel Wfllard. The first is the
reconcfliation of the mother church and the Third
Church. Again and again the Third Church had
taken steps toward a reconcfliation with the First
or mother church; each advance had been repeUed
vdth indignity; I do not think I state it too strongly
when I say with insult. Probably a few of the more
bitter had died in the thirteen years. At any rate,
in 1682, thirteen years after the division, a move
was made by the First Church toward a reconcflia
tion. A vote of the First Church was sent by Rev.
James AUen, the minister, to the Rev. Samuel
Wfllard. This was entertained most cordiaUy by
Mr. WiUard, who wrote in return saying that

[4o]
nothing would please him more than to bring £d)out
a complete reconcfliation of their differences. The
note in reply to this from the First Church is a
model of penitence and Christicm manliness:
Honoured, Worshipfull, Reverend, Beloved in the Lord
We have received your return by the worshipfuU
Mr. John Hull, esqr., and the reverend Mr. Samuel
WiUard to our motion to hear, wherein you express your
thankful reception and fuU concurrence with the con
dition of accommodation therein mentioned, which we
declare to be acceptable to us. And, wherein our sinful
inSrinities have been grievous to you or any of your
church, we mutually ask forgiveness of God and you.
And desire all offences we judge have been given us, may
be forgiven and forgotten, desiring to forgive others
even as we believe God for Christ's sake hath forgiven us.
And we further entreat that both our motion and your
return and this conclusion may be recorded with you,
as it shall be with us, in memory of a happy issue of our
uncomfortable dispute and the way of our peace.
Now the God of peace, that brought again from the
dead our Lord Jesus Christ, that great Shepherd of the
sheep, by the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you
perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you
that which is most well pleasing in Ms sight.
So pray, Honoured, Reverend, Beloved:
your brethren in the faith and
feUowship of the gospel,
James Allen,
John Wiswall,
with the full and unanimous consent of the brethren.
Surely this is beautiful. It is good to fight when
you have a good cause and good to win; it is sore

[41]
to be defeated when you have a bad cause; but
better stfll, when the fight is over, for both sides
to get together as brethren. Think what an ex
hibition of this we have had in our own country.
When I came to this country in 1781 the gulf
between the North and the South was deep and
almost impassable. The gulf has not only been
bridged, it has been drained and fifled up. There
is something to be said for the position of the
Southern lady, by whose side one of our historians
sat at dinner recently and who when asked if she
were interested in history, rephed, "No, I wemt to
let bygones be bygones!"
The second dramatic incident in the life of the
Third Church refers to the coming of Governor
Andros from England with a warrant to secure
equal ecclesieistical rights for Episcopahans in the
town of Boston. That sounds fair untfl you recaU
the fact that there were no equal rights in England
for anybody but Episcopahans; that the two
ablest Puritan ministers, John Howe and Richard
Baxter, were sacrificed because they were aposties
of Jesus and freedom. Andros cafled together the
ministers of the town of Boston and told them that
they must bufld a chapel for the Anghcans. A
modest request, surely. You note the faces of the
ministers with a considerable frown on them. The
second request was stifl more interesting: "You
must pay the salary of the minister of the Anghcan
chapel." The frown deepens. The third request

[ 42 ]
was stifl more appalling: it was not a request, it
was an ultimatum. The Governor requisitions the
meetinghouse of the Old South for the Anglicans tfll
such time as they shaU have a chapel of their own;
the meetings must be held at a time to suit him, and
the ministers of the church under requisition must
arrange their devotions in the odd hours of the day.
Mr. WiUard and his men protested at each step, in
the most vigorous and memly fashion. They told the
Governor that their meetinghouse was their own
property. The Governor told them in reply that
he owned the patents of the Colony and vacated
them aU by a word, and that aU the meeting
houses in the Colony belonged to him.
Three years of this sort of thing stirred the free
men of Boston. They appointed a committee of
pubhc safety, and arrested the Governor and some
of his men and threw them into jafl. For this they
undoubtedly would have suffered capital punish
ment had not a revolution occurred, had not
James II fled to France, had not Wflham and Mary
ascended the throne in his stead. This commit
tee of pubhc safety took Governor Andros, put
him on board a ship, and sent him home as an un
desirable citizen. A cleaner, fiuaer, manlier deed
has never been done in the history of Boston than
that; and Samuel Wfllard and his men were in it
for aU they were worth. Examples they are of
the kind of men who cared for the Old South Church
in that day.

[43]
The third dramatic incident refers to a sea fight.
A piratical vessel under command of one Captain
Pounds raided the vessels on our coast and tem-
porarfly destroyed the commerce of the town of
Boston. Captain Pease with his Lieutenant, mem
bers of Mr. Wfllard's congregation, got together a
crew, armed a sloop and set forth to find the robber.
They found the vessel in Vineyard Sound. After
a bloody fight, they captured the vessel and re
turned with their prize; and aU the ways of the
sea leading into Boston were made safe and calm.
Captain Pease lost his life in the fight. Tender and
impressive must have been the service in the Old
South Church the foUowing Sunday when a coUec-
tion was taken in aid of the widow and four father
less chfldren of the heroic man, and also for the
famflies of the other men who had lost their lives
in maintaining the freedom of the sea.
Samuel WiUard was an uncommon man; he was
great as a teacher, administrator and as an influence;
he was perhaps the strongest inteUectual and moral
force in the New England of his time. There is a
good story that shows that Mr. Wfllard had a
happy sense of humor. He had a son-in-law who
was a minister; an exceUent writer, but, it would
seem, not a very good speaker. Mr. Wfllard ex
changed pulpits with him one morning. The outcry
against the sermon of the son-in-law was fierce.
It was the poorest sermon they had heard time out
of mind; they begged him never to exchange with

[44]
that man again, even if he was his son-in-law.
Mr. WiUard, like a wise man, took his discipline m
patience and calmness. Two years passed; he
borrowed of his son-in-law that same sermon and
preached it to that same congregation, who, like
many another congregation since his day, had for
gotten aU about the sermon. The chorus of praise
was tremendous. Mr. Wfllard had never exceeded
that effort; they begged a copy of the sermon to
print for pubhc circulation. "He that hath ears
to hear, let him hear."
The most famous layman of this period, and a
great leader, was Judge SewaU. He, hke so many
of the early men, was an immigrant. The Judge
was bom at Horton, England, in 1662; he came to
this country with his parents in 1661 ; they settled
at Newbury. He was graduated from Harvard
Coflege in 1671 and united with the Old South
Church in 1677 at the age of twenty-five. He married
a daughter of a founder of the church, John Hufl,
and came into possession of a very considerable
fortune. He became Magistrate in i684; CounciUor
1692; Judge of Superior Court in 1692; the last
ten years of his judgeship he was Chief Justice.
In addition he was a judge of probate and had
access to the wflls of his friends, which also became
an item in his after experience.
His first wife and he hved together nearly forty-
two years. They had fourteen chfldren. The
second wife lived only seven months; the third

[45]
wife was a Newton lady. The Judge was good-
looking; he was a social force in the new com
munity; he was welcomed everywhere and went
everywhere, was a good talker and he had a good
memory. He was the first to protest against African
slavery; he wrote a noble pamphlet on the selling
of Joseph by his brethren; he was one of the first
voices in what became one of the noblest sym
phonies in our whole history. Samuel SewaU was
a compound, a mixture of goodness and gossip;
of justice and utter triviahty, of straightforward
hving and skflful economic diplomacy. He was a
great influence, a good influence, but a mixed in
fluence. He is best known to you through his con
nection with the witchcraft craze. Here, however,
only thirty-two people lost their lives in that panic
and craze, whereas in Great Britain thirty thou
sand died, in France seventy-five thousand, in
Germany one hundred thousand, and a proportion
ate number in Switzerland, Sweden, Italy, and Spain.
I repeat that New England had a loss of only thirty-
two hves; and yet every scribbler on freedom refers
to the horrible persecution and the miscarriage of
justice here, and says nothing about what happened
in the rest of the world. Judge SewaU, you recaU,
after condemning these poor deluded souls to be
hanged, repented and wrote a confession of his
guflt and a prayer for forgiveness, to be read be
fore his fellow-Christians. He stood with bowed
head in the Meetinghouse whfle the confession was

[46]
being read. The Chief Justice took a different
view. He said, "When I condemned those people
I beheved that I was doing right, and a judge must
always do what he considers right at the time."
Here you have both sides.
Two men fittingly bring us to the close of the
Colonial period. Dr. Joseph SewaU and Thomas
Prince. Joseph SewaU was the fourth minister
of the Church. He was graduated from HarvEu-d
CoUege in the class of 1707, at the age of nineteen;
he became coUeague to Mr. Pemberton, an ex
ceUent scholar and an eloqpient preacher, in i7i3,
and was for seventeen years his father's minister.
One can imagine how deep a joy it was to the old
Judge to sit for seventeen years under the preaching
of his beloved son. Mr. Sewcdl received the degree
of Doctor of Divinity from Glasgow University.
He contributed a fund to that University, after he
received his degree, not before, in the interest of
poor students; the Old South Church through that
minister is connected with Glasgow University and
the education in aU these generations of worthy,
poor students. Dr. SewaU was chosen President of
Harvard CoUege; he declined in the interest of his
own church. He was in no way a great man, but
he was good-looking, he was worthy, he was benev
olent in feeling and in action, he was serene in
spirit, and for nearly fifty-six years he was the
minister of the Old South Church. He holds the
record for length of service, and I think is likely to

[47]
hold it for many years to come. We have many
church records in his handwriting; they are models
of neatness emd accuracy; the character of the man
is in his penmanship. His coUeague, Thomas
Prince, was born a year earher but graduated in
the same class.
They were classmates, and became coUeagues in
1 718, and for forty years they tofled together side
by side. They differed in opinion often, but always
with good wfll. Each kept a journal and both
journals reveal nothing but noble men, devoted
friends. It was a romance, that co-pastorship;
their friendship was hke that of David and Jona
than. Prince was a much traveUed man for his
time, saw many places, many cities, many famous
men. He was a great coUector of books and manu
scripts; where he got them I do not know, and he
has not told whether they were borrowed and
never returned, or bought! If he bought them all
he must have been a wealthy man. His library
was rich in books and manuscripts. It was stored
in the tower of the Old South Meetinghouse, on
the comer of Weishington and Milk streets. It
was raided by the British in the Revolution and
many of its most valuable possessions were carried
to England. There is httle doubt that some of these
manuscripts are now hidden in London libraries.
What was left was coUected and finaUy placed
for safekeeping in our Boston Public Library. The
ministers and the deacons of the Old South Church

[48] ^
are the trustees for aU time of that hbrary. It is
owned by the Old South Church, not by the Boston
Pubhc Library; any time, by the payment of twenty-
five hundred doUars, the Prince Library can be re
claimed. The history of New England could not
be written without that library; it is precious be
yond words. It is the best monument to the far-
sighted humanity of Thomas Prince. He was a
pioneer among historians, and a man with the in
stincts of a scholar. He died at the age of
seventy-one after having served this church forty
fuU years, the holder of the second record in length
of service.
You recaU the incident wrought into power and
fire by LongfeUow when the French fleet had set
out to destroy Boston. If you think the incident
overdrawn, remember that a President of Yale
University said that the event was. one of the pro
foundest causes for thanksgiving afl over New
England. Those men beheved that God intervened
to care for a civfl community, foimded in freedom
and devoted to the kingdom of God. ShaUow is the
faith that does not include behef in the Almighty's
interest and defence of the supreme causes of hu
manity. Here is the incident, and the prayer of
Mr. Prince according to the poet:

[49]
A fleet with flags arrayed
Sailed from the port of Brest,
And the Admiral's ship displayed
The signal: "Steer southwest"
For this Admiral D'Anville
Had sworn by cross and crown
To ravage with fire and steel
Our helpless Boston Town.
There were rumors in the street.
In the houses there was fear
Of the coming of the fleet.
And the danger hovering near.
And while from mouth to mouth
Spread the tidings of dismay,
I stood in the Old South,
Saying humbly: "Let us pray!
"0 Lord! we would not advise;
But if in thy Providence
A tempest should arise
To drive the French Fleet hence.
And scatter it far and wide.
Or sink it in the sea.
We should be satisfied.
And thine the glory be."
This was the prayer I made.
For my soul was all on flame,
And even as I prayed
The answering tempest came;

[5o]
It came with a mighty power,
Shaking the windows and walls,
And tolling the bell in the tower.
As it tolls at funerals.
The lightning suddenly
Unsheathed its flaming sword
And I cried: "Stand still, and see
The salvation of the Lord!"
The heavens were black with cloud.
The sea was white with hail.
And evermore fierce and loud
Blew the October gale.
The fleet it overtook.
And the broad sails in the van
Like the tents of Cushan shook.
Or the curtains of Midian.
Down on the reeling decks
Crashed the o'erwhelming seas;
Ah, never were there wrecks
So pitiful as these!
Like a potter's vessel broke
The great ships of the line;
They were carried away as a smoke.
Or sank like lead in the brine.
0 Lord! before thy path
They vanished and ceased to be.
When thou didst walk in wrath
With thine horses through the sea!

[5i]
III. The Church in the Revolution

W.

E come now to the most dramatic and the
most famous part of the history of the Old South
Church, the part that it played in the American
Revolution. As we begin the thriUing narrative,
so weU known to most of you, we must remark
that at this period the leadership passed from the
minister of the church to the laymen of the church
and congregation. Hitherto it had been otherwise.
There was no layman in the town of Boston at aU
equal in power or in influence to Samuel WiUard
during his twenty-nine years of service in this
church. Ebenezer Pemberton, Joseph SewaU,
Thomas Prince were afl genuine leaders; Judge
SewaU was a subordinate person in comparison
with the ministers of the church; the period on
which we are now entering in the history of our
church finds the reverse to be the case.
Mr. Cumming, who died before the forces of the
Revolution were in fuU command, served the church
only about two years; he was a man of abflity of
his own kind but he left no impression upon the
general community. Mr. Blair and Mr. Bacon
served the church briefly, Mr. Blair for nearly
three and Mr. Bacon a little over four years; and
although men of abflity and high character they
did not read the signs of the times, and left no im
pression upon the Old South Church or the town of
Boston. Mr. Hunt served the church from 1771

[52]
untfl his death in 1776; he was greatly beloved by
the people and sincerely mourned when he died;
his ministry of high spirituedity was often after
ward recalled, but he was too frafl in body and
altogether unfitted for commanding leadership in
the stormy time which had now arrived.
The laymen were the leaders, and chief of these
was Samuel Adams. His father and mother were
members of the Old South Church. His grand
father and grandmother had been members and
he himself became a member in 1789 and was in
fuU communion with the church for the last four
teen years of his life. He was bom in Boston in
1722, just one hundred years before the birth of
General Grant. He was graduated from Harvard
in 1740, at the age of eighteen. It is sometimes
said that he began the study of law to please his
father and that he left it to please his mother. He
entered one business enterprise after another and
fafled in them aU. He took to politics and was at
once an immense success. He was a representative
at the General Court and became Clerk of the House.
During his service here his work was of an ex
traordinary value, his correspondence with prom
inent persons in aU parts of the Colony being
voluminous and of vital importance.
Adams repudiated the idea advanced by Franklin
and others of a representation in the British Parlia
ment of the American Colonies. He was the author
of the idea of the Continental Congress and was a

[53]
representative in that Congress from 1774 to 1781;
he was one of the signers of the Declaration of
Independence. He won over many influential men
to the American cause: John Hancock, the wealthy
Boston merchant, Dr. Joseph Warren, one of the
most upright and influential men of the time,
Josiah Quincy, and memy other vahant souls were
won to the cause through the insight and the in
spiring personal leadership of Samuel Adams.
Adams was not great as a speaker, nor as a con
structive statesman; in caUing out and organizing
the latent forces of the revolution he was matchless.
Later in hfe he was Lieutenant Governor, and stiU
later for several years he was Governor of the
Commonwealth. He died at the age of eighty-one,
in i8o3.
Passing to the church, let us see what part the
church played in these tumifltuous years. In the
first place, on June 10, 1768, an English frigate
arrived to enforce the new revenue laws, and seized
a vessel belonging to John Hancock. The free men
of Boston felt that it was an outrage that a vessel
belonging to a citizen of Boston should be seized
by a frigate from England. The selectmen of the
town caUed a meeting in Faneufl HaU; Faneuil
HaU was not big enough to hold the crowd and
the Old South Meetinghouse was thrown open and
packed to overflowing.
A committee was chosen, to protest against the
outrage to Governor Bernard, and to obtain from

[54] •
him an honorable settlement. The case was settled,
patched up, after a whfle; the Governor was con
cessive and the patriots were conservative. That
was their strength. They considered every step
that they took. The settlement was fairly satis
factory on both sides, good enough for a beginning.
In 1770 the King street massacre occurred. For
seventeen months two regiments had been quartered
in the town of Boston, to the disgust of the free
men. More and more strained became the relations
of the citizens and the soldiers; more frequently
insulting words passed between them, tiU one day
on King street, the people being especiafly aggres
sive, the soldiers shot down six of them. Next day,
in the afternoon, the Old South Church was opened
again and a crowd of 2000 men gathered, with
Samuel Adams as their leader. He was sent to the
Governor to ask that these regiments be removed
from the town and quartered in Castle WiUiam.
The Governor again was concessive, being anxious
to avoid trouble; this time the patriots were not so
conservative. The Governor consented to the re
moval of one regiment. Samuel Adams went to the
Old South Meetinghouse and reported the Gov
ernor's message, saying as he delivered the report,
"The removal of two or none!" Whereupon the
unanimous vote was, "Both or none!"
Mr. Adams returned to the Governor and re
ported the vote. The Governor surrendered and
these two regiments were sent to be quartered

[55]
henceforth m Castle Wflliam. They were afterward
known in Parhament by the name of "Sam Adams's
regiments"; because wherever he wanted them to
go, they went. Thereafter on each successive anni
versary of the King street massacre a pubhc com
memoration was held in the Old South Meetmg-
house and a noted patriotic speaker was chosen to
express the thoughts and feelings of the free men of
Boston. In 1772 Dr. Joseph Warren dehvered an oration
which stirred the town to its depths, giving an able
account in constitutional law of the relations that
existed between the Colonies and Great Britain
and preaching with great eloquence his ideas of
freedom. Dr. Joseph Warren appeared as an orator
three years later, coming in at one of the windows
of the church, part of his audience being composed
of the British troops and part of Boston patriots.
The next series of meetings held in the Old South
Meetinghouse by the patriots was in connection
with the famous Tea Party. You wfll remember
that the first ship, Dartmouth, arrived at Boston and
anchored below the custom house November 28,
1773. She was not aUowed to land the tea con
signed to this port by the East India Company,
because the port w£is to be taxed when the tea was
landed. The meetings began in the Old South Church on
this date, the 28th of November, and they were con
tinued (and no one complained of the length of

[56]
time spent in the church) tfll the i6th of December,
the same year. The Dartmouth was joined by the
Eleanor and the Beaver, and these three vessels,
anchored near Griffin's Wharf, awaited their fate.
At the meetings held in the church three votes
were passed unanimously: first, that the tea be
sent back whence it came; second, that it be sent
back with the tax impaid; third, that it be sent
back in the vessels that brought it. The best de
scription of this Tea Party extant is found in Car-
lyle's Frederick the Great. Dr. Manning in his essay
on Samuel Adams quotes a part of it ; I think you wfll
like to read the whole accoimt: i
"The Boston Tea (same day). Curious to re
mark, whfle Frederick is writing this letter 'Thurs
day, December i6th, 1778,' what a commotion is
going on, far over seas, at Boston, New England,
in the 'Old South Meetinghouse,' there in regard
to three Enghsh Tea-Ships that are lying embargoed
in Grifiin's Wharf, for above a fortnight past.
(The case is weU known and stfll memorable to
mankind.) "This Thursday, accordingly by 10 in the morn
ing, in the 'Old South Meetinghouse,' Boston is
assembled and country people to the number of
2,000; — and Rotch never was in such a company
of human Friends before. They are not uncivil
to him (cautious people, heedful of the verge of the
Law) ; but they are peremptory, to the extent of —
1 Frederick the Great, Book XXI, Chapter V.

[57]
Rotch may shudder to think what. ' I went to the
custom house yesterday,' said Rotch, 'your Com
mittee of Ten can bear me witness; and demanded
clearance and leave to depart; but they would not;
were forbidden, they said!' 'Go then, sir; get you
to the Governor lumseK; a clearance, and out of
harbour this day: hadn't you better?' Rotch is
weU aware that he had; hastens off to the Governor
(who has vanished to his country-house, on pur
pose); Old South Meetinghouse adjourning imtfl
3 p.m., for Rotch's return with clearance.
" At 3 o'clock no Rotch, nor at 4, nor at 5; mis-
ceUaneous plangent intermittent speech instead,
mostly plangent, in tone sorrowful rather than in
dignant: — at a quarter to 6, here at length is
Rotch; sun is long since set. — Has Rotch a clear
ance or not? Rotch reports at large, willing to be
questioned and cross-questioned: 'Governor ab
solutely would not! My Christian friends, what
could I or can I do?' There aie by this time about
7000 people in (about) Old South Meetinghouse,
very few taUow-hghts in comparison, almost no
hghts for the mind, either, and it is difficult to
answer. Rotch's report done, the Chairman (one
Adams, 'American Cato,' subsequently so caUed)
dissolves the sorrowful 7000 with these words:
'This meeting declares that it can do nothing more
to save the country.' WUl merely go home, then,
and weep. Hark, however: almost on the instant,
in front of Old South Meetinghouse a terrific War

[58]
whoop and about fifty Mohawk Indians, — with
whom Adams seems to be acquainted; and speaks
without Interpreter: Aha! —
"And, sure enough, before the stroke of 7, these
fifty painted Mohawks are forward, without noise,
to Griffin's Wharf have put sentries aU round there;
and, in a great sflence of the neighborhood, are
busy, in three gangs, upon the dormant Tea-ships;
opening their chests, and pimctuaUy shaking them
out into the sea. 'Listening from the distance, you
could hear distinctly the ripping open of the chests
and no other sound.' About 10 p.m., aU was finished;
342 chests of tea flung out to infuse in the Atlantic;
the fifty Mohawks gone like a dream; and Boston
sleeping more sflently even than usual." The old
South Meetinghouse then enacted history of world
wide significance.
The next revolutionary event in which the church
is connected is less widely known. General Gage,
as you know, sent an expedition to Lexington in
1775, Aprfl, to capture Samuel Adams £uid John
Hancock, who were temporarfly staying there; afl
other offenders were to be forgiven; these two were
to be executed for high treason. Of the famous
ride of Paul Revere we aU know, but the part played
by a member of the Old South Church, equaUy im
portant, is not so well known.
There were two messengers despatched that
night to alarm the countryside and especiaUy to
warn those two great leaders to withdraw. Paul

[59]
Revere went by sea; the sea course was much shorter
and he got to Lexington first and actuaUy warned the
patriots. WiUiam Dawes, member of the Old South
Church, was the other rider and he took the land
course, with great difficulty eluding the British
guard at the Neck; he crossed the Charles river at
the Brighton bridge, proceeded through Cam
bridge and got to Lexington only a little later than
Paul Revere.
These two men were riding together, having done
part of their work, when they came upon a defight
ful young patriot of the time, Dr. Prescott, who was
returning from a visit to his sweetheart. Miss
MuUiken. The three proceeded together tfll they
found themselves in the neighborhood of a com
pany of British officers. Prescott, who was the best
moimted of the three, urged his horse and cleared
the stone waU and escaped. The British officers
at once gave chase to Dawes, who spurred his steed
to its best and rode right up toward an empty farm
house, slapping his hand on his leathern breeches
and shouting, "HeUo, boys! I've got two of them!"
Whereupon the officers, suspecting a trap, turned
their horses and fled! Dawes escaped, losing only
his watch; even that was found afterwards. The
exploit of WiUiam Dawes is just as memorable,
just as inspiring as that of Paul Revere, but he stiU
waits for a LongfeUow to give lyric expression to the
glorious exploit of that evening and the foUowing
day. Paul Revere was not so lucky as his two

[6o]
friends. He rode aU unconsciously into a British
detachment and had to surrender.
In the siege of Boston, from 1776 to 1776 there
is no record of any meeting on the part of the Old
South Church anywhere. The church was without
ministers, the members were dispersed. Prac
ticaUy the church appeared to be extinct. The
Meetinghouse was desecrated in a tndy infamous
way. It must be added, however, that in times of
war churches have been taken not infreqpiently for
mflitary uses. Other churches in the town of Boston
were so used by the British, they were so taken and
used in New York, but upon no church did the
British wreak such vengeance as they did upon the
Old South Meetinghouse. The pulpit was taken
down and cut to pieces; the pews were taken out
emd burned; the finest pew of aU, Deacon Hub
bard's pew, was taken and tumed into a hog-pen.
Hundreds of loads of dirt were carted into the
church and spread upon the floor to make the riding
safe and easy and the faU without injury, if the
rider happened to faU. One part of the gaUery was
spared for the officers and their lady friends, and a
bar was erected, at which liquor was sold to the
officers and their friends. Another kind of bar was
shot across one of the doors and the soldiers in
their exercises cleared the bar, or tried to, and
landed inside the church. The regiment that thus
desecrated our former Meetinghouse was the 17th
Light Horse Dragoons. This was an appaUing

[6i]
sight to the good people of Boston; the soldiers
carried their sacrflege further. The parsonage, the
house in which John Wmthrop had lived and died,
which Samuel Wfllard, Ebenezer Pemberton and
Dr. Joseph SewaU had occupied, was destroyed.
The residence of Samuel Adams was rendered un
inhabitable. Here let me record a few episodes. The first
goes back to 1744, when Colonel PepperreU, nephew
by marriage of Joseph SewaU, and Captain Gridley
of the Old South Church, headed an expedition
against the French in Cape Breton. Under Colonel
PepperreU the great fortress of Louisburg was taken.
There are members of this church and congrega
tion today who are descendants of those who went
and took part in that great expedition. This episode
was significant in the training which it gave to
Gridley, who afterward, as a first-class engineer,
buflt the forts on Lake George, who also rendered
admirable service at Bunker HiU and at the siege
of Boston.
The second episode is of a very different character
and concerns one of the most pathetic incidents in
our entire history. In 1761 a httle slave girl of
seven, who was kidnapped from Africa and brought
hither, was offered, among other slaves, for sale
in the town. Mr. and Mrs. John Wheatley went
to look the slaves over, as you might a set of Boston
buU terriers, to see if there happened to be any in
the number suitable for their service. Mrs. Wheat-

[62]
ley was greatly moved by this httle African slave
girl of seven years of age, and took her home in her
carriage. Sensitive, obedient, clinging, loving and
lovable, this chfld gained the confidence of the
entne famfly. One of the Wheatley daughters
taught her to read and write. In a few months she
made amazing progress. She vrrote the most beau
tiful of aU the eulogies that were written of Dr.
Joseph SewaU; of aU the testimonials to his work,
that of PhyUis Wheatley was thought to be the
best. She became a member of the Old South
Church in 1771, and when Washington took com
mand of the American forces, under the old ehn at
Cambridge, PhyUis Wheatley wrote a poem in his
honor and sent him a note. Here is General Wash
ington's acknowledgment; what a superb gentle
man he was!
"Miss PhyUis: Your favor of the 26th of October
did not reach my hands tiU the middle of December.
Time enough, you wiU say, to have given an answer
ere this. Granted. But a variety of important
occurrences, continuaUy interposing to distract the
mind and withdraw the attention, I hope wiU
apologize for the delay, and plead my excuse for the
seeming, but not real, neglect. I thank you most
sincerely for your polite notice of me in the elegant
lines you enclosed: and however undeserving I
may be of such encomium and panegyric, the style
and maimer exhibit a striking proof of your poeti
cal talents; in honor of which, as a tribute justly

[63]
due to you, I would have pubhshed the poem had
I not been apprehensive that, whfle I only meant
to give the world this new instance of your genius,
I might have incurred the imputation of vanity.
This, and nothing else, determined me not to give
it a place in the pubhc prints.
" If you should ever come to Cambridge, or near
headquarters, I shaU be happy to see a person so
favored by the Muses, to whom nature has been so
hberal and beneficent in her dispensations. I am,
with great respect, your obedient, humble servant,
Geo. Washington."
Here is a sample of PhyUis Wheatley 's muse:
'Twas mercy brought me from my pagan land.
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God — that there's a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye —
" Their color is a diabolic dye."
Remember, Christians, Negroes black as Cain
May be refined, and join th' angelic train.
I have been deeply interested with the discovery
that we have so many descendants in this church
today of those who took part in the Revolutionary
war. Time woifld fafl me to mention aU. Let me
take the deacons of the church as a parable, with
holding aU names. The great grandfather of one
deacon, and the grandfather of the present treas
urer of the Old South Society, fought in that war

[64]
and obtained a bounty coat for meritorious service;
another deacon is connected by four lines of an
cestry with the fighting, emd strange enough to
say afl four lines had representatives in the battle
of Ticonderoga; two spent the winter with Wash
ington in VaUey Forge and partook of the bounties
that were then so abundant! I have been interested
to discover it was on the maternal side that the
fighting representatives were mostly found. There
is only one officer of the church who has not been
able to find any of his ancestors who fought in the
Revolution; he coupled this confession with the
remark that he was very glad because they would
have been obhged to fight against the ancestors of
his minister, who were on the wrong side!
The blood of the Revolution is in the veins of the
Old South Church today. It is a mihtant church, fuU
of the fire and spirit of '76. To know this I hope is an
inspiration to good citizenship and good Christianity.
Here a remark is in order respecting the restora
tion of the Old South Meetinghouse. For five
years, from 1777 to 1782, the Old South congrega
tion met in King's Chapel. Let that always be
remembered. King's Chapel took the Old South
people in, made room for them when they had no
place in which to gather and preserve their ecclesi
astical organization. Five years is a long time for
one church to entertain another church as its guest.
King's Chapel did this and. offered to continue it
longer ff necessary.

[65]
After the war Boston was poor; the leading men
had lost their wealth, their property had depre
ciated, they were in great straits; the repair of the
Meetinghouse was a great burden, but it was done,
and done by the people of the church. They ap
pealed to the town, that the Old South Meeting
house had so magnificently served, but nobody in
the town was able to do anything toward repairing
the desecrated church. The wiU was not wanting,
but the power was wanting; every one had enough
to do to take care of his own special obligations.
The Meetinghouse was at length repaired and
on the Lord's day, March 2, 1783, the church re
turned to its old ecclesiastical home, repeating
doubtless to itself, "The ransomed of the Lord
shaU return and come to Zion, with songs and
everlasting joy upon their heads; they shaU obtain
joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shaU flee
away." Here foUows the anthem which was sung
that day; the music was composed by WiUiam
Selby, then organist at King's Chapel. How the
anthem must have roUed throughout the renovated
church, and stiU more what music it must have made
in the happy hearts and greatened minds of those
men and women who had survived seven years of
Revolutionary war.
Behold, God is my salvation,
I will trust and not be afraid;
For the Lord Jehovah is my strength and song,
He also is become my salvation;

[66]
He hath raised up the tabernacle of David that is
fallen;
He hath closed up the breaches thereof.
He hath raised up the ruins.
He hath built it as in the days of old
And caused his people to rejoice therein.
Praise the Lord, call upon his name.
Declare his doings among the nations.
Make mention that his name is exalted.
Sing unto the Lord for he hath done excellent things;
This is known in all the earth.
Cry out and shout, thou inhabitant of Zion,
For great is the Holy One of Israel in the midst of thee.
Hallelujah! for the Lord Omnipotent reigneth!

IV. The Church and the Civil War

W.

E are stiU near the period of the Civfl War,
and the imagination of every patriotic man is
touched by a thousand appeals. Decoration Day,
with its thinned ranks of worn veterans, appeals
to thought and feeling vividly and deeply. In
every graveyard, in every hamlet throughout New
England, throughout the whole loyal North, one
wfll find the Stars and Stripes planted by a sohtary,
humble grave, here, there and yonder. Every
viUage has it soldiers' monument, telling what the
struggle meant, not only to the great cities, but
to every centre of population in the North. One
of the most affecting of these symbols is the corridor

[67]
of Memorial HaU, Cambridge. Pass through that
corridor and read the names on those white tablets
and realize what the Civfl War meant in the sacri
fice of the best and bravest of that generation.
This mode of approach deepens feeling, quickens
thought and gives a more comprehensive sense of
that burden of strife, alternate hope and despair
which lay for four years upon the soul of a great
people. The Civfl War I regard as one of the great
est wars in aU history. It was fought on moral
grounds and for moral causes, and its triumph is
an immense help to faith in the moral govern
ment of the world. Carlyle used to say that
the French Revolution saved him from atheism to
faith in a moral Deity, because there and then a
century of lust and shame, robbery and contempt,
lying and cruelty, burned itseK out under the
government of the just God.
The period to which we come in the history of our
church is a period of division and searching of
heart. Boston was divided between proslavery and
antislavery. . PhiUips Brooks once told me that in
the late forties, when the waves of opinion were
running wfld and high as if before hurricanes, he
and his playmates used to crowd into the Boston
Theatre in order to hiss the abohtionists. He said,
"We did not know anything about the reason of our
hissing, but enjoyed it. The poUce would appre
hend us and box our ears and throw us into the
street; we waited for another chance to go m with

[68]
a fresh crowd and hiss the abolitionists again!"
Here is a sign of the tumult and confusion of
opinion. This condition of things in the city reflected
itseK in the Old South congregation; proslavery
and antislavery sat side by side; one man praising
his minister when there was mention made of a
black man in the sermon, and another saying,
"Too much nigger in that discourse." This divi
sion of opinion in the city and in the church was
reflected in the ministry.
Dr. Blagden was from the South, he was pro-
slavery; the institution seemed to him of divine
origin, the Bible was in its favor. It was good for
the black man to be in bondage and good for the
white man to have him there. The institution of
slavery was good! His junior coUeague, Dr. Man
ning, coming from New England, vrith a richer
humemity, with a sense of the cruelty of barter and
exchange in flesh and blood and the reduction of
human hfe to the level of a chattel, was an anti-
slavery man in every Sbre of his being. These two
men differed on the temperance question. Dr.
Blagden said, "I am in favor of temperance, but
what is temperance? It is the moderate or rational
use of alcohol." "Every creature of God is good,"
was one of his favorite texts, and "Take a httie
wine for thy stomach's sake and thine infirmities."
His coUeague, looking upon the havoc wrought
by the use of alcohol, especiaUy among the poor.

[69]
could think of temperance only under the form of
total abstinence.
Here then were the divisions. It was as if an
earthquake had gone before them, and men were
walking and jumping across yawning chasms. They
were high-minded men, £uid no two men then ahve
could have been brought together who were nobler
in their purpose and spirit than Dr. Blagden and
Dr. Manning. It is easy enough to be united when
there £U"e no great issues burning in the hearts of
of the people, and setting chfldren against their
parents and parents against their chfldren. It
takes men of a different stamp to work together
with high composure when the community and the
church and their own minds are rent with vast
antagonisms! Fort Sumter was fired upon and compeUed to
surrender on the 12th of Aprfl, 1861. What took
place? The two ministers stood on one platform,
as Dr. Blagden said, absolutely one. The whole
church stood together as one; aU Boston was one
man when the Flag had been fired upon. The first
great scene in the Old South Church at this period
was on the first of May, 1861, nineteen days after
the government fort in the harbor of South Caro
lina had been taken by Confederate forces. As in
Revolutionary days, so now, the patriots of Boston
tumed toward the Old South Meetinghouse. The
standing committee erected a platform under the
tower for the use of speakers and a vast concourse'

[7o]
of people surrounded the church. The chairmEtn
of the standing committee, Mr. George Homer,
presided. The United States flag was flung to the
breeze from the tower of the church, amid the pro
foundest enthusiasm and emotion. Here are a
few sentences from the remarks of Mr. Homer;
his words show the feeling of the laymen of the day.
"In the dark and stormy times of our Revolu
tionary history," Mr. Homer said, "it was within
the consecrated waUs of the Old South Church that
our patriotic fathers were accustomed to assemble
and take counsel together. Here Warren and Han
cock and the Adamses and their associates met and
poured out their protest against British oppression;
here within a few feet of where we stand Benjeunin
Franklin was bom. Let us then, in view of the
memories of the past and in hope and faith of the
future and above afl relying on the favour of heaven,
reverently throw our nationed flag to the breeze and
invoke upon it the blessing of Almighty God."
Imagine the scene! Mr. Homer then cafled upon
the assembly to join with Dr. Blagden in prayer.
I quote a few sentences from that prayer:
"Bless thy servant, the President of our Union,
and those immediately connected with him in the
administration of our government. Be with them
in those solemn moments, when the hves and the
happiness of multitudes may hang on their deci
sions. Render them firm and energetic in action.
. . . Oh, Lord, K this question must be settied by

[71]
the shedding of blood, go with our hosts in action.
Yet, i£ it be thy wfll, so guide the minds of our
erring countrymen, that this issue may be avoided.
But K thou hast otherwise determined, grant that
we, who sustain the government and the laws of the
coimtry, may be united, and be blessed, and be
made successful by thee."
Then came em address by Dr. Manning, the
junior minister of the church. I quote a few sen
tences from this truly eloquent and thrUling ad
dress. The speaker was young, and youth is always
prophetic; the new generation was speaking through
him as it could not in the older man.
"God's temple welcomes the star-spangled ban
ner today, — for that banner has ceased to be the
sign of corrupt feUowship, or of subserviency to
wrong, and has become the symbol of justice and
loyalty to human rights. There floats the ensign
of the free. We hafl it with patriotic shouts, for it
signals to us divine order and the brotherhood of
men. Those stripes of crimson and pearl, and that
consteUation on its field of blue, are thrilling twenty
miUions of hearts whfle I speak. From the vaUeys
of the Pine-tree State, from the homes of Stark and
AUen, Putnam and Greene, from the mighty em
pires of the Middle States, from boundless prairie
and forest and mine they issue forth together with
you of this free commonwealth, an innumerable and
invincible host to bear our national emblem whither
duty shaU lead the way. AU that beautffies and

[72]
blesses American society asks to sit in the shadow
of the dear old flag; only that which is hateful and
destructive would drag it from the sky and rend
and trample it."
The apostrophe to the flag foUows:
"We welcome thee today to thy natal spot, to
the Puritan Church of which thou wert bom. Flag
of the free, float on forever in majesty and might,
thou glorious ensign, symbol of liberty, guardian of
order and law and a nation's pride, thou joy-speak
ing herald to the oppressed of aU lands! Within
thy folds may no crime or dishonor lurk; palsied
be the tongue that would defame thee and withered
the hand that would tear thee from that lofty
height. God go with thee in the day of battle and
victory; make thy standard her abiding place."
Dr. Manning's remarks were frequently inter
rupted by hearty applause and nine cheers were
given for the speaker when he had concluded. Dr.
Blagden rose and declared his stand, with absolute
CEmdor and impressive power:
"We are here as one man today; what is more,
we are united in eternal truth. For we meet to
sustain just government. The powers that be are
ordained of God. The magistrate beareth not the
sword in vain. This truth is mighty and wfll pre-
vafl. The flag we have raised is an emblem of it
and of a free government from which men cannot
secede but by rebeUion, and where is the foe but
faUs before us with freedom's sofl beneath our feet

[73]
and freedom's banner streaming o'er us!" Nine
cheers were given for Dr. Blagden.
The next scene of interest in the Old South Meet
inghouse in this period was the turning of the
church into a recruiting depot. During 1862 ca
lamity after calamity came to the Union arms; for
the first time the magnitude of the struggle began
to get into the minds and imaginations of the North.
Abraham Lincoln had cafled for 3oo,ooo men to
fight three years; he had issued another cafl for
3oo,ooo men to enlist for nine months; to further
this second movement the Standing Committee
threw open the Old South Meetinghouse. Bands
played, speeches were made, prayers were offered,
and in the yard of the Old South Meetinghouse
the 43d Massachusetts regiment was largely re
cruited. This regiment requested the Rev. J. M.
Maiming to go with them to the front as chaplain.
Permission was given by the church and the society
for him to go. He received his commission from
Governor Andrew, and leaving a wife and four
young chfldren behind, in his thirty-eighth year,
went out with his men to the front.
About this time others went from the church. I
have not been able to find a fuU list. There must
have been more than I can name. Edward C.
Johnson, treasurer of the Old South Society, went
as first lieutenant of the 44th Massachusetts, pro
moted to adjutant in the foUowing May; George
Blagden, oldest son of the senior minister and

[74]
Edward Bladgen, another son, served in the 45th;
Thomas Blagden went into the Navy — three of
the senior minister's sons entered the great struggle.
Joseph Henry Thayer, an Old South boy, left his
parish in Salena, and went as a chaplain to the
front. Later members who went to the front were
Wflliam E. Murdock, serving from the beginning to
the end of the great struggle; Alpheus H. Hardy,
first lieutenant in the 45th; Albert H. Spencer,
and Colonel Bradley, one of the youngest men to
enter the Army. He entered at the age of thirteen,
served through to the end, and when the war was
over he was only about seventeen years of age.
When the 43d regiment was recruited, the junior
minister of the church preached a sermon to the
officers of the regiment. The church was crowded,
as usual, and certain words to those who stayed at
home are I think particiflarly impressive now.
"Is it too much," he says, "for me to ask that
the interest of this rehgious society may follow the
regiment with which I go, that I may be able ever,
should they be in need, to point out to them the
substantial tokens of your affection and that the
moral and religious counsel which I shaU endeavor
to give may be reinforced by an argument without
which words are of little avafl. Though few or
none of them may be without ample resources of
their own today, we cannot teU to what suffering
they may be reduced by the chances of war, and I
here commend unto you and pray you to remember

[75]
the sacredness of your obligation as to the defenders
of your firesides, and ask you not only to carry
them daily in the arms of your faith, but to foUow
them with aU those other attentions which shaU
help to preserve and ennoble their manhood."
You are aware that Dr. Manning contracted a
fever in the service of his regiment and of his coun
try. He returned and was long a sufferer; so low
did he sink that his death was reported in the papers.
Slowly he came back to IKe and vigor and for many
years thereafter served this church, but always
with the germs of disease working in his body. Dr.
Manning died from the effects of the War as surely
as tf a buUet had pierced his heart on the field.
His death took place November 29, 1882.
There are many tender thoughts connected with
that time. A severe engagement had been fought
in which the 44th regiment had borne its part, and
the 45th; at the close of the day, in the dark, the
chaplain makes his way over long distances and
rough ways to inquire K the boys of his parish aie
among the living or among the dead. The sig
nificance of this story is here: these young men
and their yoimg minister took the church Emd put
it in the heart of the great struggle; the church
shed its blood with the rest of the country.
The next scene is one of transcendent interest.
AU day on Sunday, from early morning to late at
night, on the 9th of Aprfl, the news had been pour
ing in, emd buUetins were posted on the Merchemt's

[76]
Exchange buflding that General Lee had surren
dered to Genered Gremt, and that the war wEis over.
You can imagine the crowds that stood in front of
those buUetins; you can imagine the shouts of joy
and the doxologies they sung, the frantic expres
sions of emotion as they realized that the war was
over, that the country was once more united.
On the foUowing day the citizens of Boston asked
for the Old South Meetinghouse as a place of
thanksgiving. The crowd fiUed the buflding to its
utmost capacity and surged round it, a sea of joy.
Prayers were offered, speeches made and psahns
sung; the church again was the mouthpiece and
the symbol of the joy of the city and of the nation.
One week later the terrible reverse came. Over
the wires on Saturday the dreadful message ran
that President Lincoln had died that morning. On
Sunday, Aprfl i6, with the pulpit draped in black,
to an awe-stricken and broken-hearted church and
congregation, the junior minister preached his ser
mon on the death of the great leader. Curiously
enough I came into possession of a book bcEuing on
this Sunday long before I knew anything about the
Old South Church, a book in which are gathered the
sermons of afl the prominent preachers of that date.
Here are the nEunes of the men who preached in
Boston on that memorable and tremendous Sunday:
Dr. Khk, Dr. Bartol, Dr. Manning, Dr. Todd,
Dr. Clarke, G. H. Hepworth, W. R. Nicholson, Mr.
Hague, Dr. Webb, Dr. Neal, Rev. Henry Wflder

[77]
Foote of Kmg's Chapel, F. D. Huntmgton, W. H.
Cudworth, C. Robbins, W. S. Studley, R. Eflis,
S. K. Lothrop, Edward Everett Hale, A. A. Mmer,
James Reed, George Putnam, G. L. Chancy, A. L.
Stone, J. D. Fulton; only one surviving. Rev. James
Reed, the venerable and beloved Swedenborgian
minister. That day of tumult, of heart-searching, of tragic
grief, crowded afl the churches; aU the ministers
spoke on one thing, aU cried out to God for faith
and hope. What a day! Dr. MEuming's text and
the opening words of his sermon foUow:
"And the Lord said unto him. This is the land
which I swEu-e unto Abraham, imto Isaac, and unto
Jacob, saying, I wiU give it unto thy seed: I have
caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shaft
not go over thither. So Moses, the servant of the
Lord, died there in the lemd of Moab, according to
the word of the Lord."
"'According to the word of the Lord.' Sweet
annoimcement to a broken-hearted nation, today!
'Abraham Lincoln died this morning, twenty-two
minutes after seven o'clock.' That was the message
which the wires, heavy laden with their tidings,
sobbed forth yesterday in aU our pleasant places.
And we awoke from our troubled sleep this morn
ing, and lo! it was not a dream. 'According to the
word of the Lord.' 'Even so. Father, for so it
seemed good in thy sight.' We look above aU
human agency. We recognize the wiU that never

[78]
errs, nor falters, and that worketh aU things, in
heaven and on earth after his own perfect counsel.
"'So Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there.'
He had brought us through the 'great and terrible
wfldemess,' imto the borders of our goodly herit
age; but was himseK forbidden to enter. How in
complete, how complete the dear hfe that has passed
on!" As I have read the records of this time, I must
confess that I have been deeply moved. Every
word, every utterEmce, every token of life is charged
with profoimdest feeling. The great heart of the
North was stirred, stirred moraUy, stirred rehgiously
and moved toward God with unwonted power:
Bow down, dear Land, for thou hast found release!
Thy God, in these distempered days.
Hath taught thee the sure wisdom of His ways.
And through thine enemies hath wrought thy peace!
Bow down in prayer and praise!
No poorest in thy borders but may now
Lift to the juster skies a man's enfranchised brow.
O Beautiful! my Country! ours once more!
Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hair
O'er such sweet brows as never other wore.
And letting thy set lips.
Freed from wrath's pale eclipse,
The rosy edges of their smile lay bare.
What words divine of lover or of poet
Could tell our hve and make thee know it.
Among the Nations bright beyond compare?

[79]
What were our lives without thee?
What all our lives to save thee?
We reck not what we gave thee;
We will not dare to doubt thee.
But ask whatever else, and we will dare!
V. Later History
±N the late sixties of the last century it became
clear to many among the leaders of the Old South
Church that the Meetmghouse on Milk and Wash
ington streets coifld no longer adequately serve
the needs of a living, growing spiritual society.
Unanimity, however, did not exist either among
the members of the church or of the corporation.
There were remonstrants against the attempt to
ifiove, and to erect another house of worship. These
remonstrants were of three classes. There were the
members of the church and the society who were
deeply attached to the venerable and famous Meet
inghouse; in this they were fuUy justified. These
persons loved this building more than the church,
the feUowship of like-minded men and women in
the service of the community; in this they were
not justified. The majority loved the Meeting
house no less sincerely than the minority, but they
loved the church more thEui they loved the building.
A second class of remonstrants consisted of the
ministers of Boston, — a group of them would per
haps be a more accurate description. These men

[8o]
were friendly to the minority of the Old South
people, unfriendly to the majority. They made a
good deal of trouble for the majority leaders, but
they did not count for much in the trial of
strength. The third remonstiEmt was formidEible, the pubhc
opinion against the right to move, created by a
considerable number of prominent and influential
citizens. To them the Meetinghouse was a monu
mental buflding; here they were clearly in the
right. To them the church as a spiritual feflow-
ship in the service of the city counted for httie;
here they were mistEiken.
The case was cEuried before the Legislature; it
was hesad before a single judge of the Supreme
Court, and later before the fufl bench. In every
trial of justice the Old South Society won; the liti
gation was long and costly, but the triumph for the
society was complete.
Dr. Manning, sole minister of the church from
1872, when Dr. Blagden resigned, tifl 1882, was
pained by the division of opinion in the society;
he was pEuned by the absence of sympathy with
the purpose of the church on the part of many of
his brother ministers; beyond edl he was psdned by
the alienation from his ministry of a large body of
his feUow-citizens who had admired and supported
him in his early ministry. He bore afl this bravely,
and before he died he was made supremely happy
by seeing the church rescued from imminent death,

[8i]
refoimded, and in sure possession of an indefinitely
extended future of influence.
There was one layman who appeared absolutely
indispensable to the life of the church in this crisis,
Samuel Johnson, ChainuEm of the StEmding Com
mittee. Other notEible laymen stood round him.
Avery Plumer, fcEuless fighter for his convictions;
Moses Merrifl, wise, cahn, steadfeist; Alpheus
Hardy, princely Boston merchant and influential
citizen; Loring Lothrop and Frederick D. AUen,
fEuthful Emd true; Samuel Hurd WaUey, friend of
Daniel Webster, clcEir in mind and weighty in judg
ment, later chEurmEm of the committee that super
intended the erection of our present House of
Worship, whose personal and inherited love for the
Old South made his laborious service a work of
piety Emd dehght; Deacon Charles A. Stoddard, the
Old South saint of his time; emd John L. BEury,
forever loyal and mflitemt. To these names must
be added that of Linus M. Chfld, stout-hearted
attorney for the society, and Charles A. Morss,
mfld in manner, just and resolute in spirit.
Later other men appear in our records: Joseph
H. Gray, keen financial servant of the society;
Richard HaU Steams, for many years a deacon and
a prominent member; WiUiam B. Garritt whose
conservative thought was accompanied by the
deepest rehgious feeling; Alphonso S. Covel, one of
the friendhest emd most useful of men; Luther A.
Wright, perhaps the most successful superintendent

[82]
the Bible School ever had; and the learned historian
of the church, Hamflton A. HiU. These men repre
sent a later generation of members smd servemts of
the Old South Church.
In the greatest crisis in its life since it was
founded, Samuel Johnson came forward, the indis
pensable friend of the society. He was then in his
magnificent prime. No injustice could ruffie his
temper, no opposition break or weetken his purpose.
For four long, troubled years he hved mednly to
serve this church, to defend its rights, to secure for
it the command of its property, to estabhsh it by
law in freedom and security. He won his cause;
he was, as the representative of the society, trium-
phEmt everywhere; above aU he so fought as to
make no enemy; he so contended as to increase the
pubhc esteem in which he was held then and tiU his
death in 1899 among aU wise and good men. Since
the Founders of the Church there has been, in my
judgment, no layman so important at a critical
period of our history, or so nobly influential in suc
ceeding years.
The Boston fire, in November 1872, made wor
ship in the old Meetinghouse practicaUy impos
sible. Then it was, however, that the fight began
in earnest. At one meeting of the Society a mem
ber rose emd said that since the buflding was spared
from the flames that had consumed the whole
region round it, clearly it was the wfll of God that
the church should continue to worship there. To

[83]
this a veteran of the Civfl War, then a young man,
inquired with consuming logic. How about the
saloon at the other end of Mflk street? That, too,
was spared from the flames. Did Providence intend
that both enterprises, the hquor trade and rehgion,
should go on at the old sites? That young mem
was Edward C. Johnson, for the past twenty years
treasurer of the Old South Society.
The Old South Church was granted the right to
move; the Old South Meetinghouse was preserved.
The noble struggle had thus a whoUy happy issue.
Nothing remains today but the friendhest feeling in
the Old South Church for the men and women who
represent those who saved a monumental buflding,
and in the Old South Meetinghouse Association, in
which by rEu-e courtesy the present minister of the
church is a member, for our feUowship and work.
In this spirit we greet each other today.
The Old South Church, in the noble words on the
tablet in the front porch, weis "preserved Emd blessed
of God for more than two hundred years whfle wor
shipping on its original site, comer of Washington
and Mflk streets, whence it was removed to this
buflding in 1876, amid constant proofs of His
guidance and loving favor." The church has sur
vived because its members in each new generation,
with clean hands, pure hearts, and wise heads, have
loved it, served it, and set its good above and be
yond aU private interests. No other force thEm
that CEm save it for the future. "The memory of

[84]
the just is blessed"; the great company of just
souls, men and women who are worthy of remem
brance; and the just memory of today by which
they are held in everlsisting remembrance. The
whole great story fiUs the mind with the high mean
ing and the solemn beauty of hfe:
. . . Life is not as idle ore.
But iron dug from central gloom.
And heated hot in burning fears.
And dipt in baths of hissing tears.
And batter' d with the shocks of doom
To shape and use.

THE MINISTRY OF GEORGE A. GORDON

HE paper which follows deals with Dr. Gordon's
pastorate at the Old South Church from his installa
tion to the time of the publication of this volume. It
was prepared by the Reverend Albert E. Dunning,
D.D. — a member of the Church, at the request of the
Church Committee.

THE MINISTRY OF GEORGE A. GORDON
installed APRIL 2, l884
HISTORIANS have remarked that the end of
a century and the beginning of the next are
usuaUy a period of greatest unrest. This is
notably true of the last thirty-five yesirs. Every
realm of thought and action has expanded through
storms — theology, education, politics, industry,
arts, inventions.
The local history of the Old South Church during
this time of upheaval has been distinguished by
two things; by inw£u"d harmony and by msmifest
divine guidEmce. The faith of its members is in
scribed on the outer waUs of the new edifice, "Qui
transtuht sustinet." As a prophecy it has been
wonderfuUy fulfiUed.
The church is rarely fortunate in having one
leader during all this period. Through him it has
spoken the word of wisdom interpreting the pur
pose of God in each crisis. His confidence in the
ideals Emd integrity of its members and their un
swerving confidence in him have made secure its
assurance that through the strife and struggle of
men and nations the wiU of God is being established.
The sane optimism of the Old South Church is an
87

[88]
unfafling source of its spiritual strength Emd its
materisd progress.
George Angier Gordon was born and bred in a
typical Scottish ChristiEm home, a fEumer's son and
himseK a farmer in his boyhood. The hfe of his
homeland throbs in his veins not less now than
fifty years ago. It pulses in his sermons, through
which ffit pictures of sunsets on Scotiand's purple
mountEuns, reflected in her tarns, of flocks quietly
feeding in her close cropped pastures. The song of
the skylark in the dawn, of the mavis at nightfafl,
the whistie of the blackbird in his thorny den at
noon, and the reaper's song in the field of ripened
wheat are undertones in his appeals.
In a spirit of bold adventure, he found his way
to this New World when he was eighteen years
old, Emd earned his hving as a working man at an
iron moulder's bench in South Boston. He found
room in his meagre luggage for the hammer he had
often thrown successfufly in athletic contests.
Fired by a passion to preach the Gospel he left
the workshop, made his way through Bemgor Theo
logical Seminary and was ordEuned pastor of a
typical New England country church, in Temple,
Maine. There he labored for a year with a devo
tion which after half a century is fragrEmt in the
memories of the chfldren of his people, Emd in the
traditions of the generation foUowing them.
Under the pressure of an ever increasing thirst
for knowledge he tumed from his ministry for a

[89]
time and came to HarvEu-d University seeking in
struction in Greek Literature and in philosophy. He
was aUowed to take these two subjects as a special
student. Two ycEus of passionate and persistent
pursuit of these studies so impressed his teachers
that the Faculty of the University by unanimous
vote took the unprecedented step of admitting him
to the senior class without exEunination. Imme
diately on his graduation in 1881 he resumed the
work of the ministry, as pastor of the Congrega
tional Church in Greenwich, Connecticut.
During these years the way was being prepared
for Mr. Gordon to enter on his hfe work. Dr.
Mamning, with the strong support of the leaders
of the Old South Congregation, had guided them
through storm-tossed waters in their migration from
the old Meetinghouse on Washington Street to
their new home on Copley Square. His ministry
of twenty-five years was virfle, evEmgelical and
scholarly. He weis mflitEmt for the truth as he
understood it, yet not of a controversial spirit. He
cherished an outlook on the future which was not
merely optimistic, but inspired and insphing. It
is regarded by the church as a favoring providence
that his spirit continues with it up to this time
through the presence of Mrs. Manning, and that
his oldest daughter perpetuates his ministry as
Mistress of the Manse.
Dr. Manning's health was permanently impEured
by his mihtary service during the Civfl War. In-

[9o]
creasing weakness compeUed him to resign his
active pastorate, taking effect on the twenty-fifth
anniversary of his instaUation, in March 1882. He
remained pastor emeritus tiU his death, Novem
ber 29 of that year. Immediately after, the Church
and Society, by unEmimous votes, instructed their
committees to extend a caU to Mr. Gordon. They
had been looking in this direction almost from the
time when Dr. Manning's active service ended.
However, they met with an obstacle which probably
was unexpected. They were commissioned to
invite a young minister to become the leader of the
oldest Congregational Church in the largest city of
New England. They regEuded it as the strongest,
and in its new location the most promising church
in Boston, which was the headquarters of the de
nomination. But the young man was engaged in
a prosperous and important work. He felt that it
demanded his continued service. He was also re-
luctEmt as yet to assume the greater responsibflity
tendered to him. He promptly declined the cafl.
The Old South, however, knew the kind of man it
wanted and had found him. It placed his letter
of declination again in the hands of its Committees,
with instructions to confer with him further, "with
a view to bringing him to us as our pastor in the
earhest possible time." A ycEU" later the caU was
renewed and accepted.
The instaUation service, Aprfl 2, i884, has be
come a landmEirk in the history of our denomina-

[91]
tion. A theological controversy was dividing it
into opposing parties.
Committees in scEU-ch of peistors were being
warned by conservative leaders against selecting
men "tainted with the higher criticism." The
denomination was looked on vrith suspicion by
strongly orthodox bodies which possessed ecclesi
astical authority to discipline their ministers. The
Congregational pohty, because of its greater freedom,
was under fire. HarvEu-d University was regEuded
by mEmy with aversion as a formidable seat of
leEuning untempered by piety. Andover Seminary
was defending itseK against a determined effort
to oust its professors on charges of heresy. One or
more of these had been regulEu-ly preaching at the
Old South whfle it was without a pastor. The
prosecutors in that case, in their zeal to protect
this representative Congregational church against
the inroads of Unitarianism and other heresies,
were jealously inquisitive concerning the attitude
of its new minister. None of them probably had
the shghtest fll feeling toward him personaUy or
any positive evidence that he held theological be
liefs contrary to theirs. But they determined to
test him by a thorough examination before con
senting to his instaUation.
The Committees of the Church and Society knew
the history of the Old South and its traditions.
They were awEU'e of the convictions of the elders
who were pursuing hotfooted the Andover teachers

[92]
of doctrines then repudiated by the majority of
Congregationahsts. They didn't intend to risk
losing the minister of their choice through the
adverse action of a councfl. Mr. Gordon was
formaUy received into the membership of the church.
Former pastors had on their reception consented
to a confession of faith adopted by a councfl two
hundred years before. Mr. Gordon made his own
statement of behef, which was accepted unani
mously, and he was welcomed by the members at
a pubhc reception as a brother beloved, to be their
pastor. He was established in the parsonage.
In the letter missive caUing the Councfl the
churches were not invited to examine the candidate
or to advise concerning his instaUation, but "to
pEuticipate in the proceedings." The invitation
was accepted by aU the invited churches. It was,
however, received by the conservatives as a chaUenge.
The Councfl assembled in the afternoon in the midst
of a snow storm. Some of its frost seems to have
entered the chapel with the pastors Emd delegates.
The pastor elect -offered credentials that could
not be questioned. He brought the result of a dis
missing Councfl at Greenwich giving him unqualified
commendation. He read a comprehensive state
ment of his religious behef. It contained no apparent
note of controversy. It was conceived on a high
spiritual level. The candidate concluded by de
claring himseK a student of divine truth, and by
expressing the fervent hope that he would find in

[93]
his new surroundings spiritual companions m ex
ploring the unsearchable riches of Christ.
A stenographic report has been preserved of the
more thsm one hundred questions answered by the
CEmdidate in the examination which foUowed. They
relate in the mEun to the nature of the Godhead,
the meaning of the Atonement, and the effect of the
crucifixion of Christ as the Son upon God the Father
in persuading him to be reconcfled to sinful men.
The protracted discussion of the Councfl in private
session disarranged the plans which had been made
to entertain at supper the pastors of neighboring
churches. It postponed the time announced for
the instaUation service. After some hours of sus
pense for those wEuting outside the closed doors,
the Councfl at last voted by a majority of about two
thirds to proceed with the program for the evening.
Two members who had accepted prominent parts
withdrew. Their places were acceptEdjly fiUed by
others. However disturbing this experience was at the
time, it resulted in an important gain to the de
nomination. The Old South Church, by its loyalty
to its minister, helped to convince the then dominant
party of the unwisdom of attempting to make the
tenets it defended tests of feUowship. It helped to
amehorate the disputes which culminated nearly
ten years later in acknowledged freedom of the
faith, at the meeting of the National Councfl in
1892 and the American Board the foUowing ycEir.

[94]
Of the effect of this experience on the minister,
he h£is spoken for himseK. In a sermon celebrating
the twenty-fifth anniversary of his instEdlation he
SEud, "I now give thanks for the outspoken opposi
tion to my views and purposes on the pEu-t of strong
and brave men. I felt that I had come to hve among
men who had convictions, who had the courage
to express them and to stEmd by them when it was
unpopulEu- to do so."
As an indication of the trend of theological think
ing in churches caUing themselves orthodox this
Councfl had an exceptional interest. The members
who took prominent part in it had been trained to
defend the Calvinistic system. They were fixed
in their behef that this was the only "plsm of salva
tion" for lost souls. The questioning of any ele
ment of that logicaUy constructed plEm seemed to
them a covert attack on the fortress of their fEuth.
A favorite text of the leaders of New EnglEmd Con
gregationalism was Ps. II :3, "If the foundations
be destroyed what can the righteous do?" A former
pastor of Shawmut Church was sEud to have preached
fourteen sermons from that text. Mr. Gordon
frankly declared himseK an inquirer into the things
of God and men, and his purpose to press on eagerly
and reverently in pursuit of truth. Already the
spirit of inquiry had actively appeared. It seemed
ready to examine what had been accepted as founda
tions of fsdth forever fixed. Their defenders could
see no prospect, if these should be shaken, of a re-

[95]
buflding on bases that could not be shsiken. And they
fcEired the consequences of a re-examination of them.
It is a satisfaction to record that most of these
opponents hved long enough to enjoy fraternal
relations with the minister of the Old South Church.
One of the most active of them, after becoming ac
quainted with him, used to speak in terms of un
qualified admiration of his inteUectual abihty, his
Christian character and his personal charm.
On some subjects then much debated among
ministers, Mr. Gordon frankly acknowledged that
his conclusions were not fuUy formed. Concerning
them he said, "I beheve that the mental habit of
suspense is rational, healthy, fruitful of much peace,
and an indispensable safeguard against the wEiste of
inteUectual and spiritual power." However, a
comparison of his published lectures and sermons
with this statement to the Councfl indicates that
the trend of his thinking had been aheady estab
lished by strenuous study Emd eeunestiy sought
divine guidance. He had become convinced that
he had a vision of a worthier interpretation of God,
a truer idea of man as God's offspring, Emd a nobler
conception of the worth of religion than the fathers
of the church had known. The clearer revelation
of what he then saw is outlined in two of his pro
ductions nearly a quarter of a century later. One
of them is an article in the Harvard Theological
Review of 1908, "The CoUapse of the New England
Theology." The other is the sermon he dehvered

[96]
as preacher for the International Congregational
Councfl in Edinburgh the same year. He caUed it
"The Repubhc of Soifls." It is a noble exposition
of the progressive revelation of truth.
An fllustration of his habit of thorough indepen
dent thinking through a subject occurred not long
ago. When the controversy was at its climax over
the question of a probation after death, a sermon of
his was pubhshed by request entitled "A Vision of
the Dead." In it he gave reasons for the hope that
those who die without faith in Christ may not be
forever beyond the pale of divine mercy. It had an
extensive circulation. Twenty years later when it
had been sometime out of print he was asked to
revise it for a new edition. After examination he
returned the copy for the press without alteration.
Of the varied phases of Dr. Gordon's ministry
perhaps the most conspicuous is his service to
youth in schools and coUeges. In i885, the ycEU"
foUowing his instaUation as pastor of the Old South,
Harvard inaugurated a new experiment by making
aU rehgious exercises voluntary on the part of the
students. It established a Board of five preachers
of different denominations. The youngest of these
was Dr. Gordon. It was only five years after the
University had conferred on him his Bachelor's
degree that it entrusted to him this large respon-
sibihty. He served on that Board for four yesu^
continuously and then after a period of release be
cause of other urgent claims he returned for a new

[97]
term of three yesos. Here began his friendship with
PhiUips Brooks, also a member of the original Board.
This intimacy continued tfll suspended by death.
Twenty years after the Board was constituted. Pro
fessor Francis G. Peabody, Chairman of the Board,
pubhshed a volume of addresses entitled "Mornings
in the CoUege Chapel." He dedicated it to Dr. Gor
don, in a beautiful poem which includes these lines:
Still at your post you stand, high up in the lighthouse
tower,
Guarding the way of life, speaking the word of power;
Resolute, tender, wise, free in the love of the truth.
Tending the fiame of the Christ, as it marks the channel
of youth.
Dr. Gordon in later years served three fuU terms
on the Board of Overseers of the University. As
president of the Alumni he recently dehvered the
Commencement Day Address.
As a matter of course, many of the students
found their way across the river from Cambridge
to the Old South in Copley Square and to Trinity,
where Phfllips Brooks ministered. To their numbers
Boston University, the Conservatory of Music and
other institutions of the vicinity have contributed.
This preponderance of young men and women in
the congregations on Sunday morning would be an
inspiration to any preacher. As ycEirs went by, the
minister of the Old South was caUed on to give
courses of lectures at Harvard, Yale, Emd other

[98]
universities, also baccalaureate sermons and occa
sional addresses, tstxing his strength to the utmost.
Henry Weu-d Beecher, when sought for as lecturer
Emd preacher to aU sorts of assemblies, used to say
that whatever he could do to increase the streams
of spiritual wealth flowing into the reservoir of
Plymouth Church he gladly undertook; whatever
streams carried such wealth away from it he avoided.
This has been Dr. Gordon's pohcy. He has put
first the weKare of his own people. And they have
recognized it in a spirit of mutual appreciation.
This relation he has expressed in the dedication of
his latest volume of midweek addresses, to "the
people of the Old South Church and Congregation,
in grateful acknowledgement of their unsurpassable
loyalty and in deep, enduring affection."
Notwithstanding the generous service he has
rendered to the pubhc, complEiints used to be heard,
especiaUy in the earher years of his ministry, that
he confined himseK too closely to his study Emd to
his own church. He was not often seen in sociEd
assembhes or misceUEmeous public meetings. But
results have justified his determination to conserve
his strength for systematic study. He has kept in
touch with the hterary IKe of our time by associa
tion with the famous Saturday Club, and a few
other organizations which have afforded stimulus
and recreation. He has not fafled in personal
ministry to members of his congregation in theu-
times of need. And he has identified himseK so

[99]
completely with the Old South Church that he is
one with it. He knows not only its history Emd its
traditions but its historic spirit. Through its
records he is intimately acquainted with the minis
ters who have served it for the two hundred and
fifty ye£U"s of its existence. He knows the leading
laymen in aU its successive generations. He in
terprets its chief events by the pohcy it hEis con
sistently maintained through the entire period.
The inteUectual and spiritual IKe of the church is
recorded in the volumes which its minister has
issued at intervals of from two to four years dur
ing his pastorate. Looking back over the two
centuries and a haK one may see that the church
has received some distinctive gKt from each of its
sixteen ministers. It appcEU-s to us in studying this
history that in certEun directions the present ministry
is inteUectuaUy and spirituaUy the most fruitful
of them aU. Dr. Gordon's hterEiry output, in the
extent Emd vEU"iety of its themes, when compared
vdth the Bibliography in Mr. Hfll's history of the
Old South, surpasses that of any of his predecessors.
Each of the principEd ten volumes which bear his
name has a definite purpose, and is the fruit of
vridely extended but carefuUy chosen courses of
reading. As sm example, the LoweU Institute
Lectures, "The New Epoch for Faith," aim to
appraise, for the religious view of the world, the
value of the nineteenth century. For this purpose,
he says, he has read "chiefly those great books that

[loo]
constitute the watershed of the century's opinion
and feeling. ' ' The lectures give evidence of thorough
study of such historians and statesmen as Carlyle,
Gladstone, Disraeli, Thomas Jefferson, Daniel Web
ster, Abraham Lincoln. His week-end addresses,
"Aspect of the Infinite Mystery," are rich in re
flections on the great phflosophers, such Eis Socrates,
Plato, Aristotle, Paul, KEmt, Spencer and Emerson,
Emd the poets such as Homer, the Hebrew Psalmists,
Dante, Mflton, Goethe, Wordsworth, Tennyson,
Browning, and Whittier. More than seventy authors
Eire mentioned in this volume.
One charm of Dr. Gordon's preaching is his inter
preting the thoughts of great thinkers of aU the
ages for the average busy men Emd women, express
ing their aspirations Emd idcEJs more clcEuly than
they had thought them out for themselves.
Frequently the lecture room has been crowded
with young men and women students, business Emd
professional men, toflers by hEmd and brain, who
have hcEud ' their varied experiences expressed in
language which dignified their dafly lives and in
terpreted for them the human and divine sym
pathy supremely revealed in the great strong Christ,
Redeemer of mankind. These courses of midweek
lectures, represented by this latest volume, were
begun several years ago when the traditional prayer
meeting had fafled to bring together the famihes
of the congregation scattered through suburban
districts. They have weU rewarded the labor in

[ lOI ]
preparation which the minister has bestowed on
them. This midwinter course has become a recog
nized rehgious and literEuy^ institution of the city.
It is there that the pastor is at home with his own
church family smd friends. There he speaks of his
personal experience, with autobiographic glimpses,
discourses of his favorite authors, and aUows ex
pression to his sense of humor. The lecture method
of the midweek service is a return to the estEd)hshed
custom of the church in its CEurher years.
During these thirty-five years our democratic sys
tem of government has been severely tested. Its prin
ciples have been clearly set forth to the Old South
congregation, and they have been loyEdly adopted.
The issues of the world war which begEm five years
ago were plainly outhned. The imperative duty of
conquering Prussian mflitarism was proclaimed from
the beginning. With hardly Em exception the mem
bers of the congregation were busfly working to fight
the enemies of liberty, on the field, in camps, hospi
tals, centres of rest Emd recreation for soldiers and
SEiflors, and in their homes. The volume of patriotic
addresses, "The Appeal to the Nation," pubhshed
last year attests the strength and fervor of loyalty
to our American Union which has continued un
abated in this church from its earliest days.
The associate ministers of the Old South have
contributed their fuU share to its prosperity, in
their preaching and manifold pastoral labors. Rever
end Dr. AUen E. Cross fifled this office for ten years.

[I02 ]
Reverend Wfllis H. Butler has just completed a
ministry of seven years. They Eue now pastors
of important New EnglEmd churches which are
thus linked more closely with their older sister, the
Old South. Without a break in the service. Rev
erend Archibald Black, during the last five years
the pastor of South Church, Concord, N. H., was
welcomed as associate minister.
A long list might be made of men and women who
have upheld the honorable position of the church
in the community during these thirty-five years.
They have been influentiEd in professionsd and
business hfe, public officiEds of the city, state and
nation, administrators in educational Emd benevo
lent enterprises. Since it is beyond the scope of
this article to chronicle their varied services, a
mention of one may stsmd as representative of
them afl. No name is more tenderly cherished when
the recent history of our church is being considered
than that of Samuel Johnson. A prosperous mer-
chEmt, giving generously of his time and thought,
as weU as his money, to enterprises for promoting the
pubhc weKEU"e, the Old South Church had a place
in his affection second to no other. He identified
with it his family and his closest friends. The fine
hospitahty of his home was consecrated to its
service. He devoted himself to mEiking it an influen
tial factor in the missionary work of the denomina
tion at home and in foreign lands. He was a lead
ing spirit in afl its interests for half a century, so

[io3]
wise, so capable, so generous in his sympathies that
his associates loved him as weU as trusted his leader
ship. He seemed to have the Church in vision
through the seven generations of its past, Emd he
looked to the coming generations with fsuth as strong
as his confidence was assured in those who had gone.
In that spirit he regarded the members with whom
he was associated. They represented to him the hon
orable character they inherited from the church of
eEu-lier times, Emd the promise of its usefulness for
generations to come. Like many other famflies
whose names are revered among us, he has left as
bis heritage his chfldren Emd his children's chfldren
to perpetuate his service in the Old South Church.
This continuity of family hfe, which has been
such a source of strength to it for two hundred Emd
fifty ycEirs, must be maintained loyEdly as far as
is possible. It is noteworthy that only one change,
and that caused by removEd from the city, has
occurred for the last decade in the Board of six
deacons. Other importEmt trusts connected with
the various ministries of the Society, the distri
bution of its funds and the direction of its affairs
have been faithfuUy administered by those whose
many obligations were not aUowed to interfere
with the claims of their church.
Of the ministries of the Church in its local field
only barest mention can be made. Its annual gKts
to the Boston City Missionary Society have always
led Edl the other churches, emd its successive presi-

[io4]
dents have been members of the Old South. Its
own local mission, Hope Chapel, enhsted many of
its members as teachers in its weekday and Sunday
services tfll changes in the neighborhood made its
continuance no longer necessary.
Whfle the BUale School of the Old South has not
been large since its congregation has chiefly re
moved from the immediate neighborhood to subur-
han homes, it maintains a notEibly successful
chfldren's school during the morning hour of pubhc
worship, and a flourishing Bible Class at noon,
conducted on modem educatiouEd ideas. There are
also attractive classes for women, young men and
young women, with experienced teachers. Dr.
Gordon has often and eamestiy impressed on the
people the importance of the study of the Bible.
The Old South Men's Club and the Women's Sew
ing Circle are valued Emd prosperous orgEmizations.
The church hais always been Em important factor
in the rehgious and civic hfe of the community and
the Commonwealth, and probably never more thEm
during the present pastorate. The Y. M. C. A., the
Y. W. C. A., and other institutions for the pubhc
weKEu-e have found in the Old South not only a
reservoir of financial help but a place where the
£d)lest men and women could be enlisted for service.
At the celebration last May of its two hundred and
fiftieth EuiniversEuy, the Governor of the State Emd
the Mayor of the City testified to its influence for
good in public affairs.

OLD SOUTH CHURCH HONOR ROLL 1914-1919

MILFORO J. BAKER
LEWIS A. CROSSETT

PHILIP M.CHILDS
A.BARR COMSTOCK
FREDERICK M. CUTLER
JAWES H. ERLENewCH
WENDELL F. FOGO
ALBERT A.CHOREYEB
LUCIUS H.ORAHAM
RUSSELL H GREELEY
EDWARD W, HELLIEft
WALTER H.HELLIER
JOHN HITCHCOCK
GEORGE R IGLEHEART
WILLIAM T. IGLEHEART
GEORGE F B.JOHNSON

SAMUEL JOHNSON
ELLIOTT R JOSLIN
AUSTIN S. KIBBEE
JOHN LAVALLE.JR.
CHARLES C. LILLY *
VVUVRGARET «. LOTHROP
C ROBERTS LUNGER
GEORGE A.LYON
BLANCHE L.MESERVE
ELLISON MORRIS
ARTHUR W. MORSE
STEPHEN PAINE
FORREST R. PARKER
HENRY T. PATCH

HENRY E.PARMENTER F
ALEXANDER I. PECKHAM ,
WILLIAM PITKIN
JOHN REF-CE (
ROBERT HREECE 1
WARY L. REYNOLDS 1
A.WHITNEY RHODES I
A.ALEXANOER ROBEY I
WILLIAM H. ROBEY. JR.
J ARNOLD ROCKWELL
FREDERICK J.SHEPARDJR
JOSEPH E. SHERMAN
ARCHIBALD L.SMITH*

AUXILIARY SERVICE OVER-SEAS

ALBERT 8. DUNNING KARLTON a PERCY
ARTHUR S, HEATHFIELD EVARTS S. SCUDDER

RICHARD B STANLEY
EDWARD C. STREETER

ELINOR WHITTEMORE

[io5]
The members of our church, individuEdly Emd
coUectively, have a precious heritage, a royal
privflege, and a great responsibflity. It has been
preserved in increasing strength through the love
and labors of successive generations. It offers
rewEU'ds in ChristiEm feUowship, religious instruc
tion and spiritual IKe as great as its members wiU
receive. It includes aU ages Emd aU classes. MEmy
are members of famihes whose names have been on
its roUs' for half a century, some for a much longer
period. Some Eue students whose association with
it is necessarily short. A larger proportion Eire
wage earners than is supposed by outsiders. The
inheritance, the privflege and the responsibflity
belong alike to afl according to the measure of their
activities. By their presence at its services, their
shEue in its ministries, theh prayerful interest in
the welfare of its members and their loyal guardian
ship of its honor, each adds to its usefulness Emd its
exceUence. Every worthy member of the Old South
Church is able to say, "Lord, I love the habitation
of thy house, and the place where thine honor
dweUeth." This is in outline the history of our church during
the thirty-five years of Dr. Gordon's ministry to
the present time. Though the excitement and
turmoil throughout the world continues, the minister
and his co-workers look forward serenely to years of
StiU greater opportunities and more fruitful service.
Albert E. Dunning

THE GOVERNOR'S ADDRESS

lT the evening meeting. May 11, the services of devo
tion were conducted 6y Mr. Butler. In introducing
Governor Coolidge, Dr. Gordon said: "It is our
privilege to have as our guest this evening the Governor
of the Commonwealth. I have the honor now to present
to you His Excellency Calvin Coolidge, who has kindly
consented to bring greetings to this andeni and honor
able servant of the State."

THE GOVERNOR'S ADDRESS
REMEMBERING how from its very founda
tion the history of this rehgious Society has
been interwoven with the history of the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts, it is a most
grateful privflege to bring to it on the observEmce
of its anniversary the greetings of the Common-
wesdth. I suppose it would be difficult indeed for us to
reconstruct the state of society that existed at the
time of the foundation of this association. Massa
chusetts then was a colony of Great BritEun, Emd
in that great empire it had not yet been deter
mined whether men were to hve under the despotism
of the StuEUts or under a constitutional government
of parliament. It wsis twenty years, almost, Eifter
the founding of this Society, that the glorious Revo
lution in EnglEmd determined that that Empire
would turn its feet forever toward liberty. And
the same spirit was stirring in this old colony, for
in 1689 the people here, in the exercise of their right
of revolution, overthrew the Governor of that day
and took up the duty and the right of governing
themselves. Since the founding of this church something like
109

[no]
seventy different Governors have presided over the
destinies of the Conunonwealth; for it runs back to
the days of that ancient Governor whose name now
is almost lost to us — Governor BeUingham.
I have often thought of the wonderful historical
location of the old church, there on Washington
Street. Across the way was the old Province House;
on one side, near at hand, the birthplace of Ben
jamin Franklin; a little down the street the old
State House, where sat for many years the govern
ment of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. What
historic scenes it has witnessed, and what men of note
has it seen pass by its portals!
The patriots of the Revolution gathered there;
that great exponent and great exEimple of the right
of the people to rule — Samuel Adams. There in
its pews have probably sat George Wsishington,
General Lafayette, and the great men that have
visited Boston in days gone by. And aU of the
great causes that it hEis supported have been success
ful in the end. It is a great history!
Remembering that the constitution of our State
in its preamble gratefuUy acknowledges the Su
preme Legislator, and in the body of the Declara
tion of Rights provides not only for the privflege,
but enjoins the duty, of worship at stated intervals
of the Supreme Being, you can see that aU of those
fundamental principles of our Commonwealth Emd
her institutions have drawn their inspiration from
the societies on which they are founded.

[ill]
Sometimes it seems as though government were
drawing away from the eteruEd verities that men
ought to live by. I doubt K that be reaUy so. I
doubt K there is even now Eibroad anything less of
the spirit of reverence that ought to mark the
government and the places of worship thEm that
which has characterized us in the past.
It is a grateful task to come here on behaK of
the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and to bring
its greetings to an institution that has been one of
the piUEirs of the state, and from which the govern
ment has drawn guidance and inspiration, and by
whose teachings I trust the government may abide
forever.

THE MAYOR'S ADDRESS

I

NTRODUCING Mayor Peters, Dr. Gordon said:
" We have, as another guest, the Mayor of the City of
Boston. His Honor Andrew J. Peters has kindly con
sented to bring his greetings to a very old and very
honorable servant of the City of Boston, and of the
town of Boston long before it could call itself a city —
when it was little more than a village."

THE MAYOR'S ADDRESS
YOUR church is one hundred and fifty years
older than the City of Boston. It is older
than the State of Massachusetts; it is older
than our Nation. It existed and flourished under
the Stuart Emd HEmoveriEm kings, though never in
very deep sympathy with either of those reigning
houses. In a word you have been a part, and a very
conspicuous part, in the growth and development
of the City of Boston.
It is very fitting, therefore, that the Mayor of
this city should be present on this, the memorable
occasion of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary
of the creation of this congregation. We have
grown up together. To us, the civic officers, there
have been entrusted certain practicEd and mundane
interests. Yours is the higher ministry of the
Spirit. Yet I am not sure that we have ever been
so very fEir apart as such a mere verbal antithesis
may imply. On the contrary, we seem to have
lEibored in a close and sometimes in quite a con
scious cooperation. A government hke ours rests
ultimately on the wiU of the people; their free and
spontaneous assent to the measures that Eire taken
for the common welfare are the only grounds on
ii5

[ii6]
which our government cEm ever permEmently pro
gress. And what is this K not an apphcation to
civic affairs of the very essence of rehgion, its in
sistence upon human brotherhood.**
So your congregation has strengthened the govern
ment at its foundation by maintEiining the spirit
which hes at the basis of democratic citizenship.
It is no accident that in aU our great historic crises
your members have exerted a powerful influence.
The Tea Party, we are told, was discussed under
the roof of your second meetinghouse. A few
ye£U"s later the British officers only endeared that
structure to us the more by their endeavor to pro
fane it. And today the Old South Church survives
as a monument scarcely second to Faneufl HaU.
During the Civfl War the principles of Lincoln and
Sumner were eloquentiy expounded from your
pulpit. The European war found you zceAous Emd
united in behaK of those ideals which aU true Amer-
icEms hold in common.
But these are only the strong hghts of your
history, the vivid moments of excitement and public
destiny. During the intervening period your in
fluence goes on steadfly, quietly, unobtrusively.
Your continued existence is a guarantee of righteous
citizenship and of integrity and ideals in public and
in private affeurs.
So I am happy to join you in these ceremonies,
which celebrate a continuity, not only of member
ship, but of indwelling spirit — the continuity of

[ii7]
a hving idea. And because this idea is Edive and
not merely formal, it has shown the power of growth
and of adaptation to the development of the forms
of hving things. The congregation which was bom
in vehement dissent stiU maintains its original
chsiracter of independence Emd of simphcity. The
Confession and Covenant which were recited by the
founders stfll form a part of your Service of Ad
mission. But your independence has broadened
into an acknowledgment of the universal sanctity
of conscience, and your simplicity no longer rejects
the beautKul as an accessory of worship.
It is a happy coincidence that this impressive
Emniversary — for quEuter-miUennials Eue not com
mon as yet among American institutions — occurs
during a pastorate which is itseK aheady remEirk-
able for its length of years. For three decades Emd a
half your present minister, Dr. Gordon, has placed
at your service his rare gKts eis an interpreter of
spiritual truth. We aU know how successfuUy
he has striven to make rehgion a humEm experience,
a complete satisfaction of the craving of our human
nature. In these intimate relations of sympathy and trust
between a flock and its pastor, even more thEm in
the eloquence of the spoken word, the charm of the
service, the dignity of the house of worship, I find
the true beauty of a congregation hke this. I
assure you it is a deep satisfaction to me personafly
to join with you in these exercises tonight, to breathe

[ii8]
this atmosphere — impregnated with the tradition
and fragrant with the perfume of the finest Chris
tian spirit Emd highest civic ideals. I am glad to
trace as I sit here with you, in retrospect, the long
line of progress over which our Puritan spirit has
traveUed, developing and flowing in its ideals, adapt
ing itseK to modem conditions, and keeping alive
today that same spirit of vigor and force which is
ch£U"acteristic of the members of that first smaU
congregation which met two hundred and fifty
years ago.
The spirit of which your temple, your service,
you yourselves, are the outward mEinifestations, is
one of the enduring things that is characteristic of
the features of our Boston community. It could
not perish without leaving a void impossible to
fifl. And therefore, as a BostoniEm, loving my city
and having faith in its future, I am sure it wiU
not perish. For that reason I am here to wish
abundant and long continued prosperity to the
congregation of the Third Church of Boston. I
trust that this noble edifice may endure for cen
turies to come, a tower of visible beauty and, as
such, a symbol of the strength and joy which it
makes and the high ideals which axe carried on
through generation to generation by the
members of this congregation.

DR. PARK'S ADDRESS

D

R. GORDON introduced Dr. Park with these words:
" Those of you who were present this morning and heard
what I had to say about the unpleasantness in which
this church was born will bear witness that I am not
saying anything before Dr. Park that I did not say
when he was absent, — that both churches were right
and both were wrong; that they had each a half truth,
and the half truths came together thirteen years after
the original quarrel, — it took them thirteen years to
cool off. Since that time the two churches have gone
in parallel lines of service and of fellowship. One of
the first voices to welcome me here when I came was
Dr. George Ellis, a brother of the then minister of
the First Church — and it was a great greeting. We
have with us the honored and l)eloved Minister of the
First Church of Boston as our guest this evening. He
is descended from a very eminent and eminently
orthodox family, — I don't see how he got where he is, —
a grandnephew of Edwards Amasa Park, one of the
mightiest of teachers and of men in his generation.
There is no minister in Boston, or anywhere else,
whom I could introduce to you with more affection,
with more respect, than I now introduce to you the
Rev. Dr. Charles Edwards Park, Minister of the First
Church of Boston."

DR. PARK'S ADDRESS
MY FRIENDS, such an mtroduction ahnost
precludes the possibihty of an adequate
response. It touches one very deeply. It
occurs to one, however, that when institutions cele
brate their centeuEiries, individuals are bound to
feel very smaU.
I have been invited to convey to you the greetings
of the First Church in Boston upon the occasion of
your two hundred and fiftieth anniversary. I am
pEunfuUy conscious of my own personal insignifi-
CEmce, as any man would be conscious of his own
personal insignificance who strove to stsmd as a
spokesman between two such ancient and honorable
institutions; both of whom came into existence
years before he himself was ever thought of; both
of whom wifl continue to hve Emd to flourish and to
serve Almighty God years after he himseK has been
gathered to his fathers.
One might Edmost detect a little note of presump
tion in him who ventured to occupy such a position;
who ventured to frEune in his own feeble words, and
to utter with his own stammering tongue, the deep
Emd the generous messages of greeting, in afl their
volume, and moment and accumulation, which

[I22]
ought properly to pass from one institution to the
other upon this two hundred and fiftieth birthday.
It would require an exceptional man to do that, —
to msike himseK the mouthpiece of Em integrEd part
of our Boston Emd New England hfe during these
past two hundred and fifty ycEirs, Emd to address
another integral pEirt of our Boston and New Eng
land hfe, and to say the adequate thing, to give
utterance to the thing which the First Church in
Boston would want to have said to the Third Church
in Boston.
I, myseK, feel very strongly — I am sure that
you not only do feel, but have felt, very strongly —
a great deal of sympathy with the Apostle Paul
when he wrote those words to his friends the Chris
tian Hebrews: "Wherefore seeing we are compassed
about with so great a cloud of witnesses." What a
stupendous picture that suggests! You in the Old
South Church celebrating your two hundred Emd
fiftieth birthday, compsissed about with so great a
cloud of witnesses, — the hundreds and the thousEmds
of your predecessors in this honored communion,
who throughout the past generations have graduaUy
gathered together and buflt up and constituted the
substance, the texture, the body of membership,
the aggregate congregation and the aggregate con
sciousness of this Emcient Church. Think of that
cloud of witnesses present with you in spirit. Pictur
esque, K you please, in Edl the parade of their attire;
the young Emd the old, the rich and the poor, — a

[123]
noble Eumy, — girls Emd boys, the matron and the
maid, Jacobite and Puritsm and Georgian Emd Vic
torian. Think of that cloud of witnesses whereby
you are compEissed about, who have been and who
stifl are the aggregate consciousness of the Old
South Church, in behEdf of whom you Eire acting
today! Then I think you wfll agree with me that
when institutions celebrate their centenaries, in
dividuals feel pretty smaU.
Now think of another cloud of witnesses where
with another body of worshippers in the city are
compassed about, — a company very simflar to
your own, and only a few years older, — those who
have constituted, and who stfll do constitute, the
aggregate consciousness of the First Church in
Boston. And then for the time being entirely dis
guise aU present personahties, Emd let those two
great mystic, vague, stupendous assemblages of
humEm souls spesik directly to each other; let the
genius of the one utter its greetings directly to the
genius of the other. There I think we would have
some suggestion of the real messages of greetings
which would pEiss between the two Churches at this
time; the voice of the one spesiking to the con
sciousness of the other; the spirit of the one com
paring notes, reviewing the past, uttering its con-
gratiflations to the spirit of the other.
It must needs take a daring man to say just what
that message would be; it might perhaps be better
to leave the imagination to face that task unEuded.

[124]
And yet for my part I cannot resist the confidence
that the words which that voice, that vast composite
voice, would spesdi, Eire words of love and feUow
ship. Perhaps they would be words somewhat as
foUows: "My friend and my feUow worker: According to
the measurement of man the years of our IKe Eire
many and long; for two centuries Emd a half we
have lived Emd labored side by side; we have had
our ups and downs; we have drKted apart, and have
been drawn together; we have knovra our moments
of estrEmgement and jcEdousy, and our long bright
periods of close Emd brotherly cooperation; Emd
looking back over the past by and large we see from
the VEmtage point of this occasion that after eiU is
said and done our paths have been pEiraUel, that
our love for each other has been very real, that the
ties which have bound us together have been and
are infinitely stronger and more numerous than the
little forces which would have thrust us asunder,
and that we hold for each other even a deeper affec
tion, that we Eire prouder of each other, more de
pendent upon each other than we had realized.
The dear Lord knows that we are both old enough,
and we are both magnanimous enough, to rise above
the level of httle, paltry pohcies and reverences,
and to take delight, not in each other's discomfiture,
but in each other's success; and that is because we
are so sincerely agreed in our aim and in our pur
pose. We are striving, each in his own way, to do

[125]
the SEime thing. We are pEurtners in a common enter
prise, which is to engender and to implant the sphit
of Christ in this community; to estabhsh a httle
shce of the Kingdom of God here in Boston. And
it mEikes no difference as between us whether the
chief portion of that work is done by the one or the
other. What we each wEmt is to have the work
done, and that which we most delight in is to see
that the work is done, whether by one or by the
other, — whether by the Old South Church or the
First Church, whether by Paul or by ApoUos.
What we wsmt is to see the thing done, and we
dehght to see that it is done, — that Jesus Christ is
preached, that the acceptable year of the Lord is
proclaimed. " Therefore, I who am your feUow worker, I who
am the genius and the spirit of one of your com
panion churches in this great partnership of God's
service, bring you here hcEirtfelt greetings upon
your two hundred Emd fiftieth birthday; heartfelt
greetings of love, of gratitude, of pride in aU your
great and honorable past; and bright hopes and
confident expectations for the still greater
Emd the stiU more honorable future
that hes before you."

PRESIDENT MACLAURIN'S ADDRESS

I

NTRODUCING President Richard C. Maclaurin,
Dr. Gordon said: " The next speaker is the President
of one of the proudest possessions not only of the
Commonwealth, but of the country — the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. But I introduce him this
evening as an honored and beloved member of the Old
South Church, and he is to speak to us in the house of
friends and to his friends."

PRESIDENT MACLAURIN'S ADDRESS
THIS is Em historic occasion and at such a time
our thoughts naturafly Emd properly revert
to the past. Tonight I have more thought
for the future than for the past, but it is for the
future as it wfll be Eiffected by the past, seeing that
the roots of the future go deep into the past. This
morning the curtain of the past was skflfuUy drawn
aside at great moments in the IKe of the Church
and of the community. Action, great action, was
the centre of interest Emd we were fascinated not
only by the action itseK, but by the revelation of
the human quahties of the actors — strength and
frEulty intermingled in bygone days as now. To
night as a complement and contrast to this I shaU
deal not vrith action, but with thought. This I
cannot present in the dramatic form that so en
tranced us this morning. What I ask you to con
sider is this — during the turbulent Emd eventful
years of action that Dr. Gordon's sermon recaUed
so vividly to our minds, the great current of human
thought h£is flowed on quietly — how has this
current tended in the world at large and how has
this tendency affected the Christian doctrine of
IKe which, to this historic church, has always been
the theme of psiramount interest and importance?
139

[i3o]
Just twenty-seven years before this church was
founded, there was born in England of obscure
pEu-ents an infant that at first appcEired so freul
that he seemed destined to an early death. Hap-
pfly, he outhved this eEirly fraflty Emd in the vigor
of his mEinhood did, perhaps, more than Emy other
single mEm to speed the current of the world's
thought in the rcEihn of science. This was Isaac
Newton. His science weis, of course, related to
the science of Em earher day, but his was one of the
great master minds of the world and his contri
butions to scientific development gave such Em
impetus to science as to msike the progress since his
day incompEu-ably more rapid Emd significant than
at any other period of human history. The dis
coveries of science since this church was founded and
the applications of science to practical Eiffairs have
so radicEiUy changed the conditions of men's dEifly
lives that we face now a new CEuth and a new heaven.
The growth of the scientific spirit has been the
most notable human achievement since the days of
Newton. As Science has wEixed the Church in
general hEis seemed to many to WEme, and it has been
too often assumed that this waxing of Science and
waning of the Church Eire related as cause and effect,
in other words that science Emd religion are by
nature antagonistic. This is a view due primarfly
to the fact that the church has often stereotyped its
creeds or based them on the authority of a book or
a person or a group of persons, or uncriticaUy ac-

[i3i]
cepted a tradition of miraculous interferences with
the order of nature. The mEm of science is used to
wonders, but they are wonders that are subject to
law. He is suspicious of authority of any kind and
his study of nature makes him extremely critical of
any reported breach in the continuity of naturEd
law. He is keenly Edive to the fact that much of
the history on which some of the dogmas of the
Church were founded was written under circum
stances that did not make for scientffic accuracy in
the record. He knows, too, that even the unques
tioned facts of bygone days often demand a new
interpretation in later ages. So it has come about
that the growth of science has made impossible for
thoughtful minds the retention of many historic
creeds in the form in which they have been handed
down. Science tries to bufld its creeds on experience
and it realizes from experience that everything is
chEmging. Science itseK is changing and chsmging
so rapidly that what is scientffic orthodoxy today
may be heterodoxy tomorrow. SimflEirly, people
bursting with modernity today wiU be looked upon
as old fogies tomorrow. Is there anything permanent
behind these shKting forms.!* That is a great ques
tion for science and religion alike. If you arrive at
the idea of some fundamental permanence it is
easy to recognize that the form in which it is pre
sented not only changes, but must change from
generation to generation and from age to age. We
were reminded this morning of the circumstances

[l32]
of the baptism of Benjamin Franklin, one of the
great names on the roll of the Old South Church.
He is often regEuded as a pioneer of electricEd
science, but it is impossible to speak of electrical
phenomena today in the language of Franklin and
wfll doubtless be equaUy impossible a hundred years
hence to speak of them in the language of today. So
with religion — the fundamental phenomena are un
changed, but the language you must use to describe
them changes inevitably from age to age, and even
K the words are the same their meaning is different.
What, then, you may ask, is the form of Christian
doctrine that today is acceptable to the "modem
mEm"? If by "modern man" you mean the man
that writes and tEdks a good dcEd nowadays, the
man with a smattering of science and other modern
knowledge, who thinks that the inteUectual IKe
of the world began with the twentieth century,
but may be wflling to stretch a point to include a
pEirt of the nineteenth, the man that does not appre
ciate how profound has been the insight of pioneers
of thought in ages long since past, the man that
does not know the simple fact that K you estimate
the achievements of the race by the inteUectual
powers of the few very great ones that have ap
peared (let me say) since Greek thought was at its
height, there is no convincing evidence of any ad
vance at EiU, and little to be sEud for the very modem,
K this be the modem msm that you have in mind,
when you ask what form of Christian doctrine is

[i33]
acceptable, then I say that it is a matter of trifling
importance what is acceptable to him. He is a
mere sophomore strayed from the ranks of the
coUeges, and no sensible man sits up nights ponder
ing what is acceptable to such a person. If, how
ever, by "modern mEm" you mean the man who
realizes that he is the heir of aU the ages and must
formulate a creed that is consistent with aU that
he has learned from others Emd all that he has
acquired through his own experience, then your
question is indeed a momentous one Emd demands a
most serious answer. I should not, of course, pre
sume to answer it now, even had I any fitness for
the task. It presents far too complex a problem to
be summarized adequately in a formula or disposed
of in a fraction of an hour or in several hours. It
needs to be presented from many points of view and
applied to the innumerable problems of real hfe.
It demands, indeed, just such an exposition cover
ing months and ycEirs as we of the Old South Church
are privfleged in obtaining from the great preacher
and teacher who has fiUed this pulpit so worthfly
for a generation.
Although an adequate exposition of the creed of
the modern man is a lengthy matter, although much
that seems important to one generation loses al
most Edl significEmce for Emother, smd although the
phases in which the doctrine must be presented to
be acceptable to the "modem man" of Emy epoch
are necessarily changing, it is stifl true that under-

[i34]
lying these changing forms Eire a few broad views
that Eire essentially permanent and that constitute
the essence of the Christian doctrine of IKe. These
views wiU remain of vitEd interest and import as
long as they satisfy the deepest needs of mEm. They
are two in number. First a view of the possibih-
ties Emd the worth of the individuEd man, a view
that gives dignity to the humEm struggle, however
sordid its conditions; Emd the second a view of
the right relations of mEm to his neighbor, a view
that supphes an impulse and a guide to sociEd action.
Surely there never weis a time when this tragic
world needed the ChristiEm doctrine of hfe more
urgentiy than now. Look at the individual. Petti
ness Emd sordidness, muddle Emd ffitflure, surround
him on every hEmd. Crossness smd wickedness Eire
rampEmt, the war having revealed their unfathom
able depths in new and drEimatic forms. These are
facts that the modem man must face, and K he
cannot accept a Christian view of them he is
often driven to the conclusion that man lives like
Em Einimal, loves hke an Emimgd, Emd dies like an
animal. This doctrine that mEm is a mere gain-
seeking EmimEd preying upon his kind may be held
by a few individuals without much apparent result,
but what happens when it becomes the real creed
of a people, or of the dominEmt section of a people,
we see before our eyes today in the tragic spectacle
of despairing Russia.
And K you look away from the individual to

[i35]
communities and nations the urgent need of a
Christian doctrine of hfe is equaUy apparent. In
mEmy coimtries the most sigmficant social movement
today is bEised, at least in psirt, on a doctrine of
hatred, and we see at our own doors men and women
striving, Eilmost with rehgious fervor, to set class
agEiinst class and group agEiinst group. Nor is the
present generation likely to forget the awful spec
tacle of a mighty nation encouraging itseK by hymns
of hate to WEir pitflessly on the innocent and the
defenceless, and in the UEime of humanity giving
itseK up to a veritable orgy of hatred of other
peoples. I have spoken of changing forms Emd of the fact
that much that appeals to one generation is re
pellent to smother. This historic church took its
rise in Puritan days and we have since travelled far
from Puritan ways of thought and action. Modern
science, however, although it could hardly use the
language of Puritanism, finds itseK in some funda
mental matters much more in accord with Puritan
ways of thinking than with those that have since
supplsmted them in populsir esteem. .Puritan doc
trine was abandoned lEu-gely because of its gravity
and its sternness, but that is just the Eispect of it
that appeals to the man of science. He cEm have
no sympathy vrith the easy-going optimism that
has long been popular in our midst, due perhaps in
part to a reaction from the excesses of the PuritEm
regime. The popular view is not definitely for-

[i36]
mulated, but K it were it might take some such
form EIS this: "Do not trouble much about good or
evfl, about falsehood or truth. In almost every
thing humEm these things are intermingled, good
being not very far from evfl, nor wisdom from foUy,
so that one man's opinion is almost as good as
another's. Things wfll somehow aU come out
right in the end, and in the meanwhfle we cannot
do better than encourage all to shout forth their
views and settle the issue by counting heads." To
such a creed the modem man, imbued with the
spirit of science, is unalterably opposed. To him
truth and fEdsehood, good Emd evfl, are as distinct
as were God Emd the Devfl in the mind of the Puri
tEm. The root principle of his scientffic creed is to
base everything on the sohd ground of fact. He
cannot, as so many do, overlook facts simply be
cause they are unpleasant or discordant with his
theories or his preconceived ideas. Amongst the
facts that cannot escape him except by a deliberate
closing of the eyes, is the fact of the awful conse
quences not only of wickedness but of mere error.
More Emd more, as he investigates nature, he finds
aU things ruled by laws that are never relaxed,
and the punishment for ignorance of these laws
seems to him to be as certain as the punishment for
their deliberate breach. He CEinnot, therefore, be
an easygoing optimist, and whatever be his hopes
or fears as to human destiny, he cEinnot but bestir
himself to know the truth apd live in its light. Nor

[137]
can he view with equanimity the spread of perni
cious doctrines of any kind whether these doctrines
be economic, political, social, or rehgious. He must
do more than deplore them; he must do his best to
combat them. Nonresistance to evil is unthink-
Eible to him, Emd amiEible tolerance of human fraflty
and foUy is Eihnost the impEudonable sin.
Let me touch in closing on the revival by the
modem mEm of interest in the ancient doctrine that
mEm is saved, K at aU, by devotion to the church.
It is a doctrine CEisfly distorted to base uses. In
the crude forms in which it has often been pre
sented it has been the source of some of the gravest
evfls that history records. Needless to say that
in such forms it is abhorrent to the modem man,
and it is impossible to believe that it wifl ever
again become acceptable. Devotion to the church in
the sense in which it interests and attracts thought
ful men today means primarfly devotion to the spir
itual community of the Church Invisible. This is
the community of afl those who Eire loyal to the
great ideals of Christianity, whatever be the form
in which they choose to present those ideals, whether
Cathohc or Protestant, Orthodox or Heterodox,
"old fashioned" or "modem." There may be no
relation at afl between this spiritual community
and the visible church of our dafly experience, but
K there be no such relation, then, of course, the
visible church is a shEim. Easy Emd cheap it is to
point out how far this visible church falls below

[138]
its ideal; easy and cheap to belittle its achievements
Emd enlarge upon its faflures. The only thing worth
doing is to bring it nearer the ideal, and the modem
doctrine to which I have referred suggests that man
is saved, K at aU, by his effort to do this. So
this doctrine runs — devote yourself to your church
with unwavering loyalty, strengthen it by Edl the
means in your power, keep it from a mere conven
tional fEuth, Emd strive without ceasing to bring
it closer into accord with the Invisible Church of
which it should be the counterpart. There hes
the great task and the great hope. The end for the
individual is Scdvation and for society the mEiin-
tenance of civUization itseK. These Eu^e dsirk days
in the history of the world, when men's hearts Eu-e
fEifling them for fcEU-. And they may well fear, for
civihzations — highly prized civilizations — have
disappeared before now and ours may disappear as
others have done. Let us have no Ulusions. One
thing is certain. Civilization wifl not be saved by
flabby optimism nor by irresolute goodwiU. It
needs the virtues of the warrior and the cafl to its
service is even more pressing now than ever weis
the caU to Eirms. It is the CEdl for alert smd
strenuous loyalty to the great ideals
of the Master.

"'lllitfiiV^
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