USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Cambridge > Cambridge fifty years a city, 1846-1896; an account of the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation of the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, June 2-3, 1896 > Part 11
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democratic republics of the New World." There has been a rivalry between two or three of our largest cities in our own nation over the final census. We want to get big cities. It is the ambition to herd together as many millions as possible, but the fact is that the massing of large numbers is not the making of a good city. If you have observed it, as I think it is true, elaboration or reconstruction in architecture follows on the heel of commerce. First our great merchant houses run into dizzy heights into the sky, until, if we are to raise lofty monuments which shall overtop our highest architecture, we need to build them high enough to kiss the evening planets. But we are on the eve of a serious renovation in domestic architecture. Peo- ple are living in flats. It is not impossible to find churches having within a few blocks of them, in our largest cities, whole cities within cities, for the numbers of inhabitants within these limits have been estimated at many thousand, nearly all of whom live in these accumulative homes. And this is to result in enormous aggregates in our cities. If " the bulk, ugliness, and flabbiness of modern London " is a question of alarm, and such hordes of people hinder true civic life, who can tell what the future shall reveal? Indeed, a nobler patriotism, keener sense of justice, a firmer loyalty to principle and to righteous- ness, a better intelligence than the average politicians possess must be the endowment of the twentieth century, or the cities of the world are doomed.
In the medieval city we find an improvement upon the ancient city, though the ancient had some things which made it superior to mediævalism. To the ancient the temple was everything. Pride in a city's grandeur and glory is not, however, the ideal of civic life. To be lounging around in the colonnades, sitting in the porticoes, visiting the temples, sporting in the arena, splashing in the baths, - these things while they are aids to greatness are not the highest achievements of a city's life. The medieval city had much that the ancient city contained and a good deal more. I do not mean to say that I think that mediævalism was not a long way from the simplicity and devo- tion of the primitive church, but it had caught more surely the spirit of Christ and his disciples, and was a development along the lines of Christian brotherhood, to terminate in which will be the culminating glory of our common redemption. The mediaval city had its monasteries, nunneries, hospices, colleges,
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and cathedrals. Here is a great advance upon antiquity. It was the mediæval church which put a value, unrecognized in the heathen world, upon the little children, and to the foster- ing care of nuns of that era many a child was taken, and edu- cated, which otherwise would have suffered from poverty or groped on in fatal ignorance.
With all the conversations which citizens of Athens held in her theatres or in the shades of the porches, how Plato had taught yesterday in the groves of Academus or what Aristotle had said in the Lyceum in Athens, or the relative superiority of the two disputants, Æschines and Demosthenes in their ora- tions, there was never heard the blessed evangel of God to this world that He had appointed men "to preach good tidings to the meek, to bind up the broken-hearted, to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness."
There has never been an age when men had a truer sense of relationship to each other than they had in the Middle Ages. There was a love of industry, a delight in doing work of art, and doing it in the very best way possible. The master and his workmen suffered not from the mean and petty feuds, the disruptions and confusions, of our modern life.
Again, we find from remotest time pride and interest in old institutions or spots made memorable by noble deeds or historic associations, like such places in our own country as Faneuil Hall, Bunker Hill, Longfellow's Home, the Whittier Mansion, and other memorials in our towns and cities. To every Roman the Coliseum, and the Forum, surrounded with its costly temples, in which justice was dispensed, was very dear. Around in the shadows of these noble works of architecture in this famous valley were statues of distinguished statesmen and warriors and trophies brought at much sacrifice from conquered nations.
To every Athenian the graceful products of Ionic, Corinthian, and Doric architecture were highly cherished. There was the Ionic Temple of Diana at Ephesus ; there was the most mem- orable Doric structure, the Parthenon, whose colossal gran- deur in white marble crowned the renowned Acropolis at Athens : a piece of human workmanship, which has been called " the glory of Greece and the shame of the rest of the world," -these, together with other products of her accomplished
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sculptors, held in high regard, teach us lessons worthy of re- membrance for our cities, namely, that to cherish places in which are vested historic associations is our solemn duty.
There is always a city within a city. There is Boston teem- ing with its varied commerce, and there is below this surface a Boston of rare intellectual significance. There is a Cambridge within a Cambridge, rich in intellectual greatness. You may go to Paris having two thousand years of continuous history, and what a city Paris may be to you ! About her history there is a library of 80,000 volumes and 70,000 engravings, - all this devoted to one subject, the history of Paris. There is the Place de la Concorde, the Dome of the Invalides, the house where Corneille lived and died ; in the Rue St. Anne the place where the great preacher Bossuet passed away ; in the Rue de Rivoli is the house where, in the great massacre, Coligny was murdered ; there can be found the tomb of one of the greatest of modern philosophers, René Descartes. There are memorials of Pascal, and scores of others, who are well known in history. There are her great cathedrals ; so that Paris, as a city, which has more than territory and population, which has more than drives and costly palaces, which has more than extensive mer- chant houses and railway termini, wears her immortelles un- crushed as yet beneath the stampede of scores of centuries, still blossoming, here in publicity, there in obscurity, but still exist- ent, making, as one has said, Paris "more like paradise than any spot on earth." And this is true of Cambridge with her classic shades and classic towers.
But once more I feel that there is one particular in which the modern city may vie with antiquity, and that is in the con- secration of her ground to our youth for sport and exercise, and to the working people for rest and recreation. The Ro- mans surpassed the medieval church in their " classical religion of cleanliness." There is hardly language powerful enough to describe the filthy condition of individuals and cities of the Middle Ages. To be unclean then was to be religious. Gar- ments were worn unchanged for successive generations, and the more pestiferous and unwholesome these garments were, the more corrupt one's physical condition, from exposure and personal neglect, the more it seemed in accord with divine sanctity and obedience. But in the ancient times men were extremely clean. Much time was even wasted at the public
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baths. A building adorned the city of ancient Rome in which 5000 could indulge in prolonged lavations. Rome was prod- igal of hier time ; but Rome believed in the health of lier subjects and the personal cleanliness of all. Mr. Gibbon lias told us tliat Rome in the beginning of the sixth century enjoyed tlie three blessings of a capital : "order, plenty, and public amusement." We undoubtedly agree with him, but feel that his definition is incomplete. The development of the youth's muscularity and well-rounded physique, the personal cleanliness of houses, streets, and people, all these things are the obliga- tions of a Christian intelligence and civilization. Every rook- ery in the city should speedily be cleaned out. Every defective system of drainage should be improved. "Every chimney should consume its own smoke." The "silver Thames " should no longer be a reproach. The classic Charles should not be discol- ored with the city's refuse. Noxious gases and dangerous refuse should be immediately disinfected and consumed. The harm- less bosom of the blessed ocean should no longer be the re- ceptacle of incessant sewerage. We are just entering, thank Heaven, on a system of improved hygienic conditions for our city. Again, in a hundred years from now, and a good deal less perhaps, there will be two days out of every week turned to their rightful uses. Wages will be properly adjusted, so that one day of the week will be consecrated to recreation. Here lies the hope of the Christian Sabbath. As long as the power of worldliness is so great, as long as the tedium of busi- ness is so oppressive, as long as social life is so fast and detract- ing from the vitality of the nation, one day in the week must be given to rest and recreation, one day must be devoted to re- ligious worship. I look for a uniform national holiday once in seven, and an uniform Scriptural holy day in which God may be served with gladness.
To revert a little and hasten to the end. The city is not an accidental formation. It is a living organism in the great na- tional body. We are first of all Americans, citizens of the United States, the very best government under the rising and setting sun. Our conclusion is that to preserve some of the features of the ancient and mediaval city is incumbent upon those who are willing to be benefited by a past, however remote it may be, if it can in any wise instruct and profit us. But there are peculiar exigencies in our cities growing out of our
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common weaknesses, as men, and incidental to our later age. Nowhere is discontent so nervous and revengeful. Not far from 50,000 people are arrested in the capital of this common- wealth each year, and in approximate figures it can be safely said, judging from recent police reports, one half of them belong in the United States, are citizens here, or sons of naturalized parents, and the other half, as shown by my own careful calcu- lation, from statistics of 1893, come from thirty-four different countries. This mixture of negro and Mongol blood, together with our Caucasian forces, makes discontent as common and uneventful as the restlessness of maggots vying in commin- gled corruption, at the same time ambitious for a better statc. It is certain that the city has got to have the Gospel.
Nowhere is ignorance more prevalent. The uneducated im- migrants lower the average of intelligence, and yet, judging from the small proportion of the best literature which is read, there is some ground for anxiety with regard to our own offspring lest they do not grow to appreciate our best authors. There is an increasing demand for sensational literature. The public press finds too much room for gossips, fancies, and fabulous distor- tion of truth.
The question might be asked if it comes within the range of clerical duty to criticise the extravagance of our cities. Vast amounts of wealth wastefully and foolishly expended, for the justification of which there is no good reason, while Christian- ity in her missions, philanthropy, education, needs all the money the subjects of any empire or citizens of any nation can bestow ; expensive banquets, personal luxuries, - deprivations of which would be a very small test of sacrifice ; wastes of the public funds, misappropriations of public money, - of all these things, the suffering, the poverty, ignorance, unbelief in society are standing and silent condemnations.
It is within the city that the passions of the human heart give most violent expression. A man cannot do business hon- estly to-day without some temporary sacrifice. In the long pull integrity can laugh at greed, which has been consumed by its own intensity. Business unmistakably is a long stride tliis side of Christian virtue. Society ideally is a brotherhood. There are no scrambles in a family sensitive to just relation- ships. Brotherhood now is only a name. It is the theme for the poet, but not a factor in the life of the merchant. Endur-
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ance rather than righteousness is the test of success. But these standards are transient. Men who hold to righteous principles will win enduring fame. Honesty rings a bell in the ear of God whose echo never dies away.
Then the city is infamous for its lust. Sometimes it is the hovel; sometimes it is the palace whose expensive foundations one would think might be turned to uses more in harmony with its ornamentation and solidity. The police of our cities are often not sterling defenders of civic purity. Our culture is often a veneer for the meanest vice. When aristocracy covers its shame with costly fabrics it does not mitigate the sinfulness of its sin. Our lives ought to be so white in the city, if we have regard for the voice of Sinai and the teaching of Jesus Christ, that we would be willing to publish our conduct upon the house- tops.
The politics of the city should not dishonor the exalted func- tion of municipal government. The unscrupulous scramble among candidates for public office ought to yield to the grave recognition of personal virtue. And there is the saloon : never an army passed in solid phalanx into battle, with minds resolute and steel fixed against all opposition, than is organized, as I am speaking, within the compass of many of our cities, among the liquor dealers and their advocates. It is the iron ball chained to the heel of our municipal progress.
How can we solve that question ? It is not easy. But it will come. Back of legislation there must be an educated and sensitive conscience. Law can build fences. Lawlessness will jump over those fences. It will risk the penalty, and so our social life is in perpetual turmoil. But when a human heart has surrendered to the divine idea of love for one's fellows, and has a common interest in social redemption, - "not 'God and the people,' as the Italian revolution inscribed upon its ban- ners, but God in the people, is the power that is overcoming the tyrannies and slaveries, the falsehoods and hypocrisies of the world,"-then there is hope for the city. When Frederick Harrison was closing one of his chapters on " The Meaning of History," in which work he has become about as religious as he ever gets, and in this case he is in accord with God's laws as to the secret of an improved social order, he says : "To reach ideals we have to reach higher social morality, and enlarged con- ceptions of human life, a more humane type of religious duty."
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But in bringing the city to great moral and physical health- fulness, it needs a change in the method of the burial of our dead. The crematorium, I know, is repugnant to my, as well as your, sense of refinement. I would not do away with the cemeteries. I would not have any of that sickly sentiment rule which would place urns upon the mantelpieces in the home. I would preserve the little garden with its green place and floral designs in the open season, but I do feel crowding upon us in the face of the probable stupendous growth of our cities a choice between the burial of " putrescent bodies half dozen deep "- and thereby an increase of the mortality of the cities -and appropriate consumption of the body after a few days of entombment with the privilege of preserving the ashes in sarcophagi.
Last of all. the city must get rid of unbelief and become Christian. The hope of the cities of the world is in Christ. " Except the Lord keep the city the watchman waketh but in vain." The cross is the way in which God has lived among us, and it is the only way satisfactory to God for men to live among themselves. Surely God will never encourage any contradiction of his own example. Our cities can never reach social perfec- tion in any other way than by their citizens becoming righteous, as the social ideals of Christ demand. The great pressure upon us is for genuine philanthropy. Another name for the real and hidden truth in the meaning of this word is sociality. Religion is right relationships. A man's only business with God is to help him to get into Christian business with men. The worship of the sanctuary, the ecstasies of religion, are worthless for our practical age if they are only the self-absorp- tions of mere quietistic faith. Christ said, "For their sakes I sanctify myself." That is as it was in Christ's case, so it must be with us toward our fellow men, " a friendship beginning and ending in self-consecration."
There is a temple which has not been built by hands, whose inner altar is the soul's assurance of its own sovereignty, whose inner beauty is but reflected in the glory of a divine induement, whose organ of exultant praise is silent till God touches the keys of our finer sensibilities. whose exalted spire is its supre- macies of living faith piercing the skies, worth more to the world than Westminster Abbey or Notre Dame ; and the more amid the desolation of the city's selfishness we can dedicate such a
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temple to the unseen Lord, to surpass the boasted glory of the "high-raised battlement," costly architecture, courageous sol- diers, vast personal wealth, - the more we bring the New Jeru- salem down from God out of heaven, - the more, that is, that her eleanliness is the real whiteness of our eities, - the more we make her heavenly-mindedness the temper of our irreligious age, the more it will be true that the municipalities of this world shall have become the kingdoms of our God and of His Christ.
HONORABLE JOSIAH QUINCY,1
MAYOR OF BOSTON.
I FEEL that you have placed a good deal upon me in asking me to respond not only for our capital city, but also for the other municipalities of the commonwealth. While the other cities of the state may be classed as the sisters of Cambridge, Boston may be more favorably classed as the mother of your municipality. In spite of the fact that you long since emanci- pated yourself from the leading strings of Mother Boston, the cities of Cambridge and Boston are to all intents and purposes united.
The city of Boston occupies an interesting position with re- spect to the galaxy of cities and towns which lie around her, twenty-eight being included in that area that has become known as Greater Boston. By uniting them all, we might become one great municipality of 1,000,000 people instead of a smaller city of 500.000. But instead of that, we enjoy this peculiar relation which centres the business life of these com- munities in Boston. and which leaves the cities and towns about us independent, only united to Boston in the common concerns that are necessary to the business life of the metropolis.
Boston looks upon Cambridge and our other cities with no jealous feelings. We are quite content that Cambridge should be an independent municipality, working out for itself its own problems of municipal government. The conditions of muni- cipal government in a city like Cambridge, differing so much in size and character from a city like Boston, render the prob- lem quite different for you than it is for us. The more I have to study the problem, however, the more I think I can learn something from the other cities of the state, and yet, the problem, in each case, must remain a local question. It is possible for you to manage your affairs in an entirely satis- factory manner by methods and machinery that would be very much out of place and impracticable for Boston.
1 Speech delivered at the banquet in Union Hall, June 3.
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I may congratulate the citizens of Cambridge on the success with which they work out their problems. We look with in- terest on your experience and on your methods. It is espe- cially interesting that this experience has shown that the city government of Cambridge demands the cooperation of the citizens of Cambridge, which is also the case of any other city. I am glad to observe that the doctrine seems to obtain in Cam- bridge to continue in office those who are deserving, and this seems to me a great point in your favor. The doctrine of rota- tion in office is naturally not popular with those in office. I think your doctrine ought to obtain in Boston.
Governor Wolcott has spoken feelingly of the relations be- tween Cambridge and Harvard College. The impress that Harvard is making on the municipal government of our cities is noticeable. In the first few weeks in which I held my pres- ent office, I selected, entirely by chance, three men, all from the Harvard class of '83, for three important offices. When I look outside the commonwealth, I see the same thing. In New York, I see a classmate of mine, Theodore Roosevelt, as the chairman of the Board of Police Commissioners. The city of Cambridge also seems to appreciate the fact of the aptitude of Harvard men in city government, as the presence of your mayor here illustrates.
I suppose it is trite to remark that Cambridge is indebted to Boston in some degree. You are indebted to Boston in that you are able to enforce your no-license law. It is only a mat- ter of a few minutes or a few cents for your citizens to cross over one of the bridges and enjoy all the benefits of license.
In conclusion, I wish to extend to the city of Cambridge the heartiest congratulations at the condition of the city at the close of the first half-century of its existence as a municipality, and the best wishes that her growth may be marked by all the enviable associations and conditions that have distinguished her past. I cannot wish more than that you may continue along the lines of municipal life and prosperity, that the mutual good will now existing between our cities may continue so that it may again be remarked at your centennial celebration fifty years hence.
REVEREND CHARLES FRANCIS RICE, D. D.1
" I am a man which am a Jew of Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city." - AcTs xxi. 39.
THOUGH Tarsus is chiefly famous as the birthplace and early home of the apostle, yet enough is known of its character and standing to show that Paul's tribute was well founded. It was a commercial centre, and renowned as a place of education.
Paul was proud of his Jewish race, esteemed highly his Ro- man citizenship, but felt also an honest pride in his native city.
The words of the text may well suggest the theme of civic patriotism - love and devotion, not to country or state alone, but to the city as well.
In this semi-centennial year, we have great reason, as citizens of Cambridge, to say with thankfulness and pride, "I am a citizen of no mean city."
As the reasons for this thankfulness and pride may be men- tioned : -
1. The material growth and prosperity of our city.
2. The men whoin Cambridge has numbered among her citi- zens and the intellectual life of the city.
3. The high character of her municipal government and ser- vice.
4. The triumph over the saloon power.
5. The practical union in moral reform of men of all sects and creeds.
6. The leadership and inspiration which by her example she affords to other cities in the conflict with corruption and mis- rule.
The duties of the hour are : -
1. Devout thankfulness to God for the past and present of our city.
2. Recognition of personal responsibility for her future honor and welfare.
1 Abstract of a sermon preached at the Epworth Methodist Episcopal Church, May 31.
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This personal responsibility includes : -
1. The realization in our own lives of the highest possible type of manliood and womanhood.
2. Unceasing vigilance and unselfish devotion to the welfare of the city.
May our loved city go onward toward her centennial of mu- nicipal life, gaining ever new strength and beauty, rising ever to higher and nobler planes of life and activity, approximating more and more closely to that holy eity which John saw in beatifie vision ! May she ever be a joy and pride to her citi- zens, a model and an inspiration to all the eities of the land !
HONORABLE CHARLES HICKS SAUNDERS.1
IT always gives me pleasure to meet the members of the Washington School, and especially on this occasion, when we are celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the organization of our city government. This school is the oldest in our city, dating from the very earliest settlement of the town. It is older than Harvard College, and is honored by the name of the illus- trious Washington. It is the rightful successor of the " faire Grammar Schoole," mentioned by Edward Johnson in his " New England Fruits," published in 1643, in which he writes, " By the side of the College is a faire Grammar Schoole for the training of young scholars, and fitting them for academical learning."
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