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 5
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15
5. The fifth event was John Eliot's mission to the Indians. Roxbury, it is true, may claim the honor of having been John Eliot's home, and the scene of his first official labors ; but his first service with the Indians, his first sermon to them, the first evangelical sermon on this continent in the heathen tongue, the first evangelical mission, in fact, to a heathen people in modern times, belongs to Cambridge, for it was within the limits of what was then the town of Cambridge that, on the 16th of October, 1646, on the south side of the Charles River, within the present limits of Newton, which was then a part of Cam- bridge, Eliot gathered his red friends about him, explained to them the truths of the gospel, and applied them to the con- ditions and needs of his dusky hearers. The faith and fervor of one who accepted, believed in, and lived by the revelation of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost inspired and guided this first attempt to reach the untutored children of the forest with the good news of redemption in Jesus Christ.
6. And the sixth and last event - a brace of events, to speak more exactly - was the printing, first, of the Bay Psalm Book. and second of Eliot's Indian Bible, the distinct purposes of which must have been the promotion of the glory of God by means of Christian praise, and the opening of that Bible and of all the truths which it contains to the knowledge of a race otherwise sitting in darkness.
Such were the events which stamped Cambridge with its early character and gave it its bent, -a bent which it has fol- lowed largely to this day. These are the institutions to which,
52
CAMBRIDGE FIFTY YEARS A CITY.
with what has grown out of them, and with the men who have adorned them, we owe our honors. In many other respects Cambridge cannot vie with other of the suburbs of the New England capital. We have not the tide-water facilities which Charlestown enjoys. We have not the natural attractions of Dorchester or West Roxbury, or the Newtons. Our streets cannot be compared with some of those of Brookline, nor our mansions with those which cluster on the hillsides overlooking the Chestnut Hill reservoir. What is it that gives Cambridge her prestige? Is it not such institutions, such events, such histories, such lives, as those that have been mentioned here ? It is the human in the landscape that gives it its beauty and charm. It is not that England is more attractive pictorially that we are drawn to it year after year, and love to wander through its crowded cities or lose ourselves in its green fields and leafy lancs. It is because England is the home of Chaucer, and Shakespeare, and Milton, and George Herbert, and Wordsworth, and Dean Stanley, and Charles Kingsley, and Canon Liddon, and Thomas Hughes. It is because of the institutions, the events, the lives that have illuminated English history and the English landscape, that we love to visit her over and over again. And it is the same sort of history, on a smaller scale, of course, and within a narrower limit of time, that has made Cambridge what she is, and en- deared her to our hearts and made us proud of our citizenship. The town where the first Christian college in the land was planted, where the first church council was held and the first platform of Christian doctrine was promulgated, where the first printing-press was set up and the first book printed, and that book a book of psalms for the greater and more fitting praise of God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and where the first mission was preached to the Indians in the gospel tongue, - that must ever be the foremost town in all the land.
Others may be older, larger, richer, finer, but none can be greater in the moral sense. And when we add to all this the fact that this town and these its historic institutions were out- growths and expressions, natural, distinct, and explicit, of the Trinitarian doctrine of the Church of England, and that for more than a hundred years no question was ever so much as raised as to the Scriptural character of that doctrine, or the importance of it, or its obligations on the conscience and lives
-
53
EDWARD ABBOTT.
of men, there has been added the final thought which makes all this review most natural and appropriate on this particular Sunday of our Christian year. For until little more than two generations ago Cambridge was a Trinitarian town. There has always been Unitarianism in the Christian church from the time of the Arian controversy down, but hardly to organize itself and lift up its head as an ecclesiastical force until com- paratively recent times. A hundred years ago, or a little more, it became a visible and organic reality by capturing King's Chapel in Boston, until then a house of worship of the Church of England ; setting aside the Book of Common Prayer up to that time in use in its worship, and substituting for it a spuri- ous prayer book from which all recognition of the Holy Trinity had been carefully expunged. Then presently followed the formation of a Unitarian Association, and the line of demarca- tion between those who held to the old, traditional, and historic faith, and those who rejected it, became definite and divisive. It was a slow process. Exchange of pulpits gradually ceased between the ministers who stood on the opposite sides of this dividing line. The line ran in and out among all the parishes of the standing order. the Congregational throughout New England, and Cambridge was one of the points at which its manifestation and the consequences became peculiarly conspic- uous. Of the First Parish at Harvard Square, dating from the founding of Cambridge, Dr. Abiel Holmes, the father of Oliver Wendell Holmes, was then the pastor, living in the old gambrel-roofed house where the law school now stands. Dr. Holmes stood by the Trinitarian theology. Some of his peo- ple went the new way.
A rupture ensued. The difficulty was increased by the com- plicated relation then existing between the church and the " so- ciety," so called. The rupture ended in a split. The pastor and the church, properly so called, went out, and went on their evangelical way, according to the faith of their Cambridge fathers, their English fathers, and, as they understood it, the long line of fathers reaching back to apostolic times, to the New Testament Scriptures, and to the witness of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ ; while the society remained in possession of their corporate name and of the house of worship, and had their own way with the doctrine. The Shepard Congrega- tional Church, under the Washington Elm, and the First Parish
54
CAMBRIDGE FIFTY YEARS A CITY.
meeting-house, just at the upper entrance of Harvard Square, are the visible representatives to-day of these two separated bodies, attest their schism, at the beginning of this century, and stand as monuments, the one of loyalty, the other of dis- loyalty, to the accepted and transmitted teachings of the Chris- tian Church on the great point which is before our minds to-day. For more than a hundred years there had been but one religious organization in the town, the one which was now rent in twain by the wave of Unitarianism which was sweeping over New England. In 1757 Christ Episcopal Church had been planted by its side as a mission of the Church of England. These two organizations held the town between them until, in 1808, a third society was formed in Cambridgeport in the Unitarian interest, and the division of the old parish followed as above outlined, in 1829. A First Baptist Church was formed in 1817, a First Methodist in 1818, a First Universalist in 1822, and a First Roman Catholic in 1841; but the Unitarian devel- opment was a distinct divergence from the original foundation of the town, and that foundation had then been faithfully ad- hered to, as has been seen, for nearly two hundred years.
And so to-day, standing, as we do, on the historic grounds which the Church of God has occupied from the beginning, we join in the grateful and proud commemoration of the completion of the first half-century of our life as an incorporated city. We do not, we cannot, forget the rock from which we were hewn and the pit from which we were digged. We cannot and we will not forget the faith which the fathers of our city held, which they brought with them from their home beyond the sea, which they held dearer than life itself, which they proposed to hold to the end, and to defend if need be with their lives. We do not forget, what is really the glory of Cambridge, the insti- tutions to which her early life was dedicated, and the lives and works which have gilded her name with lustre wherever it is known. The pure fame of Longfellow and Lowell and Holmes, the long-continued, wide-spread, and still extending influence of her great university throughout the entire land, the dissemina- tion of a wholesome literature to which she has so materially contributed, these and such as these are her titles to honorable mention as she passes this milestone and rounds out the first half-century on her way. What is before us we little know. But this we do know, that the secret of prosperity in the future,
55
EDWARD ABBOTT.
as the secret of influence and power in the past, must be found where our fathers found it, in the fidelity of our thinking and our living to the truth as it is in Jesus Christ, the great revealer of God to man. Well might we raise, as the crowning feature of the decorations which are to enliven the scenes of the week upon which we have entered, one grand and all-enclosing arch of triumph, on whose span should be inscribed in august pre- eminence the sublime words in which are concentrated the de- votions of this day : -
" Almighty and everlasting God, who hast given unto us thy servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of the Divine Majesty to worship the Unity; We beseech thee that thou wouldest keep us steadfast in this faith, and evermore defend us from all adversities, who livest and reignest, one God, world without end."
HONORABLE WILLIAM AMOS BANCROFT,1
MAYOR OF CAMBRIDGE.
I ESTEEM it a high privilege to meet you upon this, the first of the observances, with which is commemorated our city's fifti- eth anniversary. This observance is not only the first, but it is the only one which is devoted entirely to a single interest of the city, apart from all others. In this way is shown the impor- tance which this community attaches to the subject of educa- tion. And why should not education be held here in high esteem ? It was no mere accident by which the fathers estab- lished here a college, ere scarce they had founded a state. Full well was the character of those who dwelt here known, and with much confidence was the preservation of learning intrusted to their care.
Many of you who now sit here may reasonably expect to take part in the observance of the one hundredth anniversary of the incorporation of our city. What opportunities you will have ! What responsibilities you will bear! What achievements may be yours ! And with what feelings you will look back to this day !
It is not my purpose to give utterance to such further obser- vations as the occasion suggests, for others have been asked to speak to you. [Introducing President Eliot.] This will not be the first time that a president of Harvard has talked to Cam- " bridge pupils ; but I shall not be charged with exaggeration when I say that no president of Harvard has ever reached a higher eminence in the domain of education than he who will ยท now address you. I announce President Eliot of Harvard Uni- versity.
[Later, introducing Judge McIntire.] I am now about to ask you to listen to one who was Cambridge-born ; educated
1 Introductory remarks at the gathering of the pupils of the English High aud Latin schools, and the higher grades of the Parochial schools, at Sanders Theatre, June 2.
57
WILLIAM AMOS BANCROFT.
in the public schools ; holding a degree of Harvard Univer- sity ; a soldier of the Union ; one who has served in the coun- cils of the city, and of the commonwealth ; for years a safe adviser of the municipality ; and who possesses the character and attainments that warranted his appointment to high judi- cial office. Sooner or later all of us who are able to save any property are sure to take an interest in the decrees of his court. I ask you to listen to the Hon. Charles J. McIntire, principal judge of probate for Middlesex County.
[Still later, introducing Secretary Hill.] It is fortunate that the accident of birth is not needed to become devoted to the welfare of our city. Ten years ago there came among us as the master of the English High School, then just established, one whose intelligence, whose zeal, and whose discretion ob- tained quick recognition in this, the very home of education. After he had served us with marked distinction, Boston asked him to take charge of its great school of mechanic arts ; but the commonwealth soon claimed his talents, and he has become the worthy successor of Horace Mann. I am sure that those who will now hear him for the first time will regret that they have not heard him before, and that those who have heard him before will want to hear him again. I announce the honorable secretary of the State Board of Education, Mr. Frank A. Hill.
HONORABLE WILLIAM AMOS BANCROFT,1
MAYOR OF CAMBRIDGE.
IN large part the history of nations, both ancient and modern, has been intimately associated with the history of their cities. If cities have not contained all the intellect and all the con- science of mankind, yet they have often been the theatres of direction, and often, too, of decisive action. A city has always been taken to mean a municipality, having not only a large pop- ulation, but possessing great wealth invested in public institu- tions and in private concerns, and to be as well the abiding place of many who take the lead in human affairs. Indeed, the idea of a city is that of a cluster of human activities. Much, therefore, of human interest centres about the city.
It is to the city that the traveler goes to study the traits of a people. Its government, its laws, its social customs, its busi- ness enterprises, its provisions for health, safety, education, its arrangements for locomotion, for communication, the use it makes of nature and of art for its convenience, its comfort and adornment - in short, the civilization of a people is and can be studied best in its cities.
It is fitting, then, that at suitable periods and in a suitable manner a city should publish to the world some account of its resources, some statement of its characteristics, some outline of its prospects. This can be done by the spoken word, by the printed page, by the procession in the public streets, by the gathering of its inhabitants, and by various other means which an aroused civic spirit suggests.
Founded 266 years ago, Cambridge has now entered upon the fiftieth year of its corporate existence. Grown since 1846 from a population of 13,000, and a valuation of about $10,000,000, it has now a population of 83,000, and a valuation of upwards of $100,000,000. Long known to the world as the seat of the foremost university in the country, it possesses also municipal
1 Speech delivered at the public meeting in Sanders Theatre, June 2.
59
WILLIAM AMOS BANCROFT.
advantages which are distinct, even if less famous. It is be- lieved to be the largest city in the country which for nearly a generation has enjoyed a non-partisan government, as it is the largest city which for a decade has decreed and enforced for itself the absence of liquor saloons. It has a water supply, a sewer system, and a park system rarely equaled. It has numer- ous churches, excellent schools, ample and beautiful public buildings, efficient police and fire departments, well kept and well-lighted streets, good transit facilities, and a low tax rate. It has $25,000,000 invested in manufacturing, and 5,000,000 feet of vacant land within a mile of the State House for more. It has beautiful residences, and plenty of attractive sites for more. It has historic and literary associations that are the pride of the nation, and it has, what other cities and towns in the Union have also, noble men and noble women.
The record of "Fifty years a city " will soon be closed. In it there is much to praise and but little to regret. We take counsel of the past for the gain of the future, and look forward with high hopes.
In the fifty years art has changed the face that nature gave our territory. Have religion and learning and experience changed the public character ? I do not know that they have, but I believe it is no less virtuous to-day than it was a half century ago. I need not recite the names of the living whom we delight to honor, whose bounty and whose services have aroused our civic spirit and are making this a city beautiful. Loyal, then, let us be, and let public virtue be our civic pride.
We are met to listen to such observations upon the interests that we commemorate as those who have been invited to speak shall choose to offer. I am glad that the voices you will hear are the voices of Cambridge citizens. Their attainments, their fame, their devotion especially to this community, make un- necessary any words of introduction.
REVEREND DAVID NELSON BEACH, D. D.1
" Pray for the peace of Jerusalem : They shall prosper that love thee. Peace be within thy walls, And prosperity within thy palaces. For my brethren and companions' sakes, I will now say, Peace be within thee. For the sake of the house of the Lord our God I will seek thy good."
PSALM cxxii. 6-9.
STANDING on the eve of the celebration of the fiftieth anni- versary of the incorporation of Cambridge as a city, and bear- ing in mind the desire of our noble chief magistrate, our thoughts, even in God's house, and on this holy day, turn natu- rally toward the subject of our city. For this we have abun- dant warrant in Scripture, which, though it is concerned with the highest and eternal truths, bodies these forth to us in con- nection with the lives of men, of communities, of cities, and of nations. The text is a glowing example of such a temper. That temper extends throughout the Bible. Its vision of heaven in the Apocalypse is the vision of a city lying four- square, the length and the breadth and the height of it equal. Augustine's glowing " City of God," which has engaged the im- agination and tender emotion of the church in all the ages since, and has suggested the norm by which to build civic life on earth, as well as the spiritual life within, is animated by the same idea, and owes the warm response which it has ever received to such an aptitude in men.
Let me say, then, that no city on this continent, and few cities in the world, have greater occasion for such a mood than has this city of our profoundest love. It was one of the earliest to be settled in New England. The men who were first here, Hooker, and his earnest company, who, most of them, migrated soon to the valley of the Connecticut, and Thomas Shepard and
1 Abstract of a sermon preached at the Prospect Street Congregational Church, May 31.
61
DAVID NELSON BEACH.
his friends, who, under strikingly providential circumstances, effected the permanent settlement, were persons of extraordi- nary character, capacity, and promise. To Shepard especially it was dne that here was gathered the first Synod of the churches of the Colonies ; that here was put forth the first formal declaration of principles of the ecclesiastical polity then dominating this portion of the new world; that here were settled certain exceedingly difficult problems, affecting the re- ligious life and harmony of Massachusetts Bay ; and to the char- acter. judgment, eloquence, and devotion of Shepard was due the fact that here was founded the first American college.
The events from the middle of the seventeenth century to the middle of the eighteenth, while not so notable as those earlier and later, were, as a whole, highly creditable to our community. But as the middle of the eighteenth century arrived. here began to be specially manifested that spirit which made Cambridge so conspicuous in the American Revolution. Cambridge then presently became, over and over again, the gathering place of the men of Middlesex in the early struggles and protests against the encroachment of British tyranny. Not only the geographical position of the town, but the temper of its people, and the traditional position which it had come to occupy as a centre of right civil impulses, caused it to be the key of the situation in the first great moves of the struggle with England.
On our soil landed the troops who marched on Lexington. Within our bounds, upon the retreat, occurred some of the severest fighting of that bloody day. From our common, at nine o'clock in the evening of June 16, 1776, after prayer by the president of the college, marched the men who, within the next twenty-four hours, made the little hillock in Charlestown one of the most famous spots on the globe, and the key and presage of the victorious ending of that unequal struggle upon which our people had begun. Hither came Washington. Under the tree still standing, he took command of the Ameri- can army. During his stay of nine months in this town, he grew from a provincial military commander to one of the fore- most and ablest soldiers of history. Hence it was that there issued his permission that Gage should retire - indeed with flying colors, an empty honor - from Boston, and in effect from New England. Hither was brought Burgoyne after the
62
CAMBRIDGE FIFTY YEARS A CITY.
fateful day of Saratoga, and here, in a house yet standing, he spent his honorable imprisonment until his return over seas. The very force of the first campaign of the Revolution was so effective and decisive that this ceased to be a place of military importance after 1777; but never, so long as the memory of heroic deeds shall abide, can the events here enacted, the char- acters here playing their parts, and the storied places which are so numerous within our limited boundaries, ccasc to have a precious meaning for those able to be touched by the heroic and inspiring in human life.
The years between the Revolution and the outbreak of our Civil War continued to be in keeping, though in quiet tones, with Cambridge's mighty past. It was not by accident that the first company received into the service of the Union in the war for the suppression of the Rebellion was our immortal Cambridge company. It was not by accident that from Elm- wood went out the " Biglow Papers," on their humorous, heroic, solemn errand, to stir thought and feeling and life for our cause on both sides the sea. It was not by accident that here was recited the "Commemoration Ode " when the war was done. This and other immortal pieces of literature, here originating, were but the natural outworkings of Cambridge's mighty past.
But God's greatest gifts to men are not wonderful historical associations, or those having to do, as has been so splendidly true of Cambridge, with education, or even with religion as a formal thing in the world; but his greatest gift is the gift to the world of seers, of pocts, and of great constructive and in- spiring personalities. Such in ample largess has God given to Cambridge. Passing by many poets of lesser name, though of large endowment and fame, and several other classes of in- tellectually great men, Cambridge has had within the more recent decades its Holmes, its Longfellow, and its Lowell.
O City dear to all our hearts, thou art haunted by the memories of the mighty dead; by recollections of prodigious educational and religious impulses ; but especially art thou haunted by the deathless spirits of thy great poets and seers !
And the best of it all is that Cambridge's past is matched by her present. She has been marching out into the larger life of our time. For now a generation she has excluded partisan- ship from municipal affairs. For now nearly a decade she has excluded the saloon from her populous streets. She has lifted
63
DAVID NELSON BEACH.
the ideals of civic life wondrously. She has obliterated, in the harmful sense, the divisions of politics, classes, races, and re- ligions. She has unified in an extraordinary degree the spirit of her whole people. Finally, within the last decade, has sprung up, under the local phrase familar to us all, a muni- cipal ideality hardly excelled by anything since the days of the famous cities of ancient Greece. And all this has been going on while the temper in education, and the constructive force of our university, have been putting the name of Cambridge in the world's forefront in all intellectual ranges.
O my friends, is it possible for us to realize, even in some imperfect degree, that stupendous past and stupendous present which are ours ? God open our eyes that we may see the won- drous vision, and our hearts that we may be duly thankful, and that we may adequately face the responsibility which all this involves !
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.