USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Malden > Memorial of the celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation of the town of Malden, Massachusetts, May, 1899 > Part 10
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Eliakim Willis
1792-1801
Aaron Green
1795-1827
Alexander Wilson McClure
1832-1842
Chauncy Goodrich
1843-1847
Alexander Wilson McClure
1848-1852
Aaron Chester Adams
1852-1857
Charles Edward Reed
1858-1869
Addison Pinneo Foster
1871-1872
Joshua Wyman Wellman, D.D.
1874-1883
Theodore Claudius Pease
1884-1893
Henry Hugh French, D.D.
1894-
FIRST PARISH [UNIVERSALIST] CHURCH.
REV. JAMES F. ALBION, Pastor.
THE long history of the First Parish is identical with that of the First Church until 1828, when, in the midst of a season of bitter strife, which continued many years, a final separation occurred. Its place of worship is the oldest in the city, having been erected in 1802 on the site of the third meeting-house of the town, which was built in 1729-30, at the Clay-Pits, and was the cause of the division of the town into two precincts and the gathering of the unfortunate Second, or South, Church.
The morning service at this church included a musical program, which was rendered by the choir, assisted by Mrs. William Barber, harp, and John W. Little, 'cello. The anniversary sermon by the pastor was followed by remarks by Cyrus and Darius Cobb, sons of the Rev. Sylvanus Cobb, the first pastor of the parish after the sepa- ration of the First Church.
The service of the Sunday-school was also commemorative. Addresses were made by the pastor, the Cobb Brothers, and the superintendent, the Hon. Marcellus Coggan ; and an interesting paper upon Colonial Childhood was read by Miss Amy F. Dalrymple.
* Not pastor, but supplied the pulpit.
CHIEF MARSHAL HARRY E. CONVERSE AND STAFF
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THE FIRST PARISH
OUR HERITAGE FROM THE PAST.
An Abstract of a Sermon Preached by the Pastor at the Morning Service.
JOHN iv. 38. Other men laboured, and ye are entered into their labours.
IT would be difficult, even to the most vivid imagination, to bring before the mind's eye this morning the environment of those few sturdy, daring pioneers who, two and a half centuries ago, crossed the Mystic from Mishawum to make their rude homes in the wilderness on the hillside that lies just south of this old meeting-house. The primeval forest, we are told, surrounded them. A few Indian trails through these forests were their only highways, - one the Salem Path, up which Ralph Sprague and his little band had journeyed in search of Mishawum, following the native instinct of the Anglo-Saxon to push out into new and untried fields. Just a few straggling huts and cabins around Bell Rock in the forest clearings, one of the few puny settlements on these inhospitable shores, that one day, little realized by them, was to develop into the beautiful city we know to-day.
Significant it is that one of the first things these men must have was a place in which to worship God. These men and their compeers along the Massachusetts shore were poor, except in character. The world has been thrilled and inspired by the record of their sterling virtues as they were slowly crystallized into our national history and became eloquent in our institutions.
These men sought, first, the kingdom of God and His righteousness. They could have had more ease, comfort, worldly success in England, but only at the expense of conscience and by checking the aspira- tion for liberty, which was daily growing more dominant in English hearts.
This commonwealth was born out of an intense desire to worship God according to the dictates of conscience. It was a protest, first, against the arbitrary egotism of monarchy, ever tending to tyrannical rule. The Boston Tea Party, the nineteenth of April at Lexington and Concord, " the shot heard 'round the world," Bunker Hill, York- town, and our great Declaration were all wrapped up in the compact signed in Plymouth harbor on board the "Mayflower," -- an inevitable consequence.
And, second, it was a protest against slavish obedience to ecclesi- astical and theological tradition and a like tyrannical rule in the church. John Robinson of Leyden believed there was yet more light to break forth from God's word; and beneath all their rigid Cal- vinism there was this unique passion for liberty and independence, which gave birth to a more liberal theology, as well as a free state. They did not see what the outcome would be. Men rarely do. Such 7
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things are in God's hands, and He works with a patience even yet beyond human ken.
We feel proud that a pastor of our old church was one of the first courageous men who dared to stand for intellectual and spiritual liberty, when the great body of colonists had not yet realized of what spirit they were made, nor the irresistible consequences of the liberty of worship and independence they had striven for in England. Mar- maduke Matthews struck a powerful blow at the incipient theocracy that began to show itself here in Massachusetts when he claimed the right to use his reason in interpreting Scripture, and the right of the Malden church to choose its own pastor. He also put a decided check on a tendency, quite marked in those first decades of our history, to unite church and state.
The Malden church as well as its pastor soon found that its courageous and determined stand had won sympathizers in several of the other colonial churches, who advised Malden to stand firm in its contentions. Keeping clear of the danger that seemed imminent, - the union of church and state,- they emphasized what it were well for us never to forget, that God's government and human government cannot be separated, and that if man's laws are not in harmony with Divine law they will come to naught.
I want to indicate two or three distinctive contributions of these early colonists to our civilization. First, devotion to principle, loyalty to truth, as conscience willed it; as the Great Book revealed it; in whatever way God spoke it to their minds and hearts. They showed the world that they were ready to sacrifice everything for it; home, native land, all of the advantages of that native land, schools, colleges, property, future prospects, social ties, comfort, happiness, every endearing association, the old familiar scenes, the old roof-tree and hearthside, the paternal acres, the village lanes, the old parish church and the last resting-place of loved ones - and all for what? They were ready to cross an unknown sea, to an unknown land thousands of miles distant, inhabited only by savages - for what? Freedom, liberty, independence. We smile at the Puritan for his narrowness, his pharisaic severity, his sombre, unlovely life. These were defects ; they were human. But the older our nation becomes, the more con- vinced we are of the eternal verities that were here concrete in these loyal hearts that beat under the homespun. Principle, truth, right were sacred to them. They were mistaken as to truth and right in some things, but they were loyal to conscience, to what the inner man told them was right, as no other body of men earth has ever known. That is a saving grace. Greater light will bring a truer sense of right, but a truer sense of right is of no avail where men are heedless to the voice of conscience.
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Then they were reverent men. They believed in God with all their might. It was the motive power that drove them to these shores. They were as certain of God as they were of the decks of the vessels beneath their feet. He had a reality to them which can hardly be understood in the atmosphere of the popular scepticism of these later days. Faith is the nervous energy of intellectual and spiritual life, nay, one might say of all conscious life. It is the vital force back of the most practical industrial and commercial life that surrounds us. These men believed like giants. They believed some things that were false; but I would sooner trust a man or people characterized by vigorous faith, confident and optimistic, though wrong in some of the things believed in, than a man or people uncer- tain and sceptical of things human or divine. Their reverence had more fear in it than the loving nature of God warranted ; but rever- ence, in time, will need the heart of love, no matter how much present judgment may deceive ; while irreverence by its very nature shuts up the avenues of the soul and mind of man to all good things.
And it was this God-consciousness which made the love of liberty an unquenchable passion in their souls. If one word could write the history of our land, that word would be Liberty. The liberty and freedom, however incarnate in our Declaration, in our constitution, laws, and institutions rests on this moral and spiritual basis. It was God-fearing, God-loving men who created America. It was not a mushroom growth. For centuries the human heart had been longing for it, groping here and there for it in the darkness of the middle ages, reaching weak, lame hands out towards the dim breaking light here and there; now and then a brave soul essayed to lead his fellows toward the light, but he was quickly silenced. But for a few generations preceding the landing of the Pilgrims and Puritans the ideas of liberty and independence had been fermenting all through Western Europe. Bunker Hill and Lexington had their roots far back in the past beyond Plymouth Rock. When Erasmus wrote in Holland, and Huss preached in Bohemia ; when Luther resolutely put up his articles on the church door at Wittenberg ; when the Lollards roamed through England slowly dropping their new ideas in the peasant mind ; when Wickliffe translated his Bible, and Cromwell left the plow at Ely, free speech, free thought, a free press, and a free ballot were destined in no far distant day to answer the longings of the human heart and mind.
To the matchless faith and heroism of these early colonists and their noble successors of Revolutionary days we owe a heritage of liberty such as the world never before knew, concrete in a great national life. Liberty is the very air of heaven, the essence, I believe, of eternal life, made real, actual (not perfect, of course), in a political
**
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state; this is, I believe, the great contribution of the Puritan to modern civilization. His glorious and successful example has nerved the heart of humanity around the globe ; and the end is not yet.
What has been the inevitable consequence of these truths? Democracy, in the full significance of that word. God only is king. No king or ecclesiastic can stand in man's place and usurp obedience by a false authority. Every man is a child of God, free, equal, and independent. Every man is an heir to all the blessings of the earth. Every man is free to open any and every door of opportunity. Here human brotherhood shall be tested. Here neither blood, nor wealth, nor power shall have unequal privilege. Here manhood and woman- hood shall count for their full value. This is the heritage which came to us from those sturdy, loyal hearts. God grant that we may prove ourselves worthy of the inheritance. May the Spirit that moved these men move us to-day, and guide the men in whose keeping we place our common weal.
REMARKS OF CYRUS AND DARIUS COBB.
THE addresses of these gentlemen were reminiscent in character, and as they were delivered ex tempore it is impossible to reproduce them in full.
Mr. CYRUS COBB expressed his deep emotions in standing in the church in which he was christened sixty-four years ago, and which he had not entered for sixty-one years, having moved from Malden when he was three years old. He said the inspiring strains of the organ, the 'cello, and the harp, to which he had just listened, moved his deepest soul. He also spoke in high terms of the chorus, which he declared had scarcely its superior in his knowledge, and few equals for promptitude of attack, impact, and faithfulness to the pitch.
He pointed to the front pews, where a peculiar drama was enacted sixty-four years ago. His parents brought the twin babes to the church to be named Augustus and Augustine ; but when the father held them in his arms to be named, he was suddenly seized with the desire to name them Cyrus and Darius. The name of Cyrus was in his family, his eldest brother being so named, and by adding that of Darius he would have the two kings of Persia. So his great, sonorous voice sounded out the name of Cyrus. The mother was astonished, and pulled the father's coat-tail to correct him ; but he paid no heed, and so his twins were bound to go down to posterity as Cyrus and Darius, instead of Augustus and Augustine.
As the speaker gazed about that old, consecrated church he real- ized the remarkable change and progress of the religious world since his father came there as the first Universalist pastor of the parish.
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This progress would continue until the All-Loving Father would be recognized and confessed by all Christian denominations. The very success of Universalism has been its own check as to churches, for no such preaching as greeted the ears of old church-goers and finally drove them into the church where the unchangeable God of love was preached, is now to be heard. Therefore, they were contented to remain where they were. This generation could not conceive of the battles that had been fought with devoted determination in that church and all over the land for the vindication of God and Christ. And we have to thank that God that all denominations are at heart grateful for the grand work our fathers performed. Heresy stands transformed into simple conviction, and sincere, universal confession will follow.
Mr. DARIUS COBB, in following his brother, also spoke of the inspiration he had derived from the music. The grand anthem car- ried his soul up to the spheres of the departed ones, where they joined the anthems of the angels.
There in the pew beneath him, he and his brother nestled by the side of their mother sixty-one and sixty-two years ago. Their father and mother, and their brothers and sisters have passed away ; and here they were looking upon the congregation over the space of sixty- one years. When they were three years of age their father moved to Waltham. The doctrines then delivered by that sainted father are now the ruling doctrines of the world; and if the Universalist church as an organization does not absorb a larger body of Christians it is because our doctrines so mould the tenets of the sister churches that the members are contented to stay where they are. In spirit the churches are all becoming one. Dr. George A. Gordon's remark- able statement, that the doctrine of endless misery is blasphemy, finds an echo in every church in America, if not in the world.
The speaker said the fraternal reception he had received from the churches of various denominations, since he painted his picture of Christ Before Pilate, has enlarged his own feelings and liberalized his spirit ; for a Universalist can be a bigot, a very intense one.
" I was born in Adoniram Judson's birth-chamber," he said, " be- ing just five minutes my brother's junior. Dr. Samuel F. Smith, the author of America, was pleased to say that this was what sanctified us. There is a sacredness in the thought of these relations of ours to the great Baptist missionary, when we remember that Dr. Rollin H. Neal, the Baptist leader of Boston, was one of our father's pall- bearers in Dr. Miner's Church. How often has he clasped my hand on the street, and asked that any of our father's children would accost him when meeting him. 'For he was my dear friend !' he said with deep unction.
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" I need not specify further," the speaker continued. "We all have evidence of the broad and liberal spirit that has rapidly grown to the present day, and is still increasing."
Mr. Cobb closed with a tribute to the past laborers in the church, and with an exhortation to the present members to hold fast to the truth and press on in the good work.
CENTRE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH.
REV. EDWIN H. HUGHES, Pastor.
Ar this church the morning service was appropriate to the occa- sion. A special musical program was given, as follows : -
PRELUDE. - Chorus in D. Guilmant.
ANTHEM. - Praise Ye the Lord. Randegger.
QUARTET. - And the City. Whittington.
QUARTET. - Cast me not Away. Schnecker.
ALTO SOLO (Miss TUCKER). - The Holy City. Adams.
POSTLUDE. Tours.
THE PERFECTING OF THE FOREFATHERS. SERMON BY THE PASTOR.
HEBREWS Xi. 40. - God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.
ANALOGIES are often made between the Israelites and the Puritans. Both revolted against what they deemed slavery ; both sought out a strange land ; both slowly supplanted a native people; both labored under a profound sense of God; both had stern ideas of theology ; both were the media of large and matchless blessings to the world. There is also another analogy not so often made : they both depended upon the future for the perfecting of their thought, spirit, and work.1 This, at least, was the view that the writer of Hebrews took of the Israelites. He did not treat their history as the delights of a dream, nor as the curiosities of a student ; he rather used it as a temple ringing with divine lessons. He therefore opened the portals with reverent hand and entered. When he emerged he did not carry his instruction into seclusion ; he brought it out to the world of respon- sible and struggling men. He illustrated faith by the living examples of the centuries, and ended by making all an urging motive for the race of life.
I. Thus the sacred writer seizes the thought of the aid that we 1 See Afternoons in the College Chapel, F. G. Peabody, 104.
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must give to the past and fixes it into his recital. We have all wondered at the ending of this chapter. It gives a peculiar and violent reversal of our expectation. One would suppose that it would close in fervid fashion by saying : " All these men, our forefathers in the faith, did a mighty service. Their work is blessing us now. We owe them a debt of gratitude. We without them could not be made perfect." But the chapter ends in no such way. Nothing is said directly as to the deep stream of blessing that flows from them to us. In truth, the current is sent backward, and instead of saying : " We without them could not be made perfect," it is rather written : " They without us could not be made perfect." Out of the glorifica- tion of the past, he brings the responsibility of the present.
Yet the two things are held in a sacred balance. The chapter has its long tribute to the forefathers, as well as its brief exhortation to the descendants. The worthies of the Old Testament are shown as the heavy creditors of the future. The righteousness of Abel, the fidelity of Noah, the spirituality of Abraham, the self-sacrifice of Moses, - all these are given large and lasting recognition. The very names of these men stirred the hearts of the Israelites and sug- gested volumes of eulogy. In much the same relation do we stand to our Puritan forefathers. We venerate their relics. Their chairs, their kitchen utensils, their table ware, their letters, and, most of all, their Bibles are the precious heirlooms of New England. We set their names on high ; their deeds we lift into glory. Episcopalians of whatever kind, and royalists of the traditional type cannot with- hold praise from their effort to found " a church without a bishop and a state without a king." We as a people have our chapter of Puritan faith and achievement. Time would fail us to tell of all those " who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, ob - tained promises, . . . out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens."
But this proud excursion into the past should not be suffered to rob the present of its responsibility. Our forefathers "obtained a good report ; " they did not give the world its finalities. God had " foreseen some better thing for us." In their material conveniences, their institutions, their theology, their type of character, they did not reach perfection. Their legacy was large, but it was capable of vast increase. "Without us " they could " not be made perfect." It is easier to praise others than it is to make ourselves worthy of praise. The man of luxury will admire the sacrifice of the Puritans ; the man of laxity will admire their austerity ; the man without convictions will admire their stern faith. But to take upon ourselves the form of sacrifice now demanded ; to run the risk of being thought narrow in our conceptions of conduct ; to stand by the unpleasant elements
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of the faith as revealed in the Bible and in conscience, - all this puts a momentous responsibility upon us. Who among us has not. found out that admiration is easier than exemplification ?
And this anniversary will be largely lost if it leads only to easy eulogies of the forefathers. The past is secure ; it is hardened into history. The future is pliable ; it waits to be moulded. It is good to be just to the Puritans ; it is better to be just to ourselves and to our children. It is right to laud the quarter-millennium behind us ; it is imperative to work for the full millennium ahead of us. The large expense of money and the larger expense of effort will bring magnifi- cent returns if we are all really led, not merely to praise, but to per- fect the work and character of our forefathers.
II. How is this to be done? Does this passage mean that to those now in the other world we may send influences toward perfec- tion ? So say some commentators.1 But while this view may appeal strongly to imagination, it does not lend itself readily to construction by our thought, nor to the needs of practical speech. We may be compassed about with a great " cloud of witnesses" from the Puritan past, but there is a larger "cloud of witnesses" rising up in the American future. What lines of commerce may run between us and the world of spirits, we may not say; but of the lines of commerce running down toward the coming generations, we are sure. We need not, then, tarry over dreamy speculations as to our relation to perfec- tion of character in the heavenlies. We may content ourselves with the immense and serious certainties as to our responsibility for the Malden that is and is to come.
Within the realm of our conscious endeavor we can find an appli- cation for this text. The divine principle is that of improvement. On the rocks of the farthest seas it refuses to write " Ne plus ultra." The lines of progress run across the pages of the good Book. Rigid law moves on to happy prophecy ; prophecy advances to splendid fulfilment in our Saviour; the dispensation of grace moves on to the glories of the City Eternal. And within the sphere of present human activity there is also abounding room for progress. The Puritans did not put the final period after the word " civilization." Plymouth Rock in its hardness may represent their severity of creed, in its resistance to tide and weather it may be the fitting symbol of their enduring influence ; but it was not the final goal of humanity. Lowell gathers its meaning and our duty into his stirring lines in The Present Crisis : -
" ' Tis as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle slaves Of a legendary virtue carved upon our fathers' graves.
1 See The Epistle to the Hebrews, Principal T. C. Edwards, 268.
CHIEF WINEPOYKIN PETITIONS THE GENERAL CART POR HIS RORTS IN LANDS H& M. JEN
WENEPOYKIN TRIBE, I. O. R. M.
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Worshippers of light ancestral make the present light a crime ; - Was the Mayflower launched by cowards, steered by men behind their time? Turn those tracks toward Past or Future, that make Plymouth Rock sublime ? " 1
There is only one answer : Plymouth Rock faced the future. It was a stepping-stone in the path of human progress, rather than a cap- stone in the temple of human life.
We may therefore say that without the aid of their descendants the Puritan achievement would have been harsh and incomplete. This is plain when we think of the matter of material conveniences. The Puritans certainly did not give us the final things here. The first white men who walked across the place where now stand the homes and public buildings of Malden went back to their companions to call it " an uncouth wilderness." They came by an Indian trail from Salem and passed on to Charlestown. One who may be supposed to have been in the party speaks of " three great annoyances, of wolves, rattlesnakes, and mosquitoes." Long after the first settlers had passed away, the wolf continued to howl and the snake to give its hideous rattle. Our forefathers crossed the streams in canoes or rafts. They transported their goods on clumsy wagons. They lived in rude shanties. They worshipped in barren meeting-houses. In all these respects God had " provided some better thing for us." "The uncouth wilderness " has been replaced by "a steepled city." The Indian trail has given way to a paved highway. The cries of the wild beasts have been silenced by the whistles of factories and the ringing of church bells. The streams have been arched by bridges. The wagons have been superseded by the cars. The shanties have been succeeded by dwellings of comfort. The meeting-houses have been supplanted by stately temples, making us think of the Scriptural word : " Strength and beauty are in his sanctuary." Thus have we gone on to perfect our forefathers in the way of material conven- iences. Where is the seer who can tell the advances that we are yet to make?
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