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 14
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And Christian fellowship is not merely a tie with the men of our own day; we may enter into the thoughts and aspirations of the saints of all ages ; we may seek to follow their good examples. The occasion which is drawing the thoughts of so many strangers sym- pathetically to Malden to-day illustrates this deep truth. This week you are feeling keenly the civic enthusiasm that is kindled by the memory of a long and honorable past. The character of a city, the tone of a community is indeed a thing to be proud of; it is a great practical force for good. We know that in regard to every young man who starts in life there is a question as to the place where lie was born and bred, and that the reputation of the community where he was reared, with its probable impress on his personal habits, is a thing we all take account of. It is important to work for the good name of a civic community now ; and. nothing does more to raise the tone of any town than to cherish the memory of worthy ances- tors and to look back on the blameless record of many years. A good name is as good as a heritage - aye, and better, too. The
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worthy lives of your forefathers are a constant reminder of personal duty to-day ; and therefore it is that you do well to meet here and thank God for the memories of the past, -of the good men furnished with ability and living peaceably in their habitations, who were hon- ored in their generation, and the glory of their time. Some have left a name behind, and some there be which have no memorial, but whose righteousness has not been forgotten. And while you are feeling the glory of your long heritage and the aspiration of long memories so strongly, will you not resolve to make use of the same ennobling prin- ciple as it applies in another sphere, not only in civic but in church life, not only in regard to secular good citizenship, but in regard to your Christian calling to life in a city that hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God? It is no mere principal place of which the epistle speaks, but a spiritual community, with noble traditions and an unending future, a city resting on the one foundation laid by Jesus Christ, and builded by the witnesses of His Apostles, with all the glorious companionship of martyrs and heroes, of those who have struggled and those who have suffered for the faith that is theirs and ours.
As we look back on the history of any civic community, we feel how much the life and interest of men in bygone generations dif- fered from ours. Their struggle for existence was not the same as ours, for we have entered into their labors. The arrangements about five-acre lots, and shares in the meadow and the common, all tell of a life that is quite unlike that of a flourishing town to-day ; but it is not so in the deepest aspects of human life, in the Communion of Saints. Man's relations to the Eternal abide while the ages pass ; there is the same reality in sin, the same truth of pardon, the same effort after progress, the same pledges of God's eternal love, - their experience was ours. In these experiences we may be at one with all our fellow-citizens in the Christian Church. Our great High Priest has carried with Him to the Heaven of Heavens a sense of our infirm- ities, and the Saints of God have known what it is to struggle with sin, what it is to aim at coming nearer and nearer to God. If we too strive as they did, we too shall inherit the blessing. Encouraged by their example, let us seek for a new fulfilment of the old promise by obedience to our Lord's commands, by abiding in the Apostles' fellowship. Let us not forsake the assembling of ourselves together, but cherish habitual intercourse with our neighbors who wait for the Lord ; let us lift up our hearts, too, to the cloud of witnesses that compasses us about. So shall we run our course with patience, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.
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THE OLD CHURCH.
Abstract of an Address delivered by William B. de las Casas.
ON October 17, 1861, ten people associated themselves together to form Grace Church, the first Episcopal society in Malden. At first they worshipped in private houses, then in a small hall, and finally, for the most part, in the hall over the station of the Boston and Maine Railroad, which then stood at the corner of Pleasant and Summer Streets.
About the year 1865, regular services were discontinued ; and the worshippers met only at long intervals. On Easter Sunday, 1866, a service was held in the old Methodist meeting-house, in which is now the office of the Malden Evening Mail. On January 13, 1867, regular services were renewed, first at private houses, then in the rooms of the Young Men's Christian Association in Waite's Block, where is now the office of the Malden Mirror, and finally again in the hall over the Boston and Maine Railroad station, until the present church was built.
On April 21, 1867, these worshippers organized under a special act of the Legislature as St. Paul's Church and Parish, and absorbed the outstanding legal rights of the former Grace Church. Rev. George P. Huntington was the first rector. He began his ministrations here, while yet a deacon, April 17, 1868, became rector, May 25, 1869, and resigned on account of ill health, October 4, 1884. He was succeeded by Rev. John Milton Peck, who was elected, February 22, 1885, and resigned, September 1, 1887. Rev. George Alexander Strong was the next rector. He was elected, October 15, 1887, and resigned, Sep- tember 1, 1890.
Rev. Samuel Richard Fuller took charge of the parish, January 12, 1891, was elected rector, April 18, 1891, and resigned upon ter- minating his connection with the church and diocese in May, 1896. Rev. Frederick Edwards, the present incumbent, was elected rector and took charge of the parish, December 1, 1896.
The early years of Grace Church were years of hard work in a then unfruitful soil. The struggle for existence was almost as hard in the first years of St. Paul's Church and Parish ; but the patience and faithfulness of the first rector laid a broad and strong foundation. Growth was slow, but sure, for many years. Earnestness and sim- plicity in teaching and the conduct of the services and the temporal affairs of the parish characterized the work of each succeeding rector ; and now, under the present rector, a more rapid growth has resulted. St. Paul's Church promises to be one of the strong churches of the city in the near future.
FIRST BATTALION CAVALRY, M. V. M.
THE PARADE
Corner Salem and Sprague Streets
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LINDEN METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH
LINDEN METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH. THE REV. E. STUART BEST, Pastor.
SERMON BY THE PASTOR.
ACTS xxi. 39. - A citizen of no mean city.
RHETORICIANS, when they wish to avoid anything that looks egotistic or bombastic in their style, often express a positive idea in a negative form. It was so with St. Paul in our text. Wishing to favorably impress the officer, who was leading him into custody, with the dignity and grandeur of his birthplace, he speaks of himself as " a citizen of no mean city." All the Greek and Roman historians, from Xenophon to Strabo, confirm the statement of the Apostle ; for by its wealth, grandeur, and intelligence, Tarsus was ever considered the rival of Antioch and Athens.
What St. Paul affirms of his birthplace, we may to-day with some degree of propriety apply to our own municipality, and rejoice, on this the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of its founding, that we are " citizens of no mean city." We have everything of which Tarsus, the capital of Cilicia, could be proud, and hundreds of other things of which the people of that old city never dreamed. We have churches, schools, libraries, hospitals, literary and benevolent institutions, and mercantile and manufacturing establishments, which cannot be sur- passed by those of any city of its size in our commonwealth ; and if unsurpassed in Massachusetts, they have no better in the world.
Where is the secret of our success and prosperity? Geographi- cally, our nearness to the capital of our commonwealth has led us to catch the overflow of the population of the crowded metropolis, and has made our city a city of homes. But this is not enough to account for our rapid growth and wonderful development along all the lines of municipal prosperity. In 1881, when Malden first received a city charter, her population was twelve thousand and three hundred souls. It is now, eighteen years after that event, thirty-three thousand, - showing an increase of twenty thousand and seven hundred, or nearly a threefold increase. But nearness to a great city will not always account for the rapid increase of a smaller one. We have known of once thriving towns stripped of their trade and their prosperity, and blighted because of their nearness to overshadowing cities, and left to decline and wither on their outskirts. We must look further than location, or any other material cause, before we can account for our prosperity. Moral, not material, factors have mainly wrought these favorable results. The founders of our city, like the founders of all New England, were men of strength, integrity, patriotism, and in-
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dustry. They were this and much more than this. They were men and women of fervent piety. They feared God and wrought right- eousness, and thus proved that "godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come."
James Russell Lowell has said : "Find me any spot ten miles square on the surface of this earth, where human life and property of every kind has the strongest protection ; the place where society is the most enlightened and congenial ; the place which you would select to establish your home and bring up your family, and I will show you that all these advantages grow out of the Christian religion."
We thus see that prosperity of every kind has its root in religion. In its ultimate analysis, it will be found that religion of some kind is necessary for the existence of society. Indeed, without it humanity must perish and in a few generations be swept from off the face of the earth. France, at the close of the last century, made the rash exper- iment of trying to get along without religion. Atheism was fast driv- ing the nation to destruction and chaos. Soon France was forced to return to her religion, and, bad as it was, found in it the only escape from utter ruin.
We look around to-day, with an honorable pride, upon all that makes our city beautiful, peaceful, and prosperous ; and we give praise for all these blessings to Him who on the cross redeemed mankind, and with His life purchased all the blessings which give us joy in time and hope beyond the grave. It is the Christian conscience of the community which has driven the rum traffic from our midst and has erected a rampart of ballots around us, which, like the dikes of Hol- land, preserve our fair land from the waves which rage around us. It is something to boast of this day that never, since the passage of local option laws, has this city allowed the rum-fiend to legally set foot upon her soil to blight the fair heritage which we hope to hand down to our children without the presence of one accursed saloon.
It is to the Christian religion we owe the eminent men who are doing so much for the public good and shed a lovely lustre upon the city of their choice. Of the many of whom honorable mention might be made, we select two from the constellations of the present, and two from the luminaries of the past. The Hon. Elisha S. Converse, donor of our magnificent public library, whose intelligence and piety have led him to secure for the present and future generations a fountain of health and joy, whose refreshing streams are flowing deep and wide, and will continue to deepen, widen, and grow away beyond the power of human intelligence to estimate.
The next, his Honor, the chief magistrate of our municipality, Charles L. Dean, a man meck and powerful, like the great Jewish
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legislator ; a man of few words, but of mighty deeds, who brings things to pass without noise or show, whose gentleness has made him great.
Of the past, there are two fixed stars that first arose in Malden ; and still they shine with increasing splendor and every land rejoices in their light. There is Adoniram Judson, the great apostle of Burmalı, whose learning, eloquence, and zeal, his self-sacrifice and heroic en- durance, the Christ-like devotion of his life to God and humanity mark him out as a man of whom Malden may be proud, while the noble army of martyrs, to which he now belongs, may glory in his achievements. The influence of his holy life is as deep, enduring, and powerful as the ocean in which he rests. Of Tarsus, it can no longer be said that it is no mean city. Time and war have brought desola- tion to the metropolis of Cilicia. The only thing that gives it interest now to the civilized world is that it was the birthplace of St. Paul. So it may be with Malden. It may have its decline and fall like other places of historic fame ; but never will redeemed Burmah or the Chris- tian world forget that Malden was the birthplace of Adoniram Judson.
The other name, dear to many of the living and cherished by the saints above, is that of the Christian scholar, philanthropist, reformer, and orator who was born in this city. His grave is with us, a hallowed spot, dear to every lover of his country, his fellow-men, and God. Bishop Gilbert Haven, as Father Taylor used to say, "had a heart as open as a sunflower and as big as a sugar hogshead."
Next to Garrison and Phillips he was the mightiest of the giants who broke the fetters on the limbs of three millions of slaves, trans- forming them from chattels into American freemen. Well did these colored brothers remember their benefactor; for the suffrage of their ministers, in our general conference, raised him to the episcopacy of the Methodist Church. His name is with us still as ointment poured forth. His death was a glorious translation from time to immor- tality. Where some encounter " death's cold flood," he declared, "I see no river here. I am floating away to God in a sea of light." A little poem [by E. Stuart Best], a tribute to his memory, published in several of the religious papers at the time of his death, may tell us how greatly he was loved and his loss lamented.
IN MEMORIAM.
GREATHEART THE SECOND.
Greatheart ! thy work is done ; Thy rest is nobly won ; And thou art blessed. The Son of God hath come ; Safely He led thee home. Rest, brother, rest.
Greatheart ! all o'er the lands Both white and sable hands In grief do wring.
We miss thy words of cheer, We miss thee, brother dear, Sad songs we sing.
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Greatheart ! we'll not complain, Thine the eternal gain ; Why should we sigh, When severed loved ones meet
Where saints and martyrs greet, In ecstasy on high ?
Greatheart! at eventide A light doth still abide, Bright on thy way. It lights the valley's gloom,
It glows within the tomb, And brings the day.
Greatheart ! thou art not dead, Beyond our vision fled A seraph bright. No more from flying wing Shall falling feather bring News of thy flight.
Greatheart ! thy foes are fled, See ! their grim king is dead, To reign no more.
Comrade, the battle 's fought, Onward to victory brought, Conqueror and more.
Greatheart! a crown is thine,
Jewelled by hands divine For thine own brow.
He who was crowned with thorns
Thus all his saints adorns : Receive it now.
Greatheart ! a pilgrim band, We watch thy waving hand Beyond the sea.
We'll breast the flowing tide,
Eager to reach thy side, We press to thee.
As we look through the lustre of the present to the dim past of two hundred and fifty years, and try to imagine how the accumulated forces of the present may make the future still more glorious, we feel like saying with the Psalmist, " The lines are fallen unto me in pleas- ant places ; yea, I have a goodly heritage." Let us acknowledge the debt we owe to the past by transferring to the future, with accumu- lated interest, the property and principles from which emanate all the blessings that we this day celebrate and enjoy. We sum them all up in one word, - PIETY. " Righteousness exalteth a nation : but sin is a reproach to any people." If the greater comprehends the less, we are strictly logical when we say, " Righteousness exalteth a city, and sin is a reproach to any and all of its citizens." Keep sin out and we are safe. Somebody brought over to the Scotch colonists in New Zealand some seeds of their national emblem, the thistle. Those seeds were distributed and planted carefully in their gardens ; and in that salubrious climate and fertile soil the thistles grew to enormous size and multiplied with alarming increase. Their winged and wafted seeds filled the air and rooted themselves wherever they fell. At first the Scotch people cherished them and wept over them as admired mementos of their native land ; but soon the question arose, " How can we get rid of these noxious weeds? They are destroying our sheep- walks ; they ruin all our fields." The lesson of the illustration is this : Keep sin out and we are safe. Keep sin out of Malden and it will soon be a second Eden, growing in beauty, splendor, and power, until the millennium dawns and Jerusalem the Golden comes down "from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband."
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FIRST UNITARIAN CHURCH
FIRST UNITARIAN CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH.
REV. L. FLETCHER SNAPP, Pastor.
AT this church a musical service was rendered by the church choir, during which Rudyard Kipling's Recessional was effectively read by the well-known elocutionist, Edwin M. Shepherd.
MEMORIAL ADDRESS. BY THE PASTOR.
WERE a stranger to pass through our city to-day it would be easy for him to tell by the gala display and sundry inscriptions that we are beginning the celebration of one of our great municipal birthdays. Perhaps the first impression as to our age, judging from the new- ness of the buildings and the first-class condition of our streets and parks, is that we are beginning the celebration of our first centennial. For surely there is nothing apparent to the eye of a casual observer which would denote great antiquity in our municipal life. But this impression is soon dissipated when the stranger's eye catches the legend " 1649-1899." Then he knows that the freshness and newness of life and habitation about him has a foundation of a quarter-millen- nial standing.
I can imagine him then ejaculating, " Well, well, but where are the footprints and the landmarks of the ancient life of this new and beau- tiful city?" And so eager is he to peruse another chapter of the fathers that, as he reads the placards here and there, a veritable world of "ye olde style " and quaintness in the days of the fathers opens up to him, and he breathes the atmosphere of two hundred and fifty years ago. But I dare say that his mind dwells more on the goodly things and happy events than upon the folly and burdens of that day.
From a stranger's impressions we may get our cue for the retro- spection we are beginning to make.
It is a wise and generous disposition of biographers to preserve and emphasize the good and noble deeds of a life rather than to place upon record the despicable and weak things which sooner or later find themselves written in the nature of most every career, as a badge of man's imperfection. There is enough of the vain and weak in the present time to be a menace and warning to all who might be moved by the portraiture of the dark side of the past. I would not have you infer that the city of Malden has a dark side for which she should be ashamed. She has not. But she has had her common allotment of
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strife and difficulty, which, in many instances, if dwelt upon, would not make our retrospection as joyful a one as it may otherwise be. There is " a time to weep, and a time to laugh ; a time to mourn and a time to dance." This is a time "to laugh and to dance; " for weeping and mourning would not be in keeping with the brilliant festoon, the gala parade, and the sound of triumphant music. There are those who make use of a time of this sort to rake over the old coals of dissension and strife, and give vent to the pent-up bitterness of their hearts. But this is a sad misuse of a rare opportunity.
It would be an unnatural thing for friends who had been enemies once in the line of their ancestry or association to dig up the hatchet at the time of their reunion, and fight again the battles of old factions and feuds. These should lie deeply buried, and a hearty hand-shake should take place over their graves.
It was a custom among the ancient Jews that every fiftieth year was a Sabbatical year, a year of Jubilee, when "instead of the thorn should come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier should come up the myrtle tree." In that happy year, all schisms and strifes, debts and bonds were forgotten. Slaves were liberated and debts were cancelled, and the rich shared their wealth with the poor. To the high and low, to the rich and poor, to the bond and free, it was a year of good-will, and of charity and peace.
This is a Jubilee in the life of the city of Malden, and happy it is ; but far happier it would be if more of the Hebrew spirit could enter into its celebration, - to such an extent, at least, that no one would be allowed to go hungry, or illy clad, or scantily sheltered when there is so much rejoicing. In a city of so much wealth, such strong insti- tutions, and such large-heartedness, the only sadness which should find a place in our hearts in this time of our Jubilee is that which may accrue from any indication that our present methods and institu- tions are inadequate to the demands of our city.
It is not my intention to give an historical sketch of the life of Malden, for I do not assume an historian's rôle, however humbly ; but what observations I make shall be to me of a striking and moral import, founded upon the best authority available.
Shakespeare has written that " some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them."
The city of Malden had no princely nor brilliant birth, nor was prestige, wealth, and prosperity forced upon her, neither can we say that she has achieved greatness.
I have in mind three characters : one having had a goodly birth, yet withal thriftless and ambitionless, and consequently marked by a dearth of achievement ; the second, of a humble or proud birth, as it may be, who, through native force and brilliance or sheer luck and good fortune,
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could scarcely restrain the bestowing of honor and prosperity upon him ; the third, of an ordinary birth, of commonplace ability, yet pos- sessed of an enterprise and determination such as, notwithstanding much difficulty and embarrassment, has forced the issue of a good and successful, yet ordinary life.
To the last of these characters, I would liken the life of Malden. Historically, she was not born great, as the town of Plymouth ; nor has she had greatness thrust upon her, as the town of Lexington ; nor has she achieved what we might call greatness, though she has achieved that which might be better than greatness.
That which has made our nation great among nations lies in the genius of democracy. The strength and sinew, the marrow and bone of our great commonwealth is the spirit of public opinion which emanates from the common people. According to our traditions, neither the high nor the low are dominant. The power of our coun- try is not in its adornments nor in its frizzled edges, but in the warp and woof inwrought with a common heritage and a common life.
Such a greatness is the achievement of the city of Malden, stand- ing as a wise and sober civilian to defend the right and spurn the wrong, to send her sons to the wars when great principles are at stake, to stand for peace and prosperity throughout the land. In this may her bulwarks be formidable and insuperable, and her towers of mighty strength and lasting endurance. May her good name, as that of a good and wise though common yeoman, be proclaimed abroad in this our great anniversary time.
Malden has had her allotment of pioneering, of homespun career- ing, her share of slavery, of warring with the savages and with inimical civilization. She has had her struggles and strifes, her heartaches and failures; but she has had her brawn and good-will, her self-denials and chastenings, her determination and industry, her opportunities and achievements.
Once a colonial settlement which struggled for existence, she is now a city of thirty-three thousand souls. From a school-room meas- uring 16×20 feet, she has now magnificent institutions of learning, which are nowhere excelled for the purposes to which they are dedi- cated. From the stocks and pillory of public disgrace, the city now helps to maintain industrial schools and reformatories. From a com- mon parish meeting-house, she has now many prosperous churches, laboring in their own peculiar way to fulfil the mission to which God has ordained them. From the influence of a few embittered factions, she has now, other than the great religious organizations, many non- sectarian societies, secret and open, which contribute in peculiar ways to the welfare and prosperity of the city. From the solitary gong on Bell Rock, there is heard now the siren, and fog-horn, the
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