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 17
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Is Puritanism to be held accountable for a system of contem- porary philosophy? And remember, too, that it was Cromwell who wrote to Parliament from the field of battle, " In things of the mind we look for no compulsion but that of light and reason."
Again we are told : "Independency in religion, hatred of bishops, spoliation of cathedrals, destruction of beautiful glass and statuary, - these surely were characteristic of the Puritans." Yes ! In the revolt of their strong natures against much worldliness and idolatry of the church in the past, and some in their day, they did express themselves in rough and brutal ways. We must recollect, however, that it was
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from the Church of England that Puritanism sprang forth ; it was clergymen and members of the Church of England that formed the best material of our colony. Many of them had no desire to leave the church, but found themselves by the force of circumstances out of it. Then, under pressure of more ardent spirits and for the preservation of unity, they became more and more estranged from the mother church. There is a touch of pathos in the words attributed to Higginson as he sailed for Salem : " We will not say, as the Separatists are wont to say at their leaving of England, ' Farewell, Babylon ; farewell, Rome,' but we will say, 'Farewell, dear England ; farewell, the Church of God in England.' We do not go to New England as Separatists from the Church of England, but we go to practise the positive part of church reformation."
Independency, separatism, hatred of the Church of England, was therefore an incident, not an essential element in the spirit of Puritanism.
Again we recur to the question, What is the essential element of Puritanism? And my answer is, It was the desire of the individual man to stand face to face with God, and be judged by Him.
No pope, no king, no priest, ay, if necessary, no church, which will in any way stand between a man and his God !
The Puritan may have mistaken, as I believe he did, the office of the priest and the church, but he was right in his principle. He brought Christianity back to its fundamental fact, the essential rela- tion between God and man.
On its harder side, the relation was of the sinner and his Judge ; on the tender side (for there was a deep, mystical, and tender side to Puritanism), the relation was of the child and his loving Heavenly Father.
They had no idea where this principle would carry them ; they marched like the Israelites of old in the way that God led them. That they should have been the pioneers of religious liberty, the expulsion of Roger Williams seemed to deny. That they should bring in the era of democracy ! - John Cotton said that democracy was not " a fit government either in church or commonwealth."
Given, however, the essential truth of Puritanism, and you have 'everything, civil and religious liberty, democracy, the unloosing of the shackles of thought, speech, and action, - everything that has ensued to the end of this century.
Puritanism was but a temporary and local expression of the essen- tial truth of Christ's religion. See how it worked in earlier days. A high-priest tried to shackle the thought and speech of Peter, but Peter's voice rang out as the voice of the later Puritans has rung again and again : " Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto
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you more than unto God, judge ye. For we cannot but speak the things that we have seen and heard."
A man brought into the presence of God, realizing his sin and his essential divine origin, discovers himself to be not richer or stronger or poorer or weaker than other men, but discovers himself to be a man, the brother in Christ of all other men. Here you have the germ of democracy and the truth of the brotherhood of man.
Allow a church or a state or any other organization to become so strong as to suppress the best religious aspirations, the reasonable opinions, and the moral sense of its members, and the soul that de- mands the right to stand face to face with God revolts.
Liberty, therefore, has been the watchword of the last three centuries, liberty to stand face to face with God, and to be judged, not by priest or king, but by God ; liberty to act in church and state the full part of a man ; liberty to think ; liberty to speak ; liberty to read the Bible ; liberty to interpret the Bible ; liberty to reject the Bible ; liberty to study into the deep secrets of nature and proclaim the re- sults, whatever may be the effect on theological thought; liberty to confess Christ ; liberty to deny Christ.
We know what errors and sins, what foolishness and ignorance run riot in the name of liberty, but the movement has been great, almost sublime. The shackles of mediævalism have been gradually sundered. Spain, the country of Philip II. and Ignatius Loyola, has been driven back from Western thought, as well as Western coasts. The struggle must go on ; for while man is man he will have to fight for liberty.
With all this said, is it not time to strike another note of the essential Puritan character, - the note of duty and of obedience to the higher law ?
What are you going to do with your liberty? Our fathers no sooner gained their liberty from England and touched these shores than they began to build up a Christian community and found a Christian nation.
It is a little wearisome at times, is it not? to hear men who never think prate of the liberty of thought and the right of a man to express his thoughts, no matter how stupid or blasphemous they may be.
Liberty to vote as one pleases is a foundation-stone of Democracy, but it becomes a little tiresome to watch a man throw away his vote, year after year, in order that he may have the satisfaction of exercis- ing that liberty.
Liberty to teach and preach is a truism for which the Puritan had reason to fight, but it is hardly worth while, if one thinks a different doctrine and preaches a different creed every week.
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No! my friends, it is time that we come to more immediate and practical duties. What has the Puritan spirit of duty to do in the New England of to-day ?
Two hundred and fifty years ago this was the purest English com- munity in the world, purer than any in England, purer than will ever be again.
To-day, New England is a composite population, gradually fusing into a character. The basis is English, or Anglo-Saxon, then the Celt, the Scandinavian and German, the Italian, the Russian, the Pole. We want to carry the Puritan principle into the compound New England character ; and the people, all of them, I believe, want and desire that principle.
For note this. While the people of Latin races have brought with them many of the traditions of southern Europe, the fact is that Puritanism, as expressed in civil and religious liberty, in an ethical religion and a sense of responsibility, has pushed steadily down through Switzerland to Rome; and in the hearts of the people and forms of government, mediævalism is almost overthrown. The people who have come here have, like our fathers, come to gain liberty of thought and life. They already have the essentials of Puritanism ; they are religious.
Is it not time that we and they together, for we are one in civic and social interests, should dwell not so much on liberty as upon re- sponsibility, our duty to upbuild a righteous nation ? Distrust between Englishman and Italian, between Pole and German, will never do it. We must seek the deeper bond of a sense of duty and freedom through obedience to the higher law of brotherhood and fellow-citizenship, of God and a common service.
We are witnessing what lawless liberty is doing in the South to-day. It means liberty to lynch, to murder the innocent, to trample upon law and justice. Only through willing obedience to law and justice can there be true and permanent liberty. Only through the law may we become dead to the law, that we may live unto God.
The danger of personal liberty through lawlessness is in the North as well as the South.
Strong men want to be free to build up great fortunes ; a noble ambition, if carried out under the law and a high sense of duty to the community. But suppose the law and the welfare of the community interfere with their purpose ; still they are determined to be free to make their fortune, and by their strength and influence they enslave a legislature and lynch the rights of the people. This is the issue in states throughout the North that are condemning the lawlessness in the South. And in retaliation there are those among the people and legislators who, because they cannot reach the rich and lawless
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through righteous laws, are ready to pass unrighteous laws to steal from the rich, simply because they are rich and a few of them are law- less. We want men who will appreciate and defend the rights of the poor as well as of the rich ; and who will also defend the rights of the rich as well as of the poor.
What the people of this nation need, ay, what the people of New England need to-day is more of that homely, strong, and hardy sense of duty and that moral courage that our Puritan forefathers had. It were well if some of those who scoff at the Puritans' austerity and bigotry would catch a fraction of their mighty character and sturdy honor.
By righteous law, by self-restraint, by consideration of the rights of others, we gain the highest freedom. It is not our whims or passions, not our selfish ambitions or our material resources, but it is the Truth that shall make us free.
Whether we be by inheritance or birth English, Celt, Italian, or Russian, we are now one people, American. If we would be a free people, we must have government and we must have obedience to government ; and it must be a " a government of the people, by the people, and for the people."
Finally, what has the Puritan sense of duty and obedience to the higher law to do in the present religious life of New England ?
Freedom of religion has been the glory and the byword of Mas- sachusetts. It has brought forth some of the richest fruit, and it has sometimes run to seed.
We are familiar with the bore who talks of the freedom of religion, and who, without religion himself, is a slave to his narrow prejudices.
We have among us a pretty large company of those men and women, whose fathers and grandfathers were of deep piety, who silently reject or loudly proclaim their freedom from the very religion that has given them what force and height of character they now have. Such people are like the spendthrift who has inherited his father's fortune, and who boasts that he has no use for the talents and enterprise which enabled his father to build up the fortune.
With all this said, the people of New England are at heart a religious people. They are athirst for the living God, and they wel- come a living and united church.
In his fight for liberty, the Puritan broke from the English Church ; then his church broke into parts, and with freedom we have had separatism, sectarianism, the strife of tongues, and a divided Chris tendom in the face of heathendom. I have no panacea of Christian unity to suggest. I believe that when it comes, no man will know the manner or the day of its coming. But that there is some approach
VETERAN FIREMEN (EVERETT)
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to Christian unity this very meeting to-night testifies. Think of it! the children of the Puritans, the members of the different churches, all joining together, inviting Roman Catholics as well as Protestants, in celebrating a Puritan anniversary, and having for their preacher, to name the essential elements of the Puritan, a bishop, - a bishop of the daughter church from whose mother the Puritan fled.
I pray and believe that at some future anniversary of Malden, it may be fifty, it may be two hundred and fifty years hence, the whole Christian Church, Roman and Protestant (if there be any such title then), will join together in common prayer.
At all events, our personal duty is this. By the checking of a sectarian spirit, by a larger charity, by an emphasis of the funda- mental truths of Christ, by obedience to that higher law "that all may be one," we in the true spirit of the Puritan, in his best and deepest moments, want to draw near to each other in a common brotherhood in Christ. Thus in home and school and church there will be a united effort in the upbuilding of the character of the people, and a saving not only of the souls of men but the soul of the whole community.
Massachusetts is fortunate in having a history which is an increas- ing inspiration to the people. From the day that the " Mayflower" sailed into Plymouth Harbor, from the landing in Salem of John Winthrop, through the years of struggles with Indians and efforts for liberty, through '76 and '61 and '98, we have had a list of patriots, saints, and martyrs. To-night we are compassed about with " so great a cloud of witnesses." God help us to be faithful to our duty as they were faithful to theirs, and through us and our children may the prayer be answered, -
God save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts !
HYMN. Tune, Dundee.
O God, our help in ages past, Our hope for years to come, Our shelter from the stormy blast, And our eternal home !
Before the hills in order stood, Or earth received her frame,
From everlasting Thou art God, To endless years the same.
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Time, like an ever-rolling stream, Bears all its sons away ; They fly forgotten, as a dream Dies at the opening day.
O God, our help in ages past, Our hope for years to come, Be Thou our guard while troubles last, And our eternal home !
BENEDICTION BY THE REV. JOSHUA W. WELLMAN, D.D.
FIRST CHURCH, 1874-1883.
THE OVERFLOW MEETING.
AT THE FIRST CHURCH.
THIS meeting was addressed by the Right Rev. William Lawrence D.D., and the Revs. Edwin H. Hughes, Henry H. French, D.D., William I. Haven, and Frederick Edwards.
With the exception of the last two, the remarks of the speakers were substantially as delivered at the meeting in the Anniversary Building. The Rev. William I. Haven, secretary of the American Bible Society, was introduced by the Rev. Edwin H. Hughes as the grandson of the president of the day at the two hundredth anniversary of Malden in 1849, and as the son of the poet of that occasion, the Rev., afterwards Bishop, Gilbert Haven. Mr. Haven spoke briefly, somewhat as follows : -
ADDRESS BY THE REV. WILLIAM I. HAVEN.
IT is a great pleasure to me to join with you in this great cele- bration of your city's life. Mr. Hughes has referred to my relation- ship with the president and the poet of your celebration fifty years ago. I well remember the impression made upon me by my distin- guished grandfather, - an impression of dignity and courtliness, of awe and stateliness, mingled with kindness. And, of course, I could not forget the more varied impressions made by my father, who was the poet of your earlier celebration. It is a singular fact that, after journeys which took him all over the world and around the globe, he at last returned to Malden, the city of his birth, and here he died. He and my grandfather sleep together in the city of the dead which
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our faith recognizes as really the city of the living. It is the larger of the two cities, and we should not forget it in these commemorative hours. The city of Malden has a peculiar place in my thought. About it cluster the memories of my childhood, and young manhood as well. A great history has been written in these two hundred and fifty years- a history which may well cause a great pride in all our hearts.
It is especially pleasing to me that the really higher life of the city is recognized in these religious services. For it is this religious life which gave the town its birth, and which will give it further life and significance. I join heartily in a God-speed for the city of Malden. I pray that her future may be lighted by the divine glory.
ADDRESS BY THE REV. FREDERICK EDWARDS.
ST. PAUL'S EPISCOPAL CHURCH.
THE PURITANS.
OUR thoughts to-night go back to the Puritans, to the good men and women who settled here in the early days and made our town. We are trying to imagine what they were like, what their traditions were, how they lived, and what they thought and did.
Now there are two kinds of imagination, which we may please to call the speculative and the historic. The one is in the air, the other on the ground. The first is almost altogether the child of our inven- tive faculty. With a few materials, selected at our pleasure, we create a picture to suit our mood, - the Puritan man and maid, in their peculiar costume, walking in some dark wood, or sitting in some quaint kitchen, with the lights and shadows deftly managed, and the character to suit our plot or fancy. This may be beautiful, but it is the product of art, and of such are many of our pictures of early memories. We paint them as we do our heaven, out of a few associa- tions and much desire. They belong to our ideal world.
But there is another kind of reproduction, which runs along the ground. Two hundred and fifty years may seem a long time, and yet if you think a moment not so long after all. You can almost span them in the experience of your own life. Every one of you can re member in childhood some very old person, eighty or ninety years of age. Some of you will live to be that old yourselves. Before you pass away somebody will put in your arms a little babe, perhaps, which will live to be as old. There you have it. The lives of the three of you, the person you remember, your own, and the little child, cover a period as long as we are now celebrating, two hundred and fifty years.
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Now that helps us amazingly in thinking of these early days. The old man that you knew was not so very different from the child you will hold in your arms. The education may be different, the con- ditions under which they live different, but they are both human, both use the same speech, both love, both perhaps marry and rear children. The differences are mainly external. There may even be a different cast to the thought or tone in the life, but the old man and the child are both fundamentally human, wonderfully alike, fixed in the image of God.
And even the external conditions in the life of your grandfather and your coming grandson will not be as great, in some respects, as you are sometimes led to imagine. The old man grew up before the steam car, the telegraph, and all these so-called wonderful inventions. But he knew the sun, the clouds, the open sky, the mountains, the sea, the changing seasons. He had his horse, his dog, his fowls. He ate, and drank, and slept, and ruminated upon these things ; and they are ever with us and will be unto the end.
Such a consideration will help us to understand the Puritan, per- haps, a little better. He came here seemingly a long time ago. But he looked upon the same landscape of salt marsh, river, and hill, dealt with the same world. Pine-tree was pine-tree then as it is now, stone was stone. The rains fell, the flowers bloomed along the wayside in the same way.
We think of his conditions as primitive. Yet I think his cabins and clearings must have looked much the same as the little hamlets do along the coast of Maine and New Brunswick to-day, with the woods creeping down, the horse blinking over the gate, and the flowers growing up on either side of the door.
And there was the same difference between him and ourselves that there will be between the old man you remember and the child you shall hold in your arms before you go. His clothes were cut differ- ently, his speech strange, but he was a man with thoughts and feel- ings like our own. We must remember that human nature had risen to as high a level in certain individuals by his time as it has since. Isaiah, Jesus, Plato, St. Paul were his inheritance. Chaucer and Shakespeare had written for him his English verse. Bacon had given his prose to the world ; Milton had begun to sing. I question if there are abler men in Malden to-day than there were among those who founded these colonies, or if humanity will rise in individuals to greater heights than it had in those whom the Puritan knew as familiar names.
Three things have marked the changes of the world since the Puritan's day and will go on to mould the world during the next two hundred years. One is the amelioration of physical conditions. We
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are masters of our world more than he was. We manage the light, and heat, and electricity better than he did. Our children will man- age them better than we do. But let us dream no wild dreams. A railroad cutting will still turn up the primeval stones, bricks will be bricks, rain will fall, trees will grow in Malden two hundred and fifty years from now as they do now. But it will be no heaven.
Knowledge has increased and is more diffused. The masses are better educated. . This will be one of the great moves of the future. They will be better educated still. I doubt, however, if there will be greater intellects than Plato's, greater geniuses than Shakespeare. But more common men will know more than they did in the Puritan's day or do now.
The same will be true in religion. Theology will make no incon- ceivable advance. Christ will still be Christ. There will be no more rugged, sterling characters than the Puritans. But the spirit of human kindness will be more shed abroad. There will be no better men, but there will be more of them.
I think we should be wiser if we pondered these things a little more. All progress is not improvement. The fact that we live in Malden in 1899 does not make us greater or better men than if we had lived here in 1649, or in Tarsus in the first century. Our comforts increase, but it is the same old world ; our knowledge slowly grows, but it is the same old problem ; our general advantages are greater, but it is the same human nature with which we contend, and sin is sin in us as it was in our fathers.
My friends, let us not pride ourselves too much because we can buy store clothes, turn on hot water in our bath-tubs, and ride to Boston for five cents. It is the man that counts, and these count for but little in the making of him. Better wear homespun, bathe in cold water, and walk to Boston, than to give up that strenuous inner life in which the Puritans excelled. It is well to improve on the Puritan's house, better still to improve on his schools, best of all to take his faith for which he sacrificed all that he had, and make it the quest of our lives, adding to the world's store where he lacked, in the diffusion of tolerance and Christian kindliness, which St. Paul called charity, and St. John love, and which Christ showed to be the per- fection of the sons of God.
PROGRAM.
MONDAY, MAY 22, 1899.
8.30 A.M. PUBLIC REHEARSAL - Anniversary Building.
9.00 A.M. WATER SPORTS - Fellsmere Park.
9.00 A.M. BICYCLE RACES - Webster Park.
9.00 A.M. GAELIC FOOT BALL - Cradock Field.
10.00 A.M. TRACK AND FIELD SPORTS - Cradock Field.
10.30 A.M. BASE BALL - Cradock Field.
11.00 A.M. OBSTACLE RACES - Webster Park.
Also, During the Forenoon :
Children's Entertainments in the several School Halls and Public Halls.
RACE OF HOMING PIGEONS FROM ALBANY, N. Y.
1.30 P.M. LITERARY AND MUSICAL EXERCISES - Anniver- sary Building.
1.30 P.M. WATER SPORTS - Fellsmere Park,
2.00 P.M. TRACK AND FIELD SPORTS - Cradock Field.
2.00 P.M. BICYCLE RACES - Parkway, Edgeworth.
4.30 P.M. BALLOON ASCENSION - Ferryway Green.
8.30 P.M. PROMENADE CONCERT AND BALL - Anniversary Building.
Dancing 10.30 to 1.00. · Continuous Collation.
All Day - GOLF at Converse Links, Pine Banks.
Salutes at 6 A.M. and at sunset. Band Concerts at several points and at Sports.
ARTHUR H. WELLMAN Orator J. LANGDON SULLIVAN, M. D. Odist
DELORAINE P. COREY President of the Day, etc.
OBADIAH B. BROWN Chairman Musical Exercises WILLIAM N. OSGOOD Toast Master
EXERCISES OF MONDAY.
N OTWITHSTANDING the clouds and rain of Sunday, which failed to dampen the ardor of any, but caused some fears for the success of the outdoor events of the next two days, Monday came with a promise of fair weather ; and the clouds soon gave place to a clear sky and a cool breeze that were all that could be desired.
The day was introduced by the firing of bombs at Ferryway Green and the ringing of church bells, while the national salute was blown at the factory of the Boston Rubber Shoe Co. at Edgeworth. The rain of the preceding day had put the streets in good condition, and all nature was fresh and bright. The weather was doing its best for the celebration, and the city was clean, sweet, and busy. There was no loitering in the morning. All who could go out were early afoot, and incoming guests soon added their forces to the crowds which began to appear in the streets.
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