circumstance through which they have already passed in safety. To appreciate the magnitude of these changes, we must recall the facts that suffrage in Massachusetts was long conditioned upon church membership; that towns could be fined for neglecting to support the gospel; that for two centuries attendance at meeting on the Sabbath could be enforced by fine; that all corporations holding lands within a parish were taxable down to 1831 for the support of public worship, and that down to 1835 the property of individual parishioners was held liable for the debts of the parish. Never was there a closer union of Church with State than that which existed in Massachusetts in 1630, and never has there been more complete separation of Church from State than that which exists in Massachusetts to-day. Churches and ministers have gradually been stripped of every peculiar privilege and every adventitious support, until they now stand upon this firm ground-that they partly satisfy an imperious need and ineffable longing of the human soul. Time to come can hardly have in store for the New England churches changes comparable in gravity with those which they have already experienced. Their present legal condition is healthier, freer, more natural, and more likely to be stable than any previous condition. The minister is judged, like other men, by his gifts, attainments, and character; and the church is valued for the services which it renders to the community.

It would have been happier for the cause of religion if the disestablishment of churches had pro

ceeded as rapidly in Europe as it has in Massachusetts. History, then, might not have had to record that millions of educated and liberal-minded men have been alienated from religion by the habitual political attitude of the established churches.

Two hundred and fifty years is a long life for anything of human creation. There is not a written political constitution in the world which has even half that age. Empires and republics have come and gone, old dynasties have disappeared, and new ones risen to power within that period. In our own little Commonwealth, not only the external form of government has changed, but the whole theory of the political constitution. Every industry, manufacture, and human occupation has undergone fundamental changes in its processes and its results. But all these years this venerable church has maintained its original organization and held stoutly on its way through gladness and gloom, through sunshine and storm. Solemnly, resolutely, and hopefully, may it move on for centuries to come.

Does any one ask why universities, which must inevitably be occupied chiefly with secular knowledge, should feel any great concern for the permanence of religious institutions? I answer, that universities exist to advance science, to keep alive philosophy and poetry, and to draw out and cultivate the highest powers of the human mind. Now science is always face to face with God, philosophy brings all its issues into the one word duty, poetry has its culmination in a hymn of praise, and a prayer is the transcendent effort of intelligence.

WHY WE HONOR THE PURITANS

ADDRESS

AT THE CELEBRATION OF THE 250TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FIRst Parish CHURCH IN CAMBRIDGE, FEBRUARY 12TH, 1886

WHY WE HONOR THE

PURITANS

I

WISH to confess, in the first place, that I made a grave error when I advocated in the Committee of Arrangements a morning celebration of this anniversary. To this proposal Dr. McKenzie objected that the men of his congregation could not well attend in the forenoon, and that it would be a serious charge and trouble to provide a midday meal for so large a number of people as might assemble. How much the better Puritan he was, I discovered a few days later, when I came, in the records of the Great and General Court, upon the following enactment, passed October 1, 1633: "And whereas it is found by common experience that the keeping of lectures at the ordinary hours now observed in the forenoon to be divers ways prejudicial to the common good, both in the loss of a whole day, and bringing other charges and troubles to the place where the lecture was kept; it is therefore ordered that hereafter no lecture shall begin before one o'clock in the afternoon." For