work far above the petty contentions of sectarian difference into the pure atmosphere of the gospel of Christ.

In so grand a position of power and beneficence does our beloved Commonwealth stand. I should be indeed faithless to her highest impulses and her heartfelt convictions did I not here and now recognize her obligation to the stern and godly men of yore, who built the ancient churches and gathered the people within their walls to worship God, to praise Him for His abundant blessings, and to invoke His great mercy and favor upon their undertaking in the cause of religion and liberty.

But the people of to-day cannot safely disregard their duty. If there shall be a great and honorable future, if the celebration of the next century's anniversary shall be crowned with renewed glory and continued peace and safety, it will be only because the sons hold in sacred trust what the fathers so grandly established and transmitted. The interests of religion lie near the life of the State. While the framers of our Constitution declared absolute toleration and protection for all forms of religious faith, they put them in union with unqualified recognition that "the public worship of God and instruction of piety, religion, and morality promote the happiness of the people and the security of a republican government." Though the State has no established church, her people cannot neglect the interests of religion without grave danger to good order and security. By no means have we

any right to claim that it is a matter of no consequence whether public worship and religious teachings are maintained or not. That is not the guaranty from the past. Liberty is not license. Independence is by no means indifference. Privilege affords no release from duty.

Bitter, indeed, may be our scoffing and ridicule over the austerity and illiberality of the Puritan. fathers; but merciless will be the condemnation coming generations will visit upon us, if while we boast of our freedom and flaunt our defiance of ecclesiastical control, ignorance, immorality, corruption, selfishness, and worldliness shall have despoiled us of our patrimony and blighted the prospects of the future. Bring religion and politics together into the domain of the private conscience; let the obligations a man owes to the public be tested by the standards of justice, of fairness, of integrity, of square dealing that characterize honorable intercourse among men, in other words, carry the church, your church and mine, and the high inspirations that come from every religious communion, into public service and duty, and that union of Church and State, incarnating the noblest principles and the purest life, will bring no peril but rather unlimited support to our free institutions, and assure the stability of the State.

Says De Tocqueville: "Despotism may govern without religious faith, but liberty cannot. The United States must be religious to be free. Society must be destroyed unless the Christian moral tie be

strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed; and what can be done with a people who are their own masters, if they are not submissive to Deity?"

I am honored in the invitation to participate in the celebration of the establishment of this ancient church, and to it I respond in all the earnestness of my heart. No occasion like the present can pass without touching closely in sympathy all the people in Massachusetts. She abides to-day in her loyalty to the grand and noble deeds and sentiments of the past; and all the honor of her future rests in fidelity to God's eternal laws of justice, of holiness, of purity, and of uprightness, for which everywhere the true church shall be consecrated and revered in the hearts of men.

The original hymn by Dr. WILLIAM EVERETT, to the tune of St. Thomas, was then sung by the choir and congregation; after which the Chairman said:

"The past of Massachusetts is rich with moral and intellectual wealth, of which this church has contributed its full share. We call on the President of the Massachusetts Historical Society to draw from the storehouse of his abundant knowledge the fruits of wisdom and instruction. Apart from our reverent relations to him as our frequent guide and teacher in the pulpit of this church, and as a member of the First Church of Boston, from which we welcome a voice of sympathy, there is a historical propriety in his presence and aid. The rooms of the Massachusetts. Historical Society stand on the north side of our burialground, on the site of the home of the last provincial clergyman of this church, the Rev. Dr. Caner, who at the

Revolution fled the country. This property was confiscated by the State, and eventually came into the possession of the Historical Society. In either building Dr. Ellis stands the representative and the exponent of the richest associations of our political and ecclesiastical history."

ADDRESS.

BY THE REV. GEORGE EDWARD ELLIS, D.D., LL.D.,

President of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

OUR local, historical, and memorial celebrations are becoming very numerous, as is realized by those privileged to take part in them. One of our New England mothers of a household, in the olden time. of large families, began with a loving observance of the recurring birthdays of her children, as they came one by one or in pairs. But as they multiplied, so as to require a festive occasion almost in each month, she decided to take a general average of them, and to make the annual Thanksgiving Day a very happy one for them all. We may yet have to group some of our commemoration days.

But the first question to be asked of each of these occasions is as to what gives it its special interest, significance, or importance. So we ask of this occasion. And we distinguish at once between two elements in it, one of which we put all aside. The old feuds and rancors of religious controversy, the animosities and alienations attendant upon the planting of a church of the English model in a Puritan colony, are left by us to the past, - to

history. As such, they have a full and impartial record on the admirably wrought pages of the first volume of the history of this Chapel by your present minister.

There is quite another point of view for our retrospect. Nature, as we see it in the old woods, gently covers with moss and creeping growths the wounded trunks and stumps in their decay. And so may picturesque incidents, touches, and fancies come to us as investing the exciting occasion when the English Church, with its observances, came uninvited here. As we look candidly at the facts, the time and occasion had rightfully matured for the recognition of the State religion of the realm on this peninsula. Even as the strife which was opened was the warmest, its incidents and features could not have been all grim and sour; some touches of merriment and humor must have relieved it. Whether that mischief-maker Randolph, in writing to the archbishop, used the word "lethargy " instead of "liturgy," as much needed here, or whether it was a mistake of the printer, the joke was equally an available one. We may trace the serious and the humorous incidents of the strife in the Diary of the good old Puritan judge Samuel Sewall, though what is humor to us was all very serious to him. Recall his deep sadness and his stiff resolve, when he was asked to sell a plot of his land on the ridge opposite this present building for a church. "No," said he, "the land belonged formerly to Mr. Cotton, the Non-Conformist exile from his mother