GREETINGS Great God! thou heard'st our fathers' prayer, When, o'er the ocean brought, They with a patriarchal care A sanctuary sought. Hither thy guidance led their feet, Here was their first abode; And here, where now their children meet, They found a place for God. Thy flock, Immanuel, here was fed, In pastures green and fair; And thine the Shepherd's care. Here may the Church thy cause maintain, From The First Church in Cambridge, Unitarian From the City of Cambridge The Mayor, Hon. WALTER C. WARDWELL President CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT, LL.D. From Harvard University From other Bodies, Religious, Social, and Educational At the close of the meeting, guests to whom cards have been PRAYER OF REV. CHARLES E. BEALS. Eternal God, illimitable Love, we thank thee that we have learned to call thee our Father, and ourselves thy children. 'Thou hast made us for thyself, and we are restless until we rest in thee "; neither canst thou be satisfied till thy nature is imparted to us, thy love established in every heart, till all share life with thee. We praise thee that life is not planless. Thy wisdom, thy power, thy love, order our steps and thou dost shape the course of history. We know that love is the way and the life because our hearts assure us that love is true, eternally, finally, divinely true. And so, even amidst the storm and stress of life, the bewildering turnings and overturnings, we rest in the calm, sweet confidence of the triumph of love and God. We render thee hearty thanks that thy kingdom is coming. As thou dost follow seed-time with blade and ear and bountiful harvest, so we rejoice that thou dost plant ideas in the minds of men, and bring to sure fruitage those great revolutionizing, civilizing, Christianizing principles which make for stability and brotherhood. And so thou art teaching us that they who "work with God at love " can be patient, glad, and strong, knowing that their work is not in vain, but is work that shall succeed and abide. And that we are permitted to live just now, when history is making so rapidly and so evidently towards that love-kingdom of which He spoke who best interprets the riddle of existence to the man-child, we especially thank thee. Thou dost use human beings to accomplish thy divine purposes, and we thank thee for government, and schools and churches, for law, for education, for religion. We thank thee for and pray a blessing upon our nation, state, and city. Only in a country of free people, with institutions which safeguard our liberties; only in a commonwealth like ours, rich in its heritage of democracy, idealism, education, and morality; only in a city favored among the cities of the world with the light of learning, open-mindedness to truth, a citizenship of lofty purposes and high standards of civic righteousness; only under such favorable conditions can such lives be lived and such pastorates be made possible as the life we have gathered to honor and the pastorate we now celebrate on this glad occasion. For high-souled public servants, and an intelligent, right-minded populace; for government and university and temple worship we bless thee, praying that we may prize and so use these privileges that we may worthily carry on the work begun by those who builded in blood and tears. We glorify thee for thy manifold blessings upon thy servant who for these many years has ministered to and in and through this church, bringing vision to the visionless, comfort to the sorrowing, steadiness to the rejoicing. For the broad and deep foundations, for the strength and symmetry and beauty of all his honest, loving, enduring work, we thank thee. Thou hast given him the understanding heart; from thee gained he the warm, generous, tender, human sympathies. Thou hast led and sustained and inspired him through all these busy, fruitful years during which he has builded his life and thy life into the living characters of thousands of thy children. For him, their under shepherd, these assembled hundreds lift their gratitude to thee, Great Shepherd of our souls. And for that greater multitude scattered abroad over all the earth — the thousands who have been helped by this Christian minister, we bless thee. And we thank thee for those thy servants who, cheered and comforted by the word and infectious hope of this thy message-bearer, have finished their course in faith and do now rest from their labors. We give thee glory for the many visible results of this life dedicated in young manhood to thee and to the service of humanity. And we thank thee for the things that do not yet appear. For past and present and future, receive thou our thanksgivings. Give, we earnestly pray thee, unto this thy servant, whose labors thou hast so signally honored, in these sunset years of earthly pilgrimage the glow of heaven. Help him to feel that truly "the best is yet to be." Upon his family and dear ones send thou heaven's choice benedictions. May nothing but good come to him and to his. Bless, we entreat thee, O Father, this church that has been so lovingly loyal. May its future record new, bright chapters in its story, already so long and luminous. We commend to thee for thy blessing all organizations and corporations, political, educational, philanthropic, and religious, represented in this presence before thee, and bound by living ties to the heart of him who has come to fill so large a place in our ministerial, municipal, and national life. We entreat thee, help us all to live worthily, as honest followers of the dear Christ, knowing God, understanding and sympathizing with our fellow-men, bearing a simple, real word of testimony in our day and generation; never shunning labor or difficulty; never flinching before danger; but enduring the cross and sharing the joy of joys — the joy of the cross - with Him who hung on Calvary, a witness to those things which are deathless, — life and love and God. We ask it in thy hallowed and gracious name. Amen. OPENING REMARKS OF THE CHAIRMAN, It is a great privilege and pleasure, on behalf of the officers and people of this church and society, to bid you all a most cordial welcome. Many of you have come from different churches and from other public and private bodies. Your presence, therefore, is a recognition and expression of Christian fellowship that is peculiarly fitting in this place. Here, in 1637, soon after the First Church in Cambridge was founded, assembled the Cambridge Synod, the first general expression of fellowship among the New England churches. Here, six years later, in 1643, met the first convention of their ministers; and here again, in 1648, was adopted the Cambridge platform, upon which the churches have stood together ever since in a common government and practice. Your presence is also a conspicuous recognition of the abiding dignity and importance of the Christian ministry. Though the minister is no longer the arbiter of politics, as he was in the first generation of New England, he is still the interpreter of the divine law; he is still the man of God, and in his keeping are the issues of life. This fact is best seen in a ministry that has been prolonged. A long ministry may permeate fully the various agencies for righteousness in the community that it serves; it may build up a consistent, symmetrical structure of character in the men and women under its teaching; and it may reach outside its own community into the various moral and spiritual activities of the larger fellowship and life. Such ministries have become traditional in this church. During its existence of two hundred and seventy years there have been but eleven pastorates; one, that of Dr. Nathaniel Appleton, continued for sixty-seven years, and three others continued for thirty years or more. The present pastorate, the second of them all in length, has now continued for considerably more than a generation; and to what extent it has influenced the church, the community, and the outer world others better qualified will presently speak. But your presence is most of all a tribute to a personality. For it is not the duration of a pastorate so much as the character of the man who fills it that gives it dignity and power; and if we shall leave this sanctuary with a firmer conviction that he best serves his community, his church, and his God who conceives and upholds Christian ideals and strives |