ard, and I called around me the leading men of Roxbury to assist me in doing what could be done to rescue an endangered country, and for the purpose of giving it back to liberty and to law. And I remember that I then found no more efficient supporter than the Rev. Dr. MEANS, whom I now have the pleasure of presenting to you.

RESPONSE OF THE REV. JOHN O. MEANS, D.D.

MR. PRESIDENT AND FELLOW-CITIZENS: I am sure you will all agree with me that there is but one man in this city who ought to stand here to-night and respond to this toast to the clergy of Roxbury. It was he whose eloquent lips brought men to sign the rolls in those days to which allusion has been made, and who pleaded for them in the pulpit after they had gone to the field, our dear friend (Rev. Dr. George Putnam), 'whose bodily health alone prevents him from being here, and who stands in the lineal succession from the first minister.

It was not merely when the alarm of war rung out a few years ago that the authorities of Roxbury called the clergy to their aid. They have been wont to do this from the first. A hundred years ago Roxbury had no minister, because he had laid down his life for his country when the great struggle for freedom was just commencing. There was then but one church and one meeting-house, which all the inhabitants were expected to attend. No other denomination had come in, nor for forty years afterward did any come in. The meeting-house stood where it now stands. When Washington was beleaguering Boston, in 1775, Roxbury was one of the fortified posts. Rev. Amos Adams, who for twenty-two or three years had been the faithful pastor, was indefatigable in ministering to the troops, as well as to his own people. After preaching faithfully to his congregation, he held a service with a regiment of soldiers in the open air. The exposure, one Sunday, after all his fatiguing labors, says his biographer, brought on a fever, from which he died. So it came about that during the early years of the Revolution this ancient town and church was without a minister.

It is proper to say, and as we are speaking of things a hundred

years ago it is not indelicate to say, that the pulpit of Roxbury has had a large influence in determining the character and growth of the town. I was interested in noticing that our eloquent orator this afternoon occupied no small part of his time in telling what the ministers had said and done. He would not have been true to history', and he would have missed some of the most important materials of history, if he had done otherwise. In the early days of the colony there could be no complete organization of a town till a church had been gathered. There might be two or more churches in one town; there could be no town without one church. In an important sense, therefore, each town had its very beginning in the church. General Sargent has spoken in fit language of Thomas Welde as the first minister, and of the great influence he exerted. But it is a little difficult to say who should be regarded as the first minister of Roxbury. There were often two ministers to each church in those days, one called the pastor and the other called the teacher. Rev. Thomas Welde was ordained as pastor in July, 1632, and in November following Rev. John Eliot was ordained as teacher. Neither alone could be called the minister; the teacher Eliot, I think, was the most of a minister. Mr. Welde took a more active part in the civil affairs of the colony than in the spiritual welfare of the town. In 1641 he went to England, on a political errand, and never returned. John Eliot, on the other hand, lived and labored here unremittingly till his death in 1690, nearly sixty years. He was one of the great lights of New England; his fame filled Europe; he made Roxbury known the world over as the town which had for its minister the great Apostle to the Indians. It seems fair to call John Eliot the first minister.

The town has owed its prosperity in part to the eminent ability and to the celebrity of some of its ministers. In early days they discharged a variety of functions. Eliot was not only one of the founders of our Latin School; by his will he endowed a Grammar School in Jamaica Plain. He was one of the authors of the first book published in English America. The gentlemen of the press will be interested to know that the first printing press brought to English America was procured by a minister, and set up in the house of a minister, President Dunster of Harvard College. The first issue was the Freeman's Oath; the second, an Almanac; the

third issue and first volume was the Bay Psalm Book, which has recently been so much talked about, and one early copy of which has been sold at such a fabulous price. Thomas Welde and John Eliot, the two Roxbury ministers, with Rev. Richard Mather of Dorchester, were the authors of this famous book.

As our toast-master has been rolling out his rhymes upon us, I have been thinking of a criticism which one of the Cambridge men of that day made upon the Roxbury poets, for there were critics in Cambridge from the earliest times. Mr. Shepard, of Cambridge, addressed the authors of the Bay Psalm Book:

"Ye Roxbury poets, keep clear of the crime

Of missing to give us very good rhyme;

And you of Dorchester, your verses lengthen,

But with the text's own words you will then strengthen."

We heard many pleasant stories of John Eliot this afternoon. He was facetious and witty, and very entertaining in conversation. Above all he was remarkable for his kindliness of spirit and his charity. But there were bounds to his charity. The good minister who gave the poor woman all his quarter's salary, because he could not untie the knots in his handkerchief in which the prudent parish treasurer, knowing Mr. Eliot's weakness, had tied up the money, could not abide certain persons,- and many to-day cannot abide them any better; he could not abide the men who part their hair in the middle. "For men to wear their hair with a luxurious, fœmenine, delicate prolixity," says Cotton Mather; "to preserve no plain distinction of their sex by the hair of their head and face; much more for men to disfigure themselves by hair that is not their own; and, most of all, for ministers of the gospel to ruffle it in excesses of this kind, he could not abide. But the hair of them that professed religion, before his death, became too long for him to swallow, and he would express himself with a boiling zeal concerning it, until at last he gave over, with some regret, complaining The lust is become insuperable.'”

Nowadays clergymen, we are told, have no business to know anything about science. One of our early ministers, Samuel Danforth, a colleague with Eliot from 1650 to 1674, was eminent as a mathematician and astronomer. He published almanacs, and

gave a description of the comet of 1664. Mrs. Eliot, the minister's wife, was "skilled in physics and chirurgery, and dispensed many safe, good and useful medicines unto the poor that had occasion for them; and some hundreds of sick and weak and maimed people owed praises to God for the benefit which therein they freely received of her." At that time, it must be remembered, there was hardly a regular physician in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

The testimony of those who have written about the matter is invariably of the great ability, eloquence, learning and piety of the Roxbury ministry. There has been also, on the part of the people, a most honorable and kindly recognition of the services of their pastors. John Eliot would not consent to receive a salary raised by a town rate; it was raised by voluntary contribution. In his extreme age, for fear his people might not be forward, on account of the expense, to procure such additional pulpit ministration as they needed, he proposed to relinquish his salary. ""Tis possible you may think the burden of maintaining two ministers may be too heavy for you; but I deliver you from that fear; I do here give back my salary to the Lord Jesus Christ; and now, brethren, you may fix that upon any man that God shall make a pastor for you." “But his church, with a handsome reply, assured him that they would count his very presence worth a salary, when he should be so superannuated as to do no further service for them."

How harmonious have been the relations between the ministers and people of Roxbury appears in the fact that, with the single exception of Thos. Welde, who returned to England, no minister has ever been dismissed,— I speak of the old church which covered the whole ground till recent years; all the pastors have died in office. The pastorate of two of the first ministers, Eliot and his successor, Nehemiah Walter, cover a period of one hundred and eighteen years; and the pastorate of two of the last, Dr. Putnam, — long may he continue among us! — and Dr. Porter, his predecessor, already cover a period of ninety-four years.

Let us hope that in the future, as in the past, the Roxbury pulpit may deserve and may exert an influence for good in all directions, as large as is legitimate.

Tenth Sentiment.

"OUR ROXBURY PATRIARCH."

Once on the vessel's deck he stood, and once he held a pen,
And honors full and plentiful have come to him since then;
At fourscore years he proved himself a seaman good and brave,
For he sailed into the Senate on a sweeping tidal wave.

INTRODUCTION BY THE CHAIRMAN.

Our Roxbury Nestor; our ablest representative of the press; our fifth Mayor; almost our oldest inhabitant, and our youngest Senator. I have the pleasure of presenting to you Hon. JOHN S. SLEEPER. [Applause and three prolonged cheers.]

RESPONSE OF HON. JOHN S. SLEEPER.

MR. PRESIDENT: I am almost overwhelmed at this welcome, and at the reception I have received from the citizens of Roxbury. I have witnessed the glowing fires of patriotism which this Centennial celebration has kindled among our people, and listened to the stirring, eloquent and exceedingly interesting address of the orator of the day with much gratification, and I gladly seize this opportunity to offer a few remarks of a suggestive nature, on a subject far removed from myself, but somewhat connected with the spirit of this occasion, and in which I feel a deep interest. It is, Mr. President, a singular fact, that that portion of the great city of Boston - that section in which we live, and whose glories and honors we this day commemorate is no longer known in any official proceedings at Roxbury. It is true we still have our Roxbury Charitable Society," our "Roxbury Latin School," our "Roxbury Savings Institution," our "Roxbury Athenæum," and our Roxbury military companies. But Roxbury itself,- old Roxbury, one of the earliest settled towns in New England, after an

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