THE TWO TABLETS.

We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us, what work thou didst in their days, in times of old. Ps. XLIV., I.

WE have placed on the walls of our church, and have before us for the first time, these beautiful tablets to the memory of the first two ministers of this parish. As an expression of the love and veneration in which they are held, we write their names in gold, that our children and children's children to the latest day, may learn to speak them with reverence and affection and gratitude.

There are still a few persons among us who have personal recollections of Dr. Bancroft, and can recall him as he appeared in his old age. Many more are they to whom Dr. Hill is still a living memory; but the space of a generation has intervened since his death, so that to the younger portion of our congregation even he is but a name. Among our most precious treasures are the traditions and examples that have come down to us from the past. It is our duty to keep them in mind, and transmit them, so that those who come after us may know something of the endeavors and sacrifices of the men who have bequeathed them so rich an inheritance. That these

memorials which we erect this day may speak with clearer voice, let us recall the events of that earlier time; and if to some of you it is a twice-told tale, remember that to most it is as unfamiliar as antiquity.

The first minister of this parish, Aaron Bancroft, served it for fifty-three years,-from 1785 till his death, at the age of nearly eighty-four, in 1839. For fortyone years he was the sole pastor; and during the remaining twelve, although he had the assistance of a colleague, his interest in his people never waned. His long pastorate is itself a claim on our regard, but years were not required to show the spirit which he possessed. The circumstances attending his coming to Worcester bring into relief those qualities which marked his whole life.

Worcester was then a quiet village of about two thousand inhabitants. Although there were only three families who were not Congregationalists, there was not the utmost harmony in the community. John Adams says, in a letter: "The town was a scene of disputes all the time I lived there." This was some time before Bancroft's coming. It was to the one Church of the town that he was first asked to preach as a candidate, he then being a young man under thirty. There was a new and free note in his preaching, which displeased one portion of his hearers as much as it pleased another portion. As a result, after prolonged discussion that was not without bitterness, a minority of the congregation, young people for the most part, decided to withdraw from the mother church and form a new organization. The difficulties in the way of such a step were almost insuperable, and men less bold and determined than they would have shrunk from the attempt.

We must remember that this was in the days of the established Church in Massachusetts, when it was a man's political duty to support the Church, and when

he was assessed for it as he was for other public institutions. There was no law by which he could be released from this obligation. If he wished to have a Church of his own, he must pay for that as he would for any other luxury, in addition to the regular rates. It was in the face of such obstacles that the Second Parish was formed. It had no legal standing or recognition. It had to look for its support to men who had already paid their proportion for the maintenance of the State Church. It was frowned upon not only as an innovation but as an apostasy by the main body of the community. Never did a movement start with less to encourage it, or offer less inducement to a young man at the beginning of his career to assume its leadership.

It must have been the character of the men engaged in the movement that prevailed with him in his decision to stay in Worcester. In the precious records of that early time, we find such names as Lincoln, Paine, Bigelow, Allen, Chandler, Benjamin Flagg and Edward Bangs and Isaiah Thomas, and others—names still honored here in their living descendants; and among them is one, perhaps not the least persuasive in the list, that of a maiden of twenty years, Lucretia Chandler, who was to become the bride of the young minister the next year. As Dr. Bancroft himself said in his 50th Anniversary Sermon, the sixty-seven persons associated in the new society comprised "a large proportion of the professional and distinguished men of the town." With such staunch supporters he may well have taken courage, yet he was fully aware of the critical nature of the venture. In his letter of acceptance, in June, 1785, he says:

"I have