One other circumstance I permit myself to mention, is of a purely personal character. It struck me with a sense of pleased surprise that the name of your pastor is the Rev. Henry Rose. My father, although a Nonconformist minister, found in the Rev. Henry Rose, at one time Rector of Great Brington-the Washington Church-a dear personal friend; and it was the Rev. Henry Rose who consigned his remains to the tomb in Great Brington churchyard. It is a coincidence not without interest, I think, in these celebrations, showing how direct and personal are the ties which bind not only Old Northampton in England to Northampton in Massachusetts, but the old country across the seas to yours. I greet you, then, in the name of our Sunday schools across the sea. I know that today at a Sunday school of three hundred children, in the Old Northampton, where I am superintendent, they will be thinking of me as I am thinking of them. They will be wondering how I am getting on, in the far distance I have gone from the old home. But I know that their prayers and good wishes will be for you and yours. They will hope and pray that you and they together may glory in belonging to the same kingdom, in living under the providence of the same God, in enjoying the salvation of the same Saviour. They will trust and pray that the ties which bind our peoples may be multiplied and strengthened as the years go by; that the peoples of the AngloSaxon race may be one in their desires and efforts to advance the Master's kingdom on earth.

The Rev. Henry Rose remarked that he did not know his ancestry in the old country had ever included in their number any one so respectable as a Rector of the Established Church.

At the invitation of Mr. Armstrong, the superintendent, the whole of the scholars and congregation arose in support of a proposal to send to the Sunday schools of Northampton hearty greetings on the occasion of this Celebration, in response to the greetings conveyed by Mr. Campion.

T

HE rector of St. John's Church, Rev. Lyman P. Powell, took for his subject, "Our Obligations to the Past," and the text, "Other men have labored, and ye are entered into their labors."-John 4: 38. John 4: 38. He said in part:

In the lexicon of life there is no such word as chance. Nothing happens without cause. Today is rooted in the past. This truth we ought today to realize with all its force.

God and man alike have labored here to our delight and profit. Natural beauties and natural advantages are the background of man's efforts here, and man has made the most of them. To thrift and enterprise and all the other virtues of the typical New England town our forbears have added generosity. No town of its size in all New England has perhaps received so many benefactions at the hands of citizens or near-by neighbors. So it has been from the day of Major Hawley's generosity to schools to these later days of Smith College and the Forbes Library and St. John's Church, the gift of one not resident of Northampton, but still mindful of the rock. whence he was hewn.

Men who have had no silver and no gold to give have given more, themselves; and from Bloody Brook to Santiago you will find the record of their more than generous generosity. Preachers we have had who have bestowed on us the gift of fame, and that is always precious. To call the roll of lawyers who have lent the town its dignity and wisdom is to name most of the leading families for many a generation. Our physicians are today as expert as the town ever had. Better work is turned out now perhaps by our literary folk than ever before. But best of all, from first to last, the town has had more than its need of average folk above the average in character, whose contribution to the making of the best in all our past is as incalculable in the sight of man as it is inestimable to the One who knows the secrets of all hearts. And today we meditate upon their labors quite as much as on the labors of our great and more conspicuous.

Others have labored and we are all the better for their labors, and thereby hangs a duty, the duty of appreciation-appreciation of the living who are trying quietly and earnestly, all around us, to live up to the standards set by our forefathers. Again there is the duty to prove our right to reap the harvest which the dead have sown, by living as they did at their best, to the spirit, not to the flesh; living with a passion for

reality which ill brooks the vulgarity of those who have no more to contribute to the town than money and which hales to the bar of common sense the silly affectations and pretentious conventionalities of any who would turn this good old town into a glittering cross section of New York or Paris.

And then at last there is the duty to add to our benefactions and to strengthen them in every way we can. Smith College ought to have five times the endowment it now has. Our great Forbes Library needs much more money for administrative purposes. The Dickinson Hospital ought to have a far more liberal allowance from the town. And our church, St. John's, will find in its endowment a ban and not a blessing unless we one and all contribute to its support as freely as though it were not liberally endowed.

What the future of Northampton is to be no one knows, and yet we dare to hope, we have good reason to expect, that when our children and our children's children celebrate the town's 300th anniversary thrift and industry will be circumscribed by love and liberality, and culture still will shine as it shines now through the transparent medium of Christian character.

The musical program of the morning was as follows:

Guilmant

ORGAN PRELUDE: Slow Movement from 5th Sonata,
PROCESSIONAL HYMN 176: "For all the Saints who from Their Labors Rest,"

GLORIA TIBI,

HYMN 496: **Lord of Our Life and God of Our Salvation,"
OFFERTORY ANTHEM: "O Lord, Thou Art My God,"
SANCTUS,

Barnby

Wagner

Barnby

C. C. Chase

Stainer

COMMUNION HYMN 225.

Bread of the World,"

GLORIA IN EXCELSIS, Chant 205.

RECESSIONAL HYMN, "O God, Our Help in Ages Past,"
ORGAN POSTLUDE, Processional March,

Hodges

Zeune

Croft

Marcus H. Carroll

R

EV. John C. Breaker of the Baptist Church spoke on the topic, "Northampton as a Center of Religious Influence." Text, Psalm 143: 5, "I remember the days of old."

Mr. Breaker said in part: In entering upon the celebration of the Quarter Millennial anniversary of the settlement of this town it is eminently fitting that attention should be centered first of all upon religion. Whatever reputation Northampton may have gained through its industrial and educational institutions; however far spread its fame today as an educational center; its chief claim to distinction rests upon the fact that influences have gone forth from this town affecting the theological thinking and the ecclesiastical practices not only of New England and the United States, but of the entire English-speaking religious world.

When the Pilgrims came to the shores of the new continent they brought with them certain ecclesiastical customs and practices which they set in operation. Among these, that one of the qualifications to be required of a voter should be membership in the church and participation in the ordinance of the Lord's Supper. It has sometimes been said that this practice was peculiar to the churches of New England; and the Pilgrims. and the Puritans have been called "bigots" in consequence. The custom was not peculiar to New England, however; it was common to the other colonies and to the lands across the sea. The churches of New England received as members those only who could give a credible evidence of conversion. This put the voting power into the hands of those men only who were by experience, as well as by profession, Christians.

At the time of the settlement of this town, in 1654, there had arisen a warm discussion in the churches of New England about the qualifications for church membership. This discussion culminated in what has been known as the "Half-Way Covenant." This covenant provided that all persons who had been baptized in infancy, who understood the covenant, and who were not guilty of any crime a court would judge scandalous, should be received to church membership, and enjoy all the privileges thereof, except the Lord's Supper. This half-way covenant had been received by a vast majority of the churches in New England when in 1672 Rev. Solomon Stoddard became pastor of the

church here in Northampton. Mr. Stoddard not only accepted the half-way covenant, but insisted that the Lord's Supper should be given to all the members of the church. In the controversy which followed he advanced the theory that the Lord's Supper is a converting ordinance, and should be given to all. While these views were combated by the ministers in the eastern part of Massachusetts, such was the prominence and influence of the Northampton minister that his views were widely accepted in Connecticut and Western Massachusetts.

From this town there went forth those influences, between 1672 and 1729, which undermined church discipline, removed all barriers between the church and the world, and opened the way for unconverted men into the Christian ministry. Notwithstanding his peculiar views and their promulgation, Mr. Stoddard was an earnest Christian man and minister, and was used of God to bless the people of his parish. With the decay of piety there came a laxity in doctrine. The Pilgrims and the Puritans were Calvinists of the old type. They had accepted the interpretation of divine truth given to the world by Calvin of Geneva and Knox of Scotland. Divine sovereignty and the divine decrees were for them the Alpha and Omega of faith.

During the ministry of Mr. Stoddard in this town the position of the Calvinists was being assailed both in England and the colonies. The controversy was becoming quite sharp, when, in 1727, Jonathan Edwards came to be the colleague of his grandfather in the pastorate of the church in Northampton. The defenders of Calvinism in England were Watts and Doddridge. Neither of them proved equal to the task, and it seemed as if Calvinism would be swept from the field. Then it was that Jonathan Edwards changed the character of the controversy by assailing the position of the opponents of Calvinism. His two great productions, "Original Sin," and "The Freedom of the Human Will," in the judgment of those competent to express an opinion, remain unanswered to this day. Edwards maintained, against the assailants of Calvinism, that man manifests an inclination to evil; this he called moral inability. Against the older Calvinists he maintained that man has reason to discern the good, affection to love it, and will to perform it; this he called man's natural ability. Out of this view springs the teaching that has become so common, that men may become Christians if they will. This underlies the burden of the preacher's message throughout the English-speaking world today.

The truths formulated here in Northampton and unfolded by President Edwards the younger, by Timothy Dwight and others, constitute what has come to be regarded as a modified Calvinism.

The writings of Edwards were widely read in England. They fell into the hands of Andrew Fuller, who recognized their original and profound thought, and their reverence for the Word of God. His own theology was moulded by them. And Fuller's theology supplanted all others in the Baptist schools on both sides of the Atlantic. It gave