ization when the Christian civilization of this country shall serve as a base for the evangelization of the world. Our fathers planned more wisely than they knew. Here were to be developed Christian institutions which in their beneficent results to the millions that were to occupy a continent were to be the admiration of mankind, and to give a prestige to the Christian name.

If I were a prophet, or the son of a prophet, I would like to lift the veil that hides from our view the next two hundred and fifty years, to show you the triumphs of Christianity in every land and clime, - how Christian institutions and Christian homes have become the common heritage of mankind; how art and science and philosophy and literature have laid their tribute at the feet of Christ.

"Then shall His glorious Church rejoice

His Word of Promise to recall,

One sheltering Fold, one Shepherd's Voice,
One God and Father over all!"

LETTERS.

MANY letters were received from gentlemen who were invited to attend the celebration, and some of them are here given:

BOSTON, Feb. 5, 1886.

Rev. EDWARD H. HALL, Rev. ALEXANDER MCKENZIE, Dr. J. T. G. NICHOLS, and others, Committee.

GENTLEMEN,- Accept my sincere thanks for your obliging invitation. Most gladly would I represent my venerated ancestor, as has been suggested to me, in celebrating the anniversary of a church at whose organization he assisted two hundred and fifty years ago. It would have delighted the old Governor's heart to know that the flock which the excellent Shepard gathered and fed so devotedly, almost in a wilderness, should increase and multiply, century after century, until no single fold would hold them.

I do not forget that the great Thomas Hooker preceded Shepard. Both were of that Emmanuel College in old England out of which came so much of the best Puritanism of New England.

Your church was organized in a memorable year of the Massachusetts Colony. The First Church in Cambridge and Harvard College date alike from 1636, and they have gone along side by side, in prosperity and honor, to the present day. Harvard has given not a few pastors to your church, and your church or churches from Thomas Shepard to the well-remembered

and highly valued Dr. Abiel Holmes, and their numerous successors - have furnished devoted friends and supporters to the College.

May the time never come when Religion and Education shall cease to be thus harmoniously associated in raising up sons who shall be worthy of their fathers!

Regretting that I cannot be with you on this interesting occasion, I remain

Very faithfully yours,

ROBERT C. WINTHROP.

BOSTON, Feb. 9, 1886.

Rev. ALEXANDer McKenzie, Cambridge, Mass.

MY DEAR SIR, I fear that, after all, I shall not be able to take part in your approaching anniversary.

This I especially regret, as yours is the third of the four churches in which I have a strong hereditary interest which has recently celebrated some memorable event in its history; and at not one of those celebrations have I been able to be present.

First came the quarter-millennium of the Boston Church; and John Cotton was one of my progenitors. Next was the bi-centennial of the old Hingham Meeting-house, which was dedicated during the pastorate of John Norton, whose daughter married John Quincy of Mount Wollaston. Now comes the Thomas Shepard quarter-millennium ; and Thomas Shepard was an ancestor of John Quincy. Next, and last, will be the quarter-millennium of the church at Weymouth, of which William Smith was forty-nine years the pastor; and William Smith married the daughter of John Quincy.

I had accordingly intended to take part in next Friday's commemoration; it would have been to me a sort of family affair. Cotton Mather speaks of Thomas Shepard as a "silver trumpet," and again as one whose life was a trembling walk with God.” Whatever I might have contributed to your celebration would have been as a descendant of that Thomas Shepard, speaking, two centuries and a half after he began his labors, to the society

of which he was the first pastor. The life of the church of Cambridge now covers almost two thirds of the whole period that has elapsed since the discovery of America. He who presided over the gathering of that church left behind him no quickly fading memorial. He wrought his life into a thing of permanence.

Will the work that Thomas Shepard's descendants are engaged in last as long as his work has now lasted? It does not seem to me that we are building exactly in the spirit in which Shepard's generation built; indeed, our generation is engaged rather in an eager race with Mammon than in a "trembling walk with God." The year 2136 may record a different verdict. It may be that the edifices-political, intellectual, moral, and materija - into which we are now, consciously or otherwise, working our lives, will then stand a comparison as regards strength and permanence with those into which the founders worked their lives in 1636; and should they stand such a comparison it will be well for us. Meanwhile, what we may do they actually accomplished. This, our present, is their future; and that, at least, is secure. A generation which founds political and religious institutions still flourishing in vigorous life and usefulness after two hundred and fifty years have passed over them has done a considerable work. Such a work Shepard's generation did; and the neighboring University, — which, Cotton Mather records, was planted at the door of the Cambridge Church mainly through its pastor's instrumentality, no less than the church itself, seems likely to remain for many generations a living witness to the fact. So far as Thomas Shepard and his immediate congregation are concerned, time has recorded a verdict which cannot now be reversed.

to participate in the celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth

anniversary of your venerable organization.