I.

In the community in which one lives, no less than in himself, often lies

the secret of a man's strength and greatness. The individual shares the

endowment or potency of those impersonal forces which sustain and

enhance public life. The spirit which animates the broader ranges of

general history acts with unhindered freedom on the narrower sphere of

the individual mind and often becomes the creator of its better moments.

Silent influences, hidden providences, are at work in society of which

the individual has no suspicion, and whose effects cannot be recorded in

statistics. Below the plane of conscious recognition there are

far-reaching movements of thought which transcend our powers of

understanding, but which act with almost unbounded sway in controlling

the thought and life of each person. The early promise is fulfilled in

the ripening powers of the mind under the cumulative influences which

nourish it from without. In the order which surrounds the individual,

and in the movement of which he has become a part, we see, as clearly as

in himself, the inevitable promise of his ultimate destiny.

In whatever pertains to liberal culture Boston is never weak or

wavering. Boston impresses one as possessing innate respect and

enthusiasm for intellectual supremacy, and reverence for the pure

sentiments of religion as continuous forces in human life. For two and a

half centuries it has been the wish and work of her most cultivated

minds to give human thought and life the highest expression; and this

has been done with monumental activity. In Boston, culture and religious

piety have never been decadent; over and above the controversies and

schisms and sectarian quarrels which from time to time have rent the

churches, they have remained intact. In spite of the manifold currents

of opposing tendencies, which now and then threaten to overwhelm

cherished beliefs and to lift the world off its hinges, they remain

essential elements in this city's social life. They are stern present

necessities, unwritten and immutable laws which she will not and cannot

transgress. From the founding of the city by the "choice spirits" of the

seventeenth century, they have retained their vitality and have been

affirmed without doubt or debate. With the growing demands and maturity

of her civilization she reiterates them as her loftiest and most sacred

privileges, subject to no vicissitudes. With these primitive traits

eternally vital, thought is quick, and intellectual enthusiasm spreads

rapidly. Boston is always stirring with "new ideas" and with the passion

for a broader ethical and religious development. The character and

repute which she acquired in former days for literary taste, clerical

influence, and the administration of religion are to-day influencing

surrounding secularity and the hurrying concerns of daily life. They are

animating every institution and ordinance, every supreme and exquisite

medium of feeling, every revelation of truth and hope in the human mind.

In this exhaustless tide of thought and aspiration, which we may accept

as Boston's native product, it is easy to interest the people and to

unite them in any attempt for the good of mankind under the sanction of

culture, benevolence, or religion.

But religion is felt to be Boston's greatest need and glory. In this

city of philosophy and poetry, art and business energy, religious faith

and life have their proper place, and are invested with power and

dignity. Fixed habit and traditional thought contribute, without doubt,

to the need and sacredness of religion; yet its transcendent results are

due to the permanent disposition of the people. They are the appropriate

manifestation of a religious culture and spirit that are fitted for all

time, the logic of truths born of religious intuitions working out in

the most practical results. However universally certain religious

beliefs are ignored, there is no disposition to put culture or

philanthropy above the gospel, the school above the church, or to make

the schoolmaster, the literary autocrat, or the princes of wealth take

precedence of the preacher. The spirit of conventionalism reigns more or

less in Boston's religious life; yet religion makes an irresistible

appeal to the understanding, the conscience, and the heart. Everything

is compelled to bow to its influence and to feel its inspiration.

Although our churches present various theological tendencies, from the

stiffest orthodoxy to the freest rationalism and pantheism, and with

creeds yet confessedly nowhere settled, reason never pronounces religion

absurd; to it homage is accorded. It is still the deepest and holiest

interest of man. We all have an elevated sense of its vast importance in

the destiny of mankind. Its manifestations may change, but its spirit is

ever the same. While edifices of towering magnificence, grand displays

of musical talent, time-honored ordinances, and attractions for popular

reverence are fashionable and full of beauty and significance, and,

possibly, prudent means to stimulate our patronage and to save to the

ranks of the churches the votaries of all that is artistic and refining

and impressive, they are no sure sign that spiritual life is departing;

they have their utility, they foster the higher interests of mind and

heart. These symbols of religious faith are not the productions of cold,

speculative reasoning, but the statement of truth wrought into the

convictions of the devout and spiritually minded.

Guided by these facts we may assume that the man who distinguishes

himself in Boston as a preacher is one to whom considerable interest

attaches. Upon such a man, as upon all her citizens of rare attainments

and peculiar personal excellence, she confers distinction.

The Rev. Minot J. Savage, D. D., who recently changed his residence and

his ministry from Boston to New York, and whose successful work in the

former city may be a prophecy of enduring honors in the latter, has thus

distinguished himself and been rewarded.

When Mr. Savage came from the West to Boston, he came "as a stranger,"

as I myself heard him say. For years he thought and walked and worked

alone. He was unpopular, and he felt his unpopularity. All religious

sects, even that of his own persuasion, were critical and sceptical. As

a preacher he had fellowship nowhere. He was met as a preacher of

unwelcome and unwholesome doctrines. But he came as one having a special

dispensation, as the witness and repository of new truth, as the

representative of no low and paltry type of the Christian ministry, but

as a living testimony to the reality and power and excellency of

religion and its institutions. He felt the difficulties with which he

had to contend. They were manifold, subtle, and fraught with deepest

peril to his ministry. Prejudices, precedents, and the theology of the

schools--whose only merit seemed to be that it was smitten with a

passion to reduce Christian doctrine to logical form--were arrayed in

open hostility to him. He was met by the _regime_ of ecclesiastical

orders, by men who preached the Gospel according to established and

venerable routine, and whose credentials, not their wisdom, were their

only power. But although he felt himself to be a _persona non

grata_,--another unpopular person to suffer for his beliefs,--he girded

himself for earnest uncompromising warfare. He planted against every

church his strongest batteries of criticism, satire, and sarcasm. He

poured forth his thoughts in words that made men's ears tingle, till the

protestations of his adversaries fell from their lips with something of

a hollow sound. Half preacher, half assassin, as he was thought to be,

repudiating as offensive the doctrines of the Cross, and hating with

every drop of his blood the general traditions and faith of the Church,

he worked and awaited the day of his triumph. It came.

Boston is slow to recognize new prophets; yet religious belief of every

kind is treated with gentleness and indulgence. The preachers of the

city might regard Mr. Savage as a teacher of "positive error," but they

could not object to the hospitality of Boston, a citizen and preacher of

which Mr. Savage became on the footing of democratic fraternity. By the

free development of reason and the spread of intelligence Boston has

become temperate and tolerant. She will not enslave the understanding or

deny anyone one vestige of religious freedom. With her, religion is a

practical and spiritual thing rather than a theoretic and ceremonial.

The latter helps to stimulate the former to the fullest discharge of

duty, but does not in itself constitute religion. The one comes by

internal necessity, the other belongs to the sphere of outward

operation, of inventive and enterprising minds. Religion is a living

mode of thought sustained by personal character, and needs not ambitious

terminology or supervision. Boston trusts her instincts, as Emerson has

taught her, and asks only ample scope for the imperative working of her

religious sentiment and the life of the heart.

Under these favoring conditions, by which Boston, like a mother, works

out her own character in the spirit and life of her gifted men, the Rev.

Mr. Savage was impelled onward in his daring enterprise. With stern

fidelity Boston exercised a definite and pervasive influence on Mr.

Savage's mind. Although his religious thinking came upon the public like

a new birth, he was only reiterating its progressive thought and the

stout emphasis it placed on thinking out religion in intelligible terms

and in all the breadth of its activities. Instrumental rather than

absolute, Boston's versatile and expansive thought furnished the new

preacher his coveted opportunity. Her faith failed not, nor did her

courage falter. Silently she was assailing the old theology and

elaborating the new, in which she has unhesitating belief, and which

entered with enlightening and nourishing force into Mr. Savage's broad

and free opinions. It came to him as the expression of the abiding

atmosphere in which he dwelt and with a beneficent bearing on his

ministry. Favored thus by the concurrent voices of those to whom he

ministered, and by the general freedom and grace of the entire

community, Mr. Savage made a real and salutary advance in his religious

work in Boston. And supported by the judgment of an ever widening

public, conservative thinkers about him felt his influence on current

religious opinion. While he indulged a liberty of speculation, he

instilled religious habits of thought and the spirit of worship into

many inquiring minds, and enabled them to identify themselves with the

highest development of his own religious consciousness. Boston and

vicinity became fully appreciative of the distinctiveness of his mission

and of his apprehensions of the truth. In recognition, therefore, of the

unmeasured praise and enthusiastic acceptance which he received from

the public, he was honored, at the close of his ministry in Boston, with

the degree of Doctor of Divinity at Harvard University. Harvard thus

expressed her highest confidence in the truth and permanence of his

ministry. This famous institution of classic, scientific, philosophic,

and sacred learning attested the sanity of the mind and doctrines of

this once obscure and despised but now noted preacher.