them effective citizens; the Puritan Harvard and Yale and Williams and Amherst and Dartmouth and Princeton were established primarily to educate men to understand and fulfill the purpose of the living God. The Puritan ideal of worship demanded the exercise of the believing mind. Other churches might appeal to the esthetic sense, or to the religious emotions; the Puritan meeting-house, in all its bareness, was a challenge to think-to gird up the loins of the mind, to understand what the will of the Lord is. If the Lord of hosts in His glory, if the Son of God in His divine humanity, if the church of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven were to be present to the worshiper's soul, they must be realized by his own thoughtful imagination. In other churches a man might stand "heart in, head out"; but there was no worship for the Puritan unless he could engage in it "with the consent of all his faculties," and supremely of his intelligence. This insistence on the role of the intellect has made the history of Puritan churches stormy with controversy, and exiled many a too hardy thinker, whose views his brethren would not tolerate, and many a too feeble mind, who could not think out the mysteries of God and His relations with the children of men. Puritans are justly charged with failing to accord to others the liberties of thought for which they themselves fought so heroic a battle. But their emphasis on thoughtful religion, on intelligent companionship with the Most High, is a true Christian emphasis, without which men and women remain babes or servants, not sons and daughters of the Father in heaven. The Puritan ideal had serious limitations, and it would be easy to speak at length of its deficiencies. It is more profitable for us to recall its contributions which we who are its heirs need to conserve and make permanent elements in the race's life. The immediacy of the soul's fellowship with God; the sensitive conscience directly accountable to Him; every man's life a divine mission; the world to be faced aggressively and brought under the reign of the will of God; the democratic rule of the sons and daughters of God in the earth; intelligent fellowship with Him demanded of those who claim to be His people-these are priceless convictions. Many kindreds and tongues and nations, with countless varieties of the Christian faith and of other faiths, have come with their spiritual treasures to our hospitable shores, and the ideals current in our land to-day are composites of many ingredients. The descendants of the settlers of New England are the heirs and guardians of a spiritual inheritance surely as valuable some of us cannot but think more valuable than any other portion of the wealth of the nation's spirit. It is for us to conserve the life with God which was our fathers' most cherished possession. And life is conserved not by attempting to hold fast and repeat the phrases in which they expressed it, nor by seeking to maintain unaltered the institutions in which they embodied it, but by freely living in our day with their living God, as freely uttering our life with Him in speech that is natural to us, and as freely incorporating that life in institutions adapted to our age, as did they. Life is conserved by being kept alive and made vitalizing, so that more and more men share it as the generations come and go. We cannot overestimate the trust reposed in us. The America that has been the ideal of our finest spirits-poets, statesmen, prophets, public-minded citizens—has been very largely Puritan America. In the America that holds the love and reverence of the finest spirits among us to-day, the elements from the Puritan inheritance form far the richest part. If we are patriots not merely of our country's soil, but of its soul, it is with a most keen and humbling and at the same time exalting sense of trust that each of us faces the Most High when we say: "Thou hast given me the heritage of those that fear Thy name." The New England Society in the City of New York commemorated the One Hundred and Eleventh Anniversary of its organization and the Two Hundred and Ninety-sixth Anniversary of the Landing of the Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock by the usual festival at the WaldorfAstoria, Fifth Avenue, Thirty-third and Thirty-fourth Streets, Friday evening, December twenty-second, Nineteen hundred and sixteen. A large representation of the members of the Society and their guests were present. Mr. Francis Lynde Stetson, President of the Society, presided. The toast list was as follows: TOASTS THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES THE MEMORY OF OUR DEAD FOREFATHERS' DAY NEW ENGLAND, PAST AND PRESENT.-Dr. A. LAWRENCE LOWELL. THE NEW NEW ENGLAND.-MR. FRANK TRUMBULL. THE NEW ENGLAND SCHOOL MASTER.-MR. LEWIS PERRY. The guests of the Society were as follows: Dr. A. LAWRENCE LOWELL, President of Harvard University. Mr. FRANK TRUMBULL, Chairman of the Board, Chesapeake & Ohio Railway Company. Dr. LEWIS PERRY, Principal of Phillips Exeter Academy. The Honorable WILLIAM C. REDFIELD, Secretary of Commerce. Mr. AUSTIN B. FLETCHER, President of the New England Society, 1906-1907. Mr. HOWLAND DAVIS, President of the New England Society, 19111912. The Honorable VICTOR J. DOWLING, President of the Society of the Friendly Sons of Saint Patrick. Mr. WILLIAM SLOANE, President of the Saint Andrew's Society. Mr. CECIL F. SHALLCROSS, President of the Saint George's Society. Mr. S. READING BERTRON, President of the Southern Society. The divine blessing was asked by the Reverend W. W. Bellinger, D.D. At the conclusion of the dinner, the President called the assembly to order and spoke as follows: |