The Worcester spy. [volume] (Worcester, Mass.) 1898-1904, 1899-11-28
REV. FRANK |.
PHALEN INSTALLED.


/
years the office of mayor was offered to
men of our company by the represent
! atives of the dominant political party,
| an offer from whose representatives
rendered an election certain. One of
| these men was our. beloved and saint
| ly friend Albert Tolman, whose refusal
of that high honor was remarkable
! example of a conscientious self-denial.
For thirty-one of these fifty years, the
office of judge of the probate court for
/ Worcester county. a court through
which once in twenty-five years, 1t is
said the whole property of the COM
munity passes, has been held by mem
! bers of the Church of the Unity. For
| twenty-four years of the fifty, the seat
! for this district in the national House
of Representatives has been occupied
| by members of this parish, and for
i twenty-three years of the fifty, seat
| in the Senate of the United States For
forty years out of the fifty, the office
! of sheriff of the county of Worcester
has been held by one of our number.
i OF ten district attorneys, four have
! been of our number. OF the clerks OF
| the court since the office became elect
| i've. Jan. 1st, 1857, two of the three
! have belonged to this parish. holding
/ the office thirty-nine years out of near
| ly forty-three. The office of collector
/ of internal revenue, an official who col
lected during the war period from three
to five million dollars annually, was
| held by two of our number in success
| sion. and the tax so collected was as
| sessed by another member of this par
ish nearly all the time that the Office
| of assessor continued. There has gone
out to the charities of this city from
this church an abundant and never
failing stream. There are two great
educational institutions in Worcester,
Clark university and the Polytechnic
institute-great in what they have ac-
complished already, greater still in their
assured and confident hope. OF one
of them the founder and first president
belongs to the Church of the Unity, and
of the other the first treasurer and two
of the seven trustees. The honored
and lamented president for many years
of the great railroad of the common
wealth, which, with it's branches, is to
Massachusetts as the spine and ribs
long worshipped in this church, of
which he was one of the founders. For
nearly this whole period, majority
of the bank presidents and bank treas
urers or cashiers have been of our
numbers.
There have been four savings banks
in Worcester beside that lately found
ed by our Catholic friends. OF one
of these, founded in 1854, three presi-
dents from this parish held Office TWEEN
ty-two years out of thirty five, and a
treasurer from this parish nineteen
years out of thirty-five. OF another,
we have furnished one of the presi-
dents and the treasurer for forty-fiVe
years. Of a third, we furnished the
presidents in succession for thirty-fiYe
years. There have been seven ma
tional banks in the city since the life
of the city began. To every one of
these we have furnished either a presi-
dent or a cashier. To one of them
we have furnished three presidents in
succession, whose term of office extern
ded more than forty-one years. and a
cashier whose term extended more
than thirty years.
I cannot undertake to give a com
plete list of the leading business men
of the city, including such names as
Tolman and Miller and Barton and
Mason and Morse and Messenger and
Winslow and the Smiths and Thayer
and Lapham and Sumner and Foster, |
or of the eminent lawyers and emf |
nent physicians who have worshipped
from Sunday to Sunday in these pews.
Still less can | speak with propriety
of the women, those among the living |
and those who have gone to their re-
ward, who have blessed us by their /
companionship and who have been ac- |
tive and faithful in every good work |
wherever sorrow needed comforter |
or sufferer a relief. If we could take |
the census of the brightest examples
of Christian character in this congre- |
cation or in any other congregation l
have ever known, after all, the high |
est place on the list would be given |
to those women who often in the hum |
blest places in life have set us the ex-
ample of patience under their own sor- |
rows and have healed the sorrows of |
their kindred, cheered the sickness or
poverty of some husband or brother
or father, still ornamenting the con-
gregation week by week and year by |
year with the beautiful light of faces
Illuminated by a Christian patience, a ,
Christian cheerfulness and a Christian
hope
Let no man or woman think that |
have broken in upon this hour and |
this place of devout thanksgiving and |
of high resolve with a vulgar Boosting |
of money-getting and office-getting, or
even an attempt to prove by our own |
example that the ways of goodness are
profitable or that wisdom, celestial |
wisdom, hath in her left hand riches |
and honor. l speak of all this for two |
objects.
First I wish to show that the faith
which has been taught from this pull
pit and the lives which have received |
their inspiration in these pews, have /
borne fruit in the solid confidence of |
the city and the commonwealth; that |
the men who reject or who think thew
reject our doctrine, seek eagerly to /
profit by the fruits of our doctrine. BY /
their fruits We shall know them. We |
have right to inquire if the charac- |
ter which is founded upon Unitarian
ism, as We interpret it, is a character |
which inspires the confidence of the
community We have right, holding |
as we do that that is the true Chris |
tian doctrine which blossoms and bears |
fruit in honest, fragrant, Christian
lives, to see whether it be true or no |
that when the commonwealth or the
county or the city. with her eighty
churches, seek men that they can trust
with their dearest interests. thew sock
and they find such men within the
narrow walls of our simple and hum |
BILE edifice. The bedrock of the CITY
and of the commonwealth is charac- !
ter. There is no other test that | know
of the quality of the stones we con- |
tribute to the building of this beloved |
city of ours, than the fact that the
architects choose them and prefer
them.
But there is another way of dealing
with this matter, which brings it upon
higher plane. There is no stimulant
to good accomplishment, either for a
man or for a woman or for state or a |
city or parish, like good history
Certainly we do not mean to let This
parish down, to let the light of tbis
blazing torch flicker and go out. To
have it said that the sons were worse
than the fathers and the daughters
worse than the mothers; that our faith
may last for a generation or for half a
century, but that after all a short fftv
wears is the limit Of I1saf1,IYo..