Excerpt from The Commemoration of the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the First Church, Charlestown, Mass: November 12, 1882 This has been the faith of this church through the past which we are now reviewing. It is this which gives its chief interest and value to the record we are reading. Upon this plan history is not an account of detached events, which have been subject to the varying tastes and principles and experiences of different generations. It is the record of a purpose held by a master-will, and reaching to a predetermined end. It has dignity and unity. It deserves to be written and retained. The father may instruct the son, whose life is to move in the same plane. The son may draw wisdom from the experience of the father, to whose career he joins his own. It is not the past, then, which we are studying, as if it were a finished thing. It is the present in which the past still has its being, with which it is to live on to the great consummation. We are looking through the years of the life of a church. We may surely expect to see here the divine thought and plan clearly revealed, and to be instructed concerning the divine will for the days which are our own. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.