each others' joy. As the Apostle Paul has phrased it, "we are all members of the body of Christ" and our life is a common life. As your brethren in Christ, members one of another, we salute you on this happy occasion.

I have been wondering how it must feel to be two hundred and seventy-five years old! The church which I have the honor to serve (the Washington Street Baptist) celebrated its fiftieth anniversary two years ago. We felt very ancient then but when we stand beside you to-day we feel very youthful.

Two hundred and seventy-five years! What must it mean to this community that this one church has given to it two hundred and seventy-five years of consecutive, consecrated service? Nothing but the book of the recording angel could convey any adequate conception of what that has meant. Nothing but eternity can reveal it. The church is the most important institution in the community; more important than the school, the literary organizations or the government itself. The church is the foundation of the school, the inspiration of the libraries and it furnishes the moral fibre of the government. What this city is and what it has been for nearly three centuries is due in no small degree to this First Church of Christ in Lynn.

One of the most remarkable phases of our Christian civilization is the disproportionately strong influence which the Christian church exercises in the community. Not more than one-tenth of the people of Lynn to-day, probably, are members of any Christian church and yet the Christian churches can exercise more influence than all the other institutions if they so desire. The church can

accomplish almost anything it desires in the community to-day. This old First Church looks insignificant in a way. At no time in its history has it had more than five hundred members probably, and yet no one can conceive what this church has meant in the life and history of this city. Because of what this church has meant to Lynn for two hundred and seventy-five years we congratulate you.

Yet what of all this celebration anyway? If you had simply gathered to-day to celebrate the birth of an institution born two hundred and seventy-five years ago, if that were all, some of us would not care to spend our time here. But it is because it is a living institution, that is reviewing two hundred and seventy-five years of life, that there is some significance in this celebration. We are here because this old church is a living organism. We are here because we believe that the church has a future; because we believe that it is destined to do more in the days that are to be than in the days that have been. Some profess to believe that the church is an institution of the past, but we believe that it is an institution of the past and of the future. We have seen as yet only a promise of what the church is to be and do.

When the church comes better to understand its message, when it comes to see that it has a message to the community as well as to the individual, it will do more than it has ever done in bringing in the kingdom. The mission of the church is not only to convert and train the individual members of society but its mission is also to transform society itself, until the Kingdom in Heaven shall be the Kingdom on earth. When during the next few

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years of its life this church shall catch this larger vision of its mission, its influence will be vastly greater than in these years we celebrate.

The Pilgrims and the Puritans had the right conception of the relation of the church and the community. Their only trouble was in the application of their principle. The church will never apply its principle and do its work in their way again but it will apply the principle in a truer form and do the work in a larger way.

Not only, then, for what you have been and have done in these two hundred and seventy-five long years but for what you are to be and do, your sister churches bring you heartiest congratulations and best wishes to-day. It is our great hope that your next two hundred and seventyfive years may be marked by larger visions of truth, deeper consecration to Christ and more glorious consummation of your work than in these two hundred and seventy-five splendid years of the past.