History of the First Universalist Church in Somerville, Mass. Illustrated; a souvenir of the fiftieth anniversary celebrated February 15-21, 1904

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[36] as would not move timidly to their work, or carefully measure the rod with which the folly, and the bigotry, and the almost unscrupulous opposition was chastised. It needed just such sturdy pioneers to go into the wilderness and hew down the forests, and make plain a highway for the Lord. It needed just such men to clear the fields, and put in the breaking — up plow, beam deep, and tear out the roots, and turn up the furrows to the warm sunshine, in order that others might follow and harrow and sow, and weed and reap, and gather the harvest into garners. It needed the work of pulling down and laying the foundations that others might build thereupon, that in after years the sound of the hammer might be heard in the construction and rearing our holy temple unto the Lord.

You young people of to-day are living when the rough corners of the old theology against which they so manfully battled have been broken off, and its harsher features softened.

There is one thing you may be assured of, that it required no little courage in those early days of our church to face this opposition and this social and religious ostracism.

In one respect there has been quite a revolution in the habits of men and women. Then few women dared to venture into the assembly where there was Universalist preaching. It is the men who more largely keep away from church-going to-day, and the women who attend.

But this timidity was not entirely confined to the women. Many men fought shy. Let me tell you of an instance that occurred a little beyond my remembrance in the beginnings of our society in Cambridgeport, where I ministered for fourteen or fifteen years.

Hosea Ballou and others perhaps who were settled in Boston would go out for an evening service to Cambridgeport, where service was held in the schoolhouse. It is a fact that it was a matter of curiosity, as well as fear,