"^eli^iou^ Pi^O^^i^e^^ k^i C!l\ri^tikr| dultui^e 



-OF- 



OCDXJXsJ-T-Y'. 



^)AMUEL ^. Derrick, 



I AM invited to address you upon the Religious Progress and Christian 

 Culture of Suffolk County for the last two hundred years. My theme 

 has thus been stated very definitely and very happily, as it seems to me, 

 by the committee which have done me the honor to extend to me this in- 

 vitation. 



Religious progress has Christian culture for its end. The one is the 

 path, the other the goal of the traveler; the one the growth o( the tree, the 

 other the ripened fruit which the tree produces. The one relates to the 

 various processes of breaking up the soil, and applying to it the methods 

 of tillage, the selection and sowing of the seed, the attention and care be- 

 stowed upon the growing crops, the fcjstering which they get from the 

 brooding skies, the suns which shine, and the storms which beat upon 

 them, as well as the cultivation of human skill. The other signifies the 

 yellow fields of ripening grain, the wealth of sheaves which the reaper gath- 

 ers in his bosom and garners in his barns. I am to say something to you 

 of the thought, and toil, and anxieties of the fathers, and the abounding 

 joy and comfort and prosperity of the children resultant thereupon. " Dav 

 unto day uttereth speech. " The days of old are speaking to this day of 

 ours. I am to tell you what these old days seem to be saying into our 

 ears, and what response these days of ours are gratefully or ungratefull}- 

 returning to the past. 



But progress of any sort involves not only a goal, but a point of de- 

 parture. There must be, as the philosophers say, a tertninus a quo as well 

 as a terminus ad quern. To fintl the beginnings of our county's progress for 

 the period assigned therefore, we shall be obliged to go back of its politi- 

 cal formation. Our religious institutions are of venerable origin. They 

 are rooted in that great movement whicb brought the Pilgrims to Plymouth, 

 and the Puritans to Massachusetts Bay. To-day our fathers share the 

 honors, as two hundred and fifty years ago they shared the privations and 

 the sulTerings, of the men of whom James the First declared that he would 

 make them conform or he would ' 'harry them out of the land. " That Suffolk 

 County is, peopled as it is to-day, is due to the fact that the royal tyrant 

 was as good, or rather as bad, as his word. 



