Boston is self-conscious, not with the charming naiveté of a sixteen-year-old in her first party frock, but with the tense awareness of a spinster whose ancient silk is cracking at the seams and too obviously mended. Yet Boston has no inferiority complex. The parvenu on the shores of a howling wilderness with the temerity to dub itself "the Hub of the Universe" has demonstrated that fact. Instead it exhibits a stultifying correctness that admits of no error.
HISTORIC BOSTON.—One of the earliest settlements on the North American continent, Boston was founded in 1630, under the name, Trimountaine, a name still retained in tarnished, dilapidated Tremont Street. The three-pronged hill, suggesting the original title, has been somewhat leveled off into the famed Beacon Hill, whence has flowed the bluest of the blood that has nourished the Harvard tradition for centuries.
Until the end of the nineteenth century, Boston was the leading literary center of the United States. Among her sons, native or adopted, she numbers the historians William Prescott, George Bancroft, John Motley, and Francis Parkman; and the authors Emerson, Hawthorne, Lowell, Longfellow, Holmes, Thoreau, Whittier, and Richard Henry Daria II.
With such a wealth of tradition behind her she is rich in lore of the past. Students of history may view her relics : the Old North Church in whose belfry hung the signal that sent Paul Revere galloping over the Middlesex countryside ; the King's Chapel Burying Ground, with its fascinating markers dating back to 1630; Bunker Hill Monument of "Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes" fame; Griffin's Wharf, scene of the famous Tea Party; the frigate Constitution, tied up at Boston Navy Yard; and Fort Independence on Castle Island commanding the entrance to Boston Harbor.
THE PEOPLE.—The population, once purely Anglo-Saxon, of Unitarian faith, has become cosmopolitan and predominantly Catholic. In the middle of the nineteenth century the potato famine in Ireland greatly increased immigration to America and led to the infiltration of new blood.
The Irish have left their mark on Boston, and it is equally true that Boston has left its mark on the Irish. The historic heritage of the city still remains a strong influence, and Puritan conservatism still finds in Boston a redoubtable stronghold.
ECONOMIC BOSTON.—Modern Boston, named for the town in Lincolnshire, is the capital and largest city in Massachusetts, Suffolk County seat, and a major Atlantic seaport. Normally it handles extensive coastal shipping, and is the northern terminal of the Savannah Line, whose passenger ships connect the summer playground of New England with the winter resorts of the South. It also harbors the largest fishing fleet on the Western Hemisphere. Its major asset for commerce has been the Port of Boston, through which has flowed a considerable volume of raw material for the manufacturing plants developed by New England when it became evident that her shallow, rocky soil would never support a race of gentleman farmers.
Local industries are printing and publishing, sugar refining, meat and fish packing, manufacturing of woolens and worsteds (Boston being the foremost wool market in America), leather goods and footwear, rubber goods, machinery, electrical equipment, and safety razor blades.
SEEING BOSTON.—The Boston sky line presents no such, breathtaking display of towering skyscrapers as impresses the visitor sailing into New York Harbor. It is not because Bostonians lack a flair for the spectacular, but rather because much of Boston is built on land reclaimed from the swamps bordering its network of rivers. And the streets of the city are notoriously narrow and crooked, meandering through its business district with apparent disregard for modern efficiency, in effect both charming and annoying.
The transportation system is adequate, consisting of two subways and an elevated line that goes underground through town. Numerous surface lines, both car and bus, connect with these. Park Street is the clearing house for all transportation.
BOSTON BEAUTIFUL.—Boston has a certain quaint and gracious charm for those who know her better. She goes formal in the public gardens, where seasonal blooms are correctly displayed in stiffly bordered beds. Less formal is the Esplanade bordering the Charles, and the Fenway with its lovely rose gardens edging the meandering Muddy River. For those who like their beauty natural, there are the 223 acres of the Arnold 'Arboretum, a botanical garden belonging to Harvard University but open to the public. For the younger members of the family there is Franklin Park, the largest of the recreation grounds in the Boston area, containing a zoo that ranks with the best in the country.
And north of the city is the Middlesex Fells Reservation, in the heart of which stands our own New England Sanitarium and Hospital, so situated because God chose the location and revealed it to Ellen White in a dream.
INTELLECTUAL BOSTON.—Bordering the bea.utifulful Charles, where Harvard crews row their racing shells, is erected another "shell" for a different purpose. Built on the Esplanade to catch cool breezes on warm summer evenings, that Boston music lovers may enjoy out-of-door concerts, it houses the Boston Symphony Orchestra on summer nights. Beacon Hill and East Boston rub elbows on such occasions, for music draws both the colonels' lady and Judy O'Grady.
Not alone for music can Boston be drawn from its shell. She might well be called the Athens of America. (Acts 17:21.) Bostonians, too, are curious to hear some new thing. Ever since 1634, when Boston Common was legally both cow pasture and parade ground, anyone with one idea ahead of the crowds, lungs lusty enough to make himself .heard, and a soapbox from which he could be seen, has been assured of an audience there.
Today, when the average Bostonian thinks that he has heard just about everything, he'll take one more chance—but it had better be good ! Even if it is, he'll probably not accept it. The Harvard influence is still strongly felt. While modern skepticism is undermining belief in the old foundations, ultraconservatism is retarding acceptance of anything new. True to Paul's prophecy, they are "ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth."
Higher education can be had in the following local institutions : Boston University, Boston College, Emmanuel College, Emerson School of Oratory, Northeastern University, Simmons College, Suffolk University, New England Conservatory of Music, Massachusetts School of Art, and Gordon College of Theology and Missions. A traditional stone's throw across the Charles in Cambridge are Harvard University, Radcliffe College, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, more familiarly known as MIT.
Bostonians are health-conscious. Nationally known authorities like Paul Bragg and Gaylord Hauser come frequently with lecture courses that hold large audiences. Seventh-day Adventists have begun to capitalize on this interest in the health food store opened by Felix Elicerio in Park Square, Boston's bus terminal. Here is made available not only our health foods but our literature as well, both dispensed by one of our most able colporteurs.
RELIGIOUS BOSTON.—Today the Irish Catholic element permeates every quarter of Boston but is concentrated in East Boston, whence it dominates the political scene. But Boston has its quota of Protestant churches as well, with C. Gordon Brownville at Tremont Temple (Baptist), and Dr. Okenga at Park Street (Congregational).
THIRD ANGEL'S MESSAGE.—Our work began in the aristocratic South End, scene of so much of the good living and high thinking of the past century. Today it is the red-light area, where more crimes are committed than in any other police district in New England. The wealthy and aristocratic have moved out to Wellesley and the Newtons, leaving their shabby mansions with the brownstone fronts to a motley crew of transients. Tremont Street is lined with spiritualist mediums and palmists. Columbus Avenue is a little Harlem. The cross streets harbor brothels and dope peddlers.
In this atmosphere the Seventh-day Adventist church has been located for the past twenty years, which perhaps explains its lack of growth. In Boston proper we have but one white church with a membership of less than four hundred, in a city of two and a half million. Since 194o, Boston Temple has been housed in a neat little brick church in the Fenway, on the corner of Peterborough and Jersey streets. This property, purchased from a disbanding Unitarian group, is within sight of the rose gardens in season, and well suited to church activity, with its parish house adjoining. Yet Boston Temple is a dying church; most of its membership are over fifty years of age, and it has almost no young people. Practically all its members live at a distance from the church.
Evangelism has contented itself with Sunday evening meetings, mostly in the church auditorium, or in small halls in outlying districts—Dorchester, Arlington, Cambridge. One of our evangelists packed gilded Symphony Hall a few years ago. Before the Voice of Prophecy took over the air waves, favorable contact was made over WHDH, whose manager was delighted with the local program and warmly sympathetic with our work.
The welfare department of Boston Temple is located in a store on Tremont Street in the midst of the slum district.
Boston stands in the center of a metropolitan area of eighty-three cities and towns, most of them awaiting our coming. True, they have been sown with Present Truth and Signs of the Times. Entire towns have been showered with Belief and Work of Seventh-day Adventists. Colporteurs have worked them with our literature. So they know us in theory, but what they lack is a real demonstration. [C. A. Reeves started a city-wide effort in Boston soon after this article was written, and is having promising results.—Editor.]
Adjacent to Boston are Cambridge, where is located the Greater Boston Academy; Somerville and Everett, both with small Seventh-day Adventist churches, and the latter with a church school; Chelsea, Winthrop, Revere, Watertown, Belmont, Arlington; the Newtons, Brookline, Dedham, Milton, and Quincy. These are but the inner circle of this eastern metropolis.
The people of Boston and nearby communities are not standing with outstretched arms, calling, "Come over and help us !" They are too tightly locked into their smug fortress of traditional superiority to realize their need. But medieval fortresses afford no refuge against modern warfare. And so the Holy Spirit has weapons to put into the hands of consecrated and daring evangelists who will storm this stronghold of conservatism.
