"Forty years ago to-day, I for the first time delivered the elements of the Lord's Supper into the hands of the officers of this church. On the previous Wednesday, I had been ordained to the ministry, which, through the goodness of God, and by the consent of this religious society, I have held for forty years. Few of those whom I now address can feel any interest in these dates; but no one will think it strange, that they awaken recollections in my mind from which I cannot turn away, or that they have suggested to me the discourse which invites your present attention. Forty years are too long a period to have been passed in the same social connections, without leaving permanent results, good or bad; a period too long to be reviewed without anxiety, lest its opportunities may have been neglected or its duties been misunderstood" [opening lines]. Sabine 26533.
Ezra Stiles Gannett (1801-1874), son of Caleb Gannett, professor of Mathematics and Steward of Harvard College, and grandson of the Congregational minister and President of Yale, Ezra Stiles, was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, attended Phillips Academy and graduated from Harvard College and Divinity School. Early in 1824, Gannett was called to become William Ellery Channing's colleague pastor of the Unitarian Federal State Church in Boston, and the following year he helped to found the American Unitarian Association, writing its constitution, serving as the first secretary, founding and editing the Scriptural Interpreter from 1831 to 1835 and the Monthly Miscellany from 1840 to 1843 and editing the Christian Examiner from 1844 to 1849. He became President of the Association in 1844, holding the position for five years. In 1835 he had married, but the next year had a nervous breakdown, precipitating his moving to Europe for rest; his wife joined him in London in 1837, and they returned to Boston in 1838. In 1840 his right leg became permanently paralyzed because of a stroke, necessitating his using two canes for the rest of his life. In 1843 he was awarded a Doctor of Divinity degree from Harvard. The year before the award he had replaced Channing, who had died, as senior minister and guided the church through its move in 1861 from Federal Street to Arlington Street. Although he reluctantly became an avowed opponent of slavery, as a pacifist he refused to preach in support of the Civil War, having fervently wished that the Union would stay intact. He died in a train accident outside Boston. His papers are located at the Massachusetts Historical Society.