Excerpt from Historical Address Delivered by Rev. Edward A. Chase, at the Centennial Celebration of the Congregational Church, Hampden, Mass, , November 18, 1885I had been wont to think of youth as a time for looking into the future rather than into the past, a time of imagination rather than for the discussion of plain everyday facts, and yet I find myself to-day placed to recall for. You the events of the past century of vour church life, surely the theme de mands a longer memory, a better judgment, a readier pen than mine, - yet that which I have I gladly bring to your ser Vice.The day is one of thanksgiving and congratulation. Thanks to God, who, by His wisdom, has directed the church through the eventful century, thanks to Him as the faithful promisor, who, in all this time, has fulfilled his word for the field, and thereby has sustained the life of the people, thanks to Him as the loving Father who has crowned our homes with their love and precious sympathy.A day of congratulation to vou, for your steadfast faith and that of your fathers, Men whose hands were brown with toil, Who backed by no ancestral graves, Hewed down the wood and tilled the soil And thereby won a prouder fame.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.