I know no better words than these to give direction to our
thoughts in the service of this day. It is a service of deepest
thankfulness and of most sacred memories. It takes us back over
the years of a century. It brings to our remembrance the story of
the more than threescore previous years which led up to the event
that we commemorate. It awakens hope and trust for a coming and
unknown future. It binds those memories of the past and those
hopes for the future into one living body of thanksgiving, which,
for all who have gone before us, for ourselves, and for those who
are to follow us, must find utterance in the words of the
Psalmist: "Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy Name
give the praise, for Thy loving mercy and for Thy truth's sake."

Go back with me, brethren, in your thoughts, to the beginning of
the century the close of which we commemorate. It is the Festival
of the Annunciation in 1783; and we find ourselves in an inland
village of what was, ere long, to become the Diocese of
Connecticut, the village of Woodbury. It was not then the village
of our time, the long street of which, with its venerable elms and
well-kept homesteads, nestles beneath the craggy heights that
overlook it, or spreads out in peaceful loveliness towards stream
and valley. Things were on a smaller scale then, rougher and ruder
than they now are. One house, at least, still stands that was
standing then; and if we enter it we shall find ourselves in the
"glebe-house" which is the abode of the missionary of the Society
for the Propagation of the Gospel, and in the presence of ten of
the fourteen clergy of Connecticut who were ministering in their
cures at the close of the War of the Revolution. Neither history
nor tradition has preserved to us all the names of these true-
hearted men. We know, however, from written records, that