124 A HALF CENTURY. 



spirit and purpose of the men and women who formed it, have in_ 

 fluenced us to the present hour. As "the child is the father of the 

 man," so the original body of disciples who founded this church gave 

 permanent direction to its life. And whether we, who are here to-day, 

 have grown up with the church, or have, as the apostle says, been 

 " graffed in" upon it, we have all alike entered into the original 

 inheritance, and are together sharers in the inspirations of the past. 

 " Thou bearest not the root, but the root thee ! " 



The soil out of which this root developed gave promise of a vigorous 

 growth. 



New Britain had not, at that time, attained to the dignity of a sepa- 

 rate town government. It was a part of Berlin; a retired and rather 

 out-of-the-way place, just passing from the quiet of a country parish 

 into the condition of a stirring manufacturing village. Its population 

 did not number as many hundreds then as it does thousands now. 



But it was a God-fearing and church-going community. The old 

 "North Church," as it was called, had stood for nearly a century, 

 presided over for more than half that time by one of the ablest 

 and most energetic of the old New England divines. "All business 

 arrangements were shaped to favor the moral and religious welfare 

 of the place." Young men of promise were encouraged, by the gift of 

 land and by financial assistance, to come and assist in the development 

 of its industries. Workmen were urged and expected to attend pub- 

 lic worship, " and those loose and demoralizing habits which too often 

 characterize manufacturing towns were openly discouraged." 



It was a homogeneous community. Almost without exception 

 the inhabitants were of New England stock, and dwelt together in the 

 good old-fashioned way of simple and hearty neighborliness — finding 

 no place for those marked social divisions which the inequalities of 

 our modern life have since developed. Employer and laboring man 

 toiled together at the same work. There was a community of inter- 

 ests, a common acquaintance, a simplicity of life, which have been 

 swept away by the complex conditions of a prosperous and advanc- 

 ing age. 



It is sometimes questioned whether the old days were not, in 

 some particulars at least, better than these in which we live. Life 



