170 A HALF CENTURY. 



selves the pleasure of taking part personally in the glad observances 

 of your joyous semi-centennial. It is with grateful hearts that we re- 

 call what the South Church has been to us. To our souls, this be- 

 loved church was the mediuin of blessings untold, and our love for 

 her will ever be deep and fervid. May her favored membership ever 

 enjoy the sanctities of a pure communion and the blessings of God's 

 abounding grace. " 



The Rev. Dwight M. Seward, D.D., was pastor of the old 

 North Church, the mother church, during the six years imme- 

 diately preceding the organization of the South Church, from 

 1836 to 1842, In the summer of 1886 the two churches united 

 in a service commemorative of the fiftieth anniversary of his 

 ordination. It w^as a pleasure to have him wdth us again on 

 another semi-centennial occasion, and listen to his bright, strong, 

 hopeful words. 



Dr. Seward opened his remarks wdth an allusion to a pre- 

 vious speaker, who had acknowledged a shrinking from the 

 coming on of old age. He observed that age with its confessed 

 drawbacks and disabilities had a bright and redeeming side. 

 He affirmed the necessity of grouping the years together in 

 order to get a truthful estimate of life. He then proceeded to 

 exhibit some of the lessons of the last fifty years. 



"So far as we can learn from tradition and history, they contain 

 more of radical change and revolution, of rapid progress and great 

 events, than any half century before them. They show more vividly 

 and dramatically than any other fifty years in the annals of time, that 

 life is a term of ever alternating light and dark, of gladness and grief, 

 of victory and defeat. While these years have brought wide changes 

 in creeds and changes in the themes of theological dircussion and con- 

 troversy, they have attested the vitality, the freshness, the unabated 

 power of old and fundamental truths. They have carried away some 

 things that should have stayed and taken root for succeeding centuries. 

 They have brought in many things, in the rnaterial and religious 

 realms, that add to the beauty and the significance of life. 



*' These years have borne into another temple and another world 

 the original members and the organizers of this church. But the faith 

 and energy of these honored founders were a prophecy of growth and 

 vigor which has come to ripe fulfillment. The advance, the successes, 

 the resources of this church, are a marvelous record of religious 



