Such, my friends, were our ancestors, into whose heroic labors we are to-day permitted to enter, and who in the dawning of the last century founded this church and builded this building ; its hundred years of service bear witness to the honesty and solidity of our fathers. Its timbers are no less massive than were the consciences of the men who felled them and fashioned them into God's temple. The severe simplicity of its architecture is typical of the lives of its builders. Its unimpaired usefulness to-day is an enduring testimony of the rugged wearing qualities of those who founded it. That this estimate of the men and the work of the fathers, here and now manifest, is not a phase of common ancestor-worship, is, I think, borne out by contemporary testimony. But one year after this Church was built President Dwight, journeying through the town, recorded in his "Travels in New England" his impressions, thus: "After passing the Western boundary of the township of New Haven, we entered the parish of North-Milford. The surface of this parish is formed of easy undulations. The soil is rich; and the inhabitants are industrious, sober, frugal, and virtuous. x x
'Here, in truth,
Not in pretence, man is esteem'd as man.
Not here how rich, of what peculiar blood,
Or office high; but of what genuine worth,
What talents bright and useful, what good deeds,
What piety to God, what love to man,
The question is. To this an answer fair
The general heart secures.'
The people of North-Milford, plain as they are, have built one of the handsomest churches in the County of New Haven; and have thus shown that they have a just taste for the beautiful, as well as a proper attachment to the useful." Coming from so competent a witness, this testimony is honorable to the town, and the average experience of a century has done nothing to discredit or impair it.