Waterbury evening Democrat., 1908-03-23
10TH ANNIVERSARY
Celebrated al St Paul's Methodist
 Episcopal Church Yesterday.

Yesterday was the twentieth an- niversary of the founding of St Paul's Methodist Episcopal church in this city and the occasion was fittingly observed with special ser vices during the day. There was not an empty seat in the church at the morning service. The address of the day was delivered by the Rev E. D. Bassett of Babylon who during 1905 and 1906 was pastor Of the parish, He gave in detail the bengining of the parish and went through it's history to the present time. A few paragraphs from his address follow:
 The country was never so pros- porous as at the present time. Men never lived So we'll, never had to many advantages never lived in such comfort; never had such schools, never were so supplied with books and all kinds of literature. But it has all grown out of mutual helpfulness. It has only been as we have learned that we can safely trust one another.
 Tn the old days every man look ed out for his own household; he raised all the food that he could not catch in the streams or shoot in the forest. He made the shoes himself out of hides he had tanned, he raised the wool and the flax and his good wife spun and wove. They were very independent, living as they did on the homestead, but they lived very simply.
 Those were the days when the children went barefoot to church, carrying their shoes in their hands until they had almost reached the church; those were the days when one suit of good clothes lasted for lifetime and was willed to the next of kin. Some of those old wills bequeathing trifles to the heirs will show up how plainly and poorly our forefathers lived, for they could only live so when they lived to themselves. It was only as they grew to be more mutually depend- ent and mutually helpful that they came to have more.
 People coming to the city say to me, Why, brother Bassett, we have to buy everything we have even the water We drink True, but we were never so well fed, so well clothed, so we'll housed so well read as to-day. Imagine man coming back from the long ago and joining some man who is extra early to his work going into the shop and waiting for you to commence your day and as he sees you asking what you are doing. Then he asks where you are to get your food and clothes for your family, etc. He cannot understand that hundred thousand men are feeding and cloth ing your family, and that you are working for men in every cline. We are parts of the great body poli- tic, but it is not best we should be all alike. This would be a hungry would if we were all machinists, a poorly clothed world if We were all bakers, a hungry world if he were all tailors.
 "Too great similarity is not good The prophet says the myrtle and the balsam and the pine shall grow to- gether. Orchardists tell us it is not best to set whole blocks of one kind of apples: they are better polinized if we set one row of one variety and the next of another. God never seemed to approve of having all alike. In family of children you will find a certain similarity, bur yet no two will be like. The same father and the same mother brought up in the same way in same hnstga xfrifI, eit, A Af,,rx the differences far surpass the re. semblances.
 During the morning service Mrs Walter Baldwin sang "The Lord is my Shepherd" The choir also con- tributed several selections. The morning service closed with bene- diction and an organ postlude.
 After the morning service. the Sunday school held it's regular meeting. At 5:45 in the afternoon the Epworth league met and dis cussed the subject, "The Church for Worship and Service" The services in the evening were in charge of the Rev D. c. Tullar, pastor of the East Pearl street church. New Haven. He was the first pastor of St Paul's church.
 The programme will be concluded this evening. The services will be- gin at 8 o'clock and addresses will be delivered by the Rev E. D. Bas- sett, the Rev E. c. Tullar. the Rev W. W. Bowditch, pastor of the Sixth avenue, M. E. church, Brook lyn. N. Y. and the Rev P. ]. Wag- ner. pastor of Trinity church. Meri- den. The remarks will all be brief. A musical programme will also be rendered.
 St Paul's church at present has about 400 parishioners and it's Sum day school numbers about $50. The pastor is the Rev Martin O. Lepley. who has been in charge the past two years and who has done excellent work.