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the benighted heathen. Thank God they are doing great things in the blessed work of evangelizing the nations. large proportion of the 6,000 missionaries at work in heathen lands and the $10,000,000 annually expended for the foreign mission cause comes from these United States.

With thankful hearts we should engage in these memorial centennial services which have been fitly inaugurated by suitable religious observances in the churches of the county.

We dare never forget the toils, the dangers and privations of our pioneer ancestors. They turned the wilderness into a fruitful field and made the desert blossom as the rose. Cultivating friendly relations with the Indians they had multiplied and prospered in the region west of the Susquehanna, so that already in 1755 there were 3,000 men able to bear arms. Then came the blunders and horrors of the French and Indian wars, culminating in Braddock's disgraceful and disastrous defeat. A year later, in the fall of 1756, scarcely one hundred were left in all the great Cumberland Valley. 18 forts were erected to protect them against Indian forays. On every side the pioneer settlers and their families were waylaid and massacred, or borne into barbarous captivity by prowling bands of savages. McCord's Fort, near the foot of Mount Parnell, was captured, and 27 men, women and children met a horrible fate. In my hand I now hold the MSS. journal (140 years old) of James McCullough, which contains page after page of entries reciting massacre after massacre of the pioneer settlers and their families. Those were dark and trying days indeed, and had not their hearts been stout as oak, and their sinews strong as steel, they could never have withstood the fearful strain of body and mind which the anxious suspense must have caused even for those who escaped the tomahawk and scalping-knife of the merciless savages. All honor to the brave men and women of those pioneer days! Base and ignoble are those who fail to cherish the memory of such an heroic ancestry.

CULTIVATE THE HOME FEELING.

This is a sacred memorial season, a hallowed jubilee year full of inspiring associations. It is a time to visit the old

homestead, to trace up and record genealogical tables, to hold family re-unions and revive the fond memories of the olden time.

Such is the spirit and sentiment of our text, "ye shall hallow the 50th year and proclaim liberty throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof. It shall be a jubilee unto you, and we shall return every man unto his possession, and we shall return every man unto his family.'

Happy are they who can do this with gratitude to the God of their sainted forefathers! Happy are they who can thus return to the home of their childhood! Happy are they who remain in the honorable possession of the patrimony of their pioneer ancestors! The love of liberty, of home and of fatherland will be strong and abiding in the hearts of such a people.

A CONTRAST BETWEEN THE PAST AND PRESENT.

Great and marvelous have been the changes and improvements of the century just ended. The pack-horse and the lumbering Conestoga wagon have given place to the traction. engine and to the locomotive and railroad trains which daily pass through our streets from New York to New Orleans. The express rider, galloping over the mountains and through the wilderness on panting steed, at the peril of his life, has been superseded by the electric telegraph, which conveys messages of love and light in the twinkle of an eye to the remotest part of the Republic, yea underneath old ocean's briny waves to all parts of the habitable globe. The flail and the sickle of our fathers have given place to the steam separator and the four-horse reaper. The thirteen colonies along the Atlantic coast, with three or four million people, a large number of them negro slaves, have increased to thirty-eight States, reaching from ocean to ocean, with a population of fifty odd millions and territory enough for twenty States more. "The Lord hath done great things for us as a nation, whereof we have reason to be glad and to bless His holy name.' And with the Psalmist we may exclaim : "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not

all His benefits."

The blood-thirsty savages no longer skulk about our dwellings as they did in the days of our pioneer ancestors, when young and old were ruthlessly slaughtered regardless of sex, age or condition.

In our valley hundreds of Indian youths are now receiving instruction in the elements of education and Christian civilization within the precincts of Carlisle Barracks, whence the heroic Bouquet marched to punish their race for their atrocities, 120 years ago. The same work is going on at Hampton Institute, Virginia, where I addressed a large number of them through an interpreter, a few weeks ago, and told them of the universal Fatherhood of God and Brotherhood of man. No longer do our children go to school, and our people to church and to their daily toil at the peril of their lives, as did our pioneer ancestors. Peace and plenty, prosperity and safety is the portion of our inheritance in this goodly land.

OUR DUTY TO CHERISH THE ANCIENT LANDMARKS.

The blessings of constitutional liberty, the principles of representative self-government for which our Reformation forefathers suffered in Switzerland, Germany, Holland, France and Great Britain, have become a fundamental part of the institutions of our land.

Let us cherish these as something more precious than silver or gold. Above all let us cherish the principles of Christian faith and piety, so dear to the hearts of our sainted forefathers. For the sake of religious principle, our ScotchIrish and German-Swiss ancestors endured the dangers and hardships of pioneer life, and only by imitating their fidelity to the Lord Jesus Christ can we preserve and perpetuate the blessings of civil and religious liberty enshrined in our constitutional form of government. It is true now as in the days of old “righteousness exalteth a nation, and sin is a reproach to any people." We have made great progress in the arts and sciences, in agriculture and the mechanic pursuits, but the old-fashioned principles and habits of honest industry, frugality and piety remain the enduring basis of all true prosperity and power. In these respects let us gratefully "remember the days of old." Thus shall we 66 honor

father and mother," and inherit the divine promise that our days shall be long in the land which the Lord our God, hath given us. Let us walk in the good old paths of truth and righteousness and keep in view the ancient landmarks.

CONCLUSION.

And, finally, my Christian friends, let us remember that all these earthly jubilees are but faint shadows of the grand reality, the Jubilee of glorified humanity, when the ransomed of the Lord, from every land and nation, shall enter the home of the blest with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads. That we may all stand accepted in the Beloved and be numbered among the saints in glory everlasting, in that great and notable day, should be our hope, our prayer and our supreme endeavor. Amen. And, Amen.

CENTENNIAL SERMON OF REV. J. HASSLER, OF MERCERSBurg, PreacheD IN ST. PETER'S REFORMED CHURCH, IN FORT LOUDON, PA., ON SUNDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 7, 1884, AND IN THE TOWN HALL, IN FANNETTSBURG, PA., SEPTEMBER 14, 1884.

DEUT. 32:7-"Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations; ask thy father and he will show thee; thy elders and they will tell thee."

Three thoughts are before us: 1. Thanksgiving and praise for our grand old mountains, and the rich and fertile valleys that characterize the geography of our county.

2. Thanksgiving for the moral integrity and upright, religious life of our pioneer settlers.

3. Civilization and National Freedom, the price of blood.

I. SCENERY AND FERTILITY OF SOIL.

The words of our text constitute an extract from the plaintive song of a dying man. The great drama of a great life is at an end. The greatest commander that ever lived— the greatest moral hero that ever stepped on the stage of history-he, who is the most honored of all human beings, who talked with God "face to face"-whose hand met the

fingers of Jehovah in receiving the Law-this great man, whose whole moral life is the greatest miracle of the greatest age that ever characterized the inhabitants of earth; whose life, and deeds, and death challenge infidelity, and will ever scatter to the winds of heaven all doubt or uncertainty as to the truth of inspiration-this great man is called upon to die, to pass away from the scenes of earth! His death song is contained in this chapter, the import of which is: Obedience to God secures independence, personal and national prosperity. Disobedience brings ruin, loss, captivity, death! So to-day. It is meet and right for us, as a religious community, to look back a hundred years and consider the many trials, hardships and cruel captivities our fathers endured, to give us this beauteous land of freedom; and these grand and fertile valleys, that surround these lofty mountains of beauty and power! And thus, by this review of a century past, generate in our hearts praise, thanksgiving and obedience to our fathers' God.

In 1682 William Penn came from England to this country and founded a colony, which he called Pennsylvania— the forest land, or land of Penn. The whole country was inhabited by rude and untutored Indians, who lived in wigwams and subsisted on hunting. Penn desired his people

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to live in peace with these wild and savage tribes, hence his Treaty of Peace," on the very spot where now stands the City of Philadelphia, on the banks of the Delaware.

But oh! what changes! Instead of wild game, Indian huts and camp-fires you now see hundreds and thousands of houses, built high, three, six and eight stories; of brown stone, brick and marble; and thousands upon thousands of white people, all with busy step and hurried tread, eager in business, trade and commerce-buying, selling and getting gain!

Where is the old "Elm Tree," under whose wide spreading branches, late in autumn 1682, the treaty was made? Alas! the sacred spot is now covered by a large, populous city; and the place itself is only marked by a marble monument, to perpetuate its memory. The tree itself stood till 1810, when it was blown down by a storm at the age of 283 years, being 155 at the time of Penn's treaty. When the