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INTRODUCTION.

"I love the Church, the holy Church,
That o'er our life presides,

The birth, the bridal, and the grave,
And many an hour besides!

Be mine, through life, to live in her,
And when the Lord shall call,
To die in her, the spouse of CHRIST,

The Mother of us all."

CHRISTIAN BALLADS.

HISTORICAL ACCOUNT

OF

CHRIST CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA.

INTRODUCTION.

THERE is no building in our city, and it may be doubted whether there is any in our country, around which so many hallowed associations cluster, and which calls up so many time-honoured and holy reminiscences, as the venerable structure known as Christ Church. It is nearly a century and a half since the first humble edifice was erected on the spot where the present beautiful building now stands; and this last has withstood the storms and the tempests of more than a hundred years. In a country so new and changeful as ours, where the most sacred and venerable piles are often sacrificed to the love of gain, and not unfrequently pulled down to make room for what is miscalled

"modern improvement," it is claiming for a building great antiquity, to say that it has stood for a century. To every citizen in Philadelphia, who cherishes the recollection of departed years, and values the monuments of olden time, this Church must be looked upon with respect; while by every Episcopalian, it must be regarded with feelings of veneration and love. Some there are, who are now far down the vale of life-some whose heads are whitened by the frosts of nearly four score winters-who have worshipped here from earliest childhood, and in the very pew where their fathers, and their fathers' fathers worshipped before them. And what a tide of "sweet and bitter recollections" must gush upon their aged hearts, as they enter its consecrated walls, and stand beneath its hallowed arches, or tread its sacred aisles, with the monuments of the dead around them, and the dust of those who died a century ago sleeping beneath their feet, while busy memory carries them back to the days of their childhood-to the time when here the man of God first signed the sign of the holy cross upon their sunny brow; or when they came glad and

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