The Centre Grove United Methodist Church in Clearfield will celebrate 200 years in 2015. In the program for the church’s One Hundredth Anniversary celebration in 1915, there was a perspective offered on the advances of the previous century. The piece may have been an ad for the local Clearfield Hardware Company …
One hundred years seems like a long time, but it isn’t—It’s only a drop in the ocean of time or eternity as verified by the old hymn we sing, ‘When we’ve been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise then when we first begun.’
However one hundred years brings a lot of changes in things temporal on this old kaleidoscopic-sphere.
What mighty empires have risen and fallen. What wonderful scientific discoveries have been made. What marvelous improvements have been made in lighting, transportation, and communication. Through these improvements the methods of modern merchandising is scarcely less marvelous. Within the century this church is celebrating, and not so very far back either, the lone store was lighted with the tallow dip, goods were packsaddled across the mountains over the tow paths from Philadelphia, Harrisburg, and later from Tyrone. When a merchant was out of an article, he was out ’till after rafting time’ or ‘after harvest’ when the annual buying trip was made, but now, thanks to the brain and brawn that brought to the present standard of perfection the mighty ocean steamer, the fast express and freight trains, the automobile, the airship, the telegraph, the telephone, the wireless, and the electric light and power, you don’t have to wait ’till after rafting time for the Hardware you need, nor do you have to make a long tedious journey on horse back to make selection of your purchase under the rays of a tallow dip and then ‘pack’ it back home. You sit in your electric lighted home, phone your order to the Clearfield Hardware Company and have the goods delivered the same day by auto truck. If perchance the article is out of stock, a telegram and fast freight or express or parcel post brings it in a day or two.
Fascinating. What might be written in 2015?