A SPECIAL service was held in the Church of the Holy Trinity, Middletown, on the one-hundredth anniversary of the first Ordination held by Bishop Seabury, August 3, 1885, at 11 o'clock A. M. The processional hymn being ended, Bishop Williams began the Communion-service, the Collect being that for St. Simon and St. Jude's Day. The Epistle (that for St. Mark's Day) was read by the Rev. Prof. Samuel Hart of Trinity College, and the Gospel (that for St. Matthias's Day), by the Rev. Sylvester Clarke, Rector of Trinity Church, Bridgeport. After the Creed, the Bishop delivered this address: The third of August, 1785, was a memorable day for this diocese and for our whole Church. For the first time an American Bishop was to hold an ordination in the United States. The event carries us back, in thought, to Apostolic days. The first act of ordination by the Apostles at Jerusalem, after the miracle of Pentecost, was the laying on of hands upon the seven deacons. The first ordination ministered by him who first bore the Apostolic commission to this nation, was an ordination--not of seven indeed, but of four--to the diaconate. The authority, the ministration, and the order imparted were in both cases the same, separated though the acts were by the great chasm of seventeen centuries. It is good to commemorate such an event. It is right to commemorate it in the place in which it occurred. Such a commemoration fitly ends the series of centenary observances which we began in Woodbury in the spring-tide of 1883. For the act of this day certified our fathers that what they had sought and cried out for through long and weary years was gained at last; that no longer did three thousand miles of ocean separate them from the possibility of admission to the "ministry of Christ, and the stewardship of the mysteries of God." Let me, first, say something of the place in which the service of ordination, and all the services and acts connected with it, were held. There stood, at that time, on what used to be called the South Green in this city, a small wooden church known as Christ Church. There are not many persons, probably, now living who remember it, but a rough sketch of it, which has been preserved, has given many who never saw it an idea at least of what it was. It was not an altogether ungraceful building with its arched windows--regarded by many in those days as indicating Romeward tendencies--and its pointed spire. And it had nothing in common with those hideous combinations of packing-box and Grecian portico, which prevailed many years later on; but which decay and fire and other merciful interferences and visitations have made things of the past.