First-[Second] Free Lutheran Diet in America
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ARTICLE VI. THE CAUSES AND THE REMEDIES OF THE LOSSES ()F HER POPULATION BY THE LUTHERAN CHURCH IN AMERICA. BY REv. B. SADTLER, D. D., PRESIDENT OF MUHLENBERG COLLEGE, ALLENTOWN, PA. Introductory to the consideration of the causes of the losses of her population by the Lutheran Church in this country, it will be necessary to take a brief historical view of the sources and national and personal characteristics of that population. It was originally an emigrant population; to a limited extent from Holland and Sweden, and predominantly from Germany. The history of these early settlers has been written by able pens, and in full detail, and at the recently held Diet, was so lucidly, though summarily, given by one of its worthy secretaries, Dr. Jacobs, that I need not re hearse the well told story. My task will be to find, in the external circumstances and spiritual surroundings of that population, such facts as will help to solve the question, why we have lost a part of it. The period in which our brethren in the faith first settled in this country, covering the latter half of the 17th and the whole of the 18th century, was an era of colonization. All the old countries were sending out their full quotas, partly to dispose of surplus pop ulation, and partly to secure a share in the rich lands and commerce of the new continent. When the Dutch came over and settled New Amsterdam, now New York, and the lands along the Hudson and Mohawk, those of our Confession came along with their Reformed neighbors. They were a small minority of the whole number, but I can find no historical statement that will show they were not the equals of the Reformed in intelligence and means. The Swedish emigrants were a noble band, and came to our shores not only in fluenced by the spirit of enterprise, but by the higher purpose of (Io 4) Dr. SADTLER's ESSAY. IO5 planting the standard of Christian truth among the aboriginal tribes that roamed in the forests. The traveler from this city to Balti more will observe on his right as he enters Wilmington, Delaware, a very ancient structure, partly of native stone, and partly of im ported brick, standing high above the street grade, in the midst of the graves of its founders, long departed. There dwelt and labored Campanius, the second pastor of the congregation. He has the high honor of having been the first Protestant missionary to the Indians. His thorough devotion to the truth and methods, as con fessed and used by our Church, is proved by the fact that he trans lated and published Luther's Catechism in the language of the Del awares. The German emigration to this country set in rather later than that of the Dutch and the Swedish, but it assumed larger propor tions, and has flowed on, in an uninterrupted stream, for about two centuries, until we have the remarkable spectacle of American cities, containing more Germans than any in the mother country, except ing a few of the capitals. The early German settlers were differ ent from the Dutch and the Swedish, in that they were not only emigrants, but refugees from religious persecution. As a conse quence, they were generally poor in this world's goods, and for a long time were unable to provide for more than the sternest require ments of the present life. Many were sent over as early as 1706 to 1710, at public expense, under the auspices of Queen Anne of England, to supply the labor market in the colonies, especially in New York. Others came over as so called redemptioners ; that is, they were brought over by contract, by the shipowners and masters, and sold into temporary servitude, until they paid the price of their passage and outfit by their personal services. The abuses of this system became so great that the German Society of this city inter fered, and secured the necessary legislation to abrogate it. But without dwelling on the evidences of the general poverty of the early German settlers any longer, we assert the fact of that poverty, and in it will find one of the two great factors that from the very beginning operated to the detriment of our Church. Let us see how it injuriously affected the early prosperity of our Zion. It prevented her securing an adequate su/pſy of ministers to serve at her altars. Nay, for a long time she had no ministry at all. The Swedish branch had. In that cold land of the North, Protest IO6 - SECOND LUTHERAN DIET. ant zeal was at fever heat. It had come forth gloriously from the Thirty Years' war, and, though he was never canonized, Gustavus Adolphus was thenceforth a sort of Protestant saint, revered on no special saint's day, but on all days. When the descendants of per haps some of the very men that had followed their great king to victory on the plains of Germany, went forth as emigrants to the New World, they went protected and provided for by the State and blessed by the Church. They were provided with a learned, pious and adequate ministry, to preach to them the everlasting truth as it is in Jesus, and to comfort and edify their souls under the hard ships of their pioneer life. But not thus with the Germans. They were exiled from their vineyards and fields, their forges and looms in the Palatinate; but it was not a wholesale exodus of pastors and flocks, of school-masters and scholars. Many remained behind, and their pastors remained to minister to them. Those that went forth went well nigh empty-handed, as to this world's goods, and their whole visible spiritual outfit, in addition to the Bible and Cate chism, was the few devotional books that were in vogue in their day. These old heirlooms can still be occasionally bought at the sales of household chattels in the German counties. For a genera tion they were well nigh without regular pastors and services. There were but few exceptions to this state of things. The exodus of the Protestant Salzburgers was wholesale, and they took with them pastors supplied from Halle, to their settlement in Georgia. Here in the North, our poor forefathers were a prey to every de structive influence that could befall a shepherdless people. Near the Swedish settlements, their pastors took pity on their forsaken German brethren in the faith, and did what they could to provide them with the ordinances and the sacraments. In the interior, chil dren often grew to manhood and womanhood without baptism, or received it at the hands of vagabond pretenders to holy orders, or of deposed ministers, that had left their country for their country's good, and here palmed themselves off as the Lord's true servants, until, renewing their vices, the wolf was discerned beneath the sheep's clothing. In the Hallische Nachrichten, p. 142, as late as 1751, the sad recital of what these settlers had just lived through, is thus given: “For many years these poor people had gone with out proper instruction out of the Word of God, the children had grown up without the knowledge of God and of divine things, in DR. SADTLER's ESSAY. Ioy part even without baptism ; nor was there any lack of wolves and hirelings in this spiritual wilderness. From one side the scattered sheep were torn, or at least driven about by the many sects; on the other side the deposed preachers and school-masters from Ger many, or even other persons, who were worthless at home, when they came to Pennsylvania, set up for preachers and wrought much mischief among them. One can easily imagine, that such fellows were but little concerned about the instruction and edification of the people, and their own disorderly walk could only give rise to offences among them.” Yet even under these discouraging circumstances the great ma jority of our brethren held fast to the faith of their Fatherland. Exiles for conscience sake, they knew the value of the pure Word and Sacraments, and sent pitiable pleas out to Germany for pastors and teachers. In 1733 the Church, already existing, at New Han over, and Providence (now the Trappe), and here, united in an earnest appeal to Halle to have regularly ordained ministers sent to them, and in their pitiful plea say they are in a land “full of sects and heresy, without ministers and teachers, schools, churches and books.” It was not until 1742 that their prayer was answered, and on the 25th of November of that year Muhlenberg stepped ashore in the New World. With his arrival a great star arose in the dark ness that had overhung an infant church. He was a man of the Barnabas order: “a good man and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith; and much people was added unto the Lord.” His spiritu ality was the deepest, his consecration to his work the most devoted, his industry simply wonderful, both in acquiring and dispensing. He seemed almost to pick up a language over night, that he might preach in it the next day. A lay historian of the Lutheran Church in New York city (Review, April, 1877, p. 274), gives the following as a specimen of a day's work of this eminent servant of Christ in that city: “Early in the morning he held confession in his house, with some church members from abroad, after that he preached in the Dutch language and administered the communion to fifty per sons.