3X 
 
 3 b&S 
 
The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://archive.org/details/cu31924029475120 
 
(^^icJa.c/ JcJ/a£^r >^^^ 
 
 From tbe Steel Engraving made tn 1847. 
 
THE PIONEERS 
 
 Reformed Church in the United 
 States of North America. 
 
 BY 
 
 H. J. RuETENiK, D. D., LL. D. 
 
 CLEVELAND. OHIO: 
 
 Central Publishing House, 1134-1138 Pearl St. 
 1901. 
 

 l\% I (^ btip 
 
 Copyright, 1901, 
 
 Central Publishing House of the Reformed Churchy 
 
 1134-1138 Pearl St., Cleveland, O. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 In 1899 the author was invited to prepare for the 
 Reformed Assembly a. paper on the Pioneers of the 
 Reformed Church in the United States. Upon setting 
 to work he found such an abundance of valuable ma- 
 terial in Dr. J. I. Good's History of the Reformed 
 Church in the United States from 1725-1792, and in 
 some other works of minor importance, that he became 
 deeply interested in his task, and felt constrained to 
 put it into the more permanent form of a little book 
 so arranged as to bring out clearly and prominently 
 the most important facts and the most efficient men of 
 this period, the Genesis of the American Reformed 
 C German) Church. 
 
 From past experience present duties are learned by 
 the church as well as by men. A careful study of 
 Gdd's dealings with men is most helpful in forming a 
 correct conception of God's purposes with them. It is 
 not only that people thus learn to magnify the goodness 
 of God, and His mysterious indwelling in His Church, 
 but they are also led to obtain a better insight into 
 Christ's purposes with that particular branch of the 
 church, with which they stand connected and to 
 which they owe their loyal allegiance. 
 
 The visible church, it is true, falls far short of sinless 
 perfection. The truthful historian has to chronicle many 
 
shortcomings and failures incident upon her noble 
 labors. Her best men are no better than David or 
 Peter or Paul. But if we cannot always be proud of 
 our church, we have always good reason to be grateful 
 for what God worked through our forefathers. If 
 hero-worship is not to be cultivated, there still remains 
 the sacred duty of honoring father and mother, the 
 first command that has promise. 
 
 The Chinese deify their ancestors, and — stagnate. 
 The impious of all nations despise them, and — drift 
 away. The wise build on the foundations laid by them, 
 and — raise "each temple*' nearer to heaven. 
 
 May this book with all its imperfections — and they 
 are seen by no one more clearly than by its author — 
 afford some help to all who desire to love their church, 
 not blindly, but sincerely and intelligently. 
 
 The author's thanks are due to Prof. W. J. Hinke, so 
 favorably known for the accuracy and conscientious- 
 ness of his researches, who very kindly consented to 
 revise the historical data. 
 
 October, 1901. The Author. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page. 
 
 I. THE PIETISTS 7-27 
 
 The Siegen Country ; 7.- g 
 
 Joh. Heinrich Haegener's Colony 8- 9 
 
 The Palatinate 0-12 
 
 The Mohawk and the Swatara 12-13 
 
 Infralapsarianisni 13-16 
 
 Pietism and Catechism 16-17 
 
 Guldin's Conversion 17-20 
 
 - Guldin in Philadelphia 20-23 
 
 J. H. Goetschi 23-25 
 
 Joh. Peter Mueller , 25-29 
 
 II. THE MORAVIANS 30-54 
 
 Zinzendorfs Principles. The Tropes 30-32 
 
 Old Friends and Arrival of Zinzendorf. 32-38 
 
 John Bechtel, Inspector. Reformed Tropus 38-39 
 
 The New Catechism 39-41 
 
 The Reaction Setting in 41-42 
 
 John Phil, Boehm, the Schoolmaster 42-45 
 
 John Phil. Boehm, the Church Organizer 45-47 
 
 John Phil. Boehm and Weiss 47-50 
 
 John Phil. Boehm against Zinzendorf. 50-53 
 
 End of the Reformed TropuB 53-54 
 
 III. THE DEPUTIES AND MICHAEL SCHLATTER 55-86 
 
 Weiss and Reiff in Holland &5-56 
 
 Missionary Spirit in the Dutch Church 56-57 
 
 Fifteen Years of waiting , 57-60 
 
 Schlatter's Youth 60-62 
 
 The Yisitator 62-63 
 
 Work done in 1146 64-67 
 
 The First Coetus 67-69 
 
 The Second Coetus 69-72 
 
 Schlatter against Boehm 72-74 
 
 The Philadelphia Congregation against Schlatter 74-77 
 
 Schlatter in Holland, Switzerland; and Herborn 77-79 
 
 The Crash.— Weiss's Knd 80-83 
 
III. THE DEPUTIES AND MICHAEL SCHLATTER (Continued.) 
 
 Page. 
 
 The Chanty Schools 83-85 
 
 Schlatter's End 85-86 
 
 IV. THE REVIVALS 87-109 
 
 The Mission of Methodism 87- 88 
 
 Otterbein's Youth 88- 90 
 
 The Lancaster Congregation 90- 91 
 
 Otterbein's Consecration 92- 94 
 
 Tulpehocken, Frederick, and York ..... 94- 97 
 
 The Baltimore Congregation 97-100 
 
 Martin Boehm 100-101 
 
 The Big Meetings 101 
 
 The Antietam Meetings 101-103 
 
 Otterbein's End 103-105 
 
 Alb. Conr. HelflPenstein's Consecration 105-106 
 
 Alb. Conr. Helffenstein's Sermons 106-108 
 
 S. C. Stahlschmidt 108-109 
 
 V. INDEPENDENCE 110 
 
 Estrangement of the Coetus from the Deputies 110-111 
 
 Declaration of Independence 111-112 
 
 Reflections 113-114 
 
 The Immoral Independents, Spangenberg, Weickel, 
 
 Vandersloot 114-117 
 
 The Good Independents. J. S. Zubly 117-120 
 
 Lists and Names ...120-123 
 
 Conclusion 121-123 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Hochstadt 45 
 
 Ref. Church at Worms 45 
 
 The Linzebuel Church , 64 
 
 The Ref. Church at Philadelphia 64 
 
 Weinheim 80 
 
 Bppingen 80 
 
 Schlatter's Home 86 
 
 Ordination of a Minister in Amsterdam 113 
 
 The Cloister Reformed Church at the Hague 113 
 
I. THE PIETISTS. 
 
 The first German Reformed congregation in North 
 America was organized in Virginia, in 1714, by Siegen 
 people. 
 
 The principality of Siegen, Stilling's home, at that 
 time was one of the many petty sovereignties consti- 
 tuting the German empire. It was a mountainous 
 country, not far from the lower Rhine, and was inhab- 
 ited by a poor but intelligent population. 
 
 It is true, they lived somewhat isolated, and did not 
 come in contact very freely with the big bustling world. 
 Trade and industries in our times considered absolutely 
 necessary to higher civilization, were not carried on to 
 any considerable extent. But they were deeply inter- 
 ested in religion ; the number of converted persons was 
 quite large among them; they were studying their 
 Bibles carefully and regularly ; they were truly enlight- 
 ened by the Holy Spirit dwelling in them and in their 
 congregations. And they were kept from stagnation by 
 frequent intercourse with the pious circles in neigh- 
 boring countries. New ideas were constantly conveyed 
 to them by spiritually minded visitors coming from 
 far and near, and thus a lively interest in the woes and 
 joys of Christendom everywhere was fostered. 
 
 Their princes being of the house of Orange, and 
 their religion being the Reformed, there naturally was 
 
The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 much intercourse between Siegen and Holland, where 
 at that time great revivals were going on, brought on 
 by the earnest preaching of men like Lodenstein, 
 Labadie/and others, during the terri^ble devastations 
 with which bigoted Louis XIV. visited the Nether- 
 lands. 
 
 Here it happened that Pastor John Henry F. 
 Haegener^ of Fischbach, heard of Gov. Spottswood, the 
 Virginian, inviting miners to settle in his province for 
 the development of its mining resources, and in 171 1 
 he started to go there with twelve families, all expert 
 in the mining carried on extensively in Siegen. In 1714 
 they settled on the Rapidan river, at what is now 
 called Germanford, in Virginia. 
 
 It so happened that, in November, 1715, a traveler, 
 John Fontain, passing through that part of Virginia, 
 spent a few days with them, and afterward published 
 an account of what he had seen. He describes their 
 settlement as a fortified place palisaded with stakes 
 thick enough to resist a musket shot, and driven in 
 close together. He found nine houses within, for so 
 many families, all built in one line, with sheds for their 
 hens and pigs about twenty feet from each house, all 
 in line with the dwellings. In the center of the enclos- 
 ure there stood a large blockhouse, for a retreat and 
 citadel in case hostile Indians should succeed in forc- 
 ing the stockade. Its walls were loopholed for muskets. 
 
 Fontain called at the pastor's house for a lodging, 
 and was there given some good straw to sleep on, but 
 he had nothing to eat ; there was no food suitable for 
 
The Pteiists. 
 
 him in the house, nor in the whole settlement, and he 
 had to depend on his own provisions brought along. 
 But the bread of life was not wanting. That strong 
 house in the center was not built for Indian warfare 
 only, it also was their spiritual stronghold for pro- 
 tection against the lowness of spirit, not to say despair, 
 that could not fail to darken their souls in the solitude 
 of a trackless wilderness, without all the accustomed 
 comforts of life, with hunger and cold, with the hard- 
 est of unprofitable work. Once every day the colonists 
 met here to find comfort and spiritual strength in 
 prayer and psalmody; on Sundays two services were 
 held. Their German exercises were not understood by 
 the visitor, but their spirit was felt. He says they ap- 
 peared very devout, and joined most heartily in the 
 singing of psalms. 
 
 In the year 1719, when Pastor Haegener had grown 
 old, and his son, who had taken orders in the Episcopal 
 church, could not minister to their wants, they sent one 
 of their number, J. C. Zollikofer, to Germany, who 
 inserted an appeal for a pastor in a newspaper pub- 
 lished in Frankfurt A. M. But nothing came of it. 
 Finally they abandoned their colony, because the gover- 
 nor of Virginia refused to give them legal titles to 
 their land. Schlatter found them, twenty-five years 
 later, in Germantown, Fauquier Co., Va. 
 
 These people did not owe their religion to America, 
 but America is indebted to them for bringing it along 
 from their home in Germany, which at that time was a 
 stronghold of Reformed life. The Palatinate with its 
 
10 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 university at Heidelberg, the cradle of German relig- 
 ious freedom founded on Free Grace, had fallen into 
 other hands, but its treasure had been transferred to 
 Herhorn in the Lower Rhine region. Here Ursinus, 
 the brains, and Olevianus, the heart of Reformed doc- 
 trine, after they had been driven from Heidelberg, 
 taught Christ, the source of true life, and Holy Scrip- 
 ture, the standard of true doctrine. And independently 
 of their work, all along the lower Rhine from Wesel 
 upward to Frankfurt, Reformed congregations had 
 been built up by refugees from England, from France, 
 and from Holland, men who had loved the Kingdom 
 of God better than their country. When their govern- 
 ment would force them to worship God in what they 
 felt convinced to be an unscriptural and unholy form, 
 they had turned their backs on homes as sweet and as 
 dear to their hearts as ours are to us. The new congre- 
 gations thus formed in their German exile were by 
 them named the Churches under the Cross. No golden 
 crosses, it is true, glittered from their steeples ; but the 
 cross planted and rooted in their hearts was reflecting 
 so bright and kindly a light, that many of their Ger- 
 man neighbors were attracted by it and united with the 
 Church under the Cross. In this way the stanch Re- 
 formed Churches of the Lower Rhine had been estab- 
 lished, which to this day are towers of strength and 
 beacons of light in Jesus Christ. Peter Minuit, the first 
 good governor of New Amsterdam, had come from 
 them, and later on many of their elect followed. 
 
 They loved liberty, not in lawless license, but in 
 
The Pietists. 11 
 
 Christ, who can make men free indeed, since He was 
 obedient to death, even to the death on the cross. Such 
 freedom made them worthy of citizenship in this new 
 world, which God in His wisdom for many centuries 
 had hidden from European civilization with its kings 
 and popes, until the time was fulfilled, when the Re- 
 formation began to bring out the full stature of man- 
 hood in Christ, adult Christianity so to speak, weaned 
 from the leading-strings of childhood. Christendom in 
 the new world was not to be hampered by the institu- 
 tions and traditions of the pre-reformation age. Its 
 liberty must luxuriate in virgin soil. 
 
 But although Lower Rhineland was the first to send 
 a few of her best children to the land of freedom. Up- 
 per Rhineland soon sent ten thousands of people not 
 to be despised either. Here was the Palatinate with its 
 vineclad hills and its waving wheat fields, the home of 
 the Heidelberg catechism testifying to the christian's 
 personal experience of guilt and misery as well as of 
 salvation found and felt, and the home of Frederik HI, 
 who alone in the Great Diet of Catholic and Lutheran 
 dignitaries confessed his Reformed convictions "even 
 if it should cost him a cap full of blood." 
 
 His house had been blessed of God, until Frederick V. 
 became king of Bohemia and was on the point of mak- 
 ing the Reformed Church the leading one in Germany. 
 But he failed most miserably, and Ichabod was written 
 over the doors of her temples and palaces. Then came 
 the war of thirty years, and the rule of Roman Catholic 
 electors, and the intrigues of Jesuits, and finally Louis 
 
12 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 XIV. of France sent Melac with fire and sword to re- 
 duce the cities to ruins and the fields to a wilderness. 
 
 But man's necessity is God's opportunity. To the 
 Palatinate church lying in her blood by the wayside he 
 said: "Thou shalt live." Fifteen thousand Palatinesfied 
 down the Rhine to Holland, and thence to England. 
 Encamping in the outskirts of London, they were cared 
 for by Queen Anne and by noble-minded Englishmen ; 
 even the savage Mohawk chiefs from the province of 
 New York, who at that time were staying in London, 
 befriended them and invited them to their fertile lands 
 on the Mohawk, up the Hudson river. 
 
 About three thousand of these Palatines were trans- 
 ported to the province of New York, but were there 
 held in severe servitude. A large portion of them then 
 made their way to the Mohawk, but after they had 
 cleared their fields, were told that they could not own 
 their lands. Once more they then arose, and hearing of 
 Penn's just and liberal rule in Pennsylvania, they 
 placed themselves under the guidance of Conrad 
 Weiser, one of their own young men who had made 
 friends of the Indians. He guided them over the moun- 
 tains to the sources of the Susquehanna, down which 
 river they floated with their cattle and household 
 goods, until they reached the beautiful banks of the 
 Swatara. Here at last they found a permanent home 
 where the swallow could build her nest and rear her 
 young. In the course of time, many thousands of 
 their friends followed them, and Eastern Pennsylvania 
 became the new home of the Reformed Palatinate 
 
The Pietists. 13 
 
 church. More than one hundred years ago, the electors 
 of the Palatinate following the Reformed instincts of 
 tolerance, had offered an asylum to the Mennonites, 
 whom neither Catholic nor Lutheran would tolerate in 
 their lands. Now the Quakers paid back the debt of 
 gratitude for their fellow sectarians and verified God's 
 promise: "Cast thy bread upon the waters, and after 
 many years thou shalt find it again," Eccl. xi:i. 
 
 Rhineland begins in Switzerland and ends in Hol- 
 land, and the whole basin, from the snowclad Alps to 
 the seawashed dykes, teams with an industrious and 
 liberty-loving population, the light and the salt of 
 which are the sons and daughters of the Reformed 
 Church that give tone and character to its life. Nor 
 were they to prove a blessing at home only; they were 
 also to have their share in the making of America. 
 From every one of the countries of the Rhine, not from 
 the Palatinate only, or Siegen, or Nassau, but from 
 Switzerland also, and from the borders of Holland, a 
 large number of earnest Christians came to the Amer- 
 ican settlements early enough to exert a permanent in- 
 fluence on the formation of their character. 
 
 We have no full records of their exact numbers, but 
 in Dr. Good's History the names of more than one 
 hundred of the earliest Reformed ministers are given, 
 and in most cases their places of nativity, and it seems 
 quite safe to assume that, generally speaking, the people 
 came from the same countries with their pastors. 
 
 According to Prof. Hinke*s latest list containing the 
 
14 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 names of one hundred and ten Reformed pastors in 
 America from 1725-1792 
 
 Twenty came from Switzerland, 
 
 Twenty-nine from the Palatinate, 
 
 Five from the Lower Rhine, 
 
 Eight from Westphalia, 
 
 Thirteen from Hessen and Nassau, 
 
 One from Holland, 
 
 Nine from other parts of Germany, viz., Hanover, 
 Magdeburg, Anhalt, Tyrol, mostly coming from col- 
 onies of Hugenot refugees there. 
 
 Four were born in America, and of twenty-one their 
 place of nativity is unknown. 
 
 The greater moiety of these, sixty-one, had taken a 
 regular theological course of study at Reformed uni- 
 versities, and that then meant that they were well 
 grounded in the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination. 
 It did not mean, however, the stricter form of it, supra- 
 lapsarianism teaching that God from all eternity, be- 
 fore Adam's fall in paradise, foreordained and elected 
 those that were to be saved and that Christ died for 
 them only. It meant infralapsarianism as formulated 
 in the famous canons of Dort, 1619, that Christ's death 
 and blood is a sufficient ransom for all humanity, and 
 that after Adam's fall God fore-ordained in Christ 
 those that were to repent, to believe, and to be saved. It 
 did not mean that God forces repentance and faith upon 
 His elect as if they were sticks or stones, but it meant 
 that through the means of grace, by the Holy Ghost, 
 
The PieiisU. 15 
 
 he instructs and persuades and convinces them of the 
 truth as it is in Jesus. 
 
 iln those times theology was in the air. In our ma- 
 teriaHstic age we are hardly able to form a conception 
 of such a state of things. In our times the leaders of 
 people are indifferent to theology, and the laboring 
 men hostile to it, but in those times kings and states- 
 men took a vital interest in theological questions, and, 
 in forming their alliances and planning their policy, 
 were to a large extent guided by theological issues. In 
 every university the theological faculty took the lead 
 of all others ; public education was intensely religious ; 
 the great apostacy of the last days had then not yet pro- 
 duced that shameful slighting of spiritual things which 
 now is limiting religious instruction to the few that are 
 not entirely given to the pursuit of worldly things. 
 
 Under such circumstances, with the establishment of 
 the calvinistic doctrine in any state its people were 
 taught that salvation came not by htmian effort; that 
 nobody can save himself; that without grace divine no- 
 body may love God nor his neighbor, but all are prone 
 to disobey every divine commandment; that in order to 
 be saved, we must humbly pray for light divine and life 
 divine, and patiently, perseveringly wait on God in the 
 attitude of penitent prayer until it pleases Him in His 
 infinite compassion to grant us pardon and parental 
 love, without any merit or worthiness whatever on our 
 part, for Christ's sake only. 
 
 It is true that at present the state-church-system is 
 not favorable to personal experience of religion in its 
 
16 The Pioneer s of the Reform ed Church. 
 
 clergy. At present, candidates for the ministry in Ger- 
 many are examined for license by government officials, 
 who would hardly ask them whether they have received 
 the Holy Ghost. Examining boards of today there in- 
 quire into the scientific attainments, and at the best 
 into the moral character of applicants. But in those 
 times the classes and the synods had not yet yielded to 
 the state their right and duty to examine and license 
 candidates, and, in consequence, the ministers who then 
 came over, as a rule, were men not only well grounded 
 in doctrine, but also matured in personal piety. 
 Some were more than that ; they were 
 
 PIETISTS. 
 
 The name of Pietists came into use about the year 
 1680, when a Lutheran minister from the Elsace, 
 Speener by name, who during his stay at the Strass- 
 burg University had become acquainted with Re- 
 formed views and practices^ introduced them in his 
 pastoral work at Frankfurt A. M. The Reformed made 
 a regular practice of holding prayer-meetings^ they 
 were administering church discipline; they made a 
 point of teaching that true Christians during their life- 
 time receive, through the Spirit, an assurance of for- 
 giveness and of their heavenly inheritance. Among the 
 Reformed people these things were looked upon as a 
 time-honored practice, but in Lutheran circles they 
 challenged attention and opposition, and soon a name 
 was found for what they considered a more than doubt- 
 ful innovation. They called it pietism, or piety over- 
 
The Pietists. 17 
 
 done. The opprobrious term, very improperly, from 
 the Lutherans passed over into those circles of the Re- 
 formed church, where lukewarmness and worldliness 
 had come to prevail, and where ardent love of Christ 
 and full consecration to His service had come to be 
 looked upon as cant and caprice. 
 
 Let us now, for an illustration of this "Pietism" in 
 the Reformed church, hear the story of a Swiss pastor 
 that came to Philadelphia in 1710, 
 
 SAMUEL GULDIN. 
 
 He was born in Bern, Switzerland, in 1664, and re- 
 ceived his education in the same city, preparatory to the 
 ministry. In a pamphlet of his, an apology of his so- 
 called pietistic practices, he has transmitted to posterity 
 an interesting account of his early life, from which the 
 following is taken : 
 
 There Tvere four of us, Samuel Guldin, Jacob Dachs, 
 Samuel Schumacher, and Christopher Lutz who, in 1689, 
 determined to make a trip from Bern to Geneva. We re- 
 solved to make it a distinctively christian journey, to avoid 
 the vain disputes common among studente, and to gather 
 heavenly treasure. While at Geneva, Lutz took sick. 
 During this sickness not only was he brought to a profound 
 realization of his spiritul condition, but all of us, who be- 
 fore never could be one of mind, were now so well united 
 in spirit, that ever since we have remained faithful to each 
 other. This happened in Geneva, Calvin's city. Then 
 we journeyed together to Lausanne, and ever after held 
 daily meetings in the morning and in the evening, to wor- 
 ship God. 
 
 In August, 1692, Guldin, then 28 years old, was 
 
 made pastor at Stettlen, one league east of Bern. He 
 
18 The Pioneers of the Refor med Church. 
 
 was a pious and earnest minister, but not yet satisfied 
 with his own inner Ufe. He had not the full peace of 
 God. He lacked the certain assurance of having been 
 made perfect in Christ. He did not expect moral sin- 
 lessness, but a perfect imputation of Christ's merits to 
 his own soul, and a certain, permanent knowledge of 
 the same, as taught in the Heidelberg catechism, ques- 
 tion 60: 
 
 How art thou righteous before God? 
 Only through true faith in Jesus Christ; thus, that al- 
 though my conscience convicts me that I have grievously 
 sinned against all the commands of God, and never kept any 
 of them, yea, still am prone to all evil, nevertheless God 
 without any merit of mine, from mere mercy, donates and 
 imputes to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and 
 holiness of Christ, as if I never had committed or harbored 
 any sin, and as if I had rendered all the obedience, which 
 Christ performed for me, on the sole condition of my ac- 
 cepting that benefit with a believing heart. 
 
 On Christmas, 1792, Schuhmacher informed Gul- 
 din by letter that he had passed from darkness to the 
 light. This made so deep an impression on Guldin's 
 mind, and he felt so dissatisfied with his own condition, 
 that he determined upon abandoning the ministry, be- 
 cause entirely unfit for it and unworthy of it. But on 
 the day fixed upon for writing out his resignation, the 
 longed-for experience of a change of heart came. He 
 has given a full account of it, which will be here re- 
 peated in his own words. We will add only, that, like 
 John the Apostle, John i :39, he remembered for life 
 the very hour when he found the Lord^ and that like 
 Paul, he frequently told the story to others. 
 
The Pietists. 19 
 
 On the fourth of August 1693, between nine and ten 
 in the morning, the light of faith rose and was born within 
 me. At that hour all my doubts and scruples passed away, 
 and never afterward affected me. And I began to preach 
 with a new power so that all my congregation noticed the 
 change that had taken place in my soul. 
 
 After this, he no more preached doctrine in lifeless 
 words, but testified to the Gospel as he had experienced 
 its power. He no more belonged to those who believe 
 because taught by men or books, but because they have 
 heard Christ himself, John iv : 42. Now his preaching 
 became so forceful and impressive that great crowds 
 were attracted by it from other parishes as well as 
 from his own, for the w'ord of God had grown scarce 
 in those days. The fame of his powerful preaching 
 spread far and wide; three years later he was called to 
 Bern, the capital of Switzerland, as assistant preacher 
 in the largest church there, where thousands might be 
 benefited by his preaching. 
 
 But it was not to be so. His friend Lutz, when he 
 heard of his election to that place, wrote him a letter 
 of congratulation, in which, unfortunately, some dis- 
 paraging remarks about the clergy of Bern occurred, 
 and that letter fell into the hands of the authorities 
 just at a time when their minds were rather strongly 
 exercised over the emotional and sensational preaching 
 of a certain Koenig. He was an upright and earnest 
 man, but thought that the millenium was then on the 
 point of coming, and when preaching on that subject 
 had indulged in frequent sharp criticisms of the clergy 
 and the government. In consequence, Koenig and Lutz 
 
20 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 and Guldin were summoned to appear before the High 
 Council and were there bidden to sign a renunciation 
 of certain commendations of revivalism published by 
 the Reformed Theological Seminary of Saumur, 
 France, which had attracted general attention, and 
 which the Berne authorities considered responsible for 
 the attitude taken by Koenig, Lutz and Guldin. 
 
 But the three delinquents could not be prevailed up- 
 on to sign the document, and, in punishment, Koenig 
 was banished, and Guldin's call was revoked. Lutz 
 was permitted to remain. Guldin was appointed pas- 
 tor of an obscure village in the rough mountains, where 
 he labored for a short time and then concluded to emi- 
 grate to America. 
 
 We have no definite account of his work here. He 
 arrived in 1710, and bought the first plantation he saw, 
 not far from Philadelphia, at Roxbury. Here he seems 
 to have stayed and to have worked as a farmer, to sup- 
 port his family. He did not content himself with farm- 
 ing, however, but held meetings and preached where- 
 ever an opportunity presented itself. And that could 
 not but happen quite frequently, since there was quite 
 a numerous population of churchly Swiss and Germans 
 around him. The heart of a God-called minister filled 
 with the love of Jesus must at all times, in season and 
 out of season, give utterance to the abundance of its 
 sacred thoughts, and it is just such informal preaching 
 that leads to the organization of the best churches. 
 That he was preaching to good purpose may be inferred 
 from the fact that soon after his arrival we hear of 
 
The Pietists. 21 
 
 Reformed congregations in Philadelphia and German- 
 town. He is said to have preached regularly in Rox- 
 bury and Oley, and later on in this narrative we shall 
 hear him raise his voice in defense of the Reformed 
 church with such a sense of authority as leaves little 
 doubt of his having been an influential leader in the 
 church-circles there. 
 
 Eight years after his arrival he published in book- 
 form an apology of his own and his friends* pastoral 
 work in Switzerland, entitled, Defence of the Unjustly 
 Persecuted Pietists in Bern. The book is still in ex- 
 istence and presents a clear and reliable synopsis of his 
 views and principles. 
 
 He had, been accused of reading and circulating 
 mystical books, and frankly admits the fact, but 
 although he found many dark statements in them, ob- 
 scure and unintelligible to his mind, he protests that 
 the Council of Bern had no right to forbid reading 
 them. 
 
 He had been charged with teaching that a Christian 
 may become perfectly sinless in this life, but he explains 
 that there is taught by scripture a certain perfection in 
 Christ — Hebr. v:i4, "Strong meat belongs to them 
 that are of full age, or perfect;'' Phil, iii :i5, "As many 
 as are perfect." The term perfect, Guldin says, is there 
 frequently used in the sense of one that relies abso- 
 lutely on the merits of Christ Jesus. 
 
 He had been charged with asserting that ungodly 
 persons should not be admitted to the Lord's supper 
 and that nobody should presume to preach the Gospel 
 
22 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 and administer the Sacraments without an inner, divine 
 call. To this charge he freely pleads guilty, but main- 
 tains that here he stands on good ground. For certain, 
 no apology is needed for it. 
 
 The same is true of the next charge, that in his 
 preaching he did not always speak with pastoral dig- 
 nity and propriety, but would often use the phraseology 
 of conversati'onal language. In his answer, Guldin 
 very correctly calls attention to the fadt that Christ 
 himself in His preaching did the same thing. 
 
 Then follows the charge that without proper au- 
 thority he held prayer-meetings at which, sometimes, 
 even Anabaptists and Mennonites would be present. 
 But what "proper authority" does a pastor need in 
 his own congregation for the holding of such meetings? 
 If Guldin had been reprimanded for neglecting to hold 
 prayer-meetings, an apology might have been necessary. 
 
 Our readers, however, must not be left under the 
 impression that the Reformed church as such is hostile 
 to prayer-meetings and personal experience of salva- 
 tion. There have been times when such was the case in 
 certain localities, but the opposition could be but 
 temporary. Nor did the church of Bern form an ex- 
 ception to the rule. Not many years passed by before 
 the Bern church formally and officially receded from 
 its condemnation of the Pietists. In 1730, twenty years 
 later, Koenig was recalled from his banishment and 
 even was created pilofessor of theology; Lutz never 
 had been deposed, and in his latter years received pub- 
 
The Pietists. 23 
 
 lie recognition of his valuable and splendid work; 
 Dachs was made dean of the whole Bern church. 
 
 JOHN H. GOETSCHI. 
 
 Seventeen years after Guldin's publication of his 
 apology, in 1735, another Swiss minister, Moritz 
 Goetschi, arrived in Philadelphia, bringing with him a 
 colony of four hundred Swiss originally intended for 
 the Carolinas, which at that time had many Swiss im- 
 migrants. Like Guldin he had received a full univer- 
 sity training, but he was not unblamable like him in 
 character. His career and the manner in which he con- 
 ducted his scheme of colonizaition seem open to well- 
 grounded suspicions as to his sincerity and reliability. 
 If, however, he erred^ he also suffered for it. His jour- 
 ney from Switzerland to Holland, from there to Eng- 
 land, and thence over the ocean, proved an unbroken 
 chain of misfortunes, troubles, disappointments, and 
 hardships. 
 
 By the time of his arrival in Philadelphia, a Re- 
 formed congregation had been organized there under 
 Pastor Weiss, from the Palatinate, in 1727, and he had 
 served the congregation for some years. After him, on 
 April 24, 1734, the well-known Boehm, whose work 
 is described more fully later on, had been elected to 
 preach there every fourth Sunday. That was all he 
 could dt), since he had a number of other places to sup- 
 ply with his ministrations^ and even that little could 
 not be done with any degree of regularity. 
 
 When, therefore, the Philadelphia people heard that 
 
24 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 a Swiss minister had arrived, their elders came on 
 board to welcome him and to secure his services. They 
 found him so weak from the hardships of the ocean- 
 journey that he could not walk, but such was their 
 desire for a minister that they placed him on a chair 
 and carried him fto the house of a friend. Here a de- 
 lightful hour was spent in the exchange of greetings 
 and news, so refreshing that they would gladly have 
 made it a full day, but that Pastor Goetschi complained 
 of a strange darkness clouding his eyesight and of 
 great weariness. Meantime a bed had been made ready 
 for him up stairs and they now carried him there, but 
 before the head of the stairs could be reached, he sat 
 down, folded his arms across his breast, lifted his eyes 
 to heaven, and expired. 
 
 Fortunately, his son John H. Goetschij a student of 
 theology, who had come over with him, could be pre- 
 vailed upon under these affecting circumstances to 
 take his father's place. He was only seventeen years 
 old, but the people insisted upon his becoming their 
 pastor. He preached twice every Sunday, morning and 
 evening, and after each service held catechization. Be- 
 sides in Philadelphia, he also preached in a number of 
 country places. All this was done rather irregularly, 
 for he had not received ordination to the ministry. He 
 had applied for it with the Presbyterians, but they had 
 recommended him to wait until he would have com- 
 pleted his studies. Another irregularity was that he was 
 intruding upon the pastoral labors of Boehm, one of 
 the leading pioneer ministers, whose life is fully 
 
The Pietists. 25 
 
 described later on. Nor could young Goetschi maintain 
 his position longer than four years. Still he seems to 
 have been an earnest preacher. From Philadelphia he 
 went to New York in 1740, where he was called by con- 
 gregations in Long Island, There he united with the 
 Dutch Reformed church, his ministry was blessed with 
 great revivals, and he occupied, among other honorable 
 positions of trust, that of a trustee to Queen's College. 
 
 JOHN PETER MILLER. 
 
 John Peter Miller is the representative of a some- 
 what different type of Reformed pioneers in America, 
 not a pietist, but a mystic, i. e., given to a contempla- 
 tive, retired life of vision and rapture rather than to 
 public activity. 
 
 He was the son of a Reformed minister in the Palati- 
 nate, and absolved his theological studies at the Heidel- 
 berg University, but before receiving his ordination, he 
 emigrated to America, and arrived in Philadelphia, in 
 1730, before the times of Goetschi. A few weeks after 
 his arrival he presented himself for ordination before 
 the Presbyterian Synod in session there just at that 
 time. This body examined him carefully and was very 
 favorably impressed with him, Dr. Andrews writing, 
 "He speaks Latin as well as we speak our native 
 language," and they ordained him. 
 
 The reason why he applied for ordination with the 
 Presbyterians rather than with the Reformed church 
 was that the German Reformed had no synodical or- 
 ganization and that the Dutch church was rather dis- 
 
26 The Pioneers of the Reformed Chu rch. 
 
 tant. Boehm, who had in the preceding year, 1729, 
 received his ordination from the Dutch in New York, 
 after much wearisome delay, wanted him to follow his 
 example, but Mueller, like most German newcomers in 
 America, had wrong ideas of liberty, confounding law- 
 lessness with it. The difference of liberty from servi- 
 tude is not in the absence of law, 'but in one's attitude 
 toward the law. The slavish servant obeys the laws 
 upon compulsion, of necessity, but the free citizen, 
 from choice, willingly, having himself had his share 
 in their making. But Mueller said to Boehm that "In 
 this land of glorious liberty Christians are free, and 
 Christ alone is their head." He forgot that Christ, our 
 Lord and Master, does not rule arbitrarily but accord- 
 ing to well established laws and forms. 
 
 As an ordained minister Mueller served the Philadel- 
 phia congregation one year only. In the country con- 
 gregations he succeeded better and might finally have 
 settled down to permanent usefulness, had he not fallen 
 in with one of God's curiosities, a man named Conrad 
 Beissel, 
 
 He was a leader of Seventh Day Dunkards, or Bap- 
 tists, who aimed at a life of sinless perfection to be 
 reached by withdrawing from the world and even 
 from family-life. They taught that sin began to enter 
 this world when Adam desired a helpmate, by whom he 
 was afterwards seduced. To avoid the snares of the 
 world they had built a large monastery in Ephrata, Pa. 
 
 Beissel resolved to convert to his faith the Reformed 
 ministers that began to arrive, since they were more 
 
The Pietists. 27 
 
 spiritual than the Lutherans. Every day he prayed to 
 God on his knees to "Give him one of these preachers 
 for the better carrying on of God's work." First he 
 prayed for the conversion of Rev. Rieger, a fellow stu- 
 dent of Mueller, who had come before Mueller and 
 was preaching in those parts. But Rieger married, and 
 Beissel complained to God: "O Lord, thou sufferest 
 them to sj>oil on my very hands." But nothing daunted 
 he next turned his attention to Mueller, and with him 
 he succeeded. At the same time he also gained over 
 Conrad Weiser, the man that led the Palatines from 
 the Mohawk to the Swatara, three elders, and ten 
 heads of Reformed and Lutheran families. On one 
 day all were immersed, and the solemnity of the oc- 
 casion was hightened by piling up some catechisms, 
 hymn-books, and prayer-books, and burning them pub- 
 licly, because they were the works of man and not of 
 God. 
 
 However, the impression made did not last long. 
 All but Mueller soon returned to their mother 
 church. He took the new baptismal name of Jabez. 
 1 Chron. iv:io, "And Jabez was more honorable than 
 his brethren, and his mother called his name Jabez, 
 i. e., sorrowful. And Jabez called upon the God of 
 Israel, saying, O that thou wouldst bless me indeed, 
 and enlarge my coast, and that thine hand would be 
 with me, and that thou wouldst keep me from evil, that 
 it might not grieve me. And God granted him that 
 which he requested." 
 
 Of the Jabez in the Bible nothing else is known. 
 
28 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 Few Bible students if asked who he was would know 
 anything about him. The name was chosen, probably, 
 for that very reason. Nor did the people know him by 
 that name, although he continued to live in the cloister 
 until his death, in 1796, more than sixty years. They 
 called him Peter the Hermit. He did not entirely sub- 
 ordinate himself to the rules of the order, but as he 
 loved a quiet life, and had literary tastes, and the 
 Ephrata Society had a printing press there and pub- 
 lished many devotional books, he had no lack of con- 
 genial work to occupy his mind. Beissel wanted him 
 to labor as a preacher, but Mueller refused to comply. 
 
 When he had grown quite old, during the Revolu- 
 tionary War, an opportunity was presented to prove in 
 an unmistakable and ever memorable way, how genuine 
 his faith was. There was living in Ephrata a fanatical 
 enemy and persecutor of the cloister-people, base- 
 minded, full of gall and bitterness, in every possible 
 way ever ready to harm them. He was also a Tory, 
 and as such was detected in treasonable attempts 
 against the government of the United States. He was 
 seized, tried, and condemned to be hanged. 
 
 As soon as Mueller heard of it, he set out on foot 
 and walked sixty miles to Washington's headquarters, 
 to intercede for the condemned. The general listened 
 to his appeal with his habitual kindness, but answered 
 that sorry as he was to disappoint Mueller, his un- 
 fortunate friend could not be pardoned — ^he must die. 
 
 "My unfortunate friend," exclaimed Mueller, "why, 
 I have no greater enemy in the world than that man." 
 
The Pietists. 29 
 
 "What," rejoined Washington, "and you have 
 walked sixty miles to save an enemy's life ! That puts 
 matters in an altogether different light. I grant your 
 prayer." 
 
 The pardon was made out and without delay Mueller 
 went on foot fifteen miles to the place where on that 
 afternoon the execution was to take place. He arrived 
 in the nick of time; the culprit was just on his last walk 
 to the gallows. 
 
 "There," he cried, when he caught sight of the old 
 man, "there is old Peter Mueller, who has walked all 
 the way from Ephrata to see me hang." 
 
 So little do such men know of God's children. Let 
 us hope that he made use of the remainder of his life 
 to repent, and that he learned to love Peter Mueller and 
 his Savior. 
 
 The writers of history do not generally place on rec- 
 ord the names of true heroes like Mueller. The world 
 does not care for them. But we will not forget them. 
 We thank God for them; we praise Him for having 
 placed in the galaxy of the truly heroical pioneers of 
 America such men as Haegener, Guldin, and John Peter 
 Mueller, side by side with the followers of William 
 Penn and Roger Williams, the Puritans and the Pil- 
 grims. 
 
IL THE MORAVIANS. 
 
 About fifty years after the rise of Pietism in Ger- 
 many, Count Zinzendorf founded the Moravian com- 
 munity. He had himself received a pietistic training, 
 but in addition to what the pietist Lutherans had 
 learned from the Reformed, he learned new truths from 
 the Moravian remnants of Hussites and Bohemian 
 Protestants, who had been persecuted by the bigoted 
 Austrian government for centuries with unrelenting 
 and constantly increasing violence. Under the cross 
 they had learned to govern themselves as a church en- 
 tirely free from state control, and when upon Zinzen- 
 dorf's invitation they built the city of Herrnhut on his 
 lands, Zinzendorf making common cause with them, 
 they succeeded in establishing the first Christian church 
 in Germany free from state control — a great advance 
 upon the Lutheran conception of churches governed by 
 princes and civil magistrates. 
 
 In point of doctrine, he overcame the somewhat nar- 
 row views of the Pietists on conversion. They held that 
 to become a genuine Christian one must pass through 
 a severe agony of repentance succeeded by transports 
 of joy over pardon obtained from God, and that no 
 one may claim the comforts and privileges of a true 
 believer, who cannot point to a day on which he passed 
 through such experience. But Zinzendorf knew Christ 
 
 HO 
 
The Moravians. 31 
 
 from childhood; in fact, from infancy. His first child- 
 ish attempts in penmanship and composition consisted 
 in letters addressed to Jesus and cast out of the win- 
 dows to be born heavenward by the winds. His plays 
 as a boy in school culminated in the organization of 
 the Mustard Seed Order, for united prayer and work. 
 Unconscious of any special hour when he had accepted 
 Christ, he had grown and waxed strong in spirit, filled 
 with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him — • 
 Luke ii : 40. From his own experience, then, he could 
 not but reject the theory that made an agony of re- 
 pentance once experienced the test of saving faith. 
 
 As for a doctrinal standard, he retained the pietistic 
 laxity of doctrine. He did not consider creeds essential 
 elements in the foundation of the church. Himself no 
 theologian, he preferred the enjoyment of devotional 
 exercises in closet and conventicle to systematic re- 
 search. Although he called himself a Lutheran, he felt 
 perfectly free to identify himself with God's people in 
 every other denomination. From the very beginning he 
 organized his new church on a union-basis. Its official 
 name was the Unitas Fratriim (Union of Brethren). 
 
 'Men might enter this Union without giving up their 
 denominational peculiarities, and they might, further- 
 more, form groups in which to cultivate them. These 
 groups were called Tropes. There was to be a Luth- 
 eran Tropus, a Reformed Tropus, e. a. The term was 
 derived from a Greek word used in Phil. i:i8, where 
 Paul speaks of some men preaching Christ in conten- 
 tion, but does not complain of it; he rather rejoices in 
 
32 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. _^____^^_^_ 
 
 that, "Every way, whether in pretence or in truth, 
 Christ is preached; and I therein rejoice, yea and will 
 rejoice." The word way stands for the Greek tropos. 
 
 Quite a number of Lutherans and Reformed fell in 
 with Zinzendorf s plan and formed Tropes in connec- 
 tion with the new church. But a much larger number 
 of adherents came from various sects in the Palatinate, 
 in Siegen, in Wittgenstein, and some other Reformed 
 states in the Lower Rhine region. In those times the 
 Lutheran and the Catholic princes did not tolerate 
 sects; their subjects must have the religion of their 
 rulers. But the Reformed were more tolerant and of- 
 fered them asylums in their territories. Some of these 
 sectarians indulged in mystical speculations and 
 claimed to have special inspirations and visions reveal- 
 ing to them the near advent of the millenium. They 
 interpreted the seven congrations named in Revelation 
 ii. and iii. to mean seven periods in the history of the 
 church. In the order of these chapters the one of 
 Laodicea comes last and that of Philadelphia second 
 last. Now Philadelphia means Brotherly Love, and on 
 this ground the Moravian church, the Unity of Breth- 
 ren, was thought to usher in the second-last period, 
 and the promise given Rev. iii : 7, was applied to them, 
 "I will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which 
 shall come upon all the earth." Possibly, the city of- 
 Philadelphia, in Pennsylvania, may have received its 
 name on similar grounds, for Wm. Penn always main- 
 tained an intimate intercourse with sects in Germany. 
 
 These pious members of sects and of the Reformed 
 
The Moravians. 33 
 
 and the Lutheran church seem to have known Jesus, 
 Him whom to know means to love Him, and not only 
 to love Him, but also to love Him better than their own 
 church community. The better men love Christ, the 
 more they enjoy fellowship with Christ^s own in other 
 denominations. But how to temper such largeness of 
 heart with loyalty to the church, that is a problem not 
 easy to solve, and the mildness of the Reformed 
 people, their liberality, and tolerance of other Christ- 
 ians has frequently misled them into an indiscreet zeal 
 for fellowship with men of other churches, and to a 
 fatal disregard of ecclesiastical duties. They would 
 break the outward form of the church so necessary to its 
 work and its very existence, as one breaks the shell of 
 a nut to get at the kernel, thus killing its very life and 
 its power of germination. 
 
 Let us now see how the Reformed pioneers in 
 Pennsylvania had to wrestle with the problem of liber- 
 ality combined with loyalty. 
 
 When Zinzendorf, in Nov., 1741, came to America, 
 he found in the Reformed congregations many pious 
 souls most favorably disposed, having been well pre- 
 pared for his coming by active members of the Morav- 
 ian settlements in Bethlehem and other places of 
 Pennsylvania. They had been informed of his won- 
 derful achievements. He. also brought along with him 
 a number of amiable Reformed companions, pious, 
 earnest, and spiritual in their conversation, among 
 whom his own almost supernaturally lovely face 
 beaming with the happiness of a child-like faith and 
 
34 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 reflecting the full peace of a consecrated life, shone 
 forth like a sun among his planets. 
 
 One of these companions was John Brandmueller, 
 a bookkeeper from Reformed Basel, but now a member 
 of the Moravian congregation there, well gifted in 
 speech. Later on he was ordained to the ministry here. 
 
 Another such was Chr. H, Ranch, who became a 
 famous missionary among the Indians. To his minis- 
 try an Indian chief once bore this testimony : 
 
 "Other missionaries came before him. They 
 preached we must not steal nor get drunk, but the 
 birds of the trees had sung that message into our ears 
 long before they came, and our hearts remained cold 
 and hard as stones. Then this man came and told us 
 that the Son of God loved us and suffered for our sins 
 on a cross, and at his words our hearts became like 
 wax in the noon-sun. I then was like a poor worm, 
 around which a circle of dry leaves is burning. The 
 worm creeps one way for to escape, but is turned back 
 by the burning fire; it creeps another way, but the 
 flames drive it back again; it creeps many ways, but all 
 in vain. Finally it curls up in despair and lies down in 
 the center, to die. Then, when I was nearly dead, lo, 
 an arm reached down from heaven and a hand took me 
 up and saved me." 
 
 Thus the untutored mind of the savage had appre- 
 hended the gospel, saved by grace, the story told by 
 one who knew it by heart, i. e., by experience. 
 
 This same Ranch finally served a number of Re- 
 formed congregations in Eastern Pennsylvania. 
 
The Moravians. 35 
 
 Another bright star in this constellation was John 
 Lischy, a weaver by trade, from the Elsass. There he 
 had been awakened in a Moravian meeting to a sense 
 of his need of a Savior. After that he had visited 
 Herrnhuth and other hearths of the sacred fire, 
 and all aglow with it he now came with Zinzendorf, 
 soon to be ordained and to be made the leading spirit 
 of the Reformed Trope. Like Ranch, he finally served 
 a number of Reformed congregations with acceptance 
 and success. 
 
 Their number was soon augmented by the Ameri- 
 cans whom the Moravian leaders resident in Bethle- 
 hem had prepared for Zinzendorf's coming. 
 
 ■Henry 'Antes, a native of the Palatinate, was an in- 
 fluential 'felder of the Reformed congregation, at Falk- 
 ner's Swamp. He enjoyed general confidence for his 
 integrity and sound judgment as well as for his earn- 
 est piety. He seems to have been well educated, for 
 whenever any legal business was to be done, his neigh- 
 bors would come to him for advice and for the mak- 
 ing out of documents. Seven years before Zinzendorf 
 came, Spangenberg, Zinzendorf s theologian, had com- 
 menced visiting Antes, and had so well prepared the 
 ground that Zinzendorf came to see him almost im- 
 mediately after his arrival in Philadelphia, and could 
 at once induce him to issue a circular calling upon all 
 who longed for a union of God's people to meet for 
 prayer and deliberation in Germantown, now a suburb 
 of Philadelphia. 
 
 The Reformed congregation of Germantown at that 
 
36 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 time was served by John Bechtel, one of those pious 
 men without a theological training who then were of- 
 ficiating in Reformed congregations. By trade he was 
 a turner, nor had he given up working at the turning 
 lathe in his own workshop after he had been called to 
 the ministry. In his youth he had been converted, after 
 he had sowed his wild oats quite recklessly. Then he 
 had married and had emigrated from his home in the 
 Palatinate in 1726, together with a large number of his 
 countrymen. He had settled in Germantown, and there 
 he had for two years given his time to the cares and 
 labors of pioneer life, and to the establishment of his 
 mind in the knowledge and the love of his God. His 
 home had become a temple of the Holy Spirit, and his 
 heart the abode of Christ. And since Christ never can 
 be idle, Bechtel, for whom to live was Christ, could not 
 be inactive with him. He held prayer-meetings every 
 morning and every evening on week-days, also on 
 Sundays. By the Reformed people of those days such 
 exercises were looked upon with much favor, and four 
 years later the leading men of the congregation just 
 then engaged in building a church,* thought that even 
 
 *In Dr. Good's History the laying of the corner stone is said 
 to have occurred in 1719; the same date is given in Dubbs' 
 American Church History, viii : p. 245, and in Hallische Nach- 
 richten. But the Swedish pastor, Dylander, who laid the cor- 
 nerstone, did not come to Pennsylvania before 1737, eighteen 
 years later, and one of the Germantown elders writes in a 
 letter dated July 14, 1744: "Some ten years ago four members 
 of this congregation did their very best to build a church." 
 
 Also Boehm says in his letter of Oct. 28, 1734, that the con- 
 gregation had indeed made good progress with the building 
 of their church, but was heavily oppressed with debts. 
 
 W. J. HINKE- 
 
The Moravians. 37 
 
 if Bechtel lacked education and ordination, he would be 
 the suitable man to build up the church. Bechtel was 
 given a call and entered upon his pastorate in 1733. 
 
 Like Antes, Bechtel had held frequent intercourse 
 with the Moravians, especially with Spangenberg, and 
 had come to think very highly of them. His address 
 had been furnished to Zinzendorf in Europe, and no 
 sooner had Zinzendorf landed in New York, even be- 
 fore coming to Philadelphia, than he sent him a letter to 
 Germantown with an invitation, appointing the time 
 and place for an interview in Philadelphia. Bechtel 
 felt perplexed; he hesitated to commit himself; but 
 one of his daughters urged him on, and when her argu- 
 ments and entreaties failed to overcome his doubts, she 
 ran into the pasture behind their house, caught her 
 father's horse and soon had it bridled and saddled in 
 front of the house. Such ardent appeal was not to 
 be resisted. Bechtel went to see the remarkable man, 
 and on the next day the remarkable man came to see 
 Bechtel. And a complete conquest resulted, so complete 
 that the first conference of The Congregation of God 
 in the Spirit, for such was the official title of the new 
 organization, could be called to meet in Bechtel's 
 church. Zinzendorf was invited also to preach a series 
 of sermons there. 
 
 A third friend of the Moravians was John Barth, 
 Rieger, the fellow-student of Mueller, whom Conrad 
 Beissel had tried so hard to convert to mysticism, now 
 pastor of the Reformed congregation at Lancaster. He 
 had previously become acquainted with the Moravians, 
 
38 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 perhaps with Zinzendorf himself, when studying in 
 Basel. Zinzendorf now paid him a visit in Lancaster 
 and received a cordial welcome. From his pulpit, on 
 next Sunday, Rieger highly commended the great 
 leader and his cause. 
 
 After these preparations the conference was held in 
 Germantown on January i and 2. The Lutherans, the 
 Reformed, the Mennonites, the Seventh-Day Dunk- 
 ards of Ephrata, the Schwenkfeldians, the Inspired, 
 and the Separatists were represented, a queer crowd, 
 but they made up by sincerity for what may have been 
 lacking in dignity. As was to be expected, the proceed- 
 ings were not altogether harmonious, and some com- 
 plaint was made about Zinzendorf's rather imperious 
 manner. Probably some of these curious saints with 
 more imagination than common sense could not well 
 be curbed without a bold assumption of authority on 
 the leader's part. Nevertheless, some good results were 
 reached sufficiently encouraging to proceed with the 
 work and to hold six more conventions in the five 
 subsequent months, and a permanent organization was 
 effected, a basis on which to work together. 
 
 Of the Reformed Trope, consisting of Reformed 
 ministers and congregations joining the new union, 
 Bechtel was made Inspector, and he was authorized to 
 write and publish a new catechism for their use. That 
 was a fatal error. If the Reformed Trope was to con- 
 sist of men continuing to hold Reformed views, no 
 such office should have been created, and no such au- 
 thority should have been given to one man. The Re- 
 
The Moravians. 39 
 
 formed church holds fast to the parity of all its minis- 
 ters and elders as taught by Christ, Luke xxiii :8, "For 
 one is your master, even Christ, and all ye are 
 brethren." Nor could they substitute a new catechism 
 for the Heidelberg, if they would claim to stay 
 Reformed. But they objected to questions 8i and 114, 
 where the necessity of a continued repentance and 
 a daily conversion of believers is taught, and where the 
 most pious are said to make but a very small beginning 
 in keeping the laws of God. 
 
 To vest Bechtel's new catechism with more authority, 
 and to make it more palatable, it was said to be based 
 on the Canons and Essentials of Christian Faith pro- 
 mulgated by the Synod of Bern, in the early days of 
 the Reformation, in 1532. But the claim cannot be sus- 
 tained. In point of fact, Bechtel's catechism passes by 
 in absolute silence the Apostles' Creed, the Ten Com- 
 mandments, the Lord's Prayer, the doctrine of the 
 Trinity, and other "essentials." Of baptism it says that 
 it was instituted in memory of Christ, and the Lord's 
 supper is ignored entirely. 
 
 On the other hand, the book is not without its 
 merits. Like all modern Christianity it is more prac- 
 tical, and has more to say about the true manner of 
 apprehending and accepting salvation on the part of 
 man, than the older testimonies. Much is said about 
 conversion and about the true Christian life. But the 
 author is far from relying on man's natural strength 
 for it; much stress is laid on Christ's love and its 
 power, on the efficacy of His death, and on faith. 
 
40 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 From a copy before the author, printed in 1742 by 
 Benj amin FrankHn, in Philadelphia, the following 
 questions are translated as samples of its eminently 
 practical character: 
 
 167. Wherein does conversion really consist? 
 In turning from Satan's power to that of God. 
 
 168. Who is Satan? 
 
 An angel who did not keep his first estate, but left 
 his own habitation. Jud. 6. 
 
 169. What is he doing? 
 
 He walks about, as a roaring lion, seeking whom he 
 might devour. I. Pet. v : 8. 
 
 170. Whom does he get? 
 
 He deceiveth the whole world. Rev. xii rQ. 
 
 171. What has he to do with the world? 
 He is the God of this world. II. Cor. iv : 4. 
 
 172. What else is he? 
 Its father. John viii :44. 
 
 173. Who are his subjects? 
 
 He worketh in the children of disobedience. 
 
 174. But would people leave him? 
 
 If once their eyes were opened. Acts xxvi :i8. 
 
 175. But how may one get away from him? 
 Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved. 
 
 Acts xvi 13. 
 
 176. But if one cannot believe? 
 
 God offers faith to every one. Acts xvii 13 1. 
 
 177. But what is faith? 
 
 Calling on him whom we do not see as if we saw 
 him. Heb. xi:27. 
 
The Moravians. 41 
 
 178. How far must that go ? 
 
 Even as if you saw the prints of his nails, and laid 
 your fingers into the prints of his nails, and thrust your 
 hand into his side. 
 
 For some time it seemed as if the new organization 
 would split and disintegrate the Reformed congrega- 
 tions in Pennsylvania. By ordaining Rauch, Antes, 
 Brandmueller, and Lischy, the conference could count 
 six Reformed pastors, men of undoubted piety and 
 power. In one of their meetings three Indians, Mo- 
 hawks from New York converted through Rauch's 
 labors, were baptized. There were other very solemn 
 and impressive scenes in other conferences. But a re- 
 action set in. First the Seventh-day Baptists with- 
 drew. Then the Reformed became disaffected because 
 Moravian customs were pressed upon them, after large 
 numbers of Moravians had came over as a compact 
 colony. Lischy took offence at the introduction of 
 white vestments and long litanies. In Lancaster the 
 Reformed congregation would not sustain Pastor 
 Rieger in his efforts to befriend the Moravians, and so 
 he had to resign. The many quaint forms and customs 
 bred in Zinzendorf s fertile mind and introduced by 
 him for new festivals seemed contrary to the scriptural 
 simplicity of worship. In the Moravian hymns is found 
 more sentimental play on the emotional side of Christ's 
 passion than sober instruction and food for the intel- 
 lect. However attractive at first, these pleasantries in 
 course of time became insipid and distasteful. Zinzen- 
 dorf himself left America soon after the seventh con- 
 
42 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 ference meeting, and the absence of his powerful per- 
 sonality was felt to such an extent that no further con- 
 ferences were held. 
 
 Samuel Guldin, high in years, but of considerable 
 influence among the people, raised his voice of protest. 
 At first his longing for fellowship and increased life 
 had impelled him to make common cause with Zinzen- 
 dorf, and he attended the first of the conferences at 
 Germantown, but he left the conference at the end of 
 the first day. He seems to have missed the divine ele- 
 ment in that effort at unification. In his judgment, the 
 advocates of the movement displayed too much human 
 zeal. In 1742 and 1743 he wrote a book to that effect 
 and had it published in 1743, entitled, "Unpartisan 
 Witness on the New Union of all Denominations in 
 Pennsylvania, and also on Some Other Points." 
 
 But the most active and efficient defender of the Re- 
 formed church, to whom, next to God, its preservation 
 in those dangerous times seems mainly due, was a man 
 who deserves more than a passing mention, 
 
 JOHN PHIL. BOEHM. 
 
 Of the workers in Christ's church some are like 
 high-pressure engines, and others like low-pressure 
 ones; some are subjectively filled with strong personal 
 convictions to be impressed upon their fellowmen, and 
 others are objective representatives of their fellow- 
 men's minds to be fostered in wisdom and modera- 
 tion; some work in fitful flashes, and others in steady 
 strength. Boehm was of the latter class, one of the 
 
The Moravians. 43 
 
 cleanest-cut representatives of the Pennsylvanian type, 
 very mild, but very firm. He abounded more in com- 
 mon sense than in imagination, for which reason he, 
 probably, was less efficient in the pulpit than in pas- 
 toral work. 
 
 He lacked a university education, nor was there any- 
 thing brilliant or catching about him, nor does he seem 
 to have been aggressive in his labors. He rather ex- 
 celled in persistence and insistence. His daily walk 
 was without blemish, and his character altogether with- 
 out reproach. If he did not arouse men to new thought, 
 he could put together and keep together existing life- 
 forces. 
 
 His personal experience of the inner life seems to 
 have been like the even flaw of a river without sharp 
 turns or rapids and cataracts. He inherited from pious 
 parents the habits of life and thought that reflect 
 Christ's life, and from the hour of his baptism on he 
 quietly grew into the consciousness of his salvation, not 
 without those severe struggles, of course, and agonies 
 even, without which it is' impossible to overcome sin 
 and self, but without experiencing those violent throes 
 and travails to which they are subject who from out- 
 spoken enmity to the Lord pass over into devoted con- 
 secration to His service — a John the Evangehst rather 
 than a St. Paul. 
 
 His father was a Reformed minister in Hessia, but 
 he himself had to content himself with the humbler 
 calling of a schoolmaster. From 1708 to 1715 he taught 
 the Reformed School of Worms in the Palatinate, The 
 
44 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 schoolmasters of those times were to a large extent 
 assistants of their pastors, and had to perform many 
 clerical functions. In the Sunday service, besides lead- 
 ing in the singing, they read the scripture lesson. They 
 assisted in the administration of the Lord's Supper and 
 of baptism, also at funerals and marriages. In school 
 they taught scripture and catechism. In case of the 
 pastor's absence they conducted the Sunday service and 
 read a sermon. When in America the newcomers found 
 themselves without pastors, they would naturally look 
 to the schoolmasters for the conducting of public ser- 
 vice, they being the pastor's legitimate substitutes. In 
 the early records of Reformed churches here the names 
 of many such are met with. There was Conrad Tem- 
 pelmanUj who began to preach in 1725, in his own 
 house at Lebanon, and served as many as six congrega- 
 tions at a time, greatly beloved. Geo. Suther served the 
 first congregations in North Carolina and deserves to 
 be called the father of the Reformed church in that 
 state. Friedr. Casp. Mueller, from 1774 to 1763 , served 
 a number of congregations in Eastern Pennsylvania. 
 John Weymer, Otterbein's co-worker, was a school- 
 master, and so was Peter Miller — not identical with 
 John Peter Mueller — who officiated in several East 
 Pennsylvania congregations. 
 
 Boehm came to America in 1720, not from choice 
 nor from temporal motives, but because his position 
 had been made untenable by the intrigues and petty' 
 persecutions of Jesuits, to which the Reformed were ex- 
 posed, since, in 1685, a Catholic side-line had inherited 
 
Hochstadt near Hanau. The church in which Boehm was baptized 
 is in the center of the picture. 
 
 The Reformed Church at Worms, where Boehm was schoolmaster. 
 
 45 
 
The Moravians. 45 
 
 the Palatinate, the direct Hne of Frederic III. of the 
 Heidelberg catechism, having become extinct. The 
 Catholics took from the Reformed in Heidelberg the 
 cathedral church of the Holy Ghost, and all over the 
 country the use of the Heidelberg catechism was for- 
 bidden because in question 8a the mass is denounced 
 as a damnable idolatry. To every town and village 
 Jesuits were sent to find pretexts for legal persecution 
 and to pick quarrels with the pastors, sure in every 
 case to end in dispossessing the Reformed of their 
 churches and guaranteed rights. 
 
 In those times of religious oppression, from which 
 the Lutherans and the Mennonites had to suffer no 
 less than the Reformed, highly colored descriptions of 
 'the fertile lands in Pennsylvania were circulated in the 
 Rhine regions by the agents of Wm. Penn, in a small 
 teok called The Golden Book, Fine farms were to be 
 had for the asking, with full freedom of worship, and 
 civil liberty and equality. A great exodus of emigra- 
 tion set in, and Boehm joined it. 
 
 He found the country north of Philadelphia, the 
 Schuylkill valley, where he settled, thickly inhabited by 
 his countrymen and coreligionists, but destitute of pas- 
 tors, and when they urged him to care for their relig- 
 ious needs, he readily acceded to their request. 
 
 At first he officiated in the capacity of a lector only, 
 i. e., he read sermons and conducted the service. But 
 there was a large number of unbaptized children, and 
 no communion had been held for many years. In this 
 destitution the people felt that the exigencies of life in 
 
 4 
 
46 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 a new world would warrant a disregard of forms and 
 restrictions meant for their old and well established 
 home church, the more so since this was a free coun- 
 try. The Falkner's Swamp congregation was the first 
 to call upon Boehm to become their pastor, and Henry 
 Antes, the elder, the same who afterward joined Zin- 
 zendorf, with many tears entreated Boehm to accept a 
 call so evidently providential. He yielded, and on 
 Oct. 25, 1725, administered the communion to forty 
 members. In the next month he served it to thirty- 
 seven at Schippach, and in the succeeding month to 
 twenty-four at White Marsh. 
 
 Although by these acts Boehm clearly violated the 
 laws of his church, it was not his mind to let license 
 run wild. He wanted law and order, and submitted to ' 
 these three congregations a complete constitution writ- 
 ten out by himself, but based on the rules of the home- 
 church. It was Presbyterian in government, with a 
 consistory, and ruling elders of equal executive au- 
 thority with the pastor. It was Reformed in dis- 
 cipline after the old type, imposing penalties on 
 those that led a life unbecoming a Christian. It was 
 Calvinistic in doctrine, accepting the creeds of the Re- 
 formed church in Holland at that time the leading 
 power. Special mention was made of the canons of 
 Dort, still less was the Heidelberg catechism over- 
 looked. 
 
 Nor was Boehm satisfied with introducing this con- 
 stitution in his own immediate vicinity. Two years 
 later he introduced it in Conestoga and Tulpehocken 
 
The Moravians. 47 
 
 when ihe (held communion service there. Seven years 
 later he had it adopted by the Philadelphia congrega- 
 tion, and two years later in Oley. In some places, 
 however, he met with stubborn opposition. German- 
 town and Goshenhoppen rejected it. 
 
 In Lebanon, Tempelman, a tailor by trade, had be- 
 gun preaching at the same time that Boehm began in 
 Falkner^'s Swamp. Boehm went to him, administered 
 communion, introduced his constitution, and appointed 
 Tempelmann his schoolmaster and reader, — rather a 
 strange assumption of authority for one who had him- 
 self not been ordained to the ministry ! 'But he seems 
 to have been a man of more than average ability, who, 
 having his own strong convictions on the necessity of a 
 written constitution, was able to impress others with 
 the same. After a while, however, Tempelmann was 
 urged by his own people, who esteemed him highly for 
 his earnest preaching, to act as their pastor and to ad- 
 minister the sacraments. If the Falkner-Swamp peo- 
 ple could raise their schoolmaster to clerical dignity, 
 why should the Lebanon church be forbidden to do 
 the same ? Moreover, the distance from Boehm's place 
 of residence to Lebanon was embarrassingly great. 
 Tempelmann consented, and, like Boehm, added a 
 number of other congregations to his charge. Tempel- 
 mann died in 1761, the highly beloved pastor of an 
 extensive field. 
 
 But the lack of a valid ordination came to be felt 
 very painfully when, in 1727, a regular minister from 
 the Palatinate made his appearance in Philadelphia, 
 
48 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 S. M. Weiss by name, who had enjoyed school advan- 
 tages far superior to those of Boehm. He had com- 
 pleted his theological studies in Heidelberg, had made 
 the examinations prescribed by law, and had been or- 
 dained by proper authority to accompany a society of 
 400 emigrants from the Palatinate, that left in 1727. 
 Upon his arrival in Philadelphia he was at once called 
 by the Reformed congregation there to become their 
 pastor. 
 
 When he found the congregations in and around 
 Philadelphia served by unordained men, he felt greatly 
 shocked, and that feeling was intensified by persons 
 inimical to their pastors, such as will be found wher- 
 ever faithful servants of Christ are preaching the 
 whole truth, not forgetting to reprove iniquity. 
 
 In Schippach he fell in with an elder, George Reiff 
 by name, who had been disciplined by Boehm and who, 
 in retaliation, had formed a counter-congregation. He 
 easily succeeded in enlisting in his enterprise young 
 Weiss, unsuspicious, inexperienced, impulsive, and ag- 
 gressive as he was. Besides, he had quite insinuating 
 ways about him, as was shown later on when he acted 
 as a church collector in Holland. Unscrupulous 
 enough to retain for his private use the money col- 
 lected, he had a ready flow of tears and an imposing 
 show of outraged innocency at his command, when 
 called to account and confronted with documentary 
 proof of his dishonesty. He even could forge official 
 letters when that would serve his purposes. In conse- 
 quence, Boehm found himself severely denounced 
 
The Moravians. 49 
 
 by Weiss here and in his other congregations, as one 
 that had no right to perform clerical acts. So far was 
 Weiss carried away by his zeal that with assumed 
 authority he issued a formal summons to Boehm, to 
 be tried by himself, Weiss, for officiating "without 
 permission of the clergy, taking for a pretext that this 
 is a free country." The summons ended with these 
 words : 
 
 "Now, therefore, by the authority of the Most Rev- 
 erend Ministry, and according to the power accorded 
 to a regular minister of Christ, the gentleman is hereby 
 summoned and requested to appear in Philadelphia be- 
 fore the Presbyterium* of the church at the house of 
 the minister in order to be examined by one or another 
 of those present." 
 
 All this may sound somewhat pompous and hollow 
 to our ears, for the Philadelphia congregation, just re- 
 organized by Wei'S'S, had no jurisdiction whatever over 
 Boehm. But Weiss was puffed up by a strong sense 
 of his superior learnedness. In the "Philadelphia 
 Mercury" he offered his services as a teacher in logic, 
 natural philosophy, metaphysics, et a., and knowledge 
 puffeth up, but love edifieth, L Cor iii: i. 
 
 That the church was not edified by his course was 
 demonstrated when a tumultuous crowd in February 
 1728, met before Reiff's house in Schippach, w^here the 
 Sunday services had been conducted so far by Boehm, 
 but where he now was forbidden entrance. Anid when, 
 
 *In Germany the consistory of a congregation is called Pres- 
 byterium. 
 
50 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 in the following year, the new church-building was 
 dedicated, and Reiff claimed it as his own property be- 
 cause built on his own land, Boehm and his adherents 
 were ousted for good. 
 
 In Whitemarsh similar tumults were raised, though 
 here Boehm's friends prevailed. 
 
 But God is good and wise, and sincere followers of 
 Christ receive grace enough to see their errors and to 
 make due amends. On November 23, of the next year, 
 1729, an impressive and solemn event occurred in New 
 York. In the Reformed (Dutch) churdh there, 
 Boehm, with three of his elders, before a large congre- 
 gation, and Weiss and two worthy dominies. Revs. Boel 
 and Dubois, after appropriate addresses, ordained and 
 set apart for the holy ministry with laying on of their 
 hands, by order and authority of the classis of Am- 
 sterdam, John Philipp Boehm, of Pennsylvania. Then 
 Weiss stood up and publicly expressed his regrets for 
 what he had done, and his willingness to make full sat- 
 isfaction, and to abstain from all further interference 
 in Boehm's pastoral work at Schippach, Falkner's 
 Swamp, and Whitemarsh. Boehm then agreed to leave 
 Weiss in charge of Philadelpbia and Germantown. 
 
 This happy result had been brought about by 
 Boehms request for ordination sent to the church in 
 Holland, which, after considerable correspondence and 
 tedious waiting, had been granted, to be carried out by 
 the New York pastors who then were members of the 
 Amsterdam classis. 
 
 Thus Boehm came to be a member of the classis of 
 
The Moravians. 51 
 
 Amsterdam, which now had to exercise supervision 
 over his pastoral work and to protect him in times of 
 need and danger. True to his duty, as soon as the 
 classis learned of Zinzendorf's proposed trip to Amer- 
 ica, they put him on his guard and sent him a book pub- 
 lished by one of their pastors against the Moravians. 
 It bore quite a formidable title : 
 
 "The naked exposed Enthusiasm, Fanaticism and 
 corrupt Mysticism of the socalled Moravians, exhibited 
 most clearly from their German hymnbooks and other 
 writings and their agreement with the corrupt Mystics 
 and Fanatics in Germany, and the Tremblers (Quak- 
 ers) in England, most plainly indicated, tending to 
 repeated faithful warning against those people, and to 
 the complete defense of the Pastoral and Paternal Let- 
 ter of the Reverend Amsterdam Consistory against the 
 false accusations of a certain anonymous writing added 
 back of this. Published at the earnest request and by 
 the order of the Reverend Consistory and from the love 
 of truth which is unto salvation, by Gerardus Kulen- 
 kamp, preacher at Amsterdam. At Amsterdam, 1739." 
 
 A warning coming by authority of his classis could 
 not fail to impress Boehm strongly. When Zinzendorf 
 arrived in Philadelphia it was Boehm's Sunday to 
 preadh in the joint Lutheran and Reformed church 
 there,* on Christmas Sunday, and he took occasion 
 earnestly to warn his people against him. On the next 
 
 *Weiss had left years ago. 
 
52 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 Sunday Zinzendorf was to preach for the Lutherans, 
 and Boehm, instead of going home to his country place, 
 made it his business to stay in Philadelphia, the rather 
 since some of the Lutherans requested him to help them 
 keep out Zinzendorf. 
 
 On the Sunday appointed, when he approached the 
 church, he found a large cioncourse before the door, 
 earnestly discussing the expected visit, some being for, 
 and some against Zinzendorf's preaching there. 
 Boehm kept his peace until some of the Lutherans 
 asked for his opinion. 
 
 He answered, I think I have more information 
 about these things than many of you, and therefore I 
 must protest against any one asserting that either the 
 Reformed or I consent to Count Zinzendorf's preach- 
 ing in this church. Of course, we Reformed have no 
 right to interfere with your disposal of your Sunday. 
 If you do anything to your own injury, we wash our 
 hands of the consequences. 
 
 Zinzendorf did not put in his appearance at that time, 
 but a few days later sent a letter to Bodhm's house at 
 Witpen, by special messenger, in which he informed 
 Boehm that the Lutherans had asked him, Zinzendorf, 
 to preach. Being a Lutheran myself, he wrote, and 
 havir^ preached in many a Lutheran church before 
 this,* in Germany, I feel like acceding to the request. 
 But I do not believe in the doctrine of reprob nation** 
 
 ♦Zinzendorf had in Germany taken regular orders as a Luth- 
 eran minister with that very object in view. 
 
 **Teaching that God elected some persons to be lost forever, 
 a doctrine falsely ascribed to the Reformed. 
 
The Moravians. 53 
 
 like you. On this account I would ask you if you have 
 any authority to forbid me. In that case I should pre- 
 fer not to preach in the church. 
 
 Boehm wrote back on the same day, that as to his 
 right to interfere, he could not answer so quickly, but 
 he would stand by what he had said on the previous 
 Sunday to the Lutherans in Phikdelphia. 
 
 Zinzendorf did, on the following Sunday, preach for 
 the Lutherans, and he even succeeded in having himself 
 elected their regular pastor. Boehm, however, gave 
 him the cold shoulder. Subsequently, when Zinzendorf 
 asked him to yield him his Sunday for communion-ser- 
 vice, he curtly refused. And the Lutherans continued 
 their arrangement a few months only. In June they 
 forcibly ejected Zinzendorf. 
 
 In August, Boehm took a step still more decisive. He 
 published his "True Letter of Warning addressed to 
 the Reformed in Pennsylvania" containing extensive 
 quotations from Kulenkamp's book, together with 
 severe criticisms of Bechtel's catechism. He also takes 
 exception to the irregular proceedings of the cfonfer- 
 ences. 
 
 The Moravians, in answer, published a defense. 
 Then Boehm issued a second warning. Guldin, as 
 stated previously, also gave into print his warnings on 
 The True and the False Union. 
 
 These earnest efforts had their effect on the ranks 
 of those who had entered into the union movement, wa- 
 vering already from other causes. One congregation 
 after the other dismissed their Pro-Moravian pastors. 
 
54 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 Even Bechtel's church in Germantown, in 1744, took 
 that step and then called Boehm as their pastor. Revs. 
 Rieger and Lischy returned to the Reformed fold. 
 "The Congregation of God in the Spirit" ceased to 
 exist. 
 
 Thus the story of the Galatians of old was repeated, 
 who "began in the spirit and expected to be perfected 
 in the flesh," Gal. iii : 3, who would by human agencies 
 do the Spirit* s work. Evidently these men were gen- 
 uine Christians and worked for a highly commendable 
 end, viz. : a union of denominations. To this day their 
 multiplicity is loudly calling for a remedy, and all earn- 
 est Christians are longing for the time when there will 
 be but one Shepherd and but one visible fold. But the 
 time has not come yet. Still less had it come then. The 
 one wing of that movement, over-spiritual, so to speak, 
 relying exclusively on direct revelations of the Holy 
 Ghost, without taking the trouble involved in careful 
 study of Scripture and patient performance of duty, 
 could not blend with the other wing, overformal, timid- 
 ly clinging to forms and traditions of human origin 
 never meant for permanency nor for eternity. The free 
 Jerusalem which is above, Gal. iv : 26, was not to be un- 
 veiled then, nor has she been unveiled to this day. The 
 Spirit and the bride still cry. Come I 
 
III. THE DEPUTIES AND SCHLATTER. 
 
 Whilst Boehm was struggling manfully to preserve 
 the Reformed church in Pennsylvania, the mother 
 church in the Netherlands was preparing to help in 
 other ways. Her sympathy had frequently been 
 aroused by the sufferings of German Reformed people 
 on their way to America, as well as by the religious 
 destitution of those already in America. 
 
 The first impetus in this direction was given when in 
 1709 the Rhine was white with vessels bearing Palati- 
 nate refugees fleeing from Louis XIV. 's cruel generals. 
 Of those fifteen thousand, one-half were Reformed, not 
 destitute, it is true, of religious supplies, for they had 
 been very careful to bring along their Bibles, their 
 prayerbooks, and their catechisms, but they were so 
 destitute of bodily food that during their stay in the 
 seaports of Holland strenuous efforts on a very large 
 scale had to be made for their relief. 
 
 Soon after this, from the Reformed authorities in the 
 Palatinate, letters and appeals for assistance in provid- 
 ing pastors for the settlements in Pennsylvania began 
 to reach Holland. 
 
 Then came Boehm's request for ordination, which 
 led to his and Weiss' becoming regular members of the 
 classis of Amsterdam in 1729. 
 
 In the next year the Reformed congregation of Phil- 
 
 55 
 
66 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 adelphia, then engaged in the erection of a church 
 building, resolved to send their pastor, Weiss, together 
 with Elder ReifiF, of Schippach, on a collecting tour to 
 the Dutch 'brethren. In those times Holland was well 
 known everywhere as the richest country of all the 
 world. The two collectors arrived in due time, and 
 were well received, for the Reformed churCh of Hol- 
 land had a warm heart for suffering saints, in spite of 
 their much abhorred Calvinism and their canons of 
 Dort. Intelligent and pious Zinzendorf accused them 
 of believing in reprobation, and to our times they are by 
 many pious souls looked upon as sold to the idols of 
 stern and cruel dogmatism. But often men are without 
 cause afraid of things without reality. 
 
 The Hollanders were Calvinists, but that doctrine 
 bad by no means stood in the way of God's Spirit mak- 
 ing His abode with them. Great revivals under Un- 
 tereyk, Lodenstein, Labadie, e. a., had swept over the 
 w'hole land. Then Coccejus had crystaHzed the new 
 life, and taught his system of covenant-theology mak- 
 ing God's covenant with His people the fundamen- 
 tal truth of Christian religion. According to this con- 
 ception of theology, man is by no means consigned to 
 passive inactivity toward God, but is put in his proper 
 attitude of assuming duties and making pledges and 
 promises to God, even as God pledges himself to man. 
 
 Finally Lampe had clinched the nail with his Practi- 
 cal System of Theology, which makes the salvation of 
 souls the main and never-to-be-lost-sight-of object of 
 all Scripture study. 
 
The Deputies and Schlatter. 67 
 
 By professors of these theological schools the pas- 
 tors then in office had received their training, and by 
 them many hearts had been awakened to the new life, 
 the life of love. In consequence, the collectors from 
 Pennsylvania found so many open hands that over 
 2,000 florins were contributed. 
 
 But this was not all. It was felt that the time had 
 come to provide for permanent relief. Arrangements 
 must be made to send pastors to Pennsylvania and an- 
 nual remittances of money, to aid the congregations 
 there. The matter was laid before the regular judica- 
 tories of the church, the synods and the classes, and 
 after due consideration a standing committee was ap- 
 pointed of commissioners, or deputies, as they called 
 them, — a board of missions we should call it now, — who 
 should obtain and collect information, should examine 
 into the merits of all appeals, and should plan collec- 
 tions. All letters and all moneys were to pass through 
 their hands. 
 
 The deputies found their task not easy to accomplish. 
 As honey attracts flies so money attracts men like Judas 
 or serves to develop the Judas-nature of which no man 
 is absolutely free. Weiss and Reiff were no angels. 
 Weiss, it is true, passed through the ordeal of a collect- 
 ing tour without reproach. But he was the one of the 
 two least exposed to temptation, since Reiff had been 
 appointed to receive all the money collected and to keep 
 the accounts, probably on the ground that elders are 
 better treasurers than pastors, and that pastors should 
 not be burdened with the management of finances. 
 
68 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 Scripture, {however, does not seem to support that opin- 
 ion, for St. Paul proved an untiring arid successful col- 
 lector for the saints in Jerusalem, disinterested to a 
 fault, without having his spiritual activity impaired by 
 the temporal. 
 
 However that may be, in the case of Weiss and Reiff 
 the elder proved the weaker man, for on their return 
 home he kept the money and resisted all attempts made 
 by his constituents in Philadelphia to obtain a settle- 
 ment. 
 
 Now Satan had good reason to rejoice. He might 
 hope to have put an end to the pious work of the depu- 
 ties. Of course, they would now in disgust abandon 
 their work of love, and in consequence, thousands of 
 shepherdless sheep in Pennsylvania would fall his 
 prey. But if such was his calculation, he had not taken 
 into account some essential factors in the Lord's affairs. 
 Christ does not rely on the strength of man, but on the 
 power of His own redeeming Love, and the deputies, 
 strict Calvinists that they were, had a clear conception 
 of sovereign grace able to save man though totally de- 
 praved. Their faith was not of the emotional cast, eas- 
 ily swayed by feelings of disgust and disappointment. 
 They believed and practiced the perseverance of saints. 
 Besides, if the Germans afe said to be slow but sure, the 
 Dutch are slower still and surer still. They did not 
 grow weary in well doing, but they, very wisely, con- 
 cluded to act with more caution and now began to cast 
 about for more information concerning things in Penn- 
 
The Deputies and Schlatter. 59 
 
 sylvania, information' that would enable them to carry 
 on with better success the work assigned to" them. 
 
 Nor was their firm determination shaken when new 
 discouragements came, and when a number of ministers 
 well recommended to them by high church officials in 
 Germany for missionary work in Pennsylvania proved 
 entirely unworthy of their confidence. 
 
 Their search for more information for some time 
 'seemed almost hopeless. They wrote to Weiss and 
 Reiff, but could elicit no answer from either. Then 
 they addressed their letters to Boehm, but years passed 
 by and no answer came. In those times the mail ser- 
 vice was in its infancy; the ocean was crossed in sail- 
 ing vessels consuming months for one trip, and even if 
 Boehm and Weiss wished to send information, not to 
 speak of Reiff, reliable information was not easily ob- 
 tained. When these men failed them, they wrote to 
 whomsoever they could think of, but year after year 
 elapsed without a single response. 
 
 And still they persevered, these noble men, noble not 
 by virtue of birth or brilliant deed, but ennobled by un- 
 wavering faith in Christ, their Master, by whom they 
 stood commissioned. Full fifteen years they persevered, 
 hoping against hope, and at last their faith received its 
 reward. All things come to him who can wait, if he 
 waits upon the Lord. And this is one of the best tests 
 of genuine faith, that it waits, not inactive, refraining 
 only from activity not indicated by God himself opening 
 the door and the way for it. 
 
 In 1745 full reports came carefully collected by 
 
60 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 Boehm, and no sooner had they been received and read 
 and been found reliable, than the deputies set to work. 
 They had the reports put into print together with their 
 own appeals for men and means, which in the name and 
 by authority of their church were distributed all along 
 the Rhine. One copy of _them fell into the hands of a 
 young minister of Switzerland, who took it to heart, 
 
 MICHAEL SCHLATTER. 
 
 Michael Schlatter was born July 14, 1716. His par- 
 ents were able to give him a college education and a 
 university training for the ministry, but he was not the 
 best of students. By his lively disposition he was fre- 
 quently carried away into indiscreet and even immoral 
 acts. Caring more for adventure and excitement than 
 for tame life at home, he several times changed his 
 place of study and some times would abandon his stud- 
 ies altogether, to take up other pursuits. He spent some 
 time at Helmstadt, in Northern Germany, and quite a 
 number of years in Holland, at that time the golden 
 goal of all fortune-seekers. But better councils again 
 prevailed and he was enabled to complete his studies. 
 Finally, when thirty years old, he was put in charge of 
 a small suburban church in his native city, with a salary 
 of no more than twenty dollars a year in our money. 
 But his troubles were not over. Again he was betrayed 
 by his passionate temper into serious indiscretions and 
 had to leave his home abruptly, in disgrace.* 
 
 *The details are recorded in a manuscript chronicle of the 
 
The Deputies and Schlatter. 61 
 
 Going to Heidelberg, where he had on former jour- 
 neys become acquainted with men high in position, who 
 received him kindly, he there saw the appeal sent out 
 by the deputies, and perceiving his opportunity he at 
 once went to Holland. By his connections in Heidel- 
 berg he had been given the best of credentials and rec- 
 ommendations. In those times things of this sort were 
 not done with the scrupulous care made possible in our 
 times of railroad, telegraph, and telephone, and be- 
 sides, America was looked upon as the country where 
 persons of a good education, who had lost standing at 
 
 St. Gall clergy, preserved in the archives of that city. He was 
 seduced by an abandoned woman living separated from her 
 husband. The same archives contain three letters by the 
 woman's father, Dean Bleyl. 
 
 The story of Schlatter's fall might have been passed over 
 in silence here, as it has been suppressed in all books so far 
 published on Schlatter and his times. Love is to cover the 
 multitude of sins. But that course would have left unex- 
 plained so many occurrences in the subsequent history of the 
 church and would so have misled the reader into misconcep- 
 tions of important events and persons, that this narrative would 
 have become fiction rather than history. 
 
 The Bible does not hide nor ignore the sins of saints. Da- 
 vid's fall and Peter's denial and many discreditable acts of 
 the Patriarchs are recorded without a word in extenuation, 
 so that the readers may learn the lesson of sinners saved by 
 grace, from deep degradation to glorious exaltation. But 
 the Bible does not stop with the account of the saints* fall 
 By faith the fallen souls rise to a full and complete abandon- 
 ment of that special sin. Peter never again denied Christ 
 after he had been pardoned. And as for Schlatter, he never 
 afterward fell into the same sin, but lived chaste to the end 
 of his life. Had it been otherwise, his enemies would have 
 made it known. And he had many of them, bitter and re- 
 lentless. 
 5 
 
62 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 home, might rehabilitate themselves, and such were, 
 to this end, readily given clean papers. 
 
 The deputies read Schlatter's papers, conversed 
 freely with him, submitted him to a rigorous examina- 
 tion, and came to the conclusion that he was the very 
 man they needed to organize the Pennsylvania church. 
 Five months after leaving St. Gall, cm May 29, he set 
 sail for America. 
 
 By his commission he was invested with the authority 
 
 of a Visitor Extraordinary, an office not new in the 
 
 Netherland church. It does not mean inspector. An 
 
 inspector may act, may punish, may order work on his 
 
 own judgment, but the power conferred by the deputies 
 
 is the one defined in Sec. 44 of the church constitution 
 
 of Dort, the fundamental law of the land : 
 
 *'Zal 00k de classis eenige von haaren Dienaaren, ter 
 minaten twe, vac de oudste, ervarenste en geschickteste 
 authoriseereDj om in alle Kerken van de Staden so wel as 
 van het platte Land, alle jaar visitatie te doen en toe to 
 sien, of de Leeraars, Kerkenraden en schoolmasters haar 
 ampt getrouwelijk warnemen." 
 
 The classis shall also authorize some of its ministers, 
 two at the least, from the oldest, most experienced, and 
 most suitable, to hold visitation each year in the cities as 
 well as in the open country, and to ascertain whether the 
 ministers, the consistories, and the schoolmasters faithfully 
 perform the duties incumbent upon them. 
 
 These visitors were to report to classis, and classis 
 was to take action if necessary. So Schlatter was to 
 make report, not to act. Schlatter, however, was 
 authorized to do some things which could not be left to 
 a classis so far away; he was to organize the Reformed 
 
The Deputies and Schlatter. 63 
 
 pastors and elders into a coetus, a conference subject to 
 classis, not empowered to ordain or to discipline minis- 
 ters or to pass on church ordinances. The Dutch 
 churches in New York province, about ten or twelve in 
 number, were just then in the same manner constituted 
 a coetus, or "conferentie/' as an integral part of the 
 Amsterdam classis. 
 
 On Sept. 6, 1746, after a two months' sail to Boston, 
 then the larg-est city in North America,- Schlatter ar- 
 rived 'in Philadelphia, at that time a city of about 10,000 
 inhabitants living in 2,300 houses mostly built of stone, 
 with seven churches and two Quaker meeting-houses. 
 
 It would have been right for Schlatter, after so ted- 
 ious a journey, to take a rest here, but such was not his 
 way of doing things. One day only he remained, long 
 enough to arrange for permanent lodgings with one of 
 the Reformed elders there. Perhaps he was burning 
 to make amends for his grievous fall and to show his 
 gratitude for the Lord's merciful dealings with him. 
 The day after his arrival, he went to Boehm in Witpen, 
 who gave him a warm welcome. Imagine how glad 
 this aged servant of the Lord was, who had for many 
 years been defending his church against her adversar- 
 ies, who had found it so hard to preserve and to foster 
 the spirit of brotherly love between the few ministers 
 then laboring in the field, and who knew of the great 
 spiritual destitution of the congregations then about 
 fifty in number. Imagine what must have been his joy 
 when in the solitude of his rural home there appeared 
 before him, altogether unexpectedly, an ambassador of 
 
64 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 the strong and liberal mother church in the Netherlands 
 with a message of love and a promise of assistance. 
 
 The interview of these two men must have brought 
 extraordinary gladness to their hearts, and their united 
 prayers of thanksgiving would certainly prove a sweet 
 savor to God as well as a refreshing dew to their own 
 souls. But Schlatter gave himself no rest. The very 
 next day he set out again and went eight miles further 
 to S'ee Reiff , to prepare the way for a settlement of his 
 now sixteen year old accounts as collector in Holland. 
 Returning next day to Philadelphia he investigated the 
 whereabouts of 130 German bibles sent from Holland 
 four years ago, and found them in good order for distri- 
 bution. Then he turned his attention to the congrega- 
 tion in Philadelphia and prepared its members for a 
 solemn communion-service held in common with 
 Boehm, in which one hundred communicants took part, 
 men and women who never had seen in this new world 
 two ministers together in one church distributing the 
 sacred seals of God's promise in Christ. 
 
 Immediately after this, the two visited the congrega- 
 tion in Germantown, the same that under Bechtel had 
 gone over to the Moravian conference, but had dis- 
 missed Bechtel in 1744, and had elected Boehm their 
 pastor. This congregation was now thoroughly reor- 
 ganized, and was, together with Philadelphia, consti- 
 tuted a charge to be served by Schlatter. 
 
 On next Friday we find him in Bucks county with a 
 Reformed pastor named Dorsius, who in former years 
 had been in correspondence with the deputies, and had 
 
The Reformed Church at Philadelphia 1747-1772. 
 
 The Linsebuel Church a. St. Gall, Schlatter's first charge. 
 64 
 
The Deputies and Schlatter. 65 
 
 even been over to Holland in 1743, but who had acted 
 in a very independent way. Here he was received 
 kindly, but was not permitted to confer with the consis- 
 tory in his official capacity. 
 
 On the same Friday he made the thirty-five miles 
 back to Philadelphia, on horseback of course, and on the 
 ensuing Sunday preached there and obtained a formal 
 call as their pastor, sixty members subscribing about 
 sixty-six dollars toward his support. Boehm, who now 
 was sixty-three years old, acquiesced, for the time be- 
 ing at least. 
 
 On the Monday following he again traveled thirty- 
 five miles to Old Gosherihoppen, where Pastor Weiss 
 preached, who had been to Holland with Elder Reiff, 
 and whom he prevailed upon to accompany him for a 
 second interview with Reiff . They had a difficult task 
 before them. That dishonest man had many profuse 
 tears to shed over his own imaginary grievances, and 
 many extravagant charges to make for his expenses and 
 personal labors. He would in no wise disburse. But 
 Schlatter would not yield. A final settlement was 
 reached subsequently, many months later, and Reiff 
 gave up a little less than one-half of his collections. 
 
 From here Schlatter went to Oley, to where Weiss 
 had preceded him, and together they journeyed to 
 Tulpe'hocken, one of the oldest Reformed congregations 
 in Pennsylvania. Here they met Boehm by previous 
 appointment, who had prepared the congregation for 
 the Lord*s Supper. The celebration of the holy sacra- 
 ment was more impressive yet than that in Philadel- 
 
66 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 phia. Many people were moved to tears by the un- 
 wonted sight of as many as three ministers at a time 
 together serving- at the Lord's table. The bread of life 
 was broken to several hundreds of communicants. 
 Such an abundance seemed almost miraculous in those 
 time's of pioneer life and spiritual famine. 
 
 •Having more fully organized this old congregation, 
 on the next day Schlatter went to Lancaster, then a 
 city of about 500 houses. Here Rieger had not been al- 
 lowed to preach since the days of the Moravians, and 
 Schlatter was in hopes that now a reconciliation be- 
 tween the pastor and the congregation might be ef- 
 fected, for Rieger continued to reside in Lancaster 
 and was serving some small country congregation. 
 Schlatter's hopes, however, were not realized. Still the 
 visit proved by no means barren of results, for Rieger 
 now saw into the desirability of good order in church, 
 and consented to help Schlatter organize a coetus. He 
 accompanied him back to Philadelphia, a distance of 
 sixty miles, where on the 12th of October, 1746, by pre- 
 vious appointment, Boehm and Weiss met with them. 
 
 This was the first time these three pioneer pastors 
 ever met together, although they had been laboring in 
 the same district for nearly twenty years. Boehm had 
 been with Weiss, and Weiss had been with Rieger, and 
 Rieger had been with Boehm, but the three had never 
 been together at once, and frequently they had been 
 separated by jealousy and misunderstanding. Now 
 Schlatter, after five weeks of travel and hardship, saw 
 them reconciled, blessing the ties that bound them to- 
 
The Deputies and Schlatter. 67 
 
 gether, and feeling that their aims and joys and hopes 
 were one and the same. And now they were able to 
 devise the steps necessary for the organization of the 
 intended coetus to be held next year. 
 
 Well might Schlatter now take a little rest and be 
 thankful, and well might he now sit down to write out 
 his first report to the deputies. And still better reason 
 had the deputies to rejoice and to praise God when they 
 received his report. With tears of joy and gratitude 
 they wrote back : 
 
 Blessed are the peacemakers^ for they shall he called 
 the children of God. 
 
 Before winter set in, Schlatter made another journey, 
 revisiting those congregations that needed encourage- 
 ment, and some others not reached previously, that had 
 by letter asked him for ministerial service. The win- 
 ter he spent in pastoral work together with Boebm. 
 
 In the next year, 1747, during the months of April 
 and May, he made what he himself called his grand 
 journey, which extended as far as to what now is called 
 Frederick City in Maryland, a distance of 130 miles. 
 Traveling in those days, on hoTseback, by bridlepath » 
 through primeval forest and rocky mountain, meant a 
 great deal of hardship and privation. One day he rode 
 15 miles without seeing a house or a human being, but 
 the worst part of it was the crossing of rivers, which 
 seldom 'coudd be accomplished without danger of life. 
 Once Schlatter had to cross the Susquehanna then 
 swollen with the spring rains, two miles wide. The 
 
68 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church 
 
 boat was manned by twelve oarsmen, and still they had 
 hard work to stem the powerful current. When they 
 neared the banks they could not land from their boat, 
 but must mount horses. The slippery rocks and the 
 half melted ice greatly troubled the horses, causing 
 them frequently to lose their footing. But he was richly 
 rewarded for his labors. He found an area of 7,000 
 acres exclusively settled by Reformed people, thrifty 
 farmers on the richest land, and at the same time ex- 
 tremely anxious for the bread of life. They were then 
 engaged in the erection of a church. Eighty-six mem- 
 bers came to commune at the Lord's table, and about 
 200 dollars in our present currency were subscribed for 
 a pastor's salary. The sdhoolma'ster of this congrega- 
 tion was Mr. Schley, from whom Admiral Schley, of 
 Santiago renown, descended. Dr. Ph. Schafif's wife 
 also was a Schley. 
 
 His next trip was to New York, where he secured 
 about $250 for the church in Philadelphia. So far the 
 congregation had worshiped in a dilapidated barn- 
 like building, but now they were erecting a better edi- 
 fice, though at present it would hardly be thought suit- 
 able. It was in the form of a hexagon, and the roof 
 had the form of a pyramid with a steeple on the apex. 
 But it was not for this church mainly, that Schlatter 
 went. His main object was to consult with the Dutch 
 brethren there about the organization of coetus. He 
 also by correspondence and circular agitated the mat- 
 ter, and his efforts were crowned with success. On 
 Sept. 29, 1747, four ministers, Schlatter, Boehm, Weiss 
 
The Deputies and Schlatter, 69 
 
 and Rieger, and twenty-eight elders met in Schlatter's 
 house in Philadelphia. They organized by making 
 Schlatter president and Boehm secretary, listened to 
 Schlatter's reports, made reports to the deputies, and 
 acted on requests from congregations, also on Rev. 
 I.ischy's request to be received. He had been in the 
 Moravian movement and 'had come to see his error 
 some time ago. Coetus resolved to recommend him to 
 the deputies for reinstatement. Tempelman also was 
 recommended to them for ordination. 
 
 Shortly after this meeting Schlatter married a 
 daughter of a 'highly connected family in New York, 
 with whom he lived happily for more than forty years. 
 But he did not stay at home very long to enjoy his 
 honeymoon. In October he made a journey to see 
 about Lischy in York; in November to minister to the 
 needs of some congregations in New Jersey. In May, 
 1748, he went on a journey still more extensive than 
 the "grand journey" of 1747 to Maryland. After hav- 
 ing revisited the Frederick people and other settlements 
 in that colony, he crossed over into Virginia to Freder- 
 icktown and to New Germantown, where he met with 
 those pious people from Siegen, who, in 1714, under 
 Pastor Haegener had organized the first German Re- 
 formed congregation of North America, on the Rappa- 
 hannock. 
 
 Before going to Maryland and Virginia, he had in 
 York made an appointment with Lischy, to be back by 
 the 17th, and had also asked Rieger to be there at that 
 time, in order that Lischy's case might be considered 
 
70 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 more fully. It hardly seems credible that he should 
 have been able to keep this appointment, for on the 
 13th he was in the Virginia settlements and on the 15th 
 in Frederick, Md., laboriously wending his way through 
 almost trackless forests, crossing large rivers and 
 rough mountains. But when the appointed day came, 
 Schlatter was found in York, and so was Rieger. Their 
 object was to reconcile the large congregation there 
 with Lischy. In order to convince them of Lischy's 
 having fully abandoned his Moravian errors, -they 
 asked him' to preach a sermon on Matth. xxii : 14, 
 "Many are called, but few chosen." Since the Morav- 
 ians objected strongly to the Reformed views on pre- 
 destination, by preaching on this text Lischy was to 
 show on which side he stood. The sermon proved 
 highly satisfactory to all, and henceforth Lischy was 
 permitted again to preach. But he was not to admin- 
 ister the sacraments until the deputies would be heard 
 from. The Lord's Supper was administered afterward 
 to 265 persons. Indeed, there was a large field white 
 for the harvest. 
 
 Schlatter's great joy over the rich blessings be- 
 stowed by God on his labors so far was increased by 
 another success. On Aug, 13. two new ministers ar- 
 rived, sent over by the deputies, and on Sept. 15. a third 
 one arrived. Their names were Bartholomaeus, Hoch- 
 reutiner, and Leidich. All three had received a univers- 
 ity education, and came well recommended for their 
 piety and their character. 
 
 With them the second coetus, opened Sept. 28, al- 
 
The Deputies and Schlatter. 71 
 
 though Weiss was absent, counted six ministers pres- 
 ent. There were also present seven elders. The open- 
 ing sermon was preached by Rieger on Psalm 133, "Be- 
 hold how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in 
 unity/' a favorite Scripture of the Reformed people. 
 To this day, whenever pastors would report what is 
 best in their work, they report that peace and harmony 
 are prevailing, and whenever meetings of classis or 
 synod are to be praised, this is their story, and this is 
 their song. The Reformed church is emphatically 
 peaceful. Some may wish the church were made of 
 sterner stuflF. They may desire more courageous fight- 
 ing and standing up for fundamental truths. We are 
 the church militant they say, and glorious in"their eyes 
 is the time when the trumpet sounds and the war steed 
 rears. But our making is of God, and He taught us to 
 love peace above all things. Ps. 100: 3, "The Lord is 
 God. It is He that has made us, and not we ourselves; 
 we are His people and the sheep of His pasture." 
 
 The proceedings consisted mainly in adopting a 
 creed and a church constitution. The creed, as pro- 
 jx>sed t)y the deputies, was the Heidelberg catechism, 
 and the canons of Dort. Rieger, however, was excused 
 from subscribing, on account of his scruples on predes- 
 tination. Boehm's constitution of 1725 was adopted 
 with some additions. Coetus was careful to preserve 
 the equality of ministers by giving the presidency in ro- 
 tation to one after the other. The first coetus had been 
 presided over by Schlatter, Boehm was president of 
 the second, and Rieger was elected for the third. By a 
 
Y2 The Pioneers of the RefoTmed Church. 
 
 curious arrangement, a relic perhaps of the old-coun- 
 try-ideas on promotion, the secretary elected for one 
 year was 'by that act made president for the next. An- 
 other such relic was the establishment of a tariff for 
 clerical service, 90 cents for marriages and 60 cents for 
 funerals. But the Reformed character of the c:hurch 
 was preserved by having no fees for baptisms. 
 
 Of the new ministers, Leidich was assigned to the 
 Faulkner Swamp charge, Bartholomaeus to Tulpehock- 
 en and Hochreutiner to Lancaster. But though man 
 proposes, it is God who disposes. The new American 
 church was early made to learn this lesson. When 
 Hochreutiner had his horse standing ready for his 
 journey to Lancaster, he tried to extract a bullet from 
 his gun; it went off, and he was killed instantly. His 
 opening sermon, carefully written out, was found in 
 his pocket. It was very appropriately based on I. Sam. 
 iii: i-ii, "And the word of the Lord was precious 
 (scarce) in those days, and there was no oi>en vision 
 (SBenig SCBei^yagung)/' etc. His theme and disposition 
 was. The Call of Samuel; w'hy Samuel was called; 
 when he was called; what he was called to do. 
 
 Why did the Lord do this? His dealings with the 
 church are mysterious and past finding out, nor may 
 shortsighted man presume to pry into the secrets of 
 His plans. But the great poet of England truly says 
 that coming events cast their shadows before them, and 
 Scripture admonishes us to watch and pray, for we 
 know not what hour the thief may come. And so, if God 
 sends afflictions extraordinary, the wise will take the 
 
Th^ Deputies and Schlatter. 73 
 
 warninig, and remember how frail a creature is sinful 
 man, and how foolish it would be in this world to look 
 for uninterrupted 'success. If man were free from 
 pride and presumption God would indeed always con- 
 tinue to '*build the house of His people, to fill their 
 quivers with children, and to give His beloved sleep." 
 Ps. 127. But no man is free from pride and presump- 
 tion, and so God gives His beloved trouble. 
 
 In consequence, this is what happened. 
 
 Schlatter had acted somewhat inconsiderately and 
 highhandedly in his dealings with Boehm. One of his 
 first steps taken in Philadelphia had been to have him- 
 self elected pastor there and in Germantown, with 
 Boehm's acquiescence to be sure, and yet it could not 
 have been done without somewhat grieving him. No 
 pastor likes to have his most important fields pass into 
 other hands. Then, in Boehm's congregation of Falk- 
 ner's Swamp, Schlatter baptized Elder Dr. Miller's wife 
 and her eight children, without consulting Boehm. 
 Then he had changed the consistory of the Philadel- 
 phia congregation by a new election, without Boehm, 
 had doubled the number of elders and deacons, and 
 making all of them stand up in line, had ordained all, 
 the old on'es as well as the newly elected. Finally he 
 had for Boehm's liturgy of the Palatinate substituted 
 his own liturgy of St. Gall. 
 
 For a time Boehm had submitted without protest, lest 
 the establishment of the new church-organization 
 should be imperiled. But after the second coetus, 
 when the formation of a permanent authority seemed 
 
74 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 well secured, he felt free to address a long letter to tftie 
 deputies, in which he suggested the propriety of in- 
 vesting coetus with greater authority, and limiting that 
 of Schlatter. Among other points he made was, that 
 the deputies' official correspondence might now be di- 
 rected to coetus, also the missionary moneys to be dis- 
 tributed among the ministers. 
 
 Soon after, Boehm died, April 29, 1749, and was 
 gathered to his fathers. But that event did not put an 
 end to these complications, for now Schlatter proposed 
 to the church in Philadelphia to give him a formal call 
 as sole pastor, and accompanied the proposition with 
 some demands rather distasteful to the people. Had he 
 known their sentiments toward him, he would probably 
 have made no such demands, for they were by no means 
 well pleased with his services. He was not a very im- 
 pressive speaker nor did he possess the gift of win- 
 ning ways. Even where he meant to confer favors, he 
 often gave offense by the manner in which he con- 
 ferred them. 
 
 Schlatter wanted a call for life, "as long as he 
 preached the pure Gospel and led a correct life." But 
 the consistory rejected that form and proposed another, 
 which gave the consistory power to dismiss him in case 
 he did not teach and walk correctly. Schlatter ap- 
 pealed to the congregation, and himself took the vote in 
 a rather singular form. "All that are on my side," he 
 said, "put on their hats." But the number of hats put 
 on was by no means overwhelmingly large, and the re- 
 sult remained doubtful. 
 
The Deputies and Schlatter. 76 
 
 At this juncture new complications arose from a 
 well meant act of the deputies, who sent a new minister, 
 a Swiss, Steiner by name, that happened to be 
 acquainted with Schlatter's antecedents. When he ar- 
 rived during Schlatter's absence from Philadelphia, 
 Schlatter's opponents at once laid hold of him, took him 
 into their houses, and were by him informed of Schlat- 
 ter's shame. An election for pastor was held, and 
 Steiner obtained 140 votes, whilst no voted for Schlat- 
 ter. Of course, very many of the votes cast were il- 
 legal, for the number of members entitled to a vote was 
 by no means that large. Moreover, Schlatter contended 
 that the congregation had no right to dismiss him; he 
 appealed to the coetus, and that body decided in his 
 favor, because Steiner had no documentary evidence to 
 prove his a&sertions, whilst Schlatter could produce the 
 best of testimonials and recommendations from the 
 proper authorities. 
 
 But Steiner's party would not acknowledge the au- 
 thority of coetus, and some very disgraceful proceed- 
 ings ensued. To insure possession, Steiner's friends 
 went into the church on Saturday evening and stayed 
 there all night, with a guard of twenty- four men. When 
 Schlatter came with his friends, at the time of service, 
 they found Steiner in the pulpit. Schlatter called upon 
 him in the name of God to vacate it, but to no effect. 
 Then his friends employed a stratagem not unfre- 
 quently made use of in similar circumstances by Re- 
 formed congregations. In those days the Reformed in 
 church sang the psalms, and when they wanted to tire 
 
76 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 out an obnoxious preacher, they would intone the 1 19th 
 psalm, which has 176 verses. And they chanted very 
 slowly. 'Before the singing was over, officers of the 
 civil magistrate made their appearance, who vacated the 
 building, locked the door, and kept the key. 
 
 Nothing now remained but to institute legal proceed- 
 ings. However, a well meaning attorney suggested a 
 compromise, and finally the whole question was by com- 
 mon consent given into the hands of six ar1:yitrators. 
 All of these were Quakers, except one who was an 
 Episcopalian. Having heard both parties and exam- 
 ined all the evidence, the arbitrators decided in favor 
 of Schlatter. The accusations brought forward by 
 Steiner's adherents against Schlatter's conduct in 
 America could not be sustained, and the reports about 
 his conduct in St. Gall were set aside. 
 
 Schlatter and his friends were now again put in pos- 
 session of the church building; Steiner's friends formed 
 another congregation and built a large new church, but 
 the disorderly character of the ruling men led to dis- 
 sensions among themselves. Two years later Steiner 
 left them, and the whole enterprise eventually failed. 
 
 For Schlatter, however, it was a barren victory ; his 
 influence was permanently impaired, not in his con- 
 gregation only, but among his fellow ministers also. 
 The controversy in Philadelphia had lasted from Octo- 
 ber, 1749, to April, 1750, and during all this time very 
 little could be done to supply the many vacant congre- 
 gations with pastors. Steiner had turned against 
 Schlatter, and no new minister was sent over in 1750. 
 
The Deputies and Schlatter. 11 
 
 Nor did any funds arrive. Boehm had died. To make 
 things more gloomy, Bartholomaeus became insane. 
 So discouraged were the few pastors left, that no rec- 
 ords are extant of the coetus that met in November, 
 1750. At a special coetus held December 13, the con- 
 clusion was reached that Schlatter should make another 
 journey to Europe for ministers and subventions. 
 
 It was winter, and the regular season for navigation 
 in those days of sailing vessels had closed. But the 
 necessities of the case seemed so urgent that as early as 
 February 5, 1751 Schlatter set sail. With his cus- 
 tomary zeal he applied himself most diligently to the 
 new task. 
 
 In April he landed in Holland. The next month was 
 spent in reporting to the deputies and explaining the 
 state of affairs in Pennsylvania. In June he appeared 
 before the classis of Amsterdam and met with a very 
 favorable reception. His request for an official vindi- 
 cation of his course in Philadelphia was granted. His 
 description of the destitution of the Reformed multi- 
 tudes in Pennsylvania and adjacent States did not fail 
 to make the impression desired, and a pious publisher 
 of Amsterdam offered to print at his own expense 
 Schlatter's journal, in which all his observations and 
 experiences made in America during the three years 
 spent there had been recorded with great care. To- 
 gether with Schlatter's journal, an introduction to the 
 same, and an appeal by classis for men and means based 
 upon it was published in Dutch, in German, and ui 
 English, all at the same publisher's expense. 
 
78 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 From classis Schlatter turned to tlie synods, and these 
 responded no less warmly. Upon their representations 
 the civil government of the Netherlands voted a sub- 
 vention of 2,000 guilders, or florins, — about $800 in our 
 money, — to be paid at once, and the same sum yearly 
 for five years. Liberal traveling expenses were also 
 appropriated for Schlatter's journey through Germany 
 and Switzerland. 
 
 The most important and promising objective point of 
 this tour was Herborn, at that time the most flourish- 
 ing Reformed university of Germany. From there 
 Schlatter went further south to Frankfurt A. M., 
 Heidelberg, and St. Gall. In his native city he stayed 
 several weeks and his reception there seems to prove 
 that the circumstances of his sin committed there fivt 
 years previously, admitted of a lenient construction. 
 His old teacher, Waegelin, recommended him and his 
 cause, and a small donation was contributed. In Heid- 
 elberg and in Frankfurt he received several hundred 
 dollars ; in other places smaller gifts. But the best re- 
 sult was obtained in Herborn. Here fivt candidates 
 for the ministry offered their services as missionaries in 
 America, all well recommended by their superiors. In 
 March, 1752, Schlatter presented them to the classis of 
 Amsterdam. They were subjected to a careful and 
 even rigorous examination, were found suitable for the 
 work, and then solemnly ordained. A sixth one was 
 added in the next month. Their names were Ph. Wm. 
 Otterbein, J. J. Wissler, Theo. Frankenfeld, Wm, Stoy, 
 John Waldschmidt, all of Herborn, and John Ruebel, 
 
The Deputies and Schlatter. 79 
 
 of Wald, Rhenish-Prussia, who had absolved his theo- 
 logical course in Marburg, Hessia. 
 
 The classis also gave Schlatter a letter to the Phila ■ 
 delphia congregation, ordering them to retain him as 
 their pastor, and a letter to Steiner ordering him to re- 
 turn eighty dollars given him by the deputies for trav- 
 eling expenses. 
 
 Toward the end of June, 1752, after an absence of 
 eighteen months, Schlatter landed in Philadelphia. He 
 returned apparently successful and victorious, 'having 
 obtained liberal offerings and six co-workers and of- 
 ficial documents in vindication of himiself . But how de- 
 ceptive appearances are sometimes ! Not all is gold 
 that glitters. In many an apple with red cheeks a 
 loathsome worm is gnawing at its heart's core. Would 
 to God that all men would realize that a contrite spirit 
 only and a humbled heart find favor in the sight of men 
 as well as of God. Jesus accepts sinners, it is true, but 
 only the penitent ones. And men do not even accept 
 the penitent sinner. Most men, most Christians not ex- 
 cepted, even if they forg'ive, cannot forget. God alone 
 possesses the power of forgetting what he sees fit to 
 forget. Jer. xxxi : 34, "I will forgive their iniquity, 
 and I will remember their sin no more." 
 
 On the other side, sinners, after they have repented 
 often forget the lesson of humility. It is reported that 
 Schlatter did so. Two of the missionaries brought 
 along by him, Wissler and Ruebel, immediately upon 
 setting foot on American soil, parted company with 
 Schlatter. They complained greatly of his imperious 
 
80 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 manners during the voyage, and Ruebel, who was 
 aware of Schlatter's youthful immorality, at once set 
 to work to ingratiate himself with the Philadelphia 
 congregation and to complete the alienation of their 
 feelings from Schlatter. Just as three years before 
 Steiner had been taken hold of by Schlatter's oppon- 
 ents, they now received Ruebel with open arms, lent 
 their ears to his insinuations, closed their pulpit and 
 church against Schlatter, and without allowing him to 
 present his documents from Holland, elected Ruebel his 
 successor. He never again preached there. 
 
 Two more of his intended co-workers failed him later 
 on. Stoy proved a great stirrer up of strife, and after 
 giving his brethren untold trouble, turned independent. 
 Waldschmidt grew negligent after a short period of 
 usefulness, and ended in indifference. 
 
 During Schlatter's absence the meeting of coetus in 
 175 1 had been attended by three members only, w'ho 
 realizing that something must be done to encourage the 
 others, issued a circular letter telling of the good suc- 
 cess in Europe and holding out bright prospects of help 
 at hand. In consequence, when coetus met again in 
 annual session after Schlatter's return, the attendance 
 was better. Four older members were present at Lan- 
 caster, October 18, 1752, Weiss, Schlatter, Rieger, and 
 Leidich. The five new ones, and three, whose ordina- 
 tion and reinstation had been submitted to the deputies 
 and had been favorably acted upon, Lischy, Dubois, 
 and Tempelmann, swelled the number to twelve. 
 
 But Schlatter at once threw the apple of discord 
 
Weinheim, the birthplace of Tempelmann. 
 
 
 3" I ' 
 
 Eppingen, the birth place of Weiss. 
 80 
 
The Deputies and Schlatter. 81 
 
 among them. He insisted that elders should have no 
 vote, and after he had carried his point, was unani- 
 mously elected president. But Ruehel, who had been 
 delayed on his journey, after the election made his ap- 
 pearance with his two elders and created a great up- 
 roar, loudly protesting against Schlatter's fitness for the 
 presidency. 
 
 His protest was overruled, but he did not stand 
 alone, and so strong was the feeling that besides him 
 three ministers, led by Weiss, with their elders left the 
 meeting. Nor was this all. Worse things were to 
 come. The next year saw two rival coetus in session, 
 of equal numerical strength, both of which appealed to 
 the deputies for recognition. And by this time the dep- 
 uties lost confidence in Schlatter. For some time they 
 had become suspicious of his character, and they had 
 written to St. Gall for full information. In response 
 they had received a letter from Pastor Wirtz, in Zurich, 
 revealing the whole story. In consequence, Schlatter 
 offered his resignation to the deputies, which was ac- 
 cepted. On his next trip to Holland he appeared be- 
 fore them and confessed all. The official minutes of his 
 examination on this occasion as well as Wirz's letter 
 are preserved in the archives of Amsterdam. 
 
 Hereupon the disunited members of coetus reunited; 
 they repealed the act by which elders had been pre- 
 cluded from voting, and held good, harmonious meet- 
 ings in 1754 and 1755. But Schlatter never afterwards 
 attended any of them. 
 
82 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 Before concluding the account of Schlatter's life, it 
 seems proper to finish the account of Weiss' life and 
 labors. Although Ruebel was the instigator of the 
 strife, his character did not command sufficient respect 
 to make him leader of the opposition. If Weiss had 
 not committed himself to such an extent as to head the 
 organization of a coetus free from Schlatter's influence, 
 things might have taken an altogether different turn, 
 for behind Schlatter the deputies stood, and behind the 
 deputies the missionary aid and appropriations, and 
 without these they would have been greatly crippled 
 by poverty. 
 
 Weiss lived nine years longer. He died in 1761 in 
 Goschenhoppen, his last charge, sixty-one years old. 
 His share in the making of the Pennsylvania church 
 was somewhat troublous. First he opposed Boehm on 
 the ground that he was not ordained. After Boehm's 
 ordination he co-operated with him. Then he went to 
 Holland with Reiff, and aroused the sympathies of the 
 church there so intensely that the deputies were elected. 
 When sixteen years later the deputies sent Schlatter, 
 he stood by him at first, but gradually withdrew from 
 him and finally by openly opposing him may be said 
 to liave saved the life of coetus. 
 
 In the unsavory Reiff affair, Weiss' character came 
 out without blemish. His integrity was not called in 
 question by any one. 
 
 As a matter of curiosity, it may be noted here that he 
 published the first book, or rather pamphlet, ever 
 written by a German Reformed minister in America, 
 
The Deputies and Schlatter. 83 
 
 ''A Refutation of the New Born." The New Born are 
 here represented as teaching that they need not pray, 
 'being one with God and illumined by the Holy Spirit. 
 For th'C same reason they need neither ministers, nor 
 public service, nor sacrament. 
 
 A copy of the pamphlet is preserved in the National 
 library at Washington. The comtents are cast in the 
 form of a dialogue. 
 
 Weiss owned a family of slaves. After his death 
 they were given their liberty by his widow, who also 
 made liberal provision for them by legacy. 
 
 Schlatter's career after his resignation has no bear- 
 ing on the church. He entirely ignored the coetus and 
 the coetus entirely ignored him, although he lived 
 nearly forty years longer. 
 
 On his second trip to Holland he became identified 
 with a charitable work of great promise, which, how- 
 ever, ended in total disappointment and caused much 
 ill feeling. The King of England and the heads of 
 the church there had been told that the numerous Ger- 
 man settlers in Pennsylvania constituted a dangerous 
 element. At that time, the French and Indian war, 
 1755-1763, was about to break out, which was to de- 
 cide whether North America was to be all English, or 
 half French. Suspicions were aroused that the Ger- 
 mans in Pennsylvania, through ignorance of the Eng- 
 lish language, might side with the French. There was 
 not the slightest cause for such suspicion, for 
 the Germans and the French are hereditary and in- 
 
84 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 veterate enemies. At that very time the Germans felt 
 more bitterly than ever against the French, because 
 the beautiful regions of Rhineland, where the bulk of 
 the Germans in Pennsylvania had come from, were 
 devastated so cruelly and wantonly. 
 
 Moreover, these Germans were misrepresented as 
 totally destitute of churches and pastors, and fast re- 
 lapsing into savagery. By highly colored appeals along 
 these lines large sums of money, amounting to $20,000 
 in our money, were raised, and just at that juncture 
 Schlatter made his appearance. Since he was so fa- 
 miliar with the state of things in Pennsylvania and 
 had so much experience in traveling there, he seemed 
 to be the right man to act as agent of the new charity, 
 he having well proved his activity and zeal. So it came 
 about, in February 1755, that he was appointed super- 
 visor of charity schools in Pennsylvania to be estab- 
 lished among the Germans to learn English. For a 
 short time the work went on finely ; in one report nine 
 such schools are enumerated, with 600 boys taught. 
 But when the Germans learned how they had been 
 misrepresented, a storm of indignation arose so violent 
 that the whole scheme collapsed. 
 
 At that time the Province of Pennsylvania had what 
 is called a proprietary government, i. e., the governor 
 was appointed by the proprietors, the Penns, and the 
 people had no voice in filling the office. In consequence, 
 the people had but little love for their governors, and 
 since the governors favored the new charity schools, 
 the people felt the more suspicious of them. Schlatter, 
 
The Deputies and Schlatter. 85 
 
 however, stood well with the governor, and when the 
 schools failed, was given another appointment, a chap- 
 laincy in a crack regiment, the Royal regiment levied 
 in Pennsylvania, which formed part of an expedition 
 sent to capture Halifax and Louisburg in French 
 Canada. Schlatter went with the expedition, but re- 
 turned home in 1759, the year after the surrender of 
 Louisburg. 
 
 Ever after, for thirty years, he led a quiet life with 
 his family on a small farm by him named Sweetland, 
 four miles from Germantown on the Reading turnpike. 
 The place at present is called Barren Hill and Chestnut 
 Hill, and is dotted all over with beautiful residences 
 for wealthy Philadelphians. 
 
 The proceeds of the farm worked by his boys, and his 
 salary from an independeni: congregation there helped 
 support his family, but his main income was derived 
 from marriage fees. He still retained and used his title 
 of Chaplain in the Royal Regiment, and continued cul- 
 tivating the society of aristocratic friends that gave him 
 a high social standing. This, together with the locality 
 of his house, well suited for love affairs and marriages, 
 and his social habits, made him the popular dispenser of 
 marriage bliss. From Dec. 23, 1768, to July 9, 1770, he 
 reported 64 marriages and received $185 in fees, and 
 this was by no means an extraordinary season. 
 
 This idyllic life was interrupted but once, in 1777, 
 when after the fall of Philadelphia, British soldiers 
 plundered his house and kept him imprisoned for a 
 short time. 
 
86 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 He died in October, 1790, a^ed 74 years. 
 
 By some authors Schlatter has been represented as a 
 saint and a hero. Men love to worship heroes, and 
 Christians love to worship saints. But history must be 
 true amd impartial. Untrue history is unscriptural, for 
 scripture does not conceal the sins of its holiest men. 
 It is a dangerous error to think that God rules his 
 church by the virtues and the wisdom of sinless or 
 comparatively sinless men. He rather overrules the 
 follies and shortcomings of her leaders. For the Roman 
 Catholic (Church it may be the necessary thing to fill her 
 people with a superstitious awe and reverence for her 
 leaders. She wants a strong government by men of 
 might. But it behooves the Reformed church rather to 
 magnify God and to recognize His consummate wisdom 
 in the mastery with which He accomplishes the great- 
 est things through weak and ignoble instrumentalities, 
 even as human mastery in art is evidenced by wonder- 
 ful workmanship done with tools defective and seem- 
 ingly unserviceable. 
 
 Nor would it seem pleasing in the sight of God to 
 build magnificent tombs for prophets stoned by their 
 cotemporaries. Schlatter's cotemporaries were rather 
 severe on his faults, but his indefatigable zeal, his buoy- 
 ant hopefulness, and his unselfish indifference to the 
 accumulation of wealth might still have served the 
 church to very good purpose, if men could have for- 
 given and — forgotten. As it was, this much is true, 
 that Schlatter worked hard and died poor, and that his 
 work lives on, though he was buried before he died. 
 
Scblatters Home od Chestnut Hill. 
 
 86 
 
IV. THE REVIVALS. 
 
 When Schlatter put forth his last grand effort to re- 
 cover his ground, and succeeded in enlisting six addi- 
 tional ministers for America, he could not divine that 
 one of them, Otterbein, the best of them, would be im- 
 mortalized by a new sect. Nor was he, probably, aware 
 that at that time a new star had appeared in the Church 
 of England, Wesley, who was not only to found a new 
 sect, but to herald a new era in Christendom, the era 
 of an active membership, active in spiritual things. The 
 founder of Methodism differed from the Pietists and 
 the Moravians in that he made the whole world his 
 parish, and the whole parish his clergy. Every one must 
 seek the conversion of every one he comes in contact 
 with. Not that he bad more religion than they, but that 
 his religion was cast more aggressive than theirs. 
 
 Of these things Schlatter knew nothing. But God 
 knew. And God looked down upon the German Re- 
 formed church in Pennsylvania in great mercy, to make 
 her share in the new element of power. In the first 
 quarter of the century some leaven of pietism had been 
 mingled with her meal ; in the second, Zinzendorf , who 
 had been brought up as a pietist, brought some of his 
 peculiar gifts to her work ; in the third the deputies en- 
 riched her life with the tonic of matured calvinistic dis- 
 cipline ; and in the fourth, Wesley, who dated his con- 
 
 87 
 
88 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 version from a Moravian prayer-meeting, contributed 
 to her heavenly treasure gems of new lustre. 
 
 Ph. Wm. Otterhein was born in 1726 in Siegenland, 
 the same that gave birth to Haegener, pastor of the 
 first German Reformed congregation ever formed in 
 the New World. His father, a minister, died early, but 
 his mother was one of those quiet women, who seem so 
 inert and who develop so much reserved power when 
 the times come that try men's souls and test their metal. 
 She was a poor widow, but she moved to Herborn with 
 her six sons, and there gave every one of them a univer- 
 sity education, struggling on and working on with that 
 heroism of self-denial, of persistence, and of incessant 
 prayer, of which so few women and still fewer men 
 seem capable. And she received an earnest of her 
 reward when her motherly eye saw every one of her 
 six sons active in the gospel ministry, and every one of 
 them a blessing to many others. 
 
 In t:hose days the Pietists inaugurated the modern 
 work of foreign missions, which has since grown to 
 such wonderful dimensions that 16,000 missionaries, 
 aided by many more native helpers, are now in the field 
 of glory. It was in 1706 that the Pietist university of 
 Halle recommended one of its students, Ziegenbalg, to 
 the King- of Denmark for missionary work in the Dan- 
 ish colony of Tranquebar, where he gathered the 
 Tamuls into Christian churches, the first foreign mis- 
 sionary of Protestantism. 
 
 Mother Otterbein became greatly interested in this 
 new departure of Christian activity, and frequently she 
 
The Revivals. 89 
 
 was heard to say : "My William will have to be a mis- 
 sionary, he is so frank and so open, so natural and so 
 prophet-like." Her wish was fulfilled, though in an un- 
 expected way, in 1752, when Schlatter came to Herborn 
 with the appeal and the recommendations of the Hol- 
 la nd„deputies. He had not been able to enlist any candi- 
 dates in Switzerland, nor in Heidelberg either. But in 
 Herborn he found ears to hear and eyes to see. The en- 
 tire faculty seconded his efforts, and six young brethren 
 offered their services. 
 
 There is found in the Herborn college-journal a 
 significant entry dated February 25, 1752, written by 
 Henry Schramm, professor of practical theology, as 
 follows : "Rev. Mr. Schlatter handed me a list of the 
 candidates he desires to take along with him to Pennsyl- 
 vania, and prays that we give them a general academic 
 testimonial. Shall they have such?" To which John 
 Eberhard Rau, professor of Oriental languages, makes 
 answer : "Yes ; I hope that there is none who would not 
 be glad to see ministers desire rather to work in for- 
 eign lands than in their own country." Such was the 
 missionary spirit of the professors of Herborn. 
 
 Nor was Otterbein's mother less willing. Unhesitat- 
 ingly she gave up one whom she had borne in sorrow 
 and on whom she had lavished her love through years 
 of self-denial. Taking William by his hand and press- 
 ing it to her bosom throbbing" with such anguish as only 
 a mother feels, she said : "Go. The Lord bless thee and 
 keep thee. On earth I may not see thy face again. 
 But go." He never forgot her. As long as she lived he 
 
90 The Pioneers of the Reformed Ohurch. 
 
 each year sent her a generous portion of his scanty 
 salary, fifty guilders. 
 
 Upon his arrival in Philadelphia he was assigned to 
 one of the most important, and at the same time one of 
 the most unfortunate charges, the child of many sor- 
 rows in the family. The city of Lancaster, in the pres- 
 ent time^ is one of the centers of church activity, the 
 seat of an academy, a college, and a theological semi- 
 nary, altogether with twenty professors and five 
 hundred students. In four beautiful churches, three 
 English and one German, Reformed pastors serve large 
 and influential congregations. But Otterbein found 
 Lancaster a Rachel weeping for her children and refus- 
 hig to be comforted. 
 
 The church building had been erected in 1736 under 
 Pastor Joh. Jac. Hock, Who left after a pastorate of 
 but sixteen months and was not heard of afterwards. 
 Then Rieger came, who received Zinzendorf and was 
 by his people turned out of the pulpit for loving him too 
 well, but not wisely. The congregation never after 
 could be persuaded to forgive their pastor or to take 
 him back. In 1745 a certain pastor, Caspar Louis 
 Schnorr, commissioned by the church government of 
 Zweibruecken in the Palatinate to go to Tulpehocken, 
 became pastor of the Lancaster congregation. He quar- 
 reled long and bitterly with Rieger, who still lingered 
 in Lancaster and longed for his former pulpit; besides 
 this, Schnorr was a drunkard, and his scandalous life 
 brought disgrace upon himself and his people. Then 
 Liscky, after he had left the Moravians, essayed minis- 
 
The Revivals. 91 
 
 tering unto them, but never could win their full esteem 
 and confidence. In 1748 young Hochreutiner was to 
 serve them, but lost his life when on the point of start- 
 ing from Philadelphia. 
 
 Through all these troubles the congregation retained 
 a very large membership. Schlatter adminstered the 
 Lord's Supper to 250 persons, but for three years could 
 iind no pastor for them, during Which time the school- 
 master conducted the services and read sermons. In 
 1750 Schlatter sent Louis Fred. Vock, but he proved 
 unsuitable, being too old, and leading an improper life. 
 After a very short pastorate he had to leave again. 
 
 Finally, it was in this same church at Lancaster that 
 the disastrous coetus meeting of 1752 was held, where 
 four ministers left and formed a rival coetus. 
 
 In these circumstances, although Otterbein here 
 found an abundance of what is called material — 'Stoff, 
 m_atter — he could hardly expect to find much spirit. But 
 those old German congregations made up in cohesive- 
 ness what they lacked in aggressiveness. The average 
 German Christian harbors more of faith in Christ and 
 love to Christ than he is apt to show. In spite of all the 
 misfortunes that had befallen the Lancaster flock, the 
 life of the congregation at once revived under Otter- 
 bein's preaching. Large and attentive audiences crowd- 
 ed the building. The year following, a larger stone 
 church was built. 
 
 So far, so good. But the true church, the Jerusalem 
 gathered by Christ Himself from on high, is built of 
 
92 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 lively stones. And it pleased God to bless them with in- 
 crease of life as well as of size. 
 
 One Sunday, after Otterbein had preached an incis- 
 ive sermon on repentance and faith, a man powerfully 
 convicted of his sinfulness came to Otterbein's house 
 for spiritual advice. That was a new experience for the 
 young minister. True enough, he was not devoid of 
 Christian life; almost all his lifetime he had breathed 
 the atmosphere of communion with Christ and His 
 saints. He was no stranger to the personal knowledge 
 of sin and misery, which according to the Heidelberg 
 catechism is the first thing necessary to salvation. But 
 he lacked that power of the Spirit, which enables 
 Christ's servants properly to guide souls anxiously 
 seeking salvation. He did not know what to say in pri- 
 vate to the man whose soul he had stirred up in public. 
 He looked upon him, and with deep emotion said: 
 TWetn g-veunb; 6ei mir i[t Iieute guter 3tat teuer. "My 
 friend, good advice is scarce with me to-day." 
 
 The young ruler of Luke xviii:i8 lacked one thing, 
 and Christ told him what it was. He must consecrate 
 himself to God's service all in all. But the young ruler 
 was not ready then to take that step. Most Christians 
 when challenged by Jesus for a full surrender of all, 
 plead for more time. Unwisely so. The more con- 
 venient season, to-morrow, moves with man as the 
 moon does with the nocturnal wanderer. To-morrow is 
 never. But Otterbein chose the part of wisdom. Im- 
 mediately, just as he was, he repaired to his study, and 
 there unreservedly consecrated himself to his Lord, and 
 
The Revloals. 93 
 
 the Lord accepted him— He always does — and endowed 
 him with power from above, Acts i :8, and invested him 
 with the full insignia of his office, David's Key. 
 
 Henceforth, in his pastoral work, he could effectually 
 reach out for higher things than the external upbuild- 
 ing of his congregation, and could lead in person many 
 of his members to the personal Christ. To his great 
 sorrow, however, he saw that the leading men and the 
 bulk of his people continued in comparative indiffer- 
 ence. The fact is, that generally the mind of the con- 
 gregation has more influence than the pastor's mind. 
 The conversation of the membership, their every-day 
 talk, is greater in force as well as in volume than the 
 pastor's talk. They are too many for him alone. It is 
 only vv^hen his words are seconded by the leaders of the 
 church that the seed, after it has germinated and sprout- 
 ed, receives the fostering care, the watering, and the 
 sheltering needed to mature the tender plant to the full 
 stature of Christ, Eph. iv:i3. 
 
 Otterbein's leading men in Lancaster, it is true, did 
 not object to the intensified earnestness of the member- 
 ship awakened by the pastor's zeal ; they rather ap- 
 proved of it, since it filled the pews and the exchecquer. 
 But they did what was worse. They remained care- 
 less and indifferent for themselves, nor would they even 
 yield so much to his earnest expostulations as to ex- 
 clude from the Lord's table members leading immoral 
 lives. They could not be made to see that for this vei-y 
 fact many were sickly and many slept. L Cor. xi : 30. 
 
 Accordingly, Otterbein prepared to leave them. When 
 7 
 
94 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 accepting their call he had engaged himself for five 
 years. At -the expiration of the time he annoimced his 
 determination to seek another field of labor. But they 
 were very loth to let him go, and remembering his 
 desire to have unworthy members excluded from com- 
 munion they now promised to yield to his wishes if he 
 would consent to stay with them. His fellow pastors 
 in coetus-meeting joined their entreaties to those of 
 the congregation. Under such pressure Otterbein could 
 not well refuse. But he would stay no longer than one 
 year, and at the end of his sixth year of service he 
 resigned unconditionally. 
 
 During his pastorate, among other good things, the 
 custom was introduced that before each communion the 
 pastor had a personal interview with each communicant 
 on the condition of his faith-life, a custom borrowed 
 from the Reformed churches in the lower Rhine region. 
 The Lancaster people kept it up for three quarters of 
 a century. 
 
 From Lancaster Otterbein went to a quiet country 
 charge, Tulpehocken, where he rested from the great 
 strain to which his mind had been put, but did by no 
 means abstain from work, for how could the Christ in 
 man's lieart be idle? Love never is. He here made 
 good progress in learning how to do personal work. 
 
 In 1760 he accepted a call to Frederick, Md., where 
 he was able from the start to present the gospel in that 
 incisive form in which John saw it proceed from 
 Christ's mouth, like a two-edged sword, and in which 
 the author of the epistle to the Hebrews describes it, 
 
The Revivals. 95 
 
 chap, iv: 12, "piercing even to the dividing asunder 
 of soul and spirit." Preaching of that sort is the kind 
 that calls forth active opposition, and active opposition 
 is far less to be feared than a stolid, passive indiffer- 
 ence. 
 
 When, one Sunday morning, one of the leading men 
 locked the church door against Otterbein and could 
 not be prevailed upon to open it for the large audience 
 that had gathered, Otterbein, like the war-horse scent- 
 ing the battle from afar, put on his whole gospel-armor 
 and, standing on a large tombstone in the churchyard, 
 joyfully preached such a sermon that the key had to 
 come forth from his opponent's pocket, and the same 
 hands that had locked the door felt constrained to 
 unlock it again. Evidently the key of David, Rev. iii: 
 7, was not in the enemy's hand, but in that of the fear- 
 less preacher. 
 
 A new stone church was built here under Otterbein's 
 ministrations, just as it had been done in Lancaster, but 
 more than that was built, the temple of lively stones, 
 CeBenblge ©teine. I. Pet. ii: S, a fellowship of true be- 
 lievers, among whom there never were wanting men 
 able to conduct meetings when their pastor was absent, 
 men who held prayer-meetings for many years after 
 Otterbein had left and a successor had been elected 
 that did not favor them. 
 
 In a report of the coetus, Otterbein is represented as 
 "having worked himself nearly to death in Frederick," 
 and no wonder, for, not content with work in his own 
 
96 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 charge, he preached all over Maryland and far into 
 Virginia. 
 
 After ^vt years of hard work here, he went to York, 
 Pa., choosing this call from a large number of others 
 received. While there, he made his long intended trip 
 to Europe, once more to visit the home of his youth, 
 after an absence of eighteen years. To his great joy 
 he found his aged mother still living, and so were his 
 five brothers, now all active pastors in the Reformed 
 church. His brother, George Godfrey, pastor in Duis- 
 burg, was a standard bearer of the faithful in their 
 battle with the powerful current of Rationalism at that 
 time in the flush of popularity. When William told 
 him of his personal experience in Lancaster, he listened 
 with deep interest, and no sooner was the testimony 
 finished than he arose from his chair, embraced his 
 American brother, and, with tears flowing, said, "My 
 dear brother William, now we are more than brothers 
 in the flesh, we are one in the spirit; blessed be the 
 name of the Lord !" 
 
 Returned to America he found a number of calls 
 awaiting him. His York people would have been but 
 too glad to retain him, just as those in Frederick, Tul- 
 pehocken, and Lancaster were, for as Stahlschmidt 
 writes : "He is a very gentle and kind man, and re- 
 spected everywhere because of his pious and godly 
 manners." But for that very reason scarcely a year 
 passed by without his receiving invitations -and calls 
 from other places. Church people may not always be 
 willing to accept for themselves the glorious joy and 
 
The Revivals. 97 
 
 the sweet peace in store for all who surrender entirely 
 to their most gracious Lx3rd, but they always recognize 
 the blessing bestowed on such men, whenever in their 
 daily walk they meet them, and feel attracted by them. 
 
 Finally Baltimore succeeded in securing him. 
 
 Of the origin and the early history of the Reformed 
 church in Baltimore but little is known. Probably it 
 is of more recent date than that of Philadelphia, the 
 tide of immigration into Maryland having set in con- 
 siderably later. The first mention made of a congre- 
 gation in Baltimore is that in 1765 it is reported va- 
 cant. In 1768 John Christopher Faber was called by 
 it, an orthodox minister with a thorough university 
 training obtained at Heidelberg; but he had been re- 
 jected by the Deputies when he applied for their as- 
 sistance and recommendation. He then came over on 
 his own responsibility and found an open door in Bal- 
 timore. But he proved cold and tedious in the pulpit, 
 and his conversation under the pulpit was devoid of 
 the salt — entertaining rather than elevating. For ihat 
 reason, a number of the members, under the leadership 
 of Pastor Benedict Schwob, had left his church and 
 had formed a new organization. This Schwob had 
 been an elder in a neighboring country church, of good 
 moral character, with the love of Christ in his heart, 
 and coetus had ordained him, since he proved suffi- 
 ciently well educated.* Under Schwob the new con- 
 
 *His ordination was, later on, acquiesced in by the Deputies, 
 because they considered their authority confined to the limits 
 of Pennsylvania. 
 
98 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 gregation built a chapel and seemed prosperous, but 
 there was constant friction and bad feeling between 
 the old and the new congregation. Upon their ap- 
 pealing to coetus they were advised both to dismiss 
 their pastors, which they did, without, however, ef- 
 fecting a reunion. Several pastors were recommend- 
 ed to them, but none of them would accept a field so 
 full of difficulties. Finally Schwob recommended 
 Otterbein, and he accepted, much to the surprise of 
 his brother ministers. They mostly favored the older 
 congregation; the Deputies also sided with them. The 
 membership of the new one was small, and it did seem 
 strange that he should leave after a short pastorate of 
 three years only the large and peaceful flock at York, 
 where he enjoyed the love and confidence of all, for 
 what might be called a crown of thorns. But, like all 
 the charges so far served by him, the York congrega- 
 tion was by no means a unit in Christian sentiment; 
 and by this time he had learned by much and varied 
 experience that a house divided against itself, Matth. 
 xii :25, does not form a good base of operations in 
 Christian warfare. In general, congregations retain 
 the character of their founders. First impressions are 
 lasting impressions. Now at last an opportunity pre- 
 sented itself to work in a congregation avowedly 
 formed under the standard of the Christ with the 
 promise of the Holy Spirit for all believers, in oppo- 
 sition to a Gospel without His power. To him this 
 seemed his golden opportunity, the turning tide in his 
 affairs that comes but once in human life. He seized 
 
The Revivals. 99 
 
 it, and he chose well. More than forty years he was 
 permitted to spend here in labor owned by Christ and 
 richly blessed by God. 
 
 This change of field was made in 1774. But in 
 order to fully understand the nature of Otterbein's 
 labors in Baltimore, it is necessary to turn back to 
 what had happened years before. In 1744 one of the 
 great lights in the European churches came to Amer- 
 ica, George WhiteHeld, on a similar errand, and by a 
 similar providence to that of Zinzendorf in 1741. By 
 a significant coincidence he came in the very same year 
 that an American revivalist of different stamp, Jona- 
 than Edwards, broke with the "half-way covenant." 
 Whitefield created a widespread sensation. His audi- 
 ences were numbered by thousands and by myriads. 
 His impassionate words stirred up the sober minds of 
 the eastern colonist as well as of the less educated pio- 
 neer of the west. Never before had America witnessed 
 such a tumult of holy emotions. And as often as he 
 repeated his visits, and as far as he extended them all 
 over the colonies, invariably the same results would 
 follow : immense crowds, frequent conversions of 
 hardened sinners, and jubilant rejoicings in the power 
 of the Spirit. 
 
 The Reformed church never has been of the Chi- 
 nese-wall-celestial-empire kind. Her heart always 
 beat in sympathy with the pulsations of Christ-life 
 everywhere. It had warmed when Zinzendorf came; 
 it warmed again when Whitfield came, and twenty 
 years before Otterbein went to Baltimore, many Re- 
 
100 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 formed congregations in southern Pennsylvania and in 
 Maryland had come to feel the effects of the revival- 
 ists* fervent eloquence. 
 
 About fourteen years before, in 1760, it came to pass 
 that a Mennonite preacher plowed his field not far 
 from Lancaster. Mennonite ministers have to handle 
 the plow, since they receive no salaries. But this one, 
 Martin Boehm, was only half a minister. He had 
 been elected preacher, and had essayed to preach, but 
 again and again he had failed. He might have talked, 
 but being an earnest and sincere man he could not 
 thrash empty straw, and to do justice to the Gospel of 
 infinite grace, words failed him. And now, whilst 
 plowing, he came to feel his failure so keenly that he 
 fell on his knees in a plow-furrow, and in answer to 
 his supplications, thought he heard a voice in his heart 
 crying: „3Sertoren, vtxloxtnV' "Lost, lost!" "Then 
 let me go on with my farm-work," he said to himself, 
 and again he put his hand to the plow. But the voice 
 seemed to follow him through every round, and at 
 length, unable to contain himself any longer, he knelt 
 down in the middle of his field, crying: "Lord, save 
 me, I perish !" Then came to his thoughts another 
 voice, saying : "I am come to seek and save that which 
 is lost." And immediately there was in his heart the 
 unspeakable joy of salvation. 
 
 Now he was able to preach to purpose. His small 
 meeting-house could not hold his audiences, and after 
 the custom of those days, a gro^e 33erfammlung, 
 
The Revivals. 101 
 
 a large meeting, was called in Isaac Long's barn, near 
 Lancaster. Here some Lutherans and Reformed at- 
 tended, and Otterbein also was present, who at that 
 time was serving the Tulpehocken charge, his soul yet 
 aglow with the first love of a fully consecrated life. 
 Hearing Boehm's stirring words, he could not control 
 his emotions, but rushed forward and, unmindful of 
 clerical dignity, folded the plainly attired preacher in 
 his arms, exclaiming with a loud voice, "We are breth- 
 ren." 
 
 After that, many similar meetings were held where 
 the two worked together, and a close friendship sprung 
 up between them. 
 
 In Baltimore another prominent revivalist entered 
 into intimate friendship with Otterbein, Francis As- 
 bury, one of the founders of the Methodist Church in 
 America— a friendship maintained unbroken until Ot- 
 terbein's death. Such was Asbury's intimacy with 
 Otterbein that, when Asbury was to be ordained to the 
 office of bishop, Otterbein was asked to assist. He 
 did not, however, comply. Probably he had become 
 aware of the distrust likely to be produced in the minds 
 of his people by so pronounced an intercourse with 
 the leader of another denomination. 
 
 The same consideration seems to have guided him 
 in holding the so-called Antietam meetings. He knew 
 how to appreciate the blessings derived from mass- 
 meetings, where earnest Christians coming from dif- 
 ferent congregations may exchange their thoughts, to 
 
102 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 receive new impulses of love and to be inspired with 
 increased faith. But he had also learned to fear the 
 dangers connected with interdenominational meetings. 
 Churches then were not ripe for them. Many will 
 never be ripe for them before the advent of Christ. 
 Otterbein now preferred to have gatherings controlled 
 by persons of his own church. 
 
 The first were held at Antietam, the celebrated bat- 
 tleground of a later time. The first one of which 
 records have been preserved met at Pipe creek, and 
 was attended by members from Baltimore, Frederick, 
 Antietam, and other places. At the next meeting, held 
 in October of the same year, six Reformed ministers 
 were present. In June of the next year another was 
 held in Frederick, with 300 persons present; next they 
 met in Baltimore, in October. Subsequently a few 
 more meetings were held, but the War of Independ- 
 ence, with its troubles, put an end to them. 
 
 In themselves such mass meetings were not entirely 
 new in the Reformed church. Similar ones had been 
 held in the Lower Rhine region, but a new feature 
 made its appearance in the Antietam meetings — the 
 appointment of class-leaders for the spiritually minded 
 in each congregation represented. The name of class- 
 leaders was borrowed from the Methodists and indi- 
 cates that these men were to hold class-meetings, the 
 main feature of which is that those present tell of 
 their own spiritual condition, and that is something 
 foreign to Reformed usage. The Reformed always 
 have had prayer-meetings. Voetius, who died in 1676, 
 
The Revivals. 103 
 
 professor in Utrecht, a champion of orthodoxy, was 
 a warm advocate of the ^'Collegia Pietatis," week-day- 
 meetings for prayer and Bible study. But as to a reg- 
 ular weekly account given of each participant's inner 
 life, that would not se-em in accordance with the proper 
 distrust in man's knowledge of self and of God's 
 secrets, Deut. xxix, 29 * There is also much of mystery 
 in the New Testament. As we believe in the mysterious 
 presence of the Lord in the communion-service of be- 
 lievers, so we desire to continue in ''Holding the mys- 
 tery of the faith," I. Tim. iii : 9. And mysteries must 
 not be and cannot be 'made the subject of testimony in 
 meeting. They are between God and the individual. 
 
 The United Brethren in Christ — 'which organization 
 grew out of the Big Meetings, not the Antietam meet- 
 ings, claim Otterbein as their founder. But he, as 
 well as the other five Reformed pastors interested in 
 the Antietam meetings, never left their church. The 
 next active after Otterbein, John Wm. Hendel, pastor 
 in Philadelphia, and honored by Princeton College 
 with the title of D. D., prepared a large number of 
 young men for the Reformed ministry. All of them 
 held prayer-meetings that were meetings of prayer, 
 and all of them practiced church discipline that pun- 
 ished. 
 
 It must be admitted, however, that Otterbein's atti- 
 tude toward the church is not quite as clear as that of 
 those five. Some of the facts in his later life are hard 
 
 ♦The secret things belong unto the Lord our God. 
 
104 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. ^___ 
 
 to harmonize. The new church organization was per- 
 fected September 25, 1800, with the election of Otter- 
 bein as bishop and Martin Boehm as his associate. 
 And yet, six years later, 1806, Otterbein attended the 
 meeting of coetus. At this meeting the rationalistic 
 element came to the front, grown powerful partly 
 through the incoming of rationalistically trained min- 
 isters from Germany, partly through the general deca- 
 dence of religion following in the train of the revolu- 
 tionary war. War is hell, not only by fostering vice in 
 camp-life, but also by giving patriotism the precedence 
 over loyalty to Christ and his church, and overshadow- 
 ing the glory of true Christian heroism in the humbler 
 walks with the fascinating glamor of military heroism. 
 
 At the coetus (now synod) meeting of 1806, Pastor 
 Becker, a student of Halle, where rationalism by that 
 time had succeeded pietism, made so fierce an attack 
 on Otterbein that Otterbein abruptly left, and never 
 came again. It is reported, however, that Rev. Isaac 
 Gerhart paid him a visit in 1812, and was told by him 
 explicitly that he considered himself a member of the 
 German Reformed synod, only that from old age he 
 could no longer attend to meetings. 
 
 Perhaps he considered the United Brethren in Christ 
 an interdenominational society like the Tract Society 
 or the Bible Society, membership in which would by 
 no means conflict with church-membership. 
 
 When Otterbein died in 1813, aged 87 years, he was 
 trustee of the church property, and willed it to the Re- 
 formed church. But his will was set aside, and the 
 
The Revivals, 105 
 
 large congregation with the church on Conway street 
 built by him, passed over into the hands of the United 
 Brethren. 
 
 If the Reformed church failed to obtain the full 
 benefit of his abundant labors, a two-fold lesson drawn 
 from that fact suggests itself. To be cautious in 
 colabor with men of other denominations and in mak- 
 ing use of extraordinary meetings and measures, on 
 the one hand; and on the other hand, to be cautious 
 in opposing good men in the church when burning 
 with pious zeal they use means and methods different 
 from the customary church-work. 
 
 ALBERT CONRAD HELFFENSTEIN, 
 
 Another leading revivalist of the Reformed church 
 of those days was Albert Conrad Helifenstein, a man 
 of old Reformed stock, whose descendants, however, 
 like Otterbein's congregation, have passed into another 
 church. 
 
 His great-grandfather, in the thirty years' war, nar- 
 rowly escaped from the Catholics seeking to kill him 
 for his loyalty to his Reformed church. His father, a 
 prominent minister of the Palatinate, longed to go to 
 America, to escape from the worldliness and rational- 
 ism then prevailing among his fellow ministers, but 
 never could carry out his purpose. However, he en- 
 couraged his two sons to go. One was Albert Conrad 
 and the other John Henry Helifrich (half brother, 
 whose descendants have in unbroken succession served 
 part of one and the same charge, near Allentown, Pa). 
 
106 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 After the completion of Albert's studies in Heidelberg 
 the two brothers applied through their father to the 
 Deputies, and were by -them sent to Pennsylvania. 
 
 They had a long and stormy passage, from Septem- 
 ber 6, 1771, to January 14, 1772, suffering greatly from 
 sickness, hunger, and thirst, frequently in peril of life. 
 In those times passengers had to furnish their own 
 provisions, and the two brothers had been too poor to 
 lay in a supply sufficient for four months. But God 
 turned their misery into a great blessing. 
 
 Once an immense wave nearly washed Albert Helf- 
 fenstein overboard. It was on January 7, 1772, a date 
 never after forgotten by him, a true red-letter day, 
 for then and there in the anguish of his soul he gave 
 his whole heart to the King, whose garments are red 
 with blood "from the wrath of God." Is. Ixiii : i. God 
 stilled the storm. After that, their voyage proceeded 
 prosperously. Seven days later he landed safely in 
 New York. 
 
 His first charge was Germantown. Four years later 
 he was called to Lancaster. Here he continued the 
 work of bringing souls to decide for Christ, as Otter- 
 bein had done fourteen years before, and after him 
 Hendel from 1765-68. But the Germantown people 
 were so warmly attached to Helifenstein that after 
 three years they succeeded in again securing his ser- 
 vices, and keeping him to the end of his life, ten years 
 later. 
 
 He was one of the most impressive preachers. On 
 one occasion he mounted his pulpit, closed his eyes, 
 
The Revivals. 107 
 
 bowed his head, folded his hands, and exclaimed: 
 "Lord, save me or I perish/' Some of his hearers took 
 alarm, supposing him in physical distress, but he had 
 in mind Peter sinking in the Sea of Galilee, when at- 
 tempting to walk on the water with Jesus. In a few 
 seconds he opened his eyes and proceeded, "Thus it 
 was that Peter cried when he saw himself in danger 
 of sinking." 
 
 After this first introduction he offered prayer, ac- 
 cording to his habit, and then the second introduction 
 followed, based on another text, and then the sermon 
 on the Sunday^s text. Of course, singing by the con- 
 gregation came in between. 
 
 During his pastorate at Lancaster, a large number 
 of Hessian prisoners of war were kept there. -To them 
 he once preached on Is. lii:2, "For thus saith the Lord, 
 Ye have sold yourselves for nought, and shall be re- 
 deemed without money." His hearers felt the sting 
 and the shame of their mercenary soldiership more 
 strongly than the healing balsam of promise contained 
 in the text, and greatly resented the preacher's plain- 
 ness of speech. 
 
 On a later occasion, after a sermon on the text, "If 
 the son make you free, ye shall be free indeed," John 
 viii : 2)^, the excitement of the prisoners rose to so high 
 a pitch that he had to be sent home under a safeguard. 
 
 There are those who want ministers to say peace, 
 peace only and never to unsheath the two-edged sword, 
 and under such preaching they are very apt to fall 
 asleep. But there was not much sleeping done under 
 
108 The Pioneer t of the Reformed Church. 
 
 Helffenstein's preaching, and often great awakenings 
 followed. He was no dim tallow candle, but a burning 
 and a shining light, highly tempered steel burning in 
 pure oxygen with unearthly brightness but rapidly con- 
 suming itself and soon dying of its own intensiveness. 
 He died at the age of 42 years only, when his church 
 was in the midst of a revival. 
 
 A third one of those revivalists may close their rec- 
 ord here, 
 
 JOS. CHRISTIAN STAHLSCHMIDT. 
 
 He was born in 1740 in the Siegenland, the home of 
 Otterbein and Haegener. There he had attended 
 prayer meetings of awakened men, but had been forced 
 by his father to forsake them. Unable to bear life at 
 home under such conditions, he went to sea and spent 
 ten years before the mast, among rude scoffers. But 
 he kept close to Christ, and whenever on furlough, 
 sought the fellowship of disciples. Twice during this 
 time he visited his dear Tersteegen in Muelheim. 
 
 In 1770 he came to Philadelphia, where Dr. Wey- 
 berg, one of Otterbein's friends, was serving the Re- 
 formed congregation. Both Weyberg and Otterbein 
 encouraged him to study for the ministry, and under 
 Hendel's supervision he did so, privately. The Ger- 
 maritown congregation gave him a call, and Otterbein, 
 Hendel, and Helffenstein urged its acceptance upon 
 him, but he felt diffident and it was only seven years 
 later that he accepted a call to a country charge near 
 York. 
 
The Revivals. 109 
 
 People here were divided on the question of loyalty 
 to King or Congress. Stahlsohmidt believed on the 
 ground of Rom. xiii : 1-2, that one should be subject 
 to the de facto government, but the royalists among his 
 members, for that reason, looked upon him as a rebel. 
 In consequence, after a short pastorate of two years 
 only, Stahlschmidt returned to his old home, where he 
 spent the remaining thirty-seven years of his life as a 
 leader of prayer-meetings, and as a champion of Bible- 
 Christianity against the rationalism ■ then prevailing. 
 
V. INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 When the first century of the Reformed church's 
 life in America neared its end, the poHtical independ- 
 ence of the colonies had been fully established, and the 
 loose confederacy of states had developed into a firm 
 union. As a necessary consequence, the American 
 church could no longer remain a dependency of a Eu- 
 ropean church; she must begin to be responsible to 
 Christ directly for all she did. The time had come for 
 the deputies to leave their American foster-children to 
 act for themselves, as a wise father, in due time, dis- 
 misses his adult som from tutelage and guardianship. 
 
 After Schlatter's dismissal, they had continued forty 
 years longer to send ministers and moneys, and to 
 exercise a careful supervision over the actions of the 
 Coetus. But the time came when the services of min- 
 isters trained in the ways of Europe were no longer 
 acceptable to the American-born descendants of Ger- 
 man immigrants. Not on the ground of language 
 mainly ; it was not only that the broad brogue of some 
 Swiss newcomers was complained of as distasteful and 
 unintelligible; nor was it the uncontrolled temper of 
 others only that repelled American-bred people trained 
 to habits of self-government and self-command; it 
 was not only that most Europeans had never learned 
 and some never could learn the rules of calm parlia- 
 
Independence. Ill 
 
 mentary discussion, nor how to meet their fellow-men 
 on terms of equality, and their opponents in the spirit 
 of tolerance — the whole bearing and personality of 
 European men proved more or less uncongenial to the 
 American church. The last minister sent, in 1788, D. 
 C. Pick, was not accepted by Coetus. 
 
 Moreover, in the matter of ordinations, vexatious 
 delay and sometimes serious losses were caused when 
 the Deputies insisted upon being consulted before 
 Coetus could ordain licentiates. In the administration 
 of church discipline also all suspensions from the min- 
 istry as well as all reinstatements had to be sanctioned 
 in Holland before they could become valid in America. 
 Sometimes Coetus was reprimanded quite severely for 
 rash action in such cases. Still more sharply the Amer- 
 icans were called to order when they began to speak 
 of establishin.s: an institution of learning. The estab- 
 lishment of Franklin College in Lancaster*, although 
 not controlled by the Reformed Church, was made 
 the occasion for some pointed questions. 
 
 These checks and frictions began to gall the Ameri- 
 cans. The spirit of independence was up in the land, 
 and freedom was in the air. In New York the 
 Dutch dominies had cut loose from their mother 
 church. The Pennsylvania Germans had been weaned 
 from the counsels of the Deputies by those interrup- 
 
 *Fifty years later this Franklin College was merged into the 
 Marshall College of Mercersburg moved to Lancaster, and 
 the united institution placed under control of the church. 
 
112 The Pioneers of the Reformtd Church. 
 
 tions of commerce and correspondence that were 
 unavoidable in a war waged with the ruler of the ocean. 
 In Holland, on the other side, the interest in the 
 needs of Pennsylvania began to wane, the collections 
 dwindled down, and the transmissions of new minis- 
 ters grew few and far between. Nor was there any- 
 longer a pressing demand for them, since the Ameri- 
 can pastors were now training candidates for the min- 
 istry sufficient to meet the demand. 
 
 Financial conditions also had undergone a great 
 change. American pastors no longer stood in need of 
 missionary appropriations, their congregations being 
 now able and willing to support them. As early as 
 1764, Coetus resolved to forego all financial aid ten- 
 dered by the Deputies to ministers stationed in Amer- 
 ica. The resolution was not fully carried into effect 
 then, but gradually it came about that moneys from 
 Holland were used for the traveling expenses only of 
 the men sent, for pastors' widows, and for invalid min- 
 isters. 
 
 In 1 79 1 Coetus resolved, inasmuch as the Deputies 
 had sent no answer to their request for authority to or- 
 dain licentiates Stock and Rahauser, to proceed with 
 their ordination, and henceforth to examine, license, 
 and ordain candidates on the authority of Coetus 
 alone. 
 
 In 1792 Coetus resolved to elect a committee for 
 the preparation of a constitution. 
 
 In 1793 the new constitution was submitted and ac- 
 
Orriioation of a Minister in Amsterdam, in 1730. 
 
 f ft 
 
 The Cloister Reformed Church at the Hague, where the 
 
 Deputies met. 
 
 113 
 
Independence. 113 
 
 cepted. It contained no reference to the Deputies, and 
 made Coetus an independent synod. 
 
 For sixty years the church of Holland had carried 
 on the work of helping their German brethren in Amer- 
 ica. The whole number of ministers commissioned for 
 service 'here and assisted while here, amounts to thir- 
 ty-seven, and the moneys transmitted amounted to 
 $25,880 in our money. But of far greater value before 
 God than this large sum of money and these valuable 
 men is the persevering faith and love displayed by this 
 remarkable body of men, which under the name of The 
 Deputies, wiH go down to posterity as a splendid illus- 
 tration of charity which "sufifereth long and is kind," 
 "envieth not/' "vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, 
 does not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, 
 is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil ; rejoiceth not in 
 iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, 
 hopeth all things, endureth all things." i Cor. xiii. 
 
 But beside this brilliant constellation on the heavenly 
 canopy spread over the American Reformed Church, 
 her gratitude is also claimed by those illustrious men 
 belonging to other churches, who stimulated her to in- 
 creased spiritual activity, the Separatists and the Mys- 
 tics, the Moravians and the Methodist and Mennonite 
 Evangelists. 
 
 In the science o'f botany the celebrated Fritz Mueller 
 has recorded a variety of observations proving that the 
 pollen of some flowers does not act as well on the seed- 
 germs of the mother plant as upon those of others. 
 
114 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 Nature even has provided ways and means to prevent 
 the pollen from coming in contact with its own seed- 
 germs, and to transfer it to others. This transfer is 
 accompHshed h.y the agency of insects and winds. 
 Flowers from seeds fertilized with their own pollen 
 generally prove inferior to those from seeds fertilized 
 with pollen coming from different plants. 
 
 Like many other laws of nature, this also applies to 
 God's Kingdom. Any denomination that will confine 
 its range of thought and the maintenance of its min- 
 istry to its own resources exclusively, is likely, in the 
 course of time, to stagnate, to degenerate, and to con- 
 tract a sort of spiritual consumption. A free circula- 
 tion of air and of blood is conducive, yea necessary to 
 a healthful life. We have good reason, then, to give 
 thanks to the Lord for having brought to bear so many 
 and such varied influences upon our church during its 
 formative period, whereby He made her what she is 
 now, firm in the maintenance of principles character- 
 istic af her own peculiar life and mission, and at the 
 same time willing to receive new inspirations from all 
 and every one confessing the Christ come in the flesh. 
 
 THE INDEPENDENTS. 
 
 This narrative necessarily has dealt mainly with min- 
 isters in the Coetus, but the reader's knowledge of the 
 early church would be incomplete and one-sided, if 
 the multitude of those were passed by in silence, who 
 under the name of independent ministers served num- 
 erous Reformed congregations perhaps equally large 
 
Independence. 115 
 
 as the number of those in connection with the Coetus. 
 The bulk of them 'bore a more than doubtful character. 
 One of them, Cyriacus Spangenherg de Reidemeis- 
 ter, died on the gallows in Berlin, Pa. He seems to 
 have been a soldier in Holland, where at that time many 
 Germans in desperate circumstances were entrapped by 
 the wily recruiting officer. He came to America in 
 1780 and studied theology with Boos, indeipendent 
 minister in Reading, and repeatedly applied to Coetus 
 for ordination, but was rejected as often. Since 1785 
 he officiated unordained. He may have been a fluent 
 speaker, but when he wanted to marry, the fact leaked 
 out that he had a wife in Holland. In consequence, he 
 had to seek a new field of usefulness — to himself, and 
 three times he succeeded for a short period. A few 
 months after he had been settled as paster over the 
 Berlin charge, the congregation was called by the eld- 
 ers to a meeting and Elder Glessner moved his dis- 
 missal. That so enraged Spangenherg that he jumped 
 on him and stabbed him. He was arrested, brought to 
 trial, and executed six months later. 
 
 Another, /. H. Weickel, when serving Boehm's 
 church, in the beginning of the Revolution, preached 
 on Eccl. ii: 13. "Better is a poor and wise child, than 
 an old and foolish king, who will no more be admon- 
 ished." If he intended to produce a sensation, he suc- 
 ceeded beyond hope, for the congregation contained 
 quite a large number of tories, and he finally had to 
 resign. 
 
116 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 His favorite amusement was to turn his horse loose 
 in a small yard, and fire his pistols over his horse's head 
 to train it for military service, he said. Finally he is 
 said to have turned highway robber. 
 
 Another, F. W, Vandersloot, posed as a great man, 
 because he had been "inspector" of the Joachimsthal 
 Gymnasium in Berlin, Prussia, and had preached in 
 the "Dome," the cathedral where the royal court at- 
 tended service. But an inspector there is no more than 
 a tutor, and the places of inspectors were given to 
 licentiates who as such had to preach probationary 
 sermons in the Dome before their examiners and the 
 sexton. But with his pretensions he so imposed upon 
 the farmers in Northampton county that the largest 
 congregations chose him pastor. Finally he was de- 
 tected in bigamy and had to quit. 
 
 It must be said, however, that the number of immoral, 
 or tramp, ministers of those times is by no means as 
 large as it has been represented. Of the forty-two 
 ministers independent of Coetus known at this writing 
 ten only led scandalous lives. To this number twelve 
 more must be added, who originally were members of 
 Coetus, but were suspended from the ministry. In all 
 probability, the number of independents was about as 
 large as that of the Q)etus ministers, all of whose 
 names are on record, whilst the independents frequent- 
 ly left no record behind. 
 
Independence. 117 
 
 Men like Haegener, Bechtel, Guldin, John Peter Muel- 
 ler, Antes, Rauch, Brandmueller, and, perhaps, Hock, 
 could not be classed with the impostors, although not 
 subject to any eclesiastical authority. The story of one 
 such independent may help to form a correct estimate 
 of their characters in general. 
 
 JOH. JOACHIM ZUBLY. 
 
 He was born in 1724 in St. Gall, Schlatter's home. 
 His father came over in 1736 with a Swiss colony un- 
 der Pastor Zuberbuehler. In those times quite a num- 
 ber of Swiss colonies guided by their pastors came to 
 settle in the New World, e. g. Gotschy's colony, and 
 that of Weiss. Zuberbuehler's colony went to Georgia, 
 where Oglethorpe, the philanthropist, was at that time 
 providing a home for the London debtors, for the 
 French Hugenots, and for the persecuted Lutherans 
 from Salzburg. 
 
 Zubly's father was a weaver of comparative wealth. 
 When the father went to America, the son was left in 
 school at home, and a sufficient sum of money was de- 
 posited to provide for the completion of his studies. By 
 the time the son had completed his course in theology, 
 his means were exhausted, and his father, who by this 
 time had become a poor man, in a letter still preserved, 
 asked the magistrate of St. Gall to furnish his son 
 with the means to come to America and "preach the 
 Gospel to the Indians and build up the Reformed 
 Church," a request which seems to have been granted. 
 Young Zubly, however, never got to the Indians. Im- 
 
118 ■ The Pioneers of the Reformed CJmrch. 
 
 mediately upon his arrival, the youthful preacher of 
 twenty years was called to the Purysburg, S. C, con- 
 gregation. He was not content, however, with the 
 comparatively narrow range of German fellowship. 
 The excellent education his father had provided for 
 him enabled him in a comparatively short time to mas- 
 ter the language of his new country and to form 
 the acquaintance of the most efficient Christian work- 
 ers here. Whitefield and his orphans' home, Bethes- 
 da in Georgia, attracted him especially, and by White- 
 field he was prevailed upon to make an evangelistic 
 tour through the colonies, such at Whitefield himself 
 had made repeatedly. 
 
 By sea he went to Philadelphia, in 1752, and preach- 
 ed for Steiner, not with his approbation however, for 
 Steiner was not in sympathy with revivalism. Nor 
 were his other Reformed brethren just then so situated 
 that communion with them of an inspiring character 
 could have been held. It was the very year when the 
 Coetus-split occurred. But what Zubly did not find 
 with his old countrymen, he abundantly found with his 
 new countrymen. Everywhere the pulpits of the Eng- 
 lish churches were cheerfully placed at his dis'posal. 
 Princeton also invited him, where Aaron Burr, father 
 of the later vice president, at that time presided over 
 the college. Later on, the college bestowed on Zubly 
 the title of D. D. Then he came to New York, and the 
 German Reformed congregation there desired to re- 
 tain him as their pastor, but he felt called to preach 
 repentance in many tongues and places. On every day 
 
Independence. 119 
 
 in New York he preached two or three times in Ger- 
 man, English, and French. 
 
 From here he traveled throug"h the interior of Penn- 
 sylvania, preaching in cities and country churches. 
 
 On his return home he finally took charge of a con- 
 gregation in Savannah, where in the morning he 
 preached in French and in the evening in English. 
 
 When the Revolution came, the political storm car- 
 ried him away for some time. On July 4, 1775, he 
 preached a sermon* on Is. xi: 13. "The envy also of 
 Ephraim shall depart, and the adversaries of Judah 
 shall be cut off; Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and 
 Judah shall not vex Ephraim." His subject was the 
 jealousy existing then between the southern states and 
 New England, which must be overcome for united re- 
 sistance and final deliverance. 
 
 The politicians recognized the high value of Zub- 
 ly's eloquence and influence; he was elected member 
 of Congress, and to him fell the honor of opening its 
 proceedings with prayer. A still greater honor might 
 have been his, that of signing the great Declaration of 
 Independence, and he might have become one of the 
 immortals whose names are read generation after gen- 
 eration, by millions and myriads of men. But he was 
 not politician enough for that. After all, his sacred 
 calling for him was of more weight than human glory. 
 He knew of a higher liberty than political independ- 
 ence, a liberty not fought for with the soldier's sword. 
 
 *Somewhat prophetically, for the Declaration of Indepen- 
 dence came one year later. 
 
120 The Pioneers of the Reformed Church. 
 
 Being a messenger of the peace he would not advocate 
 war against England, and left Congress in the spring of 
 1776, to return to pastoral work in Savannah. But 
 here his influence was gone now. He was suspected 
 of secretly corresponding with the British, was exiled 
 from Savannah, and lost his property by confiscation. 
 He died in 1781. 
 
 Nine of his sermons in print are preserved. The 
 first, of 1794, bears the title: But They are Not Con- 
 verted. 
 
 Another, printed 1765, m London, is entitled: The 
 True and the False Conversion, and the Difference be- 
 tween Them. 
 
 In another, delivered before the Georgia Legislature 
 in 1775, he gives a concise account of Switzerland's 
 struggle for liberty. His "Evangelical Witness" 
 reached the fourth edition. 
 
 A List of Ministers Permanently Connected 
 With the Coetus. 
 
 Alsentz, Bartholomaeus, Boehm, Boehme, Blumer, 
 Chitara, Dubendorf, Dubois, Dalliker, Faber, Faber, 
 jun., Foehring, Frankenfeld, Gebhart, Gobrecht, Hoch- 
 reutiner, Hendel, Henop, Helffrich, Helffenstein, Herr 
 man, Hautz, Leidich, Lischy, Mann. Nevelling, 
 Pauli, Pomp, Otterbein, Rahauser, Rieger, Runckel, 
 Stapel, Schwob, Conr. Steiner, Stahlschmidt, Stock, 
 Schlatter, Troldenier, Tempelmann, Weiss, Wissler, 
 Waldschmidt, Weyberg, Witner, Weymer, Wagner, 
 Weber, Wack, Winckhaus. 
 
Independence. 121 
 
 A List of Ministers not Belonging to Coetus, 
 Some Suspended. 
 
 Antes, Brandmueller, Berger, (Bucher), Boas, Becli- 
 tel, Corminga, Dorsius, Decker, Dillenberger, Goetschi, 
 Gasser, Giese, Goos, Guldin, Gueting, Hecker, Ingold, 
 Hirzel, J. J. Hock, Kals, Kern, Haegener, Lange, Lupp, 
 
 Loretz, Joh. P. Mueller, Peter Mueller, Fr. C. Muel- 
 ler, Martin, Michael, Pick, Pernisius, Pythan, Rauch, 
 Reiss, Ruebel, Roth, Rothenbuehler, Luther, Steiner, 
 sen., Schnorr, Stoy, Straub, Spangenberg, Schneider, 
 Vandersloot, Willy, Wallauer, Weickel, Wuerz, Zubly, 
 Zuberbuehler, Zufall. 
 
 Ministers of Coetus, 1793. 
 
 Present : Faber, Hendel, Helff rich, Hock, Hautz, 
 Gobrecht, Mann, Pauli, Rahauser, Runckel, Wack, 
 Wagner, Winkhaus. 
 
 Absent: Dalliker, Dubendorf, Blumer, Gueting, 
 Hermann, Otterbein, Pomp, Troldenier, Weber. 
 
 These lists contain the names of fifty German Re- 
 formed ministers connected with the Coetus, and fifty 
 four not connected with it, one hundred and four in all ; 
 add to them six names omitted because doubtful, and 
 the result is that one hundred and ten ministers were la- 
 boring during this period, from 1714 to 1793, among 
 the Reformed Germans in North America, some of 
 them men eminent for Christian character and spiritual 
 power, almost all of them patiently and diligently 
 preaching the Gospel of Christ; administering the sac- 
 
[^ The Pioneers of th e Reformed Church. 
 
 raments in reverent faith; carefully instructing the 
 youth ; and privately, as well as publicly feeding their 
 flocks with the bread that comes from heaven. 
 
 In thus working for Christ and the church, they en- 
 countered all the hardships of pioneer life, "being des- 
 titute, afflicted, tormented, of whom the world was not 
 worthy; they wandered in deserts and in mountains." 
 Hebr. xi : 37, 38. But they that kept the faith, now 
 have their reward of exceeding joy before the throne of 
 Christ Jesus, in whom they believed, though then they 
 did not see him. They now are in glory; all their 
 agonies are over; in untroubled peace, with no one to 
 molest them or make them afraid, they stand before the 
 throne of the Lamb, in white garments, shining like the 
 stars of heaven for aye and aye. 
 
 Many thousands and thousands of immortal souls 
 were saved and comforted by theif humble labors; 
 thousands of households were gladdened by their pres- 
 ence and from the mean pursuit of earthly things lifted 
 up to a heavenly walk and conversation ; from strife and 
 jealousy to peace and happiness; from the bitterness of 
 mutual reproaches to the sweetness of mutual forbear- 
 ance. They stood by the sick tortured in pain and re- 
 morse, and led them through penitence to peace; they 
 stood by the dying and whispered the sweet name of 
 Jesus into their ears about to be closed forever to all 
 earthly sound and human voice; they stood by the 
 grave and consoled the widow and the orphans with the 
 promises of the God of Love and the Christ of the Res- 
 urrection. 
 
Independence. 123 
 
 More than that : They built the Church. Amid storms 
 and tempests, when unbelievers scoffed and men of 
 little faith trembled because of the shame and the weak- 
 ness of this visible church : they worked on. Believing 
 that, as Jesus told Peter, the gates of hell should not 
 prevail against her rock-built foundations, they said to 
 their own doubting minds. Be still ! and to their dis- 
 couraged flocks, Keep the faith, fight the good fight! 
 And He who would not break the bruised reed, nor 
 quench the smoking flax, Is. xlii: 3, He who intercedes 
 for weak disciples and compassionately smiles on de- 
 spairing believers, the ever glorious Son of the living 
 God, He gave them the victory. 
 
 The little band of twenty-two preachers who consti- 
 tuted the Coetus of 1792, in the course of one century 
 has grown into eight synods with twelve hundred min- 
 isters, whilst the population of our country has multi- 
 plied twenty fold in the course of a century, the Re- 
 formed Church in the United States has multiplied 
 fifty fold, and at this very writing the president of the 
 whole country is worshipping in one of her humble 
 churches. 
 
 Glorious things of thee are spoken, 
 Zion, city of our God; 
 
 He whose word cannot be broken 
 Formed thee for His own abode ; 
 
 On the Rock of Ages founded, 
 What can shake thy sure repose ; 
 
 With salvation's wall surrounded, 
 Thou may'st smile at all thy foes. 
 
Dr. J. I. Good's Books 
 
 Published by Daniel Miller, 
 Reading, Pennsylvania. 
 
 History of the Reformed Church 
 in the United States (1710-1793.) 
 
 This book aims to give a complete history of the origin 
 of the German Reformed Church, based on the original 
 records in Europe. Most of the dark problems have be- 
 come clear through it, as it throws a flood of light on 
 the early history and the men who made it. 
 Price (postpaid) $1.75. 
 
 Other books written or edited by the 
 same Author. 
 
 Origin of the Reformed Church of Germany 
 (only a very few copies remaining), $1.50 
 
 History of the Reformed Church of Germany. 
 (this edition is also growing small), $1-75 
 
^% 1 BX9565 .W ""'™'''*^ ^'""^ 
 
 ^^1 iiiiHiir 
 
 3 1924 029 475 120 
 
 wm^mM 
 
 'p^^m. 
 
L wA.&A'ilrbt