LUTHERANS IN AMERICA. L Earh/ Ilistor//.— The celebrated German divine, Dr. Henry Melchior Miihlenberg (q. v.), is generally and justly recognised as the founder of the Lutheran Church in America. He arrived in this country in 1742. Long previous to his coming, however, the Lutherans had gained a footing here. Adherents of the Church of the great German reformer first came to these shores of the West from Holland in 1621. In consequence of the severe meas- ures adopted by the Synod of Dort (1018-19), the stay of non-Calvinists had been made uncomfortable in the mother country, and with the first Dutch settlers in the province of New Amsterdam (now New York) came several Lutheran immigrants, seeking here a home, and a place to worship God agreeably to the dictates of their conscience. They had come, however, without a shep- herd, and for years were dependent upon lay supervision and instruction. The first Lutheran communicants who brought thither one to minister unto them came from Sweden in 1638, and settled on the banks of Delaware Bay, where now stands the thriving city of Wilmington. For many years the Swedish Lutherans only were fa- vored with miuisterial care. The first to perform this duty was Reorus Torkillus (died in 1643), whose suc- cessor, John Campanius, " a man of enlightened zeal, deeply interested in his work, and burning with a strong desire to promote the spiritual interests of the aborigi- nes," was the first to publish in this country Luther's
Smaller Catechism, and first to furnish it to the Red Man in his own vernacular — " perhaps the first work ever ren- dered into the Indian language, and the Swedes most probably were the first missionaries among the Indians in this country." Strangely enough, the Swedes were also the first to fall a;v'ay from their mother Church and enter into communion with those of the Protestant Episcopal Church — a result due, no doubt, in a great measure, to the want of complete organization, as we shall see below. Dr. Miililenberg, as we have noted above, was of the German Church, and, though his labors were mainly confined to those of his own nationality, the influence of this man of God extended over all Lutherans in the states, and caused them to be " of one heart and one mind," and to keep "the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." The first German Lutherans preceded the doctor very nearly one hundred years. He himself, as we have seen, came hither in 1742; the first of his countrymen in the faith reached these shores in 1644. They came in company with the Dutch, and, like the latter, for a long time depended on lay instruction. By 1653 they had increased in strength sufficiently to seek the services of a preacher, but in vain they directed a petition to the Dutch Directory to secure permission for such a step. In 1664, finally, the much-coveted privi- lege came to them from the English authorities, who, immediately upon their acquisition of this territory, granted the Lutherans religious liberty. The first to preach to the German Lutherans in their own vernacu- lar was Jacob Fabricius, who reached this country in 1669. The first house of worship, however, they enjoyed two years later (1671); but they were deprived of it by the butch in 1673. It was rebuilt in 1703 (on the south-west corner of Broadway and Rector Street). The Lutherans enjoyed a decided accession in 1710, when four thousand Germans, the victims of civil oppression and religious persecution, who had fled for refuge to England under the patronage of queen Anne, came to the provinces of New York, Pennsylvania, and South Carohna. Quicldy others followed, until in 1717 their large numbers began to excite the serious appreliension of the civil authorities. In Pennsylvania the govern- ment actually felt it its chtti/ to direct the attention of the " Provincial Council" to the fact " that large num- bers of foreigners from Germany, strangers to our lan- guage and constitution, had lately been imported into the province." All these people had come without their ministers, and so it happened that, by settling in Penn- sylvania and South Carolina, they were deprived of the regular ministrations of the sanctuary, and dependent for religious instruction upon those of their own number best informed " in heavenly things." A colony of Ger- man Lutherans, refugees from civil oppression and Rom- ish intolerance at Salsburg, was founded under better auspices in Georgia in 1734. Their pastors were John Martin Bolzius and Israel Christian Gronau. In the following year they received large accessions from the mother "country, and by the time of Dr. Muhlenberg's arrival the Lutherans of Georgia formed quite a consid- i erable Christian band (over 1200 of them). Indeed, it is I said that these Lutherans exerted a very salutary influ- I ence on the piety of John and Charles Wesley. 1 As early as 1733, the German Lutherans of Philadel- I phia and other places had sent urgent petitions for I ministerial help and pecuniary aid to the Lutherans of ' England and of the mother country. At Halle, where now flourished the pious Aug. Hermann Francke, their prayers were heard, and by the untiring exertions of the" founder of the "Halle Orphan Asylum," the future founder and leader of American Lutheranism was in- duced to leave his native land, and " to relieve," among his brethren of the faith and fellow-countr\'men who had sought a home in the wilds of America, " the spir- itual destitution that prevailed, to gather together the lost sheep, and to preach to them the truths of the Gos- pel." With the year 1742, therefore, oi^ens a new epoch in the historj' of the Lutheran Church hi America— the