From Waldoboro, Maine, to Ebenezer, Georgia, in 1735 there were but eight pastors for the whole Lutheran population. The people generally were poor, their speech alien, themselves strangers in a strange land. Some made use of de”otional books brought from the Fatherland. Here and there an earnest layman assembled his country men and read a sermon. Churches were few ; barns, mills and stable lofts, carpenter shops, or their rude cabins, were the usual. places for worship; the services and ministrations of the church were seldom enjoyed. Clerical im postors, base men, devastated and deceived the congregations. The religious training of the young was sadly neglected. Distressing in the extreme was the general spiritual condition.
"The Patriarch of the Lutheran Church in America," a graduate of the University of Goet tingen and sent from Halle. the Rev. Henry Mel chior Muhlenberg, in 1742, reached Philadelphia, Pa. His apostolic life, his faithful, untiring and blessed labors, his piety, ability. taot and sagacity, inspirited the people, reduced chaos to order and laid solid foundations for the future of the church. In 1748, Muhlenberg with five other pas tors and lay representatives from twenty pas toral districts, organized the Ministerium or Synod of Pennsylvania and adjacent states. In 1786 the second Synod. that of New York, was urganized.
The French and Indian wars, and the War of the Revolution, destroyed churches, devastated communities and scattered congregations. In fidelity, deism and rationalism poisoned by their evil influences. Throughout the colonies religion reached a very low ebb. The German Lutheran population greatly suffered in the general spiritual degeneration and destitution. At the close of the century the New York Synod had decreased in its pastoral roll nearly one-half; in the Carolinas six pastors remained; there were less than sev enty in all the United States.
(3) Nineteenth Century. As for the Church in general, so especially for the Lutheran Church has the nineteenth century proved a period of be fore unheard of activity. It began in troublous times. The wars of Continental Europe, as also those of our own country, had killed the mis sionary life of the church to a great extent. What there was left in New York State of the earlier Dutch settlers had been served and appropriated by Reformed pastors. The Swedes along the Del aware were shepherded by Episcopalians, and they, too, ceased to be Lutherans. Many of their young men studied in colleges of other denomi nations, which but built bridges for many of the second and third generations of Lutherans to iden tify themselves with the more popular churches.
Yet there was a remnant left in those earlier years. The work of Miihlenberg, Schaum, Brunn holz, Kurtz, Handschuh, Hartwick and others was too well done to lose its identity amid the church life of the new century. Already, in 1817, steps were taken toward the founding of a theological school, which is even now in successful opera tion as "Hartwick Seminary." In 182o three of the meanwhile organized synods founded the "General Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church," which established. its schools, church organs and mission agencies, adding districts and losing some again, until it now comprises 24 synods, and has educational institutions at Gettys burg and Selinsgrove, Pa., Hartwick, N. Y., Springfield, Ohio, Carthage, Ill., and Atchison, Kan., with boards for church, mission and elee mosynary activity.
The second quarter of the nineteenth century began with a decided tendency toward Ameri canization. But during the later thirties large numbers from the Fatherland swelled, the ranks of Lutheranism immensely, settling mostly in the middle and then far western states. Some little pressure against Lutherans in Germany be cause of their refusal to accept the union of the two Reformation churches, as decreed by King Frederick Wilhelm III of Prussia, drove a col ony under Pastor Grabau to Buffalo, N. Y., %%here they founded churches and schools. A still larger colony from Saxony, under the lead of Pastor Stephan. followed by Pastor C. F. IV. Walther, settled in Missouri and established a definite center of German influence at St. Louis, organizing themselves into a synod at Chicago in 1847. A few pastors found-ed the Iowa Synod, in 1854, at St. Sebald, Ia. Those immigrants, sent out and cared for by a inission society of Ber lin and mainly settling in Canada and in the states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota, organized themselves successively as "State Syn ods" in 185o, '58, '6o and '61. The Swedes be gan to come during the forties, and they were organized under the lead of Professor Esbjorn, in 186o, into what is known as the Augustana Synod, with district conferences all over the United States. The Norwegians have their old synod of 1853, preceded by Hauge's of 1846, al-.1 followed by the United Norwegian Church of 1890 and the Norwegian Free Church of 1891, the German synods of Texas, Wartburg, Augs burg, Nebraska; the Icelandic and Finnish are creations of the latter part of the century.