Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE SECOND PERIOD. CONGREGATIONS ORGANIZED INTO SYNODS. DURING the period which we are now to study the scattered flocks were gathered into organic unity. A part of the Lutheran Church became organized under Muhlenberg. It furnished the foundation for ultimate success. It absorbed the Dutch church and later the congregations of Berkenmeyer. It would have assimilated the Swedish churches, if the organizing forces had been large enough. With the advent of the Pennsylvania Ministerium, the Lutheran Church steps out of the stage of scattered congregations into the stage of a systematized ecclesiastical body. This organization, in its final analysis, was the work of the German mother-church. She supplied the largest number of men and also their financial support. Without her assistance the Lutheran Church of America would have been lost beyond redemption. It is to be regretted that the War of Independence terminated this relation with the mother-church before the American offspring had grown strong enough to look entirely after its own interests. The new development created new problems which were only partially solved in this period. We refer to the question of language, the looking after new territory and the training of competent ministers. CHAPTER II. MUHLENBERG AND THE FOUNDING OF THE FIRST LUTHERAN SYNOD. § 4. Muhlenberg and His Work. 1. Muhlenberg's Call and Arrival. Heinrich Mel- chior Muhlenberg (born at Eimbeck, Hanover, Sept. 6, 1711), descended from a family which had lost title and estate during the Thirty Years' War. Under such disadvantages he had received his preparatory education, struggling all along the line. As a student of theology, he entered the University of Goettingen, where he graduated in 1738. Having come in contact with the influences of H...