a religious community founded in 1722 at Herrnhut, Germany, by Count
Zinzendorf. It was a strictly religious, semimonastic group of single
men and single women, whose hearts were filled with zeal for mission
work. At that period, I suppose America seemed a possible and promising
field for such efforts, and accordingly forty-five of the brothers and
as many of the sisters turned their faces toward this new world. One
can fancy that when the thought first entered their minds, of coming to
a land peopled by savage Indians, with but a bare sprinkling of "the
Lord's people," they trembled even in their dreams at the thought of the
cruel incidents they might encounter in that wilderness toward which
they were impelled by apostolic zeal, and the unquiet sea upon which
they were about to embark foreshadowed an unknown future. But there was
small danger for them upon the sea; surely they could not sink in
troubled waters, these etherial souls! The heavenly quality of them
would upbear the vessel and cargo. They would come safe to land, no
matter how tempestuous the elements!

I suppose, at all periods of the world, prophet and martyr stuff might
be sifted out from the man-stuff of the times if the race had need of
them. In normal states of growth, we call them "cranks" and look for no
results from their existence. But the elusive spirit of love never dies.
It appears and reappears in the history of all races and times, and
leaves its mark upon them in various shapes of beneficence.

These missionary brothers and sisters had chosen as the theater of their
labor that part of our broad land which was pleasantly christened
Pennsylvania, and selecting a portion of the southern area, they founded
their colony and called it "Ephrata."

It existed for forty years, constantly increasing its membership, and
living a life reaching out toward a perfection of goodness which seemed
quite possible to their apostolic souls.

Time, however, brought changes of circumstance and of mind, and after
many philanthropic phases, in 1749 the mingled elements and aspirations
of the enlarged congregation were merged into two boarding schools, one
for boys, which was the germ of Lehigh University, and another for girls
at Bethlehem, which, under the careful fostering of the sisters, became
the birthplace of the famous Moravian needlework. So were melted into
the modern form of scholastic instruction the various efforts of
religious activity, the eterna