se to his
labors, so rich, that Muhlenberg could say with a grateful heart: 'It
seems as though now the time had come that God would visit us with
special grace here in Pennsylvania.' Furthermore, self-exaltation was
utterly foreign to him. 'God does not need me,' he would say; 'He can
carry out His work also without me.' Likewise, he was ever content
although he never saw much money. During the first half-year of his
stay in Philadelphia he earned his board by giving music lessons."
(279.) Dr. A. Spaeth: "Though there were Lutheran congregations and
pastors among the Dutch on the Hudson, and among the Swedes on the
Delaware, as early as the first half of the seventeenth century, and,
later on, among the numerous German immigrants, still the real
organization of the Lutheran Church in America, on the foundation of the
fathers, only dates from the middle of the eighteenth century, and is
due to the Rev. Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, by common consent the
patriarch of the Lutheran Church on this continent, through whose
efforts the Ministerium of Pennsylvania, 'The Mother Synod,' was
established in 1748. In missionary zeal, in pastoral tact and fidelity,
in organizing ability and personal piety, he had no superior." (_C.P.
Krauth_, 1, 316.)

MUHLENBERG'S CONFESSIONALISM.

45. Unqualified Subscription to Entire Book of Concord.--Like the
"Fathers in Halle," Muhlenberg, self-evidently, desired to be a
Lutheran and to build a Lutheran Church in America. He himself says, in
a manner somewhat touchy: "I defy Satan and every lying spirit to lay at
my door anything which contradicts the teaching of our apostles or the
Symbolical Books. I have often said and written that I have found
neither error, nor mistake, nor any defect in our Evangelical doctrine,
based, as it is, on the apostles and prophets, and exhibited in our
Symbolical Books." _Dr. Spaeth:_ "The standards of the Lutheran Church
of the sixteenth century were accepted and endorsed by Muhlenberg
without reservation, and in his whole ministerial work he endeavored to
come up to this standard, as he had solemnly pledged himself in his
ordination vow before the theological faculty of the university at
Leipzig, on August 24, 1739, which committed to him the office of
'teaching the Gospel and administering the Sacraments according to the
rule given in the writings of the prophets and apostles, the sum of
which is contained in those three symbols, the Apostolic, Nicene, and