the United States in
1837, the innocent and Christlike Moravian missions have been exposed
from every side to the malignity of savage men both white and red. No
order of missionaries or missionary converts can show a nobler roll of
martyrs than the Moravians.[194:1]

The work of Muehlenberg for the Lutherans stimulated the Reformed
churches in Europe to a like work for their own scattered and pastorless
sheep. In both cases the fear that the work of the gospel might not be
done seemed a less effective incitement to activity than the fear that
it might be done by others. It was the Reformed Church of Holland,
rather than those of Germany, miserably broken down and discouraged by
ravaging wars, that assumed the main responsibility for this task. As
early as 1728 the Dutch synods had earnestly responded to the appeal of
their impoverished brethren on the Rhine in behalf of the sheep
scattered abroad. And in 1743, acting through the classis of Amsterdam,
they had made such progress toward beginning the preliminary
arrangements of the work as to send to the Presbyterian synod of
Philadelphia a proposal to combine into one the Presbyterian, or Scotch
Reformed, the Dutch Reformed, and the German Reformed churches in
America. It had already been proved impossible to draw together in
common activity and worship the different sects of the same German race
and language; the effort to unite in one organization peoples of
different language, but of substantially the same doctrine and polity,
was equally futile. It seemed as if minute sectarian division and
subdivision was to be forced upon American Christianity as a law of its
church life.

Diplomacies ended, the synods of Holland took up their work with real
munificence. Large funds were raised, sufficient to make every German
Reformed missionary in America a stipendiary of the classis of
Amsterdam; and if these subsidies were encumbered with severe conditions
of subordination to a foreign directory, and if they begot an enfeebling
sense of dependence, these were necessary incidents of the difficult
situation--_res dura et novitas regni_. The most important service which
the synods of Holland rendered to their American beneficiaries was to
find a man who should do for them just the work which Muehlenberg was
already doing with great energy for the Lutherans. The man was Michael
Schlatter. If in any respect he was inferior to Muehlenberg, it was not
in respect to diligent devotion