to Europe. After the war Ebenezer
presented a sad spectacle. Soldiers had used the church as a hospital
and stable; Rabenhorst's home had been given to the flames; fields were
laid waste; and the inhabitants were scattered and despoiled of their
property. The congregation, however, recovered, and through the
endeavors of Urlsperger received a new pastor in the person of John
Ernest Bergmann, who had studied at Leipzig. In 1785 he assumed the
duties at Ebenezer, formerly discharged by two and three pastors. But,
though a diligent worker, Bergmann was not a faithful Lutheran, nor did
he build up a truly Lutheran congregation. There came a time when but
very little of Lutheranism was to be found in the old colony of the
Salzburgers. (600.) During Bergmann's long pastorate, which was
conducted in the German language exclusively until 1824, the
Americanized young people gradually began to drift away from the mother
church. However, to the present day descendants of the Salzburgers are
found in the Lutheran congregations of Savannah and of the Georgia
Synod.

LUTHERANS IN NEW YORK.

16. Persecuted in New Amsterdam.--In the first part of the seventeenth
century the Lutheran Church was by law prohibited and oppressed in the
United Netherlands. When the power of the papists had come to an end,
Reformed tendencies gained the ascendency, and Calvinists reaped where
Lutherans had sowed with tears. While claiming to be adherents of the
Augsburg Confession, they persecuted the Lutherans, forbidding all
Lutheran worship in public meeting-houses as well as in private
dwellings. Nevertheless the Lutheran Church not only continued to exist,
but even made some headway in Amsterdam, Antwerp, and other places. The
greatest handicap, however, which also prevented the Dutch Lutherans
from developing any missionary activity, was the lack of a native
ministry thoroughly conversant with the language of the people.
Conditions similar to those in Holland obtained in the American
colonies. Like the mother country, New Amsterdam had a law prohibiting
the exercise of any religion save that of the Reformed faith. Sanford H.
Cobb, in his work _The Rise of Religious Liberty in America_, quotes the
law as follows: "No other religion shall be publicly admitted in New
Netherland except the Reformed, as it is at present preached and
practised by public authority in the United Netherlands; and for this
purpose the [Dutch West India] Company shall provide