to the business on which he had been
sent. It is much to the credit of both of them that, in organizing and
promoting their two sharply competing sects, they never failed of
fraternal personal relations. They worked together with one heart to
keep their people apart from each other. The Christian instinct, in a
community of German Christians, to gather in one congregation for common
worship was solemnly discouraged by the two apostles and the synods
which they organized. How could the two parties walk together when one
prayed _Vater unser_, and the other _unser Vater_? But the beauty of
Christian unity was illustrated in such incidents as this: Mr. Schlatter
and some of the Reformed Christians, being present at a Lutheran church
on a communion Sunday, listened to the preaching of the Lutheran
pastor, after which the Reformed minister made a communion address, and
then the congregation was dismissed, and the Reformed went off to a
school-house to receive the Lord's Supper.[196:1] Truly it was fragrant
like the ointment on the beard of Aaron!

Such was the diligence of Schlatter that the synod or coetus of the
Reformed Church was instituted in 1747, a year from his arrival. The
Lutheran synod dates from 1748, although Muehlenberg was on the ground
four years earlier than Schlatter. Thus the great work of dividing the
German population of America into two major sects was conscientiously
and effectually performed. Seventy years later, with large expenditure
of persuasion, authority, and money, it was found possible to heal in
some measure in the old country the very schism which good men had been
at such pains to perpetuate in the new.

High honor is due to the prophetic wisdom of these two leaders of
German-American Christianity, in that they clearly recognized in advance
that the English was destined to be the dominant language of North
America. Their strenuous though unsuccessful effort to promote a system
of public schools in Pennsylvania was defeated through their own ill
judgment and the ignorant prejudices of the immigrant people played upon
by politicians. But the mere attempt entitles them to lasting gratitude.
It is not unlikely that their divisive work of church organization may
have contributed indirectly to defeat the aspirations of their
fellow-Germans after the perpetuation of a Germany in America. The
combination of the mass of the German population in one solid church
organization would have been a formid