t of the author]
When New York Was Young
A Corner of Broad Street
New Amsterdam in 1640
In the Eighteenth Century
Trinity Church
Henry Melchior Muehlenberg
The Old Swamp Church
Frederick Muehlenberg
John Christopher Kunze
Kunze's Gravestone
Carl F. E. Stohlmann, D.D.
Pastor Wilhelm Heinrich Berkemeier
The Wartburg
G. F. Krotel, D.D., LL.D.
Augustus Charles Wedekind, D.D.
Pastor J. H. Sieker
Charles E. Weltner, D.D.
Apology
Lutherans are not foreigners in New York. Most of us it is true are new
comers. But with a single exception, that of the Dutch Reformed Church,
Lutherans were the first to plant the standard of the cross on Manhattan
Island.
The story of our church runs parallel with that of the city. Our
problems are bound up with those of New York. Our neighbors ought to be
better acquainted with us. We ought to be better acquainted with them.
We have common tasks, and it would be well if we knew more of each
other's ways and aims.
New York is a cosmopolitan city. It is the gateway through which the
nations are sending their children into the new world.
Lutherans are a cosmopolitan church. Our pastors minister to their
flocks in fifteen languages. No church has a greater obligation to "seek
the peace of the city" than the Lutherans of New York. No church has a
deeper interest in the problems that come to us with the growth and ever
changing conditions of the metropolis.
In their earlier history our churches had a checkered career. In recent
years they have made remarkable progress. In Greater New York we enroll
this year 160 churches. The Metropolitan District numbers 260
congregations holding the Lutheran confession. But the extraordinary
conditions of a rapidly expanding metropolis, with its nomadic
population, together with our special drawback of congregations divided
among various races and languages as well as conflicting schools of
theological definition, make our tasks heavy and confront us with
problems of grave difficulty.
On the background of a historical sketch a study of some of these
problems is attempted by the author. After spending what seemed but a
span of years in the pastorate on the East Side, he awoke one day to
find that half a century had been charged to his account. While it is a
distinction, there is no special merit in being the senior pastor of New
York. As Edward Judson once said to him: "All that you have
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