d Avenue A. Doubtless none of
their contemporaries ever dreamed that this insignificant congregation
was related to one of the larger movements of church history.

Connecting links were two men whose names I have never seen associated
with the story of the Lutherans of New York. One of them was Dr.
Benjamin Kurtz of Hagerstown, the other was Frederick William III, King
of Prussia. The king had imposed the Union upon the churches of Prussia
and imprisoned the pastors who refused to conform. This was the king's
part in the movement. Dr. Kurtz had visited Berlin in 1826 in the
interest of his educational schemes and in one of his addresses he
implanted the microbe of America in the mind of a man who subsequently
became a leader of one band of these pilgrims to the promised land. This
was Dr. Kurtz's share in the work. Both Kurtz and the king were
unconscious instruments in the hands of Providence.

Dr. Kurtz was for a large part of the nineteenth century a distinguished
leader in the General Synod. He contributed to the establishment of the
Theological Seminary at Gettysburg and he was the founder of the
Missionary Institute, now the Susquehanna University, at Selinsgrove. He
died in 1865. His grave is in the campus of the University of which he
was the founder.

But who were these immigrants and how did they come to be exiles? This
is another story; but it has to be told, because in the providence of
God it is connected with the history of the Lutherans in New York.

In the early years of the nineteenth century there occurred a remarkable
religious awakening in Germany. This awakening had much to do with a
revival of Lutheranism. It had been greatly strengthened at least by the
publication of the Ninety-five Theses of Claus Harms in 1817, on the
occasion of the tercentenary of the Reformation, and it in turn
stimulated the Lutheran consciousness of multitudes who had been carried
away by the rationalistic movement of the eighteenth century. The
publication of the royal Liturgy in 1822 and the forcible measures of
the king in ordering a union of the Lutheran and Reformed churches of
the kingdom called forth the staunch opposition of the Lutherans. This
ended in a widespread agitation which sent multitudes of families to a
land where one of the chief fruits of the Lutheran Reformation, that of
religious liberty, could be enjoyed.

The notable thing about the entrance of a few of these people into our
New York life was