Daily Globe

Duty More Than Promotion.

In the picturesque town of Bethlehem, among the Lehigh hills in Pennsylvania, are to be found some of the most singular buildings in this country. They are of stone, built, apparently, to last for centuries, with great buttresses supporting their massive walls. They were erected by the Moravians, who came as missionaries to the Indians in the beginning of the last century, and formed common households, a Sister and Brother House for the unmarried, and a Gemein Haus for husbands and wives. A few of the aged sisters lingered here until a year or two ago; some of them had entered these houses as children, and died in them, living for seventy years in the same quaint little room, and knowing little of the world beyond the quadrangle of flower-beds outside. There is no more inspiring record of heroism in the history of this country than the lives of these early Moravians who left their homes in Europe and settled in this wilderness, threatened daily with rapine and murder, to teach the gospel to the Indians. The most remarkable, perhaps, was that of David Zeisberger, whose parents emigrated to Georgia and left him to be educated, a boy of 9, with the brethren at Herrnhut. The brethren's rule was one of iron. David, finding his condition intolerable, came to this country. After many curious adventures he found his parents and came with them to Bethlehem. At length he was ordered by the church to return to Europe as one of the suite of Count Zinzendorf. It was esteemed a great promotion, but Zinzendorf found the boy in tears when the ship had set sail.

"Why do you wish to stay, David?" he said.

"I want to be converted to God, and to serve Him among the Indians," was the answer, strange enough from a boy.

"It is the will of God," said the Moravians. The Count ordered the ship to cast anchor, and Zeisberger was sent back. For seventy years he preached the gospel to the red men with the fervor, the zeal and the success of a messenger sent by God. He died at 87. We know of no more striking picture in our history than that of the old man dying, surrounded by the Indians whom he had converted, singing the hymns of triumph which he had written for them.