Crossing the Bridge

Bethlehem was of course not “the country”, but a reasonably civilized place on its own merits. Oncle Jacques Haight taught history at Lehigh University across the river, where Catherine Drinker Bowen’s father had once been president. I walked down the “alley” of Milton Street, then west two blocks on Wall Street to Moravian Prep, which had been founded by the Moravians in 1742. Tuesdays and Wednesdays, after school, I walked over the Hill-to-Hill Bridge, past plaques commemorating Count Zinzendorf, the first performance of Mendelssohn in this country, the poet H.D., to Nativity Cathedral to sing in the boy’s choir.


About 90 years ago, the little band of Moravians, scarcely 600 in number, began their missionary work. Of all the multitudes then professing the name of Christ, they only, seem to have felt the force of his parting injunction, "Go—preach the Gospel to every creature " In this grand work, for 70 years, they continued to take the lead of all the Christian world. Within the last 20 years, the church at large has been waking from her slumbers. Instead of 150 missionary laborers, she has now in the field a number not less than 400.—Sixteen years ago, scarcely a single Bible Society of any extensive influence, existed. Now, the number publicly known is little short of 1000. Before the establishment of these Societies, little was done towards translating and printing the Word of Life for the barbarous nations. Since then, nearly 50 of these nations have to read, in their "own language, the wonderful works of God." -The Panoplist