education, which engaged his warmest sympathy. He returned to Lissa in the year 1648. Eight years afterwards, when the town was destroyed by the Cossacks, he and the Brethren who had been living there, left it finally. The latter were scattered over different countries. Comenius, after a short abode at Frankfort on the Oder, proceeded to Amsterdam, and remained there for the rest of his life, engaged in literary labors. His writings were very numerous, and some of them celebrated in their day; for instance, Janua Linguarum Reserata, (published in 1631,) which was translated into twelve European and several Asiatic languages. In the year 1671, after having acknowledged and bewailed the errors into which he had fallen at one period of his life, in consequence of his connection with persons who claimed to receive revelations from God, this venerable servant of the Most High, the last bishop of the Moravian-Bohemian line, ended his eventful career in the seventy-ninth year of his age, hoping still for the restoration of the Unitas Fratrum. For this end he had never ceased to work in all the countries which he had visited, and especially during his long exile in Holland. The most important and abiding results of these labors may be summed up as follows: First, he republished the discipline and church-order of the Brethren, adding a history of the church and reflections of his own, the whole work bearing the title, Ratio Disci plinæ Ordinisque Ecclesiastici in Unitate Fratrum Bohemorum, and dedicated it to the Church of Eng

land, to which he also solemnly commended the Unity of the Brethren in the event of its renewal. Again, he published a Catechism, containing the doctrines of the church, and dedicated it "To all the godly sheep of Christ, dispersed here and there, especially to those of Fulneck, Gersdorf, Glandorf, Klitte, Kunwalde, Stachewald, Seitendorf, and Zauchtenthal," villages of Moravia, where many Brethren still dwelt, and from each of which, in the next century, emigrants came to Herrnhut. And, finally, he cared for the preservation of the episcopate, and in the year 1662 took measures for the consecration of two new bishops, in hope against hope. These were Nicholas Gertichius, court-chaplain of the Duke of Liegnitz, and Peter Jablonsky, pastor of a church at Danzig. Through them the succession was carefully preserved until the year 1735, when it was transferred to the Renewed Church of the Brethren.

And now we pass to the history proper of the Hidden Seed. It is soon told. The Anti-Reformation in Bohemia and Moravia, under Ferdinand II., was at an end, the Brethren's Church extinct, and these countries lay, in abject submission, at the feet of Rome; but in the very nature of the case, many families had been forced into a mere outward conformity to the Romish worship, without yielding the convictions of their hearts. This was particularly so among the members of the Unitas Fratrum who had remained in their native land. They were true to the doctrines of their fathers, in so far as they could

be, under the oppression of the Hierarchy; they had carefully concealed their bibles, hymn-books, and other evangelical writings; strengthened their faith by these means, and often met, in secret, for mutual edification, as the founders of the church had done two centuries before. Occasionally they were visited by exiled pastors, who administered the Lord's Supper to them; at other times they went on journeys to Protestant countries, and received the sacrament there. All this was done with the utmost secrecy; and if any were discovered by the Romish priests engaged in such devotions, they were severely punished. For a series of years, this state of affairs continued. Towards the close of the seventeenth century, when a new generation had grown up, the light of evangelical truth was obscured among the descendants of the Brethren; still, the traditions and principles of former days remained in single families, especially in Moravia, and the Unitas Fratrum was never entirely forgotten. There were, in particular, individual men of God,-aged fathers of the invisible church,-who kept up the connection between the present and the past, and looked with longing eyes into the future. Among these, Martin Schneider, of Zauchtenthal, and after him, his grandson, Samuel Schneider, deserve to be mentioned,-both of whom were preachers of righteousness in their families and among their neighbors, and ceased not to exhort to repentance, and to encourage the hope of a resuscitation of the Church of the Brethren. No less dis

tinguished, in this respect, was George Jaeschke, of Sehlen. Born 1624, in the midst of the oppressions of the Anti-Reformation, by which the Unitas Fratrum was overwhelmed, trained up with pious solicitude in the ways of the Lord, and taught to love the principles of evangelical truth, he lived for more than four-score years, from the beginning almost to the end of the period of the Hidden Seed, doing what he could to perpetuate the memory of the fathers, and keep alive their faith. This man had five grandsons, of the family of the Neissers, and a young son, Michael by name, born to him in his extreme old age. In the year 1707, feeling his departure to be at hand, he called his son and grandsons around his bed, laid upon them his blessing, commending Michael to the particular care of the latter; and then, full of faith, which seemed to catch something of the spirit of prophecy, as he drew near the land of sight, declared it to be his firm conviction that the time for a renewal of the Brethren's Church was close at hand; exhorting them not to hesitate to make any sacrifices in view of this event, even if it should be to forsake their homes and native country. And so he died. But, however bright the anticipations of this patriarch were, they seemed destined not to be fulfilled; for when he was no more, and when the Schneiders and other fathers were gone, the meetings for edification which they had held, were gradually given up, or restricted to family worship. The reading of evangelical books, the singing of Brethren's hymns, and

other similar exercises, were, indeed, continued by their descendants, but as meritorious works, in which, together with the rejection of Romish superstitions, they sought the essence of evangelical piety, instead of cultivating repentance, faith and holiness. Humanly speaking, therefore, the Hidden Seed seemed on the point of perishing forever; and the prospect of a resuscitation of the Unitas Fratrum farther off than at any previous period. But this was God's time. Fifteen years after the aged Jaeschke had been gathered to his fathers, his dying anticipations, and the prayer of Comenius before him, uttered on the mountain-top, began to be fulfilled. The days came for the re-planting of the Hidden Seed. The history of the Renewed Brethren's Church opens.

SECTION III.-THE RENEWED CHURCH.

FROM 1722 To 1859.

The renewal of the church was not a work of man, but of God. No well devised plan, no fixed purpose, except to glorify His name, actuated the agents whom He employed. They were led by a way they knew not, step by step, even as the founders of the Ancient Unitas had been, until the work was accomplished, and the old principles rejuvenated by the infusion of new life from the Evangelical Church of Germany, beat with great throbs in a new body ecclesiastic, and were felt in distant countries, and among heathen tribes.

A glance at the preparations made in Germany for