The first three Moravian Missionaries are represented as on their Voyage to Greenland, in the Year 1733-Sketch of the Descent, Establishment, Persecutions, Extinction, and Revival of the Church of the United Brethren from the tenth to the beginning of the eighteenth Century—The Origin of their Missions to the West Indies and to Greenland.
THE moon is watching in the sky; the stars
Are swiftly wheeling on their golden cars;
Ocean outstretcht with infinite expanse,
Serenely slumbers in a glorious trance;
The tide o'er which no troubling spirits breathe,
Reflects a cloudless firmament beneath;
Where, poised as in the centre of a sphere,
A ship above and ship below appear;
A double image, pictured on the deep,
The vessel o'er its shadow seems to sleep;
Yet, like the host of heaven, that never rest,
With evanescent motion to the west,
The pageant glides through loneliness and night,
And leaves behind a rippling wake of light.
Hark! through the calm and silence of the scene,
Slow, solemn, sweet, with many a pause between,
Celestial music swells along the air!
-No!-'tis the evening hymn of praise and prayer
From yonder deck; where, on the stern retired,
Three humble voyagers, with looks inspired,
And hearts enkindled with a holier flame
Than ever lit to empire or to fame,
Devoutly stand:-their choral accents rise
On wings of harmony beyond the skies;
And midst the songs, that Seraph-Minstrels sing,
Day without night, to their immortal King,
These simple strains,-which erst Bohemian hills
Echo'd to pathless woods and desert rills;
Now heard from Shetland's azure bound,—are known
In heaven; and He, who sits upon the throne
In human form, with mediatorial power,
Remembers Calvary, and hails the hour,
When, by the Almighty Father's high decree,
The utmost north to Him shall bow the knee,
And, won by love, an untamed rebel-race
Kiss the victorious Sceptre of his grace.
Then to His eye, whose instant glance pervades
Heaven's heights, Earth's circle, Hell's profoundest shades,
Is there a group more lovely than those three
Night-watching Pilgrims on the lonely sea?
Or to His ear, that gathers in one sound
The voices of adoring worlds around,
Comes there a breath of more delightful praise
Than the faint notes his poor disciples raise,
Ere on the treacherous main they sink to rest,
Secure as leaning on their Master's breast?
They sleep but memory wakes; and dreams array
Night in a lively masquerade of day;
The land they seek, the land they leave behind,
Meet on mid-ocean in the plastic mind:
One brings forsaken home and friends so nigh,
That tears in slumber swell th' unconscious eye;
The other opens, with prophetic view,
Perils, which e'en their fathers never knew,
(Though school'd by suffering, long inured to toil,
Outcasts and exiles from their natal soil;)
-Strange scenes, strange men; untold, untried distress; Pain, hardships, famine, cold, and nakedness,
Diseases; death in every hideous form,
On shore, at sea, by fire, by flood, by storm;
Wild beasts and wilder men ;-unmoved with fear,
Health, comfort, safety, life, they count not dear,
May they but hope a Saviour's love to show,
And warn one spirit from eternal wo;
Nor will they faint; nor can they strive in vain,
Since thus to live is Christ, to die is gain.
'Tis morn :-the bathing moon her lustre shrouds ;
Wide o'er the East impends an arch of clouds,
That spans the ocean;-while the infant dawn
Peeps through the portal o'er the liquid lawn,
That ruffled by an April gale appears,
Between the gloom and splendour of the spheres,
Dark-purple as the moorland-heath, when rain
Hangs in low vapours o'er the autumnal plain :
Till the full Sun, resurgent from the flood,
Looks on the waves, and turns them into blood;
But quickly kindling, as his beams aspire,
The lambent billows play in forms of fire.
-Where is the Vessel?-Shining through the light,
Like the white sea-fowl's horizontal flight,
Yonder she wings, and skims, and cleaves her way
Through refluent foam and iridescent spray.
Lo! on the deck, with patriarchal grace,
Heaven in his bosom opening o'er his face,
Stands CHRISTIAN DAVID ;-venerable name!
Bright in the records of celestial fame,
On earth obscure ;-like some sequester'd star,
That rolls in its Creator's beams afar,
Unseen by man; till telescopic eye,
Sounding the blue abysses of the sky,
Draws forth its hidden beauty into light,
And adds a jewel to the crown of night.
Though hoary with the multitude of years,
Unshorn of strength, between his young compeers,
He towers;-with faith, whose boundless glance can see
Time's shadows brightening through eternity;
Love,-God's own love in his pure breast enshrined;
Love, love to man the magnet of his mind;
Sublimer schemes maturing in his thought
Than ever statesman plann'd or warrior wrought;
While with rejoicing tears, and rapturous sighs,
To heaven ascends their morning sacrifice.
Whence are the pilgrims? whither would they roam?
Greenland their port ;-Moravia was their home.
Sprung from a race of martyrs; men who bore
The cross on many a Golgotha, of yore;
When first Sclavonian tribes the truth received,
And princes at the price of thrones believed;
-When WALDO, flying from th' apostate west,
In German wilds his righteous cause confess'd;
-When WICKLIFFE, like a rescuing Angel, found
The dungeon where the word of God lay bound,
Unloosed its chains, and led it by the hand,
In its own sunshine, through his native land:
-When Huss, the victim of perfidious foes,
To heaven upon a fiery chariot rose;
And ere he vanish'd, with a prophet's breath,
Foretold th' immortal triumphs of his death:
-When ZISKA, burning with fanatic zeal,
Exchanged the Spirit's sword for patriot steel,
And through the heart of Austria's thick array
To Tabor's summit stabb'd resistless way;
But there (as if transfigured on the spot
The world's Redeemer stood) his rage forgot;
Deposed his arms and trophies in the dust,
Wept like a babe, and placed in God his trust,
While prostrate warriors kiss'd the hallow'd ground,
And lay, like slain, in silent ranks around:
-When mild GREGORIUS, in a lowlier field,
As brave a witness, as unwont to yield
AS ZISKA's self, with patient footsteps trod
A path of suffering, like the Son of God,
And nobler palms, by meek endurance won,
Than if his sword had blazed from sun to sun:
Though nature fail'd him on the racking wheel,
He felt the joys which parted spirits feel;
Rapt into bliss from ecstasy of pain,
Imagination wander'd o'er a plain :
Fair in the midst, beneath a morning sky,
A tree its ample branches bore on high,
With fragrant bloom, and fruit delicious hung,
While birds beneath the foliage fed and sung;
All glittering to the sun with diamond dew,
O'er sheep and kine a breezy shade it threw ;
A lovely boy, the child of hope and prayer,
With crook and shepherd's pipe, was watching there;
At hand three venerable forms were seen,
In simple garb, with apostolic mien,
Who mark'd the distant fields convulsed with strife,
-The guardian Cherubs of that Tree of Life;
Not armed like Eden's host, with flaming brands,
Alike to friends and foes they stretch their hands,
In sign of peace, and while Destruction spread
His path with carnage, welcomed all who fled:
-When poor COMENIUS, with his little flock,
Escaped the wolves, and from the boundary rock
Cast o'er Moravian hills a look of wo,
Saw the green vales expand, the waters flow,
And happier years revolving in his mind,
Caught every sound that murmur'd on the wind;
As if his eye could never thence depart,
As if his ear were seated in his heart,
And his full soul would thence a passage break,
To leave the body, for his country's sake;
While on his knees he pour'd the fervent prayer,
That God would make that martyr-land his care,
And nourish in its ravaged soil a root
Of GREGOR's Tree, to bear perennial fruit.1
His prayer was heard:—that Church, through ages past,
Assail'd and rent by persecution's blast;
Whose sons no yoke could crush, no burden tire,
Unawed by dungeons, tortures, sword, and fire,
(Less proof against the world's alluring wiles,
Whose frowns have weaker terrors than its smiles ;)
-That Church o'erthrown, dispersed, unpeopled, dead,
Oft from the dust of ruin raised her head,
And rallying round her feet, as from their graves,
Her exiled orphans, hid in forest-caves;
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