THE COLONIAL CHURCH CHRONICLE, AND Missionary Journal. 1862. "Christianity is to be considered as a trust deposited with us in behalf LONDON: RIVINGTONS, WATERLOO PLACE; J. H. & JAS. PARKER, OXFORD; DEIGHTON, BELL & CO., CAMBRIDGE THE COLONIAL CHURCH CHRONICLE AND Missionary Journal. JANUARY, 1862. HISTORICAL NOTICE OF THE OLD SWEDISH MISSION IN NORTH AMERICA. THERE is one chapter of the annals of the Church in North America with which English readers have hitherto been little acquainted-the history of the Swedish Mission to Delaware Bay, founded in 1638. This seems, however, worthy of notice, not only as an instance of missionary effort made by adherents of the Reformation, but as showing that the events of the sixteenth century did not destroy the relations previously subsisting between the English and Swedish Churches. Yet Mr. Anderson's notice' is brief and dry, and even Bishop Wilberforce, in his valuable volume, after saying 2 that "the district of Pennsylvania had been settled... by the Dutch, assisted by some Swedish emigrants," adds, with regrettable inaccuracy, "Here therefore were established the religious rites and usages of the Dutch and Swedish Presbyterian worship." It was in the reign of that knightly king, Gustavus Adolphus, that an attempt was first made to plant a colony of Swedes in America. Usselinx, a Hollander, proposed to Gustavus the idea of a trading company, urging, in addition to material inducements, "that the Christian religion would by that means be planted among the heathen."3 The king warmly took up 1 "Hist. of Ch. of England in Colonies," 1848, II. xvi. He elsewhere mentions that the name of "Bilberge [?], Bishop of Stregnetz in Sweden," occurs in the earliest reports of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among its foreign subscribers. (III. xx.) 2 "Hist. of American Church," 1844, p. 42. 3 Bancroft, "History of United States," vol. ii. ch. xv.; and Clay, "Annals of the Swedes on the Delaware." |