Bethlehem Diary - November 6, 1763
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[Symbol for Sunday] November 6
The Gemeine sang the hymn Holy Trinity to open today’s Gemeintag [Congregation day] and then heard, in addition to the regular sermons, reports read aloud from Greenland [and] Livonia, and a diary in various sections from Bethabara and Bethania on the Wachovia Tract, [covering] April 5 through the end of September of this year.
Br. Nathanael went to Nain in the afternoon, to make the brothers and sisters there familiar with the intentions of the Government, in which they are to willingly surrender themselves as befits a people of God and afterwards deliver their guns to the specified persons, according to official order.
In the gathering of the Abendmahls Geschwister [communicant brothers and sisters], the daily Congregation Day reading, Cap. Sc. 27th Ψ,* which in view of the present circumstances was very remarkable and as if selected, was read, with chorales intermixed, by Br. Peter, and then the coming emigration of our Indian Brethren was mentioned and a movement of the heart shared by all.
In the Congregation Hour, Br. Nathan spoke with particular force about the Daily Text: In God I will praise his word, in God I have put my trust; I will not fear what flesh can do unto me, ** and closed his sermon with a moving prayer on his knees for this land in particular, upon which the Gemeine shared the Kiss of Peace while chanting the Blessing of the Church.
* Greek letter psi. According to the 1763 Text Book, on the Congregation Day closest in date to November 6, the scheduled reading was Psalms 27. In all likelihood, this notation thus translates as Chapter 27, Psalms.
** Psalms, 56:4. English translation taken from the King James Version.
Transcription and translation by Katherine Carté Engel
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