THE STORY OF THE HYMNS AND THEIR WRITERS 289
companions on board the ship in which he sailed to Georgia in 1735, and when the young clergyman was perplexed as to Miss Hopkey he consulted htm. The matter was laid before the elders of the Moravian Church, and Nitschmann was their mouthpiece in advising him to proceed no further in the matter.
The exiles who had been driven out of Salzburg for their Protestant faith, arrived outside Kauffbeyern one December night in 1731, after the gates were shut. Whilst they waited to know whether the townsfolk would admit them, they sang Luther s hymn with great devotion. Orders were soon given for their reception, and some of them had lodgings assigned them in the Protestant inns, whilst many were received into private houses, not without many tears. There were eight hundred of them, and when arrangements had been completed for distributing them in various towns, they attended a service at Trinity Church, which concluded with the hymn " God is our Refuge in distress," which was sung only by themselves. Being dismissed by the citizens with innumerable blessings, they took their several roads in God s name, like so many flocks of sheep, with great patience and humility. The third part of the exiles went to Ulm, singing all the way from the Danube Gate to the Town House, God is our Refuge in dis tress, and He that confides in his Creator. Other exiles followed, and in England .33,000 was raised to help them. General Oglethorpe conducted a party of them to America in November, 1732, and by them the town of Savannah, where John Wesley ministered, was laid out.
Hymn 407. Peace, doubting heart! my God s I am.
CHARLES WESLEY (i).
Hymns and Sacred fci rtis, 1739; Works, i. 135. Headed Isa. xliii. 1-3.
Wesley once nerved the fishermen for a stormy passage from St. Ives to the Scilly Islands by singing with great vigour the verse, When passing through the watery deep.
Just before the Maria mail-boat struck on the reefs near Antigua in February, 1826, little Willy White, one of the mis sionary children on board, gave out, with an emphasis and seriousness which were much noticed, the verse, Though waves and storms go o er my head, and talked to his small companions
U
�� �
