Before closing this chapter and taking up the account of Kunze’s pastorate, let us follow the steps of Frederick Muehlenberg, the former pastor of the Swamp Church.  We recall his unceremonious flight from New York.  We cannot blame him.  The British had threatened to hang him if they caught him.

We remember too that in Pennsylvania he was called upon to take an active part in political affairs.  He was a member of the Continental Congress, also a member of the legislature of Pennsylvania and Speaker of the Assembly.  He was President of the Convention which ratified the Constitution of the United States.

Thirteen years have passed since he left New York.  It is A. D. 1789.  New York was just beginning to recover from the disastrous years of the Revolution during which the British troops occupied the city.  The population had sunk from 20,000 to 10,000 in 1783, but by this time had risen again to 30,000.  The people were getting ready to celebrate the greatest event in the history of the city, the inauguration of the first President of the American Republic.  Preparations were made to honor the occasion with all possible ceremony.  Great men had gathered from all parts of the country.  But to the older members of the Swamp Church there was doubtless no one, not even Washington himself, who stood higher in their esteem and affection than the representative from Pennsylvania, the Reverend Frederick Muehlenberg.  And when a few days later the erstwhile German pastor of the Swamp Church was elected Speaker of the first House of Representatives of the United States of America, none knew better than they that it was only a fitting tribute to the character and abilities of their former pastor.

Kunze’s is one of the great names on the roll of our ministers.  He was a scholar, a teacher, a writer, and an administrator of distinction.  Trained in the best schools of Germany, when he arrived in America in 1770, he at once took high rank among his colleagues in Philadelphia.  Besides his work as a minister he filled the chair of Oriental and German languages in the University of Pennsylvania.

In 1784 he accepted a call to New York.  He did this partly in the hope of establishing a Lutheran professorship in Columbia College.  He accepted a call to the chair of Oriental languages in Columbia.  He was also a regent of the university.

Kunze was not only an able man, he was also a man of deep piety, a qualification not altogether undesirable in a shepherd of souls.  His writings indicate that in his preaching and catechization he strove not to beat the air but to win souls to a personal experience of salvation.

While it is doubtful whether he would find admission to some of the most orthodox synods of our own day; he was comparatively free from the latitudinarian tendencies which had been brought over from Germany during the last quarter of the century.

Along with General Steuben and other influential citizens he founded, the German Society, an association which is still an important agency in the charitable work of this city.