Page:A memoir of Lewis David von Schweinitz.djvu/15

6 globe, and sent out about 1000 individuals to proclaim his doctrines, he finally died at Herrnhut in 1760, where we are informed, his obsequies were attended by 2000 of his followers, and his body borne to the grave by 32 of those messengers of his faith who were at the time assembled there from Holland, England, Ireland, Greenland and North America.

The contemplation of this example, of a man who was at once the ancestor of his family and the father of his denomination, with that of other distinguished progenitors, early impressed the imagination of the youthful Schweinitz with an ambition for a career of similar activity, and gave the first impulse towards the acquisition of literary and scientific eminence.

The society of those friends with whom the early years of his childhood were spent, was calculated to inspire him with the same affections and views which had operated on his ancestors for two generations. His mind was here imbued with those principles, which, at a later period, shone forth in the purity and simplicity of his manly character.

Endowed with powers of conception of no ordinary cast, he gave early indications of his bias for intellectual pursuits, and by his assiduity more than compensated for any deficiency in the means of improvement then within his reach. The clear and explicit manner in which his juvenile ideas were expressed, encouraged his fond parents to indulge the hope, that he would one day become an active instrument for advancing the cause to which themselves and their predecessors had been so