their entreaties for their speedy return, and promising to settle beside them when they came.  At parting, they presented Uttakiyok with their skin boat and several useful articles, as a recompense for the important, essential, and affectionate services he had rendered them.  On the 4th October they reached Okkak in safety, after an absence of three months and ten days, having performed a voyage of from twelve to thirteen hundred miles.  An account of their expedition was transmitted home,[I] but circumstances prevented the mission from being undertaken for several years.

No very remarkable alteration took place at any of the different stations, during the two succeeding years.  The increase of their number was gradual, and their advance in the Christian course quiet but perceptible; and at Okkak they had the pleasure of readmitting, upon their repentance and acknowledgment of their sin, the members they had been forced to exclude for their misconduct during the past season; and it is not the least among the mercies of God towards the brethren, nor one which ought to be passed over in silence, the benefit which their congregations derive from the kind and judicious, yet firm administration of church discipline; in a majority of instances it answers the ends for which it was instituted—­the brother is gained instead of being driven away to associate with the world, and to nourish a spirit of dislike, if not of hatred, towards those with whom he was formerly in fellowship—­a melancholy consequence when this ordinance of the Saviour is not attended to in the spirit of love.

In 1812, the superintendant, Burghardt, was called to his reward; he had been able to fulfil the duties of his office till within three days of his departure.  He was obliged to take to his bed on the 24th of July, and had appointed the 28th to confer with his brethren on various subjects, but when that day came, he was so much exhausted, that this was found impracticable.  He had done with active service upon earth.  He now lay quiet, in peaceful expectation of the happy moment when his Lord and Master would call him to rest.  About three o’clock in the afternoon, he breathed his last in a most gentle and peaceful manner, in presence of the family gathered around his bed.  “During this transaction,” the missionaries add, in their letter announcing the event, “a powerful feeling of divine peace prevailed among us, and many tears were shed by us who are left behind, to follow the example of this devoted servant of Jesus.  He had attained to the age of seventy nine years.”

His removal brought forward, in a very prominent point of view, the unwearied diligence of the Moravian missionaries, who unite so much active exertion in temporal affairs, with such devotedness to spiritual exercises, and, in a pre-eminently apostolic conduct, exhibit the import of the injunctions, “not slothful in business,”—­“fervent in spirit,”—­“serving the Lord.”  “In consequence of this