He rejoiced to gather no less than fifty communicants at the first celebration of the Lord's Supper, and to organize them into a church according to the Reformed discipline.

The two elders were the governor and the Company's storekeeper, men of honest report who had served in like functions in churches of the fatherland.

The records of this period are scanty; the very fact of this beginning of a church and the presence of a minister in the colony had faded out of history until restored by the recent discovery of a letter of the forgotten Michaelius.[69:1] The sagacious men in control of the Dutch West India Company were quick to recognize that weakness in their enterprise which in the splendid colonial attempt of the French proved ultimately to be fatal.

Their settlements were almost exclusively devoted to the lucrative trade with the Indians and were not taking root in the soil.

With all its advantages, the Dutch colony could not compete with New England.[70:1] To meet this difficulty an expedient was adopted which was not long in beginning to plague the inventors.