[2] At this time Muhlenberg was influenced by his older friend, Jackson Kemper (1789–1870), who became the first Missionary Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1835.

Its collection (approved in 1826) contained several of Muhlenberg's compositions, including I Would Not Live Alway, Shout the Glad Tidings and Saviour, Who Thy Flock Art Feeding.

The foundations for the building were completed by 1837 and the edifice of pink stone and white marble began to rise on the hill above Long Island Sound.

It was not only the unfortunate financial Panic of 1837 but the party squabbling within the Episcopal Church that prevented Muhlenberg from collecting on the pledges to capitalize and endow St. Paul's.

Without adequate endowment, the state legislature denied Muhlenberg's request for a collegiate charter, which meant that St. Paul's could not legally grant the degree of Bachelor of Arts.

[5] These Episcopalian communities considered literature, the sciences, and moral education equally in order to mold Christian character rather than pursuing academic excellence alone.

[6] Muhlenberg defined character as not only moral goodness, but also the qualities, skills and attitudes favoring effectiveness in the world (for example, to manage a challenging course of study).

A classical scholar familiar with moral goodness in the pagan world, to him the Gospel and Christianity were true and the best education would incorporate them.

Muhlenberg strongly discouraged public comparison of weaker to stronger students, and rarely administered corporal punishment; both distinguished him from most contemporary American educators.

Well-versed in the spread of Christianity during Late Antiquity, he was a missionary among the Mississippi Chippewa in the North Woods of Minnesota and established Muhlenberg-type schools for Ojibwe students.

His application of Christianity to education resembled the aims of Horace Mann (1796–1859) and Thomas Arnold's work at Rugby School beginning in 1828.

Foreshadowing John Dewey, Muhlenberg wrote: "Some great minds are slow in developing, the acorn gives little promise of the oak"[8] and "The head should not be furnished at the expense of the heart.

Stepping back and taking a good philosophical look at what Muhlenberg and company achieved, we can see that they successfully applied Christianity to the 2,500-year-old perennial philosophy of education in the west.

Much emphasis was placed upon educating the “head” while less and less time was given to the other aspects of human nature – the “heart.” The west still suffers from this bias.

Hence while Muhlenberg and his disciples were less sectarian than anyone in their generations, they saw the wisdom of equipping the schools with the doctrines and usages of what we would call the Episcopal "denomination," which they considered very broad and ecumenical.

Muhlenberg's Flushing Institute and St. Paul's College failed due to inability to weather the 1837 financial crisis in the United States.

Henry Augustus Coit (1830–1895), a former student of Muhlenberg and Kerfoot, was the founding rector of St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire (1856).

Muhlenberg consulted with EHS founding headmaster William Nelson Pendleton, and sent acolyte Milo Mahan (who taught at St. Paul's in College Point) at the request of the Bishop of Virginia.

"[citation needed] His position was also similar to Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800–1882), an Oxford professor and a leader of the 19th-century revival movement in the Church of England.

As a youth, Muhlenberg worked to become quite familiar with the Fifteen Sermons and Analogy of Religion of Bishop Joseph Butler (1692–1752).

Trained in Philadelphia by William White and prepared for ordination by Jackson Kemper, he began to call his religion "Evangelical and Catholic" in the late-1840s and published a newspaper of that name in the 1850s.

[citation needed] By "evangelical," Muhlenberg meant personal devotion to Jesus Christ, dedication to the Scriptures as the Word of God, and the responsibility to live and share the Gospel.

Muhlenberg worshiped Christ without sentimentality, believing that Jesus lived in his schools, his parish church, and in St. Luke's Hospital, New York, where he ministered to the sick and dying.

When he created St. Johnland on Long Island late in his life, he would say that the primary study in the educational programs there was "Jesus."

The resolution calling for open-mindedness and the freedom of parish clergy to be responsive to parishioner needs, especially concerning Sunday-morning worship.

[1] Muhlenberg founded the first American order of Protestant Episcopal deaconesses, the Sisterhood of the Church of the Holy Communion, between 1845 and 1852.

He bought 535 acres (217 ha) with 1.5 miles (2.4 km) of shorefront on Long Island Sound near Kings Park as a home for young, crippled children and the elderly.