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A Tale
OF THE
KLOSTER
A Romance of the German Mystics
of the Cocalico
_By_ BROTHER JABEZ
_Illustrations by_ FRANK MCKERNAN
_Oh, blessed solitary life,
Where all creation silence keeps!
Who thus himself to God can yield
That he ne'er from him strays,
Hath to the highest goal attained,
And can without vexation live.
Faith, toleration, love, and hope,
These all have come to his support._
--JOHANN CONRAD BEISSEL. Translation
from the German by Julius Friedrich
Sachse, Litt. D.
PHILADELPHIA
Griffith & Rowland Press
1904
COPYRIGHTED 1904 BY
ULYSSES S. KOONS
Published December, 1904
From the Press of the
American Baptist Publication Society
TO THE MEMORY OF
My Mother
THIS STORY OF THE LITTLE BAND
OF BROTHERS AND SISTERS
OF THE KLOSTER
IS LOVINGLY DEDICATED
INTRODUCTION
A great New England historian has said that "The colony of Pennsylvania
was not only more heterogeneous in population than any of the others,
but it actually was the principal center of distribution of the
non-English population from the seaboard to the Allegheny Mountains. All
of the population of the Carolinas, as well as in Virginia and Maryland,
entered the country by way of Pennsylvania, and this migration was so
great, both in its physical dimensions and in the political and social
effects which it wrought, that Pennsylvania acquires a special interest
as the temporary tarrying place and distributing center for so much that
we now call characteristically American."[1]
[1] "Dutch and Quaker Settlements." John Fiske.
It is undoubtedly true that into none of the other colonies did there
flow such a tide of German immigration, bringing with it many a hardy
Swiss and French Huguenot refugee from the Palatinate, along the lower
Rhine.
Up to the Revolution there were more Germans in Pennsylvania than in all
the other colonies together. Benjamin Franklin, it is well known,
feared that the State might become a German province. Among the causes
of this resistless tide of immigration were: Religious zeal, fostered by
the teachings of William Penn and George Fox and their followers, and
Penn's far-sighted pledge of tolerance as to liberty of worship,
sectarian ambition, escape from religious persecution, and bad
government.
Especially were the first-comers inspired by religious zeal, and it was
to this that such old settlements as Bethlehem and Germantown and
Ephrata owe their founding. Later, when the tide rose to a thousand
German immigrants a month, a great majority came with the simple desire
to earn a livelihood in peace and safety--a desire played upon by the
glib-tongued, unscrupulous land agents of that day so successfully, that
shipload after shipload of poverty-stricken German peasantry, enduring
uncomplainingly the sufferings and hardships of hunger, thirst, and
foetid air of the crowded hold and consequent ship-fever, poured into
the port of Philadelphia and immediately took the oath of allegiance.
Quaint and curious names they had, as is evidenced by many an ancient
shipmaster's list--patronymics indicative of trade, occupation,
profession, personal characteristics, nicknames, names that by a slow
but sure process of anglization have lost much of their humor and
flavor, and are now so changed in spelling and sound as hardly to be
recognized in their original form.
But with all the fears of pauperism and disease and racial deterioration
and establishment of inimical foreign institutions, this mass of crude,
uncouth peasantry, with their unpronounceable names, besides bearing the
brunt of Indian depredation and massacre during the French and Indian
wars, became the ancestry of perhaps not less than one-third of the
population of Pennsylvania to-day.
Beneath the unpromising exterior of these peasants were firmly fixed the
virtues that give strength and stability, if not mercurial
brilliancy--piety, industry, patience, thrift, peaceful dispositions,
and intense love of home. The men were homemakers; the women were
homekeepers. Devoted tillers of the soil, politics and business had few
charms for them.
Although in such counties as Bucks, Lehigh, Lancaster, Dauphin,
Northampton, York, Carbon, and Monroe, there are many communities
inhabited almost entirely by Pennsylvania-Germans, still retaining their
peculiar dialect, nevertheless their German church service and German
newspapers are rapidly becoming things of the past.
The present generation of Pennsylvania-Germans is going to the public
schools, normal schools, and colleges, and in other respects is becoming
thoroughly English; for however strongly the more conservative ones may
cling to the old habits and traditions, it is true that ere long
Pennsylvania-German and such things as Pennsylvania-German singing
schools, "Fóstnacht" festivities, "frolics," and "vendues," will be
matters of tradition.
Perhaps no phase of their history is more interesting than that of their
early religious experiences. In no other of the American colonies were
there at such an early date so many altars raised to the various
faiths--orthodox, sectarian, mystic, and separatist, Lutheran, Moravian,
Quaker, Mennonite, Dunker, Seventh Dayer, and New Mooner. But though
differing in creed and tenet, and frequently hurling at each other their
broadsides, as their controversial pamphlets were called, all these
sects were conspicuous for their thrift, industry, and religious
devotion; for though many of their beliefs were extremely mystical and,
showed every vagary of pietism, one great fundamental idea inspired and
possessed these people, namely, to live in the utmost simplicity of
habit, manner and speech, garb and diet, in strict conformity with the
practices of the early church, and as close as possible to their Lord
and Master, to whose service their lives were consecrated. It is because
of this idea conscientiously lived out that this Commonwealth is so
greatly indebted to them.
The author has selected as a type the Kloster at Ephrata (a name
fragrant with biblical suggestiveness), the founder of which, Conrad
Beissel, was a strong, intensely earnest, impetuous religious leader,
who in a few years gathered about him a number of zealous men and women,
some of them of considerable learning. In less than a decade there arose
a semi-monastic community which developed into a religious, educational,
commercial, and industrial settlement that at an early date set up in
that far-away wilderness, many miles distant from the chief city of the
province, the third printing press in the colony, and the first to print
with both German and English type.
The little town, or "mountain borough," of Ephrata lies about eighteen
miles southwest from the flourishing city of Reading and not more than
thirteen miles northeast of Lancaster, with its memory of the
Continental Congress, in the rich, fertile valley of the Cocalico in the
northern part of Lancaster County.
The Ephrata of the present day, numbering possibly three thousand
inhabitants, is situated at the foot of the gentle northwestern slope
of the Ephrata Mountains. A broad main street that easily ascends
toward the southeast leads up close to the "Ephrata Mountain Springs,"
a famous resort in the days before the war of the Rebellion. But
directing one's way in the opposite direction, leaving the little town
with its banks and hotels and industrial establishments, the unfailing
accompaniments of these prosaic, unsentimental days, the wide,
ancient thoroughfare leads northwestward, the business features giving
way to the neat, pleasant, comfortable homes so characteristic of the
Pennsylvania-Germans. The houses, with the peculiar feature of their
gable ends toward the side instead of facing the street, are well set
back in the grassy yards enriched with glorious dahlias in crimson and
gold and ivory white, purple asters, bright geraniums, flaunting
hollyhocks, and all the other well-beloved, old-fashioned favorites,
while from the opulent garden in the rear, most likely a magnificent
sunflower in solitary gorgeousness turns his dark, golden-fringed eye
to his god of fire and light, now and then the whisper of some truant
breeze swaying the stately head of the ardent devotee into a
half-wistful glance out over the dusty road.
But neither these nor the spacious front porch, with its luxurious
trellised vines and the inviting benches before the front door, receive
more than an admiring and half-envious glance, and are left behind as
the road passes over the arches of the old stone bridge that spans the
Cocalico, flowing along the northwestern edge of the town. In the angle
formed by the northern bank of the stream and the southern side of the
turnpike road, but a short distance beyond the point of the angle where
the road leaves the bridge, lie the Kloster grounds, formerly known as
"The Settlement of the Solitary" (_Lager der Einsamen_), but now locally
referred to as "The Kloster," a full and excellent description of which
is contained in "The German Sectarians of Pennsylvania," by Julius
Friedrich Sachse, LITT. D., in which he has, after years of patient
labor given us a most admirable, critical, and legendary history of the
Ephrata Kloster.
Within the confines of this out of the way nook the author has placed
the personages of this romance, which he fondly hopes may be of interest
not only to Pennsylvania-Germans, but to all who delight in a story
which is only a story. Over a century and a half has elapsed since the
Sisterhood and Brotherhood were in the zenith of their little world, and
it were well-nigh impossible to reproduce at this late day with absolute
fidelity such matters as dress, customs, manners and habits, religious
rites and ceremonies; and yet, thanks to the exhaustive investigations
of Mr. Sachse and others, the author has been able to pattern forth in
the warp and woof of this tale more or less distinctly, considerable
that relates to the homely architecture, the cloistral life, worship,
rites, ceremonies, and beliefs of these peculiar but devoted,
plain-living, high-thinking Sisters and Brothers.
To reproduce their speech, even if possible, were of course sadly out of
place at this day; for the German, even of the early settlers, was
represented by such various dialects as Swabian, Würtemberger,
Bavarian, Swiss, Hessian, Palatinate, and others; and though these were
all German dialects, yet since those days there has been such a copious
infusion of English words, that to-day Pennsylvania-German, though "it
is still, in the articulation of its bones and its general form and
spirit, the tongue of the Rhine country,"[2] is none the less neither
German nor English, but "a hybrid, non-descript jargon,"[3] at best an
Americanized dialect of the German, but a dialect able to produce
beautiful flowers in the fields of lyric poetry under the cultivation of
such as Harbaugh, Hark, Zimmerman, Zeigler, Fisher, Grumbine, and
others.
[2] "The Pennsylvania-German Dialect," by Lee L. Grumbine, Esq.
[3] _Ibid._
Pennsylvania-German being a dialect not of the almost universal English
tongue but of the German, and what is especially to the point, a fast
declining dialect with but a small remnant who can speak and understand
it in the vernacular, the author feels not only that he should by
employing this dialect address himself to an exceedingly small audience,
but might, moreover, justly incur the charge of pedantry and
affectation.
Thus while it is true that the greater number of the Sisters and
Brothers of the Kloster were Germans and spoke the mother tongue in
their daily intercourse, yet after all language is only the means of
conveying ideas, thoughts, and these we know have a language understood
by all.
Moreover, this volume is not presented from the standpoint of the
antiquarian or philologist. The Brothers and Sisters of Ephrata, though
celibates, sworn to the love of the celestial Eve and the heavenly
Bridegroom, were none the less flesh and flood, subject to the same
passions and temptations as the men and women of the present day. They
too had "eyes, hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions,"
and were "fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to
the same diseases, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer." In
a word, they were men and women of like passions with ourselves.
It is of such men and women the author writes; men and women unused "to
the courtliness of state, unskilled in the hollowness of vain
compliment, untutored in the frippery and polish of artificial society,
unacquainted with the insincerity and diplomacy of the wider world,
removed from kith and kin and thrown upon their own resources among
strangers and amid new surroundings."[4]
[4] Grumbine.
The author, that he may not be held to have drawn too deeply from his
neighbor's well, fully acknowledges his great indebtedness to his
friend, Mr. Sachse. Indeed, to do exact justice, it must be said that
this volume contains nothing more than a romance wound about the facts,
incidents, traditions, and descriptions, taken by the author from the
"German Sectarians," with the kind permission of Mr. Sachse.
Acknowledgment of indebtedness should also be made to Rev. J. Max Hark
and Hon. Samuel W. Pennypacker, Governor of Pennsylvania, for the use of
translations, portions of which are prefixed to Chapters XV. and XIX. It
should also be added that the initial letters used through the book, as
well as the design on the cover, are made from reproductions of pen-work
drawings executed by the Ephrata Sisterhood.
THE AUTHOR.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. FLIGHT FROM THE WORLD 1
II. "PETER THE HERMIT" 10
III. SONNLEIN 21
IV. WE LEAVE THE HERMITAGE 30
V. EPHRATA 40
VI. CONCERNING TAXATION 51
VII. THE RIGHT PREVAILS 69
VIII. OUR FIRST LOSS 77
IX. A LOVE FEAST 86
X. THE BROTHERHOOD OF ZION 94
XI. BROTHER AGONIUS AND HIS PROPHECY 108
XII. SISTER BERNICE IS COMFORTED 127
XIII. THE COMET AND BROTHER ALBURTUS 135
XIV. OUR SISTER LEAVES US 146
XV. THE GREAT COMET 155
XVI. A FAR JOURNEY 165
XVII. IN A STRANGE LAND 176
XVIII. SONNLEIN COMETH TO MAN'S ESTATE 193
XIX. WHEN HEARTS ARE YOUNG 207
XX. SISTER GENOVEVA IS GONE 223
XXI. BROTHER ALBURTUS 235
XXII. SONNLEIN TAKETH THE ORDEAL 249
XXIII. A MIDNIGHT VISIT 265
XXIV. MINE ENEMY'S HIDING-PLACE 281
XXV. THE END OF THE WITCH 295
XXVI. THE TWAIN ARE MADE ONE 305
XXVII. RETROSPECT 324
CHAPTER I
FLIGHT FROM THE WORLD
Happy the man who has the town escaped;
To him the whistling trees, the murmuring brooks,
The shining pebbles, preach
Virtue's and wisdom's lore.
The whispering grove a holy temple is
To him, where God draws nigher to his soul;
Each verdant sod a shrine,
Whereby he kneels to heaven.
--Ludwig Heinrich Christoph Hölty.
For a clearer understanding of what I have here written in the fond
desire that there may be those who delight in a tale simply told, even
though it be of my brothers and sisters who lived their quiet, peaceful
lives, with now and then, 'tis true, a jarring note, consecrated to
their faith, in the solitude of a new-world wilderness, I must set
forth, without weariness to the reader, I hope, somewhat of the humble
pilgrim whose now old and time-worn hands pen these lines.
I, Johann Peter Müller, son of a reformed minister, under the inspection
of _Kreis Kaiserslautern_, was born in the year 1710, at Altzborn
Oberamt Kaiserslautern in the Palatinate, studied at Heidelberg,
matriculated 1725 at that university and in my twentieth year
volunteered in response to the urgent calls for clergymen from the
province of Pennsylvania.
Leaving my beloved father and mother and _Vaterland_ in the summer of
1730, I floated on a raft down the Rhine to Rotterdam, embarking there
for America on the good ship "Thistle," and after a long, uneventful
voyage arrived at Philadelphia, August 28, 1730, taking the oath of
allegiance the following day, which oath I am proud to say I have always
kept. Almost immediately upon my arrival I applied to the Rev. Jedediah
Andrews, for ordination, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in
Philadelphia.
After asking me a great many questions he advised me to apply to the
synod. This excellent advice was acted upon so promptly that in three
weeks after my arrival the notes of the synod recorded, "It is agreed by
the synod that Mr. John Peter Miller, a Dutch probationer lately come
over, be left to the care of the presbytery of Philadelphia to settle
him in the work of the ministry."
In pursuance of this resolution the presbytery appointed three ministers
to examine me for entrance upon my holy office, and what they required
of me is best shown by a minute of the meeting where I "came under
Tryals and after a previous Test of his ability in Prayer, Examining him
in the Languages, he read his sermon and Exegesis on ye Justification
and Various suitable questions on ye Arts and Sciences, officially
Theology and out of Scripture."
Briefly, the presbytery licensed me as a candidate to preach the gospel
"where Providence may give him opportunity and call," and for four years
after my ordination to the ministry I preached the word, during which
period I received much assistance from Conrad Weiser, one of my church
officers, who for years was consulted by both the civil and military
authorities in times of need and danger, he being an efficient Indian
interpreter to the government.
I officiated among my countrymen in Philadelphia and Germantown, and in
the Skippack Valley, besides visiting the more widely scattered
congregation in the province. I was also called upon to take regular
charge of the Tulpehocken Church, together with the Union Congregation
of the Lutheran and Reformed which had been formed by the Germans living
in the valley of the Cocalico and the Bucherthal. This region was
almost wholly settled by those of the Lutheran and Reformed faiths, the
circuit being known as the Canestoga congregation. Ere long a church for
the United Congregation was built about six miles northeast of Ephrata
on a commanding hill beyond the Bucherthal, the Moden Crik (Muddy Creek)
Church.
Having preached to mine own people for several years, I quit the
ministry and returned to private life, not, however, without much prayer
and meditation; for about that time the Ephrata community was in its
infancy. I had never had much inclination to join it, because of the
reproach and contempt which lay against the community by the orthodox
churches of the province; but my inward conductor brought me to that
dilemma, either to be a member of this new institution or consent to my
own damnation. I chose the first, and received baptism into the
congregation in May of 1735, together with Conrad Weiser and a number of
families from the Union Church. We were baptized by Conrad Beissel,
whose inspired eloquence had finally prevailed upon me to take this
step.
I did not much differ from a poor criminal under sentence of death when
I was led into the water. However, the Lord our God did strengthen me
when I came into the water, and then I in a solemn manner renounced my
life with all its prerogatives, without reservation, and I have found,
in all my long life, that all this was put into the divine records, for
he hath never failed to assist me in times of need, and these have been
many.
But much wrath and indignation was engendered against us by our baptism.
We were called "seceders," "rebels," "Beisselianer"; others said we had
been deluded by the witchcraft and sorcery of Beissel; still others said
that our conversion was the work of the Evil One; others were for
bringing civil action against us; but in all the noise and smoke of this
great tumult, Brother Weiser successfully prevented any charges being
brought against us. Pastor Boehm, my old Skippack rival, hath kindly
said of me in this matter in his report to the Amsterdam Synod: "This
Miller at the same time drew the Tulpehocken church to himself, against
whose false spirit I frequently warned them; but they continued to
adhere to him like misguided, silly people. Finally, the fraud against
which I warned them so honestly and continuously has come to light, and
this Miller publicly went over to the dissolute Seventh-day Tumpler
sect, and had himself baptized Tumplerwise in the Canestoka, in the
month of April, 1735. He took out ten families, Reformed and Lutheran,
from the Tulpehocken congregation, who did as he did."
May the Lord forgive him for his narrow sneer as I have long ago, for it
hath ever been my rule not to bear spite or malice, no matter how
grievous the injury, knowing full well that what the Roman philosopher
hath said is true, and that is, "Malice drinks one-half of its own
poison."
Brother Weiser, I regret to say, did not possess himself of the same
spirit; but on the contrary always resented every insult, and it is
still current among us that shortly after he left the Kloster in later
years to accept a justice's commission offered him by Governor Thomas,
our Brother Weiser, while riding the road to Reading, met the Reformed
pastor of the Cocalico, on his nag. Brother Weiser, foolishly forgetting
the spirit of humility of the Kloster, cried out to the pastor that he
surely must think himself above his Lord whom he professed to serve.
Asked for an explanation, Brother Weiser replied that where an ass was
good enough for the Saviour it should be good enough for his followers,
to which came the quick rejoinder that this was perfectly true, but as
Governor Thomas had appointed all the asses as justices, people were
forced to ride upon horses.
Within two days after our baptism, and in order that we might cut
ourselves entirely loose from our former mode of life and thought, we
determined that all books which were now considered _libri heretici_,
such as the Heidelberg Catechism, Luther's Catechism, the Psalter, and
Arndt's "_Paradies Gärtlein_," should be utterly consumed by fire. In
short, all devotional literature of the old faith not in accord with
our new departure, we gathered from the various families that had been
converted, and not a few from mine own little library, and upon the
appointed day Brother Weiser and the converts and myself assembled at
the little cabin of Brother Fiedler, and there solemnly condemned the
pernicious volumes to be burned.
The "_Paradies Gärtlein_," however, had a peculiar sanctity attached to
it by the German settlers; for it was firmly believed that it was
protected by Divine interposition from both fire and flood. I had heard,
even in my boyhood days, many a story of the miraculous preservation of
this book. Some present objected to its being included, for surely the
Lord would save it. Others, as ardent in their new faith as they had
been in the old, no more honored the book as sacred, but were now firmly
convinced that as its immunity hitherto had been from the Evil One, the
greater the reason it must be destroyed with the others.
The brush heap was accordingly prepared in front of Brother Fiedler's
cabin. Each of the participants gathered up an armful of the doomed
volumes, and at the word filed out of the little doorway headed by
myself, followed by the schoolmaster. Arriving at the brush heap it was
soon set afire, and the various books were solemnly consigned to the
flames by Brother Weiser and the schoolmaster and others, with the
solemn invocation "Thus perish all priestcraft!" Afterward the ashes
were scattered to the four winds, and we departed feeling that we had
thus cut ourselves off from the faith of our forefathers and had this
day taken a step pregnant with glorious promise for the future.
It was said the next day, and I firmly believe this was an invention of
our enemies, that one of Brother Fiedler's family found among the now
cold ashes the little "_Paradies Gärtlein_," a trifle charred on the
edges, the leather cover shriveled and blackened, the clasps almost
burned to a crisp, but the leaves still holding together, and not a page
of the print in the slightest impaired. Its preservation soon became
noised abroad, and was greatly used as an argument against us by those
who opposed our step. As for me, despite the many foolish and malicious
charges that have been made against my soundness of mind for taking part
in this thing (which I defend on the ground of necessity and possibly
due somewhat to youthful zeal) I never believed that the book had been
saved but for the reason that when it was thrown into the pyre it was
tightly clasped and by chance fell to one side of the flames, and as I
have often noted paper tightly pressed together yields but grudgingly to
the flames. Many good people, however, believed the miracle story and
feared extreme punishment for condemning such a sacred volume to
destruction, and the demand became so great for the book that an edition
was later printed by Christopher Sauer, of Germantown; but strange to
say not one of his great output was able to withstand either fire or
flood when it came into contact with these elements.