USA > Pennsylvania > Lehigh County > Bethlehem > A history of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 1741-1892, with some account of its founders and their early activity in America > Part 13
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the other hand. Subsequently it was decided to have stated meetings of the Synod and to hold quarterly conferences of the ministers con- nected with it, at Philadelphia, Bethlehem, Conestoga or elsewhere in the country.
Zinzendorf's personal connection with these conferences began with undergoing a general inquisition at the first one, on the part of the different sectarians assembled, who had come prepared to make him a target. He had gone down among them as one of them, on their level, and had to submit to the decidedly democratic and, in some cases, insolent liberties they took with him. He proved himself equal to the situation, however. Some left full of spleen, and took refuge in shooting at him from a comfortable distance through Saur's print- ing-press and furnishing new ammunition to his enemies in Europe. Others were won, or learned regard, and at the second conference he was unanimously chosen Syndic or Moderator. He presided in this capacity at the remaining sessions, relieved occasionally by Antes, who had opened the first conference and presided at it, or by some one else. When the indistinctness of his position to the minds of so many was distorted to his prejudice, he insisted upon the basis he claimed when he came to Pennsylvania, and plainly declared that he assumed the moderatorship at those conferences, "not in the char- acter of a special, free servant of God as Mr. Whitefield had labored," but in the capacity of a Lutheran minister. He declared his convic- tion that his own religion, in which he was reared, was the best ground on which to stand in appealing to sects and schismatics in those assemblies, and stated that he "needed no theology for that position other than that to be found in Luther's smaller catechism." In conducting the proceedings he secured agreement at the outset to an extraordinary measure which was subsequently more reviled than any other feature by those who first acquiesced in it and then, when they found it restraining their fanatical turbulence or aggressive contentiousness, "forsook the conference to go out and write pas- quils." This measure was to regularly submit to the lot the ques- tion of introducing any new matter that any one might wish to bring forward, orally or in writing. This, it was thought, could more grace- fully be accepted, if it should rule out anything, than a general regu- lation limiting subjects, or a vote on each special case, or a decision from the chair; and in this way no previous inquiry into the nature or purpose of the communication or proposition in question was needed, in order to decide whether to admit or reject it. It was
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intended, under the peculiar circumstances, to control the propensity to thrust in irrelevant, unprofitable or controversial themes, and to do this in a manner that might be taken as Providential overruling, without the risk or restricting liberty or quenching the spirit by an exercise of human will or judgment. Zinzendorf set the example of rigidly applying this method to whatever he thought of introducing or proposing, and, as he afterwards stated, usually had some person inimical to him draw the lot in his case.7
A beginning was made with organizing congregations for the sev- eral religions under this Pennsylvania Synod; for the Lutherans, that in Philadelphia, as reconstructed by Zinzendorf, and several in the country ; for the Reformed, who would adopt the Synod of Berne in preference to Boehm's Amsterdam cult, that in Germantown, as reconstructed after Bechtel's ordination, and one in the country. Zinzendorf became inspector of the Lutheran department and Bech- tel of the Reformed department of the Synod's work. The state- ment that Zinzendorf came to Pennsylvania claiming the
7 This arrangement, which Zinzendorf himself later referred to as adopted for an extraor- dinary situation, and not advisable under normal conditions, has been mentioned by some historians as introduced in accordance with Moravian custom. No such method has ever been in vogue in conducting Moravian synods or conferences. Apart from this extreme application of it, the use of the lot was not an entirely new and strange thing among the people who were there assembled, and all agreed to the plan at first. Zinzendorf even inti- mated in one of his later references to it, that the original proposition to pursue this course did not emanate from him. It was far more common in former times than now, among Germans and some others, to use the lot in various ways, in making selections, decid- ing questions or seeking guidance in perplexity; or to employ methods akin to it, such as drawing names, numbers or questions, yes or no, drawing, in connection with many a matter, from an assortment of Scripture texts, opening the Bible at random for a suggestive passage, etc. Those who think of the employment of the lot as an exclusively Moravian practice in times past, lack proper information. Moravians became conspicuous before the world in this particular be- because all their doings were so much advertised in print-books were not written about other people who used the lot privately or collectively-and because what gradually became, among them an uncommonly prevalent practice, through example of Zinzendorf, who from his youth privately followed this custom to an inordinate degree, was, after his death, officially estab- lished and reduced to system, as a process of governmental machinery; applied, from the control of the whole down to congregations and individuals, in a variety of ways which, even in those times, many in the Church did not favor. In this only, and not in the optional use of the lot by people privately or officially, individually or jointly, did the Moravian Church stand unique, so long as this was maintained, and present a singular ecclesiastical experiment. Less than twenty years after the establishment of this official lot regime, oppo- sition was so strong that the General Synod (1782) was constrained to begin modifying it. Successive further modifications followed at intervals, gradually reducing the range of things to which it was applied, until at last for many years these were very limited, and finally the use
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position of General Inspector of all the Lutheran congrega- tions in the Province is erroneous and misleading; as is also the representation that he thus broadly installed Bechtel in similar charge of all the Reformed congregations and called upon Boehm to subordinate himself to Bechtel. All that was done in this respect must be understood to apply merely to those that were willing to come under the Synod and adopt its principles. These organizations were of course ephemeral. The subsequent collapse of the scheme in consequence of the increasing assaults from without and elements of weakness and impracticability within ; and the final waking up of the respective European authorities of these religions to the neces- sity of doing something substantial for their people in Pennsylvania, caused the permanent ecclesiastical development to take strictly denominational form. Thus, in its defeat, Zinzendorf's plan indirectly expedited the performance of the important duty they had neglected. He later said: "All the priests and levites in Europe were deaf to
of the lot disappeared entirely from the system of government. Its application for many years to marriages in the Exclusive Church Settlements and in the case of persons officially serving as ministers and missionaries, arose under an overwrought system devised to carry out lofty ideals of a completely consecrated associate and individual life, under Christ the Head; and of complete subjection to Divine guidance, believed to be given in every matter in response to simple faith and to be ascertained in this manner. This particu- lar application of the lot, after many years of growing dissent, was relaxed in 1818. After that, it was unknown in the American Church Settlements, and, in the course of the follow - ing years, ceased elsewhere. It was retained longest in connection with persons called to serve in the foreign mission field. Much popular misconception has prevailed in reference to this whole lot system, through lack of acquaintance with the principles and methods. Space cannot be taken here to explain these, beyond mentioning the extremely important fundamental principle of the system, that no official use of the lot by a board, involving a call, or proposition to any persons, ever bound the persons in question without their previous knowledge and consent. It bound the board, if affirmative, to extend the call or make the proposition, but not the person to acquiesce, except by previous understanding. The force of this principle in the matter of appointments to service and in the yet more important matter of marriages, is obvious. That persons were mated together for marriage by a board using the lot in connecting one's name with that of another, without their concurrence, in a kind of lottery, is a preposterous supposition. In view of the absurd representations and the fictions that have been circulated and believed about these matters, these explanations, which would be necessary somewhere in these pages, are here inserted once for all. It may be added, that in 1889, after the official use of the lot had for many years been restricted simply to the confirmation of certain particular elections and appointments, the General Synod of the Moravian Church abolished this remaining vestige and expunged all reference to the lot from its digest of principles and enactments, so that it was then obsolete in every particular.
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the cry of the Pennsylvania sufferer until their grudge against the Samaritan [himself] unstopped their ears."
The Synod also came into touch with the work among the heathen which had been started by the Brethren in the West Indies, in Ber- bice, South America, and among the North American Indians. All of this work was to be fostered and supplied from Pennsylvania, as one of the departments of activity in which all elements of the Synod co-operated. This was the particular, but not exclusive, sphere of labor had in view for the Moravian Brethren. The West India work was personally represented at the last three general conferences by the missionaries George and Maria Elizabeth Weber and Gottlieb Israel, who arrived in Pennsylvania from St. Thomas just before Bishop Nitschmann sailed to visit that mission, and they remained until after his return.
At the third conference-that in Oley-two of three deacons ordained "priests" (presbyters), Gottlob Buettner and Christian Henry Rauch-the third was Pyrlaeus-were had in view especially for missionary service among the Indians, in which Rauch had made a noble beginning in the Province of New York; and on that occasion his first three Indian converts, Shabash, Seim or Otabawane- men, and Kiop or Kiak, were baptized in John de Turck's barn, and named Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, as patriarchs of the Indian church, and in token of belief in the descent of the aborigines of America from the lost tribes of Israel.
Another department of activity instituted was school work for the hosts of neglected children. At the fourth conference it was decided to invite parents in the different townships, concerned for the wel- fare of their children, to meet for consultation, April 17, at the house of John Bechtel, in Germantown. Zinzendorf published this in the Manatawny neighborhood when he preached there, April I, and Bech- tel issued a printed circular, April 3. The appointed day was that just before the opening of the fifth conference. A few came from town, but none from the country, except such as were members of the Synod. In some quarters, poverty too great to provide suitable clothing for the children; in other quarters, callousness and general apathy in such matters ; in yet others, the warnings sounded by those who would save the children from the peril of falling into the hands of the "Herrnhuters," worked together among the country folk as impediments to this well-meant and greatly needed effort. A school was opened, however, on May 4 in the Ashmead house in German-
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town, with twenty-five girls in attendance, as a beginning. It com- bined instruction in reading and writing, manual employment in various ways, and religious instruction; with, of course, the spiritual good of the children as the chief object. Thus Moravian school work in Pennsylvania had its beginning. This first attempt was made by Zinzendorf's daughter, the Countess Benigna, with Magdalena Miller -later married to the missionary John William Zander-and Anna Desmond-later the wife of the missionary John Hagen-as her assistants. Three men, Anton Seiffert, Zander and George Neisser were also connected with the enterprise in one way or another. This school was transferred to Bethlehem.on June 28 and became the nucleus of the first school for girls there. At the sixth conference it was decided that another circular should be issued. This was done by Bechtel on June 5, inviting parents to another conference on the subject to be held at Bethlehem, June 24-25. It was accompanied by an official request from Zinzendorf to the justices in all the town- ships, to bring the invitation to the notice of all the most sensible Germans known to them in their respective jurisdictions.
When the seventh conference opened in the house of Edward Evans in Philadelphia, an unusually large number of persons appeared, not only because it was the last such gathering for a sea- son, but because something out of the ordinary was expected. In the opening session Zinzendorf formally announced the arrival, on June 7 at Philadelphia, of the Bethlehem colonists who were anxiously awaited. This large accession to the settlement in the Forks of the Delaware, to the preparation for which allusion has been made sev- eral times in these pages, and which figured so prominently in con- nection with the regular organization of Bethlehem and the develop- ment of its first religious and industrial activities, calls for more notice at this juncture than an abrupt introduction upon its arrival in Philadelphia. It was the fifth and largest of successive companies, up to that time sent to other countries from Germany by the Breth- ren, in pursuance of the colonization policy inaugurated by Zinzen- dorf in 1734. The general purpose was, in view of their uncertain situation in Saxony, as stated in a previous chapter, to provide for the Moravian immigrants-for they preferred colonization to disper- sion; and to further his evangelistic plans by a method that would establish new centers to work out from, where there seemed to be a field, and where favorable terms were offered by governments, or could be secured. There is an interesting connection between these
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successive colonies in that they all contributed eventually to the per- sonnel of Bethlehem at its regular organization.
The first was that to the Island of St. Croix in 1734. The second was one to the Duchy of Holstein, the same year-abandoned in 1736, on account of ecclesiastical and political difficulties, and trans- ferred in 1737 to the royal division of Holstein, where conditions seemed more favorable, and some of the first colonists, with others, founded Pilgerruh. The third was that to Georgia in 1735. The fourth was one to Holland, where, in the Barony of Ysselstein, the short-lived settlement of Heerendyk was established in 1736; some of the first company sent to Holstein furnishing part of the nucleus. Pilgerruh did not flourish, for some of the colonists were unsuitable persons, and complications in the matter of terms and conditions again appeared. An attempt to get the work properly established by recruits of reliable people on new terms in 1740 came to naught, and Pilgerruh was abandoned. Some of the new colonists destined for that place, with certain of the previous Holstein settlers, were then chosen for the Pennsylvania colony which was to join the rem- nant from Georgia, and the others who had followed them to Penn- sylvania, in establishing the first American center. Their number was to be augmented by selected persons from Germany and Switzer- land, and finally by a few from England. Thus the company was gradually formed.
It was to consist mainly of young married couples and of single men ; and various professions, handicrafts and lines of experience in practical life were to be represented. Especially were they to be people of well-tested Christian character and of spiritual enthusiasm, who would be not only a salt among the people where they located, but all available, in some way, in the propagation of the gospel-dis- tinctly understood to be the main purpose for which the settlement was founded. The final selection of these colonists was completed in December, 1741. The rallying-place from which they started-at that time the most notable center of the Brethren in Europe-was Herrnhaag, a settlement in the Wetterau, in south-western Germany, founded in 1738 and abandoned at a perilous internal and external crisis in 1750. The name recalls a noble beginning, inspiring but then melancholy associations and a tragic end, opening and closing an epoch of unhealthy exuberance, when the Church let extravagant tendencies run to excess and gave its detractors a perpetual theme. They left Herrnhaag, December 19, 1741, and proceeded to Marien-
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born, a neighboring old castle-originally a convent-in possession of the Church under lease, and for a number of years an important seat of activity. There they were joined by another contingent and had final interviews with the responsible heads, with the Countess Zinzendorf and with Spangenberg, who had been making arrange- ments in England for their voyage and had hastened over to Ger- many to give them important directions. He returned to England in advance of them. The whole company set out from Marienborn, December 20, for Holland.
There were twenty-two married people-twelve men and ten women-and nineteen single men. Two of the latter only accom- panied them to the sea-board. They traveled in seven bands, each having its leader and constituting a mess in fare and quarters. Their first considerable halt was at the settlement Heerendyk, in Holland, where the last squad arrived, January 4, and the future Superintendent of the single men, who had come another way, joined them. From there they started two days later for Rotterdam, where on February 9 they boarded the English sloop, the Samuel and James, which, after a tedious and uncomfortable sail, landed them at London on Satur- day morning, February 24. English friends escorted them to their lodgings in Little Wild Street, where they were quartered in groups of six and seven, in several adjacent houses.
On February 26, at a memorable meeting in the Moravian chapel in Fetter Lane, presided over by Spangenberg, at which about three hundred persons were assembled, the colony was temporarily organ- ized for the voyage under the name Seegemeine-Sea Congregation, or Ship Congregation or Ocean Church. Peter Boehler, who had been doing important work in England since he left America a year before, and had shortly before this been married and appointed with his wife, an English woman, Elizabeth Hopson, to accompany this colony to Pennsylvania, now joined them, with six married couples and four single men from England. George Piesch, a son-in-law of Father Nitschmann of Bethlehem, and one of the three men sent to Suri- nam in 1735, who had latterly been one of Spangenberg's chief assist- ants in England, was called to be their general conductor on the voyage. The colony, thus completed, consisted of fifty-six persons, besides Piesch-sixteen married couples, two married men without their wives, and twenty-two single men. Under the special organi- zation, as an ocean church, Boehler was chaplain, with two assistants in spiritual oversight among the married people, and one for the
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single men; while his wife was the general spiritual counselor for the women. His chief assistant was the Rev. Paul Daniel Bryzelius, a Swede, and a theological graduate of the University of Upsala, who had entered into connection with the Brethren, and was selected to labor in the Lutheran department of their American work. He was an unstable man who later forsook them, when the Lutheran Church was regularly organized in Pennsylvania, and eventually went over to the Anglican Church. Other offices to which various persons were appointed for the voyage were those of general monitor, to watch over the observance of regulations, both among the married people and the single men; steward and general dispenser ; nurses and cook. Prayer-bands were also formed to maintain the custom of "hourly intercession" day and night, which was instituted at Herrn- hut in 1727, after the manner of the Acoemetae-the praying watchers of the fifth century, mentioned in the letters of Theodoret.
At the conclusion of that memorable meeting of February 268 Spangenberg drew attention to the watchword for that day, in the collection of daily texts, and based an impressive closing address on it. The passage was from Esther 4:16, "If I perish, I perish." In addition to the common hazards of ocean travel, which were then greater than in modern times, peculiar perils awaited them, because the Atlantic was infested with privateers, by which Spain and France were harrassing England in those times of war. Many of these crews were made up of pirates, hardened in all cruelties and vil- lainies. The colony, moreover, was going to sail, not under convoy, but alone and without any defenses on board.
Their ship was an English vessel of the build and rig known as a "snow" or "snaw," and was called the Catherine.º She had been pur- chased for £600 and specially fitted up to transport this colony. Cap-
8 Some writers give February 27 as the date of this organization of the Sea Congregation. This is an error.
9 The Catherine was registered in the name of George Stonehouse of Buttermeer, in the County of Wilts, formerly Vicar of Islington, for a time in association with the Brethren, and an officer of the Society for the Furtherance of the Gospel, founded by them in 1741. He was a man of property, and his wife, who became a regular member of the Moravian Church, and rendered it valuable service, was possessed of large means. She furnished the money to purchase the vessel At Philadelphia the Catherine was sold by Samuel Powell, agent, under power of attorney from Stonehouse to Boehler. The subsequent fate of this snow is not known. Out of the proceeds of the sale, the Society for the Furtherance of the Gospel, organized in Pennsylvania by Spangenberg in 1745, received £300, in accordance with provision in the letter of instruction sent to Boehler by Stonehouse.
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tain Thomas Gladman, a man of much experience and adventure on the sea, who had been in the employ of George Whitefield and had navigated his sloop which conveyed Boehler and the last Georgia colonists from Savannah to Pennsylvania in 1740, and at this time was intimately associated with the Brethren in England, took com- mand of the vessel, with a mate, a boatswain and six sailors.
On Friday, March 16, the vessel left the dock and slowly moved down the Thames. She lay at Gravesend over Sunday. Spangen- berg and his wife, who had accompanied the colonists that far, took final leave of them on Monday morning, March 19, and then the Catherine, with her ocean church and its conductor-fifty-seven breth- ren and sisters-together with the captain and crew, sixty-six souls, on board, sailed off into the channel. Passing out of sight of land finally on March 23, she was headed nearly southward, as it was deemed advisable to take a far southerly course. April 7, they reached the Island of Madeira and put into the harbor of Funchal. The novel sight of tropical verdure was enjoyed; a cloister, contain- ing a shrine constructed of skulls and bones, was visited by some who went ashore, and the state of the ignorant people under the rule of the Padres was deplored; various articles of provision were taken aboard; empty water casks were filled; and on April 10, in the midst of great excitement and tumult in the harbor, caused by the approach of two suspicious looking large vessels which at first refused to be interrogated from the English men-of-war there lying, the little Catherine, unobserved by any, in the hubbub, lifted anchor, set sail and quietly proceeded on her way. Several severe storms were weathered and imminent peril from privateers was more than once encountered, but the hand that rules the wind and waves, and foils the designs of men, when those in question have a further destiny to fulfill, was held over the light and defenseless bark, and no evil befell her.
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