USA > Pennsylvania > Lancaster County > Ephrata > Souvenir book of the Ephrata cloister; complete history from its settlement in 1728 to the present time. Included is the organization of Ephrata borough connected with the cloister > Part 7
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Their schools, seminaries and love for art, music and care for the aged are most praiseworthy.
The Brethren with their close communion, their lovefeast, feet-washing and holy kiss, have colleges and publishing houses and number among them some of the intellectual giants of the present day.
The Mennonites, who were originally followers of Menno Simon, an ex- priest from Holland, had a conscientious, able, and fearless leader and they have colleges and publishing houses. Their faith spread in Europe un- til Wm. Penn in 1683 invited the Mennonites to Penn's woodland, Pennsyl- vania, and to-day we find them in nearly every state, with 18 conferences and numerous organized missions.
The Amish, an offspring of the Mennonites, a little more severe in the garb proposition, a branch of the orthodox Amish tolerating no houses of worship, whilst the church Amish have church buildings for worship. Yet their articles of faith and creed include the Triune God, baptism by pour- ing, self denial, bishops, elders, etc., by lot; the bread and wine as sym- bols; feet-washing; sisters devotional covering, I Cor. 11, 2 to 16; anointing with oil, Jas. 5:14, etc .; holy kiss, I Peter 5:14; marriage only in the Lord, I Cor. 7:39; divorce contrary to the Spirit, Matt. 19:5 to 9; non-conformity in dress, in association, in business or politics, Rom. 12:2; no oaths, secret orders, or life insurance, Matt. 5, 33 to 44, II Cor. 6:14, Jere 49:11; obsti- nate sinners to be expelled, I Cor. 5:13; obedience to magistrates within
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gospel limits, Rom. 13:1 to 7; churches to evangelize, Matt. 28, 19 and 20; a final judgment, eternal reward and punishment, II Cor. 5:10, Matt. 25:46; unaccountable children will be saved, Mark 10:14; no open communion, pay taxes, but indulge in no political conspiracies, nor hold public office, and bring Christ into disrepute; no revenge on any be they English, German, French or Japanese, etc., nor any human nor even brutes; the right to flee' from wrong accusers and rather than build battleships, feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, shelter the homeless, visit the sick, care for the indigent.
They countenance no partnership with Satan, no suing in court, only when forced there by self defense, preaching ex-communication, believing in an evolution of the mind, educating the heart, all being astray sheep who must be redeemed, they practice no infant baptism, admit of figurative cir- cumcision but tolerate no whites and blacks to intermarry, non-believer and believers not to intermarry, II Cor. 6:14, I Cor. 7:38; practice non-resist- ance, Matt. 5:33 to 37; Matt. 26:51 to '2; Luke 9:51 to 57; II Cor. 10:4; Rom. 12:19 to 21, and the commandment "Thou shalt not kill !"
They are opposed to salaried ministers, Isa. 55:1, Matt. 10:8, I Peter 5:2; weakening the spirituality of the church, I Cor. 9:19, etc .; commercial- ize high calling, II Peter 2:3; and a hindrance to preaching the truth, II Tim 4:2-4.
They advise members who marry a companion who belongs to a church not of non-resistant faith and a member of lodges to receive definite teach- ing and in case of transgression inform them of their error, if possible lead them to repentance and if they make no amends deal with them as II Thess. 3:6.
According to Matt. 5:40 and I Cor. 6:1 to 8 they deem it unscriptural to take aggressive part in lawsuits.
A brother being elected to the legislature and their congregation sup- porting his election shows the ministers to have failed and all should be dealt with according to the spirit of the gospel as in Gal. 6:1.
Since to the powers of the world are delegated the use of force and carnal weapons and fobridden to the children of God these sectarians, or a majority thereof, deem it inconsistent with the teaching of God's word for our brethren to hold office in the legislature and any one being a candidate for such office should be instructed to withdraw his candidacy.
If a brother and sister neglected to commune for a number of years they should be duly and prayerfully admonished and instructed and if they refuse should not be considered members. According to II Cor. 10:45, and our faith we should teach the evils of wars and their results. But to ex- emplify this doctrine guard well the tongue and do not abuse your Christian liberty by appealing to law for protection of life and property. Family reunions are frowned upon unless in a Godly way and manner conducted.
The Amish say that inasmuch as our forefathers in Europe suffered because of non-resistance principles we came to America on the promise of liberty of conscience and religious freedom and inasmuch as we to-day hold sacred the same principles and are conscientious in that matter that we cannot engage in war in any form. Our opposition to war is not founded on cowardice or disloyalty to our government but on the conviction that the gospel of Christ is a gospel of peace, I Tim. 2:1, 2. Lead a quiet, peaceful . life, good and acceptable in the sight of the Savior.
1. To the ministry: that they be ensamples of the flock, that they preach, teach and exemplify, reprove, rebuke and exhort with all long- suffering and doctrine (II Tim. 4:3-4) and, where needed, to discipline in the spirit of love and meekness; that in the line of dress they wear the regulation plain coat and avoid all outward ornamentation, that they en- courage the plain coat and modest apparel with no uncertain sound.
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2. To the brethren: that they submit themselves to the Word of God and to them that watch for their souls as they that must give account. The fashionable neckties, ornamental chains, studs, rings or other jewelry, not in harmony with the aforesaid scriptures, and are to be refrained, as well as all other changing follies, fashions in attire, cutting and combing the hair to the latest styles, etc.
To the sisters: that they read the above Scriptures in the fear of God. That in the line of dress they adhere to the plain cloth bonnet, fastened with strings, (not hatpins) for summer protection, and to the plain hood or bon- net for winter, that costly silks, laces, embroideries, low cut or unbecoming short dresses, short sleeves, transparent fabrics that give an immodest ap- pearance, also jewelry in the line of wearing gold, pearls, rings, bracelets, broaches, pins, chains, wrist watches and all outward ornamentation be avoided. That our sisters should part their hair in the middle, comb it flat and put it up in a becoming way, to wear the devotional covering, which should be of proper size, so as to be kept on the head, and be readily seen answering the purpose for which it is intended and not so as to bring re- proach to the cause of Christ. Lastly,
To the brotherhood in general: that we so live as to promote the spirit of unity of the body of Christ and in example and teaching uphold the Bible principles on the subject of simplicity and non-conformity, in all things being a light to the world, ever pointing to the fact that we are strangers and pilgrims here and that we seek a city whose builder and maker is God.
They practice the golden rule, and are of a quiet, unobtrusive nature, quick to sympathize, rather sunny in disposition, not boisterous in laughter, try to understand others, lend a hand and material help when possible, looking for the best in others, are loth to believe bad reports or hearsay, don't recite their own worries, in public don't preach what they think, but what they believe, and admonish the practice thereof. "Bearing all things, hoping all things, and enduring all things."
Few if any of these Early Sectarians are punished by getting to our jails, none if any are found in our almshouse and the writer never saw one of them in our insane asylum.
The lesson most impressive from this glimpse into the lives of our Early Sectarians, looking at perils and hardships endured, to the writer, means unselfish labors for posterity having built on the solid rock of sound moral- ity and religion, acting in faith, living with hope, and practicing charity; showing by their aims, culture, purposes, ideals and achievements, the high- est, noblest and most adorable types of real manhood and womanhood, leaving to us a magnificent heritage.
Will we emulate them to the utmost of our ability, by sturdiness of character, by devotion to faith, by being real Christians?
They learned in Prussia that religion ceases to be religion in proportion as it is forced. They have studied in detail that
"There is no such good soil anywhere to be found for the growth of the seeds of hypocrisy as that furnished by a state-enforced religion. He who counts himself an acceptable servant of God because of his observance of religious regulations made and enforced by the state, has not learned the first principles of the kingdom of Christ. The gospel of that kingdom is not thus proclaimed, and no such organization was ever commissioned of heaven to give it. Men are not to be made good by statute. No; but men can be made civil by law, and that is the province of civil law. The state can only deal with those things of civil character. Those things which are religious and pertain to the consciences of men, are wholly outside the jurisdiction of the state. Let this distinction be clearly drawn.
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OUR EARLY SECTARIANS
"God requires of every man obedience and worship. Each must obey for himself; each must worship for himself. No man has authority from God to delegate those duties to another. Neither has any man authority from God to require another to obey God in the manner he thinks that other ought to obey, or to worship God in the manner he believes that other ought to worship. Liberty in these matters is the foundation of all liberty.
"Compulsion is no part of the gospel of Christ. He who can not be drawn to the service of Christ by the love of Christ and the beauty of his character, can not be driven to acceptable service through human laws and human punishments.
"The church proclaims her lack of love and divine power whenever she seeks to carry on her work by coercion and the power of the state.
"The utmost that severity can do is to make men hypocrites; it can never make them converts.
"When the church goes into politics you can expect politics to go into the church.
"Should he [the ruler] persecute his obedient, loyal subjects, on any religious account, this is contrary to all law and right; and his doing so renders him unworthy of their confidence, and they must consider him not a blessing but a plague."-Adam Clarke, on Romans 13.
GEORGE WASHINGTON ON RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
To the Quakers, in October, 1789, George Washington said:
"Government being, among other purposes, instituted to protect the persons and consciences of men from oppression, it certainly is the duty of rulers, not only to abstain from it themselves, but, according to their sta- tions, to prevent it in others.
"The liberty enjoyed by the people of these States, of worshiping Al- mighty God agreeably to their consciences, is not only among the choicest of their blessings, but also of their rights."-Sparks's "Writings of George Washington," Vol. XII, page 168.
George Washington, replying to congratulations of the Baptists in Vir- ginia on his election to the presidency, in May, 1789, said:
"If I could have entertained the slightest apprehension that the consti- tution framed in the convention, where I had the honor to preside, might possibly endanger the religious rights of any ecclesiastical society, certainly I would never have placed my signature to it; and if I could now conceive that the general government might ever be so administered as to render the liberty of conscience insecure, I beg you will be persuaded, that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution. For you doubtless remember that I have. often expressed my sentiments, that every man, conducting himself as a good citizen, and being accountable to God alone for his religious opinions, ought to be protected in worshiping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience."-Id., Vol. XII, p. 155.
To the New Church, Baltimore, January, 1793, George Washington said:
"We have abundant reason to rejoice, that, in this land, the light of truth and reason has triumphed over the power of bigotry and superstition, and that every person may here worship God according to the dictates of his own heart."-Id., Vol. XII, page 204.
These sectarians accept Thomas Jefferson when he says "Among the most inestimable of our blessings is that of liberty to worship our Creator in the way we think most agreeable to His will-a liberty deemed in other countries incompatible with good government any yet provided by our ex- perience to be its best support."
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Roger Williams was banished from Massachusetts in 1635 for maintain- ing the doctrine of religious freedom, saying that no man could be held responsible to his fellow-man for his religious belief.
James Madison: "Religion is not in the purview of human government. Religion is essentially distinct from government and exempt from its cog- nizance. A connection between them is injurious to both."
U. S. Grant: "Leave the matter of, religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contribution. Keep the state and the church forever separate."
Thomas Jefferson also said: "Almighty God hath created the mind free; all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burdens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy Author of our religion, who, being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by co- ercion on either, as was in his almighty power to do."
Wm. Penn, when a prisoner in the Tower of London, wrote: "To conceit that men must form their faith of things proper to Another World by the Prescriptions of mortal Men, or else they can have no right to eat, drink, sleep, walk, trade, be at liberty, or live in This, to me seems both ridiculous and dangerous."
Spurgeon, the great English preacher, has well said: "I am ashamed of some Christians because they have so much dependence on Parliament and the law of the land. Much good may Parliament ever do true religion, except by mistake! As to getting the law of the land to touch our religion, we earnestly cry, 'Hands off ! leave us alone!' All forms of act-of-Parlia- ment religion seem to me to be all wrong. Give us a fair field and no favor, and our faith has no cause to fear. Christ wants no help from Caesar. I should be afraid to borrow help from government; it would look to me as. if I rested on an arm of flesh, instead of depending on the living God. Let the religion triumph by the power of God in men's hearts, and not by the power of fines and punishments."
No power but that of love can rightfully compel the conscience. Relig- ion is a matter for the individual conscience.
All of these quotations are to show a side generally misunderstood.
Characters like those of our Early Sectarians gave service, sacrifices, suffering as well as sympathy, four S's that form a sacred legacy transmit- ted to our veneration, to be cherished, to be preserved unimpaired and gladly given to our descendants after and for ages.
CONSTITUTION OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA
ARTICLE I, SECTIONS 3 AND 4
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
Section 3. All men have a natural and indefensible right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences, no man can of right be compelled to attend, erect or support any place of worship; or to maintain any ministry against his consent; no human authority can, in any case whatever, control or interfere with the rights of conscience, and no preference shall ever be given by law to any religious establish- ments or modes of worship.
RELIGION
Section 4. No person who acknowledges the .being of a God and a future state of rewards and punishments shall, on account of his religious sentiments, be disqualified to hold any office or place of trust or profit un- der this Commonwealth.
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AMENDMENT
ARTICLE I .- FREEDOM OF RELIGION, OF SPEECH, OF THE PRESS, AND RIGHT OF PETITION
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
You can forge a crowbar but you can't hammer out a conscience. Christ never petitioned the government to make people good by law or ordinance.
The present hysterical age of emotional revivalism which tends to mob rule in land slides of opinion, radically and spontaneously bursting like bubbles, condemning the right, forgetting that ours is a land of liberty to worship as we believe is most agreeable to God's will and when the reform associations want law to touch our religions we earnestly cry "Hands off !" Learn a lesson of calm, considerate, conservative action, being unassuming and thereby emulate the lives of the Early Sectarians. And as Christ says: "Search the scriptures for in them ye think ye have eternal life and they are they which testify of me," and as Paul says: "Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not be ashamed, rightly di- viding the word of truth"; also "For this cause God shall send them strong delusions that they should believe a lie."
When not misunderstood the lives of the Early Sectarians recognize the law of our great country in all secular matters, and the laws of God and of God alone in religious faith and practice. These are but the inalienable rights of all the members of the greatest of all nations.
May God, The Immaculate Lamb, rest and abide with us throughout , eternity.
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THE OLD CLOISTER AT EPHRATA, PA.
By LOUISA A. WEITZEL
'Twas October, dreamy, tender, all the land was bathed in splendor, And our hearts did melt within us as we loitered by the way O'er the old stone bridge we wandered and half audibly we pondered How a million feet had passed it ere we saw the light of day.
Soon we reached a stile and climbing landed in green clover Carpeting the field surrounding buildings men come far to see. Here they lived, the old and sainted Brethren history has painted, In their simple lives and labors, in their rare old piety.
As they reared the quaint, high gables naught cared they for lettered fables But the glory of the Highest whom their daily walk adored, Hence these temples more enduring, to the pious more alluring, Built they than Old World cathedrals in their splendor can afford.
As we passed through narrow doorways, as we trod the firm, hard floorways, Paced the narrow halls and entries and each bare and cell-like room Oft we seemed to see the stately Sisters passing, prim, sedately, Kneeling in the chapel, working at the distaff or the loom.
And we wondered if they hovered, by kind Providence empowered, In those dim and low ceiled chambers, once so dear to them of yore, Curious, too, to see the zealous-and, perhaps a little jealous Of these desecrating fingers-linger o'er their work to pore.
Did they revel in the beauty of kind Nature or did duty Chain them to their tasks more closely than we heirs of later date? Artist souls felt no repression, see we by their own confession, In the charts and books they left us, spared as yet by time and fate.
All around is changed and changing, as each wanderer sees found ranging 'Round the weather-beaten structures, which alone unchanged remain, And those pictured forms uncanny of the Sisters few, if any, Scenes familiar would discover, if to life returned again.
One thing only changes never; for the human heart forever Find we in all times and places beating to the same old tune; And the same old joys and sorrows, yesterdays and same to-morrows Share we with those ancient Brethren, like the changes of the moon.
Virtue, too, is found not only grown in sheltered cloisters lonely, But it blooms wherever shineth God's free sunshine o'er the land. Yea, we find it in all ages, in this old world's passing stages, Cloistered halls may fall and crumble, but His kingdom still shall stand.
-From "A Quiver of Arrows," a book of poems by the author.
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THE BOUND TO PLEASE Heckman Bindery INC.
NOV.65 N. MANCHESTER, INDIANA
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