USA > Pennsylvania > The making of Pennsylvania; an analysis of the elements of the population and the formative influences that created one of the greatest of the American states > Part 10
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They had the same devoted love for music as the
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Ephrata people, and took the same delight in composing hundreds and hundreds of hymns, some of which when translated into English seem very extraordinary. In fact, they had a very large measure of those mystic German feelings in religion which are so strange and fantastic that they can hardly be understood by people of English stock.
Although they had a decided tendency towards com- munal life, they were not believers in celibacy, like the Germans at Ephrata. On the contrary, they exalted marriage into a very sacred duty. All souls, they held, were in their essence feminine, and the male was simply a temporary office created for the probationary period of this world. But although his existence was ephemeral, his duties were none the less clear and positive. As Christ was the true spouse of every woman, so her hus- band was his representative and the saviour of his wife in this world.
They regulated their marriages very strictly, and the church often took the part of match-maker, helped the man to choose his wife, and communicated his proposal to her. In this, as in many of their other deliberations, they often resorted to casting lots. Indeed, the lot was relied upon by them for their most important decisions, and by it missions were established and ministers ap- pointed. Like the Quakers, they have never made any rules about divorce, and yet to this day, it is said, divorce is practically unknown among them.
They seem to have been more inclined than the other German sects to develop liturgies, and they had one which has attracted some attention, and is known as the Litany of the Wounds. They have now a regular
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liturgy which is printed with their hymn-book, and together with their hymns has a strong resemblance to the services of the Church of England. They were indeed a curious blending of qualities of their own and qualities which resembled those of the Quakers, Men- nonites, Tunkers, and various other forms of pietism.
They showed comparatively little of that strong ten- dency of the other Germans to cling to their language and customs. They readily adopted English, and in colonial times were always on closer and more congenial terms with the English than with their own countrymen ; and their modern ritual and customs have always proved attractive to people of English religion.
A few years of American life had a great effect in changing their emotionalism; and, it is said, they have been afflicted with its worst forms only once in this country while under the rule of Bishop Cammerhof. They have long since frankly repudiated all such ex- citements, and, in the preface to a recent edition of their hymn-book, describe them as belonging to a time of sentimental fanaticism. They now more nearly re- semble the original church in Moravia, which, before it was destroyed by the Romish persecution, was Episcopal and not unlike the Church of England. Indeed, the Church of England has long since recognized the suc- cession of the Moravian bishops as apostolic, and the two churches are in communion with each other.
The Moravians date the beginning of their renewal when they became a German sect, from the 17th of June, 1721, when the first tree was cut down for them on Count Zinzendorf's estate, but the date usually given is 1722. It was the era of sect-making, and they increased
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rapidly, spread all over Germany, the United Provinces, Great Britain, and sent missionaries to Greenland and the West Indies. In 1749, less than thirty years after their renewal, they are said to have numbered at least thirty thousand members, with over a thousand mission- aries.
They began to come to America in 1734, and settled in Georgia on some land which had been offered to the Schwenkfelders who preferred to come to Pennsylvania. The Moravians might possibly have continued in Georgia, if they had not been obliged by the government, con- trary to their religious scruples, to take up arms against the Spaniards.
The first of them began to appear in Pennsylvania about 1739, and they settled on a tract of land near Nazareth, a few miles north of the Lehigh River. This land belonged to Whitefield, the famous preacher, who was also interested in Georgia. He had named the place Nazareth, and had intended to establish a negro school there. It was within one of the Penn manors which has often attracted attention, because it was held by one of those curious old English tenures which required the delivery every year of a red rose. This manor had also attached to it the privilege of Court Baron, and was capable of being developed into a little principality. The Moravians selected it for this reason, as their inten- tion was at first to live by themselves and have a colony of their 'own. They, however, never made use of the privilege of Court Baron, and their exclusiveness in government was confined to their communal system.
The remaining Moravians soon arrived from Georgia, and, the Indians becoming troublesome, the whole body
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moved a few miles south to the banks of the Lehigh, and in 1741 founded Bethlehem, where they have re- mained ever since. They spread out to Philadelphia and other parts of the State, but their head-quarters were always at Bethlehem, and Bethlehem is still the metrop- olis of their church in America.
It was there they established their communal system. Personal property was not surrendered, but the church owned all the land, and received into its treasury the results of the combined labor of the community, giving to each member in return the necessities of life, instruction for his children, and protection in sickness and old age.
They provided houses in which the bachelors lived together, other houses for the single women, and others for the widows. Some of these houses can still be seen in Bethlehem, and are of curious and interesting archi- tecture. So independent and self-sustaining were they that they owned one or two ships, with captains of their own faith, in which their immigrants were brought over in ease and comfort, and avoided the dirt, crowding, and disease which destroyed so many of the other Germans.
About thirty trades were carried on for the benefit of the church. There were button-mills, grist-mills, saw- mills, tanneries, potteries, linen weaving, stocking weav- ing, rope-making, bakeries, butcheries, and even chimney- sweeping and shoe-cleaning. Some of the products of their industry became well known for their excellence, and were sent to Philadelphia in considerable quantities. The profits being all concentrated in the community and not dissipated among individuals, The Economy, as they called their communal establishment, became very prosperous and successful.
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Their intention was not merely to separate themselves from the world and afford retreats where men could hold undisturbed communion with God, but to make of themselves more efficient missionaries. One of their principal objects at first was the conversion of the Indians. The number of missionaries among them was always very large in proportion to the laity, and those who came to Bethlehem seem to have been unusually earnest. Communism seemed to them an economical way of uniting their efforts so as to enable the greatest number to give time and energy to the conversion of the heathen.
The story of their Indian missions is a long one, and would fill a volume in itself. They were among the first who carefully studied Indian customs; they formed suc- - cessful communities among the savages near Bethlehem, and also as far west as Ohio. But the coming on of the French and Indian Wars destroyed the fruits of all their efforts, as it destroyed all that Penn and the Quakers had done. The flourishing Indian community of the Moravians in Ohio became suspected of being in league with the hostile tribes, and was destroyed by the white settlers at the close of the Revolution.
In 1762, at the time of the Indian wars, the commu- nism at Bethlehem was largely abandoned. The church retained as its property only a few farms, trades, and the old Sun Inn. But it still controlled the land, and would sell it to none but Moravians until 1844. At that date the town was thrown open to strangers, and soon began to develop those enormous industries in the manu- facture of iron, which have now made it one of the richest and most prosperous towns in the State.
In December, 1741, when the settlement at Bethlehem
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was begun, Count Zinzendorf appeared in Pennsylvania, and remained for a little over a year. He spent much of his time at Philadelphia and Germantown, and also visited nearly every other part of the colony. He made several excursions among the Indians, and was the first white man to penetrate the Wyoming Valley. His daughter accompanied him on these rather daring expe- ditions, and he has left us in his journal an interesting account of their wanderings and dangers.
He seems to have aroused much enthusiasm among the Moravians; but other people were by no means favorably impressed with him. The English thought him disagreeable and eccentric. Muhlenberg complained very bitterly of his attempts to convert Lutherans, and accused him of resorting to artifice and trickery unbe- coming a man of religion.
He was certainly a very extraordinary character, full of the strangest sort of German emotionalism, and diffi- cult to understand. His own disciples have admitted that he was governed more by his heart than by his head. He decided everything rapidly and on the spur of the moment, and was constantly changing his mind. He seemed to be giving utterance to every thought, vague, subtle, or eccentric, that occurred to him, and often re- sorted to several languages to express himself. He had, however, unquestioned force of character, and a com- manding influence over his followers.
The appearance of his face in the best portrait that has come down to us is certainly most striking and powerful. He had boundless energy and industry, and was indifferent to hardships and fatigue. He bustled about in the towns and forests of Pennsylvania in a way
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that was astonishing, and few men then living could have covered so much ground, seen so many people, white and red, and expressed so many extravagant notions in the same amount of time.
One of the objects he seems to have had most at heart, was to organize the whole German population of all sects and classes into a sort of league of religions which he called the Church of God in the Spirit. He seems to have considered himself in a certain sense a religious statesman. He had taken up religion as a great general subject of infinite importance, and cer- tainly the one which at that time was strongly attracting the attention of the German people.
By birth and associations he was a Lutheran, deeply convinced of the benefits of the pietist movement. When the remnant of the Moravians appeared he had taken them under his care, settled them on his estate, and become one of their bishops, not because he was a Moravian more than anything else, but because he be- lieved they were one of the sects that were travelling upon the right path. He always proclaimed that he had not ceased to be a Lutheran by becoming a Mora- vian.
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He came to Pennsylvania because the Germans there had been represented to him as in a state of great dis- order, split up into innumerable divisions, without leaders and yet willing to be led, and anxious to be organized into some form of evangelical religion. He was bitterly disappointed when he found that each sect was as hard set in its prejudices as a Presbyterian or a Catholic ; that instead of a soft mass of enthusiastic German sentiment, waiting for a great man to mould it, there were a score
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or more of hard crystallized divisions, more distinct than in their native land, and suspicious of every one but themselves.
Before coming to Pennsylvania he announced that he had laid aside for the present his office of bishop among the Moravians, and wished to be known simply as a Lutheran clergyman. When he arrived in the province he called a meeting of the governor and prominent cit- izens in Philadelphia, and in their presence, and asking them to be witnesses, he laid aside his title as count. He was going into battle, he said, and was ready and willing to be attacked and hit, but wished to avoid having his family name dragged about in the conflict. He tried to give himself various other names,-Dominie de Thürstein, Friend Lewis, Brother Ludwig, and Ordinary. But his formal resignation of a title was a failure, caused much amusement among the English, and his original name always clung to him.
Thus prepared and assisted by Antes and other Germans, he began to call together delegates from the sects. The first synod was held in Germantown, January 7, 1742, and representatives appeared from the Re- formed, Lutherans, Mennonites, Tunkers, Hermits, and a few others. The object was to establish a league, or spiritual union, in which all would agree in essential points, and yet each remain true to his own denomina- tion. It was to be a Christian Union on almost exactly the same plan that has been much talked of and recom- mended in our own time.
The difficulty was to agree on what were essentials and to avoid having the essentials adopted consist too exclusively of the essentials of one of the parties to the
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contract. The Separatists were the hardest to deal with, for they held it to be sinful for believers to have close fellowship. The strenuous advocacy of any idea was, they thought, an uncharitable reflection on those who differed from it. Zinzendorf's spiritual union, as an attempt to make a sect which should not be a sect, scemed to be in their line, and yet they were afraid of it, and ended by calling Zinzendorf the beast of the Revelation, and persuaded Sauer to use his newspaper against him.
The Tunkers and their offshoot, the Ephrata people, were also in the synod, and could not be restrained from occasionally taking a turn at each other. Zinzen- dorf was greatly grieved, but was himself very little better than the rest. He finally announced in one of the synods that Lutheranism was the true principle, and that Lutheranism would gradually absorb the Reformed and also all the other sects, including the Moravians, and that would be the true church.
This ideal of union among the Protestant divisions of Germany remained long in his mind, and was afterwards attempted by others, sometimes with a little success. The union, however, when analyzed, meant that the Moravians were to be the centre of the unity; that all other denominations were to recognize them as the connecting link, and after that be allowed to retain their own peculiarities; certainly a noble position for Unitas Fratrum. In other words, Zinzendorf's concep- tion of Christian unity was about the same that has been entertained in our own and every other time.
The synods he established for the purpose in Penn- sylvania continued to meet every few weeks and lasted
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for about five years after he returned to Europe. But the sects one after another withdrew, and finally they became synods of the Moravian Church alone, to which Zinzendorf, in spite of his protests, really belonged.
At the same time that he was managing the synods of the Church of God in the Spirit he was organizing the Lutherans and Reformed as his own people. With the Reformed he had comparatively little success. But the Lutherans flocked to him. They had then no regular head or leader in Pennsylvania, and the count easily persuaded them. He was made pastor of their church in Philadelphia, and several other congregations recog- nized him as the superintendent of the churches of the colony, with power to appoint ministers.
Whether he could finally have turned them all into Moravians is difficult to say, for he had been at work among them only about a year, when Muhlenberg appeared and soon put a stop to his course. It has been supposed by some that information of his suc- cess had reached Germany, and was one of the chief reasons why Muhlenberg was sent. Muhlenberg's authority as a Lutheran clergyman seems to have been more regular than the count's. At any rate, the people more readily recognized him, and though at first he had only a minority as followers, he soon acquired control of pretty much the whole body. Zinzendorf's Lutheranism he regarded with contempt, as a mere cover to advance the Moravians, and Muhlenberg's writings are not the place to look for praise of the count.
The count, however, had secured a few recruits. The Moravian Church in Philadelphia appears to have been
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made up principally of Lutherans and English converts, and in several other places in the province the Church of God in the Spirit seems to have proved itself a valu- able ally. For many years afterwards the Moravians continued to keep a watchful eye on the Lutherans and Reformed, and encouraged any tendency among them that seemed to lean in the right direction. A catechism was written for those who inclined to Moravian doctrine. The Moravian Church had also an officer who was called Vice-Inspector of the Lutheran Church in America, and he is said to have ordained a Lutheran pastor-elect at Tulpehocken. Moravian missionaries continued for some years to organize congregations among both the German and the Swedish Lutherans and also to some extent among the Reformed.
The explanation of this apparently loose state of affairs is, that the German pietist movement had not at that time crystallized. Most of the Lutherans in Pennsyl- vania were pietists of one form or another, and the Mo- ravians were also pietists, and most of them had been born Lutherans. It was disputed whether the Moravians were in the Augsburg Confession with the Lutherans, and in Germany it had been decided that they were. The Moravians were really a pietist party in the Lutheran Church, and the real dispute between Zinzendorf and Muhlenberg was whether the Pennsylvania Lutherans should take the Moravian form of pietism or adopt Muhlenberg's Halle pietism. In the end Muhlenberg prevailed, and the Moravians separated and became a distinct division.
When Zinzendorf arrived in Pennsylvania, in Decem- ber, 1741, the Moravians were a mere handful, who had
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just built a log-house at Bethlehem. He visited them there, but for the first six months or so his efforts were chiefly devoted to the conversion of the Lutherans and Reformed. Having done what he could for these, he turned his attention to his own proper people and the Indians, who sufficiently occupied his time during the remainder of his visit.
His presence caused much excitement and contro- versy, and produced a long list of pamphlets and polem- ical literature. The Quakers were not opposed to him, and the Episcopalians had no very serious objection. His worst opponents were the Presbyterians, and some of the German sects like the Separatists. To the Presby- terians of that time Moravianism seemed either ridiculous or loathsome. They had no hesitation in saying so, and Zinzendorf, in his turn, seldom hesitated to say what he thought of Calvinism. He accordingly found himself accused of drunkenness, his daughter, who was with him, described as a child he had kidnapped, and his followers as "locusts from the bottomless pit."
But he returned to Europe, and the land had rest. His life and work, in spite of all his peculiarities, were an important episode in the history of the Moravians. He restored and renewed them when they were about to perish, and there are few things in history more romantic than this young nobleman expanding under the religious movement of his time, filled with broad ideas of unifying the disordered sects of his country, adopting a persecuted and helpless sect of another country which he believed was in the right, and sacri- ficing all his estate and fortune to help it. The story is still more complete when we know that within recent
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years the Moravians have paid back to the count's family every cent he expended for their benefit, with interest to date.
After the count returned to Europe the Moravians settled down at Bethlehem, increased in numbers, and began to develop what became a very beautiful and quiet life. We read of no stories of dirt and disorder, which the colonists so often charged against the other Germans. On the contrary, the Moravians were more like the Schwenkfelders and the early Mennonites, who settled Germantown under Pastorius,-orderly, neat, neither poor nor rich, self-respecting, respecting others, and liked by everybody. They were far removed from the rabble, nominally Lutherans and Reformed, which Muh- lenberg and Schlatter complained of, and still farther removed from that nondescript mass of ignorant peas- antry which had been picked up in Germany by the newlanders and shipping-agents and exported to Penn- sylvania for what it would bring.
Bethlehem became a garden. Like the Mennonites at Germantown, the Moravians were very fond of fruit- trees, and planted them everywhere. The streets were lined with them, and far down into the present century the stranger passing through the town could help him- self and enjoy a great variety. They became famous for their inns, and added to the already high reputation of the colonial tavern in Pennsylvania. The Nazareth, the Rose, and the Crown were outside of Bethlehem, but well known, and each has had its history, and the Mora- vian historians have spared no pains to celebrate their merits. The best one of all, however, was the Sun, which was within the town, and familiar for nearly a
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hundred years to all the people of the country from Massachusetts to the Carolinas.
The reason for this was, that the principal line of travel between Boston and the Southern colonies passed through Bethlehem. Travellers from the South usually came to Philadelphia, thence to Bethlehem, thence through what were called the Minisink settlements in northeastern Pennsylvania to Kingston, on the Hudson, which was crossed, and a straight road followed to Boston or any other part of New England. There was another line of travel from the South which went to New York City through New Jersey, and was convenient for any one going to that place. But those going to Massa- chusetts usually followed the Bethlehem and Kingston route.
It is doubtful if we shall ever again in this country see any of the old-fashioned comforts that were enjoyed in that inn. It had private suites of apartments, most of them consisting of a sitting-room with two bedchambers, with a special servant. An Englishman who was there at the time of the Revolution describes how he was received, led at once to his private apartment, the key given him, the special servant assigned to him, and he felt at once as if he were in his own home.
At different times the inn has entertained beneath its roof nearly all the signers of the Declaration of Inde- pendence, most of the members of the Continental Con- gress, and all the Presidents of the United States down to Lincoln. That the wines were remarkable, and that the inn had its own brand of Madeira, goes without saying. The early Moravians lived largely on game and cultivated a great variety of vegetables. Deer and
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grouse were very abundant on the barrens in the Manor of the Red Rose. It was long a favorite sporting-ground for Philadelphians, and the resort of colonial governors. The wayfarers at the inn lived on all these delicacies in the greatest abundance, together with the famous fruit, trout, shad, and wild strawberries. Foreigners who stopped there invariably declared that the inn was fully equal to the best in Europe. It was owned and managed by the Moravian Church as part of its communal system. Let us hope that other religions may arise that will keep such inns.
One of the chief amusements of the travellers was to stroll out from the inn and visit the establishments of the Moravians, the widows' house, the brothers' and sisters' houses, and the schools. Every one was not only pleased, but strongly attracted; and many wished to intrust the education of their children to these simple, well-ordered souls. Such visitors have continued to be numerous down into our own time, and the church has been often obliged to appoint a special person whose business it was to show such people the town.
In colonial days, and long afterwards, distinguished men of the country and distinguished foreigners were constantly appearing. Some of them travelled by stage, but most of them were in their own carriages or on horseback. Hotel registers, in which the guest signs his name and says nothing about himself, were not used then, but a much more interesting book was kept by the clerk who entered descriptive memoranda. In some of these books at the Virginia Springs there are curious records of the old plantation life, when whole families were in the habit of invading the springs, bringing their
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