Three Problems in the Early Letters and Ministry of Bishop Andrew Mack 1836-1917

 Jacob Mensch Letters

Jacob Mensch "corresponded with every...Old Mennonite community (Ruth, Maintaining, 395) and  "kept records of meetings from 1880 to 1907"  (Wenger, History, 52).  I obtained the Andrew Mack letters (1870 to 1906) in just the fashion suggested below, eagerly donating to defray costs. Isaac Horst is now deceased. Anyone interested in contributing further sums to make the completed archive of translations available online is welcome to do so:  "A project is underway to have the 1603 letters of Jacob Mensch translated and typed, with the possibility of eventual publication. The first phase is estimated to require about $4000.00 for completion of copying, translation labor, and typing. You are invited to send a donation to help defray the costs of the project."

Notice in the Mennonite Historian,Winnipeg, Manitoba March 1982

There is a real question as to whether the names given in these letters should even now be made public. In an age of the most sordid revelations it would seem innocuous enough. Not to reveal the names even now, even though they are public record, but they are so closely related to Mack, his brother in law, an elder, the father, the mothers the sister all implicated in this tiny community, prevents our understanding why they might have had such tight rules. It was in order to survive. The relations were pretty much for life. Is the maid of Ihst going to move away? But of course there is always the possibility we might make a mistaken identity try as we might otherwise. But there is a larger point for  instruction, that being that the fraud, the sham and the cover up all too familiar, with nobody taking or giving account of their own sins, has been so perpetuated that we drown in a sea of self infatuation where nobody’s at fault. This seems the more  relevant considering “spiritual wickedness in high places” scholars may cite at the machinations of King David’s court, the fortune and fog of war. 

When we do get the hair shorn from the religious? Spare us the names? Do we need to think more poorly of ourselves than we do? Does our own rehabilitation override covering the sins of Lot? Good questions, except there is no answer in good taste. And further what happens to the content neutral standard of good writing if as we show the passion of a character and his empathy we trespass so far into the moral universe. In the end there is no avoiding what Ezekiel saw through a hole in the wall, the elders making pact and sacrifice.  Such sins are sordid not glorious, not the “heart became proud on account of its beauty” (Ez 28.17), the second we think of Ezekiel and do well to be afraid. The Spirit lifted me up…I dug into the wall and saw a doorway…I went in and looked, and I saw portrayed all over the walls all kinds of crawling things and detestable animals… In front of them stood seventy elders of the house of Israel, and Jaazaniah son of Shapham was standing among them  (Ez 8.11). 

To see the sins of world portrayed in all their sickness is a crippling sight and when it concerns your own all the more so, so that we can well believe Andrew Mack saw these things with tears and we can believe it was with weakness and pain that he mediated among them. It’s not witty, it’s heartbreaking. Ezekiel writes with a sense of outrage and judgment, but his knowledge is by revelation, being caught up. Andrew Mack writes privately with a sense of sorrow, pain, unbelievable contradiction that such things come to him he has to decide. But Andrew Mack was also a farmer. He knew that when the weeds are rank in their growth the husbandman with a scythe (or a weedeater) is going get the moist blades and severed roots on his clothes. Weed puller, he was a stone puller.

The circumstances of his early life as a pastor were utterly formative in the career he was to have as a peacemaker. These took principally two forms in the problems he faced in his own church and in his dire sickness when elevated to Bishop.

The first six letters, from 1870 to 1876 are preoccupied with pastoral problems that the young minister needs to air: discord, adultery and immorality leading to disfellowship. In spite of the custom that Mennonites would generally confess their sins before the whole congregation, in much of this he is the last to learn of the problem, hearing only secondhand of the discord and adultery. The problem with digging around in the past is that we might find things that have been buried. This is the case regarding the young pastor’s afflictions.

 With the first problem of discord however the young preacher does not even himself believe his advice to the parties and does not actually send the letter. He must sense that his own counsel is flawed. Are we to take it literally when he says he writes “partly in tears?” He says, “I have heard that discord has taken place” and feels that he must act, “write.” Perhaps the reason he does not believe even himself is that he assumes their guilt in such language that they might “sooner return to your first love.” What are you going to say to gossipers, “I heard that you were gossiping?” That doesn’t work. That’s gossip too. His strategy in the letter he doesn’t send is to display his feelings, “tears,” followed by his reasoning.

This is all the more strange since this letter is not cataloged with the other 49! As though it had fallen through some crack and ended up in the Mensch collection.

His reasoning he admits “is sometimes made worse by writing.” But this leads in the second part of the letter to his own self doubt as if he were seriously thinking, “I will lay down my office” rather than intervene this way. He includes himself with them in a triangle, “consider with me where we stand.” Their disagreement is emotional, fueled by false beliefs about themselves, each other and of the nature of discord, “the old Adam,” who threatens God’s kingdom in this, and gives comfort to Satan. His solution is humility, his own as he has said, but theirs too, but are they hardhearted or tender? And whose spirit is it that “will make us believe this or that, which often has no significance?”

The solution he offers is one he sought for himself in his own life with his own tears. That is “take each other’s weaknesses upon yourself,” that is, bear one anothers'  burdens to the sea of forgetfulness, the “ocean of oblivion.” His argument is that they should be like Jesus “and hear Him say, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

It doesn’t sound even to him like this is going to work if they want to continue to disagree. He feels that the letter would just make it appear he is taking sides. He doesn’t send it also because he doesn’t believe his own argument. What is the flaw? Nothing except that he is still learning to feel his way in such matters. But he learns that the solution is not argument. His wife feels this too and gives the writer the best counsel of his day, stop. Later in life he will have learned how to bring the disagreeable together, but also he will know when not to speak.

With the second issue, the sin of adultery, he only learns of it at the 11th hour and there is little then to do except try to heal the injured by counseling, but he is counseling his own family, daughter, cousins, aunts. The offender in this letter is John L. Gehman who has confessed himself an adulterer “several weeks ago,” an act that transpired “several years ago, with the maid who was with Ihst.” This raises two issues with him, first that Ihst “did not wish to say anything; yet he talked about it so much it made me wonder; then he told me about it himself.” It sounds derelict of Ihst first not to have defended the maid better after “she told Ihst about it,” but further, when she had confided in him, not to have properly reported it, instead gossiping the news all over so that Mack heard it from others before ever Ihst said a word.

John L. GEHMAN

[NI19113]

12 SEP 1819 - 3 MAR 1892

BIRTH: 12 SEP 1819 [24459]

DEATH: 3 MAR 1892, Hereford, Berks Co PA [24460]

BURIAL: Old Hereford Mennonite

REFERENCE: LKG

Father: Johannes Ziegler GEHMAN
Mother: Maria M. LATSHAW

Family 1 : Susanna S. STAUFFER

MARRIAGE: 25 AUG 1844 [61708]

+Susanna S. GEHMAN

Family 2 : Elizabeth S. STAUFFER

MARRIAGE: 4 APR 1847

+Abraham S. GEHMAN

+David S. GEHMAN

+Enos S. GEHMAN

http://www.wengerdc.com/Wenger/d0000/g0000023.html#I19113

Another and more serious problem for him is that this John L. Gehman, ordained a deacon in 1858,  is the son of the preacher  John Z. Gehman (mentioned in Noah Mack, 4) who had grown up in the church and community. He was about 50 when taken with the escapade of the maid of Ihst. But Gehman had married Elizabeth Stauffer in 1847. Andrew S. Mack is Andrew Stauffer Mack, and indeed had both sisters and daughters named Susanna and Elizabeth, but with different birth dates than Gehman's wives, so this was either an aunt or cousin. Further Gehman had previously been married to Elizabeth’s sister, Susanna Stauffer in 1844. He had one child with the first wife, a daughter, and three sons with the second, two of whom became deacons. [see Mack 10, the number of sons and daughters is in question.] No wonder the “church is in a sad situation.”

When Mack says “you wouldn’t believe how much trouble this caused for me and also for many others, especially the family," that is because of his relation to the Stauffer family and because Gehman had married both daughters. Mack’s solace which he offers is that Gehman’s “wife thinks she can bear it with the help of God,” meaning that she can go on living anyway, “yet for the rest of life can have no more joy,” more than a sad situation.

As with the previous discord and the “old Adam,” here “the flesh still feels its weakness” and nobody can correct those who will not correct themselves: “verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity.” Later he says that “Gehman also desires that all faithful ones should pray for him. He is quite depressed because of this sin,” but that is not altogether to the point since, “what is man when he flees from the Lord? He is as the prodigal son. He must arise and go to the father, but no man can come to him except the father draw him.” Nobody can correct one who will not correct himself. Mack bears the lesson himself as always and mutually exhorts Mensch, “dear brother, let us seek to accomplish our office faithfully,” always realizing that “we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities…the rulers of darkness of this world…”

To illustrate the extraordinary nature of these Mennonite communities and their close proximity to one another, therefore the need to be without discord and adultery, Gehman’s own daughter was married to the same (John M.) Ihst (1844-1923) with whose maid Gehman conducted his affair. Andrew Mack had visited upon him a vision of the sins of the world and it was only his weakness that enabled him to bear.

           

A third, even greater personal tragedy, reported in these first letters, his own brother-in-law is disfellowshiped. Compassed with the first report of his severe ensuing illness which was to last years, this makes the trial more poignant, “I write tonight as I have never written before.” Taking his lead from “the saddest part,” he writes that “brother John Gabel fell into an abominable sin and is discharged from the church.”

 John L. Gable (1837-1887) had first been married to Leah High who died 23 Aug 1873 at age 34. Andrew Mack preached the sermon at her funeral. He had eight children with her. A sawmiller and merchant, he then married Elizabeth, sister of Andrew S. Mack and had four more children.  Gabel had been ordained a deacon at Hereford 17 Oct 1872.

This letter comes two and a half years after the death of that first wife. That this transgression had occurred while he was, past tense, still a widower, we would say “single,” indicates perhaps that he was remarried at the time of this report. Mack writes that “this took place while he was still in the state of widowhood.” Writing as he has never written before means that “you can’t imagine how my poor heart often feels, especially at this time while I am weak and unwell.” It is as though he feels the whole enterprise is coming apart yet still he has to provide solace for the aggrieved, Gabel’s father for instance, who died at age 86 in 1885, who with his son J. L. Gabel bought the Gleason company machinery and had begun production in 1871. 

Demonstrating again how everybody knew everything about everybody else in that small community, he says, “old father Gabel was here today and he wept over his son.” While he says nothing about the pain of his sister in all this, he does say “pray for J. Gabel. He is in great sorrow yet there are those who press him farther down.” Depression and some gossip, the reward for sins. He seems to bear the burden himself, “when I see the church and how I labored these 12 years that I served, my courage would often sink.”

Not To Do

Like the first account when writing could have been misconstrued so it were better left unsent, writing to his friend Mensch as relief from pressures is to be curtailed, “I could still write much of what is on  my mind, but too much writing isn’t good for me either.’  This is because of the sickness he has first reported,

 “I am not well…my nerves are also weakened.” Those things which had been his escape from the ministry are now denied to him: “I am not to do any heavy physical work, not preach, not indulge in deep thoughts and not read. The latter is the most difficult for me. I couldn’t keep up with reading much anyhow.”

This sickness is to vex him off and on the rest of his life. It reminds him of his vulnerability, increases his humility so that when “our pilgrimage is over, we may all enter into that heavenly home where no sickness nor sorrow may overtake us.” His solace in all this is simply what he recommends to others and himself, “I will seek to totally surrender myself to my dear Jesus and as He decides for me is right.”

It must be the case that these letters are only a sampling of the trials of these six years, although maybe they are the low spots; it is obvious he has undergone a lot. This period of his life comes to an end. Never again does he address such dire straits, either because they don’t happen, other issues are more urgent, or simply that he says nothing. His health however continues to be difficult, both from the burden of his accountability and from the physical weakness. He writes, “how serious it often appears to me when I consider what we are accountable for, if we have not been found faithful stewards.” This does not refer to finance, but to moral leadership, compassion, wisdom, judgment in administering his office. He would always feel this deeply. “I find myself so weak, physically and spiritually,” he says, probably a desirable effect in a leader since it enforces a sense of humility. “I am still not supposed to preach and cannot work much yet.” It has only been six weeks since he had released the doctor’s report in his last letter, but it shows how much he wants to continue his vocation.

Whether to Resist 

He is to have plenty of opportunity to be accountable. About a year after being ordained bishop by acclamation in 1875, a dispute arises between the old and new Mennonites at Boyertown, formerly Colebrookdale. This corporate discord has its roots in the original split of 1847, the Oberholtzer controversy.  He was not a minister then, but was the first ordained after it at Hereford in 1863. His jurisdiction as bishop now includes the problem, so  immediately his care of the larger Mennonite community impacts both Old and New Mennonites as it was also to do later in his life when he “approved the organizing of the Mennonite General Conference, even though the majority of his conference did not” (The Mennonite Encyclopedia, III, 432).

 The beginning is innocent enough. Mennonites had shared premises, I mean buildings, a long time. After their initial division between old and new in 1847 the two groups shared the Hereford meetinghouse until the new Mennonites built their own in 1851. The old group then bought out the new’s half share in the old building. There being also a building at Boyertown, then Colebrookdale, about six miles from the Hereford church, “built for the convenience of the Hereford Mennonites in and near Boyertown” (Wenger 366), but with no pastor separate from Hereford, this building had been used by both groups until 1876 when the old purposed to build anew on the original 1819 building, first tearing down the old. In the midst of the demolition the new “served an injunction against the building committee, enjoining them against the tearing down of the meetinghouse, and sued for equal rights as tenants in common” (Wenger 122).

Contrary to the stand of the old, Andrew’s son Noah says that his father “always upheld the idea that the old Mennonite Church should not have made any defense but when the sheriff came and placed an injunction on the church building the brethren just should have left and built a meeting house outside of the town” (Mack,   ) A question as to why he could not overrule the building committee as bishop does not understand the conditions applied. Neither could he introduce footwashing or missions when he wanted. Pressed on his first trip to Kansas in 1881 about missions by some Prussian Mennonites at Beatrice, Nebraska, he could only reply that “he had to wait until the time when such support could be had” (5). The injunction not only resulted in a lawsuit that lasted seven years, ultimately decided by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, but it caused a scrutiny of the conditions of the original Oberholtzer controversy of 1847.

“However, he was somewhat relieved in heart when the judge of the supreme court called the old Mennonites the defendants still to the close of the litigation but from a pure non-resistant standpoint he considered the true way would have been to leave all when and flee to another city as Jesus says Matt. 10-23.” (Mack,   )

Andrew Mack would of course know nothing of this when he wrote, before the fact, the letter of 27 Feb 1876:

 “For some time there have been quite a few communications among us regarding the building of a meeting house in Boyertown. The new (Mennonites) wished to build with us and we did not want that. Then our members decided that we would build a house, but they [the New] would have nothing to say to the building, but after it was built they could donate to the costs voluntarily and then have meetings in the new house as before in the old house. The new (ones) wished to have meetings in the new house as before in the old house. The new (ones) wished to have a written agreement drawn up so they could show that they had their rights, but ors did not wish to commit themselves. Now this is as it stands and I haven’t heard anything more. I heard that in Matdege they built in a similar way. If you know how they did in Matdege then write to me as soon as you can. I did not intend to be concerned with the building, but I would like to tell the brethren how they did it there.”

For one who “did not intend to be concerned with the building,” his concern is prescient. The original differences between the two groups in 1847 were some parts substantive, one being the whole subject of legality, which traditionally Mennonites rejected. That is, “that litigation was a downright violation of the New Testament ethic and was contrary to the historic practice of the church” (Wenger, 353).  Oberholtzer testified, “our conference was not opposed to go to law in a just cause” (cited by Wenger, 353). Outside of the Bible and the Dortrecht Confession, traditional Mennonites shunned legality, creeds, written ordinances, constitutions, even minutes of their meetings at that time. 

In Boyertown the two factions fought all the way to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. When the old group referenced in Andrew Mack’s letter decided to build anew, they offered tenancy to the new, on condition of their using no objectionable musical instruments. This demand initiated a series of conundrums that lasted six years. When demolition had already partly removed he old building, the New Mennonites sued for tenancy in common before the Berks County Court.  That suit, denied in 1879, was subsequently reversed. Then, on appeal in 1883, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, reversed it back, finding for the Old, a truly contradictory procedure for people who did not believe in such legal remedies (see Wenger, 122-23 and Ruth, 366-67) and a betrayal of principles held by traditional Mennonites.

The disagreement between old and new at Boyertown was similar to one in Skippack except there the old Mennonites surrendered the meetinghouse and built anew. This was celebrated by John F. Funk as “one of the most glorious examples of self-denial and devotion to … religious principles, presented to us in modern times. The new factions claimed the old meeting-house and were determined to have it at all events. The property was one of considerable value and justly belonged to the Old Church, and any impartial judge or jury would have, without any scruples, freely accorded it to them, had they presented their claims, but instead of doing so, they chose rather to obey the scriptural injunctions 'not to resist evil, and of him that taketh away thy goods, not to ask them again,' and quietly, leaving the new factions in possession, they purchased other grounds and built themselves a new house.”  (John F. Funk. The Mennonite Church and Her Accusers. Elkhart, Indiana: Mennonite Publishing Company, 1878, 128.)

Andrew Mack’s thinking on all this was reported much later by his son, Bishop Noah Mack in 1939. This eleven page biography of Andrew Mack never got much circulation since it was solicited by Noah’s own biographers and served only as background for their work.

The Last Pennsylvania Dutchman

 She must have heard a music of mind most wonderful  those years, living alone sorting clothes on top of the dryer. Nor do I know what it was like, pretending to be a non-thinking circle member, still afflicting the Acme, yakking on the phone to this music. The amazing thing I realized this morning is she didn’t want to die any more than my black chows. Two of them now have shown the ultimate courage and gratitude for life, the most loyal of creatures with fur of \the sweet earth. She is among them, cases of insurmountable will, but really spirit you know.

For six months, a year, I expected both dogs to be gone by morning, but there they would be, hungry, ready to walk, if you could call it that. Six years apart, but otherwise the same, one time I had to carry him home in my arms. How light he was. At her last I carried her out and lay her gently on the grass. Even his last week he could jog to the gate were another dog passing, then collapse out of breath. One time he had a fit from the noise of the mower, but came back even from that.

The night before he died he lay on the bed panting with the will to life, a heating pad beneath him. About 10 PM he began to bark as he always had when he knew his family was coming home. He would bark in anticipation for  minutes before his mistress’ car ever came in view. How did he know? It was his welcome bark, deep and commanding, as he barked for life that night in all the hours. We put our hands on him and he stopped, breathed and heaved for breath. Then he barked. He barked hour after hour and only then did it begin to lessen. She couldn't walk on the slippery floors so I put carpet everywhere she wanted to go and being near blind, lights near the floor like on a runway, landing lights. I would hear her coming by her breath and gently guide her outside, then wait by the door until she came back to bed. It was a warm night in April when she left. She was so comfortable I left her out by the aloe. The previous night or two she lay in the kitchen while we cooked dinner and said I love you, thank you, thank you.  I learned I can never love enough.

It was Palm Sunday when he left. I stayed home while the others went to church. I didn’t know what to do. I think maybe I expected him to get up and run. But he stayed panting. His mistress came home in an hour. She has shepherded plenty of souls to the door of the afterlife, held their hands when they were alone, sung to them, somehow communicating comfort. So she sat with him, her hands on his chest and brow. I came out to check. He breathed his last. Then we wept. There was never any of the spirit of resignation in him as sick as he was, never any give.

Risk- taking laughter. Three women, if you count their mother, tolerated the one son and brother. Irritated with this sense of realism, stoicism, boasting you are terminal, zero gelassenheit, she wanted to go on. I heard accounts of her passing. Betty Miller held her hand, sat with her for hours, as did Carole Watkins, others. Just 5 days before, she was angry at an electrical short in the brain, was partly paralyzed, had to be fed. She died in her sleep though, quoted  Ira Byock’s The Four Things That Matter Most, please forgive me, I forgive you, thank you and I love you. She got the last, but did not expect to die. That’s what she meant when she said she didn’t think things would turn out as they did.

Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.  She would like to hear that. I flew Christmas night '04 with son to Philadelphia. We spent New Year’s eve in Arkadelphia on the way back,  ended with things never known to identify. Calls afterward roused with the move. I’m talking on the phone with her about pain. She takes offense, says you can’t call cancer arthritis. She laughs, mocks again the time she and her sister, maiden aunts, visited me in the hospital after the cartilage was cut from my knee the old way, says in the parking lot had a good laugh at my “pain.” She says I called her Curator of the family years ago. Every family needs a curator to survive in larger sense, but after looking into the Macks these years she never thought to mention that Lizzie and Jesse had their pictures in the old photo album in the attic. This after countless queries of old photographs.

Now that those letters exist in printed form in Tulip it seems like they have always been so, but of course that isn’t true. The pieces of the puzzle change in the light like the painting on her wall, like the desire to understand. What is permanent anyway? When Henry Mack was 90 I was 5. Don’t sell little children short, “a little child shall lead them.” I entertained the new Jacob, he’s two. He took home a stuffed white kitty cat bigger than himself. I sent a tortoise doll to Paris for Slow Club. Nick bit me in twelve places. I told him to sit. I asked Chris on my lap where the kitty was. He said, meow! Remember me! She’s getting communion at 11 AM today.

If glory is going to be revealed in us, in families, in the earth, it has to be in our deeds and the attitudes of our hearts. The hymn of the realist occurs to the Preacher. “I the teacher.” And what does he teach, “what is twisted cannot be straightened; what is lacking cannot be counted.”  I have more understanding than all my teachers says Psalm 119, so there will be healings and miracles today. Odds will be surmounted.  Faith is what matters.

The big problem is the preacher’s natural mind. If the Virgin Mary told her Mom she was pregnant her Mom would be supposed to say, “it takes two honey.” Natural expectation covers every degree of “normal” expectation. Thus, in the way things are, the sick must die, the rejected fail. But revelation contradicts every natural state, turns rough places plain, virgins conceive. Passing revelation through  natural understanding confirms all opposites. Passing the natural through revelation reverses them, brings union, deliverance. Oh yes it does. Religion is bondage. Everybody can cite abuses and failure of revelation, but never of natural expectation because the natural never fails. A little bit of doubt reverses natural expectation. That is faith.

Revelation  turns offense to blessing. You can explain this process to the natural mind endlessly as it transfers its assumptions to all it perceives. People transfer what they assume to be true about light, space, science to anything that conflicts with it and believe the referent wrong. This is done with dogma. It is another new religion.There is a dog in dogma. The issue isn’t, do I agree with revelation, but do I like salvation.

Everything can be restored. What’s the point of holding a grudge in the afterlife? Give it up. What’s the point of keeping a scorecard for real and imagined losses and transgressions in this life that reach far into the past. You can’t even the score. The techniques of human self destruction have no purpose. We can resurrect the offenders and torture them in a Dantean fugue or rehabilitate them in the halfway house, or stand up to them while they’re in the flesh. So stand up! They wanted money from Jake, but when he offended they didn’t oppose him. Afraid it would afright the mark? It stuck in the craw. Weakness created resentment. Saving the appearances to his benefit, the grandson stood up to Jake.

Here’s the problem with the Way of Jesus. When you’ve made your best case, rehearsed it again and again, brooded over it, cursed the deed and darkness, he tells you, gelassenheit. Bless those who curse you, bless and curse not. Pray for those that persecute you. This probably doesn’t break their teeth. Loose love and peace on them, blessing, the liquid presence of comfort.

By the time you grow up and age out you find the body is imperfect. Old dogs can tell you, and the neighbor across the street, a curmudgeon who worked for the Indian bureau. Hank had stacks of Playboy to the wainscot, took care of neighborhood business, got old. It was a slalom bounce from car to post to house, landing akimbo, to cross the street. Wherever his mind wanted to go, he sent his body.

But at the end of life my dog is worse, can’t see, hear, walk, but he can eat.  But his mind is as alive as ever. The Dutch torturers in the Martyr’s Book thought they could kill the Anabaptist body and the mind would die. That’s backwards. You can’t kill the mind, it lives, communicates its passions when the body is gone. In the memory of neighbor Hank his desert tortoises have meaning, In one of those good news the youths who now own his house stand in the street and stare at cars going 30.

By this standard nothing can be lost, even if unmade it will out, someday be remade. In the eternal library  all the lost works of merit and all works not done by people exist. They’re eternal. Have you heard of it? Want to get on Google and find it? Not the Alexandrian Library, rather like the last work of Traherene, Poems of Felicity, found in the British Museum manuscripts accidentally, published in 1910, 200 years after his death, or Tolkien’s essay on Beowulf of 1936 published in 2003 in its unrevised form of hundreds of pages.

Reputations are waiting to be made. Consider if that one copy of Jerusalem had been lost. Families have made comebacks too when they reduced to one. J. Howard was the only son of an only son, keep that up long enough it leads to extinction. But what about them that never was but were supposed to be and the lost coin, pearl, orphan? Those who never were are promises to the world that lies down with the lamb, a progeny of childless Abraham. Is that the difference between the works of man and the works of God? The first is possible the second is certain, that is, after the fact.

If they are works of man they can be done by men. If a man made it a man can fix it. Not just  frakturs, diaries, records, letters. Once lost they can be found, if they exist, but if they have ceased to exist?  The resurrection of the body leads to the record. The Father has kept all those letters.

That’s why they call it redemption. It brings back what is lost.  Anabaptists believe it. Do you think in rejecting the body, the book, the oeuvre, they actually help it along? Such a lot of questions just to understand that nothing is lost. Say it, "nothing is lost." I know my redeemer lives.

Isaiah says, “Lord open his eyes that he may see.” Nothing is lost. Regrets are lost, but not one species, not one baby, not one attempt to put into the body, into form what all creation groans toward, the redemption of the body. Not only are the lost  restored to a magnitude above all expectation but you’ve also got to get over this notion of physical existence as a curse. It was turned to a blessing by Jesus.

 Her afterlife begins for me AM, April 6, four days after death when she calls me with the info that she has a “Washington Jefferson,” 1766, one of twenty. She is back in the house, looks a little younger, pulls the b/w print carefully from its envelop, the tissue paper slides off. Do you like the symbolism? She says she was never able to get a price on it. Yes it is a dream. Her skin is fair, she is in her kitchen, about forty years old. I had another dream last night. My dog is hanging out, head down, humpbacked, like in his last months, curled head to tail. But dreams are replaced with visions. It is Easter Sunday at communion. That dog is running flat out in those tight circles he loved, barking, barking and barking, carousing around the throne of God. My dead bodies shall live. You will not suffer your holy one to see corruption.

Rimbaud’s Attic

Rimbaud was called a saint for struggling with his savage nature. Up close the savage is heightened in the old survivor, they are not at all what you first thought or lived with all of life. That Rimbaud walked out on the false world of culture and civilization, that he denuded his spirit of artificial trappings or wanted was his notion of Christmas on earth.

There’s a lot of nonsense written about Rimbaud. That he was an angel, fallen or otherwise. That he had a destiny other than his own. Nobody has a destiny until the fact of earning it. Not that he hyped himself for the ages to be greater than he was, lived a grand lie in competition with all the other great liars of politics and literature. Let him rest in the grave, even if in going there he contradicted all that the free thinkers and licensees want, because in his end all he wants is peace with God. What else is there anyway?

Well in the interim there is fame, achievement, fortune. "Are these what is destined and is destiny greater than honesty? " She doesn’t answer any of this, turns her back on the lesser by default and chooses the greater, is that her thinking? A better question might be, does it matter at all?

Put fame and fortune in a scale and weigh against self sacrifice, honesty and the life of the mind to no end other than itself. The mind as an end in itself, what a notion. And add that no one would know. There’s your Rimbaud. None of these delights shared with the world.

Is it a crime, a shame, a sin? You have to answer yourself, unless you see fame as arbitrary, an obstacle to truth’s realization and beauty’s. No, fame is a heist. Does it matter at all?  Fame is a con. Is not the thing an end in itself and not the means to some other? Can’t anybody shut Socrates up? Is beauty beauty if it is a means to fame?  It could be the implicit argument of her life. That it doesn’t matter. What matters is truth, honesty, being. It’s not about product development. How are you going to sell that to publishers, patrons and audience? Let them get their own. It is a rigorous individuality held out, living alone, spreading her past and future out upon the dryer at 94 to see what else she can do without. In the end it is pure survival.

Daniel restored Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, remembered it for him, which he couldn’t do himself, so this Portfolio of paper and ink, images on a screen, illustrates her best and worst, herself. Denial and repression are interesting things. Push it down here, won’t it come up there? In the hands a majority truth can be counted. But you can’t annihilate talent, genius, destiny. It will out of eclipse. Sun still shines and the effects when known are wonderful.

Here on the ground, if a corn of wheat falls, what happens to the grit? It goes down like the envelope she keeps her memoir of her mother in, sent originally to her in 1982 from Bennett Publishing Company with the proof revisions of her sister’s book. Will it show up in the attorney’s inventory of the estate? No. She and my old dog are standing, but not side by side. Six mourners at the private grave. I guess you’re allowed to visit. “Died the same day as the Pope,” no other epitaph. Well, one more, “buried the same day as the Pope.”

Were they able to process her right away or did she have to wait for the crush to die down, after all, it’s not every day and it's the Pope. Anyway he died first. These and many other questions we wait to answer when satellite communications are restored. And suddenly there is a rash of deaths. Saul Bellow. Prince Rainier, so good conversation anyway. Thus the last Pennsylvania Dutchman in our family, Anna Elizabeth Reiff Young.

This blog, Animal Person, connects.
Works Cited

Three volumes on Pennsylvania Dutch origins, 2004 :

Volume I: A Red Portfolio: The Life of a Pennsylvania Dutch Radical.

Volume II: A Tulip Blooms from the Heart: Some Lives and Letters of the PA Dutch.
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Volume III: Truth and Lawlessness in the Pennsylvania Religion.

 I had wanted to catalog her affairs in this manner of speaking, but was confronted with relatives' doubts and hers. Family doubters, better do nothing, what will come of something? Anything to prevent the salvation to be revealed, the body. They want to save their points of view. You can’t drive all that way. One, how can you do it? Two, the weather will prevent it. Three, she doesn’t want it done. Their doubt made me doubt them, the people on the sidelines are nuts.

Pennsylvania Spiritual Lawlessness

Contrary to its reputation early Pennsylvania was a lawless place. Whether it was so or a haven of religious plurality in a golden age is only a contest among the public relations teams of the majorities

It's easy to exaggerate lawlessness, from Gottlieb Mittelberger (1756) to Jack D. Marietta and Gail Stuart Rowe's Troubled Experiment (University of Pennsylvania, 2006), which is shocked to learn that the crime rate among Germans was greater than among English, as if there were such statistics. But Pennsylvania includes as many notable lawless mystical hard cases as libertines. These made a work of love and roaring contradiction. A definition of spiritual lawlessness can be left to induction from cases interesting in themselves, but it is a little ironic that one of the first publications in Pennsylvania was Conrad Beissel's The Mystery of Lawlessness (Andrew Bradford, 1729), translated by Michael Wohlfarth.

Spiritual lawlessness turned into law attracted many peculiarities, contention over the sabbath, denial of sexuality, fervent separation from the world. Whether it be wife from husband or sensuous goose from the table, the "luxurious indulgence" of the world was an offense to them. Buñuel's Simon of the Desert gets the spirit of this monasticism. It's hard to believe they're serious when they exchange death threats to each other, but establishment charismatics Paul Crouch, Benny Hinn, et al. have continued the practice of death threats (xvii) against Hanegraaff and his children. Prophetic authority, tithing, healing were all turned to lawlessness as much as baptism, chastity, Sabbaths and communal living were. Should it be called spiritual inconsistencies? Convinced they were headed east they called it west.

One Pennsylvania prophet who opposed all this is Matthias Baumann of Oley, founder of the Newborn. He objects to baptism in all its forms. He opposes all devout practices, says that "all that Christ and his Apostles commanded have become vast idolatry," calls the sects and denominations, Christians without Christ,  (Call to the Unregenerate. Tr. Stoudt. Berks County Historical Review, Fall, 1978, 144). In the context of  what must be considered continuing  epidemic spiritual lawlessness he says, "all people want to look at Christianity from the outside...and they know nothing about the inward ground" (138). The outer ground is here the mystic lawlessness and it is not confined to practice only. Baumann's direct speech also calls into question the plague of gnostic transferences from Eve to the body and to women.

The Baptisms of Beissel

One bright star in this stellium of radical mystic artists was Conrad Beissel who operated in the guise of the prophetic 18th century. The illuminations of books and prints in Ephrata embody a utopian society a century before  Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance (1852) or Brook Farm (1841-47). New England got all the press but it imitated the real transcendentalists of Pennsylvania. The social relationships of these communities were as difficult as New England's. Hawthorne quit Brook farm over its nastiness in 1841. Beissel was just hitting his stride in 1741, but, as will happen with the individual and the prophetic, his mentality and individuality in isolation were more extreme. At one time he attempted to baptize himselfto baptize himself which is as hard as marrying yourself, which he also tried to do.  "This questionable act, however, failed to convince him...yet he considered his old master [Peter Becker]...so far beneath him... that it would be too great a humiliation for his proud spirit to receive baptism at their hands." (Sachse, German Sectarians, I, 102). He compared himself with Jesus. In the revival on the Pequea (1724) Beissel remembered "that even Christ had humbled himself to be baptized by so lowly a person as John" (103). Then he was immersed face forward three times.


Sachse, himself a Rosicrucian, empathizes as Beissel in November 1724 "plunges beneath the flood, and through it again enter[s] the material world cleansed from all taint and sin...yet his pride forbade him to humble himself, as he considered, to bow to his old master [Peter Becker] and receive the rite at his hands" (103). These exaggerations match the pride of the celebrant, for that cleansing from all taint lasted only so long. It had to be redone, so was no cleansing at all. Of course all this must be done in further imitiation "apostolicwise," Sachse says. "Apostles" appeared in Pennsylvania as much as they did in later Scottsdale's pyramid schemes. Aposticity seemed to go along with autocracy when down he went "face forward, under the cold flood." Sachse says that "this baptism in the Pequea was the most noteworthy one in the history of the sect-people of Pennsylvania" (104).

But not so fast. As those baptized in muddy water had later to rewash, four years later Beissel renounced this baptism lest there seem to be any taint on his authority in having been baptized by a group from which he now severed (Becker's baptists). It puts a whole new meaning on Anabaptist when Beissel was rebaptized again, that is he back down to the river and got re-baptized twice. By any proper count we are now at four. First he was unbaptised backwards to wash off the former at the hands of Becker. He went under three times backwards. This was done to an accompaniment of Rosicrucian fours and sevens that only Sachse comprehends. Then Beissel, after being unbaptized, flipped over on his face and went down forwards. Backwards means face up in renunciation and frontwards means face down in restoration. In 1738 Beissel enacted baptisms in and for the dead, (Chronicon, 122) that the son of Alexander Mack has baptized in his father's stead in order to qualify him for the Celestial Virginity. These incongruent baptisms were apparent common knowledge. In his polemic against Beissel he says, "I have, without baptizing myself and letting myself be baptized four times (like him) (Sachse, German Sectarians, I, 344). They could not leave baptism alone, took Anabaptists again and again into the water. They rebaptised as a rededication, a repentance and a show of solidarity until in 1745 repeated baptism was joined with hair cutting. The whole sisterhood was rebaptized as were ten at one time, fourteen at other, all performed by Beissel. It was "purposed it be a yearly custom" (192) This occurred after the trying period when the Eckerlins had left, accused of "church-robbery" (190)

Sabbath and Celibacy

Beissel summoned these extremities to defend his notion of the Sabbath.The long title of his Mystyrion is the "Lawless ANTICHRIST discover'd and Disclos'd, Shewing that all those do belong to that Lawless Antichrist, who willfully reject the Commandments of God, amongst which, is his holy, and by himself blessed Seventh-Day Sabbath."  A law of opposites prevailed in his writing, a code where bride means whore, rest means turmoil. So the preface to the reader of Mystery of the Lawless invests Beissel's own word, the editorial "we," dozens of times in two pages. His proof of truth is that it must first be spoken before it is written, that is, by himself. That makes it apostolic, "the Whore and her Cup," "explain the Words of God after her crooked Serpentine Will." So it is necessary to "withdraw with all his Heart and whole Mind from all Vanity, and Love of Creatures, and from all Worldly and carnal or fleshly Desire." "Denying the world," is always a favorite topic of the Sanctifieds even while the whole of Pennsylvania art celebrated the world its religion forswore. You used to "the Whore together with the Antichrist" being the facetious Beissel himself.

Baptism and the Sabbath were crucial issues in 1728 and 29 when Beissel's confederate Michael Wohlfarth insisted on his own inspired authority in Philadelphia, "I have a message to you from the Lord" (Sachse, 150) and exchanged broadsides with opponents. Wohlfarth and Beissel found themselves on the court house steps of Philadelphia arguing about the days of the week (154). The odd thing in this mix of genius and idiocy is that while Beissel was proclaiming himself sultan of the left wing, introverting sexuality, baptizing again and again, he was early associated with Franklin, his printer, and coined the atonal music of his later community that fostered decorative art to the nth degree. All this is more or less simultaneous with Beissel's second theosophical work in print, the first with Franklin (c. 1729), 32 pages, of which the 99 maxims printed were, as Sachse helpfully explains, because "the figure 1 stands for the finite or man, while the 0 represents the infinite, and to make the number 100 would have been to place the finite before the infinite" (162). We can't have that.

These NINETY NINE MYSTICAL SENTENCES exist translated by Peter Miller in part (1768), issued by the Pennsylvania German Society in 1912. So Beissel in quick succession in two years published four books, the Mystery of Lawlessness, 99 Sayings, a hymnbook of 62 hymns, 31 of his own, Gottliche Liebes (Franklin, 1730) and one on Matrimony, Ehebuchlein (Franklin 1730) in addition to Wohlfarth's Seventh-Day-Sabbath (1729). These points of contention would occupy him the rest of his years: baptism, the Sabbath, wisdom, hymns and music, celibacy.

Denial and promotion of sexuality as a kind of perversion had opposite programs in Beissel and Zinzendorf, celibacy on the one and Baptism and the Sabbath were crucial issues in 1728 and 29 when Beissel's confederate Michael Wohlfarth insisted on his own inspired authority in Philadelphia, "I have a message to you from the Lord" (Sachse, 150) and exchanged broadsides with opponents. Wohlfarth and Beissel found themselves on the court house steps of Philadelphia arguing about the days of the week (154). The odd thing in this mix of genius and idiocy is that while Beissel was proclaiming himself sultan of the left wing, introverting sexuality, baptizing again and again on the other. Enforcing their own law of anti-law, their supercharged terms for sexual denial were similar if opposite. The productivity of such efforts is measured by their autocracy and amazing energy, which should not necessarily seem a product of sublimation. Beissel kept publishing prolific editions of his hymnbooks in 1730, 32, 34 (ms. edition) and 36, with Franklin, most of the hymns written by Beissel. He was a propaganda machine. The First Century of German Language Printing attributes eight of the twelve known printed works in the colony to Beissel and Wohlfarth (2) before 1738, the Mystery of Lawlessness, German and English editions of 1728, 29, the Ninety-nine Mystical Sentences of 1729-30, a book on marriage as the penitentiary of man, Ehebuchlein...Menschen of 1730 and the hymn books. His  community built houses for neighbors and held theater when they marched the road.

This Ephrata community was analogous to a large family, although one feels under this surface a substitute for a real family more like a gang. How to explain celibacy's extremities? A prejudice against life? You can see it in theosophy in the cycle of death and rebirth. One life is never enough for Those dying generations at their song, as Yeats says, dying generations, entropy, life is never sufficient. Celibacy, tantrism, magic rituals, incantations, death, rebirth, drugs oppose existence in and of itself. Their negativity was so strong it cast itself as positive and maligned the positive as negative. This negativity also produced huge creativity, push a thing down here and won't it come up there? Polarized or natural? We are unable to think clearly when the poles are reversed! Commonplace phrases of  esoteric teachings increase the reversal: rites, secret rituals, mystic theosophists, altars, fires, esoteric speculations, Celestial Eve, heavenly virgin, spiritual virgin, celestial virgin, virgin Sophia, mixed with the mystic, dogmas, awakening, simplicity,  revival. All you need do to attract a following is tie up a sack and call it love. But he negative joined to its opposite is still negative, so if St. Paul had a agapetae, meaning a live-in snuggle bunny, the real version of which might be David's girl who warmed him on his deathbed, there will be some priest who will give him a bastard, and some critic to write about it. The root of negativity is to overturn authority to create authority. The one thing none of this bears is the thought that all human relation, every act, every thought, each moment is infused with redemption, so no matter what you have done, thought or said, there is redemption for it.


Even if Beissels's tract against marriage has no known copy there is plenty of evidence of his view. About 1735 he was awakened in his hut by intruders who whipped him presumably for seducing one of the Reformed wives to seek her virginity with him (Sectarians, 254). All opposites! Along with chastity came mortifying the flesh, full beards, pilgrim costume with the implicit violence of that garb. Whether to be a full hermit or merely a monastic seemed the choice in their minds. Of the immediate temptations in this holy melancholy we have Buñuel again to spank. To borrow from conspiracy theory, the processes of this control through sexual repression are mesmerist, patterning and depatterning, inversion techniques, hypno-illusions, etc., and even if we question the applications in politics, the techniques are seen in the Pennsylvania communes.

Zinzendorf

There were many of these mystics. The meditations of Zinzendorf riding horseback to take the gospel to the Indians may resemble the meditations of Crashaw and Donne, but Zinzendorf, like Beissel, is also a consumed megalomaniac. His mysticism is tantrism, his community autocracy. Pennsylvania is more than toy statistics in the bathtub however. Christopher Sauer's wife went one snowy night to become the spiritual bride of Conrad Beissel at Ephrata. Alexander Mack, called Brother Timotheus at Ephrata (Sectarians, 88) got baptized for his godly father (after his death!)  founder of the Baptists. Conrad Weiser bounced from Lutheran to Beissel to Zinzendorf and back to Muhlenberg's daughter after burning all his prayer books. The New Mooners of Pennsylvania, played trombones at the new moon in the wilderness, holding that prayer ascended in the waxing but descended in the waning moon as did deceased souls (Sectarians, 431). The entrance to the doorway of the Ephrata chapel was so low to force the entrant to bow (404). Iron was prohibited in their building because it was unholy in the Temple, as Sachse says in reference to Nebuchadnezzar's dream, "that even in Babylon iron was known as the symbol of destruction" (402), but while iron may have been destructive it was not deceitful. When it served them to spurn Babylon they did, but when it suited them they would confirm their learning with Rosicrucian Egyptian-Babylonian ritual. Even while surrendering their so called "Babylonian names given them by their parents at baptism they substituted new spiritual names" (305) embracing Babylon at every turn, admitting Eckerling (Onesimus), Miller (Jaebez) and Weiser (Enoch) to the grandiose Order of Melchizedek (386). It was a new/old testament Babylon Talmud/Gospel.The Zionitic Brotherhood at Ephrata could in as little as 40 days so completely physically and spiritually rehabilitate as to lengthen your years to 5557 in perfect health and contentment. The initiate restored to the state of perfect innocence of Adam was reborn by fasting, chanting, and drugs, a perfect Castaneda of the 18th century (361f). The good news for historians is that these elites, living so long, must still be alive to be interviewed. Of course they are yet in their baby hood, so incompatible with rational discourse. The underlying purpose of these efforts, as reported by Sachse of Johann Frantz Reguier, was the good Pennsylvania quest that "by a strict life and bodily denial one may grow and increase in sanctification" (362). And when the self-administered treatment failed and he had after some time regained his senses, Reguier went off "on July 15, 1735…for Georgia in the hope of meeting Count Zinzendorf and through him learning the way to perfection and sanctification' (quoted by Sachse, 364). "The fortunate adept who had thus successfully completed the ordeal, with physical body as clean and pure as than of a new-born child, his spirit filled with divine light, with vision without limit, and with mental powers unbounded…should finally be able to say to himself, I AM, THAT I AM." But we know all this. What Van de Wetering says of the Zen Buddhists is said of every human spiritual master when you deed him your home and your estate. They will give you a reading.

Sachse says they aped the monastic customs of the Middle Ages in night vigils, tonsures, regalia, priesthoods (375) and mystical theology that included baptism for the dead, even more primitive than reincarnation, the most absurd instance being the creation of "immunity for deceased or absent kinfolk" (366) gained by the outer faith. It's all about the outer. Look who has entered the human plane, they tell you. So medieval that in his high calling and self esteem Beissel was forced to adopt the office of Vater instead of merely Brother, a title "too commonplace" (367). These orders, rituals and hierarchies of law and outer ceremony were just opposite of the Oley Newborn so totally dominated by inner vision and yet the impetus to egotism and domination were the same. Signs, countersigns and mystics, how embarrassed was Yeats when he practiced the rituals of the Golden Dawn?


The words of Beissel and Zinzendorf had a bite. They could not mutually humble themselves enough even to meet in the flesh. Beissel "regarded himself as of a higher rank in the theosophical fraternity, considered it against his dignity to call on Zinzendorf (Sachse, 448) who responded by letter to Beissel that he "should descend from his spiritual height that others might sit alongside of him without danger to their lives" (449).
This pearl comes from the same Zinzendorf who threatened to kill Weiser. The two are paired. Both loved secret orders, paraphernalia of medals, robes, rituals and the power to command others. The Moravians had the Order of the Mustard Seed and the Order of the Passion of  Jesus (Sachse 4548f). Both were social visionaries. Zinzendorf held seven ecumenical conferences to found "one congregation of God in the Spirit" (442). Throughout these things their words about Christ and love are enticing to the extreme, but the liberty and love they spoke were completely opposite their autocratic practice of the Bethlehem and Ephrata communities (435). "The tail of a comet portended switches with which God would lash and judge them with great "calamities (417), compelling Beissel to issue Mystische Abhandlung uberdie Schopfung und vondes Menschen Fall (1745), A Dissertation on Mans Fall, Englished in 1765 (433) which Peter Miller (Agrippa) says "has gone further than even the holy Apostles in their revelations" (422). No wonder Christopher Sauer says, but not in devotion, "this one must be regarded as a God" which he calls "spiritual harlotry and idolatry" (343, 44) in regard to Beissel's hymn to himself (Hymn 400 in the collection Sauer printed for Ephrata in 1739, Zionitic Incense Hill, (Zionitischer Weyrauchs Hugel (320). But of course this is a god-awakened soul that word awakened, being the favorite of them all, as it had several meanings. Peter Miller in the Ephrata          Chronicon claims that Beissel can render himself invisible, "the spirit under whose guidance he was, at times made him invisible" (332).

If it is a mystery how Blake yokes such disparates in his visionary poems, bespeaking at the same time primitive biblical devotional language with an allegorical remake of the nature of man, describing his Fall in mysterious quaternaries, he is just another lovable case of 18th century mind whose renaissance cabala remarried a pietistic lifestyle. Were there such extremes in England who turned up in Penn's Woods  with the renaissance pictographs of the spiritual bride? Blake got it from Swedenborg. Swedenborg got it from Zinzendorf. Thus the teachings of "the occult philosophy of the Mystics and Cabalists of the Middle Ages [were joined] with the severely simple Sabbatarian worship and tenets set forth in their primitive Bible teachings" (German Sectarians, 31). There was always a heavy blend of Rosicrucianism in Boehme, in the mystics of the Wissahickon, in Beissel, Zinzendorf, in them all, Muhlenberg aside.

Theosophists well loved, notconfined to particular time and place  station Percival Lowell in Occult Japan to make what we can only call a space jump when he undergoes possession in his Shinto ritual. Whether to be possessed by food or the gods? Or a girl? Shall we be satisfied merely to say our names in sobriety and let that be enough? Was Sauer's criticism mere sour grapes, for "all was well between the two men until Sauer's wife left her husband and family to follow…a stricter observance (313).

Mania can't hold still. Beissel is one who "journeyed towards the valley of the Pequea to bring about an awakening among the Mennonites, who had settled there, many of whom had become followers of the seductive Bauman and his noxious "Newborn" teaching.

"Many thousands of these people cared so little for religion [or so much] that it became a common saying in reference to such, who cared neither for God nor His word, that they had the Pennsylvania religion" (Spangenberg as quoted by Sachse, I, 442).

Hawthorne's Dimmesdale impregnated a naif to prove that human nature cannot be altered by ordinary means.

There was a continual flow between the Moravians at Bethlehem and Beissel at Ephrata about 1742 (Sachse, German Sectarians, 424).

Esoteric teaching, secret ritual, mystic lies

 have  truth meant as bait for all poor flies

who find the sweetness bitter as they dive,

but with enjoyment skim the surfaces.

Deeper dive to bitter seeming truth,

which is so sweet and satisfying beneath.

This is the way of opposites and earth.

Nothing is so unimportant as the principled/unprincipled conflict of principals.

Megalomania is incomplete without projection upon the other, that holiest of psychological mechanisms where the outer world is inflicted with the inner.

The comet must be punitive if Beissel says so.

[One is tempted to be facetious and say that elaborations upon these practices in Felker's Schwamp coined a new deep pit baptism. In this ritual celebrants had their feet tied to a rope suspended from a branch over water and were raised and lowered three times head first. You believe that? Also, Oley Judizers practiced left and right side baptism. Then there was foot first baptism, reserved for sects whose final planting at burial, made ready to be raised. so they were buried standing up.] Why douse a sick girl with buckets of water three times in the middle of the night? To be able to say at her funeral that it was just in time for her death. Sprinkle or plunge, forwards or backward, splash one or three, that's obvious Pennsylvania.

Some Sources:

On the musical compositions of Conrad Beissel. Peter Miller to Ben Franklin, President of the American Philosophical Society (1768)

"The Present, which I have added, was the Father's musical Book, wherein are contained the most part of the Musical Concerts, by himself composed. It did cost three Brethren three Quarters of a Year Work to write the same: by the Imbelllshment thereof It will appear, what a great Regard we had for our Superior, In the whole Book there Is no musical Error. And as It was written before the Mystery of Singing was fully discovered, there- for are not all the Keys therein mentioned. The Masters of that Angelic Art will be astonished to see that therein a Man, destituted of all human Instruction, came therein to the highest Pitch of Perfection, merely through his own Industry. Also, that when he did set up a School In the Camp, not only the Members of the Single Station were therewith occupied for many years : but also the Family- Brethren were also thereby enamoured, that their natural Affection, to their Family suffered a great Loss.

It Is a Wonder, how the even Notes and few half-notes can be so marvellously transposed, as to make thereby 1000 Melodies, all of 5 Tunes, and some of 6 Tunes, yea some of 7 Tunes, also that they came not one the other In the Way. In the Composition the Father had the same Way as in his Writings, viz : he suspended his considering Faculty, and putting his Spirit on the Pen, followed its Dictates strictly, also were all the Melodies flown from the Mystery of Singing, that was opened within him, there- fore have they that Simplicity, which was required, to raise Edification. It Is certain, that the Confusion of Languages, which began at Babel, never did affect Singing: and therefore is in Substance of the Matter in the Whole."

Peasant art, tramp art, folk art connects to the radical religious Anabaptist and demonstrates the integrity of its life. The extremes are interesting juxtaposed against each other but are nothing compared with old world extremes where celebration of baptism was held  to be worthy of death.  Switzerland vs. Pennsylvania was the greater contrast.Finally, it's very rare to find someone who writes down something and does reveal their disease in the writing.

Conrad Reiff (1696 -1777) in the Journey to Pennsylvania (1756)

The natives in Journey to Pennsylvania may be the first in all travel accounts to talk back to their critics, those moralizers like Gottlieb Mittelberger, who is not exactly Herriot in Virginia or Pastorius in Germantown. The organ master is a gossip and part time immigrant, sticks it out just a few years, which charms us in its way. He arrived in Pennsylvania in 1750 and was so offended with the "lawlessness" that he returned to Germany in 1754 to publish Journey To Pennsylvania (Frankfurt, 1756). He there exposed the many "unfortunate circumstances of most of the Germans who have moved to that country or are about to do so" (1), but not so many domestic particulars." Someone told me," he says, "and I partly found out for myself" (8).

His translators Handlin and Clive call these "direct observations" when they concern the plight of those unfortunate poor Germans who sold their lives to Redemptioners as indentured servants to get passage. But other than Capt. John Deimer and a preacher or two, Mittleberger personally mentions only two others by name. These he judges such bad examples of “the wicked life some people lead in this free country” (84) that he appoints their perdition. All the license and misbehavior of Pennsylvania he summed in Conrad Reiff and Arnold Huffnagel of Oley.

Overcome with the difficulties “on my voyage to and fro” (9) with the "unfortunate circumstances," Mittelberger brings “divine retribution” to these Yahoos, a retribution that has overtaken many an immigrant over the years. Most recently William Least Heat Moon of Blue Highways searched his “shelves [for] accounts of exploration and travel in America,[and] pulled down Journey To Pennsylvania...astonished to come across an anecdote in the Journey about one of my grandfathers [Conrad Reiff] eight generations back" (River-Horse, 92). Moon learns what Mittelberger said all along. They “often met to pour ridicule and insults upon the preachers and the assembled congregation” (84), were the worst of all misguided folk who had "changed their faith" (83) and “in 1753 these two scoffers met again, according to their evil habit…” (84) and came to ruination. Moon thinks the "assertions about divine retribution are mendacious" (93), but Mittelberger says it “had a visible effect on other scoffers." Moon facetiously agreeing with the adversary, says he is proud of his ancestor, "like grandfather, like grandson," (92)… he "he did die unshriven!" (93).

But Moon is wrong; first however to Mittelberger. He was an organist and patron of organs long before he was a journalist. Conrad Reiff had an organ so the two must have met early. Organs were the purpose of Mittelberger's journey. “The organ was waiting for me,” he says, “ready to be shipped to Pennsylvania. With this organ I took the usual route down the Neckar and the Rhine…I spent nearly four years in America and, as my testimonials show, held the post of organist and schoolteacher in the German St. Augustine’s Church in Providence” (7). As such his narrative has been believed for centuries, but the tales, arguments and “uproarious laughter” he reports in farcical court cases are nearer the truth. His accounts suffer a little from an abuse of adverbs such as, “often,” “frequent,” so that his style seems to question his assertions

But the substance of his organ bringing is much questioned. Rev. Brunnholtz, a Lutheran associate of Muhlenberg, reported to Halle in 1752 about organ building and existing organs in Pennsylvania, but "Mittelberger is not mentioned at all in the letter, raising the question of just what his connection with the organ was, if any” (Brunner, 51). Mittelberger says there were six organs in Pennsylvania at that time, "all of which came into the country during the four years of my stay there," but scholar Brunner says there were "certainly more than six organs in Pennsylvania by the time he left in 1754,” and “the six he mentions did not all arrive during his stay" (53). These "exaggerations and inaccuracies," "embellishment of the facts casts doubt on his credibility" (53), and "since his claims concerning the two organs he was directly connected with as organist seem to be false, it is unlikely that he imported any organs at all" (54).

So mendacity brought Mittelberger into question and if there is doubt about his organs, so to speak, what about the rest? "Reliable” witnesses may have “told him” of the scoffers’ actions, but he would have known the details of 1753 since he did not repatriate to Germany for another year. In his zeal to put the offenders in their place he says that Conrad Reiff died of an act of “divine retribution” when he lived in fact two decades more. It’s not that Mittelberger didn’t know them well. Huffnagel and Reiff were long time citizens. Huffnagel owned land in Oley since 1717, (Philip E. Pendleton. Oley Valley Heritage. The Colonial Years: 1700-1775, 177) and assigned a tract to Reiff in 1743. Their lands adjoin in 1750 (198). Mittelberger got around to see them and most everyone. He was an organist in Philadelphia before taking similar employment with Lutheran pastor Henry Muhlenberg in New Providence. Based on his talent with the organ, and because he is a new journalist, we expect him at social events.

The big event in January 1753 was the funeral of Conrad Reiff's mother, Anna. Employer Muhlenberg officiated. Mittelberger would have played the organ if it had not been held at a Mennonite church which had none. The journalist loved all of the "large and distinguished assembly"(Muhlenberg, Journals I, 353) and especially his subjects, but this perhaps would be before he learned of their follies, before the eagles felled Reiff in his field [not], which would have been summer. The funeral, the eagle attack, Mittelberger's departure from Muhlenberg all occurred in 1753 three years before the account published. We imagine him at the funeral talking about how it was "still pretty difficult to hear good music" (Journey, 87), making chitchat about private English "spinet or harpsichord concerts." Mittelberger would boast, "I brought the first organ into the country" (87) and about the "fine and good instruments" people came "up to thirty hours' journey" [to him] to hear. "Here's how to make better organ pipes, out of cedar trees with "a purer tone than those made of tin" he would say (56). All the organs "came into the country during the four years of my stay" (88). Lo what a love of music will do, he even played "the organ for a savage family" (63).

At the reception would he not have told about the "clumsy hangman" (73), the young wife and the old wife (71-2), the turtles at the market (50), the fireflies (61)? But even though the funeral was in Salford they wouldn't talk of Oley. Crude Oley was home of the "New Born" monsters: "such outrageous coarseness and rudeness result from the excessive freedom in that country" (48). Mittleberger knew Reiff was one of them. They mocked the "preachers" and made "the German and English newspapers of Philadelphia" (45) laugh with their crudities. Well what do you expect, "totally unlearned men [preached] in the open fields" (44). "Most preachers are engaged for the year, like cowherds in Germany" (47).

Mittelberger's believing translators (Handlin and Clive) say he is accurate in "direct observations" (xvi) of the Redemptioners, who enticed poor German immigrants into selling years of their time for the price of passage. "Later scholars who have reviewed the evidence have been well impressed by the accuracy of the book" (xvi). But is it a direct observations that "A flight of golden eagles" attacked Reiff in his field because of his "wicked life," tried "to kill him?" This was no symbolic eagle. The eagles of justice came to tear, "apologize apologize," they threatened poor Stephen, "if not the eagle will come and pull out your eyes!" Yes, Joyce in Portrait is quoting Mittelberger. Such fear was supposedly struck in Jacob Reiff's heart, that "from that time on he would not trust himself out of his house." Mittelberger says he only survived at all by the intervention of his neighbors. But this is every whit and whistle a crock. None of it happened:

"Reif...was suddenly attacked in his field by a flight of golden eagles who sought to kill him. And this would have happened without fail had he not piteously cried for help, so that some neighbors came to his assistance. From that time on, he would not trust himself out of his house. He fell victim to a wasting disease and died in sin, unrepentant and unshriven. These two examples had a visible effect on other scoffers, similarly inclined (85)."

To continue mocking the facetious report, the good news for our Conrad that day was his bargain for the better part. He got Huffnagel's place in heaven for his own in hell says Mittelberger: "The two scoffers struck their bargain." Huffnagel "who had been so ready to get rid of his place in Heaven, wanted to go down (italics ours) to his cellar the next day [and] suddenly dropped dead." He bargained for hell and died in the basement! Let that be a lesson! Immorality here has no chance, except Pendleton thinks it apocryphal (108) at least by half, but what does he know? Huffnagel did die in 1753, suddenly, that is, intestate. So Mittelberger is  shall we say one for two, for Reiff lived two decades more (d. 1777). One further correction however he did not live unshriven as the reprobate Least Heat Moon grandfather, and neither as Mittleberger's "victim to a wasting disease... unrepentant," but "in hopes of a joyful resurrection," as we will see. So be careful wh you trust.

After the funeral of Conrad Reiff's mother Anna above, where we recall the offender and righteous met over bowls, Muhlenberg wrote, "she had several married sons who are well thought of, and some of these profess the Reformed religion while others believe in nothing but the transitory riches of this earth" (Journals, I, 352). Conrad was the one with money but not the Reformed religion. He married Margaretha, daughter of New Born scion Philip Kuhlwein, brother-in-law of Matthias Baumann, founder of the Newborn. Conrad inherited Kuhlwein's land in 1736 (Pendleton, 108) and Baumann's (d. 1727) to boot! The configurations of the Baumann and Kuhlwein estates of 1725, adjoin on a southwest axis, roughly equivalent to the Conrad Reiff estate of 1750. This is success in "transitory riches."
 

Huffnagel and Reiff were however "archenemies of clergy," tasteless as it seems, "scoffing at them and the Divine Word." They heaped "ridicule and insults upon preachers and the assembled congregations," and laughed at, "denying Heaven and future bliss as well as damnation in Hell" (Journey, 84). We are prepared to address the theology of the Newborn in an upcoming Berks County Review which will show some mitigation to these reports, but what Mittelberger says of them Muhlenberg says of Reiff's equally errant nephew, Conrad Gehr, that he "ridiculed" the "Word of God and the other means of grace," mocked the churches by holding an "assembly of worship in his [tavern] house on Sunday" after which the enforced offering, "three pence apiece," was "consumed in drink," argued that "revealed religion," "heaven and hell," are used by preachers merely "to make a living" (I, 352-3). That Huffnagel and Reiff "often met" implies the same sort of affair nephew Gehr was running in his tavern.

What Mittelberger complained of in 1753 however had been  commonplace three or four decades earlier in the disorder of the frontier. One group focused this lawlessness better than others, that being the New Born. If Mittelberger is upset about their mockery of the church, it was old hat by 1753, but you need an audience for anti-worship. The "meeting" in Gehr's tavern in a good example.

History reads better as science fiction. Since we have deposed Huffnagel and Mittelberger has left the state, now fast forward to Reiff ten years later, in September 1764, at a collection taken up for the building of the Wentz Church, successor to the previously established Reiff Church founded by his brother and father. The intent of the fund raising campaign was to build a "House of Worship...in the Nurture of the Lord and to the Praise of His Holy Name." (The Perkiomen Region, I, 38). Fundraising efforts had fallen short. The first collecting tour raised only 12 pounds, 4 shillings. A second effort outside the immediate congregation found themselves "obliged to apply to the Charitable Benevolence of all well disposed Christians to contribute their Mite towards the finishing of the said Meeting House.... George Alsentz, the Evangelical Reformed minister, urged (August 1764):  "In as much as the generous contributions hitherto received from kind friends were far from sufficient to defray the expenditures of our church we are obliged to turn to other benefactors to find out their benevolent disposition toward our enterprise…May the God of all mercy send his richest blessing upon all benefactors, such is my wish, and in witness of the foregoing I hereunto set my hand" (41).

This tour did better, it raised 15 pounds, 9 shillings. They went to New Jersey, through Goshenhoppen "and then up towards Oley" (44). There were 400 contributions, illustrious names names like Philip Boehm gave l shilling, Peter Miller, Beissel's right hand at Ephrata, editor of the Chronicon Ephratense, gave a shilling, Friedrich Hilligass (father of the first Treasury Secretary) gave 5. The two largest gifts, however, 10 shillings each, were made by Georg Welker and Conrad Reiff (39-44). So where is the renegade now, considering the language of the subscribing petition, its references to "pious exercises," "the Nurture of the Lord " and "the Praise of His Holy Name?" What happened to the "the Holy Scriptures old, outworn fables, tomfoolery, and the like, and said that the parsons had to make so and so out of it in order not to lose their bread and butter"(Muhlenberg I, 139). Acceptance of the pious language of the petition must evidence a return from those who had "changed their faith" back to a reaffirmation of his Reformed roots. The Newborn were never politic in their beliefs but as "harsh and uncharitable" as Philip Bayer had been before his reconciliation (Muhlenberg I, 357).

Money was short, so again, when the first church was dedicated in November 1763, the "costs of this undertaking were greater than anticipated. "... incurred just as a depression hit the colonies following the French and Indian War" (Gladfelter I, 384). The assembly authorized a lottery to pay the debt, since "the members of the German Reformed church in the township of Worcester, in the county of Philadelphia, have erected a church and school house in the said township, the expense and costs whereof have been so great as to amount to a debt of six hundred pounds more than they are able to pay" (Gladfelter, I, 384).

The Will

The change in Conrad Reiff in old age is just plain frustrating to mockery, but so is the language of his will, which deviates substantially from convention,  in the statement of faith that forms the preface. Conventional language took a generic form. For example, the will of John Pawling of 1733 is word for word identical to the will of Christopher Dock in 1762.

"That is to say, Principally and first of all I give and recommend my Soul into the hands of God that gave it, and for my body I recommend it to the Earth to be buried in a Christian like and decent manner at the discretion of my Executor, nothing doubting but at the general Resurrection I shall receive the same again by the mighty Power of God, And as touching such Worldly Estate wherewith it has pleased God to bless me in this Life I give devise and dispose of the same in the following manner and form."(The Perkiomen Region, III, 17, and II, 25).

">Slightly different phrasings, spellings, a different order of sentences and a shortened order of divine disposition mark the statement of Gabriel Shuler's will of 1776:

"First, I recommend my Soul in the hands of God my Creator, and my Body to the Earth to be buried at the Discrition of my Executors. And as for my worldly Goods & Effects, wherewith it hath pleased God to bless me in this Life, I give and dispose the same in Mannor following…"(The Perkiomen Region, II, 45).

Nicholas Wohlfart, in 1788 is content merely to say that "first of all I commend my Soul into the Hands of Almighty God that gave it" (The Perkiomen Region, I, 129). Mathias Sheiffle in 1790 says only that "first I Deliver my Soul in to the Hand of the allmighty god, and my body to the Earth to Be Buried in Christian Lick manner. . ." (The Perkiomen Region, I, 110).

Conrad Reiff's confession of faith in this is even more evident if we compare his will with his father's, Hans George (1726) and his brother George (1759), neither of whom make any such statements: "I, John George Reiff of Salford Township for County of Philadelphia and province of Pennsylvania, Smith, being weak of Body but of Perfect Mind and Memory do make and Order this my last will and Testament. . ."(Riffe, 20). Conrad's brother George, proceeds: "Will of George Reiff, Germantown, Philadelphia County Pennsylvania…" (Riffe, 28).

Conrad's will of 1777 is as different from his father's and brother's as it is from the general community, which suggests there was a point he wanted to make. "In the name of God Amen. I Conrad Reiff of Oley township in the county of Berks and province of Pennsylvania, Yeoman, being infirm and weak in body but of sound mind memory and understanding blessed be God for the same. And well knowing that all flesh must die therefore do make my last will and testament in the following manner. I recommend my infinite soul into the hands of Almighty God who gave it to me and my body to the earth whence it was taken in sure and certain hopes of a joyful resurrection through the merits of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."

Four notable points of departure which affect the disposition of soul and body set the will apart .

1) His "infinite" soul he gives into the hands of God.

2) His body is not recommended "to the Earth to be buried in a Christian like & decent manner at the discretion of my Exects." He has neither "decent manner" nor discreet executor. He replaces the negative "nothing doubting," with his "certain hopes,"

3) not of a "general" but of a "joyful resurrection" that has his body, taken from earth once, taken once again. Finally he concludes that this all will occur

4) "through the merits of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" and not through such efforts as those offered by the secretary of Mr. Penn, through "our good works and obedience," cited below.

This statement must have been made for his progeny and the public as well. The import that he does not trust in his own merits, riches or wit, but in the "merits of my Lord" and in the "certain hopes of a joyful resurrection," is not that of a scoffer, but words that Muhlenberg would ratify.

The important conclusions that emerge from this are, first, that the words of his will are the best confirmation we can get that Mittelberger, if he had the details wrong, got the essence right. Conrad Reiff leaves just such a personal testimony in his will because he was guilty of the behavior Mittleberger charged. He goes out of his way to contradict his past. A renunciation of the Newborn sinlessness is explicit in his statement, hence, we conclude, Mittelberger's report, at least the first part, is credible.

Second, the phrase "through the merits of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" is a polar opposite of the Newborn view reported by Boehm that "they claim that they have essential divinity in themselves" (Life and Letters, 1728, 161). As to the meaning of the phrase, Muhlenberg suggests that "the merits of my Lord" means "to wrap oneself in Jesus wounds…the words mean rather the perfect payment which our Mediator made for our sins, guilt, and punishment, the perfect righteousness which He obtained for us by His life, sufferings, and death. To inwrap one's self therein means to appropriate and assume Christ's merit and righteousness in faith. . ." (I, 123). To a Newborn such language were repugnant, for the Newborn "pride themselves in their own righteousness" (Muhlenberg, I, 357). Conrad Reiff would not have been the first to come full circle, but he might have been the last. Newborn proselytes who founded the Oley Reformed Church.

In larger context the phrase "through the merits of my Lord" had been a rallying cry of George Whitfield when he made his trip through Philadelphia in 1739. Distinguishing between the outward and inward fruits of faith, so important to the Newborn who denied the need for the outward, also a point of contention for the Quakers, Whitefield exhorted a Quaker meeting "that they would talk of an outward as well as an inward Christ; for otherwise, we make our own holiness, and not the righteousness of Jesus Christ the cause of our being accepted by God." (Journals, 338). This self-righteousness had been the crux of the Newborn's rejection of church and scripture. Following the theme further, Muhlenberg said, "…first one must wrap one's self in the wounds, then Christian living must follow." As we have noted from the Weiss' dialogues, the outward, the living part was superfluous because "he has all the inner fruits, but he declares he can see no use for such outward things" (Sachse, 159). These outward things Conrad Reiff now affirms by commitment to the outer Christ, the one whose external merits become the means of his hope for the "joyful resurrection."

Whitefield revisits this when he returned to Philadelphia later that year, Sunday, November 25:

". . .after I had done preaching a young gentleman, once a minister of the Church of England, but secretary to Mr. Penn, stood up with a loud voice, and warned the people against the doctrine I had been delivering, urging, 'that there was no such term as imputed righteousness in Holy Scripture; that such a doctrine put a stop to all goodness; that we were to be judged for our good works and obedience, and were commanded to do and live.' When he had ended, I denied his first proposition, and brought a text to prove that "imputed righteousness" was a scriptural expression…I discoursed in the afternoon, and shewed how the Lord Jesus was to be our whole righteousness . . .the church was thronged within and without; all were wonderfully attentive; and many, as I was informed, were convinced that the Lord Christ was our Righteousness" (Journals, 352,353).

On April 24, 1740 Whitefield preached thus also at Skippack, but of course the doctrine of the Substitution cannot be thought peculiar to him or to the Moravians who assisted in the Skippack visit (Journals, 410). It is likely Conrad Reiff had several chances to adopt such a phrase in his life and in his will and it is good possibility that he did so through the Moravians. So it is a loaded phrase that he there plants to demonstrate in a word that in his end he had come back to his beginning.

Works Cited

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The Life and Letters of the Rev. John Philip Boehm. Edited by the Rev. William J. Hinke. Philadelphia: Sunday School Board of the Reformed Church in the United States, 1916.


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