THE COMET AND BROTHER ALBURTUS
Night's curtains now are closing
Round half a world reposing
In calm and holy trust;
All seems one vast, still chamber,
Where weary hearts remember
No more the sorrows of the dust.
—Mathias Claudius.
Hardly had Peniel been completed and dedicated, when there occurred an event that wrought great consternation, not only in our little community but among all the settlers in the province. This was nothing less than a comet. Many firmly believed this celestial visitant to be the precursor of war and its kindred evils, famine and pestilence; for full many of our German settlers had still fresh in their minds the fiery comet that had appeared in the sky of the Vaterland immediately before the Thirty Years' War, when the Palatinate was devastated from end to end and almost depopulated. Thus it was feared this fiery, flaming star foretold similar bloodshed and disaster in this hitherto peaceful New World. Many of our Brotherhood thought the flaming tail was a bundle of switches, with which the Almighty was about to punish the unrepentant and unregenerate.
To our brother hermits of the Wissahickon the comet was looked upon as a harbinger of the celestial Bridegroom, for whose coming they had so long devoutly waited.
I remember well the night this wonderful star appeared. It was early in the year 1742. The Kloster bell with its sweet tones was calling the Brotherhood of Zion to their midnight devotions. I still see our long slender line in cloaks and cowls file out of the narrow corridors, and silently and reverently take up our march toward the Hall of Prayer on Mount Sinai. There was no moon, but through the clear, frosty air was spread the light of a multitude of stars that twinkled brightly over head. Not a twig stirred on the leafless trees. Everything was quiet, Kedar and Zion looming up distinctly on the hillside, and the sharp roof of Peniel, down in the meadow, seemed wrapt in deep slumber.
As the notes of the bells died away there was absolute stillness, save for the creaking and crunching of our wooden shoes on the frozen ground. We had passed over half the distance to the prayer house, when suddenly we saw in the eastern heavens a blazing star, with its bright, fiery tail flashing upon the face of the sky. I shall never forget the awe that took possession of us so that we trembled with fear, Brother Obed who was next to me, his teeth chattering violently, whispering hoarsely it was the judgment day and Gabriel would blow his horn. I myself was not without a feeling that something dreadful was about to happen, for it was the first comet I had ever seen, and I knew not what it portended. Still, I am glad to say I was not so utterly bereft of my senses as most of my poor brethren seemed to be.
Brother Alburtus, however, was least concerned of all, a peaceful smile lighting up his face as though the celestial Bridegroom were coming on some fiery chariot to take him to heaven; but Brother Onesimus fell on his knees on the hard ground, and prayed for mercy and that the great evil and calamities foreshadowed by the fiery messenger in the heavens might be turned aside and that the Almighty would hear our prayers.
And then I felt moved to quote the sublime words of Job:
Is not God in the height of heavens?
And behold the height of the stars,
How high they are.
After the first shock of this sudden apparition was somewhat abated, Brother Beissel ordered the bells rung throughout the community, and deputed me to order all out for religious services in Peniel, where we prayed and sang until the dawn, some of us fondly hoping as the daylight appeared and the glare of the comet died away our prayers had been answered, only to find the direful visitant in the sky on the following night and many nights thereafter.
Brother Obed held that the comet augured the end of the world and Brother Philemon agreed thereto; for he recollected, which we all remembered now, that Brother Agonius some weeks before his death, had earnestly prophesied the long-looked-for millennium was at hand.
Special prayers as provided for in our ritual were said, and certain Brothers, detailed for that office, read these prayers at the services of the Sisterhood and the congregations of the households at Peniel. This liturgy consisted of the reading of the fourth Psalm, closing with a special invocation, these being changed each day according to the secret ritual of the Zionites. The sign for Sunday being the Lion; the corresponding angel Raphael, and the planet Chamma, the Sun. For Monday the sign was the Crab, the angel Gabriel; and the planet Lewanna, the Moon, and so on, a different sign and angel and planet for each day of the week, the sign for the Sabbath being the Waterman and the Goat, the angel Chephziel; the planet Sabbathai, or Saturn.
Brother Jephune, who was skilled in astronomy and astrology, informed us the comet was near the equinoxes of the heavens the first night and in the tail of the Eagle the following night. For a few nights the heavens were so hidden by heavy clouds and fogs we did not see the comet again until the following Saturday, when the star stood near Lyra, having taken a northward course; by the next night the comet had flown to the tip of the Swan's wing, and so rapid was the wanderer's flight it traveled five degrees north within twenty-four hours. The next night the comet entered the head of the Dragon, after which the awesome visitor vanished again into space, many of the Brethren stoutly maintaining it had been swallowed up by the Dragon.
But the long-looked-for millennium did not come either with the comet or its vanishing, but happily, on the other hand, neither did those dire disasters and calamities fall upon us which many had predicted; and though it was a long time before we outlived the fear inspired by this erratic body, if another had come shortly after there is little doubt in my mind our terror would not have been quite so great, for this is the nature of man.
Nevertheless, the star made a wonderful and more or less lasting impression upon all of our community, and from this time a number of our hymns date, which afterward were incorporated in the collection named by our superintendent, "Paradisches Wunderspiel" (Paradise Wonder Music). These hymns were full of prophetic insight and represented the mysteries of the last days so clearly it seemed to many of us as though the kingdom of heaven were already at hand.
But what troubled me far more than this flaming star was that which occurred the very next day after the comet disappeared. A few years after Sonnlein and I came to Ephrata, there joined the Solitary one whom I have already mentioned as Brother Alburtus, that being his Kloster name. What his real name was no one in our community seemed to know. And lest it be thought strange that we knew not who he was, it behooveth me to enlighten the reader by explaining that at Ephrata we seldom, if ever, demanded of man or woman desiring to join us, other than whether they had renounced the world and were willing to serve God in the simple manner we had agreed upon as being the best for our Master's cause.
And thus it came about that in our tolerant little republic all were welcome, no matter what their previous faith, Protestant or Catholic, or what their condition, high or low, rich or poor. Nor did we inquire overmuch into the past life of any who desired to join us; for what concerned us more than the past was the manner of life our brethren and sisters lead after joining us, and in this were we exceedingly strict.
But our Brother Alburtus was always a puzzle to me as, indeed, he was a great mystery to the rest of the Brotherhood and Sisterhood, though we all were regarded as peculiar by outsiders. He was very tall, even taller than I, and broad-shouldered, so that even with his habit of walking humbly, with bowed form, he yet towered a veritable giant above all the rest of the Brotherhood. A pronounced roll in his gait, such as men receive who have served long on the sea, inclined many of us to believe such had been the greater part of his life, and there were rumors current in the neighborhood that our Brother Alburtus had been captain of a vessel; while still others—especially the busybodies, who always imagine evil of others—gravely asserted he had been a pirate and had sought refuge among us from those who sought his capture; but the only thing I ever saw as supporting the charge of piracy was a long, livid scar across our brother's brow, giving his otherwise gentle and benign countenance a rather forbidding aspect. Whether or not he had been a rover of the seas I never learned; from his face I could not believe he had been a bloodthirsty pirate, though I know full well that oft beneath the form and features of a saint dwell the thoughts and passions of the Evil One; for the Scriptures say the human heart is a deceitful thing.
But this I do know, and in later years it was a great comfort to me, that in all the twenty or more years our brother was with us he lived a life of such saintly peace and gentleness as put to shame many a Brother who professed more but acted not so well. Whatever his past life, I felt sure with us he lived a true Christian; for a man cannot well live a hypocrite long with his fellow-men and not be found out.
Yet he had two great peculiarities we often marveled at and of which one was, that no matter where or when one saw him, he would ever be clasping and rubbing his hands together. Day after day, month after month, year after year, all the time I knew him, I believe I never saw him but that he was clasping and rubbing those hands and looking at them in a strange, abstracted sort of way, and even when the Brotherhood were at their meals, if he was not attending to the needs of the inner man, he would be still rubbing and clasping those hands, which looked white and peaceful enough to me, so far as I could see; but the suspicious ones—and they are ever a plenty—in our community and in the country round about were firm in the belief that those hands had been stained with the blood of men and even fair women and dear little children, and for whose deaths he was doomed for the rest of his life to imagine he saw the blood there which he must ever be trying to rub off.
Mine own opinion was that our Brother Alburtus, who was one of those absent-minded ones who never know what they are doing, had simply fallen into this habit, which, as is the nature of habits, became a very part of him.
His other peculiarity was that often without leaving word with any of us he would wander off, or as I have often thought, lose himself in the woods, sometimes being absent weeks at a time; but as he always returned safely, albeit his body and his cloak a trifle the worse for his ramblings, we never attempted to restrain his freedom. He and Sonnlein seemed to have great regard for each other and this too made me love our harmless brother, and often I saw the two, Sonnlein leading the way, tramp off to the woods on some wonderful trip of discovery.
As I have said, this matter which I wish to relate came upon us the day after the comet left. I was walking in the Brother woods not far from the old oak that had witnessed more than once the manifestations of the old witch. It was a cold, raw day so that I felt it needful to have my cowl over my head and I was greatly surprised and yet not entirely so—for he always walked about as if he regarded not the weather—when Brother Alburtus meandering bareheaded in the woods walked past me, clasping and rubbing his hands as ever, looking abstractedly at them and I felt sure never seeing me though his cloak almost brushed mine.
He had gone but a few steps beyond me when suddenly from out of a thicket there flew at him what for the instant I could not tell whether it was wild beast or human being; but as something bright flashed in the air like a knife or dagger I saw it was that horrible old hag, who in another moment would have surely killed our brother, standing there simple and helpless, had I not despite all the scratching and clawing, torn the vile form from him and hurled her crashing to the earth so that she rolled for a few yards from me.
I was too much startled and in such passionate anger at this assault upon our gentle, unoffending brother to say aught as the foul shape lay writhing and twisting but a second or two where I had hurled her. Then as she arose slowly from the ground as in pain—though I had heard one could not hurt a witch—and hobbled off into the forest I bawled after her: "Again have I let thee go, but 'tis the last. The next time thou dost assail any of us I shall surely kill thee"; for I was so beside myself with cruel, wicked rage I knew not what murderous threats were coming from my unbridled tongue.
And then I turned to Brother Alburtus and was surprised to see him standing there looking vacantly into space as if naught had happened, not even asking me what it was that had so violently attacked him, so that I wondered whether he even realized that I had saved his life. Thus I thought it not worth while to ask him why it was this strange woman had tried to kill him, as with all her violence she had never attempted actual harm to the others of us to whom she had appeared.
But what I failed that day to understand and for many long years was a riddle to me, came out clearly in the end.