BETHLEHEM AND THE MORAVIANS.
On August 22, 1873, as I stood upon the tower of Packer Hall, Lehigh University, I saw spread out before me the whole of Bethlehem, with furnaces, railroads, bridges, churches, schools; and the rolling country and cultivated fields of Northampton and Lehigh Counties. Pointing to a wooded hill, my little guide said, “That is Iron Hill, where iron ore comes from.”[89]
In the first house built at Bethlehem, on the 24th of December, 1741, Zinzendorf and his companions celebrated their first Christmas Eve in America. I saw in the town a picture, by Grünewald, of the house in which they met,—a long, one-story log house, with overhanging eaves, the unbroken forest behind admirably expressing the loneliness of the situation. In the beginning, one end of this building was for cattle, as in Switzerland and other parts of South Germany.
When this first house was newly erected, Zinzendorf visited it, and on Christmas Eve he went with others into the stable and sang,—
“Nicht aus Jerusalem, sondern Bethlehem
Aus dem kommt, was mir frommt.”
or, in prose,
“That which is profitable to me comes not from Jerusalem, but from Bethlehem,”—
and thus the new-born town was named Bethlehem.
“The material treasures of the Lehigh valley,” says a Moravian bishop, “the national rage of hastening to be rich, will, I fear, too much overgrow the spiritual interests of the people.”
Since Zinzendorf entered the log cabin of Bethlehem one hundred and thirty years have passed by, and four or five generations of mortal men. Other changes too have befallen the Moravians. For twenty years they lived in an economie, or associated like one family. That strict rule, which afterwards kept the unmarried in brother- and sister-houses, has since been annulled, and no vestige of it remains here but in the custom of sitting in church, the brethren on one side, and the sisters on the other. And this is not universal: families sit together.
In like manner has disappeared here the custom of appealing to the lot, which formerly prevailed even in matters so solemn as marriage.[90]
The plainness of apparel which distinguished the Moravians has disappeared also. Once even the young ladies who studied at the boarding-school were obliged to wear the peculiar Moravian dress.
In the Historical Collection at Nazareth are preserved thick muslin caps, such as the women once wore, with peculiar pieces, like a scallop shell, to cover the ears. Those tasteful little caps now worn by the young women in the choir, and the neat ones worn by the sisters who serve at the love-feasts, can scarcely keep up the memory of those of olden time.
Once the Moravians did not take oaths, but obeyed literally the command, “Swear not at all;” but now judicial oaths are permitted.
Formerly, the bulk of the real estate belonged to the church, and none could buy who were not members; but this rule has been broken, and foreigners have been allowed to buy land in Bethlehem and other Moravian towns.[91]
One trait, which has hitherto remarkably distinguished them, still exists, namely, a great missionary zeal. In 1873 a gentleman gave the numbers of the Moravians at seventy thousand baptized missionary converts, to twenty-three thousand home members in Europe and America. On this estimate the missionary converts are more than three to each of the members in the other lands.[92]
At Bethlehem a considerable landed estate belongs to the Church, whence is drawn an income of about eighteen thousand dollars. All the institutions of learning here, including the Young Ladies’ Boarding-School, belong to the Church, and the teachers are its salaried officers.
The different provinces of the Church, the American, English, and German, are like separate States of our Union, their general head meeting or residing in Saxony. This general synod still, in some respects, gives rules to our Pennsylvania Moravians; and one of the bishops says that the Moravian is the only Protestant Church which is a unity throughout the world.