THE PLAINER SECTS.
Some of our Pennsylvania German Baptist sects cannot escape a suspicion of asceticism. I speak of them as Baptists, for not only the Dunkers who dip, but the Mennonites who pour, are Baptists, because they baptize on faith, adults or young persons, and not infants. At the time of the great Centennial Exposition one of our farmers told me that although their members were not forbidden to visit it, yet it had been recommended for them not to do so. He said that there were worldly things there, unnecessary things. Of the stricter sect of New Mennonites I heard that they were forbidden. But as these churches are of simple congregational form, this rule and this recommendation may have been local.
I met another farmer on a railway train, and asked about the Exposition. He answered, “I don’t think the Lord has any love to them things. It’s like those picnics and things; those that will go to them will do anything.” But his name was afterward connected with a more disreputable thing than a picnic.
In some things our New Mennonites are very strict. It is said that one was obliged to take down his front porch and another to cut down his evergreen-trees, apparently because they were suspected of being “proud.” A woman inclined to the same sect cultivated no flowers. Yet it is surprising how showily the members allow their unbaptized children to dress, in which they are a great contrast to the Amish. It is the same New Mennonites who have so rigid a ban in the church of which I have spoken in the text. I have spoken of a father who did not come to the family table. A member of the church was kind enough to explain to me the cause. He gave way to a selfish spirit, found fault unnecessarily. The wife bore it a long time, and then complained to the meeting, whereupon he did not show a penitent spirit; he was not willing to humble himself before her. So they continued to eat apart, to be separate. Our Old Mennonites confess their faults to each other in an open meeting of the members. If the same rule prevails among the New Mennonites, we can see that it would not be at all grateful to the pride of “the natural man” to apologize thus to a meeting of which the wife was a part.
As regards another sect, the River Brethren, an acquaintance tells me that he was expelled from them for voting at elections; but still some of the brethren will vote. But against him there were two other charges, namely, of having a melodeon in his house and having his property insured.
Another division of the Mennonites are the Amish, who are very simple in dress and habits, very recluse. I once called on a plain old Amish farmer in moderate circumstances. His clothing was long worn, but clean and well mended, and his bent form, silver beard and hair commanded regard. A neighbor was with him whom he called Chrissly, the nickname of Christian. In conversation I spoke of one of my relatives as a lawyer, and I saw that this had an immediate effect. The neighbor remarked that when Judge Jasper Yeates was growing old, he said that lawyers are like woollen yarn, they will stretch. The old man added, “I guess they must tell rather more than the truth when they blead.”
I said to the old man, “You all vote?”
“Yes; there’s some of them a little conscientious; but if they are, they can just leave it alone. It may be I’m dumb; but I just think we must have government,—we have Scripture for it,—and if the good people—what I call the tame people—stays away and leaves it all to the rowdies, how would it be? We must bray for the government; do all we can. We mustn’t go to pole-raisings. It oughtn’t to be, but sometimes they will, you know.”
“Do any of your young men learn trades?” I asked.
“Yes; some are carpenters or cabinet-makers.”
“But you would rather have them farmers; why do you like that best?”
“I think if a man’s a Gristian, that’s the best thing he can undertake.”
I have been told of an Amish farmer who was sitting at table with several young men who had lately joined the meeting, having been baptized. One of these was his hired man called Yoney (a nickname for Jonathan). The Amish here do not in general wear suspenders, and the old man, addressing Yoney, said, “Was hasht du verschproke in der Gemeh?” (What did you promise in meeting?) The young man looked at his clothes, and the elder pointed out the suspenders.
Yoney answered that he was allowed to wear the clothes that he already had until they were worn out.
“These look like new ones.”
“They were my best ones,” he answered, “and I have just begun to wear them every day.”
A girl who has lived among the Amish has told me that they are obliged to give to beggars or “stragglers,” or they would be turned out of meeting. She does not know indeed that they are obliged to give to those who are able to work; but she did not believe that she ever saw them turn any away.
The impression prevails concerning the Amish that they endeavor to fulfil the saying, “Give to him that asketh of thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.” When I turn my mind to these plain people, I sometimes recall the trailing arbutus, which is found partly buried under the leaves and clinging close to the surface of the ground, but which when drawn up displays, though sometimes disfigured with dead, brown leaves, such a delicate form and tint, and exhales so sweet a perfume.
And I also have recalled Pope’s Temple of Fame:
“Next came the smallest tribe I yet had seen,
Plain was their dress and modest was their mien;
‘Great idol of mankind, we neither claim
The praise of merit, nor aspire to fame!
But safe in deserts from the applause of men
Would die unheard of, as we lived unseen.’
...
‘And live there men who slight immortal Fame,
Who then with incense shall adore our name?’”
Yet our Amish are not a highly-educated people. Some years ago I inquired of a neighbor (who did not speak English fluently) on the subject of education. He said that they were not opposed to school-learning, but to high learning. “To send children to school from ten to twenty-one, we would think was opposed to Holy Scripture. There are things taught in school that don’t agree with Holy Scripture.”
I asked whether he thought it was wrong to teach that the earth goes round the sun. “I don’t know anything about it; but I am not in favor of teaching geography and grammar in the schools: it’s worldly wisdom.”
All these Baptist sects have an unpaid ministry. Dr. H., of Bucks County, had a patient who was a Mennonite preacher, and the doctor refused to receive payment, saying that his father had taught him never to take pay from ministers of the gospel. The preacher looked sober and worried, but left quietly, and not long after he came bringing oats and corn for the doctor’s horse. Afterwards he would bring flour or buckwheat-meal and choice bits about butchering time. Thus he seems, without entering into argument, to have relieved conscientious scruples about taking pay for preaching.
The ceremonial of these plain German sects is not formal and stately, like that of the Romish Church. A Moravian of Bethlehem was amused with one of their ministers, who, in ordaining a preacher, said, “Nau kannscht du taufe, und nau kannscht du copulire.” (Now you can baptize, and now you can marry.) Then turning to a brother, “Hab ich net ebbes vergesse? Oh, ya; nau kannscht du auch beim Abendmahl diene.” (Haven’t I forgotten something? Oh, yes; now too you can serve in the Supper.)
Perhaps I would better translate the foregoing, “Thou can serve in the Supper,” for our Pennsylvania Germans generally use the pronouns thee and thou.
The Mennonites have not a great yearly meeting like that of the Dunkers. In 1874 a correspondent of one of our Lancaster papers spoke of a national meeting held in Illinois by the Dunkers. He said, “They had abundant provision for the comfort of the brethren. The tent held ten thousand people. Eighty beeves were on the ground for steaks and roasts, and one baker had orders for eleven thousand loaves of bread.” This year I see a statement that the national Conference was held in Indiana, and that twenty thousand people were on the ground. Dr. Seidensticker (Century Magazine, December, 1881) states the number of the Dunkers in the United States at about two hundred thousand, with nearly two thousand ministers, none of whom receives a salary. They pay more attention to education than the Mennonites, having now three collegiate institutes.
Mennonites are still found in Europe; in Holland, Prussia, Switzerland, the Palatinate, etc. They are sometimes distinguished in Germany into Heftler and Knöpfler, or Hook men and Button men; whence it seems that one of the distinctions here is widespread and of former origin. In 1881 I visited a family in the Palatinate, where I was shown a black satin waistcoat which the father had once worn, with hooks and eyes down the front; but none of our Amish here would wear anything so showy as a black satin waistcoat.
In the same year, 1881, a Mennonite preacher in the Palatinate gave me a list of many of the European communities, with names of their officers, such as preachers, deacons, etc. Many of the same names are found in Lancaster County, though not generally spelled in the same way. Such are Frantz, Lichti, Landes, Lehmann, Bachmann, Oesch, Bähr and Bär, Zercher, Krehbiel, Neff, Binkele, Muselmann, Brubacher, Staehly, Wickert. The family of Stauffer, in my own immediate neighborhood, has possessed for several generations the given names John and Christian. On the European list I find two Christian Stauffers, and one marked Johann Stauffer II.
I met in the Palatinate one who had travelled in Switzerland, and who had seen Mennonites there. All that he met there were farmers, who sold milk when near towns, or made butter and cheese when at a distance. They were mostly Amish. One Amish family, who still wore hooks and eyes, were named Stauffer. Other families whom he knew or heard of were named Wenger, Schwartz, Rettiger, etc.
I find in the volume just mentioned a little description of a Mennonite congregation near Tilsit, in Prussia, which shows how closely agricultural the people are. There are altogether about eight hundred (five hundred and twenty being baptized). Seven hundred and seventy live in the country, in town thirty. Fifteen belong to the mercantile class, to mechanics twenty-four, to laborers seventy. The rest own or rent land (sind Grundbesitzer und Rentier).
From this volume, some of the Russian Mennonites appear to have adopted river-baptism. One body of Russians went to Taschkant in Middle Asia, and seem to have been quite unfortunate, as most of us would expect non-resistants to be among those nearly barbarians. And these emigrants were extremists, refusing obedience to worldly authorities; they were unwilling to plant forests in lieu of military service in Russia; the office of preacher they considered a human institution, and called themselves the spouse of the Lord. (Brautgemeinde des Herrn.)
I have received a copy of the Family Almanac for 1882, published by a Mennonite company in Indiana, which bears on the cover a little engraving of the sword being beaten into the ploughshare, and the motto above, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”
Within the almanac, among other matter, is the well-known engraving of a man surrounded by the twelve signs of the zodiac, and headed thus, “Anatomy of Man’s Body as said to be governed by the Twelve Constellations.” I find the words said to be significant,—perhaps the introduction of some scrupulous person. On the same page is the statement, “Jupiter is the ruling planet this year.”
A meeting calendar at the close of the almanac gives forty-two meeting-houses in Lancaster County, and twenty-two others in this State. Also eleven in Indiana, one in Michigan, and seventeen in Virginia. There are many Mennonites in Ohio, but this list does not speak of them. Those meeting-houses mentioned make nearly one hundred; but probably the list contains none of the New or Reformed Mennonites, also none of the Amish, who almost invariably meet in private houses. A peculiarity of the Mennonite meetings in the list just spoken of is the long interval between meetings, which is mostly two or four weeks, and in three cases eight weeks.
In the article in the text called Schwenkfelders a careful observer will note a discrepancy. The author speaks of their holding the Spirit above the Scriptures; but also quotes Schwenkfeld as speaking in substance of “the gifts of grace revealed by the Father; yet so that this revelation should unite with the witness of the Scriptures.” The author has not read Schwenkfeld’s works, but quotes from different sources.
Before closing these remarks on the plainer sects, I may add that they are all evangelical, at least there are no Socinian “Menists” here as in Holland in the time of William Penn. The Dunkers do not believe in eternal perdition.
Further as regards one of these plainer sects, I may ask, Are they degenerating physically? This must be the tendency, it would seem, in all small religious bodies, limited in marriage to their own membership; but this may be compensated for by simplicity and purity of life and freedom from agitation and pecuniary distress.