CHAPTER XI
BROTHER AGONIUS AND HIS PROPHECY
No great genius was ever without some mixture of madness, nor can anything grand or superior to the voice of common mortals be spoken except by the agitated soul.
—Aristotle.
Brother Agonius, his real name being Michael Wohlforth, or Welfare, as he was known among the English settlers—what a shock, notwithstanding our boasted fortitude and resignation, his death was to us!
He was born, as became his warlike soul, at the fortress of Memel, on the Baltic Sea. Coming to this New World in his early youth, he at once joined himself to the Pietists, the Hermits of the Wissahickon; but he remained not long there, for his fiery, intrepid zeal left him no other mind but that he must journey to and fro, near and far, even making a long and dangerous journey to the Germans of North Carolina, preaching to them as he did to every one, in season and out of season, wherever he went, to repent their godless lives and to submit themselves wholly to the Master's will.
Upon his return, in 1723, from that distant province, he joined himself to our Vorsteher who, as "Brother Beissel," was then living the life of a Solitary in the depths of a forest not many miles north from Ephrata, which at that time had not yet been founded. In the solitude of this forest these two hermits, so alike in their energetic, impetuous, stubborn zeal, lived a life of silent contemplation and adoration of the mysteries of the Creator for some time, and from thenceforth even though they differed not infrequently with all the force and outspoken directness of their strong-willed natures, yet were they firm friends and companions until death separated them.
I recall how in later years in our Kloster life at Ephrata, when we had built Kedar and the other houses of worship, as I have already related, he became alarmed at their size, and deprecated especially the innovation of the innocent bells, so that for a time he withdrew from us and again became a hermit, in the mountains of Zoar, some five miles from the Kloster; but he soon resumed his life with us to remain as a valued co-worker for the rest of his days.
And now that he was gone, how we missed him! His boldness, aggressiveness, his fearlessness and fidelity in proclaiming far and wide his doctrine as to the Seventh Day Sabbath made his death a heavy loss not only to our community, but to all the Sabbatarians, German and English, in the province. He would travel on foot, no matter how hard and toilsome the way, staff in hand, in pilgrim garb, and no matter whether by country roadside or in the slave markets in the streets of the chief city of our province, in church or meeting-house, wherever he could find an audience, large or small, to listen to his voice, he would stand boldly forth, yet in the spirit of humility, and exhort and admonish with all his power, in German or in English, speaking both with equal ease, oblivious of taunts and revilings and persecutions, that his hearers live in obedience to God's commands as to the Sabbath day.
To Brother Beissel and to me the death of our brother came with far greater force than to the rest of the Solitary. Even more than our superintendent and myself he was unalterably opposed to the Eckerlings and their unchristian innovations; for it can be said in all moderation that hardly would we three succeed in overthrowing some especially offensive scheme of the Eckerings when one of the remaining four would present something new to torment us.
One of their abominations, which originated in the busy mind of Emanuel Eckerling, Brother Elimelech, was the baptism of the living for the dead, and so persistent and subtle were his arguments that he finally won over to him our superintendent in spite of all that Brother Agonius and I could do to save our leader from this tremendous foolishness.