Some ten years after his deposition (or in 1755), began the old French and Indian war. Fahnestock tells us that the doors of the cloister, including the chapels, etc., were opened as a refuge for the inhabitants of Tulpehocken and Paxton[74] settlements, which were then the frontiers, to protect the people from the incursions of the hostile Indians. He adds that all these refugees were received and kept by the society during the period of alarm and danger. Upon hearing of which, a company of infantry was despatched by the royal government from Philadelphia to protect Ephrata.[75]
But why, we might ask, did these people seek refuge in a communion of non-combatants? The question bears on the controversy, as to whether the men of peace or the men of war were nearer right in their dealings with the savages.[76]
Beissel died in the year 1768, or about thirty years after the establishment of the cloister. Upon his tombstone was placed, in German, this inscription:
“Here rests a Birth of the love of God, Peaceful, a Solitary, but who afterward became a Superintendent of the Solitary Community of Christ in and around Ephrata: born in Oberbach in the Palatinate, and named Conrad Beissel.”
“He fell asleep the 6th of July, A.D. 1768: of his spiritual life 52, but of his natural one, 77 years and 4 months.”
Endress says, “He appears to me to have been a man possessed of a considerable degree of the spirit of rule; his mind bent from the beginning upon the acquirement of authority, power, and ascendency.” For ourselves, we have just seen how he received Count Zinzendorf, who had crossed the ocean, and come, as it were, to his threshold.
Mr. Endress further says, “Beissel, good or bad, lived and died the master-spirit of the brotherhood. With him it sank into decay.”
The British officer who wrote in 1786 (?), eighteen years after Beissel’s death, gives the number of the celibates as seven men and five women. I do not consider him good authority; but if the numbers were so much reduced from those of 1740, it seems probable that they had begun to decline before the decease of Beissel.[77]
Eighteen years after Beissel’s death, was published at Ephrata the Chronicle of which I have so often spoken, giving an account of his life. He was succeeded by Peter Miller. Miller was sixty-five years old when our Revolutionary war broke out, and had been the leader at Ephrata seven years.