“Oh divine life, ornament of virginity!
How art thou despised by all men here below!
And yet art a branch from the heavenly throne,
And borne by the virgin Son of God.”
I was surprised to find such prominence given to the idea of the merits of celibacy, for I had not then seen the Chronicon Ephratense.
One object which especially attracted my attention was an upright clock, which stood in the room of Sister Sarah, and which was kept in very good order. It was somewhat smaller than the high clocks that were common forty or fifty years ago.
All that I heard of its history was that it had come from Germany. It had four weights suspended on chains. Above the dial-plate hovered two little angels, apparently made of lead, one on either side of a small disk, which bore the inscription “Hoeckers a Creveld,”—as I interpret, made by the Hoeckers at Crefeld. Crefeld,—historic town! Here then was a relic of it, and standing quite disregarded,—it was only an old German clock!
When the Dunkers were persecuted in Europe, soon after their establishment, some of them took refuge in Crefeld, in the duchy of Cleves; and I have lately read that in Crefeld, Mühlheim, etc., William Penn and others gained adherents to the doctrine of the Quakers.[84]
We also find in the American Cyclopædia that at Crefeld (Ger. Krefeld), a colony of Huguenot refugees in the seventeenth century introduced the manufacture of silk—Dunkers and Quakers; perhaps also Huguenots fleeing from France when Louis XIV. revoked that edict of Nantes which had so long protected them. (Crefeld is now in Rhenish Prussia.)
Who were the Hoeckers, or who was the Hoecker that made this old clock?[85] Who bought it in historic Crefeld? Who brought it from Europe, got it up into Lancaster County, and lodged it in the monastery or nunnery at Ephrata? What, if anything, had Ludwig Hoecker or Brother Obed to do with it—he who taught the early Sabbath-school? What tales could it not tell! But it is well cared for in the comfortable apartment of the kindly sister.