Rocky Cape Christian Community

Communal kitchen, dining hall, bakery, young brothers and sisters' quarters at the Snow Hill (Schneeberg) Community in Franklin County, Pennsylvania.

 

 

On our recent trip to Canada I received my share of what had been my father's books. Some I remembered. A few I did not. Opening a small book published at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, in 1852, I was startled to see it a collection of beautiful hymns, beginning -- remarkably -- with a large section of Abendlieder (Evening Hymns).

 

 

 

"Who would do that?" I asked myself. "Why focus on evening, or start with what most people put somewhere close to the end?"

 

Reading further I came upon my answer. The little book was published by the brothers and sisters of the "Siebentäger Täufergemeinschaft" (Seventh-Day Baptist Community) on the Schneeberg (Snow Hill) between the villages of Chambersburg and Waynesboro, in south-central Pennsylvania. And what they regarded as evening was not merely the day's end but the end of all time -- our last sunset before this world's destruction by fire, the glorious return of Christ to reign on a new earth, fully restored, in which righteousness will dwell.

 

Not only the message of the songs, but their lilting rhythm and uncommonly colourful imagery caught my attention at once. The first song (above) in sadly inferior prose translation goes:

 

 

 

 

 

The next song in the book, also an "evening song," goes:

 

 

 

 

Song after song in the little book refreshed me with its lively witness to the Spirit's work in the heart. Entire sections of New Jerusalem Songs, Personal Call and Revival Songs (Zuruf und Erweckungslieder), Humility and Lowliness Songs (Demuth und Niedrigkeit), Songs of Solitude (Einsames Leben), Shortness of Life Songs, Hope Songs, Love of God Songs, Virginity Songs, Word of God Songs, Judgement Songs, Comfort Songs. . . . And to my surprise the back half of the thick little book (as thick as three fingers of a man's hand) was a large collection of English songs, many of them still familiar to the German Baptists and River Brethren today.

 

Who were the brothers and sisters of the Schneeberg (Snow Hill) that put this book together, and what brought them to their communal way of life?

 

Two hundred years after the Reformation the people of southern Germany found themselves in terrible misery and distress. War after war had destroyed their villages and fields. The great movements of the Reformation -- Lutheran, Reformed and Anabaptist -- had all turned sickly and spiritually cold. Everywhere, in every village, earnest seekers cried out to God for new light and deliverance.

 

When that new light came, it came with such force, such a whirlwind of revival, new revelations, new leaders and voices that many got swept off their feet. Through the resulting confusion the devil made many gains, hindering what could have been a much greater work. But thousands of seekers found their way into newly established fellowships of faith such as those of the Moravians from Herrnhut, the Inspired (Amana Colonies), the Brethren (led by Alexander Mack at Schwarzenau), and numerous Pietist/Separatist communities that found their way across the ocean to America or eastward into Russia and the Ukraine.

 

During the 1720s a growing number of these awakened south Germans began to congregate along the Conestoga River in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Not well organised, having no clear leadership or affiliation, they only knew they wanted to follow Christ with all their hearts -- trusting him to show them how.

 

Into their midst, in the mid-1720s, Conrad Beissel, a young baker from Eberbach on the Neckar came as a whirlwind of information, stunning example, and radical ideas. A gifted preacher, he drew crowds and greatly influenced the direction of the Conestoga seekers until suddenly, in 1732, he handed them a New Testament, telling them to follow whatever it said, while he withdrew into solitude with God along the Cocalico Creek.

 

His solitude did not last long.

 

A trickle at first, but soon a flood of seekers joined him there in a new community they named Ephrata, for the birthplace of Christ in Bible prophecy. So rapidly did Ephrata grow and so deeply did its radical influence permeate the hearts of seekers that its influence soon spread back to Germany, drawing followers from all ranks, from Pietists and Protestants and Mennonites, from far eastern Europe, even from the Hutterites in Russia on the other side of the world.

 

Life at Ephrata was an amazing mix of worshipful solitude (getting up at all hours of the night to sing and pray) and productive industry. Married families lived on the edges of the community, but the great majority of believers at Ephrata gave themselves to serving Christ in celibacy. Together they built a large complex of wooden buildings, a mill, a bakery with which to feed the area's poor, many workshops, a unique meeting room, a bookbinder's shop and a printery.

 

 

 

Peter Müller, an honour graduate of Heidelberg University, joined the Ephrata community, humbly serving Christ as long as he lived. Not only did he translate the Martyrs Mirror (the great Anabaptist Martyr book) from Dutch into German. He, with the help of his brothers and sisters in Christ, set up a printing press, poured the type, made the ink and the paper with which to print it. Then he oversaw the binding of the great book, by far the largest, so far produced in the New World, between leather-bound wooden covers.

 

Ludwig Blum, a gifted and highly-trained musician from Germany, also joined the community. With his help, the believers wrote many hundreds of songs, putting them to music in four, six, or seven-part harmony. Often singing antiphonally (only sisters for one line, only brothers the next) their music "filled the soul" as one visitor wrote. "It is impossible to describe the feeling that comes upon hearing it."

 

Besides the Martyrs Mirror, the brothers at Ephrata published a great number of other inspiring and informative writings. They also sent out messengers to warn the world of impending judgement, to preach salvation in Christ and build new households of faith. One of them, Georg Adam Martin, made his way westward into the wilderness along the Pennsylvania-Maryland border.

 

There, along Antietam Creek in the Cumberland Valley (south of what is now Chambersburg, near Waynesboro), he found the Hans Schneeberger family, pioneering immigrants from Switzerland. The Schneebergers, like many of their neighbours on the Pennsylvania frontier, listened gladly to what Georg had to say. They repented and found new life in Christ. So many repented, such a moving of the Spirit took place, that word spread quickly and a great company of believers came out from Ephrata to greet them.

 

For many days the company travelled westward, across the Susquehanna, over the mountains, and into the Cumberland Valley. Carrying the banner of Christ, marching to the music of heavenly songs, they did not turn back when a rider galloped up to inform them that the Indians had fallen on a frontier settlement (at the site of today's Greencastle) killing a schoolteacher Enoch Brown and seven of his students. Conrad Beissel, leading the pilgrimage calmed everyone and spoke of returning good for evil, "turning the other cheek." The Indians did not harm the believers and they had a joyful time together, baptising the newly converted in Antietam Creek.

 

During this time of revival young Andreas Schneeberger's wife, Barbara, felt the Lord calling her to life in dedicated community. She took her baby and set off across the mountain toward Ephrata. A day later Andreas caught up with her on horseback and promised to live with her however she pleased, if only they could do it together. She came back and on their tract of virgin timber the Schneeberg ("Snow Hill" in translation) community took shape.

 

Earnest seekers from near and far joined the Schneeberger family in living out the reality of the Kingdom of God in south-central Pennsylvania. From their midst, the Spirit chose Peter Lehman, a young man from Lancaster County, as their first overseer. Building after building went up, houses, sheds, a dairy, horse and poultry barns, a mill. Every morning a bell rang at five for prayer. Half an hour later everyone gathered in the dining hall for breakfast. Brothers and sisters sat separately on benches around long tables covered with white cloth. Meals were simple but wholesome and during the winter a fire roared in the huge ten-plate stove in the middle of the room.

 

After breakfast, group leaders announced what everyone would do, brothers working in the mill and many workshops while the sisters prepared the food, tended the garden and milked the cows. Only single believers, many of whom had chosen life-long celibacy as their profession, lived in the main buildings. Married couples and their children lived in houses surrounding the property and on surrounding farms.

 

Before many years had passed, and as the Cumberland Valley filled with settlers, hundreds of farmers from the region came to the water-powered grist mill on the Snow Hill to have their wheat ground to flour. They took the bran home to feed their livestock while the high-grade flour, famous throughout the colonies, got hauled to Baltimore Harbour with oxen and covered wagons. A coopers shop on the community supplied the barrels used to ship the flour.

 

Every day at 11:30, noon, and at 5:30 in the evening the community met to eat, sing, and pray. Even though they maintained a rigorous order, dressing plainly, and working hard together, they got constant visits from all sorts of people looking for a better life. The community took in orphans, widows, and sick people and liberally gave out its provisions to those in need. Guests liked to attend communal love feasts, but above all the great annual love feast in June when thousands gathered to eat together on the flats below the main buildings, apple-butter on bread, cucumber pickles and hot coffee. Everything prepared and served by the brothers and sisters for free. A good way to get people to come and hear the preaching, to witness a little of the believers' life together. Anyone deciding to join could become a full member after about six months to a year in the novitiate.

 

After Peter Lehman, the brothers Andreas Fahnestock, Benjamin Specht, and others took the leadership at Snow Hill. My little book, published in the 1850s, came from a time of spiritual and material prosperity there. But another hundred years later the situation had changed. Fewer and fewer single people committed themselves to life-long service. After Obed Schneeberger, the last celibate brother died, the Saal (community meeting room, below) served the congregation only for weekly meetings, and many of the buildings fell into disuse and eventually disrepair.

 

 

 

I visited Snow Hill for the first time on a spring evening in the late 1990s. Parking my vehicle among the main buildings I knocked on several doors and looked in the small-paned windows. Was the whole place empty? Finally, at the far end I heard a shuffling and a face appeared inside a screen door. An old man, George Winger, sized me up for a while before he opened and invited me in. We sat under the great hewn beams of the dining hall and talked.

 

Several weeks later, with a number of my Mennonite brothers from the Shippensburg area, we attended a Sabbath morning meeting in the Saal. Only a handful of people. Times have changed and we have not kept in touch. I do not know what is left at the Snow Hill today, but the Spirit that inspired the songs of its early brothers and sisters continues his work. Just up the road from the community lives Leon Miller, the young man courting my niece, who continues in the song-writing, music composing tradition. Will the Spirit prompt him and his friends to write powerful Verläugnungslieder (Songs of Self Denial) like the following one from the Snow Hill book of 1852?

 

Es ist das Grösste das kann werden

Wer nichts besitzt auf dieser Erden,

Und auch das Kleinste auf der Welt

Das wird zum Wunder dargestellt.

 

 

Wer alles hat, hat nichts gefunden,

Wer nichts hat, ist mit Gott verbunden.

Wer Etwas hat, kommt nicht zum Ziel,

Denn Etwas ist dem Nichts zu viel.

 

 

Wer diese Armuth hat gefunden,

Hat Höll und Teufel überwunden.

Und lebet in dem grossen All,

Ist reich und arm in gleicher Wahl.

 

 

In dieser Schule hat studiret,

Der Mann, so uns zu Gott hin führet;

Sein Name heisset Jesus Christ,

Der alle Schüler Meister ist.

 

 

Self-denial songs. Warfare and Victory (Kampf und Sieg) songs. Evening songs. Without a doubt the waning light of Western culture will soon disappear and frightful wonderful events take place where what we have counts for nothing and what we are decides our eternal home. May our Lord Jesus let his "light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God" (2 Corinthians 4:6). May the light of his face that shone on the Snow Hill in Pennsylvania, shine on us as we carry his witness into all corners of this darkening world in our time.

 

Night falls. Morning cannot be far away!

 

Peter

 

Rocky Cape Christian Community
19509 Bass Highway
Detention River, Tasmania 7321
Australia
www.thecommonlife.com.au