A colony of mercy : or, Social Christianity at work

Front matter

T

LIBRARY

Walter E. Fernald State School

CHAPTER XV " Go and do likewise."

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

I. PASTOR von bodelschwingh .... Frontispiece II. ZION CHURCH Facing page I

III. VIEW OF THE CHURCH HILL FROM THE SPARRENBURG Page II

IV. TENT FOR PATIENTS ,, 21

V. EBEN-EZER ,, 29

VI. BETHEL HOUSE ,,36

VII. THE COLONY AS SEEN FROM THE RISING HILL

COUNTRY BEHIND HEBRON ,, 49

VIII. PATIENTS AT NINEPINS ,, 6l

IX. i; WELL BOWLED ! " ,,62

X. THE "FIELD-MARSHAL" OUT WITH THE BETHEL GIRLS ,, 64 XL CENTRE OF THE~COLONY XII. THE SISTERS* HOME OF REST .

XIII. A SISTER AND HER CHARGES .

XIV. KINDERHEIM

XV. PASTOR VON BODELSCHWINGH's MANSE XVI. THE LABOUR COLONY, WILHELMSDORF XVII. COLONISTS RECLAIMING THE SOIL .

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J ,

• • • >5

List of Illustrations xiii

XVIII. A COLONIST ARRIVING AT WILHELMSDORF . . Page 1 56

XIX. A COLONIST LEAVING ,, 157

XX. COLONISTS PEELING POTATOES ,, 1 62

XXI. "SAREPTA CONVALESCENTS . . . ,, I95

XXII. THE COLONY AS SEEN " FROM WORKMAN'S HOME " . ,, 235

GROUND-PLAN OF THE COLONY .... Appendix

THE PROGRAMME

To bind up the broken-hearted ;

To proclaim liberty to the captives,

And the opening of the prison to them that are bound.

To comfort all that mourn.

To give unto them — Beauty for ashes, The oil of joy for mourning, The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.

ZION CHURCH.

A

CHAPTER I PRISONERS OF ZION " The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness."

FEW years ago a church was opened, the foundation stone of which had been laid by the late Emperor Frederick, then Crown Prince of Germany. It is a beautiful church rising in a beech wood on a hill in the Teutoburger Forest. It is cruciform, and the people who meet there in a peculiar sense are bearing a cross. " Come unto Me, ye heavy laden," says a marble-wrought figure of Christ, the Healer, over the main porch ; and as you enter with eyes uplifted, you read the words over the high-arched chancel : "When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion," or, as the German version, looking to a " restoring " to come, has it, with fuller meaning, " When the Lord shall release the bound ones of Zion, we shall be like them that dream." Fitly, this church has been called Zion Church, for the hundred and twenty-sixth Psalm in a beautiful metrical rendering is the favourite song — the song of longing, of hope, and of promise — of that congregation. It is a congregation of epileptics. Fourteen hundred of them are now gathered around that church. The name of the colony is Bethel.

Bethel is not an asylum, not a charitable institution as we know them ; it is rather, and in the fullest sense, a colony of mercy, a commonwealth of sufferers — the care of epileptics being the central object round which other needs have gathered, and as they arose, have been met. Bethel never was planned : it is a growth, a living thing.

From the main entrance of the church you have a lovely view into what has popularly come to be called the " Silly Valley," which name, however, is fast being replaced by that of " Happy Valley," and the visitor to the imbeciles and half-imbeciles sheltered there will not be slow to discover the reason. We shall pay a visit presently to the several Homes nestling in its winding length ; we are at this moment content with the view at our feet. It is a farmhouse to which one or two newer buildings have been added ; the beech wood opening out before you, the hills rising behind, frame this picture, and the whole seems a vision of peace. You are having a peep into the cradle of the place. That farmhouse — it was named Eben-Ezer — saw the seed-planting of all this colony ; there, just five and twenty years ago, a beginning was made with four epileptics. If a creation, Bethel is a creation from above ; but faith was the soil, love was the seed, and there has been a mighty outcome.

The colony now consists of five distinct branches : —

I. The Homes for Epileptics, these being the Bethel proper.

II. The Westphalian Mother-house for the Training of Deaconesses — Sarepta — which in the course of little more than twenty years has produced a nursing and working staff of six hundred Sisters.

III. The Westphalian Brotherhood — NAZARETH — forming the male complement of the Deaconesses' Institution ; it was started fourteen years ago, and over two hundred Deacons or Brothers have since been trained.

IV. The Labour Colony — WlLHELMSDORF — to grapple with social distress.

V. The Association Workman's Home; a scheme for providing homes of their own for the labouring classes.

These are the main branches of the work done at Bethel, but there are offshoots of noble effort in every direction, which are best left to appear as the story is told.

The forlorn condition of epileptics was the need out of which Bethel has grown. Has the reader any idea how many of our fellow-creatures are suffering from this terrible disease ? It is difficult to get at reliable statistics, for epilepsy is one of the sorrowful afflictions of mankind which both the sufferers and their friends endeavour to hide ; but by a simple process, seeking to minister to a host of out-patients over and above the flock taken in, and by special researches from parish to parish, the workers of Bethel have arrived at the conclusion that one and a half to two per thousand is probably within the mark. But this means seventy to a hundred thousand epileptics in Germany. If this estimate may be applied to England — and why should it not ? the disease is as old as mankind and known all over the globe — nay, taking but one per thousand, there would be about forty thousand epileptics in this country. Are there ? Then where are they, and what is being done for them ?

Epilepsy is a mysterious and fearful affliction, an unsolved problem. It is a disorder of the borderland between body and soul, its seat the nerve-centres and the brain — this is about all even medical science can tell us. It was known to the ancients, and was probably as frequent then as now. Hippocrates treats of it in a special pamphlet. We learn from the New Testament and other sources that its terrors abounded in the time of our Lord. It prevailed in the Roman Empire, and frightful indeed were the remedies which were then employed. According to Origen, epilepsy was the thorn in the flesh for the removal of which St. Paul thrice besought the Lord, his prayer not being heard, or, rather, being heard in the answer, " My grace is sufficient for thee." Some of the greatest intellects the world has known have gone through life with this " thorn in the flesh." Julius Caesar was epileptic, and so was Mohammed ; Peter the Great also and Napoleon I. suffered from this malady ; Petrarch and Jean Jacques Rousseau likewise were epileptics. With these sufferers the affliction must have been of a kind which befell them at rare 'ntervals only, for it certainly never interfered either with their ambition or with their clearness of mind. Yet its deteriorating effects on the mental powers are well known. To popular perception, this disease has always been the " morbus sacer" the " morbus dwus" the punishment of the gods, a punishment even for special sin — " Who has sinned, he or his father ? " Hippocrates knew better — " It appears to me ' divine ' in no other sense than any illness is divine ! " The Christian knows that all illness is divine, sent, not always in punishment, but always in love. Many of the " bound ones " of Bethel are learning this lesson, as through the shadow of their affliction they are growing to be children of peace.

Often enough it is the father's sin, drink especially,* which lays this cross upon his child ; but it cannot be said that heredity is the most common factor. According to the experience of Bethel, the falling sickness in very many cases is due to a shock to the nervous system, to which attaches no personal blame. Here is a case of one rendered epileptic through the sudden news of the death of a relative. Here is another, a boy coming upon a mutilated corpse in a wood is seized with fright and falls in a fit. Here is yet another, a little girl is playing at her mother's feet, a stroke of lightning kills the mother, and the little girl from that moment becomes epileptic. However caused, it is a terrible affliction. Have you ever witnessed a fit ? seen an apparently healthy person, your fellow-traveller maybe, fall at your feet with a shriek that goes through you, the cry of an anguished soul ? The limbs in convulsions, the head jerking to and fro, the features set with an expression of unspeakable agony, the eyes rolling wildly and then glazed as in death, the mouth foaming, — this is the aggravated fit, and no wonder people shrink from the sight of it. The poor epileptic

* Though drink is not by any means the only predisposing cause, yet it has been found that the percentage of this terrible illness keeps pace with the consumption of alcohol ; in certain districts in Germany where distilleries flourish, the number from two rises to four and even six per thousand of the population. It keeps pace with any kind of debauch ; but these are not the only causes.

is shunned ; his own family in many cases are almost ashamed of him ; he is hidden away. In the"[poorer classes of society, where he ought to gain his own livelihood, who will employ him ? The workshop, the office, is closed to him ; the church even, once he has had a seizure there, tells him not again to return. He is condemned to starvation, mental, moral, spiritual ; no one will have him anywhere. Now, this is sad enough, even when there are means for his sustenance ; but think of the poor !

Here is a stonemason, on the death of his wife left with four children under ten, one of these epileptic and alone with her little sisters. Here is an orphan — there are scores of them at Bethel — for which a poor parish could do nothing but pay a pittance to the most wretched cottage in the village for the keep of that helpless worm. She had fits almost daily. There are children, tended now and cared for by the hands of love at Bethel, haunted in their dreams by the memory of what they have gone through. A poor man is there, an imbecile and has been so for years, but remembering, as often is the case, this and that of his early life before the never-ending night closed in upon him. He will tell you, amid sobs, the story of his cruel childhood — he will tell it you at the least sign of tenderness on your part ; you have but to stroke his hand, you have but to look at him with an eye of pity, and you touch that chord.

Here is another case, typical of the hundreds appealing to Bethel for admission : " I am a cripple, twenty-five years of age, and since my fourteenth year have suffered from epileptic fits. The first overtook me just after I had been apprenticed. I was dismissed from the workshop, and though I tried and tried again, anxious to learn a trade, no master would keep me. I tried work at home, but it was almost impossible because of the constant attacks. My parents are very poor, and never could pay any one to look after me ; they are both at work which takes them from home daily. Thus I have been in constant danger of life and limb, with the result of several serious accidents. I had learned to do a little fretwork, and was rising from that occupation one day to sweep away the cuttings. There was a heated stove in the kitchen, and on it a kettle with boiling water. I ought not to have gone so near, for I had a fit, fell unconscious, and lay on the stove, the boiling water pouring over me. In that state, terribly burned, I was picked up some time after and taken to the infirmary. Thirteen months I lay there, my right arm had to be amputated, and I came away a cripple. The parish since has allowed me half a crown a week ; I am not therefore starving, but what I need more than bread is a friend to watch over me, and I pray you earnestly, receive me into your homes." — Yet another case : a father? a busy workman, from morning to nightfall away in the town, a stepmother absorbed in her own children, a poor epileptic youth left to himself, wandering about the village streets, or roaming the country uncared for, in constant danger of being run over by passing vehicles. He has hurt himself badly in his fits. He is, moreover, a half-paralysed cripple, having a club foot and a palsied hand.

Ill-cared-for epileptics are to be found everywhere, and as years go on, the disease works havoc not only in the bodily frame. They grow irritable, distrustful, quarrelsome ; but worst of alt, the hand of imbecility is upon them, and the end is idiotcy, the end is insanity. Such are met with in every country, an army of helplessness.

To Christianity, this very helplessness constitutes a plea. To Christian charity every stricken one is a creditor to whom she has a debt to pay — the debt of service. One of the saints of the ancient church, once being taunted with the poverty of his community, produced the cripples, the sick and suffering of that church, and said, " These are our treasures." The church of our own time, the true Christian among us, is learning to say likewise — These are our treasures, our creditors, we owe them service. But though there is provision among us for almost every kind of human suffering, nothing was done till within the memory of this generation to alleviate the misery of epileptics. Hidden away with their trouble, no one has sought them out. If they appealed for help, there was the poorhouse, there was the idiot asylum, or possibly a hospital. But are these the places for an epileptic in the intervals of his affliction ? Remember he can work, and he ought to work ; for occupation alone, keeping him from brooding over his trouble, will stay in a measure the inevitable decay. If taken in hand in time, not more than five per cent, would be given over to helpless idiotcy ; yet even though taken in hand — such at least is the experience of Bethel — not more than seven to eight per cent, are likely ever to be cured, and these only the very young ; thus there is an intervening host to be occupied, to be watched, to have their burden eased till they lay it down in death. These are the " bound ones " of Bethel.

Hope of bodily cure, then, is almost precluded ; yet the great need of the epileptic is not a home for incurables, but a refuge, a place where he can first of all be at rest, learning the great lesson, " Rest thou thy soul upon the Lord." What a restless thing that soul of his has been, how driven between hope and fear ! How he has spent himself, seeking help and finding none ! Doctors could not restore him ; then how anxiously did he try the "unfailing" remedies of quackery and superstition — there are hundreds claiming mysterious power and promising the certain cure — remedies often foolish, often disgusting, and sometimes immoral, worse almost in their degrading influence than the disease itself. One need not go back to the Romans for folly and darkness. Think of the sufferer's inward state, seeking such help and finding none! Moreover, if he be a sensitive creature, the constant cry of his agonised soul is, " I am an outcast, I am set aside, I am shunned." He is far worse off in this respect than the lunatic, for the insane man knows nothing of his insanity, while the epileptic in most cases has a clear enough perception of his condition. He knows that every attack of his malady is a deadening blow to his intellect ; he knows that his irascibility, his helpless fits of anger, his maliciousness — part, these, of the distemper he writhes under — are but the moral outbursts of a trouble he cannot overcome. He knows there is an uncanniness about his affliction which makes even friends say, " 'Twere better he were dead."

io A Colony of Mercy

This is why first of all " Be still," the true medicine for all our deepest woes, is the one thing he needs, and those who would help him must help him first of all to an atmosphere of that stillness. It is something better than the tending of his stricken frame in a hospital, something better than mere shelter in the hour of his weakness, it is the stillness of the children of Zion lifting their eyes to the hills whence cometh their aid. " Bring him to Me," said Christ, when not even the disciples could help the stricken one ! And there is that about the life at Bethel, healthful, natural and singularly free from all religious excitement, which constantly reminds these sufferers of a healing to come. It goes to one's heart to hear them sing — that great congregation of incurables — " When the Lord shall release the bound ones, we shall be like them that dream ; then our mouth shall be filled with laughter and our tongue with singing, for the Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad." And there is a true measure of gladness with them even now, a great hope ; they are learning to wait and to be still. Their Pastors say, and one may see for oneself, that of their very hymnbooks no part is more used and leaf-worn than the songs of thanksgiving and of praise.

A strange feeling of awe naturally steals over the visitor when, for the first time, he meets with this people in their beautiful church. He has been warned there will be " fits," and even as he enters he sees the preparation for them — a curtained-off partition in the four entrance lobbies, with couches which have a sad look of much use about them. But everything is managed so quietly ; you hear a moan or a cry, you see some brothers or sisters rising to take away the sufferer, — it never creates a disturbance. And what though occasionally a bad fit comes on — it often is but a giddiness, a momentary unconsciousness, passing like a summer cloud, yet at times you may witness a serious attack. The beautiful antiphonal service, maybe, has attuned your own heart, you are forgetting there is trouble, your soul is away on the pastures green by the still waters ; there is a sudden and terrible shriek — shriek upon shriek as of the lunatic when the spirit tare him. A poor fellow has started from his seat and falls foaming, the night of unconsciousness quickly overtaking his vexed spirit. They have carried him away, and he will be lying on one of those couches, knowing nothing of his trouble. The billows are passing over his soul ; he may wake presently, and in through the little window will stream the voice of the preacher, the song of the people. It was close upon such a harrowing attack one Sunday evening, the people rose and their hymn filled the building — " Sun of my soul, Thou Saviour dear," they sang, " it is not night if Thou be near " — and then they went home through the darkening beech wood quietly, though every one of these singers knew that he or she might be taken with such a fit the very next moment, and what assurance have they it is not the night of death upon them, the last of their many struggles ? They are learning to be still, with the stillness of Zion.

I

CHAPTER II THE GROUNDWORK "The righteous is an everlasting foundation."

F you ask Pastor von Bodelschwingh who is the true founder and promoter of the work of mercy going on beneath the shadow of that church, he will take you to the quiet burial ground on the hill, at the farther end of the beech wood. There he will show you, as the last in a long row of sleepers, the resting-place of an aged pilgrim. You read an inscription : —

WILHELM HEERMANN,

THE FRIEND OF THE RAVENSBERGER PEOPLE,

Born March 31st, 1800; Died January 26th, 1882.

" The Lord shall be Thine Everlasting Light." — Isaiah lx. 20.

This man had been blind for sixty years. A peasant's son, of the Ravensberger country, he fell, when a young man, from the hayloft of his father's farm, had concussion of the brain, and lost his eyesight. But this closing up of the outward eye opened the windows of his soul for the light of heaven to stream in. He became a truly godly man, a bright Christian, and a blessing through a long lifetime to the whole country side. That Ravens-

berger Land, a province within the province of Westphalia, no larger than a moderate English county, owns a people of peculiar sterling worth, a peasantry of the good old German type, thriving on their own soil, and owing no man anything. A Godfearing people of old, the light of the Gospel had grown dim, hid under the bushel of a lukewarm ministry. Blind Heermann saw deeper than others, and knew what was wanting. Year after year he went about the country from village to village— it was all he could do — and taught the people to pray, to pray for Christian pastors. He went pleading with the earthly authorities for true shepherds to the people, going, upon occasion, as far as Berlin even, at a time when railroads were not, to intercede with the king ; and his pleading and his prayer found answer. From one pulpit and another the gospel-sound was heard ; faith grew, and love abounded — that love which, being blessed in her own home, goes out to the highways and hedges. It is not as a company of saints those peasant folk would wish to be spoken of ; theirs is a simple and wholesome Christianity, and it will appear in the course of these pages what is understood by Christianity in the Ravensberger Land. But if you would know what a Missionsfest is, go there. If these people want a holiday they go for miles in their Sunday clothes to hear a missionary on leave, or their own pastors, conversant with missionary matters, proclaim the victory of the Cross in heathen lands. And they rejoice in the news, returning the happier to dairy or plough.

They come long distances, and bring their offerings with them ; those who have much, give much, but not the least noble are the mites of the poor. Think of a farmer's lassie found fainting as she was starting for her home after one of these gatherings. Taken back to the place, she begged the pastor, amid blushes, to let her have again one halfpenny of a day's wages she had put into the plate. She did not earn more than her keep, and had thought she could go without food that day to send her little all to the heathen. But she had set out in the grey dawn of the morning, the way had been long, and a Missionsfest in Germany never is short ; and though she had feasted her soul, sitting fasting in the church, here she was faint for want of a morsel. The afternoon sun was low, and she had some ten miles before her : would he return her one halfpenny to buy a piece of bread with, and she hoped it was not robbing the Lord, she had meant to give all. Needless to say, she did not get back her halfpenny, but was taken to the manse for a plentiful meal, and then went home to think of her Missionsfest till the next came round. At such gatherings the wealthier peasant women have been known to put their amber necklaces into the plate, strings of amber beads as large as walnuts, ugly enough, but much prized as heirlooms, part of the national costume, and some of them worth ten pounds or more, for quantity of amber. These are incidents of years ago, when the u first love " was upon the land ; but the good folk in that country have never departed from their true interest in missions and in any good work they can aid.

It is, of course, Pastor von Bodelschwingh's own beautiful modesty if he takes the inquirer to that grave ; but there is a deep truth in the humble assertion behind which

The Groundwo7'k 17

he would hide his own good share. Blind Heermann for half a century ploughed the field on which a noble harvest has grown ; and it is lovely to think that for the last seven or eight years of his life he was an inmate of Bethel — that is, more correctly speaking, of " Sarepta " — not because he needed the sisters to nurse him, being hale to the last, but he was old now, and Bethel was thus paying back her debt. And the aged man, awaiting the home-call in their midst, went in and out among the epileptics, telling them of the Love he had known ; and when he died the whole country-side turned out, though it was in the depth of winter, to bear testimony at his grave of what he had done for them.

If you want to start a Bethel, a true home for the suffering, the sick, the destitute, the great thing required is not, in the first place, money. You may collect a hundred thousand pounds, and spend it too, yet your hoped-for Bethel is, not thus reached. It is not a foundation of money, it is a foundation of men that is wanted, of men and women with the love of Christ in their hearts. It is a great thing to put your money into the plate ; it is a greater thing to put in your own cherished amber beads ; it is greatest of all to put in yourself. Now, in that Ravensberger Land, so long and so faithfully prayed for, and prayed with, by that blind peasant, there is a wondrous spirit of giving abroad ; when the harvests are gathered in you should see the waggons of potatoes, of wheat, of farm produce generally, arriving at Bethel — the freewill tithes, largely given and gladly given, and given simply because they love this giving. But more than this, that people know how to give themselves ; in some parts there is scarcely a family but one or more of the daughters and sons offer for service in the Kingdom. Scores of deaconesses are of the daughters of that land, dozens of ministering brothers — or if you will go further, of missionaries — are drafted from that stock. If Bodelschwingh has been able to train such an army of helpers, it is because he has such a countryside at his back. Bethel is indeed a blossom of the Church, but it has grown on a soil of Christ-stirred humanity ; it is the outcome of a people with whom the religious life and the everyday life are so blended that it is as natural to them to watch and pray over any work of mercy going on in their midst, as to till and tend their fields.

Bethel recently celebrated her semi-jubilee — a sight not easily to be forgotten. It was on a splendid Sunday in July, for on a week-day these work-a-day people could not so largely attend. Some of them had started at two in the morning, and by six o'clock they came streaming up the valley, awakening Bethel — nay, Bethel was up by that time — but greeting her with their splendid bands. Posaunen-choirs they call them, from the beautiful word in the German Bible for the trumpet. By way of military instruments used for religious purposes, England has her experience of the Salvation Army ; but let it be understood, the Posannen-Chdre of the Ravensberger peasant folk are a thing to be heard. As chorale after chorale came rolling up the valley that morning you might have thought yourself in the heavenly Jerusalem. Indeed, these Posaunen-bldser (trumpet blowers is a miserable rendering), with their trombones, their cJarionets and horns, great and small, could any day take their place in a Handel or Bach choir. How has this come about? Not by Blind Heermann, surely ? No ; but among the pastors given to that blessed Ravensberger country by his prayers, there was one who thought with Luther that while a man makes music the devil has little chance with him, and he started a band in his village. This was the beginning, some twenty or thirty years ago. These bands are now an institution all over the country, Pastor Kuhlo, a son of the old Posaunenfather, and like him a splendid musician, being bandleader-general. Every village has its own band, but he has them all under training ; they have their weekly practice, each band for itself meeting at intervals for common practice. The instruments are provided out of a general fund, and the whole is managed with method and orderliness. That day saw seven or eight thousand people gathered at Bethel, and several hundreds of instruments among them. And not only instruments : the peasant girls and young women are trained by that same Pastor Kuhlo to a hymn singing which is nothing short of marvellous. They gave proof of it several times that day, he, with his little trumpet for a baton, calling upon them, and these women rising with a simple dignity — girls mostly, but they looked women in their national costume with their quaint little caps. There was a pretty modesty about them, yet an almost queenly absence of all shyness, and their voices were " soft and low," sweetly modulated — you never thought of peasant girls — but full of volume and clearness and musical wealth. They sang, now the soprano, now the alto in response ; it almost brought the tears to one's eyes for the unaffected simplicity of it. It was not art, it was nature answering the touch of art, these voices all instinct with the waving instrument which guided them. They seemed as one voice. The songs of praise and of thanksgiving were well rendered that day.