PENSYLVANIA 17 



Other pleasures, beyond the interchange of religious 

 exercises and domestic affairs, they know not. Twice 

 a day and as often at night, they meet for worship. 

 Only sick persons lie on beds ; all others, on hard 

 boards with a block for pillow. Men and women live 

 in separate dwellings, and under different regulations. 

 The buildings for the Brethren and Sisters are of 

 timber, but spacious, and each supplied with dining- 

 hall and prayer-room, for mostly they keep apart at 

 their religious exercises. These buildings are divided 

 into cells, each large enough for one person; without 

 ornament, but neat and cleanly. Between Brethren and 

 Sisters there is no intercourse, except that demanded 

 by the tendance upon their common affairs ; not even 

 by marriage. But if a couple desire to withdraw from 

 this regulation and enter into the state of matrimony, 

 they are then regarded no longer as full members of 

 the society nor is it permitted them to dwell any longer 

 among the unmarried, but they must go to Mount- 

 Sion, a mile from Ephrata, or into the neighborhood 

 round about, receiving from the common treasury 

 what they need for their setting-up. However, they 

 continue to wear the dress, are regarded as associates 

 of the congregation, and give over to it their children 

 to be educated. 



The chief religious principles of these Dunkers are 

 about as follows : that a future happiness is to be attained 

 only and solely by penance and outward mortification 

 of the body during this life ; and that, as Christ through 

 his meritorious suffering worked the salvation of the 

 human race as a whole, so each individual man, by 

 fasting, temperance, renunciation of all that is super- 

 fluous in dress, pleasures, &c, must likewise gain his 



