JOURNAL 



as an explanation to the jumble of sense and absurdity in the 

 association. I will therefore trace the Harmonist Society from 

 its outset in Germany to this place. 



919. The Sect had its origin at Wurtembeig in Germany, about 

 40 years ago, in the person of its present Pastor and Master, 

 George Rapp, who, by his own account, &quot; having long seen and 

 felt the decline of the Church, found himself impelled to bear 

 testimony to the fundamental principles of the Christian 

 Religion ; and, finding no toleration for his inspired doctrines, 

 or for those who adopted them, he determined with his followers 

 to go to that part of the earth where they were free to worship 

 God according to the dictates of their conscience.&quot; In other 

 words (I suppose), he had long beheld and experienced the slavery 

 and misery of his country, and, feeling in his conscience that he 

 was bom more for a ruler than for a slave, found himself im 

 periously called upon to collect together a body of his poor 

 countrymen and to lead them into a land of liberty and abundance. 

 However, allowing him to have had no other than his professed 

 views, he, after he had got a considerable number of proselytes, 

 amounting to seven or eight hundred persons, among whom were 

 a sufficiency of good labourers and artizans in all the essential 

 branches of workmanship and trade, besides farmers, he embodied 

 them into a Society, and then came himself to America (not 

 trusting to Providence to lead the way) to seek out the land 

 destined for these chosen children. Having done so, and laid 

 the plan for his route to the land of peace and Christian love, 

 with a foresight which shows him to have been by no means 

 unmindful to the temporal prosperity of the Society, he then 

 landed his followers in separate bodies, and prudently led them 

 in that order to a resting place within Pennsylvania, choosing 

 rather to retard their progress through the wilderness than to 

 hazard the discontent that might arise from want and fatigue in 

 traversing it at once. When they were all arrived, Rapp con 

 stituted them into one body, having every thing in common, and 

 called the settlement Harmony. This constitution he found 

 authorized by the passage in Acts, iv, 32. &quot; And the multitude 

 &quot; of them that believed were of one heart, and of one soul : 

 &quot; neither said any of them that aught of the things he possessed 

 was his own, but that they had all things common.&quot; Being thus 

 associated, the Society went to work, early in 1805, building 

 houses and clearing lands, according to the order and regulations 

 of their leader ; but, the community of stock, or the regular 

 discipline, or the restraints which he had reduced them to, and 

 which were essential to his project, soon began to thin his followers, 

 and principally, too, those of them who had brought most sub 

 stance into the society ; they demanded back their original 

 portions and set out to seek the Lord by themselves. This falling 

 off of the society, though it was but small, comparatively, in point 

 of numbers, was a great reduction from their means ; they had 



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