His desires for a monastic life drove him into
solitary meditation--tradition says he took shelter in a cave--where
he came to the conviction that the seventh day of the week should be
observed as the day of rest. This conclusion led to friction with the
Dunkards; and as a result, with three men and two women, Beissel
founded in 1728 on the Cocalico River, the cloister of Ephrata. From
this arose the first communistic Eden successfully established in
America and one of the few to survive to the present century. Though
in 1900 the community numbered only seventeen members, in its prime
while Beissel was yet alive it sheltered three hundred, owned a
prosperous paper mill, a grist mill, an oil mill, a fulling mill, a
printing press, a schoolhouse, dwellings for the married members, and
large dormitories for the celibates. The meeting-house was built
entirely without metal, following literally the precedent of Solomon,
who built his temple "so that there was neither hammer nor ax nor any
tool of iron heard in the house while it was building." Wooden pegs
took the place of nails, and the laths were fastened laboriously into
grooves. Averse to riches, Beissel's people refused gifts from William
Penn, King George III, and other prominent personages. The pious
Beissel was a very capable leader, with a passion for music and an
ardor for simplicity.
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