Guidance for Gda Reviews and Sponsors: : Content and Review of Chemistry, Manufacturing

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1901 edition. Excerpt: ... published through Bradford a polemic against the New-Born, a sect of sanctificationists which, under the leadership of Matthias Bauman, deeply stirred the Germans of Montgomery County. These books began the long series of theological literature in Pennsylvania which, receiving a new and strong impulse through the coming of Zinzendorf, has in one form or another, by Dunkard, Mennonite, Lutheran, or Reformed, come down to our own day. Original composition in verse at that time was chiefly in the form of hymns,13 of which a considerable number were written. Most of the brethren of the Ephrata Community turned their hand to this kind of poetry, the most voluminous being Beissel himself. As early as 1730, Benjamin Franklin published a book entitled Gottliche Liebes-und Lobesgethone, containing 62 hymns, 31 by Beissel and the rest by his associates; while in 1739 Christopher Sauer published a large hymn-book entitled Zionitischer This is likewise true of Germany at this time. What Scherer says of the hymns in that country applies equally well to early German-American hymnology. (See Scherer, Ge. schichte der deutschen Litteratur, p. 340 ff.) Weyrauchshiigel, containing 654 hymns in 33 divisions, Each inscribed with a heading as fantastical as the general title. 14 The poetical talent of Beissel, as shown in these hymns, was of a low order, and probably not nearly so great as his musical talent; they are filled with fantastic ideas, and couched in mystical and often obscure language in which sensuous love is used to express spiritual experience. They are quite in harmony, however, with the literary taste of the day in Germany and Switzerland.15 The most important of all the earliest literary men was...