CHAPTER I. RELIGIOUS AND MORAL CONDITION OF THE GERMANS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 1. PENNSYLVANIA AND ITS INHABITANTS. THE moral and religious as well as the social and political condition of the inhabitants of Pennsylvania, about the year 1740, more than a century ago, was in many respects vastly different from the present state. The colony itself, though according to the royal charter comprising three degrees of latitude and five of longitude, was in reality encompassed by very narrow boundaries, hardly extending to the Blue Mountains in the North and the Susquehanna in the West. Beyond there was a yet unexplored wilderness of endless mountains, dismal swamps and interminable forests. Even the four settled Counties of Pennsylvania contained not only many quite unsettled districts, but even much unexplored land, while other parts, now in the highest state of cultivation, were passed by and rejected as unfit for any agricultural purposes. To reach any of the settlements in the interior, which were few and far between, required days of toil; for in many instances roads had first to be cut through trackless forests, and bridges to be erected over swollen creeks and mountain torrents. Fortunate was he who could hail his next neighbor within the reasonable distance of only six or seven miles, or had only ten or fifteen miles to walk, on Indian paths, to reach the nearest mill. Whilst labor was plentiful and much hard work had (9) Ia to be performed in the clearing of the ground, the erection of mills and the construction of roads, the first settlers, living in primitive simplicity in their unadorned log cabins, were perhaps happier than many of their descendants in their stately mansions. If they had not as many comforts and luxuries, neither had they as many real or imaginary wants. Oppressed and down-trodden in the old countries of Europe, they had left their homes, and had embarked for the shores of America, to seek liberty, religious and political, in the forests of Pennsylvania. The full consciousness of being free from all political oppression and every ecclesiastical restraint, of having entire liberty to maintain and extend as far as they pleased their own religious tenets and views, sweetened all their toil and seemed to lessen all their labor. There could not be found at that time on any other spot on the globe such a mixture of nationalities and languages, such a medley of opinions and views, so freely maintained and so fearlessly proclaimed, as in Pennsylvania. English and Irish, Scotch and Welsh, Germans and Swiss, Swedes and Danes, Dutch and French, Jews and Indians were scattered throughout the whole province, maintaining their nationalities without any political restraint; and still more variegated perhaps were the religious views of the first settlers. Truth and error, genuine piety and utter indifference to all religion, fanaticism and mere formality were to be found side by side in the enjoyment of equal rights and privileges. In 1681, William Penn, of the Society of Friends, had opened an asylum in the wilds of North America. for the oppressed of all nations. The English government was indebted largely to his father, Sir William Penn, a distinguished Admiral, for money as well as services, amounting, with interest, to about £16,000, in lieu of which, the government being unable or unwilling to |