Zion Church

BEAUTIFUL Zion Valley is an oval plain with hills surrounding it like the sides of a cup, and with a winding stream following the line of its longest diameter. In the centre of the valley, with the graveyard and the winding stream at its back, and opposite it and across the road the house of Matthias Lucas, stands Zion Church. The house of Matthias Lucas is old; it was built, as the German inscription above the door bears witness, by Matthias’s grandfather in 1749. Below the name and date, carved in the stone, are the words, ‘God bless all those who go in and out.’

The church is a magnificent one for a farming community. It is built of gray stone, its style is Gothic, and its spire, a hundred and ninety feet high from the base to the golden ball at its top, seems to rise higher than the hills. The great church room measures fifty feet from the floor to the apex of the arched ceiling. There are no frescoes; the walls are gray; the straight pews and the strange high pulpit with its winding stairs are dark walnut; the woodwork of the high galleries is painted white. The windows are clear glass; they were kept bright at first by Matthias Lucas, who, after he had given the church, became for love of it its sexton; they are polished now by the women of the devout Pennsylvania German congregation. From some of the windows, one may see straight into the leafy hearts of old oak trees; from others one may look through thinner foliage out across the surrounding farms to the hills. From the distance, the gray mass of Zion Church dominates the landscape like the cathedral of Chartres upon the broad plain of France.

Zion Church is rich; she owns the broad stone house and the five farms of Matthias Lucas. She has no debt; her paint is always shining; the grassy lawn about her is always smoothly trimmed; her graveyard, whose mounds are covered with myrtle or lily-of-thevalley or clove-pink, is set with straight white stones on which no moss is allowed to gather.

Many of the graves are interesting to the antiquarian. There are several of Indians who were converted by the preaching of the first pastor, and there are many with German inscriptions. The inscriptions which are carved to-day are English; sometimes, added to those already on a tall monument, they form a record of the transition from one language to another. The grandmother of the Arndts was recorded, ‘Sarah Arndt, geboren Peterman’; their mother was described as ‘Ellen Arndt, daughter of Rudolph Hummel’; above the grave of their young sister-in-law, who died a year ago, is written, ‘Elizabeth Arndt, née Miller.’ The Pennsylvania Germans have become cosmopolitan indeed! But the inscriptions on the Lucas graves are all German. Even Matthias, the last of his family, died before any one dreamed that the residents of Zion Valley would learn English.

It is three generations since Matthias Lucas in his middle-age cursed the congregation and the church and almost God himself, and went no more to service.

The Kirchen Rath (church council) met one winter evening, as it had met since the days of Matthias’s grandfather, in the Lucas kitchen, an appropriate place, since, like his father and his grandfather, Matthias managed the affairs of the church. The second building in which the congregation worshiped had become unfit for use, the plans for a new church lay spread before the council on the old oak table. The members of the council, which had been in session from seven o’clock until midnight, had been arguing, and they were tired.

Then rose Matthias Lucas angrily from his chair. He was about forty years old, a man of powerful build and with a fine, ruddy color from working in the fields. He had inherited wealth from his father, and he was steadily adding to it. He meant to give largely to the new church, which was his own as much as was his great stone house or his farms or his wife and child. Devoted, generous, stubborn, Matthias Lucas might have said with conviction, ‘I am Zion Church.’

‘Who will have to build this church?’ he demanded hotly, in his sonorous German speech. ‘Who will have to give most of the money? I will! Whose people gave the land in the beginning but mine? This —’ Matthias laid his hand on one of the papers spread out before him—‘this is the way it is to be.’

The point under discussion was a minor one, some small difference in the height of the steeple, or in the work required on the foundation, a point on which there might easily be two opinions, both of them right. Matthias Lucas might have yielded, but he was stubborn and he had not been accustomed to having his judgments questioned. On the other hand, the church council might have yielded, but it had been looking at plans for five hours, and as far back as the mind could reach it had been domineered over by a Lucas. When the vole was taken, there were seven votes against Matthias and none with him.

Still standing, Matthias had his say.

‘You will build the church alone, then. Not a penny will I give.’

Peter Arndt rose and faced him. The candle-light made two bright spots of their white faces in the great, low room with its brown, raftered ceiling and its black shadows. The members of Zion Church were not rich. All the low arable land of the valley belonged to the Lucases, and the fine ore deposits on the higher, poorer farms lay still unsuspected and undisturbed beneath the ground. The loss of the contribution of Matthias Lucas would be calamitous. But Peter Arndt faced him bravely.

‘Then we will build it alone.’

Tired of their long meeting, certain that to-morrow Matthias would think better of his foolishness, the other seven members of the church council untied their horses from the fence along the lane and rode home. Matthias laughed when they had gone.

‘Build it alone!’ he mocked. ‘Not while the world stands! They will build it my way, or they will not build at all. They have no money.’

Matthias was right; without him Zion Church was not able to build. The old church was patched up and services were held there for ten years. Matthias, sitting in his front room on Sunday mornings, watched the congregation assemble, but did not join them. He listened in stubborn silence to the admonition of the preacher, he continued to contribute to the preacher’s salary, but into the church he would not go.

‘I will not risk my life in that old shell,’ he declared to his wife. ’It will come down on their heads. When they are ready to build, let them come to me and we will build.’

But the church council did not come to Matthias. Presently, his wife and his only son died of smallpox, and, since even this isolated Pennsylvania valley had begun to observe quarantine, their bodies were carried directly from the house to the buryingground, without the customary service in the church. Thus Matthias did not have to break his word.

Aghast at the sorrow which had come upon Matthias, the members of Zion Church visited him and shed more tears than did the stern man sitting in his grandfather’s armchair in his lonely kitchen. When the funeral was over, he went about his work as though nothing had happened. The preacher added admonition to his consolation, he besought and then commanded Matthias to return to his church. But Matthias’s heart was not softened; it was then that he cursed Zion Church and said that as God had forsaken him, so had he forsaken God.

Almost at once, as though to add to his bitterness and anger, the walls of the new church began to rise. The deep ore-beds had been opened; great blast furnaces had sprung up through all the Pennsylvania German counties. The members of Zion Church had been saving their money in anticipation of building; now, as they began to sell their ore, they added to their original plan. They had for their church a spirit of mediæval devotion like that of the builders of Amiens; they would erect the finest building in many days’ journey.

Of their plans, Matthias would hear nothing. Again the preacher visited him; humbly the church council asked his forgiveness, and explained that all the details of their plans had changed; they had rejected their own plans as well as his. But he would not listen.

‘You think you can cajole me,’ answered Matthias grimly; ‘but not a penny shall you have unless you come back and sit in my kitchen and vote to build the way I want it.’

The walls of the new church rose rapidly, and Matthias from his window opposite, and from his farms and gardens, watched them rise. Sometimes he smiled.

‘They will never pay for it,’ he assured himself with satisfaction. ‘Those who were fools enough to build for them will not get their money.’

Presently the church wras completed. By the day of dedication, the pastor had promises for all the money needed.

From his lonely house, Matthias watched the final preparations. It was October, the season of harvest-home, and into the new church were carried great sheaves of wheat and the tallest stalks of corn. Presently, when Peter Arndt drove up with his wagon loaded with fine apples and pears and vegetables, Matthias crossed the road to speak to him.

‘You are my tenant,’ said he, harshly; ‘nothing from my land is to be taken into the church.’

Without answering, Peter Arndt drove away. Matthias’s old friends had begun to be afraid of him.

There was to be communion at the morning service, and it had been ten years since Matthias Lucas had gone to the communion-table. If his heart ached and his lips hungered for the token to which he had been accustomed from his childhood, he comforted himself with hate. He sat behind his bowed shutters and watched the congregation of Zion Church rejoicing in its new possession. He saw the children come to pract ice for their exercises, he saw flowers being carried by the armful until the cemetery looked like a great garden, and his heart hardened the more within him. He said now that they had cast him off, and he believed what he said. He realized fully, with intolerable pain, that they could do without him.

That night, complete from floor to spire, fresh from the careful hands of its builders, decked with the fruits of the field as a token of thankfulness to God, with the white communion-cloth spread already on the altar, Zion Church, waiting for its consecration, burned to the ground.

Matthias Lucas’s maid-servant gave the alarm. The rosy light, reflected from the flames against the wall of the barn and thence into her attic room, wakened her, and she went, screaming, to pound at Matthias’s door. By that time the church was a mere shell about a roaring furnace. The paint and varnish were fresh, and they, with the dried leaves and grain of the decorations, fed the flame to so fierce a heat that the walls fell outward with a great explosion.

From his window, Matthias Lucas watched. He heard the screams of his servant as she rushed down the road, he heard the panting of runners as they came in answer to her call, he heard cries of frantic inquiry and wild sorrow.

He knew from whom each sound came; he could tell the voice of each of his old friends, who loved their church as they loved their souls: of Peter Arndt, and John Lorish, and James Bär, and many others. The silver communion service was in the church; Peter Arndt had to be restrained by force from rushing into the flames to find it. Watching them, listening to them, Matthias felt that he was almost like God Himself.

They will come back to me!’ he cried. ‘They owe this money, they will have to pay it, the law will make them, and they still have no church. They will come back to me!’

When he had had his breakfast and had looked after his stock, he went into his parlor and sat down by the window. His heart felt strangely warmed; he spoke gently to his weeping servant.

’It will be built up,’ he assured her, to comfort her.

Soon after nine o’clock the congregation began to gather. There were many from a distance who had not heard the dreadful news; as they came over the hill, they drew rein in horror, and then urged their horses on. Matthias could hear their cries and the galloping feet of their horses. A few who drove to the very ruins before they saw that their church was destroyed, sat dumbly, making no effort to dismount from horse or wagon.

‘They will have to ask me to help them now,’ said Matthias again to himself, a strange peace in his heart.

But no one crossed the road to Matthias’s house. The men tied their horses and gathered about the preacher, the women sat on the grass in the graveyard in the warm sunshine; they were helpless, homeless, distraught. From group to group went his weeping servant, telling what she knew of the fire.

Presently Matthias saw that they were going to hold a service. The older people found seats on the flat tombstones, the younger ones stood about. There, within that low stone wall, all the congregation of Zion Church was gathered, and there was crying such as had often accompanied the layingaway of the mother of little children, or of the strong man, dying in his youth. Only one of the living members was not present — Matthias Lucas, who waited in his house across the way.

Through the open window, Matthias could hear the preacher’s voice, broken, trembling; he could see the preacher’s hands, lifted in petition.

‘ “ Lord,” ’ cried he, ‘ “ Thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations!”'

To Matthias, it seemed that the agonized plea was lifted to him. Then, with sobs and cries, the congregation tried to sing; —

Involuntarily Matthias Lucas sang with them the words which he had learned at. his mother’s knee, —

They were in trouble, these foolish, headstrong people, but he would help them. He would not wait for them to come to him; he would go to them. Matthias rose from his chair.

But, as the members of Zion Church sang, a change came over them. The hymn rose as it had risen many times before from that solemn place, at first a cry of misery. But presently its tone changed. The God to whom they cried had sustained them always when they called upon Him thus; He would sustain them now. Their voices strengthened and became calm; the great music of the choral rose above the blackened ruins and floated out over the fields and hills to heaven itself. They dried their tears and took heart.

Then they drew closer together, and the preacher’s clear voice, cheering and encouraging them, penetrated to the old stone house, where in his wealth and his bitterness, Matthias listened.

‘We will begin to rebuild to-morrow,’ announced the preacher. ’God will bless us. We will take promises now. I will give a year’s salary, if you will help me by sending me things from your gardens.’

Immediately the offerings began, and steadily they went on. The debt was to be paid, a plainer building was to be erected at once, the congregation of Zion Church was equal to its trouble. They did not call upon Matthias, they did not think of him. Close to the graves of his wife and child, they made their plans; without the fold, alone, holding to his chair for support, stood Matthias in his desolate house.

Then, Matthias went slowly out of the door and across the yard and the road to the churchyard.

‘Listen to me!’ he cried. ‘I have something to say.’

He pressed close to his old friends as though he were pursued by a terror from which they must defend him, and they, thinking that he was smitten by disease or madness, drew away in fright. The minister went toward him, and the girl who had stayed in his house because she had loved her mistress and her mistress’s child.

‘Listen to me!’ he cried again. ’I will build you a church, a church of stone, to last forever, with a great spire. You shall have my farms to endow it perpetually. Do not draw away from me! You must let me do it, or I will die! For in the night, I came over with a candle and set fire to the church you built without me !’