These Eckerling brothers were the strangest mixture of worldly wisdom, on the one hand, and the most perverse and ridiculous religious beliefs, on the other, I verily believe, I have ever seen. While we taught and enjoined the purity and simplicity of the mode of life of the early Christians, the Eckerlings must continually be running after strange gods, so that at this time and for many years thereafter we were in great danger of total disruption; for experience clearly showeth the Scriptures say truly, a house divided against itself must fall. Thus by our increased membership and by the scheming of our Eckerlings it came about that the Solitary Brethren clamored for a building similar to the Sisters' house, Kedar, and while for a time the project was kept in abeyance by lack of money, which commodity was never dangerously plenty with us, yet finally, Brother Benedict (and I say this to his praise), a young Swiss from Kilcheryturnen, a scion of a rich family of Berne, who had joined our community, came forward with the necessary funds. Whereupon it came to pass notwithstanding our opposition, so I find it in our _Chronicon_, that, "Inflamed by the love of God, he resolved to devote his fortune to the erection of a convent"; which was accepted as coming by divine direction, and his proposition granted. There was in the settlement a pleasant elevation from which one had a beautiful view of the fertile valley and the mountains lying opposite. Of this height the Brethren in the hill house at that time held possession. When now it came to the selection of a site, the most held that the valley along the Cocalico creek was the most desirable on account of the water. The superintendent, however, went up the hill until he came within the limits of the property of the hill house, and there was the site chosen. By this the spirit of wonders indicated at the very beginning that the Brotherhood would at first build its structure on the heights of reason and thus soar aloft until at length by a great storm they would be cast down into the valley; all of which was afterwards fulfilled in the minutest detail. The site for the new chapter-house having been settled, the eager Eckerlings, like children hastening toward a new toy, could stand no delay. The Brethren must be pressed into immediate service, and every one joining in the work as though this heathenish temple were unanimously desired, in a wonderfully short time we had cut and framed the timbers, and a day was fixed in the month of May when the building was to be raised with much ritual and ceremony.