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we have no king besides God, who dwells in us and guides our
life, if we love Him and keep His commands.
Since we acknowledge no responsibility whatever to earthly
Governments, so we do not ask from them any rights and gladly
renounce all kinds of honour, all riches and so-called privileges.
While, however, we reject Governments, we have no illwill
towards state officials, but love them as brothers, and are
always ready to serve them by word or deed provided that
they ask nothing of us that is contrary to God’s will.
Our renunciation of the so-called privileges necessarily
places us in the same position as the labourer, the mechanic,
and the tiller of the soil. We do not own the land we till, for
private property was established by violence, which is a
conflict with the law of love, the command of our God, who
dwells in us. We work where we are allowed, and use the
implements of industry so long as they are not taken from us.
If they hunt us away from one place, we flee to another.
Having for our life’s aim the service of God and our fellow
men, we know that, as poisoned water flows from a polluted
source, so no good work can come from man so long as he is
full of vices. Therefore our endeavours are specially
directed to making ourselves perfect.
We are thoroughly convinced that if we ourselves grow
better, in however small a degree, the good we can thereby do
to our fellows becomes of correspondingly greater worth.
This perfection of self involves striving after purity of body
and spirit. While we follow after this purity we fear the
temptations of pride, and seek lowliness. Only as we fulfil
these conditions can we do the work of love. Purity, lowliness,
and love—there you have the three ground principles of our
life.
We allow perfect liberty to others, and set no bounds to the
search after truth. So our profession may be to-day very
different from what it was yesterday and may be to-morrow,
but we have all one and the same way, the unchangeable and
eternal way, that Christ has shown us. To maintain the
spirit’s freedom we give no pledges, take no oaths, institute or
acknowledge no creeds, and introduce no outward ecclesiastical
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