SOME MINOR SECTS.
There are two classes of people of whom a wise man should be wary. He
who comes to you in a jolly, confidential sort of way, and tells you that
you know that he never pretended to be much of a saint, and he whose
saintship is so sublimated that he finds all denominations in grievous
error, and must form a new sect for himself. It is to be feared that
such men are in a very bad way, and have most erroneous conceptions of
God and His dealings. It is certainly remarkable that they are chiefly
to be met with in the most ignorant sections of professors--amongst the
"Petulant capricious sects,
The maggots of corrupted texts."
Any liberal culture seems fatal to them. As soon as they manage to
pronounce their h's and to talk grammatically, they can worship with
other Christians, can rejoice in the magnificent inheritance which has
come down to the Church of our day from the sanctified intellect of
former times--can derive edification from an educated ministry--possibly
may sing the songs of a Keble, and may be able occasionally to join in a
form of prayer which was found adequate for the expression of the
spirituality of a Martyn or a Wilberforce.
THE PECULIAR PEOPLE.
In London, if we are to believe what we hear in some quarters, the real
seat of true and undefiled religion is to be found amongst the small body
who meet in an obscure street leading out of the Walworth Road. The
neighbourhood is not a very attractive one, and is inhabited chiefly by
retail tradesmen, who must find it in these hard times a struggle to make
both ends meet. You must look sharp to find the place of which you are
in search. In a row of shops opposite Lion Street you will see one in
the day-time with the shutters up. On the shutters you will see one or
two little bills headed Christian Meeting House, containing an
invitation, as follows:--"Dear friend, you are affectionately invited to
the following meetings." Then you have a list of the times of meeting,
an announcement that all seats are free, and the text, "For both He that
sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all one, for which cause He
is not ashamed to call them brethren." If you enter, you see a few
benches in what is meant for a shop, and a few more in the room behind.
Where the window is there is a desk, at which the chairman or conductor
of the meeting sits. By the door is a little box into which the
offerings of the faithful are poured. As a rule the place, which cannot
hold more than forty or fifty adults comfortably, is well filled by very
poor people. It is the only place of meeting of the sect in London.
They are numerous, so they say, in Essex, Sussex, and Surrey, but in the
Walworth Road they are few and not popular with their neighbours, who
possibly know no better. Now and then up comes a street-boy and makes a
hideous noise through the keyhole; but the Peculiar People have got used
to that. I should fancy with the keen-witted artisans of London they
make but little way. The reader may remember that a little while ago
some of these people figured in a police-court. They had refused all
proper medical aid for a child, and it died in consequence. They have
great faith, these poor people. They have great scorn also for people
more benighted than themselves. They speak contemptuously of the time
when they knew no better, when they trusted in forms, and attended on a
one-man ministry, and were humbled and dejected on account of sin, and
called themselves miserable sinners, and confessed that they had done the
things they ought not to have done, and left undone those things which
they should have done. All that sort of feeling and talk is all wicked
in their opinion; for theirs is the glorious liberty of the sons of God
and joint heirs of heaven. Religion has no difficulties for them, no
mysteries; nothing beyond the reach of man, heights to which he cannot
ascend, depths which he cannot fathom. To come together and declare
their unspeakable joy is all that they have to do. For this the beginner
is as competent as the grey-headed believer, the sister as well as the
brother, the ignorant man as well as he who has had a college education.
Triumphantly they ask--
"When the Lord would speak,
Think ye he needs the Latin or the Greek?"
Of course not. And thus in turn they all preach and pray with a zeal
which literally is not according to knowledge. If a man cannot say he
lives without sin, they set him down as no Christian. At one time they
held that as the Spirit of God only teaches one thing, that if true
so-called Christians disagreed in Church matters, one of them was a child
of the devil; and as they were not at all backward in applying this
doctrine, they were split up as fast as they gathered together. They
have a great deal of the Methodist leaven amongst them, and at prayer, or
while speaking is going on, express their feelings in a way which, to a
stranger, may be considered unnecessarily noisy. Their leaders seem to
be a small tradesman in the Southwark Road, and a little, pale, wizened
female, whose utterances and prayers are of the most extraordinary
character--a sort of sing-song, now rising and then dropping, in a way
which in a secular personage and on secular subjects would be ludicrous
in the extreme. But they profess to have no leaders. They have elders,
who are simply elders. They become such by lapse of time alone.
As to their organization, I much question if they have any. One brother
assured me there were rules, but as the price was fourpence, and as trade
was slack, he had been unable to procure a copy of them. In answer to
our appeal, an elder said there were such, but they were under lock and
key, and he could not find them for us; whereupon another brother reached
out a New Testament, with the assurance that there, and there alone, were
their rules. What information we could get we had to fish out by
questions. As to Church membership, they have no preliminaries. All who
come are of the Church; those whom the Lord calls will join them, and if
the Lord has not called them they will soon drop away. They consider
that every service is the sacrament, and they have no special form. In
the same way they have no baptism--infant or adult, creeds, confessions
of faith, forms of prayer, ministers set apart and trained to
preach;--all these things they have done away with. By communion as
brother with brother, and sister with sister, they can cherish the true
Christian life. If one of them lack anything, let him or her ask of God.
How familiarly and at times irreverently they pray, the reader can well
imagine. It is difficult to say common things with propriety, says the
old Latin proverb. It is more difficult to introduce them into prayer,
to inform the Lord that Brother Jones would have been present had he not
been unable to come, and to explain the peculiarly distressing
circumstances of Sister Smith. For acting on the world outside, they
have great faith in out-of-door preaching, an exercise in which they take
great delight, and for which they consider themselves peculiarly
qualified. They forget, as one has wittily remarked, that if the Lord
does not need man's learning, still less does He need man's ignorance.
As to the financial question, they get over that without much difficulty.
Their expenses are next to nothing, and each brother or sister is ever
ready to contribute his mite. They have nothing to pay for pew-rents;
they have no minister's salary to collect; they have no educational
institutions to support; the rent of a room in a back street is no
serious item; and as to church furniture, that is easily supplied--a
door-mat, a dirty desk, half a dozen old forms, a second-hand Bible or
so, a greasy hymn-book that has done duty many times, and they have all
that they require. It is not for me to judge my brother. To show him
how fatal is his fluency of tongue, how presumptuous his hope, how
unfounded his joy, is a thankless task. All I would suggest is, that he
should exercise a little of that charity of which he stands in need
himself, and not fancy that to him has been revealed what men of greater
piety and higher intellect have been unable to discover. Another
objection may also be taken. In an ancient town, with a fine old castle,
many, many years ago, there was an attempt to form a volunteer regiment.
Unfortunately all wanted to be officers; the consequence was, the
regiment came to grief. The Peculiar People have too many officers.
Where every one has an equal right to teach, the number of the taught
will be small indeed.
THE SANDEMANIANS.
In this our day one of the expiring sects of Christendom is that of the
Sandemanians. At no time have they been a very powerful denomination
either from their numbers, their influence, or their wealth. They have
never yet made their mark upon the world, nor are they likely to do so
now. The late Professor Faraday was one of their elders, and for a time
conferred on them a little of his world-wide reputation; but one swallow
does not make a summer, nor does one great man confer greatness on a
church. The eccentricity of men of genius is proverbial. Sharp, the
engraver, believed in the lunatic Brothers and the impostor Joanna
Southcote; Irving in the gift of tongues and the power of working
miracles; Swedenborg in his faculty of piercing the veil which envelopes
all sublunary affairs and realizing what we are taught to consider will
only be revealed to us when the heavens and earth shall pass away as a
scroll, and time shall be no more. Even our great emancipator Luther,
the Moses who led forth--to borrow a figure from Cowley--our modern
Israel from its house of bondage, and brought them into the promised
land, testified to a visible appearance of the Prince of Darkness, to get
rid of whom he had to dash his ink-bottle, a type, as it always seems to
me, of the victory yet to be achieved by means of print over the devil
and all his works. But Faraday is gone. No longer can the Sandemanians
boast the possession of one of England's greatest philosophers; and they
have now little power of influencing or predominating in society. They
seem to me a very plain and humble folk, aiming at keeping up in their
own hearts Christian love, and in their own circle primitive practices,
rather than in aggressive movements, without which no church or
denomination can expect in this busy age long to live.
There is one Sandemanian church in London, up in Barnsbury, at the corner
of one of the streets running out of the Roman Road. The original church
was founded in the year 1760, in the Barbican. City improvements
necessitated its removal to this site, where it has now been erected four
or five years. It was in the old chapel that Professor Faraday used to
take his turn in preaching. In the new chapel his widow is still one of
the worshippers. As you pass the place you would not see anything very
extraordinary. It is a neat, simple structure, of white brick, with no
architectural pretensions of any kind. It only differs from other places
of worship in having no board up announcing to what denomination it
belongs, nor the name of the preacher, nor the hours of assembly, nor
where applications for sittings are to be made, nor to whom subscriptions
are to be paid. Indeed, the only reference at all to an outside world
seems to consist in the putting up a caution intimating that the building
is under the guardianship of the police, and persons evilly disposed had
better mind what they are about. Thus, and thus only, is the recognition
of an outer world lying in darkness and needing the true light of the
Gospel in any way acknowledged. They have service twice on Sunday, in
the morning and afternoon, and a week-day meeting on Wednesday evening.
They have no Sunday or day-school, no tract distribution, no district
visiting, no minister, and no other means of acting on the world or
forming religious opinion. Indeed, I fancy they are averse to anything
of the kind. "We are utterly," I read in one of their publications,
"against aiming to promote the cause we contend for either by creeping
into private homes or by causing our voice to be heard in the streets, or
by officiously obtruding our opinions upon others." Even if you enter
their place of worship there is no pew-opener to show you to a seat.
They claim simply to obey the commands of the Bible implicitly, to be a
church founded for mutual edification and love--nothing more. The
stranger who for the first time attends will be struck with the absence
of the pulpit, instead of which he will find two large desks, one above
the other, in which are seated three or four elderly persons; the
attention which is paid to the reading of the Bible; the illiterate way
in which those who preach and pray do so; and the length and dulness of
the service. The morning service, for instance, begins at eleven, and is
never over till half-past one. No wonder the Sandemanians are not a
vigorous sect. I believe they have but one place of worship in England,
three or four in Scotland, and more, how many I know not, in America.
The chapel in Barnsbury will seat, I imagine, from three to four hundred
people, and it is always nearly full, and attended by people in
respectable appearance. Of the really poor they seem to have none at
all.
The Sandemanians originated in Scotland, in 1728, as a kind of reaction
against Presbyterianism and Calvinism. Mr. John Glass, a minister of the
Kirk, was deposed by the Presbyterian Church Courts because he taught
that the Church could be subject to no league or covenant--that faith was
simple belief--and that Christianity never was, nor ever could be the
established religion of any nation without becoming the reverse of what
it was when first instituted. Mr. Robert Sandeman, one of his elders,
however, by his numerous writings, left on the new organization the
impress of his name. In these days, when metaphysical speculation has
little encouragement amongst Christians, the Sandemanians tell us they
have no formal creed or confession of faith--that they simply follow
Scripture practice, and that is all. For this purpose they meet together
on the first day of the week, not only to read and hear the Word, but
particularly to break bread or communicate together in the Lord's Supper;
to pray, which is done by several in turns; to listen to an exhortation
from one of the elders. They are a Christian republic. At the
conclusion of every prayer--whether pronounced by the elders or the
brethren--the whole church say Amen, according to what is intimated in 1
Cor. xiv. 16. In the interval between the morning and the afternoon
service they have their love-feast, of which every member partakes, when
they salute each other with a holy kiss. The children are all baptized,
on the plea that if one of the parents believes the children are not
unclean but holy, and because it is written in Acts, "Believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved and _thy_ house." They deem it
unlawful to eat flesh with its blood; they wash each other's feet; they
hold all things in common so far as the claims of the poor and the Church
are concerned; they forbid no amusements but those connected with the
lot, such as cards or dice; their elders are chosen from amongst them on
account of their piety and character, and are ordained by prayer and
fasting, and laying on of hands. A deacon is elected in the same way,
minus the fasting. Any one who appears to understand and believe the
truth may be admitted into their fellowship. When a person is
excommunicated the act takes place in the presence of the whole church.
Two elders must be present at every act of discipline. It may be further
stated that in every church transaction, whether it be receiving,
censuring, or expelling members, or choosing officers, or in performing
any other business, unanimity is deemed indispensable. If there is a
dissenting brother, after the reasons of the dissent have been stated,
and judged unscriptural by the church, he is expelled. The Sandemanians
allow neither government by a majority nor a representation of
minorities.
As an outsider I should say nothing was ever more uninteresting, nothing
ever more calculated to alienate from religion intelligent young people,
than the services conducted by the Sandemanians. The elders and deacons,
excellent men undoubtedly, are singularly deficient in oratorical
ability. I think the worst sermon I ever heard in my life was preached
by one of them. They cannot even read the Bible in an impressive and
edifying manner, nor is their psalmody much better. They have a literal
version of the Psalms, and they sing them through, a couple of verses or
so at a time. I give one specimen I heard, not the last time I attended
there:--
"Moab I will My Wash-pot make,
O'er Edom cast my shoe;
Do thou, O land of Palestine,
Triumph, because of Me."
The modern hymnology, of which all sections of the Church are justly
proud, exists in vain for them. Their church seems utterly destitute of
intellectual vigour; and when, as in these days, brains are beginning to
rule, the piety that rejects or ignores them is in danger. There is a
relation between the Bible and modern thought of which the good people
who preach dull sermons and make dull prayers up in Barnsbury have no
idea.
THE SOUTHCOTTIANS.
Incredible as it may seem, there are, in these days of penny newspapers
and universal enlightenment, Southcottians in London. They may be met
with in the neighbourhood of Kennington Common, and in one of the
forlornest spots in Islington, Elder Walk, Essex Road. Thence they issue
documents worthy of Bedlam. I have now before me their "Midnight Cry,
Behold the Bridegroom cometh." And this august warning and bruising and
inviting announcement is "to and for whomsoever it may concern of
Mammon-crushed Israel." One extract I fancy will suffice--one at any
rate I must give, otherwise such religious lunacy will be held
incredible.
"Oh, dutifully observe now, O all Israel, (namely) O Judah and
Ephraim, that this Universal Marriage overture unto you, together
with these Proxy Marriage lines and record, are made and offered you
entirely because 'I am' and Jesus Christ is Life, Love, and Light
everlasting, and because of His power and right to give, and the Son
of Man's to receive, and the worthy Woman to bring Him forth, and
Israel's to inherit,--viz., the promises unto Adam, Eve, Noah,
Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, and all their seed, who were originally
the void waters and dark-faced deep until God said, Let there be
Light and there was Light. And from henceforth there shall be Light,
and both Light and Love abundantly in Heaven, here below as in Heaven
above, for in the beginning God created Heaven and Earth, and did,
and is, and will finish on the sixth day the same and all the host of
them."
The main instrument in the above precious compilation is Whatmore, one of
Joanna Southcott's chosen apostles. The paper referred to is issued from
No. 9, Elder Walk, Essex Road, Islington, London, of Britannia Zion. It
states, as far as I can gather, that in August last year something of
importance was to take place. "A month since and the gauntlet has been
successfully run; therefore, Whatmore, now has Thy lowly instrument
Watmore Whatmore, John, to submit of and by Thy worthiness, O Lord God.
Oh, shall I submit a Song of Solomon, or a Lamentation of Thy Prophet
Jeremiah, or a sermon of Thy immortalizing mount, unto Thy flock, O, O,
O! Submit, love," &c., &c. I gather that the mystery of God is to be
finished speedily by unveiling His Bible word, and His codicil thereto by
His spouse, "the wonderful Queen of prophets, Joanna Southcott, that thus
sons and daughters by her womanhood may greatly replenish the earth, and
that the poor now suffering from the murdering love of money in
consequence of unjust stewardship may fare better in time to come." This
seems to be the only idea I can extract from the Southcottians. All
mammon laws are to be abolished, money currency is to be destroyed, there
is to be no more selling, martyring, and bartering of humanity and their
requirements, "thus saith the Lord Jehovah, by J. Watmore Whatmore, and
J. G. Grant, of Zion."
As these prophets speak of the spouse of God, Eve the second, called
Joanna Southcott, Queen of the prophets, who in 1802 opened her
commission, and declared herself to be the woman spoken of in
Revelation--"the Bride, the Lamb's wife, and clothed with the sun"--let
me briefly tell her story:--
Joanna was born at Gettisham, in Devonshire. Her parents were in the
farming line, and members of the Established Church. She herself was in
service or in industrious employment, "without," writes her biographer,
"any other symptom of a disordered intellect than that she was attached
to the Methodists." Nevertheless, it was Mr. Pomeroy, the clergyman
whose church she attended at Exeter, who appears to have encouraged her
to print her prophecies and to assume spiritual gifts. The books which
she sent into the world were written partly in rhyme, all the verse and
the greater part of the prose being delivered in the character of the
Almighty. Her discourses were nothing else than a mere rhapsody of
texts--vulgar dreams and vulgar interpretations. Her fame spread, and
seven wise men from different parts of the country, the seven stars, came
to believe in her. Among the early believers were three clergymen, one
of them a man of fashion, fortune, and noble family. As her followers
supplied her with money and treated her with great reverence, the more
extravagant were her assertions and the loftier her claims. The scheme
of redemption was completed in her. If the tree of knowledge was
violated by Eve, the tree of life was reserved for Joanna. Her greatest
triumph was a conflict with the devil, which lasted a week. According to
her own account the devil had the worst of it. She gave him ten words
for one, and allowed him no time to speak. Very ungallantly, at the
termination of the dispute he remarked no man could tame a woman's
tongue; he said the sands of an hour-glass did not run faster. It was
better to dispute with a thousand men than one woman. After this dispute
Joanna is said--and her followers believed it--to have fasted forty days.
Shortly after commencing her mission, she published the following
declaration:--
"I, Joanna Southcott, am clearly convinced that my calling is of God,
and my writings are indited by His Spirit, as it is impossible that
any spirit but an all-wise God that is wondrous in working, wondrous
in wisdom, wondrous in power, wondrous in truth, could have brought
round such mysteries so full of truth as in my writings; so I am
clear in whom I believed, that all my writings came from the Spirit
of the Most High God.
"JOANNA SOUTHCOTT."
One of her means of making money and increasing her influence was the
sealing of such as signed their names to a declaration intimating a
desire for Christ's kingdom to be established upon earth, and the
destruction of that of the devil. Whoever signed his or her name
received a sealed letter containing these words:--"The sealed of the Lord
the elect. Precious man's redemption to inherit the tree of life, to be
made heirs of God and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ." To this document
Joanna's name was appended. In December, 1813, she declared her
pregnancy, and prophesied that she should have a son that year by the
power of the Most High. Her followers now increased rapidly, and chapels
were opened for promulgating her doctrines. As the time drew nigh
presents of all descriptions, it was said, came in unasked. There was a
magnificent cot for the expected Messiah, manufactured by Seddons. All
the articles used on such occasions--as laced caps, bibs, robes,
papboats, caudle cups, &c.,--were lavishly supplied; and when it appeared
that the poor woman had died, asking pardon for her late blasphemous
doctrines and past sins, the delusion was still kept up, and her
followers believed that she would reappear. It was only after a
_post-mortem_ examination that the fiction of a miraculous conception was
dispelled. Joanna was sixty years old at the time of her death, and was
buried privately in Marylebone Upper Burying-ground, near Kilburn.
The present leader is John Whatmore, formerly a smith, but who has been
led in a marvellous way, according to his own confession, to believe in
Joanna. He is an open-air preacher, and may be met with in London
Fields, Somers Town, and elsewhere pursuing his calling, which apparently
is not very lucrative. He has two boards joined together, on which some
unintelligible jargon is printed, which he calls his two sticks. These
he holds up to view, at the same time calling out, "Britannia! Ephraim!
Judah!" Then he commences his oration, a strange medley of Scripture and
nonsense. According to him the world is in the worst possible way; and
the devil has a fine time of it. The present commercial system of
society by no means meets with Whatmore's approval. The poor are rotting
off, and woe to them to whom such a catastrophe is due. There are many
disciples, he tells us; but fear of this world and a false sense of shame
prevent them from declaring themselves. There must be some, otherwise
the man could not get a living. His library seems to consist chiefly, if
not exclusively, of the New Testament and his own absurd hand-bills,
which a printer supplies him with on the chance of his selling them. In
answer to my inquiry as to where he attended when not preaching himself,
his reply was that he sometimes went to the Agricultural Hall; but they
were not advanced enough for him, and so he falls back on himself, and
goes about to do what he thinks is--or at any rate what he says he thinks
is--the Lord's work. There is no bounce about him. He is apparently a
muddle-headed, well-meaning mystic; about as mad or sane as others of his
way of thinking. That he is wretchedly poor, that he is ignorant, that
his language to ordinary folks seems simply unintelligible, perhaps in
certain quarters may be accepted as signs of his Divine commission. At
any rate, he is a representative man. If he is ignorant and talks
nonsense, what must be the ignorance and the nonsense existing in those
who listen to him? How dense must be the ignorance, how crass the
nonsense cherished in his hearers! It may be asked, and this is a
question I put to the religious public, is not the manifestation of such
religious folly a reproach to our age? If the Church had done its duty,
would such a folly have been possible?
THE SPIRITUALISTS.
Somehow or other the Spiritualists are under a cloud in this country, and
their leader--Mr. Home--has been compelled, in consequence of the
decision of a highly-prejudiced and extremely ignorant jury, to hand over
to Mrs. Lyon a very handsome sum of money which she had conveyed to him
in consequence of representations made by him to her that such was the
desire of her deceased lord and master. Up to that time Spiritualism was
making great way, and Mr. Home, as its high priest and apostle, was in
request with the nobility, and was the friend of kings and emperors. He
had married a Russian Countess; he wore a diamond ring on one hand, given
by the Czar, and on the other hand another, the present of the Emperor of
France. His speaking eye and melodramatic manner made him in society a
really charming man; literary ladies were enthusiastic in his favour. A
spiritual Athenaeum was opened in Sloane Street, Chelsea, at which a very
eminent man gave the inaugural discourse, and at which there were spirit
drawings displayed, and spirit poems read--all suggestive of the fact
that the spirits were very ordinary people, after all. But it was not so
much there as at the houses of his friends that Mr. Home tried best to
display his powers. At such times there was a wonderful parade of
religion. Previous to his attending a _seance_, a friend of the author
was asked whether he believed in the doctrine of the Trinity; "because,"
said the fair questioner, "we find that the spirits do not like to appear
before sceptics;" and the Bible was read, and prayer offered up in
apparently the most reverent, and earnest, and occasionally the most
tiresome manner. Then came a few childish tricks, such as a handkerchief
conveyed by spirits _under_ the table, the accordion played by spirits
_under_ the table, and other intimations of what was said to be spiritual
agency, but all equally out of sight. A few marvellous things were said
by Home--secrets occasionally--which the hearer thought no one knew but
himself, but secrets of the most uninteresting and unimportant character.
And then the unbeliever passed out, scarcely knowing whether to laugh or
weep; whether he had assisted at a religious meeting or a farce; whether
he had been in the company of a mortal fitted for a solemn mission to an
idle and adulterous generation seeking after a sign, or whether all he
had seen and heard was but the clever manoeuvring of a clever professor
of legerhave to take his stand with the Brothers Davenport and other
doubtful mediums who have had their day.
The Spiritualists in this country set great store by Home. They have
never been able in our cold climate to raise mediums worth talking about.
The latter have been chiefly American importations. Mr. Harris came as a
preacher of Spiritualism, and, after a few Sundays at Store Street,
vanished like a spirit, and was heard of no more. A _Spiritual Magazine_
was started. Mrs. Marshall and her niece, of 22, Red Lion Street,
Holborn, were declared by that--we presume official authority--to be
"Media." Then came the solid testimony of a learned American judge,
declaring "the first thing demonstrated to us is that we can commune with
the spirits of the departed; that such communication is through the
instrumentality of persons yet living; that the fact of mediumship is the
result of physical organization; that the kind of communion is effected
by moral causes; and that the power, like our other faculties, is
possessed in different degrees, and is capable of improvement by
cultivation." But the sect did not prosper. Then came grotesque
indications of spiritual presence. Not content with table-rapping, the
spirits had recourse to all kinds of antics, and the subject of
Spiritualism became more and more distasteful to the intelligent, and
more and more popular with that large class of idle wealthy men and women
who have no healthy occupation, and are always in search of excitement.
The climax was reached when the _Cornhill_ told how Mr. Home floated in
the air, how heavy tables would leap from one end of the room to the
other, how music was produced on accordions, "grand at times, at others
pathetical, at others distant and long-drawn," when those accordions were
held by no mortal hands. "I can state," wrote Dr. Gulley, of Malvern,
"that the record made in the article 'Stranger than Fiction' is in every
particular correct; that the phenomena therein related actually took
place, and moreover that no trick-machinery, sleight of hand, or other
artistic contrivance, produced what we heard and beheld. I am quite as
convinced of this last as I am of the facts themselves." Well might the
Spiritualists crow; had not Robert Owen and Lord Lyndhurst also believed?
Was it not uncharitable to say that they were in their dotage? The
testimony of such men settled everything.
In America, Spiritualism is more prosperous than in England. In the
"Plain Guide to Spiritualism" Mr. Clarke tells us there are in that
country 500 public mediums who receive visitors; more than 50,000 private
ones; 500 books and pamphlets on the subject have been published, and
many of them immensely circulated; there are 500 public speakers and
lecturers on it, and more than 1000 occasional ones. There are nearly
2000 places for public circles, conferences, or lectures, and in many
places flourishing public schools. The decided believers are 2,000,000,
the nominal ones nearly 5,000,000; on the globe itself it is calculated
there are 20,000,000 supposed to recognise the fact of spiritual
intercourse. In Paris and the different parts of France the
manifestations have been almost of every kind, and of the most decisive
and distinguished character. "Great numbers of persons have been cured
by therapeutic mediums," writes William Howitt, "of diseases and injuries
incurable by all ordinary means. Some of these persons are well known to
me, and are every day bearing their testimony in aristocratic society."
Writing thus, Mr. Howitt defines Spiritualism "as the great theologic and
philosophic reformer of the age; the great requickener of religious life;
the great consoler and establisher of hearts; the great herald to the
wanderers of earth starved upon the husks of mere college dogmas." "I
believe," says Mr. C. Hall, "that as it now exists, Spiritualism has
mainly but one purpose--to confute and destroy Materialism, by supplying
sure, and certain, and _palpable_ evidence that to every human being God
gives a soul, which He ordains shall not perish when the body dies."
This, as good old Isaak Walton says, in narrating Dr. Donne's Vision,
"this is a relation that will beget some wonder; and it well may, for
most of our world are at present possessed with an opinion that miracles
and visions are ceased."
What is Spiritualism? Ask its opponents. They regard it as necromancy,
a practice not only forbidden under the Old Testament, but which even in
the New we find classed by St. Paul under the general denomination of
witchcraft, with such works of the flesh as idolatry, murder, adultery,
and drunkenness, concerning all of which the Apostle Paul adds the solemn
declaration (Gal. v. 19-21), "That they which do such things shall not
inherit the kingdom of God." Such undoubtedly is the feeling entertained
with regard to Spiritualism by the great majority of orthodox Christians,
who are quite satisfied by Scripture testimony, who accept what they
think God has revealed to them in His Book, and who seek or require
nothing more. In a weak but well-meaning work just put into my hands
("Spiritualism and other Signs") I read: "The whole system is essentially
opposed to faith in, and walking with, Jesus Christ, and the Spiritualist
knows it." The writer quotes the well-known text: "Now the Spirit
speaketh expressly that in the latter times some shall depart from the
faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils, speaking
lies in hypocrisy, having their conscience seared with a hot iron." At
the same time there are many in the Christian Church of undoubted piety
and intelligence who are believers in Spiritualism. After all, however,
they are the exception rather than the rule. Amongst all sects there is
a condemnation of Spiritualism of a very sweeping character. In this one
thing Wesleyans, Low Churchmen, and Congregationalists are agreed. The
outer world, the Secularists and the Positivists, of course regard
Spiritualism with the same scorn and unbelief with which they regard all
religion, whether true or false, whether old as the hills or but
yesterday's creation.
"It is wonderful that five thousand years have now elapsed since the
Creation of the world, and still it is undecided whether or not there has
ever been an instance of the spirit of any person appearing after death.
All argument is against it, but all belief is for it." Such is a
sentence I borrow from Dr. Johnson. It is as applicable to the present
time as to that in which he lived.
In conclusion, let me add, as a distinct organization, hitherto
Spiritualism has failed in this country. I hear nothing of the
_Spiritual Athenaeum_ now, nothing of Mr. Harris, either as preacher or
poet, very little even of Mr. Home. Strange that a man who could not
write an ordinary note decently should have been a favourite medium of
the spirits. I am aware, however, the Spiritualists will extract an
argument out of that last remark of mine in favour of Spiritualism. A
young Jewish convert it is said would go to Rome. His teacher, a priest,
feared, knowing Rome too well. On his return he questioned his pupil as
to what he saw in Rome. "Ah!" said he, "I am persuaded now your religion
is of God, otherwise it would have perished of the wickedness of its
professors."
THE CAMPBELLITES.
In America of late years there has been an enormous increase of what are
called the Campbellites. They now number in that country 500,000, have
fifteen colleges, and a large university with 800 students; they have
2000 churches, and 1000 regular ministers. They are also well
represented as regards literature. They have one quarterly, six or seven
weeklies, two ladies' magazines, and several Sunday-school papers. In
London they are not a numerous class. They have places of worship in the
Milton Hall, Camden Town, and in College Street, Chelsea. The truth is,
as regards chapels and churches, public worship is as much a social as a
religious institution. Fashion has a great deal to do with the
attendance. It is the fashion to go to church. It is not the fashion to
run after new sects or preachers of new doctrines. In a flourishing
church there are societies which bring people into contact with one
another--these promote in their turn, like the far-famed ale of Trinity,
"brotherly neighbourhood." The old ladies get a habit of
gossiping--Jones, Brown, and Robinson take tea together--and then young
people form alliances in consequence often of a serious and matrimonial
character. It is uphill work, then, in London for a little isolated
cause. The odds against its permanent success are infinite. Still the
Campbellites are making way. They have a fine base of operations in
America, and they are spreading over England,--if they are not doing much
in the Metropolis. They are good, pious people, and earnest in the
conviction that they alone understand and maintain apostolical charity;
and deeply deploring the present divided and unhappy state of the
Christian Church, and with a view to unity, they increase the number of
divisions by withdrawing from all other religious bodies, and forming a
fresh one of their own.
Who are the Campbellites? I will endeavour to answer the question.
Their creed, as they tell us, is simply the Messiahship. According to
them, the Christian creed thus presents for individual and immediate
acceptance the one living, personal, loving, Divine, all-wise and
omnipotent Saviour from ignorance, sin, and rebellion. Humanly devised
and written creeds demand faith in abstract metaphysical, theological,
ecclesiastical, and political propositions, and have so effectually
supplanted the good confession, that though admitted as a doctrine, few
churches or professors of the present day would consider themselves safe
in depending solely on its saving faith or belief in God's testimony as
contained in His Word, as delivered by apostles and prophets, and as
corroborated by signs and wonders, and divers miracles and gifts of the
Holy Spirit. Campbellism distinguishes the Gospel not only from the
words of men, but from Scripture generally--that Jesus is its subject.
It apprehends him not only as Jesus of Nazareth, but as God manifest in
the flesh--the Son and Christ of the Father consecrated to the high
offices of Prophet, Priest, and King. It recognises the applicability
and reference of the Saviour's mission and work to the individual himself
as clearly as if he were the only sinner for whom Christ has died; nor is
it a mere intellectual assent, but a willing, heartfelt reception of the
truth and surrender of the whole man, body, soul, and spirit. Now, as I
imagine most orthodox Christians would say as much, and would state their
belief in similar terms, with the exception of the Presbyterians and
Episcopalians, who have the advantage or disadvantage, whatever it may
be, of having to repeat a creed of more scholastic character, the
question still remains, why cannot the Campbellites worship with other
Christians? I must frankly confess there is in their services nothing
more fitted to make an impression upon the world than there is in the
services of other denominations; neither at Chelsea nor in Camden Town do
you get from their preachers an idea that they are men of greater power,
higher spiritual life, deeper experience, or more usefulness than are
others. Clearly this definition of Christian belief is no warrant for
another schism, even though the aim be Christian unity, and the putting a
stop to the endless differences which are the grief of the Christian and
the laugh of the worldling. Their form of worship is eminently simple
and dissenting--a revival, it may be, of that of apostolic times--that I
cannot say as, according to some, there are remains of a liturgy in the
Pauline epistles. It is not clear how the ancients worshipped, but it is
clear the Campbellites simply sing and pray, and read the Scriptures and
deliver an address. They are Baptists, and they believe that Baptism is
essential to salvation. Baptist churches are numerous in London. No
Baptist need hire room, or chapel, or barn, or hall, and meet there to
edify himself and his friends apart from the great and active community
who feel as he does in that matter. The Campbellites maintain that many
things are wrong which are done in other churches. They assume that
there was a greater purity in apostolic times than now, and they aim to
revive it. For this purpose they exalt the power of the Church, and
depreciate that of the ministry. I don't learn that they have all things
in common, though that was certainly one of the most prominent features
in apostolic times; but they draw a sharp line between the Church and the
world, and in their Sunday services almost ignore the latter. They have
little of that charity which hopeth all things, which thinketh no evil,
which is long-suffering. If they are building a chapel they would not
take the money of an unconverted man. If they were collecting
subscriptions for the sending out Evangelists, for the printing of
religious books and tracts, for the support of a Christian ministry, they
would refuse those of worldly men. More logical or more consistent in
small matters, they make no provision in their books of praise for the
unconverted man. I find in their hymn-book no one verse in the whole
volume is designed to be sung simply by the unconverted. Their hymns are
for those who, having the spirit of adoption, cry, Abba Father! It is
proper, says the writer of the preface to the volume to which I refer, it
is proper for convicted sinners, who do not know the way, to seek
salvation, but they are not called to sing their sorrow, much less are
Christians called to unite with them. Again, he tells us the unconverted
have no need to sing prayers for pardon. What then, I may ask, are they
to do? The answer is that, they may stand and listen and be sung at, as
well as preached at. Mr. King, the writer already quoted, says, "Though
there are not hymns for the unconverted to sing, there are appeals to the
unconverted to be sung by the church." Practically, however, the
arrangement differs little from that of other churches. A book is put
into your hands, and the chances are, people who are in the habit of
singing sing. As only immersed adults are Christians, it is not clear
what the young people who attend their service are; that they sing I can,
however, testify. It is to be feared that the Campbellites are not
exempt from the faults of all religious worship, as manifested in
strength of expression. If men and women believed what they say or sing
in all our churches and chapels, little would remain for us but the
Millennium.
The Campbellites do seek to guard against this danger. It is the Church
that sings. It is the Church that worships. All Christian worship is in
Scripture confined to Christians, and necessarily so, for worship offered
by any one else is not Christian. Thus it is only on the faithful in
Christ Jesus that the various items of Christian worship are enjoined:
they are profaned and prostituted when applied to any others. In the
morning of the Sabbath the Church meets by itself to break bread and sing
and pray; on such occasions the members exhort and edify one another. In
the evening the service is of a more general character; appeals are made
to the unconverted, and they are invited to attend.
"All you that are weary and sad come,
And you that are cheerful and glad come,
In robes of humility clad come,
Away from the waters of strife.
Let youth in the freshness of bloom come,
Let man in the pride of his noon come,
Let age on the verge of the tomb come,
Let none in their pride stay away."
As a matter of fact, the unconverted do not avail themselves of the
offer. It is a small place of meeting, the Milton Hall, but it is quite
large enough, and more than large enough for the church and congregation.
One brother prays and reads the Scriptures and gives out a hymn, another
brother delivers an address, another brother concludes with prayer, and
then there is a prayer-meeting after. The advantage of the Campbellites
seems to me that they are only a little duller than their neighbours.
The little ones around me, when I attended, found it hard to keep awake,
and yet the service is short. It commences at seven and closes a little
after eight. As they have no paid ministry, as their elders and deacons
take the chief parts in the service, even after supporting an evangelist
their expenses are not heavy, and in this they find a plausible plea.
If, say they, half a dozen churches are built where one would be enough,
and half a dozen ministers are kept where only one is required, clearly
in consequence of these divisions amongst brethren, there is a lamentable
waste of money and power and spiritual influence. Unfortunately, as
regards London there is no force in the plea, and will not be till the
time comes when the various sections of the Christian Church shall have
made all necessary provision for the spiritual wants of the metropolis.
THE MORMONS.
Thirty years ago, writes Hepworth Dixon, in that glowing account of
Mormonism which, next to "Spiritual Wives," he seems to consider as the
crowning glory of his life,--"thirty years ago there were six Mormons in
America, none in England, none in the rest of Europe, and to-day (1866)
they have twenty thousand saints in Salt Lake City; four thousand each in
Ogden, Prono, and Logan; in the whole of their stations in these valleys
(one hundred and six settlements properly organized by them and ruled by
bishops and elders) a hundred and fifty thousand souls; in other parts of
the United States about eight or ten thousand; in England and its
dependencies about fifteen thousand; in the rest of Europe ten thousand;
in Asia and the South Sea Islands about twenty thousand; in all not less,
perhaps, than two hundred thousand followers of the gospel preached by
Joseph Smith. All these converts have been gathered into the temple in
thirty years."
The other day the Mormons of the London district met at the Music Hall,
Store Street, and held a conference. Mr. Franklin Richards, the
President, delivered an address. From his speech it appeared that in the
metropolis there were nine branches, one hundred and seven elders of
conference, fifty-three priests, twenty-four teachers, thirty deacons.
During the six months preceding 132 persons had been baptized, sixteen
cut off or had died; the total number in the London district, including
officers, was 1172. I imagine the Mormonites flourish better in
districts less enlightened. Around Birmingham they are very sanguine,
and I have seen the miners in Merthyr Tydfil by thousands listening to
the gospel according to Joe Smith and Brigham Young.
The principal place of worship of the Mormons or Latter-day Saints is in
the Commercial Road, but there are others; one of them is in George
Street, Gower Street. In that locality there is a very shabby dancing
saloon, from which the graces seem long since to have departed. At three
o'clock every Sunday afternoon the Mormons assemble there. On a raised
platform may be seen seated some seven or eight men, apparently decent
workmen. Below them is a table, around which are a few lads, who set the
tunes and take round the sacrament, which is administered every Sunday to
all, including any strangers and children who may feel disposed to
partake of it. Benches fill up the rest of the room, which are occupied
chiefly by females with their families--including, of course, the baby,
the inevitable feature in all gatherings of the lower orders. All seem
enthusiastic and very friendly, and wretchedly poor. Their idea of
Mormonism seems to be chiefly that of a successful emigration scheme,
only mixed up with a little of the religious phraseology, which is most
fluently uttered unfortunately by the unthinking masses to whom words do
not represent ideas. You might fancy as you enter that you had made a
mistake, and got amongst the Primitive Methodists. The hymns are very
much the same, and so is frequently the style of prayer. Sermon there is
none, but instead you have addresses, the burden of which is generally of
one kind. The speaker is thankful that at last he has known the Lord,
and wishes he had done more for Him, and hopes, if health and strength be
spared, to do more. There is also generally an address of a wider
character. The Lord is calling them out of this country, where the
Gentiles have the rule over them, and they are to hasten, old and young,
to the City of the Saints. They are to pay their debts, mend their old
clothes, save all they can, and then those that cannot pay for their
voyage will be helped to join the settlement in Utah. Apart from the
prayers and hymns, these meetings seem secular rather than spiritual,--to
have reference more to this world, than the next. If, as it seems to me,
the Mormonites in this country have had a Methodist training, they have
managed to eliminate pretty completely the Methodist theology; but,
perhaps, they treat it as they do the Bible. The Mormons profess to
believe in it, at the same time they omit its spiritual teaching
altogether. Their theology may be best explained in one of their own
hymns:--
"The God that others worship is not the God for me,
He has neither part nor body, and cannot hear and see;
But I've a God that lives above,
A God of power and love,
A God of Revelation,--Oh, that's the God for me!
Oh! that's the God for me; oh! that's the God for me.
"A church without apostles is not the church for me,
It's like a ship dismasted, afloat upon the sea,
But I've a church that's always led
By the twelve stars around its head,
A church with good foundations--oh! that's the church for me!
Oh! that's the church for me! oh! that's the church for me!
* * * * *
"The heaven of sectarians is not the heaven for me,
So doubtful its location, neither on land nor sea,
But I've a heaven on the earth,
The land that gave me birth,
A heaven of light and knowledge--oh! that's the heaven for me!
Oh! that's the heaven for me! oh! that's the heaven for me!"
Such are the songs sung, with a fervour unknown in better attended and
genteeler places of worship.
The Mormons speak of us as Gentiles, yet in reality they take our creed
and add to it polygamy and communism. Their belief as regards Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost is almost orthodox, and if they claim to be divinely
ruled and to have the power of working miracles, do not other sects the
same? Like the Quakers, they can dispense with religious forms. Like
the ancient Israelites, they are a peculiar people, but what is peculiar
to them, and that which constitutes the secret of their success, is
this--that they preach to the poor, and wretched, and starving, that the
kingdom of God has been founded upon earth, that it belongs to the
saints, and that they are the saints. Man, they say, is part of the
substance of God, and he will become God. He was not created by God, but
existed from all eternity. He was not born in sin, and is only
accountable for his own misdeeds. Angels, it seems, from what Young told
Hepworth Dixon, "are the souls of bachelors and monogamists, being
incapable of issue, unblessed with female companions, unfitted to reign
and rule in the celestial spheres. They have failed," said Young, "in
not living the patriarchal life--in not marrying many wives. An
unmarried Mormon fills but a low scale in the order of things." Man
being of the race of God becomes eligible for a celestial throne: his
household of wives and children being his kingdom, not on earth only, but
in heaven, polygamy is thus his highest duty, and most glorious
privilege. In the East, polygamy does not answer. The races with one
wife there breed faster than the Turks. In the city of the Mormons,
under polygamy, births are very numerous. The actual wives of Young are
twelve! the twelve apostles own from three to four each. Young has
forty-eight children, and all have their quivers full. The women,
according to Mr. Dixon, dislike polygamy nevertheless.
In this country and among the Mormons the doctrine of polygamy is not
that on which much stress is laid. Here the Mormon preaches temperance,
sobriety, honesty, industry, the need of saving up money, and the
advantages of emigration to Utah. In the _Millennial Star_, the organ of
the community, one brother writes from Wales:--
"The Word of Wisdom is quite a text with us of late, and is producing
very good effects. We see its fruits manifested among the Saints,
several of the brethren leaving off tobacco and other things that are
injurious to the constitution. _The tea is a matter that bothers the
sisters considerably_, but in the face of this difficulty many are
leaving it off, and pronouncing it of no beneficial effect in any way
whatever. I think that much will be done by abstaining from those
things towards clothing those children that are very thinly clad."
It is in this way that Mormonism has spread. It has come to the poorest
of the poor, and used their own language. Its phraseology is that dear
to the natural heart. We are all too prone to throw our responsibility
on others: It is the Lord who saves me. It is the devil who makes me
bad; and it is a great help to the ignorant and uneducated, not merely to
have spiritual states shadowed forth in earthly language, but to feel
that, after all, heaven is here in the shape of comfortable dwellings,
wives and children, raiment to wear, and a bellyfull. "This is great
encouragement to the saints in their pilgrimages here in old Babylon, and
stimulates them to more diligence in building up the kingdom of God, and
delivering themselves from the yoke of tyranny and oppression, to enjoy
the liberty of the people of God in the valleys of the mountains." Thus
writes one of the elders with reference to certain manifestations of the
gift of tongues; but I quote the passage here as applicable in an eminent
degree, and as illustrating the religious phraseology, affected no doubt
for certain ends by the Mormons. The kingdom of God, for instance, of
the theologians may be difficult of apprehension to the illiterate and
the rude; but if it means to me a good house and good living in Utah, it
at once assumes an attractive form. If to live in England is to live in
Babylon, of course it is my duty to emigrate; and if Brigham Young is the
Lord's deputy on earth, then to disobey his call is an act of sin. So
degraded are many of our brethren and sisters in this Christian land,
where we have one parson at the least in every parish, that they are
utterly unable to contemplate anything apart from its accidental forms.
Their God is a God of parts and passions; their religion is one of
sensation; their heaven a loss of physical pains and the presence of
physical delights; they become at once an easy prey to the Mormonite
preacher when for ten pounds he offers them the realization of their
hopes, not at the end of life, but now, and tells them that in the Land
of the Saints they shall hunger no more, nor thirst any more.