§ 211.1. The Methodist Propaganda.—From 1850 the American Methodists, both the Albrechtsleute (§ 208, 4) and the Episcopal Methodists, have sent out numerous missionaries, mostly Germans into Germany, whose zeal has won considerable success among the country people. In North-West Germany Bremen is their chief station, whence they have spread to Sweden, Central and Southern Germany, and Switzerland, and have stations in Frankfort, Carlsruhe, Heilbronn, and Zürich.—Of a more evanescent character was the attempt made on Germany by the so-called Oxford Holiness Movement. In 1866 the North American Methodists celebrated their centenary in New York by the appointment of a great revival and holiness committee, in which were also members of many other denominations. Among them the manufacturer, Pearsall Smith, of Philadelphia, converted in 1871, exhibited extraordinary zeal. In September, 1874, he held at Oxford great revival meetings, from which the designation of the Oxford movement had its origin. By some Germans there present his opinions were carried to Germany. In spring, 1875, he began his second European missionary tour. While his two companions, the revivalists Moody and Sankey, travelled through England for the conversion of the masses, Smith went to Germany, and proceeding from Berlin on to Switzerland, gave addresses in English, that were interpreted, in ten of the large cities. The most pious among clergy and laity flocked from far and near to hear him. The new apostle’s journey became more and more a triumphal march. He was lauded as a reformer called to complete the work of Luther; as a prophet, who was to fructify the barren wastes of Germany with the water of life. The core of his doctrine was: Perfect holiness and the attainment of absolute perfection, not hereafter, but now! now! now! with the constant refrain: “Jesus saves me now;” not remission of sins through justification by faith in the atoning efficacy of Christ’s blood, which only avails for outward sinful actions, but immediate extinction of sins by Christ in us, proved in living, unfaltering, inner, personal experience, etc. By a great international and interconfessional meeting at Brighton, lasting for ten days, in June, 1875, at which many German pastors, induced by the payment of travelling expenses, were present, the crown was put upon the work. But at the height of his triumph, under the daily increasing tension and excitement the apostle of holiness showed himself to be a poor sinful son of man, for he strayed into errors, “if not practically, at least theoretically,” which his admirers at first referred to mental aberration, but which they hid from the eyes of the world under a veil of mystery. Toward the end of the Brighton conference he declared to his hearers: “Thus plunge into a life of divine unconcern!” and, “All Europe lies at my feet.” And in subsequent private conversations he developed a system of ethics that “would suit Utah rather than England,” to which he then so conformed his own conduct that his admirers, “although satisfied of the purity of his own intentions,” were obliged energetically to repudiate and with all speed send away across the sea the man whom their own unmeasured adulation had deceived.

§ 211.2. The Salvation Army.—An extremely fantastic caricature of English Methodism is the Salvation Army. The Methodist evangelist, William Booth, who in 1865 founded in one of the lowest quarters of London a new mission station, fell upon the idea in 1878, in order to make an impression on the rude masses, to give his male and female helpers a military organisation, discipline and uniform, and with military banners and music to undertake a campaign against the kingdom of the devil. The General of the Salvationists is Booth himself, his wife is his adjutant, his eldest daughter field-marshal; his fellow-workers male and female are his soldiers, cadets and officers of various ranks; chief of the staff is Booth’s eldest son. Their services are conducted according to military forms; their orchestra of trombone, drum and trumpet is called the Hallelujah Brass Band. Their journal, with an issue of 400,000, is the War Cry; another for children, is The Little Soldier, in which Jane, four years old, dilates on the experiences of her inner life; and Tommy, eleven years old, is sure that, having served the devil for eleven years, he will now fight for King Jesus; and Lucy, nine years old, rejoices in being washed in the blood of the Lamb. The army attained its greatest success in England. Its numerous “prisoners of war” from the devil’s army (prostitutes, drunkards, thieves, etc.) are led at the parade as trophies of war, and tell of their conversion, whereupon the command of the general, “Fire a Volley,” calls forth thousands of hallelujahs. Liberal collections and unsought contributions, embracing several donations of a £1,000 and more, are given to the General, not only to pay his soldiers, but also to rent or to purchase and fit up theatres, concert halls, circuses, etc., for their meetings, and to build large new “barracks.” Its wonderful success has secured for the army many admirers and patrons, even in the highest ranks of society. Queen Victoria herself testified to Mrs. Booth her high satisfaction with her noble work. At the Convocation, too, in the Upper as well as the Lower House, distinguished prelates spoke favourably of its methods and results, and so encouraged the formation of a Church Army, which, under the direction of the mission preacher Aitken, pursues similar ways to those of the Salvation Army, without, however, its spectacular displays, and has lately extended its exertions to India. The temperance party after the same model has formed a Blue Ribbon Army, the members of which, distinguished by wearing a piece of blue ribbon in the buttonhole, confine themselves to fighting against alcohol. In opposition to it public-house keepers and their associates formed a Yellow Ribbon Army, which has as its ensign the yellow silk bands of cigar bundles. Soon after the first great success of the Salvation Army, a Skeleton Army was formed out of the lowest dregs of the London mob, which, with a banner bearing the device of a skeleton, making a noise with all conceivable instruments, and singing obscene street songs to sacred melodies, interrupted the marches of the Salvation, and afterwards of the Church, Army: throwing stones, filthy rotten apples and eggs, and even storming and demolishing their “barracks.”—In 1880 a detachment of the Salvation Army, with Railton at its head, assisted by seven Hallelujah Lasses, made a first campaign in America, with New York as its head-quarters. In the following year, under Miss Booth, it invaded France, where it issues a daily bulletin, “En Avant.” In 1882 it appeared in Australia, then in India, where Chunder Sen, the founder of the Brama-Somaj, showed himself favourable. In Switzerland it broke ground in 1882, in Sweden in 1884, and in Germany, at Stuttgart, in November, 1886. Africa, Spain, Italy, etc., followed in succession. These foreign corps outside of England also found considerable success. Almost everywhere they met with opposition, the magistrates often forbidding their meetings, and inflicting fines and imprisonment, and the mob resorting to all sorts of violent interference. Nowhere were both sorts of opponents so persistent as in Switzerland in 1883 and 1884, especially in Lausanne, Geneva, Neuenburg, Bern, Beil, etc. Although General Booth himself at the annual meeting in April, 1884, boasted that £393,000 had been collected during the past year for the purposes of the army, and over 846 barracks in eighteen countries of the world had been opened, and now even spoke of strengthening the army by establishing a Salvation Navy, the increasing extravagances caused by the army itself, as well as the far greater improprieties of those more or less associated with it, has drawn away many of its former supporters.

§ 211.3. Baptists and Quakers.—Baptist sympathies and tendencies often appeared in Germany apart from an anti-ecclesiastical pietism or mysticism. But this aberration first assumed considerable proportions when a Hamburg merchant, Oncken, who had been convinced by his private Bible reading of the untenableness of infant baptism, was baptized by an American baptist in 1834, and now not only founded the first German baptist congregation in Hamburg, but also proved unwearied in his efforts to extend the sect over all Germany and Scandinavia by missions and tract distribution. Oncken died in 1884. Thus gradually there were formed about a hundred new Baptist German congregations in Mecklenburg, Brandenburg (Berlin), Pomerania, Silesia, East Prussia (Memel, Tilsit, etc.), Westphalia, Wupperthal, Hesse, Württemberg and Switzerland. In Sweden (250 congregations with 18,000 souls) they were mainly recruited from the “Readers,” who after 1850 went over in crowds (§ 201, 2). They also found entrance into Denmark and Courland, but in all cases almost exclusively among the uncultured classes of labourers and peasants. After long but vain attempts at suppression by the governments during the reactionary period of 1850, they obtained under the liberal policy of the next two decades more or less religious toleration in most states. They called themselves the society of “baptized Christians,” and maintained that they were “the visible church of the saints,” the chosen people of God, in contrast to the “hereditary church and the church of all and sundry,” in which they saw the apocalyptic Babylon. Even the Mennonites who “sprinkle,” instead of immersing, “all,” i.e. without proper sifting, they regard as a “hereditary” church. With the Anglo-American Baptists they do indeed hold fellowship, but take exception to them in several points, especially about open communion.—A peculiar order of Baptists has arisen in Hungary in the Nazarenes or Nazirites, or as they call themselves: “Followers of Christ.” Founded in 1840 by Louis Henefey originally a Catholic smith, who had returned home from Switzerland, the sect obtained numerous adherents from all three churches, most largely from the Reformed church, favoured perhaps by the not yet altogether extinguished reminiscences of the Baptist persecutions of the eighteenth century (§ 163, 2). They practised strict asceticism, refused to take oaths or engage in military service, and kept the bare Puritan forms of worship, in which any one was allowed to preach whom the Holy Spirit enlightened. Their congregations embraced weak and strong friends, and also weak and strong brethren. The strong friends after receiving baptism joined the ranks of weak brethren, and then again became strong brethren on their admission to the Lord’s Supper. The church officers were singers, teachers, evangelists, elders, and bishops.—In North America Quakerism, under the influence of increasing material prosperity, had lost much of its primitive strictness in life and manners. The more lax were styled Wet-, and their more rigorous opponents Dry-Quakers. Enthusiasm over the American War of Independence of 1776-1783, spreading in their ranks, led to further departures from the rigid standard of early times. Those who took weapons in their hands were designated Fighting Quakers. The General Assembly disapproved but tolerated these departures; neither the Wet nor the Fighting Quakers were excommunicated, but they were not allowed any part in the government of the community. In 1822 a party appeared among them, led by Elias Hicks, which carried the original tendency of Quakerism to separate itself from historical Christianity so far as to deny the divinity of Christ, and to allow no controlling authority to Scripture in favour of the unrestricted sway of reason and conscience. This departure from the traditions of Quakerism, however, met with vigorous opposition, and the protesting party, known as Evangelical Friends, pronounced more decidedly than ever for the authority of Scripture. In England, notwithstanding the wealth and position of its adherents, Quakerism, since the second half of the eighteenth century, has suffered a slow but steady decrease, while even in America, to say the least, no advance can be claimed. In Holland, Friesland, and Holstein, Quaker missionaries had found some success among the Mennonites, without, however, forming any separate communities. In 1786 some English Quakers succeeded in winning a small number of proselytes in Hesse, who in 1792, under the protection of the prince of Waldeck, formed a little congregation at Friedersthal, near Pyrmont, which still maintains its existence.—On the sects of Jumpers and Shakers, variously related to primitive, fanatical Quakerism, see § 170, 7.568

§ 211.4. Swedenborgians and Unitarians.—In the nineteenth century Swedenborgianism has found many adherents. In England, Scotland and North America the sect has founded many missionary and tract societies. In Württemberg the procurator Hofacker and the librarian Tafel, partly by editions and translations of the writings of Swedenborg, partly by their own writings, were specially zealous in vindicating and spreading their views. A general conference of all the congregations in Great Britain and Ireland in 1828 published a confession of faith and catechism, and thirteen journals (three English, seven American, Tafel’s in German, one Italian and one Swedish) represent the interests of the party. The liberal spirit of modern times has in various directions introduced modifications in its doctrine. Its Sabellian opposition to the church doctrine of the Trinity and its Pelagian opposition to the doctrine of justification, have been retained, and its spiritualising of eschatological ideas has been intensified, but the theosophical magical elements have been wholly set aside and scarcely any reference is ever made to revelations from the other world.—From early times the Unitarians had a well ordered and highly favoured ecclesiastical institution in Transylvania (§ 163, 1). But in England the law still threatened them with a death sentence. This law had not indeed for a long time been carried into effect, and in 1813 it was formally abrogated. There are now in England about 400 small Unitarian congregations with some 300,000 souls. The famous chemist Jos. Priestly may be regarded as the founder of North American Unitarianism (§ 171, 1), although only after his death in 1804 did the movement which he represented spread widely through the country. Then in a short time hundreds of Unitarian congregations were formed. Their most celebrated leaders were W. Ellery Channing, who died in 1842, and Theodore Parker, who died in 1860, both of Boston.

§ 211.5. Extravagantly Fanatical Manifestations.—The English woman Johanna Southcote declared that she was the “woman in the sun” of Revelation xii. or the Lamb’s wife. In 1801 she came forth with her prophecies. Her followers, the New Israelites or Sabbatarians, so called because they observed the Old Testament law of the Sabbath, founded a chapel in London for their worship. A beautiful cradle long stood ready to receive the promised Messiah, but Johanna died in 1814 without giving birth to him.—A horrible occurrence, similar to that recorded in § 210, 2, took place some years later, in 1823, in the village of Wildenspuch in Canton Zürich. Margaret Peter, a peasant’s daughter, excited by morbid visions in early youth, was on this account expelled from Canton Aargau, and was carried still farther in the direction of extreme mysticism by the vicar John Ganz, by whom she was introduced to Madame de Krüdener (§ 176, 2). Amid continual heavenly visions and revelations, as well as violent conflicts with the devil and his evil spirits, she gathered a group of faithful followers, by whom she was revered as a highly gifted saint, among them a melancholy shoemaker, Morf, whom Ganz introduced to her. The spiritual love relationship between the two in an unguarded hour took a sensual form and led to the birth of a child, which Morf’s forbearing wife after successfully simulating pregnancy adopted as her own. This deep fall, for which she wholly blamed the devil, drove her fanaticism to madness. The ridiculous proceedings in her own house, where for a whole day she and her adherents beat with fists and hammers what they supposed to be the devil, led the police to interfere. But before orders arrived from Zürich, she found refuge in an asylum, and there the end soon came. Margaret assured her followers that in order that Christ might fully triumph and Satan be overthrown, blood must be shed for the salvation of many thousand souls. Her younger sister Elizabeth voluntarily allowed herself to be slain, and she herself with almost incredible courage allowed her hands and feet to be nailed to the wood and then with a stroke of the knife was killed, under the promise that she as well as her sister should rise again on the third day. The tragedy ended by the apprehension and long confinement of those concerned in it.—The sect of Springers in Ingermannland had its origin in 1813. Arising out of a religious excitement not countenanced by the church authorities, they held that each individual needed immediate illumination of the Holy Spirit for his soul’s salvation. So soon as they believed that this was obtained, the presence of the Spirit was witnessed to by ecstatic prayer, singing and shouting joined with handshaking and springing in their assemblies. The special illumination required as its correlate a special sanctification, and this they sought not only in repudiation of marriage, but also in abstinence from flesh, beer, spirits and tobacco. The “holy love,” prized instead of marriage, however, here also led to sensual errors, and the result was that many after the example of the Skopzen (§ 210, 4) resorted to the surer means of castration.—Among the Swedish peasants in 1842 appeared the singular phenomenon of the Crying Voices (Röstar). Uneducated laymen, and more particularly women and even children, after convulsive fits broke out into deep mutterings of repentance and prophesyings of approaching judgment. The substance of their proclamations, however, was not opposed to the church doctrine, and the criers were themselves the most diligent frequenters of church and sacrament.—In the beginning of 1870 the wife of a settler at Leonerhofe, near San Leopoldo in Brazil, Jacobina Maurer, became famous among the careless colonists of that region as a pious miracle-working prophetess. In religious assemblies which she originated, she gave forth her fantastic revelations based upon allegorical interpretations of Scripture, and founded a congregation of the “elect” with a communistic constitution, in which she assumed to herself all church offices as the Christ come again. Rude abuse and maltreatment of these “Muckers” on the part of the “unbelieving,” and the interference of the police, who arrested some of the more zealous partisans of the female Christ, brought the fanaticism to its utmost pitch. Jacobina now declared it the duty of believers to prepare for the bliss of the millennium by rooting out all the godless. Isolated murders were the prelude of the night of horror, June 25th-26th, 1874, on which well organized Mucker-bands, abundantly furnished with powder and shot, went forth murdering and burning through the district for miles around. The military sent out against them did not succeed in putting down the revolt before August 2nd, after the prophetess with many of her adherents had fallen in a fanatically brave resistance.

§ 211.6. Christian Communistic Sects.—The only soil upon which these could flourish was that of the Free States of North America. Besides the small Shaker communities (§ 170, 7) still surviving in 1858, the following new fraternities are the most important:

1. The Harmonites. The dissatisfaction caused among the Württemberg Pietists by the introduction of liturgical innovations led to several migrations in the beginning of the century. Geo. Rapp, a simple peasant from the village of Iptingen, went to America in 1803 or 1804 with about six hundred adherents, and settled in the valley of Connoquenessing, near Pittsburg in Pennsylvania. As a fundamental principle of this “Harmony Association,” which honoured father Rapp as autocratic patriarch, prophet and high priest, and with him believed in the near approach of the second advent, the community of goods holds a prominent place. By diligence and industry in agriculture, labour and manufactures, they reached great prosperity under the able leadership of their patriarch. In 1807 the community, by a resolution of its own to which Rapp agreed, resolved to abstain from marriage, so that henceforth no children were born nor marriages performed. A falling off in numbers was made up in 1817 by new arrivals from Württemberg and afterwards by the adoption of children. Industrial reasons led the community in 1814 to colonize Wabashthal in Indiana, where they built the town of Harmony, which, however, in 1823, on account of its unhealthy situation, they sold to the Scotchman Robert Owen (§ 212, 3), and then founded for themselves the town of Economy, not far from Pittsburg, where they still reside. In 1831 an adventurer, Bernard Müller, appeared among them, who, at Offenbach, had, for a long time, under the name of Proli, played a brilliant part as a prophet called to establish universal spiritual monarchy, and then, when in danger from the courts of law, had fled to America. In Economy, where he passed himself off as Count Maximilian von Leon, persecuted on account of his belief in the second coming, he found as such a hearty welcome, and within a year, by his agitation for the reintroduction of marriage and worldly enjoyments, drew away a third part of the community, embracing 250 souls. The dissentients with 105,000 dollars from the common purse withdrew and settled under the leadership of the pseudo-count as a New Jerusalem society in the neighbouring village of Philippsburg. But the new patriarch conducted himself so riotously that he was obliged in 1833 to flee to Louisiana, where in the same year he died of cholera. His people now in deep distress turned to Dr. Keil, a mystic come from Prussia, who reorganised them after the pattern of Rapp’s communistic society, but with liberty to marry, and brought them to a prosperous condition in two colonies mainly founded by him at Bethel in Missouri and Aurora in Oregon. Economy, too, flourished in spite of the heavy losses it sustained, so that now the common property of the populace, which through celibacy had been reduced to about eighty persons, amounts to eight million dollars. Father Rapp died in 1847, in his ninetieth year, confident to the end that he would guide his church unto the hourly expected advent of Christ.
2. When in 1831 a wave of revival passed over North America, J. H. Noyes, an advocate’s assistant, applied himself to the study of the Bible and became the founder of a new sect, the Bible Communists or Perfectionists of the Oneida Society. He taught that the promised advent of Christ took place spiritually soon after the destruction of Jerusalem; by it the kingdom of Adam was ended and the kingdom of God in the heart of those who knew and received him was established. The official churches were only state churches, but the true church was scattered in the hearts of individual saints, until Noyes collected and organized it into a Bible family. For them there is no more law, for laws are for sinners and the saints no longer sin. Each saint can do and suffer whatever the Spirit of God moves him to. All the members of the congregation constitute one family, live, eat, and work together. Goods, wives and children are in common. It lies with the wife to accept or refuse the approaches of a man. But soon this proclaimed freedom from law sent everything into confusion and disunion; schism—apostasy prevailed. But Father Noyes now saved his church from destruction by introducing a correction to this freedom from law in Sympathy, i.e. in the agreement of all members of the family. The odium which fell upon the community from without on account of its “complex marriages,” induced him at last in August, 1879, although he still always maintained the soundness of his principle of free love and its final victory over prejudice, to ordain the introduction of monogamic marriages, and the community acquiesced. With regard to community of goods, meals and children, however, they kept to the old lines. The parent community has its seat at Lenox in Oneidabach in New York State. Alongside of it are three daughter communities. They have their prophets and prophetesses, but no ritual service and no Sunday. Their employment (they number about 300 souls) is mainly fruit culture and the manufacture of snares of every kind for wild and other animals.569

§ 211.7. Millenarian Exodus Communities.

1. The Georgian Separatists. The stream of Württemberg emigrants above referred to turned also toward Southern Russia. The settlers in Transcaucasian Georgia in the long absence of regular pastors fell into fanatical separation, which the clergy who followed in 1820 could not overcome. Under the direction of three elders (one of them an old woman) as representing the Holy Trinity, they lived quietly, refused to baptize their children, to give their dead burial according to the rites of the church, to call in physicians in sickness, and at last rejected the marriage relation. In 1842 their female elder, Barbara Spohn, wife of a cartwright, appeared in the rôle of a prophet, proclaiming the near approach of the end of the world and calling upon her followers to pass through the wilderness to the promised land, there to enter into the millenial kingdom. They were to take with them no money, no bread, etc., but only a staff; their clothes and shoes would not wear old in the desert, they could eat manna and quails, and in the holy land Christ would dress them in the bridal robe. The government sought in vain to bring them to reason and to obstruct their way, when about three hundred of them wished at Pentecost, 1843, to start on their journey. They were allowed to send three men to Constantinople and Palestine to seek permission from the Turkish government to settle in a spot near Jerusalem. But these returned before the close of the year with the news, that Palestine is not the land that would suit them. This brought the majority to their senses and they rejoined the church.
2. Equally unfortunate was the attempt at colonization made in 1878 by some Bavarian Chiliasts. The pastor Clöter in Illenschwang had for a long time in the “Brüderbote,” edited by him, urged the emigration of believers to South Russia, where, according to his exposition of the apocalyptic prophecy, a secure place of refuge had been provided by God for believers of the last times during the near approaching persecutions of antichrist. In June, 1878, the tailor Minderlein with his family and nineteen other persons started to go thither. Minderlein died by the way, and his companions after enduring great hardships were obliged to return, and reached Nuremberg again in October, absolutely destitute. Clöter, however, was not discouraged by this misfortune. In December he called his adherents from Bavaria, Württemberg and Switzerland, together to a conference at Stuttgart, where they formed themselves into the “German Exodus Church.” In the summer, 1880, Clöter himself travelled to South Russia and thought that he found in the Crimea the fittest place of refuge. On his return he was banished, but after some days liberated, though deprived of his clerical office. A final stop was then put to the exodus movement.

§ 211.8.

1. The Amen Community owed its feeble existence to a Christian Jew, Israel Pick of Bohemia. Believing that he was not required in baptism to renounce his Judaism, but that rather thereby he first became a true Jew, through a onesided interpretation of Old Testament promises to his nation, he wished to found a colony of the people of God in the Holy Land on Jewish-Christian principles. The whole Mosaic law, excluding the observance of the Sabbath and circumcision, was to be the basis, together with baptism and the Lord’s Supper, of ecclesiastical and civil organization. He succeeded in winning a few converts here and there, to whom he gave the name of the Amen Community, because in Christ (the אֱלֹהֵי אָמֵן Isa. lxv. 16) all the prophecies of the old covenant are Yea and Amen. Its chief seat was at Munich-Gladbach. In 1859 Pick travelled to Palestine in order to choose a spot for the settlement of his followers and there all trace of him was lost.
2. The founder of the German Temple Communities in Palestine was Chr. Hoffmann, brother of General Superintendent Hoffmann of Berlin, and son of the founder of the Kornthal Community (§ 196, 5), in connection with Chr. Paulus, nephew of the well known Heidelberg professor Paulus (§ 182, 2). In 1854 they issued an invitation to a conference at Ludwigsburg, for consultation about the means for gathering the people of God in Palestine. A great crowd of believers from all parts, numbering some 10,000 families, was to embark for the holy land to form there a new people of God which, on the foundation of prophets and apostles, should strictly practise the public law of the old covenant in all points of civil administration, including the laws of the sabbath and the jubilee. The conference besought of the German League that it would use its influence with the Sultan to secure permission for colonization with self-government and religious freedom. As the German League simply declined the request, the committee bought the estate of Kirschenhardthof near Marbach, in order there temporarily and in a small way to form a social commonwealth observing the Mosaic law. In 1858 Hoffmann went with two of his followers to Jerusalem in order to look out a place there suitable for their purpose. The result was unsatisfactory. Therefore he issued in 1861 a summons to take part in a German Temple. Consequently a number of men from Württemberg, Bavaria, and Baden, Protestants and Catholics, forsook their churches, ordained priests and elders, and appointed Hoffmann their bishop and held regular synods. The final aim of this procedure, however, was always still to find a settlement in Palestine and erect a temple in Jerusalem which, according to prophecy, is to form the central sanctuary for the whole world. Colonization in the East was tried as a means to this end. Since 1869 there have been five organized colonies, with a Temple Chief and a congregational school, embracing about 1,000 souls, established in Palestine, viz. at Jaffa, Haifa, Sarona, Beyrout, and in 1878 even in Jerusalem, whither the original colony at Jaffa was transferred. The German Imperial Government refused indeed in 1879 to give the recognition sought for to the civil and political organization of the Palestinian colonies, as in a foreign country beyond its jurisdiction, but granted to its Lyceum at Jerusalem a yearly contribution of 1,500 marks and to the schools of Jaffa, Haifa and Sarona from 650 to 1,000. In 1875 Hoffmann published at Stuttgart a large apologetical and polemical work, “Occident und Orient,” which contained many thoughtful remarks. But since then, in the central organ of all the Temple Communities inspired by him, the “Süddeutsche Warte,” he has openly and distinctly attached himself to Ebionitic rationalism, by denying and opposing the fundamental evangelical doctrine of the trinity, redemption, and the sacraments. These theological views, however, were by no means shared in by all the Templars, and caused a split in the community, one section at Haifa with the chief templar there, Hardegg, at its head, separating from the central body as an independent “Imperial Brotherhood.” The seceders, joined by many German and American templar friends, again drew nearer to the Evangelical church and ultimately became reconciled with it. But Hoffmann has, in his last work, Bibelforschungen i. ii.: Röm.- u. Kol. br., Jerus. 1882, 1884, carried his polemic against the church doctrine to the utmost extreme of cynical abuse. He died in December, 1885. At the head of the denomination now stands his fellow-worker Paulus. From year to year several drop back into the Evangelical church so that the community is evidently approaching extinction.

§ 211.9. The Community of “the New Israel.”—The Jewish advocate Jos. Rabinowitsch at Kishenev in Bessarabia, who had long occupied himself with plans for the improvement of the spiritual and material circumstances of his fellow-countrymen, at the outbreak of the persecution of the Jews in 1882 in South Russia eagerly urged their return to the holy land of their fathers and himself undertook a journey of inspection. There definite shape seems to have been given to the long cherished thought of seeking the salvation of his people in an independent national attachment to their old sacred historical development, broken off 1850 years before, by acknowledging the Messiahship of Jesus. At least after his return he gave expression to the sentiment, based on Romans xi.: “The keys of the holy land are in the hands of our brother Jesus,” which, in consequence of the high esteem in which he was held by his countrymen, was soon re-echoed by some 200 Jewish families. His main endeavour now was the formation of independent national Jewish-Christian communities, after the pattern of the primitive church of Jerusalem, as “New Israelites,” observing all the old Jewish rites and ordinances compatible with New Testament apostolic preaching and reconcilable with modern civil and social conditions. The Torah, the prophets of the Old Testament and the New Testament writings, are held as absolutely binding, whereas the Talmud and the post-apostolic Gentile Christian additions to doctrine, worship, and constitution are not so regarded. Jesus, Rabinowitsch teaches, is the true Messiah who, as Moses and prophets foretold, was born as Son of David by the Spirit of God and in the power of that Spirit lived and taught in Israel, then for our salvation suffered, was crucified and died, rose from the dead, and ascended to the right hand of the Father in heaven. The trinity of persons in God as well as the two natures in Christ he rejects, as not taught in the New Testament and originating in Gentile Christian speculation. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper (and that “according to the example of Christians of the pure Evangelical confession in England and Germany”) are recognised as necessary means of grace; but the Lord’s Supper is to be, according to its institution, a real meal with the old Jewish prayers. As to the doctrine of the Supper, Rabinowitsch agrees with the views of the Lutheran church. Circumcision and the observance of the Sabbath and the feasts (especially the Passover), are retained, not indeed as necessary to salvation, therefore not binding on Gentile Christians, but patriotically observed by Jewish-Christians as signs of their election from and before all nations as the people of God. In January, 1885, with consent of the Russian Government, the newly-erected synagogue of “the holy Messiah Jesus Christ” for the small congregation of Rabinowitsch’s followers at Kishenev was solemnly opened, the Russian church authorities, the Lutheran pastor Fultin and many young Jews taking part in the service. Soon afterwards Rabinowitsch received Christian baptism in the chapel of the Bohemian church at Berlin at the hands of Prof. Mead of Andover, probably in recognition of the aid sent from America.—A Jewish-Christian religious communion with similar tendencies has been formed in the South Russian town of Jellisawetgrad under the designation of a “Biblical Spiritual Brotherhood.”

§ 211.10. The Catholic Apostolic Church of the Irvingites.—Edward Irving, 1792-1834, a powerful and popular preacher of the Scotch-Presbyterian church in London, maintained the doctrine that the human nature of Christ like our own was affected by original sin, which was overcome and atoned for by the power of the divine nature. At the same time he became convinced that the spiritual gifts of the apostolic church could and should still be obtained by prayer and faith. A party of his followers soon began to exercise the gift of tongues by uttering unintelligible sounds, loud cries, and prophecies. His presbytery suspended him in 1832 and the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland excommunicated him. Rich and distinguished friends from the Episcopal church, among them the wealthy banker, Drummond, afterwards prominent as an apostle (died 1859), rallied round the man thus expelled from his church, and gave him the means to found a new church, but, in spite of Irving’s protests, brought with them high church puseyite tendencies, which soon drove out the heretical as well as the puritanic tendencies, and modified the fanatical element into a hierarchical and liturgical formalism. The restoration of the office of apostle was the characteristic feature of the movement. After many unsuccessful attempts they succeeded by the divine illumination of the prophets in calling twelve apostles, first and chief of whom was the lawyer Cardale (died 1877). By the apostles, as chief rulers and stewards of the church, evangelists and pastors (or angels, Rev. ii. 1, 8, etc.) were ordained in accordance with Eph. iv. 11; and subordinate to the pastors, there were appointed six elders and as many deacons, so that the office bearers of each congregation embraced thirteen persons, after the example of Christ and His twelve disciples. In London seven congregations were formed after the pattern of the seven apocalyptic churches (Rev. i. 20). Prominent among their new revelations was the promise of the immediately approaching advent of the Lord. The Lord, who was to have come in the lifetime of the first disciples and so was looked for confidently by them, delayed indefinitely His return on account of abounding iniquity and prevented the full development of the second apostolate designed for the Gentiles and meanwhile represented only by Paul, because the church was no longer worthy of it. Now at last, after eighteen centuries of degradation, in which the church came to be the apocalyptic Babylon and ripened for judgment, the time has come when the suspended apostolate has been restored to prepare the way for the last things. Very confidently was it at first maintained that none of their members should die, but should live to see the final consummation. But after death had removed so many from among them, and even the apostles one after another, it was merely said that those are already born who should see the last day. It may come any day, any hour. It begins with the first resurrection (Rev. xx. 5) and the “changing” of the saints that are alive (the wise virgins, i.e. the Irvingites), who will be caught up to the Lord in the clouds and in a higher sphere be joined with the Lord in the marriage supper of the Lamb. They are safely hidden while antichrist persecutes the other Christians, the foolish virgins, who only can be saved by means of painful suffering, and executes judgment on Babylon. This marks the end of the Gentile church; but then begins the conversion of the Jews, who, driven by necessity and the persecution of sinful men, have sought and found a refuge in Palestine. After a short victory of antichrist the Lord visibly appears among the risen and removed. The kingdom of antichrist is destroyed, Satan is bound, the saints live and reign with Christ a thousand years on the earth freed from the curse. Thereafter Satan is again let loose for a short time and works great havoc. Then comes Satan’s final overthrow, the second resurrection and last judgment. Their liturgy, composed by the apostles, is a compilation from the Anglican and Catholic sources. Sacerdotalism and sacrifice are prominent and showy priestly garments are regarded as requisite. Yet they repudiate the Romish doctrine of the bloodless repetition of the bleeding sacrifice, as well as the doctrine of transubstantiation. But they strictly maintain the contribution of the tenth as a duty laid upon Christians by Heb. vii. 4. Their typical view of the Old Testament history and legislation, especially of the tabernacle, is most arbitrary and baseless. Their first published statement appeared in 1836 in an apostolic “Letter to the Patriarchs, Bishops, and Presidents of the Church of Christ in all Lands, and to emperors, kings, and princes of all baptized nations,” which was sent to the most prominent among those addressed, even to the pope, but produced no result. After this they began to prosecute their missionary work openly. But they gave their attention mainly to those already believers, and took no part in missions to the heathen, as they were sent neither to the heathen nor to unbelievers, but only to gather and save believers. In their native land of England, where at first they had great success, their day seems already past. In North America they succeeded in founding only two congregations. They prospered better in Germany and Switzerland, where they secured several able theologians, chief of all Thiersch, the professor of Theology in Marburg, the Tertullian of this modern Montanism (died 1885), and founded about eighty small congregations with some 5,000 members, chief of which are those of Berlin, Stettin, Königsberg, Leipzig, Marburg, Cassel, Basel, Augsburg, etc. Even among the Catholic clergy of Bavaria this movement found response; but that was checked by a series of depositions and excommunications during 1857.—In 1882 the Lutheran pastor Alpers of Gehrden in Hanover was summoned to appear before the consistory to answer for his Irvingite views. He denied the charge and referred to his good Lutheran preaching. As, however, he had taken the sacramental “sealing” from Irvingite apostles, the court regarded this as proof of his having joined the party and so deposed him.570

§ 211.11. The Darbyites and Adventists.—Related on the one hand to Irvingism by their expectation of the immediately approaching advent and by their regarding themselves as the saints of the last time who would alone be saved, the Darbyites, on the other hand, by their absolute independentism form a complete contrast to the Irvingite hierarchism. John Darby, 1800-1882, first an advocate, then a clergyman of the Anglican church, breaking away from Anglicanism, founded between 1820 and 1830 a sectarian, apocalyptic, independent community at Plymouth (whence the name Plymouth Brethren), but in 1838 settled in Geneva, and in 1840 went to Canton Vaud, where Lausanne and Vevey have become the headquarters of the sect. All clerical offices, all ecclesiastical forms are of the evil one, and are evidence of the corruption of the church. There is only one office, the spiritual priesthood of all believers, and every believer has the right to preach and dispense the sacraments. Not only the Catholic, but also the Protestant church is a “Balaam Church,” and since the departure of the apostles no true church has existed. In doctrine they are strictly Calvinistic.571—The Adventists. Regarding the 2,300 days of Dan. viii. 14 as so many years, W. Miller of New York and Boston proclaimed in 1833 that the second advent would take place on the night of October 23rd, 1847, and convinced many thousands of the correctness of his calculations. When at last the night referred to arrived the believers continued assembled in their tabernacles waiting, but in vain, for the promise (Matt. xxiv. 30, 31; 1 Cor. xv. 52; 1 Thess. iv. 16, 17), at “the voice of the archangel and the trump of God to be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.” This miscalculation, however, did not shake the Adventists’ belief in the near approach of the Lord, but their number rather increased from year to year. Most zealous in propagating their views by journals and tracts, evangelists and missionaries, is a branch of the sect founded by James White of Michigan, whose adherents, because they keep the Sabbath in place of the Lord’s Day, are called Seventh Day Adventists.

§ 211.12. The Mormons or Latter Day Saints.—Jos. Smith, a broken down farmer of Vermont, who took to knavish digging for hid treasures, affirmed in 1825, that under direction of divine revelations and visions, he had excavated on Comora hill in New York State, golden tablets in a stone kist on which sacred writings were engraved. A prophet’s spectacles, i.e., two pierced stones which as a Mormon Urim and Thummim lay beside them, enabled him to understand and translate them. He published the translation in “the Book of Mormon.” According to this book, the Israelites of the ten tribes had migrated under their leader, Lehi, to America. There they divided into two peoples; the ungodly Lamanites, answering to the modern Redskins, and the pious Nephites. The latter preserved among them the old Israelitish histories and prophecies, and through miraculous signs in heaven and earth obtained knowledge of the birth of Christ that had meanwhile taken place. Toward the end of the fourth century after Christ, however, the Lamanites began a terrible war of extermination against the Nephites, in consequence of which the latter were rooted out with the exception of the prophet Mormon and his son Moroni. Mormon recorded his revelations on the golden tablets referred to, and concealed them as the future witness for the saints of the last days on the earth. Smith proclaimed himself now called on of God, on the basis of these documents and the revelations made to him, to found the church of The Latter Day Saints. The widow of a preacher in New York proved indeed that the Book of Mormon was almost literally a plagiarism from a historico-didactic romance written by her deceased husband, Sal. Spaulding. The MS. had passed into the hands of Sidney Rigdon, formerly a Baptist minister and then a bookseller’s assistant, subsequently Smith’s right-hand man. But even this did not disturb the believers. In 1831 Smith with his followers settled at Kirtland in Ohio. To avoid the daily increasing popular odium, he removed to Missouri, and thence to Illinois, and founded there, in 1840, the important town of Nauvoo with a beautiful temple. By diligence, industry and good discipline, the wealth, power and influence of their commonwealth increased, but in the same proportion the envy, hatred and prejudices of the people, which charged them with the most atrocious crimes. In 1844, to save bloodshed the governor ordered the two chiefs, Jos. and Hiram Smith, to surrender to voluntary imprisonment awaiting a regular trial. But furious armed mobs attacked the prison and shot down both. The roughs of the whole district then gathered in one great troop, destroyed the town of Nauvoo, burned the temple and drove out the inhabitants. These, now numbering 15,000 men, in several successive expeditions amid indescribable hardships pressed on “through the wilderness” over the Rocky Mountains, in order to erect for themselves a Zion on the other side. Smith’s successor was the carpenter, Brigham Young. The journey occupied two full years, 1845-1847. In the great Salt Lake basin of Utah they founded Salt Lake City, or the New Jerusalem, as the capital of their wilderness state Deseret. The gold digging of the neighbouring state of California did not allure them, for their prophet told them that to pave streets, build houses and sow fields was better employment than seeking for gold. So here again they soon became a flourishing commonwealth.

§ 211.13. In common with the Irvingites, who recognised in them their own diabolic caricature, the Mormons restored the apostolic and prophetic office, insisted upon the continuance of the gift of tongues and miracles, expected the speedy advent of the Lord, reintroduced the payment of tithes, etc. But what distinguished them from all Christian sects was the proclamation of polygamy as a religious duty, on the plea that only those women who had been “sealed” to a Latter-day Saint would share in the blessedness of life eternal. This was probably first introduced by Young in consequence of a new “divine revelation,” but down to 1852 kept secret and denied before “the Gentiles.” The ambiguous book of Mormon was set meanwhile more and more in the background, and the teachings and prophecies of their prophet brought more and more to the front. “The Voice of Warning to all Nations” of the zealous proselyte Parly Pratt, formerly a Campbellite preacher, exercised a great influence in spreading the sect. But the most gifted of them all was Orson Pratt, Rigdon’s successor in the apostolate. To him mainly is ascribed the construction of its later, highly fantastic religious system which, consisting of elements gathered from Neo-platonism, gnosticism, and other forms of theosophical mysticism, embraces all the mysteries of time and eternity. Its fundamental ideas are these: There are gods without number; all are polygamists and their wives are sharers of their glory and bliss. They are the fathers of human souls who here on earth ripen for their heavenly destiny. Jesus is the first born son of the highest god by his first wife; he was married on earth to Mary Magdalene, the sisters Martha and Mary and other women. Those saints who here fulfil their destiny become after death gods, while they are arranged according to their merit in various ranks and with prospect of promotion to higher places. At the end of this world’s course, Jesus will come again, and, enthroned in the temple of Salt Lake City, exercise judgment against all “Gentiles” and apostates, etc.—The constitution of the Mormon State is essentially theocratic. At the head stood the president, Brigham Young, as prophet, patriarch, and priest-king, in whose hands are all the threads of the spiritual as well as secular administration. A high council alongside of him, consisting of seventy members, as also the prophets and apostles, bishops and elders, and generally the whole richly organized hierarchy, are only the pliable instruments of his all-commanding will. Every one on entering the society surrenders his whole property, and after that contributes a tenth of his yearly income and personal labour to the common purse of the community. Soon numerous missionaries were sent forth who crossed the Atlantic, and attained great success, especially in Scotland, England and Scandinavia, but also in North-West Germany and in Switzerland. On removing the misunderstanding that prevailed about their social and political condition, and supplying the penniless out of the rich immigration fund with the means to make the journey, they persuaded great crowds of their new converts to accompany them to Utah.

§ 211.14. In 1849 the Mormons had asked Congress for the apportioning of the district colonized by them as an independent and autonomous “State” in the union, but were granted, in 1850, only the constitution of a “territory” under the central government at Washington, and the appointment of their patriarch, Young, as its governor. Accustomed to absolute rule, in two years he drove out all the other officers appointed by the union. He was then deprived of office, but the new governor, Col. Sefton, appointed in 1854, with the small armament supplied him could not maintain his position and voluntarily retired. When afterwards in 1858 Governor Cumming, appointed by president Buchanan, entered Utah with a strong military force, Young armed for a decisive struggle. A compromise, however, was effected. A complete amnesty was granted to the saints, the soldiers of the union entered peacefully into the Salt-Lake City, and Young assumed tolerably friendly relations with the governor, who, nevertheless, by the erection of a fort commanding the city made the position safe for himself and his troops. On the outbreak of the war of Secession in 1861 the troops of the union were for the most part withdrawn. But all the more energetically did the central government at the close of the war in 1865 resolve upon the complete subjugation of the rebel saints, having learnt that since 1852 numerous murders had taken place in the territory, and that the disappearance of whole caravans of colonists was not due to attacks of Indians, who would have scalped their victims, but to a secret Mormon fraternity called Danites (Judges xviii.), brothers of Gideon (Judges vi. ff.) or Angels of Destruction, which, obedient to the slightest hint from the prophet, had undertaken to avenge by bloody terrorism any sign of resistance to his authority, to arrest any tendency to apostasy, and to guard against the introduction of any foreign element. The Union Pacific Railway opened in 1869 deprived the “Kingdom of God” of its most powerful protection, its geographical isolation, while the rich silver mines discovered at the same time in Utah, peopled city and country with immense flocks of “Gentiles.” The nemesis, which brought the Mormon bishop Lee, twenty years after the deed, under the lash of the high court of justiciary as involved in the horrible massacre of a large party of emigrants at Mountain Meadows in 1857, would probably have also befallen the prophet himself as the main instigator of this and many other crimes had he not by a sudden death two months later, in his seventy-fifth year, escaped the jurisdiction of any earthly tribunal (died 1877). A successor was not chosen, but supreme authority is in the hands of the college of twelve apostles with the elder John Taylor at their head.—Repeated attempts made since 1874 by the United States authorities by penal enactments to root out polygamy among the Mormons have always failed, because its actual existence could never be legally proved. The witness called could or would say nothing, since the “sealing” was always secretly performed, and the women concerned denied that a marriage had been entered into with the accused, or if one confessed herself his married wife she refused to give any evidence about his domestic relations.—Recently a split has occurred among the Mormons. By far the larger party is that of the “Salt Lake Mormons,” which holds firmly by polygamy and all the other institutions introduced by Young and since his time. The other party is that of the Kirtland, or Old Mormons, headed by the son of their founder, Jos. Smith, who had been passed over on account of his youth, which repudiates all these as unsupported novelties and restores the true Mormonism of the founder. The Old Mormons not only oppose polygamy, but also all more recently introduced doctrines. They are called Kirtland Mormons from the first temple built by their founder at Kirtland in 1814, which having fallen into ruins, was restored by Geo. Smith, jun., and became the centre of the Old Mormon denomination. In April 1885 they held there their first synod, attended by 200 deputies.572

§ 211.15. The Taepings in China.—Hung-sen-tsenen, born in 1813 in the province of Shan-Tung, was destined for the learned profession but failed in his examination at Canton. There he first, in 1833, came into contact with Protestant missionaries, whose misunderstood words awakened in him the belief that he was called to perform great things. At the same time he there got possession of some Christian Chinese tracts. Failing in his examination a second time in 1837, he fell into a dangerous illness and had a series of visions in which an old man with a golden beard appeared, handing to him the insignia of imperial rank, and commanding him to root out the demons. After his recovery he became an elementary teacher. A relative called Li visited him in 1843. The Christian tracts were again sought out and carefully studied. Sen now recognised in the old man of his visions the God of the Christians and in himself the younger brother of Jesus. The two baptized one another and won over two young relatives to their views. Expelled from their offices, they went in 1844 to the province of Kiang Se as pencil and ink sellers, preached diligently the new doctrine and founded numerous small congregations of their sect. The American missionaries at Canton heard of the success of their preaching, and Sen accepted an invitation to join them in 1847. The missionary Roberts had a great esteem for him and intended to baptize him, when in consequence of stories spread about him their relations became strained. Sen now returned in 1848 to his companions in Kiang Se, who had diligently and successfully continued their preaching. In 1850 they began to attract attention by the violent destruction of idols. When now all the remnants of a pirate band joined them as converts, they were in common with these persecuted by the government and proclaimed rebels. The expulsion of the hated Mantshu dynasty, which two hundred years before had displaced the Ming dynasty, and the overthrow of idolatry were now their main endeavour, and in 1857 they organized under Sen a regular rebellion for the setting up of a Taeping dynasty, i.e., of universal peace. The Taeping army advanced unhindered, all Mantschu soldiers who fell into its hands were massacred, and of the inhabitants of the provinces conquered, only those were spared who joined their ranks. In March, 1853, they stormed the second capital of the empire, Nankin, the old residence of the Ming dynasty. There Sen fixed his residence and styled himself Tien-Wang, the Divine Prince. He assigned to ten subordinate princes the government of the conquered provinces, almost the half of the immense empire. Thousands of bibles were circulated; the ten commandments proclaimed as the foundation of law, many writings, prayers and poems composed for the instruction of the people, and these with the bible made subjects of examination for entrance to the learned order. An Arian theory of the trinity was set forth; the Father is the one personal God, whose likeness in bodily human form Sen strictly forbade, destroying the Catholic images as well as the Chinese idols. Jesus is the first-born son of God, yet not himself God, sent by the Father into the world in order to enlighten it by his doctrine and to redeem it by his atoning sufferings. Sen, the younger brother of Jesus, was sent into the world to spread the doctrine of Jesus and to expel the demons, the Mantschu dynasty. Reception takes place through baptism. The Lord’s Supper was unknown to them. Bloody and bloodless offerings were still tolerated. The use of wine and tobacco was forbidden; the use of opium and trafficking in it were punished with death. But polygamy was sanctioned. Saturday, according to the Old Testament, was their holy day. Their service consisted only of prayer, singing and religious instruction; but also written prayers were presented to God by burning.

§ 211.16. Sen himself had no more visions after 1837. But other ecstatic prophets arose, the eastern prince Yang and the western prince Siao. The revelations of the latter were comparatively sober, but those of the former were in the highest degree blasphemously fanatical. He declared himself the Paraclete promised by Jesus, and taught that God himself, as well as Jesus, had a wife with sons and daughters. He was at the same time a brave and successful general, and the mass of the Taepings were enthusiastically attached to him. Sen humbly yielded to the extravagances of this fanatic, even when Yang sentenced him to receive forty lashes. Sen’s overthrow was already resolved upon in Yang’s secret council, when Sen took courage and gave the northern prince secret orders to murder Yang and his followers in one night. This was done, and Sen was weak enough to allow the executioner of his secret order to be publicly put to death so as to appease the excited populace. But he thus again in 1856 became master of the situation.—One of the oldest apostles of Sen, his near relative Hung Yin, had been turned off at Hong Kong. He there attached himself to the Basel missionary, Hamberg, who in 1852 baptized him and made him his native helper. In hope of winning his cousin to the true Christian faith, he travelled in 1854 to Nankin, which however he did not reach till January, 1859. Sen received him gladly and made him his war minister. But his efforts to introduce a purer Christianity among the Taepings were unsuccessful, for he tried the slippery way of accommodation, and under pressure from Sen set up for himself a harem. In October, 1860, on Sen’s repeated invitation, his former teacher, the missionary Roberts of Nankin, arrived and was immediately made minister for foreign affairs. The Shanghai missionaries, several of whom visited Nankin, had interesting interviews with Yin in 1860, but not with the emperor, as they refused to go on their knees before him. They were encouraged by Yin to hope for a future much needed purifying of Taeping Christianity. Yang’s revelations, however, held their ground after as well as before, and were increased by further absurdities. To such crass fanaticism was now added the inhuman cruelty with which they massacred the vanquished and wasted the conquered cities and districts. Had the European powers ranged themselves in a friendly and peaceful attitude alongside of the Taepings, China might now have been a Christian empire. Instead of this the English, on account of the extreme opposition of the Taepings to the opium traffic, took up a hostile position toward them, while they were also in disfavour with the French, who had been denounced by them as idolaters on account of their Romish image worship. Down to the beginning of 1862, however, Yin’s influence had prevented any hostile proceedings against the Europeans in spite of many provocations given. But after that the Taepings refused them any quarter. Roberts fled by night to save his life. Against disciplined European troops the rebels could not hold their ground. One city after another was taken from them, and at last, in July 1864, their capital Nankin. Sen was found poisoned in his burning palace.573

§ 211.17. The Spiritualists.—The shoemaker’s apprentice, Andrew Jackson Davis of Poughkeepsie on the Hudson, in his nineteenth year fell into a magnetic sleep and composed his first work, “The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations and a Voice to Mankind,” in 1845. He declared its utterances to be spiritual revelations from the other world. But his later writings composed in working hours made the same claim, especially the five volume work, “Great Harmonia, being a Philosophical Revelation of the Natural, Spiritual, and Celestial Universe,” 1850 ff. Both went through numerous editions and were translated into German. The great spiritual manifestation promised in the first work was not long delayed. In a house bought by the family of Fox in Hydesville in New York State a spectral knocking was often heard. Through the intercourse which the two youngest daughters, aged nine and twelve years, had with the ghosts, the skeleton of a murdered five years’ old child of a pedlar was discovered buried in the cellar, and when the family soon thereafter left the house, the ghosts went with them and continued their communications by table turning, table rapping, table writing, etc. The thing now became epidemic. Hundreds and thousands of male and female mediums arose and held an extremely lively and varied intercourse with innumerable departed ones of earlier and later times. The believers soon numbered millions, including highly educated persons of all ranks, even such exact chemists as Mapes and Hare. An abundant literature in books and journals, as well as Sunday services, frequent camp-meetings and annual congresses formed a propaganda for the alleged spiritualism, which soon found its way across the ocean and won enthusiastic adherents for all confessions in all European countries, especially in London, Paris, Brussels, St. Petersburg, Vienna, Dresden, Leipzig, etc. They now broke up into two parties called respectively Spiritualists and Spiritists. The former put in the foreground physical experiments with astonishing results and miraculous effects; the latter, with the Frenchman Allan Kardec (Rivail) as their leader, give prominence to the teaching of spirits by direct communication. The former in reference to the origin of the human soul held by the theory of traducianism; the latter to that of pre-existence in connection with a doctrine of re-incarnation of spirits by reason of growing purity and perfection. The latter see in Christ the incarnation of a spirit of the highest order; the former merely the purest and most perfect type of human nature. But neither admit the real central truth of Christianity, the reconciliation of sinful humanity with God in Christ. Both evaporate the resurrection into a mere spectral spirit manifestation; and the disclosures and utterances of the spirits with both are equally trivial, silly, and vain.—In England the famous palæontologist and collaborateur of Darwin, Alfr. Russel Wallace, and the no less celebrated physicist Wm. Crookes, are apologists of spiritualism. The latter declared in 1879 that to the three well-known conditions of matter, solid, fluid and gaseous, should be added a fourth, “radiant,” and that there is the borderland where force and matter meet. And in Germany the acute Leipzig astrophysicist Fr. Zöllner, after a whole series of spiritualistic séances conducted by the American medium Slade in 1877 and 1878 had been carefully scrutinized and tested by himself and several of his most accomplished scientific colleagues, was convinced of the existence and reality of higher “four dimension” space in the spirit world, to which by reason of its fourth dimension the power belonged of passing through earthly bodily matter. The philosophers I. H. Fichte of Stuttgart and Ulrici of Halle have admitted the reality of spiritualistic communications and allege them as proofs of immortality. Among German theologians Luthardt of Leipzig regards it all as the work of demons who take advantage for their own ends of the moral-religious dissolution of the modern world and its consequent nerve shaking that prevails, just as in the ancient world in the beginnings of Christianity. Zöckler of Greifswald finds an analogy between it and the demoniacal possession of New Testament times; so too Martensen in his “Jacob Boehme,” and on the Catholic side W. Schneider; while Splittgerber refers most of the manifestations in question to a merely subjective origin in “the right side of the human soul life,” but puts the materialization of spirits in the category of delusive jugglery. Spiritualism has scarcely rallied from the obloquy cast upon it by the unmasking of the tricks of the famous medium Miss Florence Cook in London in 1880 and of the distinguished spirit materialiser Bastian by the Grand-duke John of Austria in 1884.574

§ 211.18. To the domain of unquestionable illusion belongs also the spiritualistic movement of Indian Theosophism or Occultism. The American Col. Olcott of New York had already moved for twenty-two years in spiritualist circles when in 1874 he met with Madame Blavatsky, widow of a Russian general who had been governor of Erivan in Armenia. She professed to have been from her eighth year in communication with spirits, then to have had secret intercourse with the Mahatmas, i.e. spirits of old Indian penitents, during a seven years’ residence on the Himalayas. She now promised to introduce the colonel to them. Olcott and Blavatsky founded at New York in 1875 a society for research in the department of the mystic sciences, travelled in 1878 to Further India and Ceylon, and settled finally in Madras, whence by word and writing they proclaimed through the whole land theosophism or occultism as the religion of the future, which, consisting in a medley of Hinduism and Buddhism, enriched by spiritualistic revelations of Mahatmas, vouched for by spiritualistic signs and miracles and conformed to the most recent philosophical and scientific researches in America and Europe, aimed at heaping contempt upon Christianity and finally driving it from the field. As fanatical opponents of Christian missions in India they were strongly supported by the Brahman and Buddhist hierarchy, and soon obtained for the theosophical society founded by them not only numerous adherents from among the natives, but also many Englishman befooled by their spiritualistic swindle. As apostle and literary pioneer of the new religion appeared an Anglo-Indian called Sinnett. In spring, 1884, Madame Blavatsky and Col. Olcott went on a propagandist tour to Europe, where, in England, France, Austria, and Hungary, they won many converts, while Col. Olcott at Elberfeld and Madame Blavatsky at Odessa founded branches of their theosophical society.—But meanwhile in India affairs assumed a threatening aspect. Blavatsky on her departure had entrusted the keys of her dwelling and her mysterious cabinet with its various panels, falling doors, etc., to Mr. and Mrs. Coulomb, who had been hitherto her assistants in all her juggleries. Madame Coulomb, however, quarrelled with the board of theosophists at Madras, and revenged herself by placing in the hands of the Scottish mission letters addressed by Blavatsky to herself and her husband which supplied evidence that all her spiritualistic manifestations were only common tricks. In addition she gave public exhibitions in which she demonstrated to the spectators ad oculos the spiritual manifestations of the Mahatmas, and subsequently published an “Account of My Acquaintanceship with Madame Blavatsky, 1872-1884,” with discoveries of her earlier rogueries. Meanwhile the swindler had herself in December, 1884, returned to Madras in company with several believers gathered up in England, among others a young English clergyman, Leadbeater, who some days previously in Ceylon had formally adopted Buddhism. The theosophists now demanded that the reputed cheat and deceiver should be brought before a civil court. The president, however, declared that the investigations and judgment of a profane court of law could not be accepted to the mysteries of occultism, but promised a careful examination by a commission appointed by himself, and Blavatsky thought it advisable “for the restoration of her health in a cooler climate” to make off from the scene of conflict.575