Part 57

§ 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.=