Chapter IV: The Counter-Reformation (24)

6. When the Austrian constitution of 1849 gave unconditional
religious toleration, the Bohemian =Adamites= (§ 115, 5),
of whom remnants under the mask of Catholicism had continued
down to the nineteenth century, ventured again publicly
to engage in proselytising efforts. An official enquiry
instituted on this occasion declared that the sect,
consisting of Bohemian peasants and artisans, had its
headquarters among the mystics of the Krüdener school,
that its religious doctrine was a mixture of communism,
freethinking and quietism, and that its members were in
their ordinary public life blameless, but that in their
secret nightly assemblies, where they dispensed with
clothes, they celebrated orgies regardless of marriage
or relationship.

7. =David Lazzaretti=, formerly a carrier in Tuscany,
appeared in his native place after an absence of several
years, in 1872, declaring that he was descended from a
natural son of Charlemagne and had been entrusted by the
Apostle Peter with a message to the pope, pointing to a
cross that had been burnt upon his brow by the apostle
himself. He startled those of the Vatican, where he was
quite unknown, by declaring that the bones of his ancestors
lay under the ruins of an old Franciscan cloister in Sabina,
of whose existence nobody was aware, the discovery of
which seemed to vouch for his claims. These were all the
more readily admitted when it was found that he made the
restoration of the Pope’s temporal power his main task. The
number of his adherents, mostly peasants, soon increased
immensely, reaching, it is said, 40,000. On Monte Labro they
built a church with a strong “David’s Tower,” over which
“St. David” appointed two priests who, when they had made
certain changes in worship at the call of the prophet, were
excommunicated by the bishop. David now began to spread
his socialistic and communistic ideas. He insisted that
his adherents should surrender their goods to him as
representative of the society, and promised down to
December 31st, 1890, the introduction of community of goods
throughout Italy and afterwards in other countries. In
Arcidosso, the prophet’s birthplace, a beginning was to be
made, but in its overthrow on August 18th, 1878, he met his
death, and his befooled followers waited in vain for the
fulfilment of his dying promise that he would rise again
on the third day.

§ 210.3. =Russian Sects and Fanatics.=--After the attempt under
Nicholas I. at the forcible conversion of the =Raskolniks=,
especially the purely schismatic =Starowerzians= or Old Believers
(§ 163, 10), had proved fruitless, the government of Alexander II.
by patience and concession took a surer way to reconciliation and
restoration. In October, 1874, their marriages, births and deaths,
which had hitherto been without legal recognition, were put on
the regular register and so their lawful rights of inheritance
were secured. Under Alexander III. in 1883 an imperial decree was
issued, which gave them permission to celebrate divine service
after their own methods in their chapels, which had not before
the legal standing of churches, and declared them also eligible
for public appointments.--To the =Duchoborzians= (§ 166, 2),
sorely oppressed under Catherine II. and Paul I., Alexander I.,
after they had laid before him the confession which they had
adopted, granted toleration, but assigned them a separate
residence in the Taurus district. Under Nicholas I. they were to
the number of 3,000 transported to the Transcaucasian mountains
in 1841, where they were called Duchoborje.--The Württemberg
Pietist colonists of South Russia originated among the peasants
the widespread sect of the =Stundists= soon after the abolition
of serfdom in 1863. The originator of those separatist meetings
for the study of Scripture, which led first of all to the
condemnation of image worship and making the sign of the cross
as unbiblical, and subsequently to a complete withdrawal from the
worship of the orthodox church and the forming of conventicles,
was the peasant and congregational elder Ratusny of Osnowa near
Odessa, to whom, at a later period, with equal propagandist zeal,
the peasant Balabok attached himself. The latter was, in 1871,
sentenced to one year’s imprisonment at Kiev and the loss
of civil rights, and in 1873, at Odessa, a great criminal
prosecution was instituted against Ratusny and all the other
leaders of the sect, which, however, after proceeding for five
years ended in a verdict of acquittal. A process started in 1878
against the so-called =Schaloputs= had a similar issue. This sect,
spread most widely among the Cossacks of Cuban, rejects the Old
Testament, the sacraments and the doctrine of the resurrection,
but believes in a continued effusion of the Holy Spirit upon the
prophets of the church who have prepared themselves for their
vocation by complete abstinence from flesh and spirituous liquor
as well as by incessant prayer and frequent fasting.

§ 210.4. About the middle of the eighteenth century among the
“_Men of God_,” the strict interpretation of the prescriptions of
their founder Danila Filipow (§ 163, 10) had led many to abstain
wholly from sexual relations; when a peasant Andrew Selivanov
appeared as a reformer and founded the sect of the =Skopzen=
or mutilators, who, building on misinterpreted passages of
Scripture (Matt. v. 28-30, xix. 12; Rev. xiv. 4) insisted upon
the destruction of sexual desire by castration and excision of
the female breasts, generally performed under anæsthetics, as a
necessary condition of entrance into the kingdom of heaven. The
first Skopzic congregation was gathered round him in the village
of Sosnowka. The “men of God” enraged at his success denounced
him to the government. He was punished with the knout and
condemned in 1774 to hard labour at Irkutzk. The idea that
Peter III., who died in 1762, was still alive, then widely
prevailed. The “men of God” had also adopted this opinion,
and proclaimed him their last-appearing Christ, who would soon
return from his hiding-place to call to account all unbelievers.
Selivanov, who knew of this, now gave himself out for the exiled
monarch, and was accepted as such by his adherents in his native
place. When Paul I., Peter’s son, assumed the reins of government
in 1796, a Skopzic merchant of Moscow told him secretly that his
father was living at Irkutzk under the name of Selivanov. The
emperor therefore brought him to Petersburg and shut him up as an
imbecile in an asylum. After Paul’s death, however, his adherents
obtained his release. He now lived for eighteen years in honour
at Petersburg, till in 1820 the court again interfered and had
him confined in a cloister at Suzdal, where after some years
he died. Sorely persecuted by Nicholas I. many of his followers
migrated to Moldavia and Walachia where they, dwelling in
separate quarters at Jassy, Bucharest and Galatz, lived as owners
of coach-hiring establishments, and by rich presents obtained
proselytes. Still more vigorously was the propaganda carried on
in the Moscow colonies on the Sea of Azov. There in Morschansk
lived the spiritual head of all Russian Skopzen, the rich
merchant Plotizyn. After the government got on the track of
this society, Plotizyn’s house was searched and a correspondence
revealing the wide extension of the sect was found, together with
a treasure of several, some say as much as thirty, millions of
roubles, which, however, in great part again disappeared in a
mysterious manner. Plotizyn and his companions were banished
to Siberia and sentenced to hard labour, the less seriously
implicated to correction in a cloister.--The secret doctrine of
the Skopzen so far as is known is as follows: God had intended
man to propagate not by sexual intercourse but by a holy kiss.
They broke this command and this constituted the fall. In the
fulness of time God sent his Son into the world. The central
point of his preaching transmitted to us in a greatly distorted
form was the introduction of the baptism of fire (Matt. iii. 11),
_i.e._ mutilation by hot irons for which, in consideration
of human weakness, a baptism of castration may be substituted
(Matt. xix. 12). Origen is regarded by them as the greatest saint
of the ancient church; to his example all saints conformed who
are represented as beardless or with only a slight beard. The
promised return of the Christ (in this alone diverging from the
doctrine of the “men of God”), took place in the person of the
emperor Peter III. whom an unstained virgin bore, who was called
the empress Elizabeth Petrovna. The latter after some years
transferred the government to a lady of the court resembling her
and retired into private life under the name of Akulina Ivanovna,
where she still remains invisible behind golden walls, waiting
for the things that are to come. Her son Peter III., who had
also himself undergone the baptism of fire, escaped the snares of
his wife, reappeared under the name of Selivanov, performed many
miracles and converted multitudes, obtained as a reward the knout,
and was at last sent to Siberia. Emperor Paul recalled him and
was converted by him. Under Alexander I. he was again arrested
and imprisoned in the cloister of Suzdal. But he was conveyed
thence by a divine miracle to Irkutzk, where he now lives in
secret, whence at his own time he shall return to judge the
living and the dead.--They kept up an outward connection with the
state church although they regarded it as the apocalyptic whore
of Babylon. In their own secret services inspired psalms were
sung, and after exciting dances prophecies were uttered.[567]

§ 211. SECTARIES AND ENTHUSIASTS IN THE PROTESTANT DOMAIN.

The United States of America with their peculiar constitution formed the favourite ground for the gathering and moulding of sects during this age. There, besides the older colonies of Quakers, Baptists and Methodists from England, we meet with Swedenborgianism and Unitarianism, while Baptists and Methodists began to send missionaries into Europe, and from England the Salvation Army undertook a campaign for the conquest of the world. But also on the European continent independent fanatical developments made their appearance.--A new combination of communism with religious enthusiasm is represented by the Harmonists and by the Perfectionists in North America. The Grusinian Separatists and the Bavarian Chiliasts are millenarians of German extraction, of whom the former sought deliverance from the prevailing antichristian spirit in removal from, and the latter in removal to, South Russia. The Amen churches sought to gather God’s people of the Jewish Christian communities together in Palestine, while the so-called German Temple sought to gather the Gentile Christians. As Latter Day Saints, besides the Adventists, the Darbyites established themselves on an independent basis; the Irvingites, with revival of the apostolic offices and charisms, and their American caricature, the Mormons, with the addition of socialistic and fantastic gnostic tendencies. The religion of the Taiping rebellion in China presented the rare phenomenon of a national Chinese Christianity of native growth, and a still rarer manifestation is met with in American-European spiritualism with pretended spirit revelations from the other world.

§ 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.

3. 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.

4. 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]