Part 52

§ 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_.”