Personal Experiences Of Fanaticism
PERSONAL EXPERIENCES
OF FANATICISM
the poor victims who had been caught in the toils, and could see no hope or comfort anywhere.
A young woman came to me once in the greatest anguish of spirit because of a snare into which she had been led.
She said she had been seeking the Baptism of the Spirit as a result of the fervent preaching of a Methodist minister in the town where she lived, and had found great spiritual help from her conversations with him.
--They found, she said, that when they were together they seemed to feel an especial nearness to the Lord, and the closer they sat together the more they felt it. They constantly, when in one another's company, had wonderful waves of divine thrills going through them, especially when there was any personal contact, which thrills the preacher told her were the conscious
Baptism of the Holy Spirit for which she was praying.
Of course, if this was the case, the more of these waves of delicious thrills they had the more truly filled with the Spirit they were, and they had consequently sought every opportunity of being together, and had encouraged a closer and closer personal contact, never dreaming of evil, until at last she found herself in the midst of a criminal connection with the preacher who was already amarried man.
This had awakened her with a rude shock and she was in despair.
Could it be, she asked herself, that the Lord had permitted her to fall into sin when she was so earnestly striving after holiness, or was it because she had an impure mind and had had impure thoughts of what was really the truest spiritual purity.
Her distress of mind had nearly driven her crazy, and
THESBAPEISMaOFeT-THEy SPIRUT having heard of me as a religious teacher she had come to see if I could help her.
She entreated me to tell her what was right and what she was to do.
Fortunately by this time I had discovered that all such things were dangerous deceptions, and I was able to explain the whole matter to this poor girl, and to convince her that her only course was immediately and for ever to give up all intercourse of every kind with the preacher who had led her into these fearful delusions.
It was pathetic to Witness the agony and distress of this poor deluded girl.
She said that she thought someone ought to stand on the steeple-top of every town and tell everybody in the town the danger that lay in this sort of thing.
She followed my advice and gave up the intercourse, but the strain had been too much for her and not long after, happily, she died.
A year or two after that summer when Mr. L. and his mysterious household lived next door to us, I was in Boston, and was asked if I could not go to see the lady who had been largely instrumental in starting people, and especially the young women I have mentioned in my account of the L. fanaticism, on the career which led them to L.
It was hoped I might perhaps help her to see how wrong it all was, as it was feared she might lead other young women into similar pathways.
I found her to be a quiet refined lady rather past middle age, evidently very intelligent and a Christian worker who was highly esteemed by all who knew her. I told her what I knew about the L. household and asked her if she could defend it.
She said, yes, she could—
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that the Lord's leadings were often very mysterious and such as the natural man could not understand, but that what God had pronounced clean no one might dare to call unclean, and that these dear saints had been most manifestly led by Him.
All my expostulations were met with the assertion, made evidently in real honesty, that she had been led into these courses and that she could do nothing but obey ; and I may as well say here that when people say they are 'led' it is of no earthly use to reason with them.
The Divine authority that they think they have for their course naturally outweighs any human influence.
During the course of my conversation with this lady she said:
' You may think it strange, Mrs. Smith, but I speak from experience ; there have been times when, in order to help my friends to receive the Baptism of the Holy Spirit,
I have felt distinctly led of the Lord to have them get — into bed with me and lie back to back without any nightgown between.
And', she added, ' it has always brought to them the conscious Baptism'.
I expressed my horror at this and tried to show her how dangerous it was and to what abuses it might lead, and she seemed to begin to see it, but she exclaimed,
'Oh, Mrs. Smith, I dare not look at it in that light or I shall lose all my faith in God.
What am I to do if in my most sacred moments, when I am most consecrated to God, and most fully abandoned to His will, the command comes to me to do this sort of thing ? How can I believe that at such moments He would let me be deluded into evil, and how can I refuse to obey His
DIES BAPitSM OR fEite SPIRIT voice?'
It was a hard question to answer, but I could only reiterate over and over that it was all a delusion of evil spirits, and beg her to give it up.
I never shall forget the pitiful pathos of it all, nor the despairing way in which she replied to all my expostulations.
'I dare not doubt!
I dare not doubt!'
And there I had to leave her ; and I have never heard since what became of her.
But I know positively that she has been the means of leading a great many young women into the same line of things.
Another friend of mine to whom I had told about Dr. R. and his views, received while I was talking to her, what she believed was the Baptism, and began to experience right then and there thrills of rapture from head to foot, which completely carried her away.
She went on for many months in the joy of this experience, feeling that every moment when she did not have these thrills of rapture was a wasted moment, and she used to spend most of her time lying on the sofa trying to induce them to come.
She also became very fanatical, and felt it her duty to kiss several men, with the idea that through that means God would bestow either great blessings upon them or greater blessings upon herself.
She had felt led to kiss Mr. L. during the summer that he lived next door to me, and years afterwards it came upon her again.
It isa form that fanaticism is very apt to take, and especially feeling led to kiss men whom it 1s a trial to kiss.
And this dear friend of mine, who was by nature the very last person to do any such thing, and who was so good and pure minded that we all
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called her ' Saint Sarah ', began to have this unfortunate 'leading'.
She was impressed with the idea that through this performance God would bestow the Baptism of the Spirit upon the recipient of her kisses.
At one of our meetings at Brighton, when there was a great deal of talk about the Baptism of the Spirit, and many souls were hungering for it, our host, a refined and cultured gentleman over middle age, expressed a great desire to realize this experience for himself.
My friend, 'Saint Sarah', heard him speaking about it, and I noticed that she became very confused and embarrassed in her manner, and shortly after left the room. A little later I went to her about some matter, and she confided to me that she felt led to kiss him herself as a means of imparting to him the Baptism of the Holy Ghost.
She was in the greatest trouble about it, and said she did not see how it would be possible for her to do it.
She was already considerably past middle age, and she felt that she would be making herself ridiculous.
I told her I was sure it was all a delusion, and did everything I could to drive the notion out of her mind.
But it was useless.
Days went on and she became really ill with the conflict ; and at last, seeing that there was no way out of it but for her to do it, I said, 'It won't hurt ; [ll explain it to him.
So just go and kiss him and be done with it!' My taking it in this way greatly relieved her mind.
I told our host what she wanted to do, and he said he wouldn't object in the least.
He had the sense to see that while it was only a vagary of her mind, she could not be at rest until she had carried it out.
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felt so sorry for her distress of mind that we arranged that she should kiss him in the presence of his wife.
This set her mind entirely at rest, and she was able to perform what she thought was her religious duty.
This kiss was given and no harm came of it, but I must add, no baptism for the recipient either !
One would have supposed that this would have caused her to doubt all such leadings, but this was not the case.
In two or three other instances the same process was repeated, but never with any result.
This dear Saint was so enamoured of what she called the 'Touch of God', that she spent a large part of her time seeking for it and enjoying it, until it finally became a sort of possession, and in the end brought about the very sad, but alas! not uncommon, hallucination that the devil was her bridegroom and actually lived inside her body. For several months she was nearly out of her mind.
What had plunged her into this deep depression was the fact that she had sent her handwriting to a lady who professed to be able to read handwritings—a very good
Christian lady she was, who said she had spiritual insight into handwriting—and when she had read this handwriting she said it was the handwriting of a person who was possessed of a devil.
My friend believed it, and it precipitated her into the deepest agony of sorrow, with the result, as I have said above, that she thought the devil was an actual inhabitant of her body.
I was away from America at that time.
When I returned and found the state of mind she was in, I did my best to combat it, but found it impossible to make any
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impression.
She would not even allow me to mention the name of God, and when I did she would shrink in the utmost horror.
She thought that, as she was inhabited by the devil, the name of God was something that she could not bear.
I made up my mind that she must be freed from this somehow, so I took some of her writing and went to the woman who had plunged her into the trouble and told her the dreadful effects of her former words, and said to her, ' And now you must give me in writing the assurance that the devil has gone out of her,' and I bullied her into doing it.
I then went back to my friend armed with this assurance, and said to her : ' Now the devil has gone out of thee, and here is the proof'.
She believed it, and from that moment began to recover, and has since lived a peaceful and normal Christian life.
CUAL Ee lel uaeVel JEESOUT SAC EV eA NACE CLs M if HAVE made during the course of my life a pretty thorough study in fanaticism, and think that I know all the ins and outs of it, and I feel towards it very much like a person who has been exceedingly interested in a Punch and Judy show, till they find out how the puppets are worked, and after that have lost their interest.
My first introduction to fanaticism, if I leave out all that I got from the Quakers to start with, which was. a good deal, came through the Methodist doctrine of entire sanctification.
That doctrine has been one of the greatest blessings of my life, but it has also introduced me into an emotional region where common sense has no chance, and where everything goes by feelings and voices and impressions.
One of the first instances I knew definitely was a dear beloved saint, an old maid of about sixty, who had given up everything in life to follow the Lord, and who was considered by everybody who knew her to be one of the saints of the earth.
She was even so saintlike that she wouldn't tie a bow in her bonnet strings, but had a hook and eye to meet under her chin.
She was not a Quaker, but she had all the Quaker scruples with regard to dress, and looked as she walked about like the embodiment of ascetic piety.
I greatly revered her and sat at her feet to be taught.
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One day, shortly after a New Year's season, a friend who like myself was seeking after light, accompanied me on a visit to this dear saint, in order to learn some spiritual lessons, and we expected great enlightenment.
We asked her to tell us her last experience.
She said that at the New Year's time which had just passed, she had told the Lord that she wanted to make Him some New Year's gift, and that as she had given Him everything that she possessed and everything she was, she could not think of anything new to give.
Then, she said, the Lord told her that there was one thing, and that was her virginity, and that He would send a man whom she must be willing to receive in His name and surrender herself to him.
She told us that she had said, ' Thy will be done', and was now awaiting the ringing of the bell and the advent of the promised man.
My friend and I were horrified, but as this dear lady was deaf, and we had to shout in talking to her, we could not scream our disapproval and horror, and could only listen in silence and leave as soon as possible.
When we got out of the door, we looked at each other, and I said, 'Mary H., did that woman really say these things?' and she said, 'Hannah
Smith, did she?'
I confess that neither of us would have believed that it really had taken place, had we not been able to confirm one another.
After we got home I wrote the dear lady a letter, and told her that I believed she was under the delusion
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of evil spirits, and that I hoped she would review her position and give it all up, and said that until she did
I should be obliged to stop being friends with her.
Many years have elapsed since then, and I have never had a word of retraction, nor have I ever laid eyes on her again.
I suppose, therefore, that she still holds her delusion, but whether the man ever came or not, I do not know.
I have heard, however, that at one of the camp meeting grounds, where she had a cottage and where she held meetings, the authorities had been obliged to close her meetings on account of the dangerous tendency of her teaching.
I had had an experience previously with this same lady which had partly opened my eyes.
We were all at a Camp Meeting together, and I went into her tent one morning to see her.
Her Bible was lying open on her bed with a list of texts on a slip of paper, and to while away the time until she returned, I looked out these texts.
They were texts about people doing very curious things; for instance, one Prophet who ate dung at the command of the Lord; another who slept with a harlot at the command of the Lord, etc.
It appeared that she had been finding out from the Bible what would be the most awful things to do, and using them as encouragements to any form of fanaticism that might suggest itself.
Abandonment to the Lord often seems to lead to strange things.
One of the strangest instances I know was the Jerusalem party. I first heard of it in this way :
I had gone to Chicago to hold a series of meetings.
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was just in the midst of my researches into these fanatical experiences, not researches of curiosity, but researches based on an honest desire to get some light, on what
I thought the mystical way of approaching God.
By my Quaker education, I was exceedingly inclined towards mysticism, and the books I had read—such as Madame Guyon, Fénelon, Isaac Pennington and others, all of which lead to a life of introspection and self-abandonment—had greatly strengthened me in this, so that I honestly believed that wonderful spiritual light would come, and did come, to souls that gave themselves up to the control of their interior emotions and followed impressional guidance.
When I went to Chicago I left behind a most interesting circle of these mystics, and said to myself, 'I shall not see any of these dear mystics while I am in Chicago c because Chicago did not seem to me a place that could breed mystics.
But, at the close of the very first meeting I held, a party of two or three men and two or three women came up to me and said that the Lord had sent them to make a revelation to me.
I was delighted, and was all ears to hear what they had to say.
They said it was a long story, and they must come to the place where I was staying to have a private interview.
I arranged for this, and looked forward to it with the greatest interest and hope of receiving light.
I should say that they were people of good social standing and of great religious reputation and very earnest in good works ; in fact, one of them, a Chicago lawyer, had worked with Mr. Moody, while his wife had been
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famous for the wonderful way in which she had borne the loss of all her children on the wreck of the ' Ville de Havre', a ship that had gone down in mid-ocean under peculiarly dreadful circumstances.
Another one was a lady who was at the head of all the religious movements in the town, and who was looked up to by every one.
They were all past middle age, and were people of intelligence as well as piety. They told me the following story : that one of their number, a Mrs. L., a charming lady, whose husband had held some official position in Washington, and who had been socially prominent, who knew very little about religion, but was eager to know more about it, had the previous summer been attending a methodist camp meeting which was held in the neighbourhood of where they were residing.
At one of the meetings some exceedingly interesting experiences were told concerning what was called "The Baptism of the Holy Spirit', and her soul was fired with the desire to have the same experience for herself.
Being very ignorant of all religious methods, she did not know how to get it, but as she sat in her seat, she held out her hand and said, ' Now, Lord, you know how ignorant I am, and you know how much I want this experience, and now I hold out my hand to receive it.
Please give it to me'.
Immediately she felt a thrill of delight pass through her, and the feeling as of a delightful electric shock all over her body, and fully believed that that was the gift she had been asking for.
She then said, ' Now, Lord, I mean to go by Thy guidance, and as I am so ignorant, please give
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me a tangible sign by which I shall always know what Thy will is'.
Immediately the Lord gave what she believed to be the sign, which was that her lower jaw was cracked up against her upper jaw with a loud crack, and she understood that whenever that crack occurred it was to be taken as the affirmative expression of the Lord's will, with regard to the thing in hand, whatever it might be.
She immediately went home and began family worship that night.
She asked the Lord to show her where to read.
She took the Bible and ran her finger down the different books, and when she came to the book that she was to read her jaw cracked.
She then turned to the book and ran her finger over the chapters, and in the same way she was told what chapter she was to read by the cracking of her jaw.
She then ran her finger over the verses and began to read when her jaw cracked and stopped reading when it cracked again.
And in this way she believed that she had read exactly what the Lord wanted her to read, neither more nor less.
Of course this opened up most enchanting possibilities of a life of guidance, and she began to regulate her whole life by the cracking of her jaw.
Very soon other people were attracted by this remarkable phenomenon, and began to come to her for guidance in their lives.
A little community gathered round her, who all brought everything in their lives to be tested by the cracking of her jaw. They engaged or dismissed servants, arranged their households, transacted their business, gave up old businesses, entered into new businesses, formed friendships, gave up friends, dressed —
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did everything in fact by the guidance of this sign.
But, as the cracking was very loud, it became unpleasant to her husband, especially as it would often take place in the very middle of a meal, so she prayed the Lord that He would please give her a quieter sign, and her prayer was answered by the cracking of the jaw being stopped and the sign being transferred to her eyes, which were drawn back into the head, as if by strings fastened behind and pulled by an invisible hand.
From that time, everything was tested by the drawing in of her eyes.
This was only an affirmative sign ; when the answer was 'no', there was no sign given.
The community in Chicago gradually increased.
One after another was drawn into it, and they established a place of meeting a little out of Chicago, in a suburb, and met there on Sunday, when, among other things, the sign told them that they were to use oranges for their communion service.
All this they told me, with the assurance that the Lord had revealed to them that J was to join their community.
I was charmed with the people, and was deeply interested in their experiences, but did not feel at that time prepared to join the community.
Not very long afterwards, when I had returned home, | received a letter from Mrs. L. saying that the Lord by her sign had revealed to them that they were to go and form a colony in Jerusalem, and that on their way they were to stop at our house and pick me up to go with them.
They came, a party of about twelve, and spent two or three days with us, They told me that