Personal Experiences Of Fanaticism
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the Lord had revealed to them that He was coming very soon, and that they must be in Jerusalem to meet
Him, that they were the Elect Bride and would be the only ones in the world who would be prepared for His coming.
The day after they arrived in Jerusalem the Star of Bethlehem was to come and settle on the head of one of them, and this fact would go out to the world, and immediately all the people who were expecting the Lord's coming, and looking for it, would hasten as fast as possible to Jerusalem and gather round the Star, and then, when all the saints were gathered, the Lord would ascend, and His saints with Him, into the air above Jerusalem.
We had a most interesting visit from them, but I made the discovery that I could control the sign, and consequently I somewhat lost my confidence in it !
As an illustration, I asked Mrs. L. to take a drive with me.
She immediately retired into herself, and asked the Lord whether she was to go.
Her eyes were not drawn in and consequently she answered 'No', that she was not allowed to go.
I made up my mind she should go, so I took no special notice of this answer, but I put my will into the matter and began to talk to her in a careless sort of way about the beauties of Wissakickon Creek.
By this means, I excited her imagination, and in a little while I again gave my invitation for the drive with the inward determination that her eyes should be drawn in. And they were, and we took our drive, which she greatly enjoyed.
She was at this time, by means of her sign, writing a
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new Bible.
One of the party was the scribe, and whenever the inspiration came upon her to write it was preceded by all sorts of curious jerkings of her body.
Her knees would come up to her face ; her hands would be jerked in all sorts of directions ; and her body would be twisted all round, and her eyes would be drawn in so energetically that you would think they would never come out again.
She would then begin in a slow and unnatural voice something as follows :
* [—the—Lord—speak—in—these—days—through —the—mouth—of—my—servant—Moses—to —give — you —the—fresh—and —present—revelation—of — my—will—', etc., etc.
I was exceedingly interested in the writing of this new Bible, and as the inspiration did not seem to come upon her often enough to please me, J] made up my mind to try and bring it on.
The method I adopted was putting my will into it and then putting my hand to my face and bowing my head in perfect silence.
Naturally the same silence fell upon all the company, as it is really difficult to continue conversation when one member of the company seems to be in meditation.
The result always was that in a few minutes the inspiration would come upon her ; the jerking would begin, and some of the Bible would be dictated.
Their visit lasted several days, and much of the time was spent by the ladies in their own rooms, altering their dresses to meet the requirements of the 'sign'.
They told me that they were determined to take me with them, and they asked me if I believed in the guidance
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of the Spirit, and when I said yes, they told me that if I was faithful to this interior guide I would as certainly accompany them to Jerusalem as the sun would rise the next day.
However, my common. sense asserted itself, and when the time came I did not go.
Needless to say I have watched their career in Jerusalem with the greatest interest, and I am sorry to say that nothing has turned out as they expected.
No Star of Bethlehem came and settled on their heads ; the Lord did not come according to their prophecies.
Dear Mrs. L., who with her sign was the founder of the whole thing, has been deposed, and another member of the party has been promoted to the place of leader.
What her sign was, or whether she had any at all, I do not know.
After two or three years had passed, I wrote to them, reminding them of the fact that they had had a revelation that I was to go with them, and saying that they must be convinced now that their revelations were not infallible, as I not only had not gone with them, but was doing all in my power to keep people away from them and all similar fanaticisms.
They replied that the prophecy was still true, and that they were told by the Lord that I should yet join them.
GHGA Pall RegVilel eet ee ACN ASL CLO lVi NE of the most prominent fanatics with whom | have been thrown in contact was Thomas Harris, a great mystic, and yet, | fear, a very fallible human being.
His story was this.
He was a preacher in New York, and was very much impressed with the fact that neither he himself, nor anyone he knew, lived up to what he believed to be the Christian ideal.
He made up his mind to separate himself from everything in the world, and devote himself to cultivating his spiritual nature, and to seeking after spiritual knowledge, and to living a life fully in accord with what he believed to be the teachings of Christ.
One morning in his congregation he told them of his struggles, and asked if there were any in that congregation who would join him in his decision to give up the world and devote themselves to the spiritual life.
About ten members rose, and they began from that time to meet for prayer and consecration, and in a little while they formed a small community and cut themselves off from all ordinary life in order the better to give themselves up to what they believed were the teachings of the spirit.
They seemed to acquire great spiritual power, and to receive great spiritual blessings, and believed that they were directly taught in a peculiar manner by the Lord.
They
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gradually withdrew more and more from the world, and gave themselves up more and more to this inward teaching, and in the end became fanatics of the deepest dye.
At the time I first became acquainted with Mr.
Harris and his community, they were settled in California, and had built themselves a house according to what they believed to be the Divine direction sent them from Heaven.
Among other things, I remember it had no separate rooms nor doors, but simply little recesses where beds were placed, because in the new order of things their ideal was that there was to be no need for secrecy, but every one could be open and above board with all they did. They got the idea that the present order of things was to come very shortly to an end and that a new order, which they called the Arch-Natural, was to be introduced, in which everything and everybody would be pure and holy.
I do not think that this was to be Heaven, but it was to be a sort of stepping-stone to Heaven, in which present material things were to pass away, but a new order of material things was to exist.
They thought, for instance, that their house having been built by Divine direction was an archnatural house, and therefore would exist through the coming change.
'They lived there in a community which apparently was all innocence, but which, underneath, contained a great many of the frailties of human nature, and especially in regard to the sexes.
In fact, they were said to practise, under Divine direction always, a species of free love.
One of their great ideas was that
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each person had somewhere in the universe a spiritual counterpart, who was their true mate, and that the aim of everyone should be so to abstract themselves from the world and worldly relations as to lay hold of this counterpart.
It never happened that the earthly husband or wife was the counterpart, consequently those who entered this community were all required to separate from one another, and each to seek his or her counterpart in spiritual regions.
They declared that these counterparts assumed an arch-natural body which was visible to the eye and tangible to the touch, and even that there were born arch-natural children who could appear and disappear at will.
One would have thought that these doctrines could have found no support from any human being with a grain of common sense, but Mr. Harris was such a wonderful teacher and possessed so much spiritual or magnetic or hypnotic power that he succeeded in inducing even intelligent people and very devoted Christians to adopt his views.
I happened to know several of these, and I can truly say that they were among the most delightful and apparently consecrated Christians I knew.
With my usual faculty for being deeply interested in all this line of things, and yet being preserved by a small modicum of common sense from personally entering into them, I made quite a study of this phase of fanaticism and twice went to their 'arch-natural' house to see
Mr. Harris.
Although he very rarely saw visitors, he consented to see me on both occasions.
He told me that he was so sensitive to other people's atmosphere,
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and the majority of people were so surrounded by a corrupt atmosphere that it made him ill to meet them, and he took me upstairs and showed me a room surrounded with marble wash basins and running streams of water led there from a high spring on the estate where he told me he and his disciples had to come and wash out, or off, the corruptions that they were continually imbibing from the people who came near them.
I suspect now that the reason that he imbibed no corruption from me was because he thought I was well off, and would probably add to the finances of the community, as they were entirely supported by the money that was brought in by rich disciples.
I knew, for instance, of several cases where people who had read the writings, and who wanted to join them were not allowed to do so, but when, as now and then happened, these people received legacies, or entered into possession of money, immediately the call came to them to join the community.
I confess that my judgment of the high spirituality of Mr. Harris was very much modified by the way in which he praised me and seemed to imply that J was far on in the spiritual life, for I thought that if I was far on, the heights to which he had attained could not be very remarkable.
He was very sure that I was going to join his community, and told me that when 'the change' came, no matter what part of the world I was in, I should at once take the train and come as fast as possible to this house of his which, he said, had been built in the ' arch-natural order ', and would survive the 'change'.
His ideas of the arch-natural
Geil beer ANAT IT Crs M world were after all only a higher sort of materialism.
He told me that in that world when you wanted anything —fish, for instance—you would walk beside a river and pick up a fish, and hold it in your hands, and imbibe its life principle without hurting it, and put it back in the water again.
He said also that in that world, if you lacked any virtue, you would make bread impregnated with that virtue, as, for instance, bread of honesty, or bread of kindness, and so on, and would eat that bread, and in this way become honest and kind.
But I do not remember his telling me how the bread was to be impregnated with these virtues.
He also told me that he had the power of creating arch-natural food, that he could make cake in his mouth, which could be taken out and eaten by anyone who wished.
He said that Martha and Mary often paid him visits in their arch-natural form, and he had many long conversations with them, and that Christ also came in archnatural form as a young carpenter with his tools over his back.
He believed that he himself often left his body and visited distant stars, his body meanwhile lying in bed in an apparently lifeless condition,
His principal place of visitation, he said, was Mars, which was going through great changes, and his help was needed there.
He seemed honestly to believe all these things, and I could see no trace of insanity in him ; but, in looking back, it seems to me now that the man must have been out of his mind to talk such nonsense.
One thing I did not like about him ; he wanted to sit too close to me, and the day I spent with him he would
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scarcely leave my side for a moment, and even accompanied me to the station and sat close beside me waiting for the train to come.
He said in explanation, 'I find, Mrs. Smith, that great waves of renewed life go through me when I am near you, -and I am invigorated and strengthened, instead of being depleted, which is generally the case when I meet other people'.
I could not feel that this was any great spiritual experience on his part, but was decidedly of the flesh, and I confess I was thankful to get away.
I took good care never to see him again, and I never tried to investigate his teaching afterwards.
GHA PeleE Remavely [st pt Hee Oc ersA NAL 1 CLS if KNEW personally a great deal about one of the most prominent of the disciples of Mr. Harris, Laurence
Oliphant.
Mr. Harris told me, in one of my visits to him, that Laurence Oliphant came to his Community in California a perfect wreck from a life of dissipation, that he tended him and restored him to bodily and spiritual health.
Laurence Oliphant himself has told the story of his discipleship elsewhere, but one of the features of it was, as | remember, that he, a gentleman born and bred, was put at once by Mr. Harris to stable work when he joined their community, in order, as Mr.
Harris said, that a return to nature and association with animals might purify him of the evils of civilized life.
For years he was a most faithful disciple of Mr. Harris, and during this discipleship he came over to England and married a charming Miss Lestrange, a beautiful girl of wealth and position.
He imbued her with his views, and took her back with him to the community in California.
There Mrs. Oliphant was put to menial work for her purification, and in a very little while Mr.
Harris declared that she and her husband were not true counterparts, and he sent her away to teach in a distant city and would not allow them to live together.
And afterwards he sent for her to return to the community,
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and then, in order to separate them, sent Oliphant away on a distant mission.
Meanwhile he discovered that Mrs. Oliphant was his own counterpart.
To what lengths they went I never knew, but I imagine it was a species of free love.
Finally, Mr. and Mrs. Oliphant revolted from Mr.
Harris and left the community, but they found it impossible to recover the money they had put into it, and there was a violent quarrel on the subject.
How it ended I never heard, but each party told the most dreadful tales of the other to anybody who would listen.
Mr. Harris told me that Mrs. Oliphant during the last part of her stay with him was actually possessed by the devil in bodily presence, and that she used to come into his room in the dead of night and stand at the foot of his bed and tell him that the devil was her lover, and that therefore she could control the whole world, for the devil 'would do whatever she told him.
He said you could fairly see the devil looking out of her eyes, and that he lived in fear and trembling till she left him.
I never heard Mrs. Oliphant's side of the story, so cannot tell how the matter looked to her, but Mr. and Mrs.
Oliphant, when they left the community, did not give up their fanaticism.
They went to Palestine, bought a property, and established a community of their own there.
Very remarkable things are reported to have gone on at that community, and finally it had to be closed at the instance of the Vigilance Association of London, which threatened a complete exposure if it continued.
Curiously enough, I met in France Madame
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C., the wife of Marshal C., who was a great public character there.
She told me that she was a devoted follower. of Mr. and Mrs. Oliphant, and that she was living in hopes of being summoned by them to join their community.
She told me that Mrs. Oliphant was doing a wonderful missionary work among the Arabs in imparting to them what the Oliphants called
'Sympneumata ', which they claimed was the coming of the spiritual counterpart to the individual.
She said the way Mrs. Oliphant accomplished this was by getting into bed with these Arabs, no matter how degraded or dirty they were, and the contact of her body brought about, as she supposed, the coming of the counterpart.
It was a great trial to her to do this, and she felt that she was performing a most holy mission.
As she was one of the most refined and cultivated of English ladies, it is evident that nothing but a strong sense of duty could have induced her to such a course.
A great many refined people from England joined the Oliphant's community.
What became of them after the breaking up of the community, or what condition it is in now,
I have never heard.
Mrs. Oliphant, happily, died.
After her death and the breaking up of the community, Mr. Oliphant went to Paris, where he continued the propaganda of his peculiar views.
One day, when I was living in London, a lady called on me, begging for a confidential interview.
She told me the following sorrowful story.
She said that she had been an artstudent in Paris and had met and become engaged to be married to a young Scottish art-student belonging
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to a very wealthy Scottish family.
This young man, although at the time she did not know it, was a disciple of Mr. Oliphant, and very soon after their engagement he began to talk to her about the wonderful religion that he had got, and introduced her to Mr. Oliphant.
She was profoundly impressed by the apparent spirituality of Mr. Oliphant, and by the wonderful mystery of his teaching, and very soon became herself a disciple and set herself to understand this new and strange religion.
Very soon, she said, Mr. Oliphant began to take personal liberties with her, and although she was very much surprised and shocked, she felt such confidence in his extreme spirituality and such reverence for him as a teacher, that she concluded it must be her own want of spirituality that caused her to be shocked at what he assured her was the Divine method of propagating the truth.
He took more and more liberties with her, and at last induced her to share his bed, with the idea that the personal touch would bring about the sympneumata for which she so longed.
She grew more and more uneasy, feeling that this could not be the Divine method, and feeling also that there was a great deal of the flesh in it.
Finally, when he thought the time was ripe, he began to urge her to spread the blessing by herself enticing young men into the same relations with her as his own.
This was really more than she could bear, and she had at last gone over to America to consult her brother, who was a clergyman in Boston.
She told him the whole story, and he assured her it was all of the flesh, and that, in short, it was a species of free love,
pris ios Om ANAT GLSM She was convinced, and went back to Paris to try to extricate her lover from this terrible snare, but she found it impossible : the hold that Oliphant had upon him was so great that no words of hers had any influence, and she was reluctantly obliged to break off the engagement and return to Boston to escape the malign influence that surrounded her.
Her lover continued to be a steadfast disciple of Oliphant's.
It was a heartfelt grief to his father, who, although he did not know the deep, inner facts of the case, still realized that his only son and heir was being degraded and ruined by his association with Oliphant.
Mr. Oliphant's idea was that the sexual passion was the only real spiritual life, and that in order to be spiritually alive you must continually keep that passion excited.
The consequence was that he himself could never write anything except when his passions were aroused.
His influence over this young Scotchman was so great that he had induced him to believe entirely in this theory, and he too was never happy for a single moment unless his own passions were excited,
Then Oliphant, in the course of time, after his wife's death, married an American lady, the daughter of a spiritualist and who was herself a great spiritualist.
He shortly developed cancer of the lungs and died a most painful death.
His widow, a little while after, married the young Scotchman, who still adhered to their fortunes, and settled with him at Haifa, the place which had been the scene of Mr. Oliphant's special labours.
Two years later as he was returning from a
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voyage to Beyrouth, suddenly, without any warning, the young Scotchman jumped overboard and was drowned.
The cause of this I never heard, but I could not but suppose that the poor fellow had gone crazy as the result of all his fanaticism or else had discovered his fatal mistakes.
From that time I have heard nothing, either of his widow or of any of the persons connected with his party.
Curiously enough there came to spend a few weeks at a cottage near our house in the country a young man who was the son of one of Mr. Oliphant's women disciples.
He himself had no interest whatever in the doctrines taught ; he had been born and brought up in the Harris community in California, and he resented bitterly the fact that his boyhood had been passed in washing dishes and doing kitchen-work, and that he had not been allowed to receive any education.
He had at last been forced, in order to escape, to run away penniless from the community, and had had a great struggle to give himself an education and find some work in life.
He did not seem to know the inner depths of things, but he fully realized that the whole scheme was contrary to common sense and subversive of any possible right living.
On one occasion I was invited to go with two friends of mine, to spend a night at a house in Dorking in order to meet Mr. Oliphant.
It was a handsome house and grounds, and there was a large family of a mother and several grown-up daughters ; the father happened to be away from home.
In the evening, after dinner, Mr. Oliphant read us a paper about some mysterious
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experience that he declared was the Baptism of the Holy Ghost, and was the birthright of everyone ; urging us to seek the experience for ourselves.
I confess, with my nose for heresy and my experience of fanatics, I scented out what he meant; but one of my friends did not, and she was profoundly impressed with the mysterious reference to some wonderful 'it' that was to be the aim of our desires.
When he closed the paper, she said in her sweet, childlike way, ' What would'st thou have me to do in order to gain this?'
Immediately he coloured up to the roots of his hair, and said, "I could not tell you in this company'.
It flashed into my mind that if he had answered her what was really in his mind, he would have said, 'Come and get into bed with me'.
However, nothing more was said then, and we separated for the night, but I was convinced from the behaviour of our hostess and her daughters that they had been more or less initiated into the mystic rites of this new religion.
The next morning Mr.
Oliphant asked for a private interview with me, in which he told me that he believed my husband was called to enter into and propagate the views he held, and he urged me to beg him not to stop short of the full consummation.
I asked what the full consummation was.
He said, ' You noticed the question that was asked me last night ? Do you know what I would have answered ?'
I did not tell him what I had thought, but asked him, ' What would you have answered?'
His reply was, ' If I dared to I would have said, "' Come and get into bed with me"'.'
I then proceeded to expostulate
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with him, though I might as well have talked to Niagara.
I asked him if it were not possible to lead people into this glorious experience he spoke of without personal contact.
He said no, it was not.
' But', I said, 'are you not afraid, Mr. Oliphant, that some day some of these women will betray you, and you will get into a great deal of trouble?'
He said yes, there was always that danger, but that the missionary who propagated a new faith, and especially such a splendid faith as the one that he had been propagating, must not hesitate at any risk, but must be willing to face martyrdom, if necessary, in the cause of truth.
Nothing I said had the slightest effect, which is always true with fanatics, no matter how convincing one's arguments or how clear one's reasoning.
They seem to be compelled to dree their weird, possessed by the idea that they have direct communication with God, and that therefore they are raised above the region of human argument or human reasoning.
I felt sure, as I left the house, that trouble was brewing for the hostess, who was evidently strongly under Oliphant's influence, and I was not surprised to hear shortly after that the husband had come home and turned
Oliphant out of the house.
How he managed to go through life without an open scandal, has always been a mystery to me, except that those whom he had deluded must have been too much ashamed of their delusions ever to speak of them.
When his life was written by Mrs. Oliphant, the novelist, a cousin of his, I felt as if it was not right to have such a eulogy set forth of him
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when all these things were behind the scenes, but I concluded it was not my business to enlighten her, and I felt sure she would never have believed it if I had told her.
He seemed, when you were with him, the very last person for such things. He was a cultivated gentleman of apparently a great deal of good worldly sense, and, except to the initiated, conveyed no idea of the inner secrets of his life.
In this lay largely his power over others, because when so cultured and apparently sensible a man spoke in the veiled way in which he did of some wonderful experience that had transformed his life, one could hardly help but believe that it must be an experience worth knowing and sharing.
In order to explain to me about the counterparts he drew the picture of O O His counterpart Her counterpart ft ee eae rine | Oliphant His wife O ——— Earth line — O an earth line with two dots at quite a distance from each other, one representing himself and the other his wife.
In a perpendicular line over each of these dots he drew two others, the one over him represented his counterpart, and the one over his wife represented her counterpart.
He told me that during his wife's life they never came together as man and wife, but each
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one had marital relations with their own counterparts.
But the moment she died, she was united with her counterpart and the spiritual one came directly to him and dwelt within him.
What his counterpart thought of this he omitted to tell me, but I have no doubt they all harmonized together.
Afterwards, when he married the second wife, I heard that he said he married her because whenever she was present he felt the presence of his first. wife and her counterpart more strongly than he did at any other time.
He assured me in the interview we had that I was not my husband's counterpart, but that he could find his counterpart if he would only pursue the path that Mr. Oliphant would mark out.
He said that to find your counterpart was the consummation of human bliss, and-that everybody in the world, if they knew what true happiness was, would give up every other pursuit and devote themselves to this search.
GCPEALP GEER 2 LX
WIEOr ek | Sok HOA UN AS Lat GALS IM
M: HARRIS
has published a great many books containing the most marvellous and fantastic mystical revelations—which he declared at least were revelations.
For instance, he described how a Father in this world who has an arch-natural counterpart has a little arch-natural child running about, and under some spiritual evolution which I don't exactly remember, the spiritual counterpart becomes involved in the earthly
Father and then the child is swallowed up in this two in one, as he called this double Father and Mother.
These books are being issued to this day.
As regards Harris himself, I have heard that he was forced by public opinion to marry one of the women who was in his community, and that he has given up his life at his arch-natural house, and is living as an ordinary citizen in some Californian town.
I came to know a great deal about him and his teaching, through an especial friend of mine who was a very cultivated and charming lady in one of our large
American cities.
She had a yearning after spiritual things, but was in the midst of very worldly surroundings and had no help from anyone around her.
At one time she crossed the ocean on the same vessel with Mr.
Harris.
She knew nothing about him, except that he
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struck her as being a very spiritually minded man, and she was deeply interested in conversations with him.
He almost convinced her during the voyage that her eager quest after truth could be best satisfied by joining his community.
When she parted from him he told her that as soon as he had had the revelation that she was to come to them, he would communicate with her.
Months passed and she heard nothing.
At last, having become very hungry after spiritual things, she made up her mind to write to him to see if he could give her any help.
He did not reply himself, but one of his disciples, Miss W., replied for him in a very beautiful letter in which she assured this lady that she could find all the help she needed if she would come to Mr.
Harris's home at Brocton, New York.
She went, and spent a week of great interest there.
It seemed to her that she had at last found a resting-place for her soul, and she listened with intense interest to all that Miss
W. told her of their views and their life.
Mr.
Harris himself was not there at the time, but was engaged in another town where he was carrying on a very successful business and making a great deal of money.
Miss W. gradually divulged the fact that if this lady came to him, it would have to be on the condition of absolute obedience to 'Father', as they called. Mr. Harris.
Miss X. was disinclined to make an unconditional promise, but said she would be willing to obey him entirely in everything that she felt was right ; but this
Miss W. declared would not do ; it must be a promise of unconditional obedience whether the thing looked
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to her right or wrong.
'But', said Miss X., ' what could he possibly tell us to do that would be wrong? such a holy man as he is?'
Miss W. replied that things often looked wrong to a person that was not very far on in the spiritual life, which to those who had advanced further were righteous.
Miss X. had no suspicion of anything in particular, but she could not bring her mind to the point of promising unconditional obedience to any human being, and Miss W. informed her sorrowfully that it was very evident she had not yet received the Divine call.
She left Brocton with a heavy heart, almost afraid that she had closed the door of mercy to herself, and yet absolutely unable to make the required surrender.
In the course of their conversations, Miss W. had told her that there were two very dangerous Quakers in Philadelphia, Mr. and Mrs. Pearsall Smith, who had hindered some most important English disciples from joining the community.
Miss X. did not know us at the time, though she had heard of us as religious teachers, and we had many mutual friends.
Her unrest of soul still continuing, she tound herself constantly recurring to the thought of this mysterious, but fascinating, religion, and could not rid herself of the idea that there perhaps she would find that for which her soul longed.
About this time she received quite a fortune, and in some way they must have heard of this at Brocton, for almost immediately she received another letter from Miss W. saying that ' Father ' believed that a renewed call had come from the Lord oat
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for her to join them.
'This meant, of course, that she was to take all her property and hand it over to Mr.
Harris and throw herself into the community for life.
Then began a correspondence of the deepest interest to Miss X., by means of which she seemed to be irresistibly drawn to give up everything and take herself and all her property to join this community.
In fact, she even went so far as to pack her trunks and make all her preparations to hand over her property, and started, fully expecting to find herself there.
I should say that during the course of this correspondence she had been assured over and over that God had reserved for her a wonderful destiny.
She was to be made the ' Queen' of the community, and was to have a career of great honour and glory.
It was all presented in a most enticing guise, and she was warned over and over that it was her day of grace and that if she resisted this call dire misfortunes would follow.
She was, as I said, all packed ready to go, but still felt some misgivings, and determined on the way through Philadelphia to see these dreadful people against whom
Miss W, had warned her.
She wanted to know what arguments they had used to prevent the English friends spoken of from joining the community.
We had a mutual friend who had also been nearly entrapped by this community ; and, on arriving at Philadelphia, she went direct to this friend and asked her to take her to see Mrs. Smith.
They came one morning to our house, and in my little study we had a full conversation.
At that time I knew little
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X.'*S FANATICISM
about Mr. Harris's community, but I did know more about the common sense of religion, and I pointed out to Miss X. that it could not possibly be according to the religion of Christ, as it was set forth in the Bible, that any one human being should assume such absolute authority over other human beings; that the only obedience to human authority which could be demanded in religion was obedience in the Lord, which meant that one could only do that which seemed to them right in the eyes of God.
I also pointed out that nowhere in the Bible were Christians told that it was to be a universal demand that all their property should be surrendered to another person; that the instance brought forward by Mr. Harris and his followers of the young man being told to sell all and follow Christ was an isolated instance, and could not possibly be meant for universal application.
I also said that where there was so much mystery there must be something that had to be hidden, and that to give oneself up to unknown courses was the height of folly in a sensible human being.
I used, in short; the commonsense arguments that would occur to any unbiased mind in the face of such mysterious demands.
Somehow my arguments, combined with the confirmation from the friend who had accompanied her and who had herself been to Brocton, and who, without actually knowing anything concerning Mr. Harris's views, had felt an instinctive sense that something was wrong—seemed to prick the bubble—and she decided not to go.
Some years passed, and then another
PERSONAL EXPERIENCES
OF FANATICISM
effort was made to draw her into the snare, and Mr.
Oliphant was sent to see her, but made very little impression upon her.
Still, a fresh link seemed to be made, and Miss W. began to write again most persuasive and enticing letters, and again induced her to visit the community.
Much more was told her at this second visit than had been told her before.
The doctrine of counterparts was revealed to her, and she was told that God had a wonderful counterpart in waiting for her, whose life was incomplete until she joined him.
She found that ' Father' had a counterpart who was called * Lily Queen', and who was believed by the community to be the consoler and caretaker of every troubled soul that came to her ; but she discovered that the method of getting this consolation from Lily Queen was rather peculiar : The troubled soul was to go to Mr. Harris's room and get into bed with Lily Queen.
' But what became of Mr. Harris?' asked Miss X.
'Oh, Lily Queen is inside of Father, and consequently he, of course, stays in the bed, and by getting into his arms we get into her arms.'
In all this time she did not see Mr. Harris himself, but had intercourse only with Miss W. and the other members of the community.
All this greatly shocked Miss X., and she left the community troubled and distressed, and yet still fascinated by the apparent real spiritual insight and wonderful self-abnegation of the devotees there.
After leaving, moreover, Miss W. continued to write
MISS
X.'S FANATICISM
to her, sometimes three or four times a day, letters of the most solemn and impressive kind, urging her not to resist the ' Divine call', and to close with God's wonderful offers of grace and mercy while there was yet time.
Moreover, she pointed out to her that the whole salvation of her family depended upon her faithfulness ; that while she resisted this Divine. call, she was a direct barrier in the way of their spiritual advancement.
All this so worked upon her feelings that she finally almost decided again to go, and this time did not consult anyone, feeling that the arguments used before could have no weight now.
She had, however, a very wise and devoted father to whom she confided the fact that she thought of taking all her property and joining this community.
He was entirely ignorant of the whole line of teaching ; but, seeing how deeply concerned her soul was, he said :
'If you must go, daughter, I will not put a straw in your way, but I shall go with you ; and, if I can't enter the community, at least I shall live near to see that you are protected'.
This made her hesitate, and some time passed, letters continually coming from Miss W., full of the most solemn adjurations and warnings.
Finally there came a letter from another member of the community, marked 'confidential', and opening with the imperative demand that she should not let the rest of the community know that the letter had been written.
This letter was evidently written in order to add inducements to make her come, for it pictured forth the wonderful destiny that awaited her, the exalted position she
PERSONAL EXPERIENCES
OF FANATICISM
was to have in the community, and the untold delights and joys that were to be her portion.
It assured her that when she discovered who her counterpart was she would be overwhelmed with happiness, and would realize that a greater privilege had fallen to her share than ever had been known to mortal before.
The letter said that all the preparations were made to give her the most triumphal welcome that could be conceived of, and that God had in store for her marvels of glory and of grace beyond all that she could conceive, and closed by saying that all this was a profound secret which had been told to the community, but which she was not to know of.
But the writer thought that it would be a help to her to decide if she could know the blessings which awaited her, and had therefore written, but begged that her communications should be kept confidential.
This betrayal of the secrets of the community by one of its apparently most earnest members shocked Miss.
X.'s sense of honour so much that it made her doubt the reality of a religion that could allow its devoted followers to take such a course ; and somehow it seemed to break the spell once more and to deliver her afresh from the snares in which she had again become involved.
She immediately wrote to Miss W. stating these facts, and enclosed the letter that had been sent her, and said she had finally decided to give the whole thing up.
Of course this roused great animosity in the community, and letter after letter of vituperation followed, and the spell was for ever and completely broken.
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