Church History Part 19

To the predominantly Protestant North America the position of the Roman Catholic states of South America forms a very striking contrast. Nowhere else was the influence and power of the clergy so wide-spread and deeply rooted, nowhere else has the depravation of Catholicism reached such a depth of superst.i.tion, obscurantism, and fanaticism. During the second and third decades of our century the Spanish states, favoured by the revolutionary movement in the mother country, one after another a.s.serted their independence, and the Portuguese Brazil established herself as an independent empire under the legitimate royal prince of Portugal, Pedro I.

in 1822. Although the other new states adopted a republican const.i.tution, they could not throw aside the influence of the Catholic clergy and carry out the principles of religious freedom proclaimed in their const.i.tutions.

The Catholicism of the Creoles, half-castes, and mulattoes was of too bigoted a kind and the power of the clergy too great to allow any such thing. Mexico went furthest in the attempt, and Brazil, under Dom Pedro II. from 1831, astonished the world by the vigorous measures of its government in 1874 against the a.s.sumptions of the higher clergy.-In spite of all hindrances a not inconsiderable number of small evangelical congregations have been formed in Romish America, partly through emigration and partly by evangelization.

1. _Mexico._-Of all the American states, Mexico, since its independence in 1823, has been most disturbed by revolutions and civil wars. The rich and influential clergy, possessing nearly a half of all landed property, was the factor with which all pretenders, presidents and rulers had to reckon.

After most of the earlier governments had supported the clergy and been supported by them, the ultimately victorious liberal party under president Juarez shook off the yoke in 1859. He proclaimed absolute religious freedom, introduced civil marriage, abolished cloisters, p.r.o.nounced church possessions national property and exiled the obstinate bishops. The clerical party now sought and obtained foreign aid. Spain, France and England joined in a common military convention in 1861 in supporting certain claims of citizens repudiated by Juarez. Spain and England soon withdrew their troops, and Napoleon III. openly declared the purpose of his interference to be the strengthening of the Latin race and the monarchical principle in America. At his instigation the Austrian Grand-Duke Maximilian was elected emperor, and that prince, after receiving the pope's blessing in Rome, began his reign in 1864. Distrusted by all parties as a stranger, in difficulties with the curia and clergy because he opposed their claims to have their most extravagant privileges restored, shamefully left in the lurch by Napoleon from fear of the threatening att.i.tude of the North American Union, and then sold and betrayed by his own general Bazaine, this n.o.ble but unfortunate prince was at last sentenced by Juarez at a court-martial to be shot in 1867. Juarez now maintained his position till the end of his life in 1872, and strictly carried out his anticlerical reforms. After his death clericalism again raised her head, and the Jesuits expelled from Guatemala swarmed over the land. Yet const.i.tutional sanction was given to the Juarez legislation at the congress of 1873. The Jesuits were driven across the frontiers, obstinate priests as well as a great number of nuns, who had gathered again in cloisters and received novices, were put in prison.-Also _Evangelization_ advanced slowly under sanction of law, though regarded with disfavour by the people and interfered with often by the mob. It began in 1865 with the awakening of a Catholic priest Francisco Aguilar and a Dominican monk Manuel Aguas, through the reading of the Scriptures.

They laid the foundation of the "_Iglesia de Jesus_" of converted Mexicans, with evangelical doctrine and apostolic-episcopal const.i.tution, which has now 71 congregations throughout the whole country with about 10,000 souls. This movement received a new impulse in 1869, when a Chilian-born Anglican episcopal minister of a Spanish-speaking congregation in New York, called Riley, took the control of it and was in 1879 consecrated its bishop. Besides this independent "_Church of Jesus_"

North American missionaries of various denominations have wrought there since 1872 with slow but steady success.

2. _In the Republics of Central and Southern America_, when the liberal party obtained the helm of government through almost incessant civil wars, religious freedom was generally proclaimed, civil marriage introduced, the Jesuits expelled, cloisters shut up, etc. But in _Ecuador_, president Moreno, aided by the clergy, concluded in 1862 a concordat with the curia by which throughout the country only the Catholic wors.h.i.+p was tolerated, the bishops could condemn and confiscate any book, education was under the Jesuits, and the government undertook to employ the police in suppressing all errors and compelling all citizens to fulfil all their religious duties. And further the public resolved in 1873, although unable to pay the interest of the national debt, to hand over a tenth of all state revenues to the pope. But Moreno was murdered in 1875. The Jesuits, who were out of favour, left Quito. The t.i.the hitherto paid to the pope was immediately withheld, and in 1877 the concordat was abrogated. As Ecuador in Moreno, so _Peru_ at the same time in Pierola had a dictator after the pope's own heart. The republic had his misgovernment to thank for one defeat after another in the war with Chili.-_Bolivia_ in 1872 declared that the Roman Catholic religion alone would be tolerated in the country, and suffered, in common with Peru, annihilating defeats at the hand of Chili.-When at St. Iago in Chili, during the festival of the Immaculate Conception in 1863, the Jesuit church La Compania was burnt and in it more than 2,000 women and children consumed, the clergy p.r.o.nounced this disaster an act of grace of the blessed Virgin, who wished to give the country a vast number of saints and martyrs. But here, too, the conflicts between church and state continued. In 1874 the Chilian episcopate p.r.o.nounced the ban against the president and the members of the national council and of the Lower House who had favoured the introduction of a new penal code which secured liberty of wors.h.i.+p, but it remained quite unheeded. When then the archiepiscopal chair of St. Iago became vacant in 1878, the pope refused on any condition to confirm the candidate appointed by the government. After the decisive victory over Peru and Bolivia, the government again in December, 1881, urgently insisted upon their presentation. The curia now sent to Chili, avowedly to obtain more accurate information, an apostolic delegate who took advantage of his position to stir up strife, so that the government was obliged to insist upon his recall. As the curia declined to do so, his pa.s.sports were sent to the legate in January, 1883, and a presidential message was addressed to the next congress which demanded the separation of the church and state, with the introduction of civil marriage and register of civil station, as the only remaining means for putting down the confusion caused by papal tergiversation. The result of the long and heated debates that followed was the promulgation of a law by which Catholicism was deprived of the character of the state religion and the perfect equality of all forms of wors.h.i.+p was proclaimed.-_Guatemala_ in 1872 expelled the Jesuits whose power and wealth had become very great. In 1874 the president Borrias opened a new campaign against the clergy by forbidding them to wear the clerical dress except when discharging the duties of their office, and closing all the nunneries.-In _Venezuela_, in 1872, Archbishop Guevara of Caracas, who had previously come into collision with the government by favouring the rebels, forbade his clergy taking part in the national festival, and put the cathedral in which it was to be celebrated under the interdict. Deposed and banished on this account, he continued from the British island of Trinidad his endeavours to stir up a new rebellion. The president, Guzman Blanco, after long fruitless negotiations with the papal nuncio, submitted in May, 1876, to the congress at St.

Domingo the draft of a bill, which declared the national church wholly independent of Rome. The congress not only h.o.m.ologated his proposals, but carried them further, by abolis.h.i.+ng the episcopal hierarchy and a.s.signing its revenues to the national exchequer, for education. Now at last the Roman curia agreed to the deposition of Guevara and confirmed the nomination of his previously appointed successor. But president Blanco now asked congress to abolish the law, and this was agreed to.-In the United States of _Colombia_ since 1853, and in the _Argentine Republic_ since 1865, perfect liberty of faith and wors.h.i.+p have been const.i.tutionally secured. From the latter state the Jesuits had been banished for a long time but had managed to smuggle themselves in again. When in the beginning of 1875 Archbishop Aneiros of Buenos Ayres addressed to the government which favoured the clerical party rather than to the congress which was the only competent court, a request to reinvest the Jesuits with the churches, cloisters, and properties held by them before their expulsion, a terrible outbreak took place, which the archbishop intensified to the utmost by issuing a violent pastoral. A mob of 30,000 men, convened by the students of the university, wrecked the palace of the archbishop, then attacked the Jesuit college, burnt all its furniture and ornaments on the streets and by means of petroleum soon reduced the building itself to flames. Only with difficulty did the military succeed in preventing further mischief. In October, 1884, the papal nuncio was expelled, because, when the government decidedly refused his request to prevent the spread of Protestant teaching and to place Sunday schools under the oversight of the bishops, he replied in a most violent and pa.s.sionate manner. About the same time the republic of _Costa-rica_ issued a law forbidding all religious orders, p.r.o.nouncing all vows invalid, and threatening banishment against all who should contravene these enactments, and also an education act which forbade all public instruction apart from that provided by the State.

3. _Brazil._-In Brazil down to 1884, the "Catholic Apostolic Roman Religion" was, according to the const.i.tution, the religion of the empire.

But from 1828 there was a Protestant congregation in Rio de Janeiro, and through the inland districts, in consequence of immigration, there were 100 small evangelical congregations, with twenty-five ordained pastors, whose forms of wors.h.i.+p were of various kinds. In earlier times Protestant marriage was regarded as concubinage, but in 1851 a law was pa.s.sed which gave it civil recognition. But the bishops held to their previous views and demanded of married converts a repet.i.tion of the ceremony. Since 1870, however, the government has energetically opposed the claims of the clergy who wished only to acknowledge the authority of Rome. Protestant marriages were p.r.o.nounced equally legitimate with Catholic marriages, no civil penalties are incurred by excommunication, all papal bulls are subject to the approval of the government, and it was insisted that announcement should be made of all clergy nominated. The clergy considered freemasonry the chief source of all this liberal current, and against it therefore they directed all their forces. The pope a.s.sisted by his brief of May, 1873, condemning freemasonry. At the head of the rebel prelates stood Don Vitalis Gonsalvez de Oliveira, bishop of Olinda and Pernambuco. He published the papal brief without asking the imperial permission, p.r.o.nounced the ban upon all freemasons and suspended the interdict over all a.s.sociations which refused to expel masonic brothers from their members.h.i.+p. In vain the government demanded its withdrawal. It then accused him of an attack upon the const.i.tution. The supreme court ordered his detention, and he was placed in the state prison at Rio de Janeiro in January, 1874. The trial ended by his being sentenced to four years'

imprisonment, which the emperor as an act of grace commuted to detention in a fortress, and set him free in a year and a half. In consequence of this occurrence the Jesuits were, in 1874, expelled from the country. The increasing advent of monks and nuns from Europe led the government, in 1884, to appoint a commission to carry out the law already pa.s.sed in 1870, for the secularization of all monastic property after providing pensions for those ent.i.tled to support. In the same year all naturalized non-Catholics were p.r.o.nounced eligible for election to the imperial parliament and to the provincial a.s.semblies. The members belonging to the evangelical churches now number about 50,000, of whom 30,000 are Germans.(122)

V. Opponents of Church and of Christianity.

-- 210. Sectarians and Enthusiasts in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Russian Domains.

It cannot be denied that since the Tridentine attempt to define the church doctrine far fewer sects condemning the church as such have sprung from Roman Catholicism than from Protestantism. Yet such phenomena are not wanting in the nineteenth century. Their scarcity is abundantly made up for by the numberless degenerations and errors (-- 191) which the Catholic church or its representatives in the higher and lower grades of the clergy not only fell into, but actually provoked and furthered, and thus encouraged an unhealthy love for religious peculiarities. Were the absence of new heretical, sectarian and fanatical developments something to be gloried in for itself alone, the Eastern church, with its absolute stability, would obtain this distinction in a far higher degree. In the Russian church, however, the mult.i.tude of sects which amid manifold oppressions and persecutions continue to exist to the present day, in spite of many persistent and even condemnable errors, witnesses to a deep religious need in the Russian people.

1. _Sects and Fanatics in the Roman Catholic Domain_ (-- 187, 6-8, -- 190).-On the Catholic Irvingites see -- 211, 10.-(1) _The Order of New Templars_ sprang from the Freemasons (-- 172, 2). Soon after their establishment in France the Jesuits sought to carry out their own hierarchical ideas. The fable of an uninterrupted connection between freemasonry as a "temple of humanity" and the Templars of the Middle Ages, and the introduction therewith in their secret ceremonies of exercises, borrowed from the chivalry of romance, afforded a means toward this end.

The idea was started in the Jesuit college at Claremont and was approved and accepted by the local lodge. In A.D. 1754 a great number of their n.o.ble members, who were disgusted with the Jesuit templar farce, withdrew in order as "New Templars" to continue the old order in the spirit of modern times. In consequence, however, of the revolution that broke out in A.D. 1789 they could no longer hold their ground as a band of n.o.bles.

Napoleon favoured the reorganization of the order freed from those limits.

The day of Molay's death (-- 112, 7) was publicly celebrated with great pomp in Paris, A.D. 1808 and the order spread among all French populations. On the Bourbon restoration the grand-master was, at the instigation of the Jesuits, cast into prison and the order suppressed.

After the July revolution he was liberated and a new temple was opened in Paris in A.D. 1833. The show-loving Parisians for a long time took pleasure in the peculiar rites and costume of the templars. When this interest declined the order pa.s.sed out of view. Its religion, which professed to be a primitive revelation carried down in the Greek and Egyptian mysteries, from which Moses borrowed, then further developed by Christ and transmitted in esoteric tradition by John and his successors the grand-masters of the templars, taught a divine trinity of being, act and consciousness, the eternity of the world alongside of G.o.d and an indwelling of G.o.d in man. It declared the Roman Catholic church to be the only true Christianity (_eglise chretienne primitive_). Its sacred book consisted of an apocryphal gospel of John in accordance with its own notions.-(2) On the communistic society of _St. Simonians_, which also sprang up in France, see -- 212, 2.-(3) St. Simon's secretary was _Aug.

Comte_, the founder of the Positivist philosophical school (-- 174, 2) and he maintained intimate relations with his master all through life. In his later years he undertook by carrying his philosophical doctrine into the practical domain to sketch out a "religion of humanity," and thus became the founder of a Positivist religious sect. The men of science indeed who had adopted his philosophical principles (Littre, Renan, Taine, Lewes, Leslie Stephens, Tyndall, Huxley, Draper, etc.), repudiate it; but in the middle and lower ranks some were found longing for an object of wors.h.i.+p, who endeavoured on the basis of his _Calendrier positiviste_ and _Catechisme positiviste_ to form a religious society for the wors.h.i.+p of humanity. His festival calendar divides the year into thirteen months of four weeks each, named after the thirteen great benefactors of mankind (among whom Christ does not appear), while the weeks are named after lesser heroes. By the profound veneration of woman, which savours greatly of Mariolatry, as well as by the fantastic wors.h.i.+p of heroes, geniuses and scholars, which is a mimicry of the popish saint wors.h.i.+p, and by the adoption of a sacerdotalism like that of Catholicism, this religion of humanity shows itself to be an antichristian growth on Roman Catholic soil.

2.-(4) _Thomas Poschl_, in the second decade of the century, presents an instance of a degeneration of originally pietistic tendencies into mischievous fanaticism. A Catholic priest at Ampfelw.a.n.g near Linz, he sought under the influence of Sailer's mysticism to awaken in his congregation a more lively Christianity by means of prayer meetings and the circulation of tracts, in which he proclaimed the approaching end of the world. When the district in which he lived was, in 1814, attached to Austria, he was committed to prison, and his followers accepted as their leader the peasant _Jos. Haas_, who led them further still into fanatical excesses. His fanaticism at length went so far that on Good Friday of 1817 a young maiden belonging to their party suffered a voluntary death after the example of Christ for her brothers and sisters. Poschl professed the deepest horror at this cruel deed for which he was blamed. He died in close monastic confinement in 1837.-(5) The Antinomian sect of the _Antonians_, most numerous in the Canton Bern, had its beginning among the Roman Catholics. Its founder was Antoni Unternahrer, born and reared at Shupfheim, near Lucerne, in the Catholic faith. From 1802 he resided at Amfoldingen, near Thun, where he stood in high repute among the peasants as a quack doctor, gave himself out as the son of G.o.d a second time become man, and proclaimed by word and writing the perfect redemption from the curse of the law by the introduction of the true freedom of the sons of G.o.d, which was to show itself first of all in the absolutely unrestricted intercourse of the s.e.xes. After two years' confinement in a house of correction he was banished from the Canton Bern and transported to his native place, where, abandoning all pastoral duties, he died in a police cell in 1814. The sect, which had meanwhile spread widely, and at Gsteig near Interlaken had obtained a new leader in the person of Benedict Schori, a third incarnation of Christ, could not be finally suppressed, notwithstanding the liberal use of the prison, till the beginning of 1840.

Even at this day scattered remnants of Antonians are to be found in Canton Bern.-(6) When the Austrian const.i.tution 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 inst.i.tuted on this occasion declared that the sect, consisting of Bohemian peasants and artisans, had its headquarters among the mystics of the Krudener 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 a.s.semblies, where they dispensed with clothes, they celebrated orgies regardless of marriage or relations.h.i.+p.-(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 n.o.body 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 wors.h.i.+p 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.

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 a.s.signed 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 Wurttemberg 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 wors.h.i.+p and making the sign of the cross as unbiblical, and subsequently to a complete withdrawal from the wors.h.i.+p 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 inst.i.tuted 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.

4. About the middle of the eighteenth century among the "_Men of __ G.o.d_,"

the strict interpretation of the prescriptions of their founder Danila Filipow (-- 163, 10) had led many to abstain wholly from s.e.xual relations; when a peasant Andrew Selivanov appeared as a reformer and founded the sect of the _Skopzen_ or mutilators, who, building on misinterpreted pa.s.sages of Scripture (Matt. v. 28-30, xix. 12; Rev. xiv. 4) insisted upon the destruction of s.e.xual desire by castration and excision of the female b.r.e.a.s.t.s, generally performed under anaesthetics, 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 G.o.d" 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 G.o.d" 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, a.s.sumed 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 Ja.s.sy, 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: G.o.d had intended man to propagate not by s.e.xual intercourse but by a holy kiss. They broke this command and this const.i.tuted the fall. In the fulness of time G.o.d 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 subst.i.tuted (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 G.o.d"), 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 mult.i.tudes, 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 wh.o.r.e of Babylon. In their own secret services inspired psalms were sung, and after exciting dances prophecies were uttered.(123)

-- 211. Sectaries and Enthusiasts in the Protestant Domain.

The United States of America with their peculiar const.i.tution 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 G.o.d'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.

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 Zurich.-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 ma.s.ses, 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.

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 ma.s.ses, 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 Bra.s.s 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 (prost.i.tutes, 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 n.o.ble 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 b.u.t.tonhole, confine themselves to fighting against alcohol. In opposition to it public-house keepers and their a.s.sociates 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 demolis.h.i.+ng their "barracks."-In 1880 a detachment of the Salvation Army, with Railton at its head, a.s.sisted by seven Hallelujah La.s.ses, 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 establis.h.i.+ng a Salvation Navy, the increasing extravagances caused by the army itself, as well as the far greater improprieties of those more or less a.s.sociated with it, has drawn away many of its former supporters.

3. _Baptists and Quakers._-_Baptist_ sympathies and tendencies often appeared in Germany apart from an anti-ecclesiastical pietism or mysticism. But this aberration first a.s.sumed 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, Wurttemberg 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 cla.s.ses 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 G.o.d, 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 fellows.h.i.+p, 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 n.a.z.irites, 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 wors.h.i.+p, 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 a.s.sembly 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_, p.r.o.nounced 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.(124)

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 Wurttemberg 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 inst.i.tution 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.

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 wors.h.i.+p. 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 Zurich.

_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 Krudener (-- 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 relations.h.i.+p 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 Zurich, she found refuge in an asylum, and there the end soon came. Margaret a.s.sured 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 a.s.semblies. 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_ (_Rostar_). 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 a.s.semblies 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 const.i.tution, in which she a.s.sumed 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 G.o.dless.

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.

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 Wurttemberg 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 a.s.sociation," 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 leaders.h.i.+p 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 Wurttemberg 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 Muller, 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 pa.s.sed 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 leaders.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sed over North America, J. H. Noyes, an advocate's a.s.sistant, 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d moves him to. All the members of the congregation const.i.tute 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.(125)

7. _Millenarian Exodus Communities._-1. The _Georgian Separatists_. The stream of Wurttemberg 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 role of a prophet, proclaiming the near approach of the end of the world and calling upon her followers to pa.s.s 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 Cloter in Illenschw.a.n.g had for a long time in the "_Bruderbote_,"

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 G.o.d 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 hards.h.i.+ps were obliged to return, and reached Nuremberg again in October, absolutely dest.i.tute. Cloter, however, was not discouraged by this misfortune. In December he called his adherents from Bavaria, Wurttemberg and Switzerland, together to a conference at Stuttgart, where they formed themselves into the "_German Exodus Church_." In the summer, 1880, Cloter 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.

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 G.o.d in the Holy Land on Jewish-Christian principles. The whole Mosaic law, excluding the observance of the Sabbath and circ.u.mcision, 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 ????

??? 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 Wurttemberg, 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 "_Suddeutsche 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.: _Rom.- 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.

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 circ.u.mstances 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 s