Chapter XVIPARALLELS IN OTHER SYSTEMS
I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.—Joel.How is it then, brethren? When ye come together every one of you hath a doctrine, hath a revelation.—I Corinthians.
I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.—Joel.
How is it then, brethren? When ye come together every one of you hath a doctrine, hath a revelation.—I Corinthians.
The remote in time or distance is always strange. The familiar present is always natural and a matter of course. Beyond the narrow range of our horizon imagination creates a new world, but as we advance in any direction, or as we go back over forgotten paths, we find ever a continuity and a succession. The human race is one in thought and action. The systems of our highest modern civilizations have their counterparts among all the nations, and their chain of parallels stretches backward link by link until we find their origin and interpretation in the customs and rites of our own barbarian ancestors, or of our still existing aboriginal tribes. There is nothing new under the sun.
The Indian messiah religion is the inspiration of a dream. Its ritual is the dance, the ecstasy, and the trance. Its priests are hypnotics and cataleptics. All these have formed a part of every great religious development of which we have knowledge from the beginning of history.
In the ancestors of the Hebrews, as described in the Old Testament, we have a pastoral people, living in tents, acquainted with metal working, but without letters, agriculture, or permanent habitations. They had reached about the plane of our own Navaho, but were below that of the Pueblo. Their mythologic and religious system was closely parallel. Their chiefs were priests who assumed to govern by inspiration from God, communicated through frequent dreams and waking visions. Each of the patriarchs is the familiar confidant of God and his angels, going up to heaven in dreams and receiving direct instructions in waking visits, and regulating his family and his tribe, and ordering their religious ritual, in accord with these instructions. Jacob, alone in the desert, sleeps and dreams, and sees a ladder reaching to heaven, with angels going up and down upon it, and God himself, who tells him of the future greatness of the Jewish nation. So Wovoka, asleep on the mountain, goes up to the Indian heaven and is told by the Indian god of the coming restoration of his race. Abraham is “tempted” by God and commanded to sacrifice his son, and proceeds to carry out the supernatural injunction. So Black Coyote dreams and is commanded to sacrifice himself for the sake of his children.
PL. CXVIMary Irvin WrightTHE GHOST DANCE—INSPIRATION
PL. CXVI
Mary Irvin Wright
THE GHOST DANCE—INSPIRATION
Coming down to a later period we find the Chaldean Job declaring that God speaketh “in a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men; then he openeth the ears of men and sealeth their instruction.” The whole of the prophecies are given as direct communications from the other world, with the greatest particularity of detail, as, for instance, in the beginning of the book of Ezekiel, where he says that “it came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I was among the captives by the river of Chebar, that the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God.”
In the New Testament, representing the results of six centuries of development beyond the time of the prophets and in intimate contact with more advanced civilizations, we still have the dream as the controlling influence in religion. In the very beginning of the new dispensation we are told that, while Joseph slept, the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, and as a result “Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him.” The most important events in the history of the infant redeemer are regulated, not in accordance with the ordinary manner of probabilities, but by dreams.
The four gospels are full of inspirational dreams and trances, such as the vision of Cornelius, and that of Peter, when he went up alone upon the housetop to pray and “fell into a trance and saw heaven opened,” and again when “a vision appeared to Paul in the night,” of a man who begged him to come over into Macedonia, so that “immediately we endeavored to go into Macedonia, assuredly gathering that the Lord had called us.” In another place Paul—the same Paul who had that wonderful vision on the road to Damascus—declares that he knew a man who was caught up into paradise and heard unspeakable words. In Paul we have the typical religious evangel, a young enthusiast, a man of sensibility and refinement above his fellows, so carried away by devotion to his ideal that he attaches himself to the most uncompromising sect among his own people, and when it seems to be assailed by an alien force, not content simply to hold his own belief, he seeks and obtains official authority to root out the heresy. As he goes on this errand, “breathing out threatenings and slaughter,” the mental strain overcomes him. He falls down in the road, hears voices, and sees a strange light. His companions raise him up and lead him by the hand into the city, where for several days he remains sightless without food or drink. From this time he is a changed man. Without any previous knowledge or investigation of the new faith he believes himself called by heaven to embrace it, and the same irrepressible enthusiasm which had made him its bitterest persecutor leads him now to defend it against all the world and even to cross the sea into a far country in obedience to a dream to spread the doctrine. In many respects he reminds us forcibly of such later evangelists as Fox and Wesley.
The cloudy indistinctness which Wovoka and his followers ascribe to the Father as he appears to them in their trance visions has numerous parallels in both Testaments. At Sinai the Lord declares to Moses, “Icome unto thee in a thick cloud,” and thereafter whenever Moses went up the mountain or entered into the tabernacle to receive revelations “the Lord descended upon it in a cloudy pillar.” Job also tells us that “thick clouds are a covering to him,” and Isaiah says that he “rideth upon a swift cloud,” which reminds us of the Ghost song of the Arapaho representing the Indian redeemer as coming upon the whirlwind. Moses goes up into a mountain to receive inspiration like Wovoka of the Paiute and Bi′äñk̔i of the Kiowa. As Wovoka claims to bring rain or snow at will, so Elijah declares that “there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word,” while of the Jewish Messiah himself his wondering disciples say that even the winds and the sea obey him.
Fasting and solitary contemplation in lonely places were as powerful auxiliaries to the trance condition in Bible days as now among the tribes of the plains. When Daniel had his great vision by the river Hiddekel, he tells us that he had been mourning for three full weeks, during which time he “ate no pleasant bread, neither came flesh nor wine in my mouth, neither did I anoint myself at all.” When the vision comes, all the strength and breath leave his body and he falls down, and “then was I in a deep sleep on my face, and my face toward the ground.” Six hundred years later, Christ is “led by the spirit into the wilderness, being forty days tempted by the devil, and in those days he did eat nothing.” Another instance occurs at his baptism, when, as he was coming out of the water, he saw the heavens opened and the spirit like a dove, and heard a voice, and immediately was driven by the spirit into the wilderness. In the transfiguration on the mountain, when “his face did shine as the sun,” and in the agony of Gethsemane, with its mental anguish and bloody sweat, we see the same phenomena that appear in the lives of religious enthusiasts from Mohammed and Joan of Arc down to George Fox and the prophets of the Ghost dance.
Dancing, which forms so important a part of primitive rituals, had a place among the forms of the ancient Hebrew and of their neighbors, although there are but few direct references to it in the Bible. The best example occurs in the account of the transfer of the ark to Zion, where there were processions and sacrifices, and King David himself “danced before the Lord with all his might.”
Six hundred years after the birth of Christianity another great religion, which numbers its adherents by the hundred million, had its origin in the same region and among a kindred Semitic race. Its prophet and high priest was the cataleptic Mohammed, who was born about the year 570 and died in 642. In infancy and all through life he was afflicted with epileptic attacks and fainting fits, during which he would lose all appearance of life without always losing inner consciousness. It was while in this condition that he received the visions and revelations on which he built his religious system. Frequently at such times it was necessary to wrap him up to preserve life in his body, andat other times he was restored by being drenched with cold water. At one time for a period of two years he was in such a mental condition—subject to hallucinations—that he doubted his own sanity, believing himself to be possessed by evil spirits, and contemplated suicide. “It is disputed whether Mohammed was epileptic, cataleptic, hysteric, or what not. Sprenger seems to think that the answer to this medical question is the key to the whole problem of Islam.” (“Mohammedanism,” inEncyclopedia Britannica.) To how many other systems might such an answer be the key?
PL. CXVIITHE GHOST DANCE—RIGID
PL. CXVII
THE GHOST DANCE—RIGID
We are told that ordinarily his body had but little natural warmth, but that whenever the angel appeared to him, as the Mohammedan biographers express it, the perspiration burst out on his forehead, his eyes became red, he trembled violently, and would bellow like a young camel—all the accompaniments of the most violent epileptic fit. Usually the fit ended in a swoon. There is no question that he was sincere in his claim of divine inspiration. His last hours were serene and peaceful, and there is no evidence of the slightest misgiving on his part as to the reality of his mission as a prophet sent from God. Some of his inspiration came in dreams, and he was accustomed to say that a prophet’s dream is a revelation. At times the revelation came to him without any painful or strange accompaniment.
The fit during which he received the revelation of his religious mission is thus described, as it came to him after a long period of despondency and mental hallucinations: “In this morbid state of feeling he is said to have heard a voice, and on raising his head, beheld Gabriel, who assured him he was the prophet of God. Frightened, he returned home, and called for covering. He had a fit, and they poured cold water on him, and when he came to himself he heard these words: ‘Oh, thou covered one, arise, and preach, and magnify thy Lord;’ and henceforth, we are told, he received revelations without intermission. Before this supposed revelation he had been medically treated on account of the evil eye, and when the Koran first descended to him he fell into fainting fits, when, after violent shudderings, his eyes closed, and his mouth foamed.” (Gardner, Faiths of the World.)
Solitude also had much to do with his visions, as a great part of his early life was spent in the lonely occupation of a shepherd among the Arabian mountains. Like other prophets he asserted that the various angels had offered him control over the stars, the sun, the mountains, and the sea. Further, it is claimed most positively by all his followers that his great ascent into the seven heavens was made bodily and in full wakefulness, and not merely in spirit while asleep, and this assertion they supported by “the declarations of God and his prophet, the imâms of the truth, the verses of the Koran, and thousands of traditions,” as earnestly as religious enthusiasts the world over have ever backed up the impossible.
The kinship of the late Semitic idea to the old is well exemplified in Mohammed’s account of this vision, in which he is conducted to MountSinai, where he is directed to alight and pray, because there God had spoken to Moses, after which he is conducted to Bethlehem, where again he is directed to alight and pray, because there Jesus was born, after which again he is brought into the presence of Abraham, Moses, Enoch, John the Baptist, and Jesus, by all of whom he was hailed as a worthy brother and prophet. The direct descent becomes plainer still when we learn how Mohammed, on his return from talking with God in the seventh heaven, again meets Moses, who persuades him that the religious exercises prescribed by God for the faithful are too onerous, and goes back with him to plead with the Lord for a reduction of the daily prayers from fifty to five as Abraham pleaded for Sodom.
The spirit world of our Indians is a place where death and old age are unknown, and where every one is happy in the simple happiness which he knew on earth—hunting, feasting, and playing the old-time games with former friends, but without war, for there all is peace. The ideal happiness is material, perhaps, but it is such happiness as the world might long for, with nothing in it gross or beyond reasonable probability. The Semitic ideal, from which our own is derived, is very different. We get one conception, in the book of Revelation and the limits of space, whose business is every morning to praise the Lord and set all the cocks on earth to crowing after him. There is an angel who bathes daily in a river, after which he flaps his wings, and from every drop that falls from them there is created an angel with 20,000 faces and 40,000 tongues, each of which speaks a distinct language, unintelligible to the rest. But the masterpiece is the treetooba, whose fruit is the food of the inhabitants of paradise. Every branch produces a hundred thousand different-colored fruits, while from its roots run rivers of water, milk, wine, and honey. As if this were not enough, the tree produces also ready-made clothing. “On the tree were baskets filled with garments of the brocade and satin of paradise. A million of baskets are allotted to each believer, each basket containing a hundred thousand garments, all of different class and fashion”—and so on ad nauseam. (Merrick’s Mohammed.) When we reflect that this is accepted by more than 150,000,000 civilized Orientals, from whom we have derived much of our own culture, we may, perhaps, be more tolerantly disposed toward the American Indian belief.
The most remarkable, the most heroic and pathetic instance of religious hallucination in Europe is that of Joan of Arc, known as the Maid of Orleans, born in 1412 and burned at the stake in 1431, and recentlybeatified as the patron saint of France. Naturally of a contemplative disposition, she was accustomed from earliest childhood to long fasts and solitary communings, in which she brooded over the miserable condition of her country, then overrun by English armies. When 13 years of age, she had a vision in which a voice spoke to her from out of a great light, telling her that God had chosen her to restore France. She immediately fell on her knees and made a vow of virginity and entire devotion to the cause, and from that day to the time of her cruel death she believed herself inspired and guided by supernatural voices to lead her countrymen against the invader. A simple peasant girl, she sought out the royal court and boldly announced to the king her divine mission. Her manner made such an impression that she was assigned a command, and putting on a soldier’s dress and carrying a sword which she claimed had come to her through miraculous means, she led the armies of France, performing superhuman feats of courage and endurance and winning victory after victory for three years until she was finally captured. After a long and harassing mockery of a trial, in which the whole machinery of the law and the church was brought into action for the destruction of one poor girl barely 19 years of age, she was finally condemned and burned at Rouen, ostensibly as a witch and a heretic, but really as the most dangerous enemy of English tyranny in France.
PL. CXVIIITHE GHOST DANCE—UNCONSCIOUS
PL. CXVIII
THE GHOST DANCE—UNCONSCIOUS
She was forever hearing these spirit voices, which she called “her voices” or “her counsel.” They spoke to her with articulate words in the ripple of the village fountain, in the vesper bells, in the rustling of the leaves, and in the sighing of the wind. Sometimes it was the warlike archangel Michael, but oftener it was the gentle Saint Katherine, who appeared to her as a beautiful woman wearing a crown. Her visions must be ascribed to the effect of the troubled times in which she lived, acting on an enthusiastic, unquestioning religious temperament. She is described as physically robust and intellectually keen, aside from her hallucination, as was proven in her trial, and there is no evidence that she was subject to epilepsy or other abnormal conditions such as belonged to Mohammed and most others of the same class. Her long and frequent fasts unquestionably aided the result. She claimed no supernatural powers outside of her peculiar mission, and in every public undertaking relied entirely on the guidance of her voices.
Toward the end these voices were accompanied by other hallucinations, together with presentiments of her coming death. On one occasion, while assaulting a garrison, her men fled, leaving her standing on the moat with only four or five soldiers. Seeing her danger, a French officer galloped up to rescue her and impatiently asked her why she stood there alone. Lifting her helmet from her face she looked at him with astonishment and replied that she was not alone—that she had 50,000 men with her—and then, despite his entreaties, she turned to her phantom army and shouted out her commands to bring logs to bridge the moat. It was in April, while standing alone on the rampartsof Mélun, that the voices first told her that she would be taken before midsummer. From that time the warning was constantly repeated, and although she told no one and still exposed herself fearlessly, she no longer assumed the responsibility of command. Two months later she was in the hands of her enemies.
Throughout the trial every effort was made by her enemies to shake her statement as to the voices, or, failing in that, to prove them from the devil, but to the last she steadfastly maintained that the voices were with her and came from heaven. According to her own statement these voices were three—one remained always with her, another visited her at short intervals, while both deliberated with the third. On one occasion, when hard pressed by her enemies, she answered solemnly, “I believe firmly, as firmly as I believe the Christian faith and that God has redeemed us from the pains of hell, that the voice comes from God and by his command.” And again she asserted, “I have seen Saint Michael and the two saints so well that I know they are saints of paradise. I have seen them with my bodily eyes, and I believe they are saints as firmly as I believe that God exists.”
When questioned as to her original inspiration, she stated that the voice had first come to her when she was about 13 years of age. “The first time I heard it I was very much afraid. It was in my father’s garden at noon in the summer. I had fasted the day before. The voice came from the right hand by the church, and there was a great light with it. When I came into France, I heard it frequently. I believe it was sent me from God. After I heard it three times, I knew it was the voice of an angel. I understand perfectly what it says. It bade me be good and go to church often, and it told me I must go into France. Two or three times a week it said I must go into France, until I could no longer rest where I was. It told me I should raise the siege of Orleans, and that Robert de Baudricourt would give me people to conduct me. Twice he repulsed me, but the third time he received me and sped me on my way.”
The examiners were very curious to know by what sign she had recognized the king when she had first seen him in the midst of his courtiers. To this question she said she must first consult with Saint Katherine before replying, and afterward continued: “The sign was a crown. The first time I saw the king he had the sign, and it signified that he should hold the kingdom of France. I neither touched it nor kissed it. The angel came by the command of God and entered by the door of the room. I came with the angel up the steps to the king’s room and the angel came before the king and bowed and inclined himself before the king, and said: ‘My lord, here is your sign; take it.’ He departed by the way he had come. There were a number of other angels with him, and Saint Katherine and Saint Margaret. In the little chapel he left me. I was neither glad nor afraid, but I was very sorrowful, and I wish he had taken away my soul with him.”
PL. CXIXTHE CROW DANCE
PL. CXIX
THE CROW DANCE
To another question she replied emphatically: “If I were at judgment, if I saw the fire kindled and the fagots ablaze and the executioner ready to stir the fire, and if I were in the fire, I would say no more, and to the death I would maintain what I have said in the trial.”
The end came at last in the market place of Rouen, when this young girl, whose name for years had been a terror to the whole English army, was dragged in her white shroud and bound to the stake, and saw the wood heaped up around her and the cruel fire lighted under her feet. “Brother Martin, standing almost in the draft of the flames, heard her sob with a last sublime effort of faith, bearing her witness to God whom she trusted: ‘My voices have not deceived me!’ And then came death.” (Parr, Jeanne d’Arc.)
In 1374 an epidemic of maniacal religious dancing broke out on the lower Rhine and spread rapidly over Germany, the Netherlands, and into France. The victims of the mania claimed to dance in honor of Saint John. Men and women went about dancing hand in hand, in pairs, or in a circle, on the streets, in the churches, at their homes, or wherever they might be, hour after hour without rest until they fell into convulsions. While dancing they sang doggerel verses in honor of Saint John and uttered unintelligible cries. Of course they saw visions. At last whole companies of these crazy fanatics, men, women, and children, went dancing through the country, along the public roads, and into the cities, until the clergy felt compelled to interfere, and cured the dancers by exorcising the evil spirits that moved them. In the fifteenth century the epidemic broke out again. The dancers were now formed into divisions by the clergy and sent to the church of Saint Vitus at Rotestein, where prayers were said for them, and they were led in procession around the altar and dismissed cured. Hence the name of Saint Vitus’ dance given to one variety of abnormal muscular tremor. (Schaff, Religious Encyclopedia.)
About the same time another strange religious extravagance spread over western Europe. Under the name of Flagellants, thousands of enthusiasts banded together with crosses, banners, hymns, and all the paraphernalia of religion, and went about in procession, publicly scourging one another as an atonement for their sins and the sins of mankind in general. They received their first impetus from the preaching of Saint Anthony of Padua in the thirteenth century. About the year 1260 the movement broke out nearly simultaneously in Italy, France, Germany, Austria, and Poland, and afterward spread into Denmark and England. It was at its height in the fourteenth century. In Germany in 1261 the devotees, preceded by banner and crosses, marched with faces veiled and bodies bared above the waist, and scourged themselves twice a day for thirty-three successive days inmemory of the thirty-three years of Christ’s life. The strokes of the whip were timed to the music of hymns. Men and women together took part in the scourging. The mania finally wore itself out, but reappeared in 1349 with more systematic organization. According to Schaff, “When they came to towns, the bands marched in regular military order and singing hymns. At the time of flagellation they selected a square or churchyard or field. Taking off their shoes and stockings and forming a circle, they girded themselves with aprons and laid down flat on the ground.... The leader then stepped over each one, touched them with the whip, and bade them rise. As each was touched they followed after the leader and imitated him. Once all on their feet the flagellation began. The brethren went two by two around the whole circle, striking their backs till the blood trickled down from the wounds. The whip consisted of three thongs, each with four iron teeth. During the flagellation a hymn was sung. After all had gone around the circle the whole body again fell on the ground, beating upon their breasts. On arising they flagellated themselves a second time. While the brethren were putting on their clothes a collection was taken up among the audience. The scene was concluded by the reading of a letter from Christ, which an angel had brought to earth and which commended the pilgrimages of the Flagellants. The fraternities never tarried longer than a single day in a town. They gained great popularity, and it was considered an honor to entertain them.” (Schaff, Religious Encyclopedia.) The society still exists among the Latin races, although under the ban of the church. As late as 1820 a procession of Flagellants passed through the streets of Lisbon. Under the name of Penitentes they have several organizations in the Mexican towns of our southwest, where they periodically appear in processions, inflicting horrible self-torture on themselves, even to the extent of binding one of their number upon a cross, which is then set up in the ground, while the blood streams down the body of the victim from the wounds made by a crown of cactus thorns and from innumerable gashes caused by the thorny whips. Such things among people called civilized enables us to understand the feeling which leads the Indian to offer himself a willing sacrifice in the sun dance and other propitiatory rites.
The middle of the seventeenth century was a time of great religious and political upheaval in England. Hatreds were intense and persecutions cruel and bitter, until men’s minds gave way under the strain. “The air was thick with reports of prophecies and miracles, and there were men of all parties who lived on the border land between sanity and insanity.” This was due chiefly to the long-continued mental tension which bore on the whole population during this troublous period, and in particular cases to wholesale confiscations, by which families were ruined, and to confinement in wretched prisons, suffering frominsufficient food and brutal treatment. Individuals even in the established church began to assert supernatural power, while numerous new sects sprang up, with prophecy, miracle working, hypnotism, and convulsive ecstasy as parts of their doctrine or ritual. Chief among these were the Ranters, the Quakers, and the Fifth-Monarchy Men. The first and last have disappeared with the conditions which produced them; but the Quakers, being based on a principle, have outlasted persecution, and, discarding the extravagances which belonged to the early period, are now on a permanent foundation under the name of the “Society of Friends.” One of the Ranter prophets, in 1650, claimed to be the reincarnation of Melchizedek, and even declared his divinity. He asserted that certain persons then living were Cain, Judas, Jeremiah, etc., whom, he had raised from the dead, and the strangest part of it was that the persons concerned stoutly affirmed the truth of his assertion. Others of them claimed to work miracles and to produce lights and apparitions in the dark. In Barclay’s opinion all the evidence “supports the view that these persons were mad, and had a singular power of producing a kind of sympathetic madness or temporary aberration of intellect in others.”
We are better acquainted with the Quakers (Friends), although it is not generally known that they were originally addicted to similar practices. Such, however, is the fact, as is shown by the name itself. Their founder, George Fox, claimed and believed that he had the gift of prophecy and clairvoyance, and of healing by a mere word, and his biographer, Janney, of the same denomination, apparently sees no reason to doubt that such was the case. As might have been expected, he was also a believer in dreams.
We are told that on one occasion, on coming into the town of Lichfield, “a very remarkable exercise attended his mind, and going through the streets without his shoes he cried, ‘Woe to the bloody city of Lichfield.’ His feelings were deeply affected, for there seemed to be a channel of blood running down the streets, and the market place appeared like a pool of blood.” On inquiry he learned that a large number of Christians had been put to death there during the reign of the Emperor Diocletian thirteen centuries before. “He therefore attributed the exercise which came upon him to the sense that was given him of the blood of the martyrs.”
We are also told that he “received an evidence” of the great fire of London in 1666, before the event, and Janney narrates at length a “still more remarkable vision” of the same fire by another Friend, “whose prophecy is well attested.” According to the account, this man rode into the city, as though having come in haste, and went up and down the streets for two days, prophesying that the city would be destroyed by fire. To others of his own denomination he declared that he had had a vision of the event some time before, but had delayed to declare it as commanded, until he felt the fire in his own bosom.When the fire did occur as he had predicted, he stood before the flames with arms outstretched, as if to stay their advance, until forcibly brought away by his friends.
In mental and physical temperament Fox seems to have closely resembled Mohammed and the Indian prophets of the Ghost dance. We are told that he had much mental suffering and was often under great temptation. “He fasted much, and walked abroad in solitary places. Taking his Bible, he sat in hollow trees or secluded spots, and often at night he walked alone in silent meditation.” At one time “he fell into such a condition that he looked like a corpse, and many who came to see him supposed him to be really dead. In this trance he continued fourteen days, after which his sorrow began to abate, and with brokenness of heart and tears of joy he acknowledged the infinite love of God.” (Janney, George Fox.)
The sect obtained the name of Quakers from the violent tremblings which overcame the worshipers in the early days, and which they regarded as manifestations of divine power on them. So violent were these convulsions that, as their own historian tells us, on one occasion the house itself seemed to be shaken. According to another authority, men and women sometimes fell down and lay upon the ground struggling as if for life. Their ministers, however, seem not to have encouraged such exhibitions, but strove to relieve the fit by putting the patient to bed and administering soothing medicines. (“Quakers,” Encyclopedia Britannica.)
The Fifth-Monarchy Men were a small band of religionists who arose about the same time, proclaiming that the “Fifth Monarchy” prophesied by Daniel was at hand, when Christ would come down from heaven and reign visibly upon earth for a thousand years. In 1657 they formed a plot to kill Cromwell, and in 1661 they broke out in insurrection at night, parading the streets with a banner on which was depicted a lion, proclaiming that Christ had come and declaring that they were invulnerable and invincible, as “King Jesus” was their invisible leader. Troops were called out against them, but the Fifth-Monarchy Men, expecting supernatural assistance, refused to submit, and fought until they were nearly all shot down. The leaders were afterward tried and executed. (Janney’sGeorge FoxandSchaff’sReligious Encyclopedia.)
Forty years later, about the end of the seventeenth century, another sect of convulsionists, being driven out of France, “found an asylum in Protestant countries [and] carried with them the disease, both of mind and body, which their long sufferings had produced.” They spread into Germany and Holland, and in 1706 reached England, where they became known as “French prophets.” Their meetings were characterized by such extravagance of convulsion and trance performance that they became the wonder of the ignorant and the scandal of the moreintelligent classes, notwithstanding which the infection spread far and wide. We are told that they “were wrought upon in a very extraordinary manner, not only in their minds, but also in their physical systems. They had visions and trances and were subject to violent agitations of body. Men and women, and even little children, were so exercised that spectators were struck with great wonder and astonishment. Their powerful admonitions and prophetic warnings were heard and received with reverence and awe.”
At one time Charles Wesley had occasion to stop for the night with a gentleman who belonged to the sect. Wesley was unaware of the fact until, as they were about to go to bed, his new friend suddenly fell into a violent fit and began to gobble like a turkey. Wesley was frightened and began exorcising him, so that he soon recovered from the fit, when they went to bed, although the evangelist confesses that he himself did not sleep very soundly with Satan so near him.
Some time afterward Wesley with several companions visited a prophetess of the sect, as he says, to try whether the spirits came from God. She was a young woman of agreeable speech and manner. “Presently she leaned back in her chair and had strong workings in her breast and uttered deep sighs. Her head and her hands and by turns every part of her body were affected with convulsive motions. This continued about ten minutes. Then she began to speak with a clear, strong voice, but so interrupted with the workings, sighings, and contortions of her body that she seldom brought forth half a sentence together. What she said was chiefly in spiritual words, and all as in the person of God, as if it were the language of immediate inspiration.” (Southey’sWesley, I, andEvans’Shakers.)
About 1740 a similar extravagant sect, known as the Jumpers, arose in Wales. According to the description given by Wesley, their exercises were a very exact parallel of the Ghost dance. “After the preaching was over anyone who pleased gave out a verse of a hymn, and this they sung over and over again, with all their might and main, thirty or forty times, till some of them worked themselves into a sort of drunkenness or madness; they were then violently agitated, and leaped up and down in all manner of postures frequently for hours together.” A contemporary writer states that he had seen perhaps ten thousand at a single meeting of the Jumpers shouting out in the midst of the sermon and ready to leap for joy. (Southey’sWesley,II.)
About the same time the Methodists originated in England under Wesley and Whitefield, and their assemblies were characterized by all the hysteric and convulsive extravagance which they brought with them to this country, and which is not even yet extinct in the south.The most remarkable of these exhibitions took place under the preaching of Wesley, following him, as we are told, wherever he went. Whitefield, although more forcible and sensational in his preaching, did not at first produce the same effect on his hearers, and considered such manifestations as but doubtful signs of the presence of the Lord and by no means to be encouraged. On preaching, however, to a congregation in which Wesley had already produced such convulsions, and where, consequently, there was a predisposition in this direction, several persons were thus seized and sank down upon the floor, and we are told by the biographer “this was a great triumph to Wesley.”
Wesley himself describes several instances. At one time, he states, a physician suspecting fraud attended a meeting during which a woman was thrown into a fit, crying aloud and weeping violently, until great drops of sweat ran down her face and her whole body shook. The doctor stood close by, noting every symptom, and not knowing what to think, being convinced that it was not fraud or any natural disorder. “But when both her soul and body were healed in a moment he acknowledged the finger of God.” On another occasion, Wesley tells us, “While I was earnestly inviting all men to enter into the Holiest by this new and living way, many of those that heard began to call upon God with strong cries and tears. Some sank down, and there remained no strength in them. Others exceedingly trembled and quaked. Some were torn with a kind of convulsive motion in every part of their bodies, and that so violently that often four or five persons could not hold one of them. I have seen many hysterical and epileptic fits, but none of them were like these in many respects. I immediately prayed that God would not suffer those who were weak to be offended; but one woman was greatly, being sure that they might help it if they would, no one should persuade her to the contrary; and she was got three or four yards, when she also dropped down in as violent an agony as the rest.”
At another time, “while he was speaking one of his hearers dropped down, and in the course of half an hour seven others, in violent agonies. The pains as of hell, he says, came about them; but notwithstanding his own reasoning neither he nor his auditors called in question the divine origin of these emotions, and they went away rejoicing and praising God.... Sometimes he scarcely began to speak before some of his believers, overwrought with expectation, fell into the crisis, for so it may be called in this case, as properly as in animal magnetism. Sometimes his voice could scarcely be heard amid the groans and cries of these suffering and raving enthusiasts. It was not long before men, women, and children began to act the demoniac as well as the convert. Wesley had seen many hysterical fits and many fits of epilepsy, but none that were like these, and he confirmed the patients in their belief that they were torn of Satan. One or two indeed perplexed him a little, for they were tormented in such an unaccountable manner that they seemed to be lunatic, he says, as well assore vexed. But suspicions of this kind made little impression upon his intoxicated understanding; the fanaticism which he had excited in others was now reacting upon himself. How should it have been otherwise? A Quaker, who was present at one meeting and inveighed against what he called the dissimulation of these creatures, caught the contagious emotion himself, and even while he was biting his lips and knitting his brows, dropped down as if he had been struck by lightning.” (Southey’sWesley.)
About the year 1750 there originated in England another peculiar body of sectarians calling themselves the “United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing,” but commonly known, for obvious reasons, as Shakers. Their chief prophetess and founder was “Mother” Ann Lee, whom they claim as the actual reincarnation of Christ. They claim also the inspiration of prophecy, the gift of healing, and sometimes even the gift of tongues, and believe in the reality of constant intercourse with the spirit world through visions. In consequence of persecution in England, on account of their public dancing, shouting, and shaking, they removed to this country about 1780 and settled at New Lebanon, New York, where the society still keeps up its organization.
The best idea of the Shakers is given in a small volume by Evans, who was himself a member of the sect. Speaking of the convulsive manifestations among them, he says: “Sometimes, after sitting awhile in silent meditation, they were seized with a mighty trembling, under which they would often express the indignation of God against all sin. At other times they were exercised with singing, shouting, and leaping for joy at the near prospect of salvation. They were often exercised with great agitation of body and limbs, shaking, running, and walking the floor, with a variety of other operations and signs, swiftly passing and repassing each other like clouds agitated with a mighty wind. These exercises, so strange in the eyes of the beholders, brought upon them the appellation of Shakers, which has been their most common name of distinction ever since.” With regard to their dancing, he says: “It is pretty generally known that the Shakers serve God by singing and dancing; but why they practice this mode of worship is not so generally understood.... When sin is fully removed, by confessing and forsaking it, the cause of heaviness, gloom, and sorrow is gone, and joy and rejoicing, and thanksgiving and praise are then the spontaneous effects of a true spirit of devotion. And whatever manner the spirit may dictate, or whatever the form into which the spirit may lead, it is acceptable to Him from whom the spirit proceeds.” On one particular occasion, “previous to our coming we called a meeting and there was [sic] so many gifts (such as prophecies, revelations, visions, and dreams) in confirmation of a former revelation for us to come that some could hardly wait for others to tell their gifts. We had a joyful meeting and danced till morning.”
Of Ann Lee, their founder, he asserts that she saw Jesus Christ in open vision and received direct revelations from this source. On a certain occasion she herself declared to her followers: “The room over your head is full of angels of God. I see them, and you could see them if you were redeemed. I look in at the windows of heaven and see what there is in the invisible world. I see the angels of God, and hear them sing. I see the glories of God. I see Ezekiel Goodrich flying from one heaven to another!” And, turning to the company present, she said, “Go in and join his resurrection.” She then began to sing, and they praised the Lord in the dance. On another occasion she said: “The apostles, in their day, saw as through a glass darkly, but we see face to face, and see things as they are, and converse with spirits and see their states. The gospel is preached to souls who have left the body. I see thousands of the dead rising and coming to judgment, now at this present time.” At another time she declared that she had seen a certain young woman in the spirit world, “praising God in the dance;” and of a man deceased, “He has appeared to me again, and has arisen from the dead and come into the first heaven and is traveling on to the second and third heaven.”
Their dance is performed regularly at their religious gatherings at the New Lebanon settlement. The two sexes are arranged in ranks opposite and facing each other, in which position they listen to a sermon by one of the elders, after which a hymn is sung. They then form a circle around a party of singers, to whose singing they keep time in the dance. At times the excitement and fervor of spirit become intense, and their bodily evolutions as rapid as those of the dervishes, although still preserving the order of the dance. (Evans’Shakersand encyclopedia articles onShakers.)
About the year 1800 an epidemic of religious frenzy, known as the Kentucky Revival, broke out in Kentucky and Tennessee, chiefly among the Methodists and Baptists, with accompaniments that far surpassed the wildest excesses of the Ghost dance. Fanatic preachers taught their deluded followers that the spiritual advent of the kingdom was near at hand, when Christ would reign on earth and there would be an end of all sin. The date generally fixed for the consummation was the summer of 1805, and the excitement continued and grew in violence for several years until the time came and passed without extraordinary event, when the frenzy gradually subsided, leaving the ignorant believers in a state of utter collapse. The performances at the meetings of these enthusiasts were of the most exaggerated camp-meeting order, such as may still be witnessed in many parts of the south, especially among the colored people. Evans, the Shaker historian, who is strong in the gift of faith, tells us that “the subjects of this work were greatly exercised in dreams, visions, revelations, and the spirit of prophecy. In these gifts of the spirit they saw and testified that the great day ofGod was at hand, that Christ was about to set up his kingdom on earth, and that this very work would terminate in the full manifestation of the latter day of glory.”
From another authority, endowed perhaps with less of fervor but with more of common sense, we get a description of these “exercises” which has a familiar ring that seems to bring it very near home. “The people remained on the ground day and night, listening to the most exciting sermons, and engaging in a mode of worship which consisted in alternate crying, laughing, singing, and shouting, accompanied with gesticulations of a most extraordinary character. Often there would be an unusual outcry; some bursting forth into loud ejaculations of thanksgiving; others exhorting their careless friends to ‘turn to the Lord;’ some struck with terror, and hastening to escape; others trembling, weeping, and swooning away, till every appearance of life was gone, and the extremities of the body assumed the coldness of a corpse. At one meeting not less than a thousand persons fell to the ground, apparently without sense or motion. It was common to see them shed tears plentifully about an hour before they fell. They were then seized with a general tremor, and sometimes they uttered one or two piercing shrieks in the moment of falling. This latter phenomenon was common to both sexes, to all ages, and to all sorts of characters.” (Caswall, The Prophet of the Nineteenth Century, quoted byRemy.)
After a time these crazy performances in the sacred name of religion became so much a matter of course that they were regularly classified in categories as the rolls, the jerks, the barks, etc. “The rolling exercise was affected by doubling themselves up, then rolling from one side to the other like a hoop, or in extending the body horizontally and rolling over and over in the filth like so many swine. The jerk consisted in violent spasms and twistings of every part of the body. Sometimes the head was twisted round so that the head was turned to the back, and the countenance so much distorted that not one of its features was to be recognized. When attacked by the jerks, they sometimes hopped like frogs, and the face and limbs underwent the most hideous contortions. The bark consisted in throwing themselves on all fours, growling, showing their teeth, and barking like dogs. Sometimes a number of people crouching down in front of the minister continued to bark as long as he preached. These last were supposed to be more especially endowed with the gifts of prophecy, dreams, rhapsodies, and visions of angels.” (Remy, Journey to Great Salt Lake City, I.)
Twenty years later the jerking epidemic again broke out in Tennessee, and is described in a letter by the famous visionary and revivalist, Lorenzo Dow, who was then preaching in the same region. His description agrees with that given the author by old men who lived at this time in eastern Tennessee. We quote from Dow’s letter: “There commenced a trembling among the wicked. One and a second fell from their seats. I think for eleven hours there was no cessation of the loud cries. Ofthe people, some who were standing and sitting fell like men shot on the field of battle, and I felt it like a tremor to run through my soul and veins so that it took away my limb power, so that I fell to the floor, and by faith saw a greater blessing than I had hitherto experienced.” At another place he says: “After taking a cup of tea, I began to speak to a vast audience, and I observed about thirty to have the jerks, though they strove to keep as still as they could. These emotions were involuntary and irresistible, as any unprejudiced mind might see.” At Marysville “many appeared to feel the word, but about fifty felt the jerks. On Sunday, at Knoxville, the governor being present, about one hundred and fifty had the jerking exercise, among them a circuit preacher, Johnson, who had opposed them a little while before. Camp meeting commenced at Liberty. Here I saw the jerks, and some danced. The people are taken with jerking irresistibly, and if they strive to resist it it worries them more than hard work. Their eyes, when dancing, seem to be fixed upward as if upon an invisible object, and they are lost to all below. I passed by a meeting house where I observed the undergrowth had been cut down for a camp meeting, and from fifty to a hundred saplings left breast high, which appeared to me so slovenish that I could not but ask my guide the cause, who observed they were topped so high and left for the people to jerk by. This so excited my attention that I went over the ground to view it, and found where the people had laid hold of them and jerked so powerfully that they kicked up the earth as a horse stamping flies. Persecutors are more subject to the jerks than others, and they have cursed and swore and damned it while jerking.” Then he says: “I have seen Presbyterians, Methodists, Quakers, Baptists, Church of England, and Independents exercised with the jerks—gentlemen and ladies, black and white, rich and poor—without exception. Those naturalists who wish to get it to philosophize upon it and the most godly are excepted from the jerks. The wicked are more afraid of it than of the smallpox or yellow fever.”
It is worthy of note that, according to his account, investigators who wished to study the phenomenon were unable to come under the influence, even though they so desired.
About 1831 William Miller, a licensed minister, began to preach the advent of Christ and the destruction of the world, fixing the date for the year 1843. Like most others of his kind who have achieved notoriety, he based his prediction on the prophecies of the Bible, which he figured out with mathematical exactness. He began preaching in New York and New England, but afterward traveled southward, delivering, it is said, over three thousand lectures in support of his theory. His predictions led to the formation of a new sect commonly known asAdventists, who are said at one time to have numbered over fifty thousand. Carried away by blind enthusiasm they made their preparations for the end of all things, which they confidently expected in the summer of 1843. As the time drew near the believers made all preparations for their final departure from the world, many of them selling their property, and arraying themselves in white “ascension robes,” which were actually put on sale by the storekeepers for the occasion. But the day and the year went by without the fulfillment of the prophecy. Miller claimed to have discovered an error in his calculations and fixed one or two other dates later on, but as these also proved false, his followers lost faith and the delusion died out. The Adventists still number fifteen or twenty thousand, the largest body being in southern Michigan, but although they hold the doctrine of the near advent of the final end, and endeavor to be at all times ready, they no longer undertake to fix the date.
It may be noted here that the idea of a millennium, when the Messiah shall come in person upon the earth and reign with the just for a thousand years, was so firmly held by many of the early Christians that it may almost be said to have formed a part of the doctrinal tradition of the church. The belief was an inheritance from the Jews, many of whose sacred writers taught that time was to endure through seven great “years” of a thousand years each, the seventh and last being the Sabbatical year or millennium, when their Messiah would appear and make their kingdom the mistress of the world. For this materialistic view of the millennium the Christian fathers substituted a belief in the spiritual triumph of religion, when the armies of antichrist would be annihilated, but the expectation of the return of Christ to rule in person over his church before the last days was an essential part of the doctrine, founded on numerous prophecies of both the Old and the New Testament.
It would require a volume to treat of the various religious abnormalisms, based on hypnotism, trances, and the messiah idea, which have sprung up and flourished in different parts of our own country even within the last twenty years. Naturally these delusions thrived best among the ignorant classes, but there were some notable exceptions, particularly in the case of the Beekmanites or “Church of the Redeemed.” About 1875 Mrs Dora Beekman, the wife of a Congregational minister in Rockford, Illinois, began preaching that she was the immortal reincarnation of Jesus Christ. Absurd as this claim may appear, she found those who believed her, and as her converts increased in numbers they established their headquarters, which they called “heaven,” near Rockford, built a church, and went zealously to work to gather proselytes. Beekman refused to believe the new doctrine,but being unable to convince his wife of her folly he was finally driven to insanity. In the meantime the female Christ found an able disciple in the Reverend George Schweinfurth, a young Methodist minister of considerable cultivation and ability, who was installed as bishop and apostle of the new sect. Mrs Beekman dying soon after, in spite of her claim to immortality, Schweinfurth at once stepped into her place, declaring that the Christly essence had passed from her into himself. His claim was accepted, and when last heard from, about three years ago, he was worshiped by hundreds of followers drawn from the most prominent denominations of the vicinity as the risen Christ, the lord of heaven and the immortal maker and ruler of the earth. (J. F. L., 6, and current newspapers.)
In 1888 a man named Patterson, in Soddy, a small town in eastern Tennessee, began preaching that a wonderful thing was about to happen, and after the matter had been talked about sufficiently for his purpose, he announced that Christ had come in the person of A. J. Brown, who had served as Patterson’s assistant. Later on Brown disappeared, and it was announced that he had gone up into the mountain to fast for forty days and nights in order to be fittingly prepared for his mission. At the end of this period, on a Sunday morning in June, his followers went out toward the hills, where he suddenly appeared before them, clothed in white, with his hands uplifted. A great shout went up, and the people rushed toward him, falling upon their knees and kissing his feet. Many who were ill declared themselves healed by his touch. So great was the fanaticism of these people that one girl declared she was ready to die to prove her faith, and the nonbelievers became so fearful that human life would be sacrificed that they sent for the sheriff at Chattanooga, and it required all his power to compel Patterson and Brown to leave the neighborhood that quiet might be restored. (J. F. L., 6.)
In 1889 and 1890 a remarkable messianic excitement developed among the negroes along Savannah river in Georgia and South Carolina, where one man after another proclaimed himself as Christ, promised miracles, drew crowds of excited men and women from their work, and created a general alarm among the white population of the whole section. The most prominent of these Christs was a mulatto named Bell, who went about preaching his divinity and exhorting all who would be saved to give up everything and follow him. Hundreds of negroes abandoned the cotton fields, the sawmills, and the turpentine woods to follow him, obeying his every word and ready to fall down and worship him. They assumed the name of “Wilderness Worshipers,”and set up in the woods a “temple” consisting of a series of circular seats around an oak. The excitement became so demoralizing and dangerous that Bell was finally arrested. His frenzied disciples would have resisted the officers, but he commanded them to be patient, declaring that he could not be harmed and that an angel would come and open his prison doors by night. As no specific charge could be formulated against him, he was released after a short time, and continued his preaching to greater crowds than before. At last he announced that the world would come to an end on August 16, 1890; that all the negroes would then turn white and all white men black, and that all who wished to ascend on the last day must purchase wings from him. (J. F. L., 6.) He was finally adjudged insane and sent to the asylum. Successors arose in his place, however, and kept up the excitement for a year afterward in spite of the efforts of the authorities to put a stop to it. One of these claimed to be King Solomon, while another asserted that he was Nebuchadnezzar, and emphasized his claim by eating grass on all fours. In addition to the “temple” in the woods they set up an “ark,” and were told by the leaders that any persecutors who should sacrilegiously attempt to touch it would fall down dead. Notwithstanding this warning, the officers destroyed both ark and temple in their efforts to end the delusion. At last a woman was killed by the enthusiasts, and a series of wholesale arrests followed. King Solomon, Nebuchadnezzar, and others who were clearly insane were sent to join Bell in the asylum, and the others were released from custody after the excitement had waned.
Within the last five years various local revivalists have attracted attention in different sections of Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri, by their extravagances, among which prophecies, visions, trances, and frenzied bodily exercises were all prominent. Particularly at the meetings of the “Heavenly Recruits” in central Indiana, and at other gatherings under the direction of Mrs Woodworth, cataleptic trances were of nightly occurrence. The physical and mental demoralization at last became so great that the meetings were suppressed by the authorities.
From the beginning of history the dance and kindred physical exercises have formed a part of the religious ritual of various oriental sects, while hypnotic powers and practices have been claimed for their priests. This is especially true of the Mohammedan sect or order of the Dervishes, of which some account is given in the appendix to this chapter.