University of California • Berkeley
SPIRITUAL WIVES.
VOL. II
SPIEITUAL WIVES.
BY
WILLIAM HEPWORTH DIXON.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
FOURTH EDITION, WITH A NEW PREFACE.
LONDON:
HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,
13 GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
1868.
All rights reserved.
LONDON:
Stranoeways and Walden, Printers,
28 Castle St. Leicester Sq.
^51577
Bancroft Libnwy
CONTENTS
OF
THE SECOND VOLUME.
CHAPTER I.
A GREAT REVIVAL.
Religious revivals
Their effect on thought and
hfe ....
American revival in 1832
Its extent' and strength
Its origin .
Its leaders .
Not confined to any one
church
Anxious questionings .
Churches open night and day
Theatres converted into
churches .
Camp-meetings .
Agony of soul
Extends to England and
Germany .
CHAPTER II.
FIRST BURNT DISTRICT
The new Pauline Church
Its two great branches
Its leaders and expositors
Its principles
Convention of Perfectionists
VOL. II.
PAGE
1
1
2
3
3
3
4
5
6
6
6
7
They call themselves " Saints
Discussion upon marriage
vows
Lamentable disclosures
Spiritual unions .
Tendencies of the Pauline
Church .
Miss Lucina Umphreville
Her views on the relations
of the sexes in heaven
Friendship of souls
Purity of love
"Spiritual" husbands and
" spiritual" brides .
The terms first used by the
Rev. Erasmus Stone
His dream .
Its interpretation
Effects of the interpretation
Spiritual weddings
Convention of Saints at Ca
naseraga .
Chastity required in spirit-
ual unions
Distress of mind in the
burnt districts .
Breaking bonds
Miss Umphreville and the
Rev. C. Lovett .
10
10
11
11
12
12
14
14
15
15
15
15
16
17
18
18
19
19
19
VI
CONTENTS OF
CHAPTER III.
SECOND BURNT DISTRICT.
PAGE
Second branch of the Pauline
Church .... 20
Spiritual movement in Brim-
field 20
Female agitators . . .20
Miss Mary Lincoln . .21
Her parents . . .21
Becomes a member of the
Perfect Church . . 21
Her zeal . . . .22
Excited imaginations . . 24
" Brothers" and " sisters" . 25
Killing the sense of shame . 25
Defiance of the world's
opinion . . . .26
CHAPTER IV.
THE AFFAIR AT BRIMFIELD.
Noyes' doctrine of the Se-
cond Coming . . .27
His arrival at Brimfield .27
His preaching and its re-
sults . . . .28
Brimfield dangerous . 29
His flight to Putney . . 30
Mary Lincoln and Maria
Brown raise a scandal . 31
"Bundling" ... 31
Anger of Mary Lincoln's
father . . . .31
Is sent away from home . 32
Prophesies the destruction
of Brimfield by fire . .32
Flight from Brimfield . 32
Miseries endured . . .33
CHAPTER V.
CONFESSION OF FATHER NOYES.
PAGE
Noyes' share in the Brimfield
revival . . . .35
He preaches the doctrine of
the Second Coming . . 35
" The Eternal Promise " . 35
Disorderly doings at Brim-
field .... 36
Freedom of manners . .37
Flight from Brimfield . . 37
Flight to the mountain . 38
Letter fiom Maria Brown to
Noyes .... 39
First letter from Mary Lin-
coln to Noyes . . .41
Second letter . . .44
History of the Brimfield
affair completed . . 46
More spiritual matings . 47
CHAPTER VI.
GOSPEL FREEDOM.
Mary Lincoln mated to the
Rev. Chauncey Dutton . 48
Itinerant preaching . . 49
Rev. . J. Rider mates Mrs.
Chapman. . . .50
Treatment of the Spiritual
husband by Mr. Chapman 50
Chapman stricken blind . 51
A reconciliation . . .51
Death of Mrs. Chapman . 51
Noyes' theory of spiritual
wifehood . . . .51
The Battle Axe Letter . 52
Rejoicing in the Lord . .52
THE SECOND VOLUME.
Vll
PAGE
Investigation of prophecies 53
The saints' warfare . . 54
A delicate subject . .55
No marriage covenant on
earth . , . .55
Spiritual communism . . 56
Results of the letter . .56
Wallingford and Oneida
Creek .... 56
CHAPTER VII.
THE PAULINE CHURCH.
Spiritual wifehood and the
teaching of St. Paul . 57
Was St. Paul married 1 .57
What was his female helper ? 58
Divisions of opinion . . 58
Opinions of the Early Fathers 59
Renderings of the Greek
term adelphen gynaika . 60
Interpretation by the Pauline
Churches . . .61
Silence of St. Paul's bio-
graphers . . . .61
Agapa3, or love-feasts . . 62
Communism of early Chris-
tianity . . . .62
The Sermon on the Mount . 63
TheEssenes ... 63
Their doctrines and virtues 64
CHAPTER VIII.
THE AGAPjE.
What are agapse % . .65
Ridiculed by heathen writers 66
Incur the suspicion of licen-
tiousness . . .66
Their suppression . . 66
How at first celebrated . 67
Benefits achieved by them . 68
On what occasions held . 68
Abuse of privileges . .69
Fraternal kissing . . 69
St. Paul on the love-feasts at
Corinth . . . .70
Love-feasts restored by the
American Saints . .71
CHAPTER IX.
EXPERIENCE OF TWO ELDERS.
Friendship between male
and female saints . . 72
Elder Moore and his re-
ligious trials . . .72
Miss Harding visits his class 73
Mutual affinities . . .73
His sense of love while ob-
serving the Lord's Supper 74
Rev. John B. Foot . . 75
His conversion . . .75
Becomes a revival preacher 76
Joins the Rev. C. Mead . 76
A visit to Foot's married
sister . . . .76
A discovery . . .77
Contention of spirit . . 77
A Spiritual bridal . . 78
Summary punishment of the
Saints . . . "78
Mead's trial and imprison-
ment . • • .78
Vlll
CONTENTS OF
CHAPTER X.
worden's confession.
PAGE
Worden's position in life . 80
Joins the Methodist Episco-
pal Church . . .81
Is converted to Methodist
Perfectionism . . .81
New convictions . . 82
Belief of the Perfectionists . 83
The spiritual-wife theory . 84
Reminiscences of its founders 84
Causes of scandal . . 85
Origin of Spiritual wifehood 86
His attachment to a no-
marriage young lady . 87
His marriage . .87
CHAPTER XI.
STORY OF TWO LIVES.
The idolater and his idol . 89
George Cragin ; his parentage 90
Passages in his youth . 91
His conversion . . .91
Flirtations . . . .92
Stern exercise of the spirit 92
The Johnsons and Gorhams 93
Mary Johnson : her educa-
tion . . . .94
Establishment of infant-
schools in New York . 95
Mary Johnson undertakes
a charge .... 95
Her energy and zeal . . 96
Esteem in which she was held 97
CHAPTER XII.
PIOUS COURTSHIP.
PAGE
A mental suggestion . . 98
An encounter . . .99
An " uncalled-for " . .100
A consultation . . .101
A pleasant walk . . .101
Leadings of Piovidence . 101
An invitation . . . 102
Close of Mary's school . 103
Her father loses his business 103
Offers of marriage refused . 104
George's proposal . .104
Marriage . . . .106
CHAPTER XIII.
MARRIED LIFE.
Dangerous classes . . 107
The bane and the antidote . 107
Philanthropic associations . 108
Cragin, agent of the Female
Moral Reform Society . 108
Cragin's idolatry . . .108
Revival storms . . .109
Perfect holiness ; salvation
from sin . . . .109
Heart- troubles . . .110
Escape from a snare . .110
Blind leaders . . .110
Light in darkness . .111
Father Noyes' paper on the
power of faith . . .111
Its effect on Mrs. Cragin .111
Story of her inner life . .112
The power of faith . .113
The conflict passed . .113
THE SECOND VOLUME.
IX
• CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XVI.
IN THE WORLD.
PAGE
RONDOUT CREEK.
PAGE
A life without sin
114
Arrival at Rondout
133
Self-renunciation .
114
The stone house .
133
Ready for the sacrifice
115
Its ceconomy
134
An indwelling Christ .
115
Hard fare and driving work
134
George's conversion to Per-
George turns farmer .
135
fectionism
116
Godliness and contentment
136
Before the Board of the Re-
Love a snare
136
form Society .
117
A divided house
137
Is dismissed from office
118
Indications of stormy weather 138
Mary's joy .
118
Abram and Mary
138
Her letter to Father Noyes
119
George self-condemned
139
Perfectionist leaders .
120
Heart-feelings .
140
Suspicious flirtations .
120
Position of affairs
141
Mrs. Cragin becomes popular
120
Spiritual conflicts
121
A spiritual guide
122
CHAPTER XVII.
CHAPTER XV.
ABRAM C. SMITH.
A name analysed . .123
Smith's virtues and vices . 124
His religious experiences . 124
Is licensed to preach . .125
His domestic life . .125
Angel visits . . .126
George and Mary in doubt . 127
Spirit- voices . . .128
An invitation from Smith . 129
Its acceptance . . .131
Bound for Rondout Creek . 131
Mary's distress of mind . 131
A saintly Comforter . .132
THE SELFISH SPIRIT.
Relation between Mr. Smith
and Mary . . .142
Spiritual love . . . 143
Where will it end ? . .143
Arrival of Father Noyes . 144
Rumours of threats . . 144
Noyes a peacemaker . . 145
Abram submits . . .145
Admonitions . . .146
An evening with Noyes . 146
The higher school of Christ 147
Quietness restored atRondout 148
Sober reflection . . . 149
Hopes disappointed . .150
Smith recovers his power . 152
A victory achieved . . 153
x\t peace . . . .154
CONTENTS OF
CHAPTER XVIII.
HEAVENLY BRIDALS.
FAGE
Mrs. Cragin accepts Smith
as her Spiritual husband . 153
Smith leaves "Rondout on a
preaching mission . . 154
Mary goes to New York . 154
Her return . . . .155
Symptoms of a burdened mind 155
George called to New York . 155
A communication . . 156
. 157
. 158
. 159
. 159
A sleepless night
A clean breast
Brother and sister
A crisis of life
CHAPTER XIX.
CONFLICT.
A day of confessions .
Mutual exhortations .
Return of Smith .
A terrible night .
A meeting ....
Appeals to Heaven
Story of a straggle
Smith changes his base of
action
160
162
162
163
164
164
165
166
He resolves to consult Noyes 1 66
CHAPTER XX.
PEACE.
The judgment of Noyes .168
Smith's domestic and social
relations . . . .169
PAGE
New relations between George
and Mary . . .170
Resolve to leave Rondout . 171
Disposal of their furniture . 171
Bound for New York . .172
Mary's letter to Noyes . 172
Purgation from self-conceit . 173
They join the Communists
at; Oneida Creek . .173
Mary drowned in Rondout
Creek . . . .174
CHAPTER XXI.
NOYES ON SPIRITUAL LOVE.
Marriage revolution in Ame-
rica 175
Revivals: their philosophy . 176
A theocratic revolution . 176
Religious and sexual love .177
Wild experiments . .177
A divine organization of
society required . .177
Morbid results of revivals .177
Revivals and Shakerism . 177
Elder Frederick's view of
revivals . . . .178
The revivals in 1835-6 not
taken advantage of by
Shakers . . . .178
Boast of Doctor Gridley . 179
Shakerism . . . .179
Mor monism and revivals . 180
Sequence from revivals to
polygamy . . .180
Revivals theocratic in their
nature . . . .180
Leadership of women in Sha-
kerism .... 181
THE SECOND VOLUME.
XI
The two stages of love
The courting and the -wedded
stage .
Shakerism the feminine form
of revivals
PAGE
181
181
. 182
Mormonism the masculine . 182
Oneida Creek socialism
A retrospect
The confession of holiness .
The germ of the theory of
Communism .
The prosperity of religious
socialisms
The fate of scientific social-
isms ....
The theocratic basis .
182
182
183
183
184
184
184
CHAPTER XXII.
CELESTIAL AFFINITIES.
Freedom of opinion in Ame-
rica 187
Spiritual wifehood traceable
to Europe . . .187
Fraternity of the Free Spirit 187
John of Leyden . . . 187
Speculations of Swedenborg 188
Wolfgang von Gothe . .188
The practice of St. Paul . 189
His female companion . 189
Swedenborg's new heaven
and new earth . .190
Marriage of souls in heaven 191
Earthly and heavenly mar-
riages . . . .191
Perfect lovers . . .194
Nature exists in pairs . 195
Reunions in heaven . .196
CHAPTER XXIII.
NATURAL AFFINITIES.
PAGE
Gothe's belief in a friend-
ship higher than marriage 197
" Werther's Burden " . . 197
The struggle of two souls . 198
His " Free Affinities " . 198
Plato's theory of split men . 199
The meaning of "affinities" 203
Relation of all natural obj ects
to themselves . . . 203
Water, oil, mercury . . 203
Raindrops ; globules of mer-
cury . . . .203
Combination of hostile ele-
ments .... 204
A case of free affinity . . 205
The end of Gothe's story . 205
CHAPTER XXIV.
SCHOOL OF OWEN.
Robert Owen on the regene-
ration of society . . 207
Harmony and association . 207
The Rappites ; their failure 207
Owen's heresies . . . 208
Failure of his plans in Europe
and America . . . 208
Owen's views of the mar-
riage-state . . . 209
Family life at war with social 209
The Shakers and Mormons 209
The Princeites and Bible
Communists . . . 210
Dale Owen and Frances
Wright . . . .210
Privy Councillor to Republic 211
Xll
CONTENTS OF
PAGE
Doctrines of Free Love and
Divorce . . . .211
Dale Owen, his great abilities 21 1
Frances Wright's discoveries 212
The earth over-peopled . 212
The law of marriage makes
woman a slave. . .212
Her lectures on marriage .213
Dale Owen's "Moral Phi-
losophy" . . . .214
CHAPTER XXV.
SCHOOL OF FOURIER.
Albert Brisbane a disciple
of Fourier • . . 215
Fourier and Robert Owen
compared . . .215
Fourier's theory on the
rights of property . .215
Fourier's ignorance of science 217
Blunders in his books . .217
Brisbane's lectures .219
Opposed by Henry Raymond 220
Settlement at Red Bank . 221
New views respecting ma-
nual labour . . . 222
Neglect of religion . . 223
Dress of the women at Red-
bank . . . .223
Symptoms of failure . . 223
Red Bank sold . . . 224
Rev. George Ripley and Mar-
garet Fuller . . . 224
Brook Farm settlement a
failure . . . .225
CHAPTER XXVI.
FREE LOVE.
PAGE
Different views on marriage
in England and America . 227
Disparity of the sexes in
America .... 227
Women in the ascendancy . 228
Free love and its advo-
cates . . . .228
Poems . •. . .228
" The higher law " . . 232
Free -love the sequence of
free faith . . .233
Recognised by law-courts - 233
A curious case . . . 233
A free-love wedding . . 234
Settlements of Free-love . 236
Berlin Heights . . .236
Modern Times . . .237
Its inhabitants affect the
Positive Philosophy . 237
" No questions asked " . 238
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE GREAT HARMONIA.
Andrew Jackson Davis, the
Poughkeepsie Seer . . 239
His " Great Harmonia " . 240
Swedenborg and his works 241
Influence of his writings . 242
Professor Bush a convert to
Swedenborgianism . . 243
Restless minds . . . 244
Electro-biology . . .296
Spirit-rapping . . . 247
Mesmer and Swedenborg . 247
THE SECOND VOLUME.
Xlll
Bush and Davis . . 248
Social doctrine of the New
Harmonia hostile to mar-
riage .... 249
CHAPTER XXVIII.
IN THE CIRCLES.
Davis an echo of Swedenborg 250
His practical aims . .251
His unscrupulous conduct . 251
Mode of spiritual mating . 252
Carpenter's confession . 252
Towler's confession . . 256
Practical issue of Davis's
teaching .... 258
CHAPTER XXIX.
LOOKING BACK.
Development of religious life 259
Inner circle of man's passions 259
Love: what can be done with
it ? 260
A celestial order . . . 260
The will of God . . .261
Men and angels . . . 262
Love of women ; pride of off-
spring .... 263
The anti-social spirit of the
Roman Church . . 263
Monks and nuns . . 263
The revolt of human passion 264
St. Paul's declaration . . 264
A bishop the husband of one
wife . . . . 264
The Apostolic Constitutions 265
Asceticism of Eastern creeds 266
VOL. II.
The clergy free to marry in
the Early Church .
Polycarp and Irenseus
Tertullian and Ignatius
Cyprian ....
Polygamy prevalent among
the Jews ....
267
267
267
267
268
268
The Apostolical Canons
Allow the marriage of
priests . . . .269
Signs of a coming change . 269
Marriage permitted in the
Oriental church . . 270
CHAPTER XXX.
WAR OF CREEDS.
Celibacy imposed on priests
by the Roman church . 271
The doctrine took its rise in
Spain . . . .271
Spain the source of religious
passions and creeds . .271
The Council of Elvira . . 273
Priests ordered to put away
their wives . . . 273
Effect of the articles of Elvira 274
Resistance to the decree . 277
A fierce and long battle . 277
Charges against Woman . 278
Woman held in respect by
the Gothic race . . 279
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE GOTHIC REVIVAL.
Revivals . . . .283
Their effect on social life . 283
C
XIV CON!
PAGE
Yearnings for a higher sexual
affinity than wedlock . 284
Marriage and divorce . . 284
The liberty of divorce . 284
Marriage-vows how regarded
in the South of Europe . 284
Wives and their husbands . 285
Cavalieres serventes . . 286
Married life in Italy . . 286
The Gothic race ; its views
of the married state . 289
Nuptials for eternity . . 289
NTS.
PAGE
True and false marriages .
289
Modifications in the laws of
man and wife .
290
Energy of the Gothic race .
291
Its social experiments
291
Qualities of other races
291
The world of spirits .
292
Theories of spiritual and
social life
292
Appendix
. 293
SPIRITUAL WIVES.
CHAPTER I.
A GREAT REVIVAL.
In the year 1832, a loud and angry tempest rolled
through a great part of the Teutonic heaven ;
especially through that part of the Teutonic
heaven which spans the American continent ; a
thing new and weird, which has not yet had
much attention paid to it by public writers ;
certainly not so much as from what is seen of
its effect upon our religious thought and social
life, it would seem to crave.
A great revival of religion then took place.
Of course revivals of religion have been seen in
every country and in almost every age. A move-
ment in the minds of men ; quick, luminous,
electrical, coming no one knows whence, wearing
VOL. II. B
2 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
itself out no one cm tell why ; is one of the forms
in which we see that the work of God is done
upon this earth. A church, a city, — nay, a province,
may be suddenly, unaccountably, changed and rapt
by spiritual forces. Gifted men and women — men
like Whitfield and Wesley ; women like Ann Lee
and Lady Huntingdon — seem to carry this fiery
fluid in their brains, to breathe it from their lungs,
to shed it from their hands. Where such agents
of the unseen forces come, disturbance of the con-
science also comes ; so that men who are dead to
the Gospel, when they only see it in the daily beauty
of our service, pale and crouch with fear, as though
they had been smitten by some unseen arm. Yet
oftener still, the passion and the power well out
from no visible source. A cry goes up from some
village church, from some unknown lip, which
sets a whole city, a whole province, rocking and
reeling to the dust. Thus it happened in New
Haven and New York in 1832. No man can tell
how the Great American Revival came about ; no-
body caused it, nobody could guide it, nobody could
stop it. No revival in the past could vie, in either
length of time, in width of area, or in strength of
passion, with this Great Revival. Other move-
ments had been personal, this movement was
A GKEAT REVIVAL. 3
national. One storm had raged round Whitfield ;
another had found its centre in Ann Lee. The
Great American Revival was the result of unknown
efforts, of unrecorded inspirations. It has never
been identified with a single name. Who can say
where it first began ? Two large tracts of coun-
try, one in the state of New York, one in the
state of Massachusetts, are to this day mapped
in religious books, each as the original "burnt
district ;" the province over which the fiery tem-
pest broke and swept, like a prairie fire ignited
from the clouds.
We catch a first glimpse of this tempest
raging on the shores of Lake Ontario, among the
farms and hamlets of Oneida county and Madison
county ; most of all, perhaps, among the home-
steads standing on the banks of the two lovely
sheets of water, called by the Indian names of
Cayuga Lake and Oneida Lake. So far as I can
learn, the men among whom it first broke out
were not of very high name and fame. The Rev.
James Boyle was known simply as a fair scholar,
a fine preacher. The Rev. Luther Meyrick enjoyed
the favour of a local church. The Rev. Hiram
Sheldon, of Delphi, afterwards only too well
known in New York, had not then been heard of
4 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
in the larger world. Jarvis Rider of De Ruyter,
Horatio Foot of Manlius, Erasmus Stone of Salina,
three ministers living in the burnt district of New
York, could hardly boast of anything beyond a
little fame on the country side, until the cause in
which they toiled had put their names into the
mouths of men. They did not make the revival;
the revival made them.
Those in whom the spiritual leaven first began
to work were working members of old and highly
reputed churches. The Rev. Abram C. Smith, the
story of whose life as the spiritual husband of
Mary Cragin I shall have to tell in detail, was a
Wesleyan Methodist. Marquis L. Worden, whose
confessions will be found on a later page, was an
Episcopalian Methodist. Luther Meyrick and
James Boyle, the most eminent perhaps of these
revival preachers, were Evangelicals. The Rev.
Theophilus R. Gates, editor of The Battle Axe,
and founder of a wild sect in Philadelphia, was an
Independent. The Rev. John H. Noyes, the father
of Pauline communism, was a Congregationalist,
Cragin, the moral reformer, and Moore, the leader
among Sunday-schools and Bible-classes, were both
Presbyterians.
For more than a year, the facts which are seen
A GREAT REVIVAL. 5
in all revivals where the scale is large and the
country wild, were noticed in these burnt districts
of New York and Massachusetts ; afterwards, as
the fury spread abroad, they were seen in a hun-
dred towns, in a thousand hamlets, of the United
States. By a sudden prompting from within,
so far as men could see, a number of orderly
and reputable persons began to ask each other,
in eager words and with pallid lips, how it stood
with them in the great account. Were they
ranked among the chosen ? Were they ready
for the Lord's coming? Did they feel in their
souls that the Lamb had died for them, and that
all their sins had been purged away ? Some
could not answer. Some dared not face these
questions. Who could tell that he was saved?
Many of those who were in doubt began to seek.
Men who had never been at church before became
constant hearers of the word. At first the old
and steady preachers welcomed this change of
mind ; their pews being now let, their sermons
heeded, and their benches filled. But soon the
frenzy of desire to know the best and worst rose
high around them and above them, frothing beyond
their guidance and control. A service once a-
week was but as a drop of water on the lips of
b SPIRITUAL WIVES.
men and women panting for a living brook.
The churches had to be thrown open. At first
an evening meeting was called for prayer; then
a morning meeting ; afterwards an hour was
snatched from the busy noon ; until at length
some ministers took the course of keeping what
was called an open house of God, from early
dawn until long past midnight every day. Pallor
fell on the bronze cheek, alarm invaded the callous
heart. By night and day the chapels were crowded
with sinners, imploring the Lord to have mercy on
them. Heaven was assailed by multitudes of souls,
conscious of sin and peril, and seeking to take the
judgment-seat by storm. The church brimmed
over, so to speak, into the street. Rooms were
hired ; school-rooms, dancing-halls, even theatres ;
every place that would hold a congregation became
a church. In the country districts, camps were
formed for prayer ; a cart became a pulpit, a tent
a chancel, the stump of a tree an altar ; while
hundreds of wandering and unauthorized preachers,
male and female, took the field against Satan and
the flesh. In the agony which grew upon men's
souls, the regular clergy came to be esteemed as
dumb and faithless witnesses for the truth.
Farmers and tinkers, loud of voice and fierce of
A GREAT REVIVAL. 7
aspect, ran about the country, calling on sinners
to repent, and flee from the wrath to come. All
ranks and orders were confounded in a common
sense of danger, and the ignorant flocks who had
gathered round these prophets of doom, were
easily persuaded that the calm and conservative
churches of the world, which looked on all these
doings sad and silent, were dead and damned.
This spiritual tempest crossed the Atlantic
Ocean into England, and the English Channel into
Germany, in both of which countries it found a
people more or less open to its unspent power. In
America, where it was native and national, it had
a wider success and a longer reign than in Europe ;
but in England and in Germany it kept up a
faint and irregular kind of activity for many years.
In truth, no one can assert that in either country,
any more than in America, its force is spent and
its service done.
CHAPTEE II
FIRST BURNT DISTRICT.
The new Pauline Church of America, founded in
the course of this Great Revival, was divided
from the first into two great branches and many
sub-branches. The first professors of holiness had
their home at Manlius, in the state of New York,
with the Rev. Hiram Sheldon as their leader and
expositor ; the second had their home at Yale
College, in the state of Connecticut, afterwards
at Putney, in the state of Vermont, with the
Rev. John H. Noyes as leader and expositor : but
these centres of holiness were not fixed and final ;
these chiefs of the Perfect Church did not reign
alone. In America, no place is the sole seat of
empire, and no first-man has an undisputed reign.
Sheldon's power was shared by the Rev. Jarvis
Rider, the Rev. Martin P. Sweet, and the Rev.
Erasmus Stone. Noyes, on his side, had to consult,
and sometimes to follow, the Rev. James Boyle
and the Rev. Theophilus R. Gates.
FIRST BURNT DISTRICT. 9
This Pauline Church — professing to have been
founded on a new series of visions, intimations,
and internal movements of the Spirit — taught
the doctrine that man may attain to the perfect
state, in which he shall be cleansed from sin
and made incapable of sin. Into the dogmatic
part of this question, thus raised, I need not
enter, since it is a very old theory in the Church,
and has found some favour in the eyes of orthodox
and exalted saints. The testimony, both of Sheldon
and his followers, also of Noyes and his followers,
was that they had been saved from sin by the
power of faith, and were entering upon the enjoy-
ment of perfect love.
In the winter months of 1834, a general con-
vention of the New York Perfectionists was
called at Manlius, a village of cotton-mills, in
Onandaga county, six or seven miles from Oneida
Lake. The people, who assembled in a beerhouse,
heard the new gospel proclaimed by Hiram Sheldon
from Delphi, Erasmus Stone from Salina, Jarvis
Rider from De Puyter; the meeting was warm
in tone, and many of the young factory girls were
drawn that day to a closer knowledge of the
Lord. At Manlius, the chosen took upon them-
selves the name of " Saints." Here they announced
10 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
their separation from the world. Here they began
to debate whether the old marriage vows would
or would not be binding in the new heaven and
the new earth. " When a man becomes conscious
that his soul is saved," says Noyes, "the first
thing that he sets about is to find his Paradise
and his Eve." It is a very sad fact, which shows
in what darkness men may grope and pine in
this wicked world, that when these Perfect Saints
were able to look about them in the new freedom
of Gospel light, hardly one of the leading men
among them could find an Eden at home, an Eve
in his lawful wife.
The doctrine openly avowed at Manlius was,
that with the old world which was then passing
away would go all legal bonds and rights ; that
old ties were about to become loosened, and old
associations to end ; including those of prince and
liege, of cleric and layman, of parent and child,
of husband and wife. These old rights were to
be replaced by new ones. A kingdom of heaven
was at hand ; and in that kingdom of heaven
every man was to be happy in his choice. And
it was not only right, but prudent, to prepare
betimes for that higher state of conjugal bliss.
The doctrine taught in the privacy of the love-
FIRST BURNT DISTRICT. 1 1
feast and the prayer-meeting was, that all the
arrangements for a life in heaven may be made on
earth ; that spiritual friendships may be formed,
and spiritual bonds contracted, valid for eternity,
in the chapel and the camp. Hence it became
quickly understood among them that the things
of time were of slight account even in this earthly
life ; and that the things of heaven were to be
considered as all in all. Not that any rule came
into vogue which either led, or looked like leading,
to a breach of the social law. On this point all
the witnesses speak one way. Judged by their
daily lives, Sheldon and his followers struck
the mere observer as men who lived by higher
rule and a better light than their neighbours
of the Lake country. If they sang of their
return from Babylon, it was with a staid and
sober joy. If they had escaped from bonds,
they saw that the world had still some claims
upon their conduct. From of old the letter
and the spirit had been at war; in their new
condition the Saints were called to bear witness
against the flesh ; yet the spirit and the letter
should be held to a fair account with each other
in their words and deeds. In truth, the first
tendencies of this Pauline Church were rather
12 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
towards an ascetic than towards an indulgent
life.
Among the persons whom this great revival had
brought into notice was Miss Lucina Umphreville,
of Delphi, a young lady of high descent, of good
ability, of engaging manner, and of great personal
beauty. She was an early convert, and her strong
will, aided by her sweet face, gave her a leading
influence in the sect. Lucina claimed to have
visions, intuitions, inspirations, on many points of
faith ; more than all others, on the relations of the
two sexes in the Redeemers kingdom. These
relations were the constant theme of her dis-
courses. Like Ann Lee, the foundress of Shaker-
ism, she held that in the day of grace all love
between the male and female must be chaste and
holy. Hence she raised up her voice against wed-
lock and the wedded rule. She held that the
females must not think of love ; that the men
must not woo them ; that the church must not
celebrate the marriage rite; and that those who
had already passed beneath the yoke must live as
though they had not.
Most of the women, I am told, fell into
Lucina's ways of thinking on this subject. No
article was adopted, for articles were not the
FIRST BURNT DISTRICT. 13
fashion in New York. But the young farmers
and artisans in the burnt district, who had thought
their course of love running smooth enough, were
suddenly perplexed by coyness and reserve on the
part of girls who had heretofore greeted them
with smiles and kisses. A mob of lasses began
to dream dreams, to interpret visions, directed
against love and marriage, as love and marriage
were understood by an unregenerate world. Some
of those girls who were old enough to have been
engaged, threw up their lovers. Younger girls
held off from the coarser sex. Married women
grew dubious as to their line of duty ; which
doubt and fear led, where the husbands happened
to be worldly-minded, into many a serious breach
of domestic peace. In fact, these female saints
had become so good that the young men of the
district said they were good for nothing.
Lucina Umphreville, the cause of so many
breaking hearts, was generally denounced by the
men as Miss Anti-marriage. But, like Elderess
Antoinette of Mount Lebanon, Lucina Umphre-
ville did not condemn the male and female saints
to live a life apart, and thus to become absolute
strangers to each other. Young herself, and full of
love for her kind, she allowed some play to the
1 4 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
higher affections, so long as these should be
exercised only in the Lord. Men and women
might be friends, though she could not permit
them to become lovers and mistresses. Under
Lucinas guidance, for in these things Sheldon
himself could not fight against her, a sweet and
perilous privilege was assumed by these New
York saints of entering into new and mysterious
bonds of the spirit. In this friendship of souls
the law was to have no voice, the flesh no
share ; male and female were to be brother and
sister only ; they might address each other in
sacred terms, and grant to their beloved the
solace of a holy kiss. Beyond these freedoms
they were not to go ; and even these sweet
privileges were to be put aside on any move-
ment in the heart suggesting an unchaste desire.
The love was to be wholly pure and free. No law
was ever laid down; but it was tacitly agreed
among the saints that these tender passages of
soid with soul were not to be made the subject of
idle talk. An air of silence and reserve, if not of
secresy, was thought to befit so solemn an encounter
of spirits ; and every one was expected to guard
in his fellow a right which he was free to exercise
for himself. So intimate a connexion of the male
FIRST BURNT DISTRICT. 15
and female saints was likely to become known by
a special and striking name. Some one in the
Church suggested that this new relation of souls
was that of the spiritual husband to his spiritual
bride.
So far as I can see, the name appears to have
been first used in New York by the Rev. Erasmus
Stone, a revival preacher at Salina, the famous salt
village lying on the shore of Onondaga Lake. In
the early days of the revival, Stone had seen a
vision of the night. A mighty host of men and
women filled the sky ; a sudden spirit seemed to
quicken them ; they began to move, to cross each
other, and to fly hither and thither. A great pain,
an eager want, were written on their faces. Each
man appeared to be yearning for some woman, each
woman appeared to be moaning for some man.
Every one in that mighty host had seemingly lost
the thing most precious to his heart. On waking
from his slumber, Stone, who had perhaps been
reading Plato, told this dream to his disciples in
the salt-works. When his people asked him for
the interpretation of his dream, he said, that in
the present stage of being, men and women are
nearly always wrongly paired in marriage ; that
his vision was the day of judgment; that the
16 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
mighty hosts were the risen dead, who had started
from the grave as they had been laid down, side
by side ; that the trouble which had come upon
them was the quick discerning of the spirit that
they had not been truly paired on earth ; that the
violent pain and want upon their faces were the
desires of every soul to find its natural mate.
Reports of this vision of the night, and of
Stone s interpretation of it, ran like a prairie-fire
through the revival camp. Sheldon adopted this
idea of a spiritual affinity between man and wo-
man ; declaring that this spiritual kinship might
be found by delicate tests in this nether world, and
that this relation of the sexes to each other extends
into the heavenly kingdom. No long time elapsed
before Stone and Sheldon were both found putting
their doctrine to the proof. In Salina, there lived
a married woman of some beauty and much in-
telligence, named Eliza Porter, who had been an
early convert to holiness, and a leading member of
the Church. Stone had need to see Eliza very
often ; for they led the prayer-meetings and
managed the church business in common. Stone
found in Eliza a help-meet in the Lord; and
as their hearts melted towards each other, they
began to find affinities in their souls which they
FIRST BURNT DISTRICT. 17
had not imagined. All the members of their
church perceived and justified the union of these
two souls. Sheldon, too, discovered that he had
been married by mistake to a stranger spirit, one
who would be happier when she got her release from
him, and found the original partner of her soul.
He found his own second self in Miss Sophia A.
Cook, a young unmarried lady living in the lake
country.
Lucina Umphreville held that this sort of friend-
ship between male and female saints in these latter
days and in the Perfect Church, was not only allow-
able in itself, but honourable alike for the woman
and the man. St. Paul, she said, had his female
companion in the Lord; and it was right for Sheldon,
Stone, and Rider to have each his female companion
in the Lord. The He v. Jar vis Rider is said to have
taken the young lady at her word, and to have
pressed his claim for a share in her mystic dreams.
True to her creed, the beautiful girl entrusted her-
self in spiritual wedlock to a man who very soon
proved by his acts that he was unworthy to have
been trodden beneath her feet ; and the state into
which she passed through this contract with Rider,
she represented to herself and to others as the
highest condition ever to be reached on earth.
VOL. II. C
?J
18 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
Two years after the convention of Saints in
Manlius, a meeting was called at Canaseraga, also
in the burnt district, at which Rider and Lucina
Umphreville were present, as the chief male and
female preachers. They travelled in company, and
held a common testimony as to the Lords doings
in their souls. They spoke of their affinity for
each other ; describing the state into which they
had entered as one of high attainment and lasting
peace. In this meeting they professed to have
gained a new and nobler ground of religious ex-
perience than any which they had previously
enjoyed ; asserting in their sermons that they had
now attained to the state of the resurrection from
the dead.
In this meeting, and in other meetings which
followed it, Rider and Lucina took the high ground
held by the followers of Ann Lee ; that of a pure
and perfect chastity being the only basis of com-
panionship between man and woman in the Lord.
Their strength was spent in a daily protest against
what they called the work of the devil in the flesh,
and many persons in the burnt district followed
them in this war upon the world and the world's
ways. Along the shores of Ontario, in a hundred
hamlets, in thousands of log-huts, good women
FIRST BURNT DISTRICT. 19
were in sore distress of mind about their duties
in what they had been told was a new dispen-
sation. Meetings were held in village inns ;
ministers were called ; religious experiences were
compared. A great trouble fell upon the district
— a trouble which was felt in every house ; the
only comfort to many distracted husbands being
a strong conviction that the world would shortly
pass away.
How long and loyally the Rev. Jarvis Rider
and Miss Umphreville kept to the spirit of their
union is not clear. Rider was the first to break
the bond, which he did in favour of Mrs. Edwards
of Bridgeport, on Lake Oneida, a sister in whom
he had found a still closer affinity of soul than
in Lucina. Then Miss Umphreville, parting from
her first spiritual spouse, entered into the same
kind of relation with the Rev. Charles Lovett, of
New England fame. This preacher was from Massa-
chusetts, and he had come among the New York
Perfectionists as a representative of the New
England Pauline Church.
20
CHAPTER III.
SECOND BURNT DISTRICT.
The second, and stronger branch of the Pauline
Church of America, sprang into life in Massachu-
setts, a hardier province for such a growth than
the Lake country of New York.
The movement began in the post township of
Brimfield, in the hilly Hampden county, about
seventy miles from Boston ; of which place the
Rev. Simon Lovett and the Rev. Chauncey
Dutton were the revival pastors. In and about
Brimfield there happened to be then residing a
number of clever, beautiful, and pious women.
Clever, beautiful, and pious women are not scarce
in New England ; but there chanced to be living
at that time in Central Massachusetts an un-
usual number of those bright and peerless creatures
who have power either to save or to wreck men's
souls. First among these female agitators stood
two sisters, the Misses Annesley, who had come
SECOND BURNT DISTRICT. 21
into this place from Albany, in New York ; bring-
ing with them the doctrine of salvation from sin,
together with Lucina Umphreville's theory of a
pure and holy life. These ladies had infected many
persons, females mostly, with their own ideas.
Next came Miss Maria Brown, a young lady of
good position and active mind. After her came
Miss Abby Brown, her sister, and Miss Flavilla
Howard, her friend. But the real mistress and
contriver of all the mischief which befell the Saints
in Brimfield, was Miss Mary Lincoln, a young and
lovely girl, of high connexions, of aspiring spirit,
and of boundless daring.
The parents of this young lady were among
the highest people in the place. Her father was a
physician, a man of science, and of the world.
The Saints of course called him an unbeliever,
though he had always been a member in the
Presbyterian Church. Her mother was pious, and
Mary had been trained in the severer truths of
her father's faith. The habits of her mind led
her to be a seeker after light. When the Misses
Annesley came into her neighbourhood, raising
their testimony against sin, she went to hear
them preach ; and, much against her fathers wish,
became a member of the Perfect Church ; entering
22 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
with her high spirit and dashing courage into
every movement connected with the work of grace.
She was so pretty, so seductive, so peremptory,
in her ways, that people bowed to her will, and
let her say and do things which no one else
could have said and done. She helped to make
piety the fashion. She rebuked the devil in high
places. She held out her hand — a very soft hand
— to the two preachers, the Eev. Simon Lovett and
the Eev. Chauncey Dutton, men who were striving
with all their might to snatch perishing souls from
hell. Petted by these clergymen, as such a young
ally was sure to be, she threw herself heartily into
all their schemes. When the cross had to be borne
she offered her neck for the burthen. When the
world was to be defied, she stood ready to endure
its wrath. When a witness was required against
shame, she put herself forward for the part. Her
father raged and mocked; but she heeded him
not. She felt happy in this new liberty of the
spirit, under which she could say what came
into her head, and do what came into her heart. In
short, she seems to have thought that the revival
flag had been given into her hands, and that she
had been chosen in the new heaven as Bride of
the Lamb.
SECOND BURNT DISTRICT. 23
Reports of what Lucina Umphreville was doing
in the burnt district of New York had begun to
excite the imaginations of these young and clever
girls. Was Lucina the only prophetess of God?
Could they do nothing to emulate her zeal ? Was
no door open to them, with their willing hands and
devoted hearts ? Were they to be dumb and silent
in the great day ? Could they find no work in the
Redeemer's vineyard ? Had they no stand to
make against that world which lies in eternal
enmity against Him ? Surely, a way could be
found if it were hotly sought. Had not the
promise gone forth" in the New Jerusalem : " Seek,
and ye shall find ; knock, and the door shall be
opened unto you ? "
They had read the story of the Brethren
and Sisters of the Free Spirit, which the Rev.
James Boyle had recently brought forward as an
example for the American Saints ; and they yearned
to imitate the self-denial of those vigorous old
German monks and nuns. They knew the old
controversies of the Church on the merit of killing
shame, and they desired to find out a way in
which to destroy their part of that sad evidence
of man's fall. Some of their friends, like Mrs.
Alice Tarbell, a married and experienced lady,
24 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
of good sense and keen perception, warned them
against these promptings of the spirit. Alice
was one of the saints who professed to believe in
the new doctrines of holiness and freedom ; her
husband was a pious deacon ; but she shunned the
more excited class-rooms and love-feasts, and kept
her eyes open to the facts of daily life. But the
younger women would take no counsel save their
own ; for they held the wisdom of the wise as dirt,
and read their own visions and imaginations as the
word of God. They whispered to each other about
the duty of bearing the cross of Christ ; and
they sought with earnest prayer for light as
to some plan by which they might prove their
hatred of the flesh, their contempt for law, and
their devotedness to God. At length, some pur-
poses began to shape themselves in the minds of
these young women, which took the world by sur-
prise, and called down upon them its abiding wrath.
Those who could see into this revival camp,
unblinded by its j^assions, were keenly alive to
the tendency already visible among its male and
female guards to something more than gospel
freedom. Friendship in the Lord appeared to
have its own set of looks and tones. Much whis-
pering in corners, lonely walks at sundown, and
SECOND BURNT DISTRICT. 25
silent recognitions, were in vogue. The brethren
used a peculiar idiom, borrowed from the Song of
Songs. A tender glance of the eye, and a silent
pressure of the hand, were evidently two among
the signs of this freemasonry of souls. All titles
were put aside ; every man was a brother, every
girl was a sister; except in those higher and
nearer cases, in which the speaker seemed to
have won the right of using a more personal
and endearing name. When the tie between a
preacher and his convert had become spiritually
close, the word brother passed into Simon, the
word sister into Mary. Here and there, a more
advanced disciple would offer and accept, like the
German Mucker, a holy kiss.
Under such circumstances, what more could
these young ladies do to defy the world and kill the
sense of shame ? The leading ministers happened
to be away from Brimneld. The Rev. Chauncey
Dutton was gone to Albany for counsel with the
Saints who had gathered around the Annesley
circle ; the Rev. Simon Lovett was in New Haven,
whither he had gone to consult with John H. Noyes,
the wisest and most shining light in the revival
host. The Rev. Tertius Strong, a very weak brother,
was doing duty in their place.
26 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
Noyes was known to have preached a doctrine
about the Second Coming, of which the Pauline
Church in Brimfield was eager to know more. This
man had a high reputation in the schools ; for he
had been a pupil of Andover and Yale, and was sup-
posed to be deep in the best theological learning of
the United States. The views which he taught
in public were such as strike the sense, and those
which he was said to hold in secret were such as
rouse and fascinate the soul. His open testimony-
was that man must be saved from sin by the power
of faith, and by nothing else. The secret science,
which he whispered only to the chosen few, had
reference to the rule of marriage in the kingdom
of God.
In the absence of Lovett and Dutton, Mary
Lincoln and Maria Brown put their young heads
together and hit upon their plan. They had often
told each other they must do something great —
something that would strike the world — something
that would bring upon them its wrath and scorn.
And now was the time to act their part.
27
CHAPTER IV.
THE AFFAIR AT BRIMFIELD.
While these young women were dreaming of
the things they were to suffer for .God s glory,
their pastor, Simon Lovett, came back from New
Haven, bringmg with him John H. Noyes, the
preacher of that new doctrine of the Second
Coming which they were burning to hear. That
doctrine was that the Second Coming had taken
place — as all the Apostles had taught that it would
take place — about forty years after His crucifixion
in the flesh. At New Haven, Simon Lovett had
fallen in with this view; and, being won to the
new faith, he was anxious that Noyes should
come over to Massachusetts and preach it to his
Brimfield flock.
A stir was made by his coming ; for the Be v.
Tertius Strong had girt up his loins for battle ;
putting on what he called his shield and buckler
against this teaching of the New Haven school.
On the night of Noyes' arrival, a meeting of
28 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
the Saints was called ; the chapel-room was
crowded to the door ; when Noyes, standing
up, and opening the pages of his New Tes-
tament, turned to St. Paul's Epistle to the
Galatians, chapter fourth, and read it ; saying
that it meant no more and no less than the words,
in their most literal sense, conveyed. Some of the
Saints went with him, and some stood oil! The
Rev. Tertius • Strong, his main opponent, was the
first to give way and admit the fact. Lovett had
been already won. Most of the young women
came into the truth, and the township rang with
news of the arrival of this great message, and
this bright messenger, to mankind.
The Rev. John H. Noyes, the hero of this move-
ment, saw with alarm the signs of a coining storm.
He found that among this group of beautiful
women, not a few of the more passionate creatures
were falling into a state of frenzy, over which he
feared that he could exercise no control. What
course was he to take ?
The habits of the place were pleasant. A bevy
of lovely girls hung on his words, spoke to him in
tones of affection, looked to him for that peace
which is more precious to the soul than love.
Some of them called him brother, some again
THE AFFAIR AT BRIMFIELD. 29
ventured to call him John. The leading spirits
were bolder still. On the lips of Maria Brown,
he was either John, or beloved John ; on those
of Mary Lincoln he was my brother, my beloved,
and my dearly beloved.
The preacher of holiness felt that in the
presence of these seductions he was but a man,
and liable to fall. These words of love made
music in his ear, this pressure of soft hands shot
warmth into his veins. In this tender society his
soul was hardly safe. Preacher, and hero of the
day, he was the centre of all talk, of all action,
of all confidence, among these Saints. Every man
came to him for counsel. Every woman brought
him her experience. Every one sought to touch
him in the innermost privacy of his heart. How
could he resist that seeking smile, that tender
grasp, that chaste salute ? Noyes went into his
room and locked his door. All night long he
watched and prayed. God, as he fancied, came to
his help ; for in the darkness of midnight, as he
lay in his lonely bed, a light was given him to see
the danger in which he stood ; and, jumping to
his feet, he found strength in his limbs to flee from
this place of danger while there was yet time to
save his soul from sin.
30 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
Long before it was yet day, he threw on his
clothes, crept out of the house, and found his way
across country, without saying one word to any
living soul in Brimfield. The month was February ;
snow lay thick upon the ground ; and he wished to
avoid the main road, from fear lest he should be
followed in his flight, and persuaded to turn back.
He took a path over hill and dale ; and facing the
icy wind, which came from a hundred crests and
pools, he pushed forward all day, all night, through
the broken country, and across the Connecticut
river, until he reached his father's house in Putney,
Vermont, after walking through the snow, in
twenty-four hours, a distance of sixty miles. His
feet were bruised and swoln, but his heart was
saved from a snare, his soul from death.
This sudden disappearance of the New Haven
preacher only fanned the fire at Brimfield; and
two days after his departure from the town, Mary
Lincoln and Maria Brown carried out a scheme, of
which, had he remained among them, he would
probably have been the hero. They found their
way into the Rev. Simon Lovett's room, awoke
him from his sleep, and suffered themselves to be
taken in the act.
They meant no harm, and, in a word, no harm
THE AFFAIR AT BRIMFIELD. 31
was done. But the scandal raised about their
heads was loud enough to satisfy all their craving
for scorn and hate. Who cared to ask about results,
when he could fasten, on such a fact ? Two young
and lovely girls, well born, well reared, professing
members of a church, had been found at midnight,
bent, as it seemed, on mischief, in their pastor's
room. That story flew like wind from Brimfield
to Boston, from Boston to New York. An old
custom, which exists (I believe) in Wales, as well
as in parts of Pennsylvania and New England,
permits, under the name of "bundling," certain
free, but still innocent endearments to pass between
lovers who are engaged. Some such endearments
were supposed to have passed between the Bev.
Simon Lovett and the two young ladies ; hence
the bundling at Brimfield became a common
phrase, as the fact itself was a common topic
of conversation in the religious world. Mary Lin-
coln and Maria Brown had their hearts' desire of
public abuse.
Dr. Lincoln, the high and dry physician,
was exceedingly wroth with his daughter Mary,
whom he charged with bringing dishonour upon
his house. Mary could not be made to see it ;
she said it was her cross ; she had done no
32 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
wrong ; but her father could not understand her
case. Dr. Lincoln carried her to the house of her
friend, Mrs. Alice Tarbell, who took her in, and
promised to take care of her for a little while.
When it was known that Mary had been sent
away from home (cast out, as they said, for
the sake of Christ) her friends came flocking to
her side ; Maria Brown, Abby Brown, Flavilla
Howard, and many more ; who began to praise the
Lord, to sing, and dance, and kiss each other in a
frantic way. Mary told these sisters in the Lord,
that her father was possessed by a devil ; and when
he came to see and talk with her in Mrs. TarbeH's
house, she smote him on the face in order to cast
it out. Next day she left her friend Alice, and
went to another house, with every symptom of in-
sanity upon her. During that day she announced
that the town of Brimfield would be burnt with
fire, like the cities of the plain, described in the
book of Genesis; and that all who would save
themselves alive must fly with her to the top of a
neighbouring hill. Maria Brown would have gone
with her friend, but her sister Abby clung to her,
and held her back. Mary Lincoln and Flavilla
Howard fled alone ; and in their hurry to escape
from the fiery hail, they threw off most of their
THE AFFAIR AT BRIMFIELD. 33
€lothes, and pushed through the thick scrub, the
heavy snow, and the dismal swamp, to the hill base.
There they paused and prayed, when the Lord
(as they afterwards said) hearkened to their voice,
withheld the fires, and let the judgment pass.
The poor girls lost their way, and wandered
about they knew not where. Deep in the night
they came to a farm-house, and begged a shelter
from the biting cold. They had thrown away
their shoes, and their clothes were torn to rags.
Their flesh was all but frozen ; and for many days
these hapless heroines lay in the log shanty at the
point of death.
VOL. II.
34
CHAPTER V.
CONFESSION OF FATHER NOYES.
Among the papers placed in my hands by American
divines, is a confession by Father Noyes of his
share in this Brimneld revival. Who and what
this man is, the world is, perhaps, sufficiently
aware : — lawyer, theologian, preacher, sinner, con-
vertite and saint — wanderer, outcast, writer, com-
munist— he has led a life of the most singular
moral and religious changes. For thirty-seven
years he has lived in the centre of revival pas-
sions; he has an eye quick to observe, a pen
prompt to note, the things which come before him.
At my request he has put the following confession
into ink : —
"It was in February of 1835, a year after my
conversion to holiness at New Haven, and six
months after we commenced publishing the Per-
fectionist, that I went up from New Haven through
CONFESSION OF FATHER NO YES. 35
Massachusetts with Simon Lovett. He had come
as a sort of missionary from the New York Per-
fectionists to convert me to their ideas, and I had
converted him to some of mine, especially to the
New Haven doctrine of the Second Coming. He
took me on this excursion to introduce me among
his spiritual friends in Southampton and Brimneld.
In both of these places there were groups of Per-
fectionists who had received their faith from the
New York school, through two ladies from Albany,
the Misses Annesley. They had begun to take
our paper (as indeed the whole New York school
had), but had not received our doctrines. I found
them prejudiced against our views of the Second
Coming and other important teachings of the New
Haven school ; and I preached what I believed
among them with much zeal and some contention.
Their leader, Tertius Strong, succumbed to my
reasonings, and soon the doctrine of the Second
Coming, and what was called the 'Eternal pro-
mise/ were received on all sides with great en-
thusiasm. I left them in the midst of their
enthusiasm, and went on my way to Vermont.
Lovett remained at Brimneld, and from him, and
from letters of Mary Lincoln and others, I after-
wards learned the following facts.
36 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
"Two days after I left, Chauncey E. Dutton
arrived from Albany. The excitement continued
and increased. Finally, it turned from doctrines
and assumed a social and fanatical form. Several
young women, who were really leaders of the
whole flock, became partially insane, and began
to act strangely. The disorderly doings that were
reported to me were, first, the case of ' bundling ;'
and, second, a wild night-excursion of two young
women to a mountain near the village. I had no
reason to believe that any act of real licentiousness
took place ; but that the * bundling' was per-
formed as a bold self-sacrifice for the purpose of
killing shame and defying public opinion. I con-
fess that I sympathised to some extent with the
spirit of the first letters that came to me about
this affair, and sought to shelter rather than con-
demn the young women who appealed to me
against the storm of scandal which they had
brought upon themselves. But in the sequel, as
the irregularities continued and passed on into
actual licentiousness, I renounced all sympathy
with them, and did my best in subsequent years
to stamp them out, by word and deed, and
succeeded.
" I was so near being actually present at this
CONFESSION OF FATHER NO YES. 37
affair, and as liable to be thought responsible for
it, and implicated in it, that I must now tell more
particularly how and why I left Brimfield.
" From my first contact with the Massachusetts
clique at Southampton, I had been aware of a
seducing tendency to freedom of manners between
the sexes. Liberties were in common use which
were seemingly innocent, and were certainly
pleasant, but which I soon began to suspect as
dangerous.
" At Brimfield there was an extraordinary
group of pretty and brilliant young women. By
my position as preacher I was a sort of centre, and
they were evidently in a progressive excitement
over which I had no control. I became afraid of
them and of myself. At length in my night-
studies I got a clear view of the situation, and
received what I believed to be 'orders' to with-
draw. I left the next morning, alone, without
making known my intention to any one, taking a
1 bee line' on foot through snow and cold — below
zero — to Putney, sixty miles distant, which I
reached within twenty -four hours. Thus I jumped
off the train in time to escape the smash ; and as
I was not either conductor or engineer, I felt no
responsibility for it, though I sympathized wilh
38 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
the wounded and did what I could to help
them.
* " I will add to this narrative three letters from
the package I received from Brimfield soon after
the catastrophe, to show by specimen the spirit of
the affair. The flight to the mountain is described
in the following letter : —
MARIA BROWN TO JOHN H. NOYES.
«' Brimfield, March, 1835.
" ' Beloved John,
" ' I write because Sister Mary Lincoln
desires me to relate her Friday evening's adven-
ture, for she is not able to write. During the
afternoon of that day she heard the voice of God
warning her to flee — escape for her life, for the
judgments of God awaited the place. Her voice
changed, and she was filled with power. She
waited in Little Best (a small village in Brimfield),
until evening, when another dear sister felt drawn
to follow her — Flavilla Howard. Others doubted,
thinking her crazy. She left there and came to our
house, Sisters Flavilla and Abby with her. Before
she got here she was drawn another way, but she
wanted me to accompany her. She felt that this
CONFESSION OF FATHER NO YES. 39
was against the leadings of the Spirit. I was
drawn to Sister Mary, but Abby clung to me and
wept, saying this would kill her. The dear girls
left me and went on, and none of our folks were
led to go after them. Some of the Saints were at
our house, but all were prevented going after them,
for some wise purpose. The night was dark. They
went across the meadows through water and mud
to escape the pursuers (for the people were in
search of her). She felt that the clothes she had
with her and those she had on, were a burthen.
She laid them all aside. They then escaped to the
west mountain, and when there she felt that she
received the wrath of God which awaited the
people — she suffered for the saints ; but they made
the woods ring with their loud hallelujahs to the
saint. She then felt willing to return, but knew
not which course to take. It rained, and she had no-
thing on save her dress and thin cape, without shoes.
She threw her dress over her head that Sister
Flavilla might see, and went over rocks, ploughed
ground — each step sinking in the mire — through
bush, brooks, and mud-holes, sometimes carrying
her sister, and arrived at a house about a mile
distant from ours at eleven o'clock, after travelling
six miles. She returned home in the morning, and
40 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
is now scarcely able to walk. Her friends think
her crazy. The Saints have all turned against us,
thinking we are led by the devil. They will turn
back and begin where they left off when you were
here. They pierce Jesus in us, but how long they
will do so I know not. I will, and can bear it in
silence until the Almighty shuts the mouth of the
vile accusers. We hold up the liberty of the
kingdom, but they think it of the devil. I am not
considered crazy, but vile. It is all right, and I
can say Amen.
" ' Maria/
" Mary B. Lincoln, who was really the leader
and master-spirit in the Brimfield emeute, was a
daughter of a respectable physician moving in
good society ; young, beautiful, and attractive.
Her letters show that her spirit was powerful
and aspiring enough to have made her either an
Ann Lee or a Joan of Arc. You will observe
signs, slight in the first letter, more decisive in
the second, of the presence of the ' whp-shall-
be-greatest' mania. Mary carried the flag, and
thought she was to be the foremost champion
of God. Her delusions did not pass away. She
chose, and married Chauncey E. Dutton. They
CONFESSION OF FATHER NO YES. 41
circulated as spiritual leaders in New York and
elsewhere for awhile, and finally became flaming
Millerites. I had a letter of warning from her,
dated March 1843, calling on me to prepare for
the end of the world. They both died long ago.
MARY B. LINCOLN TO JOHN H. NOYES.
" ' The New Jerusalem.
" ' Beloved, dearly Beloved,
" ' After bleeding, blistering, and scourging,
my strength is almost exhausted. The little that
remains I will devote to those who are dearer to
me than life. I know you love me and all the
dear people here, and to hear from any of us will
bless you, and a few lines from me will not be
less acceptable for being penned with a trembling
hand. I have been very sick. Life has been
almost extinct in me a number of times. I am
still weak, but strong enough to declare the
eternal victory of the spirit that dwelleth within.
Though temptations and trials of every kind
thicken around me, and my spirit has often been
weighed down by the tears and entreaties of
those who love me, yet I have not been left to
deny the faithfulness of my Father by retracing
42 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
a step of the way I have taken. I know in whom
I have believed. The everlasting Father has
married me to Himself in a covenant that is
stronger than death. Satan may rage and at-
tempt to deceive, but his last mask is on. His
time is short.
" ' You know not the. stir in this place the Lord
has made through Sisters Maria, Flavilla,, and me.
The accuser presents himself in every form to us,
but he is cast down. Christ gives power through
innocency to bind all who doubt us, and there are
none here who do not doubt. I am blessed with
speaking boldly about the work in my own soul. I
have no mock humility that will lead me to secrete
any of my Father's kindness to me or any of His
dear children. I am not afraid or ashamed to
receive the sons of God into my bosom, and love
them before the world, pleading for the insulted,
injured spirit of our Father in them. It is not
enough that we speak for God in Jesus or Brother
Paul. The devil would love to have us stop here ;
but it is for me to stand by Brothers John, Simon,
and Chauncey, and throw my arms round lovely
Maria and Flavilla, the sweet angel that forsook
all to go with me into the mountain ! Sister
Maria has related this trial to you. My Father
CONFESSION OF FATHER NOYES. 43
led me there to be crucified. I am not ashamed
of it, neither does it bow me down. The victory-
He has given me since exceeds all that I before
experienced. I see a great deal of company,
testifying almost unceasingly. All are bound
before me. Smith, the Universalist of Hartford,
called to see me. Had sweet liberty in talking.
He is a sweet little sinner, and I very affec-
tionately told him who his father was [i.e. the
devil]. He thought me a wonder.
" ' The Saints here wear very long faces. Fear
has taken hold of them — the fear to cross the
lives of wicked, vile men. I feel that the Lord
will lead His children to cross them, and so upset
the polluted government of our nation ; but if
God has ordained otherwise, I shall rejoice. Gladly
would I be anything and everything that I might
win souls. He has prepared me to stand unawed
before assembled millions, to tell the simple story
of a dying Saviour s love, shedding the same tears
that our elder Brothers shed over Jerusalem. But
if God has declared war we will say Amen.
Eighteen hundred years ago, God said, " Tis peace
on earth;" but men have dared to throw the lie
into the great Jehovah's face. His long-suffering
we adore, and if His justice cuts off the wicked
44 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
now, the eternal region shall sing with our hal-
lelujahs to it. Amen, Amen.
"'Mary.'
THE SAME TO THE SAME.
" ' Mount Sion, Eternity.
" ' My Brother,
" ' Your spirit being the only one in the
clay in which mine finds rest, you will not think
it strange that I write you so soon again. My
soul goes out after some mighty spirit in which it
may hide itself awhile from the storm. Through
the kindness of our Father, many and mighty are
my trials just now. The devil never spited me as
he now does, for I see his art, and fear not to
unmask him. I have seen the man of sin revealed
in the Perfectionists, in the building up of the
Jewish temple, and most manifest where its adorn-
ing is most lovely. Is it not so? Has not God
laid it even with the dust, and can aught but
Satan rebuild it? Has not God pronounced a
woe upon it ? And shall not we, His children, say
Amen ? I still try the Saints here. They say that
I am taking steps that another has not. I know
that my steps in the desert are not in the sand :
CONFESSION OF FATHER NOYES. 45
and if the Lord leads me in untrodden paths, I
shall go praising the God of Israel who is my guide.
I feel that He has led me past all but you, for He
will not permit me to have fellowship with any
other, but strengthens me with communion with
the spirits of the air. Yes, my brother, soon God
in me will stand in front of the battle. He is
mastering my strength by His burning love to war
with hell's blackest fuiy. God has shown me by
His wisdom, that by the artlessness of females the
armies of the aliens would be put to flight, and the
victory won. God has chosen weak things tc
confound the wise. Through Eve the war began ;
through Eves it is continued ; through them it
will be closed, and a declaration of Eternal Inde-
pendence made to the joy of all who sign it. You
see " I am for war." God has armed me hi a
manner that the world thinks does not become a
once timid female ; but according to the gift I
now receive, I act. When it pleases my Father to
make me more lovely, I shall be pleased to be so.
I feel that His work, through me, will be short and
mighty. My spirit is becoming too powerful for
its habitation. I stand almost alone here. Many
doubt me, and yet God has given me power over
all the Saints. I have as much liberty in meeting,
46 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
and am as much at home as in my father's kitchen.
The last one that I was at, the Lord led me and
Sister Maria, and Samuel T. to walk the floor, sing
" Woe, woe to Babylon," and talk and laugh as
much as we had a mind to. It was a trial to some
of them, but they could not help themselves. The
Lord gave me perfect power over them all in so
doing. I told them I should talk all night, if the
Lord led me to. Most of them are following after ;
God is leading them into the truth, yet they do
not know it. Deacon Tarbell is much blessed,
Sister Hannah is very sweet, and Sister Maria is
very strong and bold.
"'Mary.'
" To complete the history of the Brimfield affair,
I will add that, besides sending its seeds into New
York, it was partially reproduced in New Haven.
Lovett and Dutton circulated there ; and spiritual
mating had its run there, as at Brimfield and
elsewhere. Whether there was any bundling I
cannot say; I never resided in New Haven,
except on occasional visits, after I left with Lovett
in 1835. Elizabeth Hawley, who was in the midst
of the New Haven intrigues, says in a letter to
me, ' Simon Lovett first brought the doctrine of
CONFESSION OF FATHER NO YES. 47
Spiritual Wifehood among New Haven Perfection-
ists, after his bundling with Mary Lincoln and
Maria Brown at Brimfield. He claimed Abby
Fowler (a very estimable young woman of New
Haven) as his spiritual wife, and got her. She
died not long after of consumption. Simon then
married Abby Brown, sister of Maria, at Brimfield.
Terens Fowler, brother of Abby, married Miss
Tarbell of Brimfield, under the idea that she was
his Spiritual Wife.
"JohnH. Noyes."
48
CHAPTEE VI.
GOSPEL FKEEDOM.
From the day on which the New York Saints
sought fellowship with their New England friends,
the spirit of Mary Lincoln and Maria Brown ap-
pears to have passed into the colder children of
Lucina Umphreville, and even into that prophetess
herself.
Mary Lincoln, on recovering from her sickness,
came into the theory of Spiritual husbands and
Spiritual wives, as this theory had been taught
from Salina by the Rev. Erasmus Stone. She
found, however, that the Rev. Chauncey Dutton,
not the Eev. Simon Lovett, the hero of her Brim-
field scandal, was her natural mate. Hand in
hand Mary and Dutton travelled through the
country, staying with those who would receive
them, preaching to such as would come and hear.
They affected to travel as they said St. Paul had
travelled with his female comforter. The passions,
GOSPEL FREEDOM. 49
which were condemned in all men, were in their
own persons crucified and dead. Brit in the end,
these hot reformers of a carnal world came under
bonds so far as to be duly married in the church.
Maria Brown went over to New York ; where
she sought the friendship and guidance of Lucina
Umphreville, and kept herself free from many of
the delusions into which her old friends and neigh-
bours felL The Rev. Jarvis Rider, parting from
his Shaker-like bride, found in a married sister,
the wife of Thomas Chapman, of Bridgeport, on
Oneida Lake, a woman of yet closer spiritual
affinities to himself. Mrs. Chapman was a young
and pretty woman, who was liked by every one
for her charming ways and her kindness of heart.
An early convert to holiness, she had always been
a pillar of the church, and her house had been
open at all times to the Saints. When Maria
Brown came on a visit to the Lake district, Mrs.
Chapman invited her to stay at Bridgeport; and
not only Maria Brown, but Lucina Umphreville,
together with the Rev. Jarvis Rider and the Rev.
Charles Lovett. Chapman, her legal husband,
being engaged in digging the Chenango Canal,
was a good deal from home ; but he felt such
confidence in his fellow-saints, that he gave them
VOL. II. E
50 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
perfect liberty in his house. Rider took advantage
■of this confidence to persuade Mrs. Chapman that
she was his second self, his natural mate, and his
destined bride in the future world. On finding
such a pretension raised, Lucina Umphreville not
only gave up all her own claims on Rider, but
sanctioned, as it seems, the pleas which he had
now put forth to a special claim on the soul of
Mrs. Chapman. The woman, persuaded by her
clerical guests, consented to accept the position of
Rider's spiritual wife.
In like manner, the Rev. Charles Lovett pro-
posed a spiritual union with Lucina ; when the
woman who had been deserted by Rider gave
herself away into a second, and a happier heavenly
match.
Maria Brown sat by, alone, content to be
alone.
When Thomas Chapman came home from his
labour on the canal, and heard what had been
dore in his absence by these Saints, he knocked
the Rev. Jars^is Rider down, kicked him black and
blue, and thrust him out into the lane. His rage
was violent, but its force soon died away. How
he became reconciled to the preacher of Spiritual
wifehood I cannot pretend to say. Men, who do
GOSPEL FREEDOM. 51
not seem to me crazy, tell me that Chapman, when
he raised his hand against the revival preacher,
was stricken blind ; not in a mystical and moral
sense of the word, bnt that he really and com-
pletely lost his sight. One man tells me that
Chapman went to New York to consult an
oculist, and did not recover the use of his eyes
for many months. In this affliction he begged the
reverend gentleman's pardon, called him back into
the house, and threw himself on the floor in
agonies of shame for having dared to assert his
carnal mind in opposition to the will of God.
Still, when his eyes were better, he got rid of his
saintly guests, left the place of Ms shame, and
separated from his wife. Rider forgot his affinity
for the cast-away wife, and Mrs. Chapman being
a woman of delicate constitution, this strife be-
tween her husband in the flesh and her partner
in the spirit, put an end to her life.
In the meantime, Noyes had been quietly
preparing to launch on the world his own theory
of Spiritual wifehood. In his sermons he had
often hinted his dislike to the present system of
legal marriage, and of family life, as not being
sanctioned by the Holy Spirit. At length he put
the germ of his system into a letter, dated January
52 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
15, 1837, and addressed to David Harrison, of
Meriden, in Connecticut. A copy of this epistle
fell into the hands of Theophilus R. Gates, of
Philadelphia, who was then editing The Battle
Axe ; and in this periodical, the letter now known
as the Battle Axe Letter, and which claims to be
the Magna Charta of Pauline Socialism, first saw
the light of day.
the battle-axe letter.
" Dear Brother,
" Though the vision tarry long, wait ; it
will come. I need not tell you why I have
delayed writing so long, and why I am in the
same circumstances as when we were together.
I thank God that I have the same confidence
for you as myself. I have fully discerned the
beauty, and drank the spirit, of Habakkuk's re-
solution, ' Although the fig-tree shall not blossom,
neither shall fruit be in the vines ; the labour of
the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no
meat ; the flock shall be cut off from the fold,
and there shall be no herd in the stalls : yet
I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God
of my salvation/ Yea, brother, I will rejoice
GOSPEL FREEDOM. 53
in the Lord, though He slay me, yet will I trust
in Him. The present winter is doubtless a time
of sore tribulation to many. I see the Saints
laying off and on like the distressed ships at the
entrance of New York harbour, waiting for pilots ;
and I would advise them all, if I could, to make
a bold push, and ' run in ' at all events.
"For one, I have passed the Hook — my soul
is moored with an anchor sure and steadfast —
the anchor of hope ; and I am willing to do what
I can as a pilot to others : yea, I will lay down
my life for the brethren.
"As necessity is the mother of invention, so
it is the mother of faith. I therefore rejoice in
the necessity which will ere long work full
confidence in God, such confidence as will permit
Him to save His people in a way they have not
known ! In the meantime my faith is growing
exceedingly. I know that the things of which
we communed at New Haven will be accom-
plished. Of the times and seasons I know nothing.
During my residence at Newark my heart and
mind were greatly enlarged. I had full leisure
to investigate the prophecies, and came to many
conclusions of like importance to those which in-
terested us at New Haven. The substance of
54 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
all is, that God is about to set a throne on His
footstool, and heaven and earth, i.e. all spiritual
and political dynasties, will flee away from the
face of Him that shall sit thereon. The righteous
will be separated from the wicked by the opening
of the books and the testimony of the saints.
' The house of Jacob shall be a fire, and the house
of Joseph a flame, and the house of Esau for
stubble. . . . Saviours shall come up on Mount Zion
to judge the mount of Esau ; and the kingdom
shall be the Lord's! — Obadiah, 18, 21. Between
this present time and the establishment of God's
kingdom over the earth, lies a chaos of confusion,
tribulation, woe, etc., such as must attend the
destruction of the fashion of this world, and the
introduction of the will of God as it is done in
heaven.
"For the present, a long race and a hard
warfare is before the saints, i.e. an opportunity
and demand for faith — one of the most precious
commodities of heaven. Only let us lay fast hold
of the hope of our calling ; let us set the Lord
and His glory always before our face, and we
shall not be moved. I thank God that you have
fully known my manner of life, faith, purpose,
afflictions, etc., to the end that you may rest in
GOSPEL FREEDOM. 55
the day of trouble ; for I say to you before God,
that though I be weak in Christ I know I shall
live by the power of God toward you and all
saints. I am holden up by the strength that,
is needed to sustain not my weight only, but the^
weight of all who shall come after me. I will
write all that is in my heart on one delicate sub-
ject, and you may judge for yourself whether it
is expedient to show this letter to others. When
the will of God is done on earth as it is in heaven,,
there will be no marriage. The marriage-supper
of the Lamb is a feast at which every dish is.
free to every guest. Exclusiveness, jealousy, quar-
relling, have no place there, for the same reason
as that which forbids the guests at a thanksgiving ■
dinner to claim each his separate dish, and quarrel
with the rest for his rights. In a holy community
there is no more reason why sexual intercourse-
should be restrained by law, than why eating and
drinking should be ; and there is as little occasion
for shame in the one case as in the other. God'
has placed a wall of partition between the male
and female during the apostasy for good reasons,,
which will be broken down in the resurrection
for equally good reasons ; but woe to him who
abolishes the law of apostasy before he stands.
56 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
in the holiness of the resurrection. The guests
of the marriage supper may have each his
favourite dish, each a dish of his own procuring,
and that without the jealousy of exclusiveness.
I call a certain woman my wife ; she is yours ;
she is Christ's ; and in Him she is the bride of
all saints. She is dear in the hands of a stranger,
and according to my promise to her I rejoice.
My claim upon her cuts directly across the
marriage covenant of this world, and God knows
the end. Write, if you wish to hear from me.
" Yours in the Lord."
The publication of this document made a noise
in the Church hardly less loud than the Brimfield
affair had made in the world : the fruits of it
are found at Wallingford and Oneida Creek.
CHAPTER VII.
THE PAULINE CHURCH.
All these members of the Pauline Church, and
nearly all these advocates of Spiritual wifehood, pre-
tend to find some sanction for their doctrine in the
teaching and the practice of St. Paul. They say St.
Paul had felt that mystic companionship of male
•and female in the Lord which Lucina Umphre-
ville made known to the Saints of New York,
which Father Noyes has carried out in his Bible
Families at Wallingford and Oneida Creek, and
which Warren Chace describes as the only bond
uniting a spiritual husband to a spiritual wife.
Paul, it is commonly said, was not a married
man ; not married, that is, in the carnal sense
before the law ; yet he would seem, from his own
epistle to the saints at Corinth, to have been ac-
companied on his journey by a woman who was
a daily helper in his work. In terms which no one
has yet been able to explain away, and which,
58 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
since all our churches are drawing more and more
upon the Pauline writings, they hold that men
should try to understand, St. Paul affirmed his
right to the fellowship of this female partner
against those cynics and scorners in the infant
church who made his personal conduct matter of
reproach. What was this woman's relation to
St. Paul ? Was she his wife ? Was she one who
stood to him in the place of a wife ? Was she as a
sister only? The Greek word (1 Cor. ix. 5) by
which the apostle names her — gynaika — means
either wife or woman, like the French word femme,
and the German word frau. From the earliest
times in which critics wrote, men have been divided
in opinion as to the sense in which the term adel-
phen gynaika was used by Paul. Clement of Alex-
andria seems to have assumed that Paul would not
have taken a female companion with him on his
travels unless she had been his wife. Tertullian, on
the other side, asserts that the woman who went
about with him was not his wife, but a holy sister,
who travelled with him from place to place, doing
just that kind of work in the early Church which
only a woman can effect. Which is the truth ?
All critics conclude, for the text is plain so far,
that Paul and Barnabas claimed the privilege of
THE PAULINE CHURCH. 59
keeping the company of certain holy women, with
whom they appear to have lodged and lived. That
the connexion between these men and women
was, in their own belief, free from blame, no one
will doubt ; but the facts which must have placed
this connexion beyond the reach of honest, open
censure, are not so clear. One word from Paul to
the effect that the parties were married would
have silenced every tongue ; but Paul did not
speak, and did not write that word. What, then,
are we to infer from his silence ? The loud voice
of antiquity asserts that Paul was a single man.
Paul himself tells us that he was accompanied,
and had a right to be accompanied, by a female
friend. What then ?
The early Fathers of the Church had to meet
a question which most of our writers on St. Paul
have agreed to shirk. Hilary and Theophy-
lactus, writing in distant countries and distant
periods, describe the two apostles, Paul and Bar-
nabas, as being attended by rich women, whom
they had converted, and whose duty it was to cook
for them and comfort them, as well as to carry the
gospel light into the harems of princes and wealthy
persons. This view, I think, is that adopted by
the Church. Clement himself, though he says these
GO SPIRITUAL WIVES.
women were married to the Apostles, seems to
think that they went about with their apostolic
husbands, not as wives in the flesh, but as sisters
in the spirit. Thus we are driven back upon the
text, which tells us little, and on the biographers
of Paul, who tell us less.
Our usual renderings of the Greek term, by
which St. Paul denotes this partner of his toils,
extend the meaning so as to make him describe
the connexion as chaste and holy. Thus, the Latin
Vulgate makes St, Paul speak of his partner as
mulierem sororem, a form which has been copied
with only slight variations into many tongues.
The Italian version gives it as donna sorella ; the
Brussells version reads, une femme qui soit notre
sosur (en) Jesus Christ; the French Protestant
version, une femme dent re nos sceurs ; the Spanish
version, una muger hermana ; the Portuguese,
huma mulher irmd. Luther renders the word by
eine Schivester zum weibe. Our English versions
lean to the same conclusion. Wycliffe translates
gynaika " a womman, a sister ; " Tyndal, " a sister
to wife ;" the Genevans, "a wife being a sister ;"
and the authorized translators, " a sister, a wife."
But this has not been always done. Some of the
earliest and some of the latest writers on St. Paul
THE PAULINE CHURCH. 61
have taken the other sense ; reading the Greek
text as they would have read any other, by plain
and open rules. Clement of Alexandria classes
Paul with Peter and Philip as the three married
apostles; Conybeare translates adelphen gynaika
into " a believing wife," and Stanley into " a Chris-
tian woman as a wife."
The Pauline churches of Massachusetts and
New York have found an easy way through what
has proved so hard a path to scholars in Europe and
Asia. They pretend that St. Paul lived with the
woman who travelled with him in grace, and not
in law ; in a word, that he was to her a spiritual
husband, that she was to him a spiritual wife.
Is it not strange that a thousand and one
writers on the life of St. Paul should have
shirked this deeply interesting question of his
relation to his female companion ? Yet this is the
singular fact. Conybeare and Howson have not a
word to say about it ; Whitby has an unmeaning
note, in which he says that either Paul had a wife,
or Barnabas had a wife, or one of these Apostles
might have had a wife, since no law forbade him to
marry if he had so pleased. The writers in Smith's
Bible Dictionary, and in Kitto's Encyclopaedia of
Biblical Literature, are equally reserved. Is this
62 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
strange silence wise ? What is to be gained for
the Church by clouding this central fact in the
great Apostle's life ?
The Saints of New York find the same sort of
Spiritual love between men and women in the
Agapse, those Feasts of Love which are so fre-
quently mentioned both by friends and enemies of
the early Church.
Hardly any subject connected with the plant-
ing of Christianity is obscured by darker clouds
than the origin and history of the Agapse ; yet
enough, they urge, is known to prove that the
Feasts of Love were the results of a new sym-
pathy having been introduced by the Church into
the relations of sex and sex.
They say the social order founded in Judea
was, in part at least, communistic ; the religious
order being made to complete, and perhaps to
supersede, that old political and domestic order
which admitted of private property and personal
wives. Life in the Church was offered for accep-
tance as a higher form of spiritual perfectness
than life in the family ; a proposition which, being
assumed and granted, it is easy to urge that the
terms brother and sister in the faith expressed
a nobler relation than those of husband and wife.
THE PAULINE CHURCH. 63
It is safe to say that no such doctrines can be
found in either the Sermon on the Mount or any
other teaching of our Lord, except so far as the
commands to love one another, to give alms to the
poor, to speak well of all men, to prefer the gifts
of heaven to those of earth, and to bear ail things
for the meek and lowly, can be made to look like
communism. These Pauline churches urge, that it
is clear, from the doctrine taught by the Apostles
after Pentecost, that these young reformers thought
good to abolish private property in favour of the
church, and that for a while, in a narrow zone,
they met with some success. " The earth," they
said, " is the Lord's." In the old times man had
held his property in trust, but the trust was ended,
since the Lord had come in person to possess His
own. All monies were to become as the sacred
shekel, which men could no longer use for their
private need.
Most of these young reformers of family life
had been pupils of the Essenes before they be-
came believers in our Lord ; of those Essenes who
had dwelt in ravines of the wilderness, in dry and
desert places, among the limestone rocks above
Jericho and Engedi; and who not only held strange
doctrines as to love and marriage, but taught
64 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
that all the children of God should feed from
the same store, and have all their goods in common.
John the Baptist had lived among these Essenes
and learned their doctrine. Peter, John, and
Andrew, young men from Capernaum, who be-
came founders of Jewish Christianity, had been
the Baptist's hearers. An Essenic spirit dis-
played itself in every act of the infant Church ;
the Apostles taking that counsel of our Lord to
a rich man tempted by his wealth, " If thou wilt
be perfect, go and sell that thou hast and give
to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in
heaven/' as a rule for all. In their eyes, private
wealth was not only a snare to the soul, — such as
love, rank, beauty, power, health, in fact any earthly
good, might become, in its abuse — but a thing
stolen from God, and consequently accursed in
itself, and incompatible with a holy life. There-
fore, say the brethren of Mount Lebanon, and
the Bible families of Oneida Creek, the Apostles
put it down. Did they also meddle with the
relations of man and wife ? The American saints
say boldly, yes ; they introduced, in their Agapse,
that spiritual wedlock which is now being revived
in the Christian Church.
65
CHAPTER VIII.
THE AGAPJE.
What were those Agapge ? Were they, as the
heathen said, but a new form of idolatry, a faint
image of the banquets held by the Greeks in
honour of their gods ?
We hear that they were social gatherings of
the faithful, who met either in each other's houses,
when they were rich, or in such chapels and syna-
gogues as they could then command. We know
that they were attended by men and women,
and that the male and female saints had the
privilege of saluting each other with a holy kiss.
We know that these meetings were festive ; that
they were enlivened by singing and playing ; that
they were called indifferently Feasts of Love and
Feasts of Charity ; and that they bore in their
outward form only too close a resemblance to
some of those Pagan rites, of no decent origin,
in which many of the converts had been trained.
VOL. II. F
66 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
The song, the feast, and the fraternal kiss, lent
ready hints for a Pagan sneer ; and the AgapaB
were ridiculed by philosophers and cynics, long
before the day arrived for their suppression by an
outraged Church.
Of course, in judging the Agapse it is not
right that we should follow the many accusa-
tions of their Gentile foes. If much was said
against them by heathen writers, much was
offered in their defence by the Greek Fathers.
Tertullian, Felix, Origen, stood by them, first
and last ; champions of whom any cause might
well be proud. Yet, the main facts on re-
cord about them remain. They fell away from
their purity ; they took a Pagan taint ; the fra-
ternal kiss became carnal; in speech, if not in
conduct, they incurred the suspicion of licentious-
ness ; and the Church, though she covered them
against assaults from without, had in the long run
to put them down, in order to preserve her own
good name.
What was the cause, what the occasion, of
this suppression by the Church of a feast which
many persons connected very closely with the
Last Supper ?
At first, there can be no doubt that these
THE AGAP^E. 67
Agapse were free from offence. It is true
that they had been conceived in a communistic
spirit; that they sought to place the life of a
believer above the life of a non-believer; and to
absorb the sentiment of home in the sentiment
of the Church. The gathering of the faithful
was to supersede the gathering of . the tribe.
Dinner was to rise into a sacrament ; and the
feast of the brethren was to take the place pre-
viously occupied by the family meal. Brethren
and sisters in the Lord were to meet in either
the guest-room of the house or in the aisle of the
church ; they were to spread out the meats and
drinks which they had brought with them ; they
were to sing a hymn of praise and joy together ;
they were then to call in the poor, the lame, and
the old ; they were to sit down at table, rich
and poor, healthy and sick, together ; they were
to tell each other of the Lord's doings in their
own souls ; they were to call for lamps when
the night came down ; they were to wash hands,
and to kiss each other, male and female, with
a holy kiss. The feast was to begin with psalms
and end with prayer. " This Love-feast," said
Tertullian, " is a support of love, a solace of purity,
a check on riches, a discipline of weakness." In
68 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
the early days of our religion, this praise was
undoubtedly well acquired; for the Agapse did
some good that could hardly have been achieved
by any other means. They made men act like
brethren. They brought a spirit of practical
friendship into the new society ; and set a
permanent, pattern of equality in the presence of
God. What more they did, of a kind which the
Church could not finally indorse, is matter of
suspicion only. It would seem to have been
understood that the brethren and sisters in these
Agapse were bound together by a closer tie than
that which had previously linked the members
of an ordinary Jewish and Pagan household ;
though the new bond of union was probably
recognised in a mystical rather than in a carnal
sense.
These feasts were held on three occasions, if
not on more, — the celebration of a marriage, the
solemnity of a funeral, the anniversary of a
martyrdom. In the first and second cases, they
were given in private homes; in the third case,
either in the church, or in the precincts of a
church. The first was gay, the second serious, the
third both. In all there were eating, drinking,
singing, kissing. In the Love -feasts kept in
THE AGAP^E. 69
honour of the martyrs, a peculiar sentiment was
developed ; for all the Saints who took part in
them were mystically supposed to become of one
kindred in the Lord ; brothers and sisters, standing
towards each other in closer relation than those of
ordinary husbands and wives.
Soon, too soon, these meetings fell into abuse.
The holy kiss became a cover for unholy thoughts,
and the feast in which every one was to break
bread with his fellow, declined into a licentious
orgy. In vain the Church essayed to stem the
liberty of fraternal kissing, and to crush the
excesses in meat and wine. An old rule, preserved
for us in Athenagoras, laid it down, that if any con-
vert should kiss a woman a second time, because
he found it pleasant, the act was sin. The chaste
salutation, it was said, should be given with the
greatest care ; for if any impure thought was in
the heart, while the lips were pressed, the kiss
became adultery, and put the soul in peril of eter-
nal fires. Athenagoras quotes this rule together
with the gloss upon it from Holy Writ, in which
they are not to be found. Perhaps they figured in
some lost writing, which the Greek Church desired
to impose on the people as of equal authority with
Holy Writ. The rule itself implies a change of
70 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
manners, and its citation, in a formal defence of
Christian practice, hints the general suspicion in
which the Agapse had then come to be held, at
least in Greece.
How, indeed, could these Feasts of Love escape
suspicion, when men who had been worshippers
of Baal and Aphrodite came into union with the
saints? In the temples of Corinth and Antioch,
these men and women had been familiar from their
youth with seductive and immoral rites ; the old
leaven seems to have forced itself into the new
societies ; and even while the Apostles yet lived,
those evils had begun to appear, which at a later
period compelled the reforming leaders to prohibit
the celebration of Love-feasts in the Church. St.
Paul complained to his friends of Corinth, that in
these Agapae they gorge and drink, while they
neglect to invite the poor. One sees from his
anger, that in Greece the converts kept to their
habit of indulging in the old Sophist's supper,
on pretence of holding the Love-feast of a new
dispensation. St. Peter and St. Jude, as well as
St. Paul, proclaimed the abuses to which the
Agapse had already given rise in their day.
But the abuse of a dear privilege, say the
American Saints, does not imply its abandonment
THE AGAP^E. 71
for ever. If the Feast of Love were good in the
Apostolic times, it must be so in every age which
shall resemble the Apostolic times. God loves and
rewards His children according to the measure of
their virtue. That which is wrong in a state of
nature may be perfectly right in a state of grace.
72
CHAPTER IX.
EXPERIENCE OF TWO ELDERS.
A rage for special and unlawful friendships be-
tween the male and female saints had been long
familiar to sage American pastors, as one of the
bad growths to be expected in the revival field.
I shall cite two little histories of this passion.
The first story is that of Elder Moore.
Elder Moore, of Spring Street Church, in New
York city, a shining light among the Presbyterian
flock, in speaking of his religious trials to George
Cragin, of the New York Moral Reform Society,
described the effect of his ghostly wrestlings with
repentant sinners on his own affections. One of
Moore's penitents was a young lady named
Miss Harding, the daughter of rich and worldly
people, who had brought her up to the enjoyment
of music, dancing, comedies, dinners, dress, and
horses. On these passing vanities her mind was
fixed, to the grievous peril of her immortal soul.
EXPERIENCE OF TWO ELDERS. 73
By chance she became a visitor in his class ; her
manner pleased him ; and he felt his heart yearn
softly towards the rich and lovely girl. At the
close of his exercises she was deeply moved ; she
seemed to be asking in her silence for a little help.
Taking her hand in his, Moore said to her : " If you
go on, I will help you in my prayers." From that
moment she had a place in his thoughts, from which
she could not be driven away. Her name was
on his lips when he rose, and when he lay down.
A tender bond grew up between them, for when
he strove with God on her behalf, a feeling sprang
into his heart akin to that which he felt a man
must have for a sister, for a spouse. Being a
single man, Moore led in the great city a lonely
and gloomy life. Cragin met him one day in the
street, and seeing him radiant with unusual joy,
accosted him. "She has triumphed!" said the
elder. " Have you seen her, then ? " asked Cragin,
who thought his friend unlikely to have ventured
to her house. " No," said Moore. " Heard from
her?" "Not one word," he answered with a
smile ; " but I am sure that what I say is true."
That night a meeting was held for prayer in
Spring Street Church, to which Miss Harding
came, and told him the story of her call. As she
74 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
dwelt on the struggles in her soul — through which
she had passed to victory, Cragin smiled ; her tale
was a perfect copy of what he had been told in
the street by Moore. For the moment these two
persons had been drawn together so close, that
they seemed to have but one nervous system.
Moore professed to have had many such pass-
ages of the Spirit ; this dark and celibate man,
unlovely in his person and his life, enjoying a
glorious sense of celestial bridals with a host of
fair and penitent women. One day, a peculiar
feeling came upon him, for which nothing, either
in the circumstances or in his state of mind,
could fairly account. The Lords Supper was
being observed in Spring Street Church, and as
one of the elders he was engaged in distributing
the bread and wine. More than the usual crowd
were present, for several young men and women,
newly brought in, were to take their first sacra-
ment that day. As he moved about the church,
he became conscious of a singular swelling in his
heart. His pulse beat quicker, his eyes opened
wider. All through the morning he had been happy
in his work, and blessed with a delicious sense of
peace. Why was he now disturbed with so strange
a joy? He longed to embrace the brethren; to
EXPERIENCE OF TWO ELDERS. 75
throw himself into the sisters' arms. He felt a
strange love for the young girls who were kneeling
at his feet, and taking from his fingers the bread
and wine. This love, he knew, was like the love
which he felt for his heavenly Father. It sprang
from the earth, but it knew no taint of sin. He
felt that, in a mystical way, every one of these
fair penitents was to him, in that moment, as a
sister and a spouse.
That day's experience of the Lords Supper
set the elder thinking on the love which is sym-
bolised by bread and wine, and wondering whether
a time would ever come when these symbols would
be replaced by another type.
The second story is that of the Rev. John B.
Foot.
Foot, a young man of high promise, had been
for some time a student of William's College,
Williamstown, Massachusetts, when the fierce re-
vival of 1832 broke out; and Dr. Griffin, a
preacher of extraordinary force, who came to
labour among the college pupils, had set his heart
on fire. Foot was converted to a sense of his
lost condition. Eight or ten of his companions
answered, like himself, to the preacher's call ;
they met for prayer in their own rooms ; they
76 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
held forth in public ; they quitted the college,
without waiting to complete their course; they
began to travel about the country, calling on
the people to flee from the wrath to come.
Gifted with powers of speech, Foot became a
shining light in the city street, and in the forest
camp ; few of the young revival preachers having
more to say, or knowing better how to fire the
souls of shepherds and woodmen. On the wild
skirts of Ohio, among the rude squatters in the
backwood, he made for himself a name of note.
Growing in grace as he grew in years, he be-
came a convert to Hiram Sheldon's doctrine of
salvation from sin, and to the social theory which
seems to have been connected in. every man's
mind with that doctrine of the final establish-
ment of heaven on earth. The Rev. Charles
Mead, his friend and fellow-preacher, went along
with him in his course; rousing the rough
squatters into fervour, and calling down the
blessings of all good men upon their work.
Six years after this conversion to holiness, the
two reverend gentlemen, Foot and Mead, being
out in what was then the Far West, paid a
visit to Foot's married sister, a woman who was
working with them in the spirit. Mead and this
EXPERIENCE OF TWO ELDERS. 77
lady soon discovered that they were spiritual pairs,
mated to each other from the beginning of time ;
a secret which they revealed to Foot and to the
lady's husband ; both of whom fell on their
knees and prayed for light in this new peril which
had come upon their faith. The cup was very
bitter, the rod was very sharp, the goad was very
strong. But what is man that he should turn
against the goads ? Heaven's will must be done
on earth ; and the only question mooted in this
pious household was, whether this thing which
had been made known to them was the work of
Heaven. After much and sore contention of the
spirit, both Foot and the husband thought they
saw their way. Death is the term of legal wed-
lock. In the resurrection there is neither marry-
ing nor giving in marriage. And had not the end
of all legality arrived ? Were not the Eev. Charles
Mead, the woman, and her husband, saints who had
entered on the heavenly life ? To them, were not
the world and its rules as things of the past ?
The reign of sin was over; and with the reign
of sin had gone all contracts made in the name
of life and death. What death could do for
them was done; and every contract which" death
could break was already broken and annulled.
75 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
On this view of the matter, they agreed to let
the woman and her spiritual lover have their
way.
But the squatters and teamsters living out
West, not having been saved from sin and born
to a new life, felt bound to resent this arrange-
ment in their neighbour's house ; and when
a child was born of this spiritual pairing,
they seized their axes and firelocks, broke into
the log shanty, collared the three male saints,
stript them to the skin, smeared them with
tar, rolled them up in feathers, and set them on
a rail.
This matter came before a court of law, in
which Mead defended himself in person ; but the
judge agreed with the mob that a great offence had.
been committed by the reverend gentleman against
public morals. Mead was cast in damages, and
sent to gaol.
Foot held fast to his view that in this sad
affair he had done no more than his duty,
since he felt sure that Mead, in living with his
sister in all the freedom of bride and groom,
was carrying into effect the holiest ordinance
of God. This was what he said to his religious
friends. Of course, the transaction made some
EXPERIENCE OF TWO ELDERS. 7.9
noise in the revival camps ; perhaps, in the
end, it weakened Foots power as a preacher; but
for a long time after Mead's trial and imprison-
ment, this reverend gentleman was well known as
a leader in the conventicles of Massachusetts and
New York.
80
CHAPTEE X.
worden's confession.
Marquis L. Worden, a staid and sober person,
fifty-five years old, is a married man, and the
father of a family. I made his acquaintance in
New York State. He was a farmer of good
standing, and of fair education for his class. He
lived in the first burnt district ; and his reli-
gious trials, which, up to a certain point in his
life, were those of many thousands of his country-
men (a fact to give them value in the eyes of all
social students), are told in the following paper,
which he drew up for me at my request :
"New York, Dec. 15, 1866.
" In undertaking to give you my recollections of
Spiritual wifehood, I must necessarily relate more
or less of personal history and experience ; and at
best I may not be able to throw much light on a
worden's confession. 81
subject wrapped, as I think this is, in the mystery
of religions enthusiasm.
" It is common with religious sects, and espe-
cially with individuals of the highest spiritual
attainments, in times of fervent zeal, to think of
God and Providence as arranging their future in re-
ference to social companionship. They have come
into the presence of God and the powers above,
and therefore recognise a higher law over their
impulses and passions, and offer their hearts to its
guidance rather than to the law of human ordi-
nances. Thus it can be seen how wives might be
claimed under the prerogatives of the Spirit.
"I was born in 1813, at Manlius, Onondaga
County, New York. It was about the time I was
twenty-one (1834) that I was baptized by immer-
sion, and taken into full communion with the
Methodist Episcopal Church. In the last days of
the same year, I became a convert to Methodist
Perfectionism. So I consider this as a sort of
pivotal period from which I look backward and
forward in my history. To me the year 1834
was throughout a year of earnestness, devotion,
and religious activity. Revivals prevailed in
the neighbourhoods and region round about
Manlius, and through the country in which the
VOL. II. G
82 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
New Measure Evangelists, such as Luther
Meyrick, Horatio Foot, and James Boyle, led
the way, and it was my pleasure to unite in
zeal and effort with them, under the Union
religious sentiments which were popular at the
time. I did not know anything of Perfectionism
until the fall of 1834, although the Sheldons and
others in Delphi, hut fifteen miles distant, had
been testifying to salvation from sin for a year or
more. Martin P. Sweet and Jarvis Eider of De
Ruyter village, near Delphi, became Perfec-
tionists under the Sheldons' preaching, and tra-
velled together as apostles, preaching from place
to place, or, as they called it, bearing witness to
salvation from sin. They went to Syracuse, to
Owego, and finally came to Manlius' Centre, where
the Cook and Mabie families, who had been
agitated by revivals during the summer, received
them and were converted. By and by I came
in contact with them, .and received one or more
of the first numbers of the Perfectionist, then
recently published in New Haven. The perusal of
these papers, together with the testimony of these
persons, led me to desire, through new convictions
and aspirations, an experience both deeper and
higher than I had attained, and it was joyfully
worden's confession. 83
realised at about the close of the year. I had a
calm trust in God and grateful sense of deliver-
ance ; had no disorderly intentions ; and supposed
I was still a Unionist or Methodist; but the
people who were called by these names did not
receive my testimony, and their coldness sent me
to the genial warmth of Perfectionists, with whom
I henceforth affiliated.
" I can conscientiously say that those early
manifestations of New York piety were charac-
terised by earnestness, zeal, and power ; and that
the influence of individuals by their faith and
daily life was convincing to their neighbours that
they held a holier faith, and lived better lives, than
common men. They believed in salvation from
sin ; that ' whosoever is born of God doth not sin,
and cannot sin because he is born of God/ and has
no disposition to sin ; that ' whosoever sinneth is
of the devil.' They believed that they were led
by the Spirit. They rejoiced in deliverance from
what they called Babylonish captivity, or the
legality of the churches, and no doubt this sen-
timent finally affected their feelings and practice
in various ways, and especially was applied to
domestic and social relations. Here we come to
the beginning of the Spiritual-wife theory.
84 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
" There was in Delphi an early believer, Lucina
Umphreville by name, — a young woman of fair
appearance, good ability, and of prepossessing
manners, who seemed to set herself up as a sort of
Ann Lee, the advocate of spiritual love, in opposi-
tion to carnal love, Lucina rejected marriage.
" I came under this anti-marriage theory and
influence, and have reason to believe it was
common throughout my acquaintance. But during
its prevalence, the idea of special companionship of
the male with some particular female existed in a
silent, undemonstrative way, and found expression
occasionally. I remember the impression I was
under, from what I heard in some quarters, that
this lady champion of no-marriage and no-inter-
course herself was at one time considered the
better half in spiritual union with Jarvis Rider,
because ' the man was not without the woman in
the Lord/
" This spiritual union too, so far as I recollect
my impressions, was conceded to be a state of high
attainment, for Lucina always quoted the text,
e They that are accounted worthy to obtain that
world do not marry, but are as the angels of God/
So the relation was considered sacred, pure, and
spiritual.
wokden's confession. 85
"In the spring of 1836, Maria Brown, of
Brimfield notoriety, came to Manlius Centre.
At that period some changes had come over these
peculiar theories and relations of the brethren
and sisters. Jar vis Rider had become much
attached to a married woman, a sister whom we
all very much appreciated and loved for her
beauty of character and goodness of heart. At the
same time, Miss Anti- Marriage (Lucina Umphre-
ville) was appropriated by Charles Lovett in the
same sense as Brother Rider had previously held
her. Meanwhile the married sisters husband
became disturbed and anxious, and in a fit of
mad jealousy took his horsewhip, and applied
it furiously to Brother Rider's back, and sent
him in haste out of doors. But afterwards,
through compunction of conscience and other
influences, this furious brother repented, and re-
stored Brother Rider to his family and confidence,
with confessions, regrets, and humiliations, and
the course of love ran smooth again. But in
the sequel there was some reason to believe that
the relation became so far carnal as to lay just
foundations for scandal.
" I do not know that the Spiritual- wife theory
was organised and put in operation by these or
86 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
any other similar transactions before and after
them, but that phraseology was used to some
extent among us. My impression is that its
origin might be traced to reports and scandals
coming in from Palmyra, Wagnelo, N.Y., where
Joe Smith, since about 1829, had been developing
Mormonism. I notice in the History of the
Mormons that mention is made of Smith's in-
ducing several women to cohabit with him whom
he called Spiritual Wives. The time is given as
1838, and it was not until 1842 that he received
his revelation authorising polygamy. But I have
the impression that there were in circulation
stories about his Spiritual Wives long before that
date.
"Whether there was anything of account, in
theory or practice, beyond such incidents as I
have mentioned, to indicate the inauguration of
Spiritual Wifehood in central New York, I
cannot say ; but I judge that some theory of
the kind did exist in fact in the minds and
hearts of the revival body as a whole. My
impression is that Erasmus Stone acted more or
less on such ideas in his relations with Eliza
Porter. And Hiram Sheldon had a time of
seeing in Sophia A. Cooke what he failed to
worden's confession. 87
appreciate in his own wife. There was quite a
general expectation that the resurrection was soon
coming to reorganise society, and provide personal
companionship of male and female without regard
to law or other marriage institutions. But as to
carnal love, it was in many minds a pollution,
not to be tolerated, but to be crucified with the
carnal mind, which is not ' subject to the law
of God, nor indeed can be/
" Years passed on. The weakness of some was
manifest in their being overcome by the passions
which they had condemned, and declared cruci-
fied and dead; in others by the surrender to the
marriage relation, and I began to wonder what
the end would be. Finally, my own attachment
concentrated on a young lady who stood, in heart,
firmly on the theory of no marriage. Purity and
community with the angels was her motto. But
I pushed in the direction of actual marriage.
Formidable were the obstructions ; among others,
I found that Brother Charles Lovett had in-
timated that my chosen one was his affianced
bride in the heavens. I waited yet awhile.
But in the year 1839, on the 4th of March, I was
married.
" Marquis L. Worden."
*
88 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
All that is said in this confession by way of
fact, known to the writer, is no doubt true. It
is only when Worden comes to hearsay and fancy
that he goes wrong. His " impression " that the
theory of Spiritual Wives may have come from
the Mormons of Palmyra, has no foundation to
rest on.
The story of Mary Cragin's Spiritual trials,
which gives us a deeper insight into the working
of these morbid passions, may now be told.
S9
CHAPTER XT.
STORY OF TWO LIVES.
Mary Cra.gin was one of the chief of many
female brands who had been plucked from the
burning fires during the Great Revival. The story
of her life is here told mainly in the words of
her husband George.
In its broad features, this story of two lives
is that of an idolater and his idol ; of a singularly
warm and steadfast human passion, in conflict
with an equally warm and steadfast spiritual
passion. The idolater was George Cragin ; the
idol was his wife Mary.
From every one who knew her, I hear that
in her younger days Mary was extremely beau-
tiful ; but her rare beauty of face and figure
seems to have been counted as the least among
her many attractions. She had the soft eye
which seeks, and the ready smile which wins,
the beholders heart. She was a good musician,
a ready talker, a delightful nurse. Every man
90 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
who came near her fell beneath her sway.
Without seeming effort on her side, she became
the soul of every society into which she entered ;
and from her native force of brain and will she
could not help becoming a leader of men and
women in both the family and the church. Her
story is worth telling at some length.
George Cragin, her husband by the law, was
born in 1808, at Douglas, a village some fifty miles
from Boston. He was of Scottish descent ; but
his forego ers had been settled in Massachusetts
since the days of the Mayflower. His father
and mother, Puritans of the hardest type, had
brought up their son in the belief that to drink
wine, to smoke pipes, to dance, to drive a sleigh,
to read novels, to see plays, to miss divine
service, and go to a revival church, were each and
all deadly sins. Cragin the elder was a dark,
stern, silent man ; staid in manner, prompt in
counsel, active in business ; who, as he seemed
to be doing well in the world, was allowed to
take a high part in the local politics, and to
represent the city of Douglas in the legislature of
his state. He was poor in health ; his business
adventures failed ; and his family was beggared at
one blow. Father and son left Douglas ; and at
STORY OF TWO LIVES. 91
nineteen years of age George Cragin found himself
thrown upon the world for bread.
At this age, George was hardly more than
a child. Twice he had made himself tipsy with
tobacco, and once with lemon-punch. Twice he
had fallen in love ; once when he was ten years
old, with a lady of the same age, but of un-
known name ; once again, when he was fifteen,
with a poor Methodist girl, named Rebecca, whom
his father would not suffer him to court. This
second love affair had brought much trouble on
his parents; who, being members of the Congre-
gational church, held Methodist girls, especially
Methodist girls who were poor, in high contempt.
This love, though hot in the lad of fifteen, could
hardly live in a parent's ire. George gave way,
and Rebecca went to the well.
George was now sent to school, where a female
pupil is said to have died for love of him. Then
he was placed behind a counter in Boston, from
which point of disadvantage he first saw something
of fallen women ; afterwards, in the way of busi-
ness, he got to New York, where he was converted
by a revival preacher, the Rev. Charles G. Finney,
a great light among the Free Church and New
Measure people. In New York he fell into mild
92 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
flirtations with Sarah Steele, a co-diseiple in the
Lord. But this New York Sarah, though she
took his arm on her way to meeting, and seemed
in her quiet mood to enjoy his talk, would not
suffer the young man from Massachusetts to kiss
her lips. Once, when he threw his arm about her
neck and tried it on, she flashed out upon him
with a " Why, George ! " that went into his flesh
like a knife. Sarah was proud to have the young
Puritan for an escort when she went to hear the
Rev. Charles G. Finney denounce the world and
the devil ; but her heart was dead to such warm
love as glowed in George's heart, and on his offer
of a soft salute, her quick reproof of his folly sent
him whirling off into infinite space ; from which,
let the lady do what she liked, he could never
find his way back.
After this rebuff from Sarah, he fell more
eagerly than ever into a course of stern, unbating
exercise of the spirit. With a clerk of like mind, in
the same trading house, he agreed upon a plan for
prayer. These lads met in the office, of which they
kept the keys, at Hve o'clock every morning ; they
prayed together until six, when they walked out
to their chapel ; there they prayed until seven ;
after which they went back to the counting-house
STORY OF TWO LIVES. 93
and began the business of the world. In their
long walks they repeated snatches of psalms and
hymns. In their moments of leisure they lisped
a form of prayer. After work was done in the
store, they returned to chapel for service, and after
service in the chapel they retired to their room
for private devotion. Every hour of Sunday
was absorbed by church and school. On that day
they held Bible classes for young men and young
women, most of all for young women ; many of
whom they wrought upon, by word or tone, to
confess their sins.
It was in this strict school of duty and
observance that George Cragin encountered the
young lady who was to become his wife.
High among the old families of Puritan de-
scent who had found a home in Maine, were the
Johnsons and Gorhams of Portland. Like all the
best families in New England, these Johnsons
and Gorhams were engaged in farming and trad-
ing ; but they ranked with the gentry ; they put
their girls into good schools ; they sent their boys
to college ; and they held their heads rather high
among the intellectual classes. Daniel, one of the
Johnson young men, had proposed to Mary, one
of the Gorham ladies ; he had been accepted as
94 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
a suitor ; and, after his equal and happy marriage,
he had become the father of two children, a boy
and a girl. This pair of Puritans, Daniel and
Mary Johnson of Portland, were Presbyterians of
the strictest rite ; members of the Pev. Edward
Payson's church ; and their infant children, called
by their parents' names, Daniel and Mary, were
baptized into the new life by that eminent divine.
In due time, Daniel E. Johnson, the boy, went to
Yale College, where he took high honours, studied
theology, and became an ornament of the Presby-
terian Church. Mary, the girl, was born in 1810 ;
and her course of life was to run on a wholly
different line.
From an early age she showed unusual signs
of quickness and sympathy. Very pretty, very
bright, very amiable, everybody liked her and
everybody petted her. To her father and her
brother, she was a sort of idol ; so that, even
when she was yet a little child, they never tired
of reading with her and working for her. Placed
in a good school when she was five years old;
kept at close drill until she was fifteen; helped
at home by a clever father ; spurred along by
the correspondence of an advancing brother ;
where is the marvel that Mary's teachers should
STORY OF TWO LIVES. 95
have at last declared that they could teach her
no more ; and that the time had come when
she might be entrusted to teach in turn?
Johnson, her father, who was engaged in busi-
ness as a bookseller and publisher, removed his
house from Portland to New York, in the hope of
doing better in the Empire State than he had
done in Maine. Shortly after his arrival with his
wife and daughter in the great city, a movement,
which had been commenced by Mrs. Bethune
and other ladies, for establishing infant-schools
for the benefit of the poor, took active form in
New York. A committee was formed, on which
were Dr. Hawks, Dr. Bethune, and many other
men of name and note. They wanted female
teachers. One school was to be opened by them
near St. Thomas' Church, to be placed under the
care of its pastor, the famous orator and writer,
Francis Lister .Hawks, Doctor of Divinity ; and
Mary Johnson, whose grace and tact were known
to many ladies and clergymen on the new com-
mittee, was asked to undertake the charge ; which
she did at once, from a high sense of duty ; though
this charge of a hundred and fifty children was
sure to be a heavy burthen to a girl not yet
beyond her teens.
96 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
Rooms were now hired on the ground-floor of
Union Church, in Princes Street ; notices were sent
into the houses and cabins all about ; and when the
doors of her school were thrown open, Mary found
her benches flooded with refuse from the quays and
lanes. The little things who came to her were
dirty and in rags ; they hardly knew their own
names ; many of them had no homes, and could
not tell where their mothers lived. All the small
miseries of a great city seemed to be poured into
the schoolroom under Union Church through these
open doors. But Mary had her heart in the toil.
She put these tiny wretches into rows and classes
— the younger chits together, the older girls by
themselves, and taught them to march in step, and
to sing in time. She induced them to wash their
faces and mend their clothes. She read prayers
for them, and explained the Bible to them. In a
few months these imps and elfs of the river-side
were changed into the likeness of human beings.
Some fell back, no doubt ; the tides of the world
being far too strong for an infant-school to stem ;
but the work of cleansing, shaping, and restoring
still went forward under Mary's care ; the little
ones coming to her when they could, and staying
as long as the house-keeper would let them stay.
1
STORY OF TWO LIVES. 97
Many a poor mother, as she tramped through the
streets, was only too glad to find a place in which
for six or seven hours she could leave her homeless
child. The Rev. Francis Hawks and the com-
mittee were coming to feel very happy in their
success, when a simple incident occurred, which
was to carry away their teacher into another
sphere.
VOL. II. H
98
CHAPTER XII.
PIOUS COURTSHIP.
* Church services are over," says George Cragin,
narrating the events which brought him into
his first companionship with Mary Johnson, " the
congregation slowly disperse, some going one
way and some another. All, save a few young
men, have left the sanctuary for their homes.
The latter hold a prayer-meeting for a short
time, and then they too separate and go here
and there. It was one of Nature's heavenly days,
that Sunday in June ; the sky clear as crystal,
and the air sweet and balmy as the breath
of infancy, when I stood in front of the church
saying to myself, l Shall I return to my home down
town ? ' I did not always return to my boarding-
house till after the evening meeting. My usual
route was down Broadway, but something
put the suggestion into my mind to return
home through the Bowery. And why that way ?
PIOUS COURTSHIP. 99
It is a good half-mile farther. Never mind that ;
obey orders and march. So down the Bowery I
started. I was by no means partial to that great
thoroughfare of butchers' and Bowery boys ; too
many roughs and rowdies promenaded its side-
walks on Sundays to suit my taste. Inwardly,
however, I felt at peace with all mankind just then,
and was humming to myself as I walked straight
a-head, passing the gay and the thoughtless, —
' Jesus, I Thy cross have taken,
All to leave and follow Thee.'
When, having nearly reached the Bowery Theatre,
I was suddenly surprised and brought to a stand-
still, by being confronted, not by rowdies walking
three abreast, with pants turned up at the bottom
showing the white lining, and each with a cigar
in the cavity of his figure-head, but by a beauti-
ful, smiling face (who ever saw a smiling face that
was not beautiful ?), the owner of which was a
Miss Mary E. Johnson, the infant-school teacher of
our church. We had never spoken to each other
before, to my recollection, although members of
the same religious body. Perhaps there had never
been a necessity for it, but there was one now.
Miss Johnson was not alone; had she been alone
100 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
we should have simply nodded recognition and
passed on. She held by the hand a little girl, not
more than four years of age, who had been brought
by some one into her infant Sunday-school class,
at the close of which the little innocent remained
uncalled for. How many children are left in one
way or another, and remain uncalled for? So,
Miss Johnson, whose interest in and care for
children under her charge was already proverbial
in that section of the city, undertook the task of
finding the little one's home, or (since many of the
very poor do not have homes, but only stopping-
places) her owners, with no other guide than the
child herself, who had taken her teacher down to the
Bowery Theatre, intimating that she lived in that
direction. But after fruitless wandering, for nearly
an hour, Miss Johnson, becoming a little alarmed,
and not knowing what to do with the ' uncalled-
for > upon her hands, was returning up the Bowery
when we met. Her anxiety about the child was
so great that, conquering her bashfulness and sense
of female propriety, that would have deterred her
from speaking to a young man in the streets, she
followed the stronger instinct of her heart by
stopping and stating to me the facts of the case.
My benevolence, acting in concert with my admi-
PIOUS COURTSHIP. 101
ration for female loveliness, needed no spur to
make me a volunteer at once for the service
required, being glad enough of the privilege of
joining so attractive an expedition in search of
the whereabouts of the child's parents. After a
brief consultation we decided to return to the
vicinity of the church, for the further prosecution
of the search ; and if no owners for the lost pro-
perty appeared, then consult the elders for further
advice. So, with the little one between us, we
moved forward for our destination.
" It was a pleasant walk that — I remember it
well. I had heard much about Miss Johnson, as
being a young woman of good mind, well educated,
and a model of the rules of city politeness,
etiquette, etc. I thought myself, therefore, highly
favoured by Providence in being thus incidentally
thrown into her company ; for the conviction con-
tinued to cling to me that I was still a rustic, and
needed much discipline to free me from clownish
habits. But little did I imagine at that time, that
I had providentially met the woman with whom in
future I was to take many walks and rides, and
have many sittings together, both in sorrow and in
joy, in adversity and in prosperity.
" On arriving at the door of the school-room in
102 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
the basement of the church, we found the mother
of the little one waiting patiently, and quite un-
concernedly, for the child to turn up. e Were you
not alarmed for the safety of your little girl V
said Miss Johnson to the mother.
" 'Lord bless ye, ma am ! how could I be troubled
when my young ones be better off with you, Miss
Johnson, than they be at home ? I wish you had
some of them all the time. But I suppose you
will have enough of your own, Miss, one of these
days/ This last allusion deepened the colour,
already cherry-red, on the cheeks of the young
teacher.
" Being relieved of the little responsibility on
her hands, Miss Johnson had a greater one now to
dispose of, which she had assumed by inviting an
ally to assist in the search. Her parents residing
nearly opposite the church, she could do no less
than invite me in to tea."
George found that he was now falling into love,
in some sort against his will ; since he was conscious,
to use his own words, that the marriage spirit was
a strong antagonist of the revival spirit ; and also,
perhaps, because, in a dim way, he was conscious
of the existence of another young girl called Sarah
Steele. Sarah was still a very dear friend ; now
PIOUS COURTSHIP. 103
and then he went to see her ; but as he told
himself that he had never opened with her a
matrimonial account (a baffled attempt at kissing,
I suppose, may count for nothing) he owed her no
apologies.
With Mary he was soon at fever heat. " When
I bid our fair friend good evening," on the second
time of speaking with her, he says, "a queer sen-
sation passed over me, quite different from any
former experience. It seemed as though I had
parted with a large share of myself or life. Not
that it was lost in any unpleasant sense, for I
felt very happy after saying that good evening."
Mary was kind to him, though in all her talk
with him her chief concern appeared to be for
the salvation of his soul. Her own affairs
were not going on well. Cholera had compelled
her to close the school ; things had gone wrong
with her father, who had lost his business and
taken to cock-tails and rum-punch ; a fierce revival
had sprung up, and her lover had quitted the old
connexion in which she lived to assist in building
up a Free Church. Heavy clouds, therefore, lay
upon her life. Not that she was hopeless ; her
beauty and her gracious talent brought to her
side a host of friends. One young man of high
104 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
family and promising fortunes offered her his
hand ; but thinking him, with all his bravery and
distinction, to be a man of worldly spirit, she put
the temptation of raising herself and all her family
from her heart. Perhaps she was in love with
George. Perhaps she had scant belief in the power
of wealth to make women happy. Anyhow, she
had a fine sense of duty, which absolutely forbade
her to accept advantages offered to her under
the stress of what might prove to be, on the part
of this wealthy lover, a passing whim.
When George in turn proposed to her, she re-
fused his love under a solemn weight of care. Was
she fit for the married life ? Was not her father a
man who drank ? Was not she in some sort a
child of shame ? Could she consent to involve
a man whom she loved in her own disgrace ?
In these words she put the case before her
lover :
" You may remember that some time ago you
drew me out in a conversation about marriage, in
which I remarked that I had made up my mind
not to marry, even if an unexceptionable life-
partnership were proffered to me. You probably
regarded it at the time as a girlish expression that
meant exactly the opposite, if any meaning whatever
PIOUS COURTSHIP. 105
was attached to it. But you will think differently
now, when you understand the ground upon which
I ventured that declaration. It may not have
escaped your notice altogether, when you have
been at our house, that my fathers conversation at
times has been quite ambiguous and disconnected,
— not to say meaningless and silly ; making it mani-
fest that he was under the influence of intoxicating
drinks. The confession, therefore, that I have
long desired to make to you is, that my father is
an intemperate man, and has been so for a number
of years. The grief that this habit of his has
caused my dear mother, brother, and myself, is
known only to Him who ' was a Man of sorrows,
and acquainted with grief.' It was through this
habit, and the associations to which it leads, that
he lost a lucrative business. For some good and
wise purpose this trial has been put upon me in
my youth, and I am learning to submit to it
without murmuring ; believing that all things
work together for good to ' them who love God/
If it were poverty alone against which we are
called upon to struggle, I should by no means
regard it as a disgrace, but only an inconvenience
to be avoided. But intemperance is a vice, if not a
crime, because it implies a lack of self-control and
106 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
manly courage in resisting temptation to idleness
and slavish appetites.
" Now will you believe me when I say to you,
that I have too much regard for you to consent to
disgrace your fathers family by accepting your
offer of marriage ? I hardly need say that it has
cost me many mental struggles to take this step.
But I could not satisfy my sense of right without
making the sacrifice."
That note from Mary Johnson fixed her fate for
life. Up to this point George had thought of her
only as a pretty girl, soft of voice, who made every-
body love her.^ Now she was a heroine ; a young
woman capable of the highest form of sacrifice.
Give her up ! What had he to do with pride ?
His family, though of the same class, was not so
good as hers ; for on her mothers side, at least,
she had come from the very best blood in Maine.
The Cragins could not pretend to rank with the
Gorhams. He therefore pressed his suit upon her.
Mary paused ; but her brother, the Rev. Daniel E.
Johnson, joined in supporting George's prayer ;
and during a summer holiday, the wedding of
these young hearts took place ; the Rev. Daniel
Johnson, now acting as the true head of his family,
giving away the bride.
107
CHAPTER XIII.
MARRIED LIFE.
The tricks which Cragin found in vogue among
the men of Wall Street sickened him with trade ;
Ins Puritan blood, his natural taste, and his
religious zeal, conspiring to make him loathe the
ways which lead to success either on the quay or
in the bank. Other work appeared to call him.
The vice on the river side, the misery at Five
Points — the thieves' slums near the Battery, the
harlots' dens in Green Street — spoke to his heart.
Thanks to the Rev. Charles G. Finney, and some
other revival preachers, efforts were then being
made to deal, on a new plan, and in a religious
spirit, with the dangerous classes of New York ;
and this strife with ignorance and misery was the
kind of work for which nature and education had
prepared both Cragin and his wife. They joined
in it heart and soul; becoming teachers among
the poor, visitors among the cast-away, dis-
108 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
tributors of tracts, of clothes, of alms to the
lowest classes in one of the most abandoned cities
of this earth. Five or six years were spent by
Cragin as the agent, lecturer, and publisher, first
of the Maternal Association, then of the Female
Benevolent Society, and next of the Female Moral
Reform Society. To the last of these societies
George was the male agent, working, however,
under a committee of ladies.
Pass we lightly over the early years of their
married and religious life ; since those years —
though full of matter to the man and woman —
were but the stages through which Mary was to
travel on her way from legal bondage, as they
called it, to a state of freedom from sin and
spiritual marriage to another man. During these
years they lived in the revival world, among
men and women who had embraced the wildest
doctrines of the New Measure and the Free
Church. They were always on the watch for new
lights, for personal intimations, for the coming of
they knew not what. They loved each other very
much ; and on George's side the passion had
passed, at a very early stage of wedlock, into
idolatry. Now and then a fear came on them
that this isolating and exclusive love was wrong;
MARRIED LIFE. 109
since they could not help feeling that it took them
from the Church ; and they began to fear lest
it should end in withdrawing their hearts from
God. On both sides there was an earnest striving
after a nobler life. Every storm of revival
energy which passed through the land in which
they dwelt, caught them up in its whirl, tossed
them to and fro on its angry waves, and left
them stranded among a thousand broken hulls
and spars.
George Cragin says :
"The spring of 1839 found us occupying the
half of a dwelling in Jane Street, New York, a
tenement amply sufficient for our small family.
Mrs. Cragin's mind was still much exercised on
the subject of perfect holiness, or salvation from
sin. Being relieved from the cares and per-
plexities of a large family, she had leisure for
reflection and self-examination. Through the
agency of Mrs. Black, Mrs. Cragin formed the ac-
quaintance of several persons called ' Perfec-
tionists/ who claimed to have come into possession
of the priceless boon of freedom from sin and
condemnation. These individuals received what
knowledge they possessed on the subject from
Abram C. Smith and John B. Lyvere, persons
110 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
with whom John H. Noyes was associated for
a short time in the year 1837. My own mind
was ill at ease during this period. I can hardly
describe the soul-tidal fluctuations to which I
was subject. Although a nominal member of the
Tabernacle Church, I seldom attended the meet-
ing, excusing myself from duty-doing on account
of the distance from my residence. I was neither
in the church nor out of it — still clinging to
the shadow, vainly wishing it might turn into
a substance. At this juncture in my experience,
attempts were made to get me back to the Third
Free Church, where I expended so much of my
early zeal during the revival period. The pastor,
with whom I was well acquainted, employed a
little flattery upon my egotism to gain my con-
sent, saying that they wanted me to fill the
vacancy of an eldership, &c. I was sore tempted
to yield to their entreaties, but some unseen
power kept me from the snare of official position.
And, moreover, what was I to gain by turning
again to the beggarly elements of dead works ?
Orders had been given me to advance ; but I was
slow in comprehending them. Formerly, I had
looked up to ministers for guidance and instruc-
tion ; I could look in that direction no longer.
MARRIED LIFE. Ill
My intimacy with some of them disclosed the
fact that they were, as a body, powerless and
penniless in the riches of the wisdom and grace
of God. The blind could not lead the blind.
Sinners preaching to sinners was a mockery that
my whole nature loathed. At times, I was greatly
dissatisfied with myself; in a word, was sick —
soul-sick. But the disease that was upon me — a
criminal unbelief — was an unknown one to my-
self and to the churches. Equally ignorant were
we of the remedy — faith."
Mary was the first to feel her way out of
these troubles. The more immediate agency of
her new conversion was a paper written by
Father Noyes on the power of faith, — a paper
which she read and pondered until light flowed in
upon her soul.
" It came," she said, " with the authority
of the word of God to her inner life. Step
by step it led her on, with that clear, logical
conviction that characterises mathematical demon-
stration, for ever settling points beyond all doubt-
ful disputation and discussion. The spirit of that
paper brought her face to face with the practical
questions of believing, submission and confession,
not at some future time, at a more convenient
112 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
season, but now — present tense, imperative mood."
Her husband then proceeds with the story of her
inner life : —
"For several weeks she spent much time in
prayer, saying but little to myself or any one, for
her feelings were too deep and intense for ex-
pression, except to Him who hears the earnest,
secret prayer of the honest-hearted seeker after
truth. Mrs. Cragin had one weakness of character
that greatly distressed her — a quick temper. At
times, when the tempter would suddenly spring
that snare upon her she would be overwhelmed
with condemnation, which for the time being
would cause her to despair of salvation. So the
question would be thrust at her again and again,
when she was on the point of confessing Christ
in her a Saviour from all sin, ' You may be
saved from other faults, but not from your pas-
sionate anger when suddenly provoked/ And
again, that unbelieving demon would insinuate
to her, that if after making the confession that
Christ had saved her from all sin, she should be
overcome by her old enemy, all would be lost,
and that Christ's power was insufficient to cast
out a devil so subtle as the one with which she
had in vain contended for so many years. Finally,
MARRIED LIFE. 113
the controversy that had been going on within
was narrowed down to this single point, ' Is
Christ within me ? ' I will quote a paragraph
from the article so instinct with life to her soul :
" ' If the inquirer declares himself willing to
part with his idols, and yet cannot believe, we
must search through his spirit again for the reason
of his unbelief. Perhaps he is saying in his heart,
' I would believe if I could feel that Christ is in
me, and I am saved ; ' in other words, ' I will be-
lieve the testimony of my own feelings, but not
the word of God/ This is wrong. A right spirit
says, ' Let God be true, and every man a liar.
God says He has given me His Son and eternal
life ; my feelings contradict His record ; my feel-
ings are the liars, God is true ; I know and will
testify that Christ is in me a whole Saviour, be-
cause God declares it, whether my feelings accord
with the testimony or not/ If you wish for peace
and salvation by the witness of the Spirit before
you believe, you wish for the fruit before there is
any root. Righteousness, peace, and joy in the
Holy Ghost, are the consequences of faith ; the
word of God, and that only, is its foundation/
" Mrs. Cragin," says her husband, " had gone
through the conflict. . . ."
VOL. II. I
114
CHAPTER XIV.
IN THE WORLD.
The doctrine of a life without sin was made to
rest on a belief that through the power of faith a
man may be able to cast out from his nature the
spirit of self. The selfish spirit was one with the
evil spirit. All true virtue began with renuncia-
tion. To give up self was to give up sin, and to
live for God alone was the highest act of grace.
" Follow me," had been a call to the elect for ever.
Leave all, — leave every one, be it house and land,
be it flocks and herds, be it even wife and child ;
cast all these things behind thee, if thou wouldst
save thy soul alive ! Such were the words ad-
dressed to a believer's heart. All things near and
dear must be laid on the altar of sacrifice ; rank,
riches, pride, ambition, peace, and love. If a man
would be freed from sin, his faith in God must be
perfect ; his abandonment of self complete. God
must become to him all in all.
IN THE WORLD. 115
This act of renouncing self in the heart is
the conflict to which George refers. Mary had
always been less worldly in her ways than her
husband was — more trustful and confiding, more
like a saint and a child, as good women are
apt to be, especially when their thoughts have
taken a religious turn. She was now ready for
the sacrifice, eager to spend and be spent.
" Mrs. Cragin had gone through the conflict,"
says the idol- worshipper, " and a severe one it
was, of giving up husband, child, mother, and
brother, the most cherished of her household gods.
She had counted the cost, moreover, of being cast
out of society, if not rejected and disowned by
relatives, and turned into the street by her hus-
band ; so great was the odium cast upon the
so-called heresy of Perfectionism. With the re-
solution and heroic purpose of the noble Esther,
of Bible history, to take the step before her, say-
ing, 'If I perish, I perish/ she dared all conse-
quences and made the confession that Christ was
in her a present and everlasting Saviour from sin.
" I well remember the day, the hour, and the
place, in which she tremblingly obeyed the inspi-
ration of her heart in confessing an indwelling
Christ. I had returned home from my place of
116 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
business at the usual hour, five o'clock in the
afternoon. We were in our basement dining-
room alone. After a pause of silence, she said,
' I confess Christ in me a Saviour from all sin :
I shall never sin again.' I believe that confession
was heard and recorded in heaven, causing angels
to rejoice over the victory thus gained — for they
know the value of souls."
George followed his wife into this non -selfish
church, as he would have followed her into any
other; for his soul was her soul, his mind her
mind ; and he seems to have had, at that date, no
wish, no hope, beyond doing her will and living
in her love. From the day of their wedding, his
passion for his lovely wife had been burning into
whiter heat. About this time his love for her
had increased to the point of fanaticism — to that
of idolatry, when she bore him his first-born child.
What she did, he must do ; whither she went,
he must go ; her country must be his country,
and her God his God. Mary was his law ; he had
not yet come to see, only to fear, that this super-
stition of the heart was an evil spirit, to be driven
out of his soul at any and every cost before he
could be reconciled in soul to heaven.
He was to learn it all in time ; but the out-
IN THE WORLD. 117
ward trouble came upon him sooner than the
inward. Scouts and spies, who seem to abound
in churches however holy, carried the news of
George's conversion to the doctrine of a life on
earth untouched by selfishness, unstained by sin,
to several of the reforming ladies of his com-
mittee— members of the Female Reform Society —
who forthwith called a meeting of the board
to condemn him. Mary wept for joy at this
sound of a coming storm. She had prepared
her soul for persecution. She wished to make
some visible sacrifice for the truth. All that she
had yet yielded up to God was a form — a dream
— an allegory — a phrase. It was only in terms
that she could be said to have given up father
and mother, husband and child. But the angry
matrons of the Reform Society were about to bring
her sacrifices home. Their questions were rough,
and to the point. What right had a man in a
free country to change his mind ? What could
induce a moral reformer to begin meddling with
religious truth ? Where was the need for one,
whose duty lay among thieves and fallen women,
to trouble himself about salvation from sin ? In
an angry mood these ladies came into the board-
room. George was told to stand up before them,
118 SPIBITUAL WIVES.
while thirty pair of bright eyes scanned his figure
from head to foot, as though they had expected
to see hoofs, and horns, and tail to match. What
had he to say in explanation and defence ?
Not much. He was a free man. He lived
in a free state. He thought he was acting in his
right. He knew that he was a better man for the
change which had come upon his spirit.
Hoot! said the Editress of a journal published
by the Female Beformers, here is the Battle
Axe letter, — an infamous letter, an infernal let-
ter : this letter is from the pen of Noyes. Could
a godly man write such a thing as that ?
George did not know. The Battle Axe letter,
he had heard, referred to what might be done
by holy men and woman at some future time, —
perhaps on this planet, perhaps in the higher
spheres. He had nothing to say about it, since
he did not understand it ; and his case stood
solely on the paper called the Power of Faith.
He was dismissed from office, and Mary wept
upon his neck for joy.
Turned out into the world, despised, con-
demned of men, the pair put on, as it were, the
raiment of bride and groom. Mary wrote to
her new teacher, Father Noyes :
IN THE WORLD. 119
" While I am writing to you I am weeping
for joy. My dear husband one week since en-
tered the kingdom. When I tell you that he
has been the publishing agent of the Advocate
of Moral Reform, and had been born but three
days when they cast him out, you will rejoice with
me. Ah, Brother Noyes, how have the mighty
fallen ! In him you will find a most rigidly
upright character, — Grahamism, and Oberlin per-
fection all in ruins. How he clung to Oberlin,
as with a death-grasp ! How confident was he
that none were saved from sin but mere Gra-
hamites ! How disgusted with the conduct of
Perfectionists ! The Lord has pulled down strong
towers. Bless the Lord ! — on the first of Decem-
ber he will be without money and without busi-
ness. How this rejoices me !"
Such was the spirit in which Mary Cragin
took the cross of persecution on herself.
The last words of her letter were hardly true.
George had been a prudent saver of his means,
and, without telling his wife about his thrift, he
had put up more than a hundred dollars in the
bank. If they were poor, they were not penni-
less. " We shall stand by," said Mary, strong
in her faith, " and let the Lord provide."
120 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
The two leading men of their new way of
thinking in the State of New York were the Bev.
Abram C. Smith and the Rev. John B. Lyvere.
Smith lived at Rondout Creek, on the North
river, about two miles from Kingston, seventy-
iive miles from New York. Lyvere had a house
in the city. With both these Saints the Cragins
made acquaintance, and from both they received
advice and help. "We looked up to these persons,"
says George, " as our teachers and guides, re-
garding ourselves as mere babes in Christ, to be
cared for and fed by others with the milk of the
word of life." To Abram C. Smith, a bold, strong
man, of large experience and resolute will, they
became attached by the closest ties of friendship
and brotherhood.
Mary was so pretty, so clever, so engaging,
that her house in Jane Street soon became a
gathering place for the Saints of New York, who
dropped in for counsel, for reproof, perhaps also
for gossip. But the best of us are hardly better
than the angels. George soon found that some
of those Saints who had come to pray remained to
flirt. At least, he thought so, and the mere
suspicion made him wretched.
" I have to confess," he writes, in his simple
IN THE WORLD. 121
story, " that my wife had become a very popular
member of our fraternity, receiving rather more at-
tention from some of the brotherhood than suited
my taste. One case in particular, with which I
was occasionally disturbed, was that of a brother
whose social antecedents presented anything but
a clean record, although he had been a member
of the Methodist Church for many years. That
at which I took offence most frequently was his
use of coarse language. Not possesing the faculty
of concealing my feelings, I became rather an
unpopular member of our circle. Placed thus
between two fires, legality on the one hand and
licentiousness on the other, my position led me
into severe conflicts with the powers of darkness,
and was anything but an enviable one. Many
and many a time, as I walked the streets of
the city, did I repeat to myself the verse, —
4 The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose,
I will not, I can not, desert to His foes.'
" I gained many a victory in spirit, devoutly
hoping that each conflict would be the last en-
counter with the enemy of my peace."
Of course, in George's state of mind at that
time, it was impossible for him to obtain, and almost
122 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
irrational for him to desire, a perfect repose of
mind. As he says, in looking back from the
heights which he subsequently gained :
" Those desires for peace before the devil was
cast out of my whole nature were, of course,
childish and egotistical. But we had entered a
new school, and accepted such teachers as offered
themselves to us. I needed help."
That help which he needed for casting out
the selfish spirit from his heart, and curing him-
self of his old idolatry of his pretty wife, was near
at hand, in the person of the Eev. Abram C. Smith.
123
CHAPTER XV.
ABRAM C. SMITH.
" The man to whom we looked for help, and in
whom we had the most confidence," says Cragin,
" was Abram C. Smith."
The Rev. Abram C. Smith, the man by whom
they were to be purged of the selfish spirit, and
made fit for life in a higher sphere— who was to be-
come George's Spiritual guide and Mary's Spiritual
husband — was of a type, a class, an order, not
peculiar perhaps to the American soil, yet nowhere
to be found so strongly and sharply marked as in
New England and New York. To begin with his
list of merits, he had the true kind of name for a
teacher, a name of three parts : the first part, a per-
sonal name, Abram ; the third part, a family name,
Smith ; and lying between these parts, an emphatic
letter, C. on which the voice was to rest in speak-
ing, and which was never to be written out in full.
Nearly all the marked men among the Saints
124 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
have this sign : as John B. Foot, Abram C. Smith,
John B. Lyvere, John H. Noyes. But Abram
C. had something about him far more potent than
a name. He prided himself on being a zealot
among the zealous, a free man among the free.
He had all the virtues, and many of the vices,
of the American frontier men. Born with an
iron frame and a burning pulse, he was noted,
even as a lad, for his hard ways of life and for
his earnest speech. Very few youngsters equalled
him in the power of getting through hard work
on hard fare. In felling timber, in slitting rails,
in trenching fields, in digging wells, in raising
shanties, very few workmen could compete with
Abram C. Like nearly all Yankee lads, he was
a man while yet a boy ; free of the world,
the flesh, and the devil in his teens ; loud,
pinched, eager, resolute, talkative. From his
cradle lie had been religious, after his kind. In
youth he had received a peculiar call ; when he
had joined a church of New York Methodists, in
whose body he began his ministerial career. To
use Cragin s words, " he possessed some excellent
traits of character ; he was naturally very affec-
tionate, kind-hearted, and self-sacrificing ; he
possessed a good intellect ; and had he been well
ABHAM C. SMITH. 125
educated, and learned the spirit of obedience in his
youth, he would have adorned either the pulpit or
the bar." But he had scarcely been at school,
and he had never learned obedience in his youth.
All that a lad can learn in the street, in the field,
and in a common school, he knew. He was great
in traffic ; had a keen eye to business ; he knew
the Bible by rote ; and he seldom failed in getting
a slice of every cut loaf for himself.
Among the new friends to whom his conver-
sion made him known, the Bev. Abram C. found
many who liked his keen speech, his firm will, his
zeal for the salvation of souls. Cold, hard, en-
during— sharp of tongue, prompt in wit, hot for
the fray — he breathed the very spirit of revival
fury. From the moment that his bishop granted
him a license to preach, he became a Yankee Saint.
" He went great lengths/' says Cragin, " in fasting,
in praying, in simplicity of dress, in frugality and
plainness of food, and he carried his notion of duty-
doing to the topmost round of the legal ladder."
Like most of his countrymen, he married
young ; but his first love died. Some of his
leaders thought he should take a second wife ; and
by their persuasion, even more than from his own
inclining, he proposed to a young Methodist
126 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
woman, who, besides being tall, pretty, and accom-
plished, had a peculiar and precious religious gift.
I suppose the girl had fits. She described herself
as receiving a sort of angels' visits, which disturbed
her mind, and reft her limbs of their natural
strength. After one of these visits, her friends
would find her on the floor writhing and prostrate.
Abram heard of these troubles of the young lady
— proofs of her exceeding favour with the higher
powers — and being anxious to stand well with
the higher powers himself, he proposed to their
favourite, and was happy in his suit. Three
children had been born on his hearth, by his first
wife ; his second wife brought him an infant ; but
the mother who bore it, in spite of her accomplish-
ments and her beauty, brought her husband no
peace. In the meetings of her church, she was all
smiles and tears ; her heart open to all, her voice
soft to all ; but in the privacy of her own house,
she showed another and darker side of her nature.
One who lived in the same log-house with her
some time, described her as a devils puzzle. She
was good and kind, but she had no sense of truth.
She could feel for another's pain, but she could see
no difference between right and wrong. When
Abram C. got vexed with her, as he often did,
ABRAM C. SMITH. 127
he would call her " a solid lie." Then, he would
curse in his heart, and even in the hearing of his
friends, those busybodies in the Methodist Church
who had driven him, by their false praises, into mar-
rying a wretch who had nothing to recommend her
but a stately figure, and a pair of very bright eyes.
Such were the two Saints at Rondout Creek,
who were tempting George and Mary Cragin to
share their home.
" Mr. Smith's claims to a superior experience,
and to a high position in the New Jerusalem
Church, now being organised on earth, were by no
means small. Had he not sounded the depths of
Methodism ? And Wesleyan Perfectionism too, —
had he not freely imbibed until it had ceased to
afford him nourishment of any kind V
The winter of 1840 was passing away and
spring coming round. The time for which the
Cragins had rented the tenement in Jane Street
would soon expire. The question, therefore, where
had the Lord prepared a place for them? came
up for decision.
Mary did not seem to care. She wanted to
bear her cross, and if it were heavy enough her
heart would be content. George had nursed
from his youth upwards a more worldly spirit;
128 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
and he preferred to see some way in which he
could earn his daily bread. Love made a good deal
for him ; but, in his view, love itself would be safer
for a large supply of hominy and squash. The
question, therefore, of what the Lord was going to
provide in the way of food and lodgings, came
before his mind with some peremptory sharpness.
" I had no disposition to live in idleness ; I was
born a worker, so that little credit, was due to me
for my industrious proclivities. Thus far in my
career I had worked for my body chiefly. In that
career I had been arrested by the same authority
that arrested Saul of Tarsus, and ordered to
expend my powers of industry for the benefit of
my soul. But how to set myself to work in the
cause of the latter interest, I did not understand.
I had a strong desire to leave the city, a desire
which I now think was an uninspired one. The
voice of the Spirit to me doubtless was, if I could
have heard it, ' Remain in the city till I deliver
you, or send you elsewhere. If you go into the
country you will have trouble in the flesh/ But I
had not learned to give my attention to the inner
voice of God."
In the meantime the Rev. Abram C. Smith
continued to press his kindness on them.
ABRAM C. SMITH. 129
" From him," says George, " we had received a
standing invitation to remove to his residence at
Rondout, and join his family, if we could do no
better. Having accepted him as our teacher, this
opening of escape from the city seemed aiispicious
to me."
At this point it may be well to remember that
the Rev. Abram C Smith was a married man.
His wife was not a saint, at least, not in her heart
of hearts; but she was his wife; and if Mary
Cragin was to go on a long visit to Rondout,
it was well that her pleasure in the matter should
be known. Even Abram C. felt that he could
hardly ask the Cragins to share his home without
making his wife a partner in his suit. "Mr.
Smith," says George, " for the first time called upon
us in company with his wife, when the invitation
to join their family was renewed. We were un-
acquainted with the real character of this woman.
In his previous interviews with us, Mr. Smith had
said so little about his wife, that we had almost
forgotten that he had one. In person, she was
prepossessing and dignified. She was introduced
to us as a newly made convert to Perfectionism, —
a recent fruit of Mr. Smiths zealous efforts for the
cause. With the Methodists she took rank among
VOL. II. K
130 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
the Sanctificationists, having many times lost her
strength by a sudden illumination from some
invisible sphere. So she said ; but she did not say
that she had lost her sins by those mysterious
trances. She failed to impress me favourably.
Her good looks; her winning smiles, and professions
of devotion to the cause we loved, were powerless
in drawing out my heart or in securing my confi-
dence. But, endorsed as she was by Mr. Smith, I
distrusted my own impressions, and gave her the
right hand of fellowship. "
An invitation which the Cragins expected from
an older friend than this reverend gentleman and
his smiling partner failed them. The lease in Jane
Street had expired. They had no house of their
own. In a short time their money would be
spent. All their old friends had been estranged
from them by their change of faith. In a few days
they would be wanting bread. What was to be
their fate ? As George now saw, Abram's offer of
a refuge from the storm eould hardly be refused.
But, even at the last moment, Mary felt some
doubts. She did not like to put herself and her
husband into Abram's power. Perhaps she had
seen some spirit in the man before which she
quailed.
ABRAM C. SMITH. 131
" How much," says George, "we needed wisdom
from above to direct our steps just then, those only-
can judge who have been placed in similar circum-
stances. Move we must in some direction, and as
the invitation had been repeated by both Mr. and
Mrs. Smith with so much apparent sincerity, we
could do no less than disregard our own impres-
sions and follow our leader somewhat blindly."
Yes, the leap was made. "On the seventh of
March, 1840, therefore, our furniture was placed on
board a sloop bound for Rondout; and the same
evening my wife, my little ones, and myself, were
escorted by Mr. Smith to a steamer destined to the
same place. That voyage was not soon forgotten.
Mrs. Cragin was so depressed in spirit that it was
with much difficulty she could control her feelings
from finding vent in a flood of tears. She after-
ward said to me that the moment we decided to
unite ourselves with the family of Mr. Smith,
darkness like an impenetrable cloud came over her
mind, as though God had withdrawn from her soul
the light of His fatherly countenance. Down to
this point in our acquaintance with Mr. Smith,
Mrs. Cragin had less confidence in and attraction
for him than myself. She was now in distress of
mind. The benevolence of our guide was appealed
132 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
to. He talked to her with all the tenderness and
eloquence of a sainted minister in the good old
days of revivals. He won her heart. Mr. Noyes,
a man whom she had never seen, had, by his
inspired writings, completely secured her confidence
as one raised up of God to lead us into the high-
way of holiness. She had been hoping that Mr.
Noyes would come to the city and advise us what
to do ; and had she been in my place I think she
would have written to him for the counsel we so
much needed. But lacking that advice, she ac-
cepted Mr. Smith as his representative ; and
knowing that I also received him in that character,
she very naturally, and, unavoidably, almost
extended to him the same confidence she would
have done to Mr. Noyes."
133
CHAPTER XVI.
RONDOUT CREEK.
At length they reached Rondout Creek, landed
on the rough bank, facing the village of Rondout,
in Ulster county, and saw the household in the
midst of which they had come to live.
" On arriving at our destination," says George,
" we found ourselves in a family much larger than
our own. Mr. Smith was living with his second
wife, by whom lie had one child. By his former
companion he had three children — a son and two
daughters, two of whom were on the verge of ma-
turity. The dwelling he occupied — an ancient
stone edifice, erected before the first war with Great
Britain — stood solitary and alone, on the south side
of the creek or bay directly opposite the village
of Rondout, the terminus of the Delaware and
Hudson canal, and the shipping depot of the
Lackawana Coal Company. As one of Mr. Smith's
cardinal virtues was economy — carried almost to
134 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
the type of parsimony — we found the interior of
the house so plainly furnished that an anchorite
could not have complained of superfluity in furni-
ture, nor of sumptuousness in the bills of fare. Its
frugality was a reminder of the experience of the
early settlers of the country, often struggling with
poverty for the right to subsist on terra jirma.
We had congratulated ourselves that we had come
down to the minimum of simple, plain living, before
leaving the city, and were entitled to a liberal
share of righteousness, if it was to be obtained by
a process of economy in food and raiment. But
Mr. Smith s system of retrenchment had now
thrown ours entirely into the shade."
In this dull house, with this sombre man, with
this haughty woman, the Cragins took up their
abode. The hard fare, the driving work, were
taken as a portion of that cross which they had
to bear for their souls' sake. The life was not
lovely, but it held out to them a hope of peace,
and it seemed to have been the lot appointed to
them of God. To Mary this was the first and
only thought ; but George, more active and ath-
letic than his wife, soon found a rough animal
comfort in doinsf the tasks which his stern em-
ployer found for him on the farm.
RONDOUT CHEEK. 135
" Finding myself/' he says, " at last in the
country, and on a farm upon which I was at
liberty to expend my physical energies, I was
soon enjoying myself greatly in following the
plough behind a noble old horse, whose only defect
was that he was as blind as a bat, with Joshua,
a son of Smith, for a rider. The ostensible
business which Smith pursued at that time was
that of foreman of a gang of hands on the
opposite side of the river engaged in manu-
facturing lime and cement. The farm we lived
upon was nominally owned by a brother of
Mr. Smith, who allowed him the use of it at a
moderate rent. The time of the latter was
already much occupied, and my attraction being
for agricultural pursuits, he placed me in charge
of the farm department, while he continued in
his position as agent and overseer for the lime
company.
" Possessing communistic ideas and proclivities,
we thus made a slight attempt to carry out
the Pentecostal spirit of holding all things in
common. For a while, our associative effort bade
fair to be a success, so far as out-door business
and self-support were concerned. I very soon
became much absorbed in my new avocatiom
136 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
This suited Smith, as he had earned the reputa-
tion of being a great worker himself, as well as
of possessing a faculty for keeping those under
him pretty constantly employed. So, with the
blind horse and the lad Joshua, the ex-merchant,
publisher, and reformer considered himself in
favourable circumstances to secure, what few
seemed to prize, the riches of godliness and
contentment."
Contentment ! Was he content ? Were the
others content ? He was much in love with his
wife, and perhaps he was a little jealous of the
Eev. Abram C. But he felt sure of Mary; and
he was only just beginning to find, through the
hints of Abram C, that he had in himself a very
bad spirit, which he should strive to cast out
with all his might. His love for Mary was too
hot and blind ; it was a snare of the devil ;
it breathed the very soul of self; and was the
sign of an unregenerate heart. That love would
drive him away from God.
George felt sorry and ashamed. He knew that
he loved his wife beyond every earthly good;
for was she not his nurse, his guide, his queen,
the light of his eye, the joy of his heart, the
pride of his intellect ? So far, he had not been
KONDOUT CREEK. 137
able to see that in loving her for her worth
and beauty, he was doing any harm. The example
set by his new teachers at Rondout rather pained
than edified him.
" Between Mr. and Mrs. Smith, we soon dis-
covered, no harmony existed. Indeed, there
was manifestly positive alienation. A house
divided against itself was not likely to offer a
very peaceful retreat in which to pursue our
.studies as pupils in the school of faith. Mrs.
Smith was now Mrs. Smith at home, not abroad.
When she called upon us in the city, she
presented herself in a character not her own,
that of a meek and lowly Christian. She had
no longer an occasion for such a dress. If it
was put on as a bait to attract us to Rondout,
it was a success."
It was not long before the bickering between
the Rev. Abram C. and his wife came to an open
quarrel ; and George soon found some reasons for
suspecting that another and prettier woman was
the active, though she may have been at first the
unconscious, cause of this domestic fray.
"My relation to Mr. Smith up to this time
was that of a son to a father. I had from the
first felt the need of a teacher. The want was
138 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
born in me, and I had heartily accepted Mr. Smith
to fill that office. For a while things appeared to
go on smoothly enough so far as outdoor business
was concerned; but interiorly there were indi-
cations of stormy weather. In the region of
my solar-plexus, counter-currents were flowing,
causing perturbations of an unpleasant character.
The first change that attracted my attention
was something like coolness on the part of Mr.
Smith toward myself. It was rarely now that
he had any communication with me except in
planning the outdoor business. On the other
hand, his communications with Mrs. Cragin were
more and more frequent and private. Did I dis-
cover a corresponding change of coolness on the part
of Mrs. Cragin, or was it a distorted imagination ? "
By this time, George had made a pretty long
step in his religious knowledge. He had been
thinking over the doctrine of renunciation ; had
talked about it to Abram and Mary ; and had
come to see that the command to give up house
and land, wife and child, might be understood
in a literal sense, as a duty laid upon all the
children of grace.
Thus it happened that when he began to
ask himself, as he trudged after the plough,
RONDOUT CREEK. 139
how things were going on within doors, he
could not help feeling that something more was
expected from him by his teacher, if not also
by his wife, than a mere sacrifice of form.
What did they want? Above all, what did his
idol wish him to do? As he dwelt upon their
life before they had come to Rondout Creek and
after, he could not help seeing that there had
been a change with him for the worse. Mary
had become silent and judicial; a new and very
suspicious state of mind for her.
" She has very little to say to me," he said to
himself, " except in the way of criticism of a spirit
in me which claims her affections." Why should he
not claim them ? " That," says George, " was my
weak point. I was stricken by the feeling of
self-condemnation that came upon me." And
then, he forced himself into a confession which
was obviously foreign to his character. " Freely
and sincerely would I admit to myself and others
that in the sight of God I could claim in Mrs.
Cragin no exclusive private property or privilege.
That in forsaking all for Christ, as I claim to
have done, my wife was included. So much was
logically clear and conclusive to my understanding."
All this philosophy, I- imagine, was the growth of
140 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
later years. The true feelings of his heart broke
out : " But my feelings, like wilful, disobedient
children, would listen to no such reasoning.
Being thus in bondage to irrational influences
over which I had no power of control, I had all
I could do to keep my own head above water
without paying mnch attention to the conduct
of others." But then, he could not leave the
thing indoors alone. The thought of what his
teacher might be saying to his wife confused his
soul, and made his hand unsteady on the plough.
Yet he had no strength to face his master, and
to protect his wife. Had the reverend gentleman
been a single man, Cragin might have fallen a
passive victim to his force of will. But, in the
haughty mistress at Rondout Creek, he found
an ally on whom he had not counted.
" Mr. Smith proved himself an unwise, unskil-
ful general in attempting the management of forces
over which he had but a limited control. While
he had found in Mrs. Cragin an ally, a sweet-
heart, and a very loveable associate, and appre-
hended no trouble from me, seeing that I was
fast bound in chains of self-condemnation, he had
not counted the cost of leaving his wife as an
enemy in the rear, with the disposition and the
RONDOUT CREEK. 141
means of causing him serious trouble. It is
barely possible, however, that he had counted
on an affaire d' amour between his wife and
myself, which, had it happened, there is no telling
what the results would have been, though they
would probably have been no better, but much
worse. But I was in no state to fall in love
with another woman. I had trouble enough on
hand already, without contracting a debt for
more, to be paid for at some future judgment
day. I had business enough on hand, too, to get
out of the idolatrous love for my wife, that I
had been falling into for years, until it seemed at
times as though I had got into the bottomless pit,
where the more I struggled to get out the deeper I
sank into hopeless despair."
142
CHAPTER XVII.
THE SELFISH SPIRIT.
At Oneida Creek I was struck by the keen frank-
ness with which my young doctor of medicine told
me the story of his passions ; that young doctor
was George Cragin, son of the George and Mary
Cragin, whose story I am now telling from his
father s notes. I then felt and said that his little
history of one human heart was the strangest
thing I had ever either heard or read. The fa-
ther s tale is certainly not less strange.
"Regardless of consequences," George continues,
"Mr. Smith succeeded in compelling his wife to
leave his house and take refuge over the Creek
among her relatives. A more rash, inconsiderate
act could not have been done, except by one
wholly divested of reason ; and the motive of it
soon became apparent.
"During the first week in May, the relation
between Mr. Smith and Mrs. Cragin had assumed
THE SELFISH SPIRIT. 143
the character of spiritual love, of the novelist type.
It was not so much hatred of his wife which had
caused him to turn her out-of-doors, as a fierce,
crazy, amative passion — I cannot call it love — for
my wife, whom he had already in spirit appropri-
ated to himself. But he played his cards skilfully,
for he so managed his hand as to throw all the
responsibility of his intimacy with Mrs. Cragin
upon myself. For instance, he told her one even-
ing to feign distress of mind, or something to that
effect, and to ask permission of me to repair to his
room for spiritual advice. My wife was so com-
pletely magnetised by him and under his power,
that she would do almost anything he bade her.
Accordingly, she obtained my consent ; and when
she returned to me no harm was done. Unfor-
tunately, the same sort of reason was pleaded the
following night. My God, I said to myself, where
is this thing to end 1 Are all these operations
needed to cure me of the marriage spirit ? Must
others do evil that I may get good ?
"Well, Mr. Smith said, my case was a des-
perate one, and desperate remedies had to be
applied. Yet it did not suit me — even though
my consent was given — to take medicine by proxy.
Moreover, I did not really believe that Mr. Smith
144 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
was at all anxious for my recovery, if that event
would require a discontinuance of the proxy medi-
cine. But my chief difficulty and the cause of my
greatest distress was attributable to a distrust
of my physician. Was he duly authorised by the
poivers above to pursue the course he had adopted ?
Serious doubts assailed me, so powerfully that it
was in vain to resist them. Inwardly I prayed,
and most earnestly too, for a change of doctors, or
at least a council of medical savans, to take my
case in hand."
His prayer was answered. John H. Noyes
with two other Saints, came down from Vermont
to New York to attend the May meetings. It was
the second week in May. On their arrival in
New York, Noyes felt troubled in his mind about
the doings of his disciple, Abram C. Smith, at
Bondout Creek, where things were looking rather
black. Mrs. Abram C. was not the kind of woman
to bear her injuries in peace ; in fact, she had
made so loud a noise about her wrongs, that the
rough woodmen and watermen of Rondout village
had been stung into threats of crossing the creek
in boats and making a midnight call on the
Saints. Noyes had heard some rumour of these
threats. " Anyhow," he said to his two friends
THE SELFISH SPIRIT. 145
in New York, " I am afraid there is mischief at
work in Smith's family," and hinted that they
would do well in going up the Hudson river to
that place. Noyes arrived at Rondout Creek in
time to prevent loss of life ; for a warrant had
been issued that day in Kingston, the nearest
town, against the Rev. Abram C. for a breach of
the peace in turning his wife out-of-doors ; and
the whole population of Rondout village was arm-
ing itself with axe and torch, with tar and feathers,
to redress the woman's wrongs. An attack on
the stone house was expected every hour. What
was to be done ? Should they stand their ground
and fight it out with the mob ? Abram C. was all
for war. To barricade the house, to arm his people,
and to resist his invaders to the death, would
have been his policy. Noyes took the opposite
ground — Peace with the outside world, criticism and
sincerity among yourselves, was his prompt advice.
News flew across the Creek into the village that
■a peacemaker was at work, and no one stirred
against the house that night. Noyes recommended
Abram to submit ; to obey the judge's warrant ;
and, in fact, to go across to Kingston and deliver
himself up. Smith was rude and stiff; but in the
end he saw that unless he gave way to the police
VOL. II. L
1 46 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
he would be murdered by the mob. This point
being carried, Father Noyes inquired into the
state of things in the house, and rebuked Smith
sharply for the course he had taken with his wife.
The facts were then brought out in regard to the
intimacy which had sprung up between Smith
and Mary Cragin. The facts were only too clear,
in whatever way they were to be judged. George,
I think, came off the worst of the three. To use
his own words : " They were admonished faith-
fully, but in love. A claiming, legal spirit in
me was the scape-goat upon whom the sins of both
parties were laid. I joined with the rest in de-
nouncing the spirit of legality, and freely forgave
Mr. Smith and Mrs. Cragin, considering myself
quite as much in the wrong as themselves, for
what had passed."
Things being placed on this footing for the
past, the little colony of saints and sinners spent
the evening in listening to Noyes. He criticised
Perfectionists generally for a spirit of unteachable-
ness and a lack of humility. He also commented
on such passages as these : " All things are lawful
for me, but all things are not expedient ; all things
are lawful for me, but all things edify not ;" " Let
no man seek his own ;" " The law was made for
THE SELFISH SPIRIT. 147
the lawless and disobedient ;" " The law was given
by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus
Christ." Noyes said he had entered the higher
school of Christ who taught by grace and truth.
The lower law school of Moses was still good for
people who were still barbarians and half-civilised,
who were yet too coarse to comprehend and appre-
ciate the power of truth as a refining element.
When believers are sufficiently refined to receive
the spiritual truth taught by Christ and Paul,
it enters into them, changes their disposition, and
thus secures in them obedience to the divine
will.
" I felt myself," says George, " richly rewarded
for all the petty trials I had thus far endured ;
was willing, I thought, to pay any price for the
full and free salvation which Christ had brought
into the world. To forsake all for Him — wife
included, as well as all other valuables, or what-
ever our attachments had converted into valuables
— had now with me a matter-of-fact meaning that
I was just beginning to understand. When Christ
said, ' Except a man hate father, mother, wife and
children, yea, and his own life also, he cannot
be my disciple/ he fired a ball into the very
centre and heart of the marriage and family spirit.
148 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
I had been hit, and the egotistical marriage spirit
was bleeding at every pore."
The next day Noyes went over with George
and Abram C. to Kingston, two miles from Ron-
dout, and settled with the magistrate of that place
who had issued the warrant for his arrest ; giving
bonds that Smith should in future keep the peace
and support his wife. But the bad spirit in the
village of Rondout was not quelled. Some of the
rough lads wanted a spree ; and to the wild spirits
of the river-side very few amusements offered so
much fun as tarring and feathering a couple of
preachers in a good cause. Again a council was
held in the stone house. Noyes, whose voice was
still for peace, proposed to leave towards evening
for his home, taking Smith and his eldest daughter
along with him to Vermont. This plan was accor-
dingly acted upon. Noyes thought that as the mob
regarded Smith as the chief offender, his absence
might pacify their feelings so as to allow of the
other members of the family remaining in peace.
And such was the fact. George rowed the company
to Kingston Point, where they were to embark
on board a steamer for Albany. On returning
to the house early in the evening, he found every-
thing quiet. No demonstrations were to be either
THE SELFISH SPIRIT. 149
seen or heard; and George and Mary were now left
alone — the idolater and his idol. " During Mr.
Smith's absence," says George, " I had a time of
repose and sober reflection. My past trials, the
dangers encountered, the visit from Mr. Noyes,
and many other stirring events, seemed much more
like a dream or a story of fiction than a reality.
The talks, too, given us by Mr. Noyes during his
brief sojourn with us, brought an influence of life.
I was reminded of the words of another Teacher,
who said to a penitent offender, ' Neither do I
condemn thee ; go and sin no more/
" I had been subordinate to Mr. Smith, and
had confided in him, up to the time of this visit
from Mr. Noyes. But when I reflected upon his
return, an unpleasant sensation came over me.
Had he been the occasion of much suffering to
me, and was I afraid of more ? After an absence
of two weeks Mr. Smith was again at home. I
was much pleased to see him again in our family.
Mr. Noyes, while with us, advised that there
should be no further intimacy or special conferences
between Mr. Smith and Mrs. Cragin ; repeating
what he had said three years before in the Battle
Axe letter, viz. ' Woe to him who abolishes the
law of the apostasy, before he stands in the holi-
150 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
ness of the resurrection/ Believing that the ad-
vice would be faithfully followed, I looked for
greater unity and more fellowship than ever be-
tween Mr. Smith, Mrs. Cragin, and myself. In
this expectation, however, I was sadly disap-
pointed. It was but a few days before he com-
menced a game of hypocrisy, that was carried on
for weeks before it came to the light. In my
presence, he would talk in his peculiarly sancti-
monious or methodistical style, clothing his ideas
in mystical language, having no other end in view,
probably, than the blinding of eyes that might
possibly discover the imposition the tempter was
inciting him to practise upon comparatively inno-
cent victims. When alone with Mrs. Cragin, his
talk was altogether of another type. Before he
could recover his power over her, he must in some
way regain her confidence. He was well aware
that Mrs. Cragin's confidence in Mr. Noyes was
greatly strengthened by his last visit to us. So
it would not do to attempt to undermine her
foundation of firm faith in the leader of New
Haven Perfectionism. To accomplish his end,
therefore, he must make it appear to her that,
he, Smith, had the confidence of Mr. Noyes to
the fullest extent ;- and, being an adept in throw-
THE SELFISH SPIBIT. 151
ing out insinuations and enigmas, he began the
game by hinting to her that Mr. Noyes virtually
approved of their past proceedings ; and that his
late disapproval and public criticism of their acts
was chiefly for my benefit.
" While thus playing a successful game in
winning back his power over my wife, he resorted
to his old trick of keeping me in a harmless,
helpless condition, by loading me down heavily
with hard work, self-condemnation, and evil-
thinking. Unwittingly he was helping me. The
pressure thus put upon me stirred up all the
earnestness within me to find the justification and
peace of Christ. With my views of the great
salvation of God, I very well understood that
i" could not carry the marriage spirit with me
into the heavenly kingdom, if Mr. Smith could ;
neither could I avoid making the discovery that
he was freighting his barge with the same com-
modity that I was throwing overboard. How-
ever, my business was now with God, and not
with man. The victory that I was daily praying
for was a reconciliation with God, and content-
ment in His service. And that victory came at
last. Labouring alone in the field, I had a new
view of God's infinite goodness and mercy. The
152 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
humanity of God, so to speak, in the sacrifice
of His only beloved Son on the cross for the
redemption of the world, was so glorious an ex-
hibition of His disinterested love, that my egotism
seemed to vanish like darkness before the rising
sun. My heavy burdens and great sorrow were
all gone. I exclaimed aloud, ' My God and my
Father ! I can suffer for ever, and yet be for ever
happy in beholding Thy great and pure love to
mankind/ Evil - thinking of my wife and Mr.
Smith had been taken from me. I was at peace
with my circumstances and everybody about me."
153
CHAPTER XVIII
HEAVENLY BRIDALS.
George Cragin did not know how far the thing
had gone between his wife and the Rev. Abram
C. Smith. He knew that they had done wrong, —
done that for which the law would have given him
swift redress. He did not know that these two
beings had actually gone through a form of marriage,
and had pledged their souls to each other for a
partnership of love, through all eternity. Yet that
was the fact. The Rev. gentleman had persuaded
Mary that neither his dead wife nor his living wife-
was the natural mate of his soul, and that she,
Mary Cragin, was that mate. Mary seems to have
striven long against this dogma, though she suc-
cumbed at last ; and their heavenly bridals had
been duly performed.
Late in the summer Abram had to go out
preaching. Some Saints from Pennsylvania came
to Rondout, and it was agreed that Abram should
154 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
go back with them to their country, passing
through New York. Smith desired that Mary
should accompany the Saints down the river, where
a week in the city would give her a pleasant
change. True to his crafty spirit, Abram con-
trived that the first hint for such a journey
should proceed from George, who was wrought
upon by a third person to make it, as his wife
would not otherwise think of such a course.
George saw that she wished to go, though, at the
moment of leaving with these religious friends,
she paused and sighed, as though she would even
then turn back. In the end, adieus were said,
and the parties went on board the boat.
" When nearly a week had passed," says
George, "I received a few lines from my wife,
saying that she intended to leave for home the
next evening, and should be happy to meet me
on the arrival of the boat at Rondout. That
letter, although very short, affected me strangely.
It was not the letter, but the spirit or magnetic
current back of it that touched my heart with a
kind of fervent heat, that melted at once all the
icy feelings that had imperceptibly accumulated
toward her. On entering the ladies' cabin, Mrs.
Cragin met me with a subdued kind of greet-
HEAVENLY BRIDALS. 155
ing, yet so affectionate and sincere, that my
equanimity was at fault, as tearful eyes invol-
untarily bore witness. I soon discovered, how-
ever, that there was a heavy burden upon her
mind, the nature of which she evidently had no
freedom to reveal ; still the evidence of a return
of her kindly feelings towards me was indis-
putable, if my inner senses and emotions were
to be accepted as proper witnesses in the case.
But I had so thoroughly disciplined myself to
the minding of my own business, that I neither
demanded nor asked for explanations. My sym-
pathies, however, were silently enlisted in her
behalf. Could I forget the past?"
Much to his surprise, he heard, a few days
later, that the Rev. Abram C, instead of going on
his mission at once into Pennsylvania, had loitered
for a whole week in New York. "What had kept
him there ? Ah, what ?
Some call of business carried George Cragin to
New York, and he very properly called on his
fellow-saints, the Lyveres. When he was entering
their house, he saw that some great trouble weighed
upon Mrs. Lyvere's mind. While he was asking
himself what it could mean, she said :
" ' Mr. Cragin, the moment you entered our house,
156 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
the impression came upon me that the Lord had
sent you here that I might have an opportunity of
unburdening my mind to you. You are aware/'
she continued, " that Mr. Smith and Mrs. Cragin
have lately spent a week in the city. They were
guests of ours most of the time. I had been made
acquainted with their unusual proceedings at Ron-
dout last May, and with the subsequent criticism
given them by Mr. Noyes. I was also aware of
the promise made by Mr. Smith that there should
be no repetition of like proceedings or improper
intimacy between himself and your wife. That
promise, I assure you, Mr. Cragin, has been broken
— judging from the evidence of their guilt in my
possession. Their conduct while here was very
strange. Your wife did her best to appear cheer-
ful, and to hide from me the trial that was upon
her. But she could not. Tears would come to her
eyes in spite of her will to keep them back, in-
dicating trouble within. Mr. Smith spent hours in
talking to her, and at times his language was so
severe, that it aroused my indignation against him
to the highest degree. One night I overheard him
say to her that if she revealed to you their secret
marriage, it would cause an everlasting separation
between them. They occupied '
HEAVENLY BRIDALS. 157
" l Stop, stop ! ' I replied, ' I have heard enough.
Let the details go ; I care not for them. That
man, that infernal hypocrite has deceived me — has
lied to me over and over again. But I must keep
<30ol/ I said more calmly ; ' Mr. Smith himself is a
victim. The devil, the old serpent that seduced
mother Eve, is at the bottom of all this mischief
and wrong. Mr. Smith's abuse of me, and the
seduction of my wife, are trifles compared with the
wound Mr. Smith has inflicted upon the sacred
cause of truth. But I will say no more. I shall
be at home to-morrow morning; I believe Mrs.
Cragin will tell me the truth, however much it
may implicate herself.' "
During this conversation between Mrs. Lyvere
and George, the Be v. John B. Lyvere had said but
little, though the few words which he dropt cor-
roborated the testimony of his wife.
With a heavy heart George went on board
the steamer that was to take him home, to the
cold stone house at Bondout, to the Spiritual wife
of Abram C. Smith. He sat on deck all night and
watched the summer stars come forth. The voyage
was long; for the vessel had to push her way
against wind and tide, so that morning dawned
before she came alongside the tiny wharf. George
158 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
jumped into a canoe, to paddle himself across the
creek.
" The morning sun shone calmly and beneficently
upon the still waters of the bay, as I entered a skiff
to row myself to the solitary stone house on the
opposite shore. As I drew near the landing, only
a few rods from our dwelling, I saw the slender
form of my wife standing upon the pier to offer her
accustomed greeting. But as I approached still
nearer, so that she could read the countenance I
wore, the playful smile upon her face instantly
vanished. With all my mental victories, edifying
reflections, and good resolves, during a sleepless
night on the Hudson, I still had the burden to
carry of a sad, heavy heart. I was a poor hand at
concealing the state of things within me. My wife
interpreted at a glance the story I had to tell.
We met on the shore, and a sorrowful meeting it
was. ' George/ said my wife, 'you know all; the
secret is out, and I thank God for revealing it/
' Yes, Mary/ I replied, ' lying, like murder, will
out/ ' I will make a clean breast, now/ she said,
1 for I can carry the works of darkness no longer/
' Wait awhile/ I replied, ' till I get rested/ I could
not talk. A conflict was going on within. Two
spirits were struggling for the mastery over me.
HEAVENLY BRIDALS. 159
One would reject her and treat her with the icy
coldness and scorn of the unforgiving world. The
other would forgive the penitent, and by sincerity,
tempered with kindness, lead her back to the Rock,
Christ, from whence she had strayed. The good
spirit prevailed. We walked to the house like
two soldiers who had been badly whipped by the
enemy — cast down, but not destroyed. 'We will
be brother and sister after this/ I remarked, ' as
we don't seem to prosper in this warfare, as
husband and wife/"
Brother and Sister ! The spirit of the old
German monks and nuns was upon them. George
felt that the crisis of his life had come. He knew
that he had been a sad idolater of beauty, wit, and
worth. He hoped and prayed that a calmer spirit
would be his. He felt no more anger in his heart
towards Mary than he would have cherished to-
wards a sister who had gone astray and had come
to throw herself at his feet.
160
CHAPTER XIX.
CONFLICT.
George continues his story : —
" The day I returned from New York was long
to be remembered as a day of confessions. Mrs.
Cragin voluntarily confessed all that was in her
heart relating to the intimacy that had existed for
the past six months between her and Mr. Smith.
Her revelations were not made to cover up faults,
but to be delivered from them. She was serious
and sorrowful, but her sorrow was not of the
world. While listening to her story, the exhorta-
tion, ' Confess your faults one to another, and pray
one for another, that ye may be healed/ came home
to me clothed with new force and beauty. Indeed
my own heart was so affected and softened by
hearing her relate the simple facts in the case
without manifesting the least disposition, as I
could see, to screen herself from judgment behind
the more aggravated faults of another, that I too
CONFLICT. 161
wanted to confess my own weakness and faults,
and cover up those of others. I realised also, that
Mrs. Cragin felt, as all true penitents must feel,
that God, much more than man or society, had been
wronged by the evil done. When one sees the
faults of which one is guilty, and has a hatred of
them, a sincere confession of them to others is,
virtually, a separation from those faults ; and the
turning of the heart to God in prayer causes the
healing power of His love and forgiveness to flow
in upon the wounded spirit."
The explanation between George and Mary
as to what was past, and the understanding
between them as to what must be, could not be
all in all. Abram was away from Rondout ; but
he would, of course, come back ; and from the
man's nature it was clear that he could never be
restrained from trying to enforce his rights upon
the woman who had contracted towards him the
obligations of a Spiritual wife.
"The return of Mr. Smith from his mission
south was looked for daily. I had not thought so
much about dreading his return, until Mrs. Cragin
said to me one day, ' George, you can hardly have
a conception of the terrible dread I have at times
of meeting that man. The very thought of the
vol. n. M
162 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
bare possibility of again coming under his power
is distressing to me/ ' You must put your trust
in God/ I replied ; ' He can protect you against
all harm from men or devils/ While thus ex-
horting Mrs. Cragin to faith and courage, I was
also exhorting myself to exercise the same, in view
of the necessity of meeting an old friend in the
possible character of an antagonist. I sincerely
felt my inability to cope with a spirit so strong as
that which I well knew Mr. Smith possessed.
With prayerful endeavour, therefore, to fortify our-
selves for what might be before us, we patiently
waited the issue of coming events.
"Late on the following Saturday night, the
family being all in bed, the lights extinguished,
and not a sound to be heard save the pattering
rain and the monotonous sound of the incoming
tide, a loud rap, rap, rap, was heard on the front
door, which was soon followed by the well-known
voice of Mr. Smith. The first knock thus heard
startled the chastened one beside me so suddenly,
as to cause much bodily agitation and trembling.
As I left my bed to obey the summons, Mrs.
Cragin begged of me not to allow Mr. Smith to
enter the room we occupied. On opening the door
to let him in, he extended his hand to me, which I
CONFLICT. 163
declined to take, saying as I did so, 'No, Mr.
Smith, I cannot take the hand of one who has
so cruelly wronged me;' and then adding, 'Your
deeds of darkness have come to the light/ His
only reply was, 'Where is Mary? I want to see her/
* You cannot/ I replied. ' Moreover, she absolutely
declines seeing you, or speaking to you. She has
revealed all;' and so saying, I returned to my room.
" Little indeed was the sleep that visited our
pillows that stormy night. From the tone of his
voice and the attitude of his spirit, we well knew
that no conviction of guilt, no repentance of evil
committed, had overtaken Mr. Smith during his
absence. We felt, too, that his heart was set on
war, if need be, for the recovery of his fancied
rights to the woman whom his delusion had led
astray. What a sudden change of the position of
the parties ! Mrs. Cragin was now anxious to shun
the very man whom, only a few weeks before, she
had implicitly trusted and loved to adoration.
'George/ she said to me, 'you must not for one
moment leave me alone with him. He will invent
every conceivable plan to see me ; prevent him/
I promised to do my best. Thus the night was
spent, very much, I imagine, as an army spends
the night in front of the enemy.
164 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
"The morning came quite soon enough, for I
had to confess the presence of feelings very-
much opposed to the inevitable conflict I saw
before me. But as there was no such alterna-
tive as retreat from the position in which Pro-
vidence had placed me, I arose with the prayer
in my heart for grace to do that which would
please the Spirit of truth. In the course of the
morning, Mr. Smith, Mrs. Cragin and myself, were
alone in the sitting-room. Mr. Smith put on a
triumphant air, inviting no candid talk or inves-
tigation of his past proceedings ; neither did he
make any concessions as to the questionable
wisdom of the course he had adopted, but stood
firmly and resolutely on the assumed ground that
he had pleased God in all that he had done ;
appealing moreover to Heaven, in a presumptuous
way, for the justification of his deeds. This was
said, not directly to me, but, as one might suppose,
to an imaginary audience before whom he was de-
livering a sermon on self-justification. His manner
of defence was peculiarly his own, being a com-
pound of preaching, praying, and ejaculation, in-
terpolated with singing, amens, and hallelujahs.
Of course, I was regarded by him with great
contempt for presuming to sit in judgment upon
CONFLICT. 165
his course and actions. Nevertheless, I stood
firmly by the judgment I had given, namely, that
he had been, and was still, under the delusion of
the devil. I repeated that judgment, whenever
he addressed me directly, adding very little be-
sides, regarding it as my main business to remain
by Mrs. Cragin according to my promise/'
George could find the strength to make new
conditions with his idol ; but he could not yield
her to the reverend gentleman who claimed her
as a Spiritual wife.
George tells the story of his struggle with
the mastering spirit of the Methodist preacher
in words which I prefer to save. No art of
mine shall come between the reader and this
strange confession from a wounded soul.
" From morning till night the battle thus raged
with unabated fierceness ; not however in the
form of combative words, as between two flesh-
and-blood assailants, but it was the wrestling of
our spirits with principalities and invisible powers,
to see which would carry the day. Once, his
eloquence in preaching and praying might have
conquered me, as I was, I suppose, easily affected
by such kind of demagogism, provided the per-
former had my confidence. But understanding
166 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
for a certainty as I then did, that the person
thus speaking was not to be trusted, and that
he was given to deception and lying, he might as
well have undertaken to melt the Rocky Mountains
by his declamation, as to move me from my convic-
tions. Mr. Smith was under the erroneous im-
pression that the affections of Mrs. Cragin were
still his ; and that if he could only overpower
the legal husband, the spiritual one would
readily and easily recover his lost prize. Hence
his unceasing efforts.
" Finally, his zeal began to wane, seeing that
he was losing rather than gaining ground. So,
early in the evening, he suddenly changed his
base, bv declaring that he had made up his
mind to start immediately for Putney. 'Very
well/ I replied, ' you could not do a better thing.
My confidence in Mr. Noyes/ I continued, 'is
still unshaken. I will submit my side of the
case to his judgment and decision/ Mr. Smith
was now pleasant and genial, and in this state
asked me if I would do him a favour. 'Cer-
tainly/ I replied, ' what shall it be ? ' ' Write
a line to Brother Noyes, saying that you cherish
no unkind personal feelings towards me/ I
complied with the request. He was then ready
CONFLICT. 167
for the journey, at the same time inviting me to
row him across the Creek. I did so, and on
leaving the boat he wished me to give him a
parting kiss, as a token of my kind regards.
With this request I also complied. Not until
I had returned to the house, however, and re-
ported to Mrs. Cragin this last diplomatic ma-
noeuvre, did I divine the motive by which he
was actuated in thus suddenly making love to
me. He was aware that Lyvere had been sent
on to Putney as a witness against him. So,
lawyer-like, he was going fully prepared, as he
thought, to rebut Lyvere's testimony, by prov-
ing that he had parted with me on the best
of terms. I must admit that I felt a little
chagrined to think I could allow myself to be
so easily imposed upon after all that had trans-
pired. However, I did not allow such trickery
on his part to disturb me seriously, believing as
I did that Mr. Noyes possessed the discernment
which would enable him to detect the spirit of
imposition that would soon confront him."
168
CHAPTER XX.
PEACE.
George Cragin did not see the face of the Rev.
Abram C. Smith again for many years. Noyes
told his once disciple that he was no better than
a rogue, whom he felt it a duty to denounce before
all the world. Smith saw and confessed his error ;
promised to sin no more; returned to Rondout;
asked his angry wife to come home ; and devoted
his energies to making money, in which he suc-
ceeded better than in making love.
Cragin says of him in parting :
" He was a man of strong social affections.
With his first wife he lived peaceably, and was a
kind husband ; but her affectional nature, as com-
pared with his own, was icy coldness. Not finding,
therefore, the satisfaction his ardent nature craved
in his own family, he gathered up what crumbs
he could find, to meet the demands of special
friendship, in the field of his labours as a Me-
PEACE. 169
thodist preacher. So that, according to his own
confessions, he was much more at home in the
church meetings, which were mostly made up of
females, than in his own family circle. With his
second wife, a still greater disappointment afflicted
him. There was in her no lack of sensuous life,
but a total lack of religious faith and moral in-
tegrity, to sanctify it. Hence, in his domestic
and social relations thus far, he had not realised
his dreams of connubial felicity. But in forming
an acquaintance with Mrs. Cragin, he found a
woman whose nature was pre-eminently affec-
tional. With large veneration for God and man,
but with little or no cautiousness, and very un-
selfish, she soon became all the world, and heaven
beside, to Mr. Smith. In defending his late con-
duct, Mr. Smith based his argument on the
the fanatical assumption that the invisible powers,
with whom he claimed to be in constant com-
munication, had given him Mrs. Cragin as his
true affinity — his spiritual wife and companion,
to he his in all ages to come, alleging that the two
previous ones were not adapted to his spiritual
needs, or, in other words, were not, either of
them, his true mate. The invisible power who
thus promised him a choice bit of property, was
170 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
undoubtedly the same infamous and unscrupulous
speculator who held out very tempting prizes to
the Son of God. If Mr. Smith's delusion on this
subject, originated anywhere outside of his mor-
bid social affections, it is to be attributed to the
social influences of the nominal church, or to the
habits of the clerical class of which he had been a
member, in being associated so much as they
are with women, as their special co-labourers in
the religious field."
Husband and wife, now come into their new
relation of pious brother and pious sister, had to
face the world once more; they had been cured
of their idolatrous love for each other ; but they
had not yet become free of the question as to
how they were to gain their daily bread.
" Mr. Smith having left for Vermont, as before
stated, the question now came home to me with
serious emphasis, What is the will of God con-
cerning my future course ? To learn that will and
obey it, at the cost of any temporal discomforts
and sacrifices, was my duty, and should be my
pleasure. After waiting on God awhile, as a man
waits on a friend who he is assured has the means
and the disposition to relieve him, some flashes of
light entered my mind ; and this light gradually
PEACE. 171
increased, until I interpreted its meaning so
clearly and satisfactorily that I could not do other-
wise than accept it as the will of my heavenly
Father concerning the first step to be taken in
the premises. I said to Mrs. Cragin, ' My mind
is made up to leave this place, just as soon as I
can arrange my business to do so, and without
waiting for the return of Mr. Smith/
" ' But where can we go V inquired my wife.
" ' The light came' from the East/ I replied ;
1 so I am going first to New York. When there,
I shall expect directions where to go next. Suf-
ficient unto the day are the directions thereof/
" Mrs. Cragin was almost overjoyed at the pur-
pose I had formed. The first thing to be done was
to find an opening for the disposal of our furniture,
most of which was mahogany, and more costly than
labouring people could afford to purchase. Our
nearest neighbour on that side of the Creek was
a Dutch farmer in fair circumstances. I went at
once to his house and reported my business. He
had unmarried daughters. The entire family re-
turned with me to examine the goods, and the
result was, I sold them every piece of furniture I
had to dispose of, at prices that pleased them.
The love of money was not a vice that I was guilty
172 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
of just then. The crops I had cultivated, and of
which I was somewhat proud — this being my first
attempt at farming since my boyhood days — I left
of course. In less than a week, therefore, from the
time that I regarded myself as having received
orders to remove from that station, I had settled
up all business matters for which I was responsible,
had my goods that we were to take with us all
packed, and taken over the Creek to a steamer
lying at Rondout wharf; and on the second day
of September, 1840, we took our leave of our
friends at the old stone house, and were ferried
across the river to the boat bound for New York."
Peace returned in time to the bosom of this
distracted house. In a few days, Mary was able
to write in her defence to Father Noyes :
" Since the fatal charm has been dissolved, I
see how I have been deceived and duped, and
taught to believe that I was in an inner circle
where it was right and pleasing to God to do what
I did. ... I never, in my heart, turned aside from
the promise I made to you when you were at our
house last spring. Again and again I asked Mr.
Smith if you would be pleased with our course
(for .1 had terrible misgivings), when he assured
me that you would, and that he himself would tell
PEACE. 173
you . . . Guilty as I am, I have been miserably
deceived and deluded by him. I am reaping the
curse of trusting in man, and I deserve it. It was
the instruction I received to lie and deceive, that
first began to open my eyes. I thank God for the
judgment that has overtaken me, and is compelling
me to see my errors, and making me, from my
innermost soul, condemn them, even if I am to be
sent to hell at last."
George adds to this tale by way of final moral :
" To sum up our experience during this time,
I might say that for the previous six months we
had been given over to Satan for the destruction
of the flesh, having been put into a sort of pur-
gatory, or deviTs-cure process, for purging us of
egotism and self-conceit. Being thus greatly
reduced as regarded self- valuation, we filled a
much smaller place in the world, after emerging
from that satanic bath, than ever before, making
us much more teachable and available to the
powers above us and for whom we were created,
than we otherwise could have been."
Subsequently husband and wife entered, as
brother and sister in the Lord, very heartily into
the communistic experiment of Oneida Creek, in
which Mary Cragin very soon became the vital souL
174 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
Some years later still, she was drowned by a
boat accident in that very Rondout Creek which
had been the scene of her trials as Spiritual
wife to the Rev. Abram C. Smith.
Many of her writings on religious subjects
have been published ; and an obelisk has been
raised above her tomb.
175
CHAPTEE XXL
NOYES ON SPIRITUAL LOVE.
By way of final gloss upon these spiritual doings
in the New Pauline Churches of America, I shall
cite, from a letter addressed to me by Father
Noyes, the following facts, reasonings, and con-
clusions, as to what he insists on calling the
marriage revolution in his own country, now being
effected through a change in its religious spirit.
It will be noted that Father Noyes considers this
coming revolution as a change from democracy to
theocracy ; from government by a mob to govern-
ment by a priest ; from the theory of free trade
and personal interest into that of free love and
brotherly helpfulness ; from the practice of buying
in the cheapest market and selling in the dearest,
into actual Christian socialism ; a change, there-
fore, which is to transform the political as well
as the domestic life of his countrymen !
In a few places I have altered a word, and
1 76 SPIBITUAL WIVES.
even struck out a phrase, since the ordinary
English reader is far less free in the use of terms
than an American divine ; but I have in no case
changed the sense, or even veiled the meaning
meant to be conveyed by the reverend gentleman.
" Oneida C, March 1867.
" It is evident from what we have seen that
Revivals breed social revolutions. All the social
irregularities reported in the papers followed in
the train of revivals ; and, so far as I know,
all revivals have developed tendencies to such
irregularities. The philosophy of the matter seems
to be this : Revivals are theocratic in their very-
nature ; they introduce God into human affairs ;
the power that is supposed to be present in them
is equivalent to inspiration and the power of mira-
cles,— that is to say, it is the actual Deity. In
the conservative theory of Revivals, this power is
restricted to the conversion of souls ; but in actual
experience it goes, or tends to go, into all the
affairs of life. Revival preachers and Revival
converts are necessarily in the incipient stage of
a theocratic revolution ; they have in their expe-
rience the beginning of a life under the Higher
Law ; and if they stop at internal religious changes,
NO YES ON SPIRITUAL LOVE. 177
it is because the influence that converted them
is suppressed.
" And the theocratic tendency, if it goes be-
yond religion, naturally runs first into some form
of Socialism. Religious love is very near neigh-
bour to sexual love, and they always get mixed
in the intimacies and social excitements of Re-
vivals. The next thing a man wants, after he has
found the salvation of his soul, is to find his Eve
and his Paradise. Hence these wild experiments
and terrible disasters.
" From these facts and principles, quite oppo-
site conclusions may be drawn by different per-
sons. A worldly-wise man might say, they show
that Revivals are damnable delusions, leading to
immorality and disorganisation of society. I should
say, they show that Revivals, because they are
divine, require for their complement a divine or-
ganisation of society, which all who love Revivals
and the good of mankind should fearlessly seek to
discover and inaugurate.
" The confession of Marquis L. Worden exhibits
a set of facts which may be called the morbid re-
sults of Revivals. By studying these cases, we can
trace out minutely the process by which Revivals
lead to the evolution of Shakerism. One of the
VOL. II. N
178 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
most interesting chapters in your New America is
that in which you give Elder Frederick's view of
Revivals as breeders of Shaker Societies. You
say:
" * The Shakers look upon a Revival as a spi-
»
ritual cycle, — the end of an epoch, — the birth of
a new society. Only in the fervour of a revival,
says Elder Frederick, can the elect be drawn to
God : — that is to say, in Gentile phrase, drawn
into a Shaker settlement. Mount Lebanon sprang
from a revival ; Enfield sprang from a revival ; in
fact, the Shakers declare that every large revival
being the accomplishment of a spiritual cycle, must
end in the foundation of a fresh Shaker union/
" This is undoubtedly a true account of the
genesis of Shakerism. In the narrative of Worden,
and in the statement added by myself, you are
taken behind the curtain and shown how the
converts are prepared for the holy Elders. It
is easy to see that, if the Shakers had been
awake to their advantage in 1835-6, they might
have established new societies in Central New
York and in Central Massachusetts. Every ele-
ment of Shakerism was present in the disorders
of these burnt districts. The Shaker doctrine of
Perfection was there. The Shaker doctrine of the
NOYES ON SPIRITUAL LOVE. 1 79
Leadership of Women was there. Lucina Umphre-
ville was the incipient Mother Ann at the West,.
and Mary Lincoln at the East. The Shaker
doctrine of chastity was there. Lucina openly
declared that Ann Lee was right in regard to the
true relations of man and woman The original
theory of the Saints, both at the East and the
West, was opposed to actual intercourse of the
sexes as ' works of the flesh/ They ' bundled/ it is
true, but only to prove by trial their power
against the flesh ; in other words, their triumphant
Shakerism. Doctor Gridley, one of the Massa-
chusetts leaders, boasted that 'he could carry a
virgin in each hand without the least stir of
unholy passion!' At Brimfield, Mary Lincoln
and Maria Brown visited Simon Lovett in his
room ; but they came out of that room in the
innocence of Shakerism. If the Elders had been
present, and prompt to gather the harvest just
when it was ripe, before it passed into prurience
and decay, two new societies at least might have
been founded. And even in the worst stages of
the disorder, Shakerism would have been a wel-
come refuge from the reactions and tribulations
that followed the excitement.
" But the Shakers must not flatter themselves
180 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
that their societies are the only births that come of
Revivals. Mormonism, doubtless, came out of the
same fertile soil. Joe Smith began his career in
central New York, among a population that was
fermenting with the hope of the Millennium, and
at a time when the great National Revival was
going forth in its strength. The order of things
in this birth was the same that we have seen
among the bundling Perfectionists, — first, Re-
ligion ; then Socialism : Revivals and conversions
of souls leading the way to Spiritual Wifehood,
and finally to Polygamy. The completion of the
sequence in this case seems to have taken two
generations of leaders ; Joe Smith laid the re-
ligious foundations, and Brigham Young has per-
fected the polygamy.
" The underlying principle here, as everywhere,
is that which I started at first : — Revivals are in
their nature theocratic ; and a theocracy has an in-
expugnable tendency to enter the domain of society
and revolutionise the relations of man and wife.
The resulting new forms of society will differ as
the civilisation and inspiration of the revolutionists
differ.
" One dominant peculiarity of the Shakers, as
also of the Bundling Perfectionists, which deter-
NO YES ON SPIRITUAL LOVE. 181
mined their style of socialism, was, in my opinion,
the Leadership of Women. Man of himself would
never have invented Shakerism, and it would have
been very difficult to have made him a medium of
inspiration for the development of such a system.
It is not in his line. But it is exactly adapted to
the proclivities of women in a state of independence
or ascendancy over man. Love between the sexes
has two stages ; the courting stage and the wedded
stage. Women are fond of the first stage. Men
are fond of the second. Women like to talk about
love ; but men want the love itself. Among the
Perfectionists the women led the way in the bund-
ling with purposes as chaste as those of the Shakers.
For a time they had their way ; but in time the
men had their way.
" The course of things may be re-stated thus :
Revivals lead to religious love ; religious love ex-
cites the passions ; the converts, finding them-
selves in theocratic liberty, begin to look about for
their mates and their paradise. H^re begins di-
vergence. If women have the lead, the feminine
idea that ordinary wedded love is carnal and
unholy rises and becomes a ruling principle. Mat-
ing on the Spiritual plan, with all the heights and
depths of sentimental love, becomes the order of
182 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
the day. Then, if a prudent Mother Ann is at the
head of affairs, the sexes are fenced off from each
other, and carry on their Platonic intercourse
through the grating. But, if a wild Mary Lincoln
or Lucina Umphreville is in the ascendant, the
presumptuous experiment of bundling is tried ;
and the end is ruin. On the other hand, if the
leaders are men, the theocratic impulse takes the
opposite direction, and polygamy in some form is
the result. Thus Mormonism is the masculine
form, as Shakerism is the feminine form, of the
more morbid products of Revivals.
" Our Oneida Socialism, too, is a masculine pro-
duct of the great Revival. I might take you
behind the scenes and show you the genesis of
Bible Communism. I shall not be likely to find a
more catholic confessor. But the task is too
egotistical for me at present ; I will only indicate
in a general way two or three points of difference
between my course and that of the bundling
Perfectionists.
"First, understand and remember that from
1834, when the Revival carried me into the con-
fession of Holiness, till 1846, the birth-year of our
present community — twelve years — I walked in
all the ordinances of the law blameless. I have
NO YES ON SPIRITUAL LOVE. 183
told you how near I came to being caught in the
scandal at Brimfield in 1835, and how I escaped.
This was my nearest, I may say my only, approach
to implication in the disorders of that period. I
was regularly married in 1838, and the files ot
papers that I published from that time till 1846
will testify that my face was set as a flint against
laxity among the Saints. My dealings with
Abram C. Smith, in. his affair with Mrs. Cragin, is
a specimen of the spirit in which I acted. I
repeat that I never knew woman till I was mar-
ried, and I never knew any woman but my wife
till we together entered into complex marriage in
1846.
"What then had I to do with the social revolu-
tions that were going on in that turbulent time?
I was a leader among Perfectionists. Is it possible,
it may be asked, that I was an innocent cipher in
these matters all through that campaign? Not
exactly a cipher. This is what I did : I looked
on; I studied; I got the germ of my present
theory of Socialism very soon after I confessed
Holiness, i.e. in May 1834. As that germ grew in
my mind, I talked about it. It took definite form
in a private letter in 1836. It got into print
without my knowledge or con&eiii m 1837. I
184 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
moulded it, protected it, and matured it from year
to year; holding it always, nevertheless, as a
theory to be realised in the future, and warning
all men against premature action upon it. I made
ready for the realisation of it by clearing the field
in which I worked of all libertinism, and by edu-
cating our Putney family in male continence and
criticism. When all was ready, in 1846, 1 launched
the theory into practice.
" Enough in this direction. One more general
remark :
" It is notable that all the socialisms that have
sprung from revivals have prospered. They are
utterly opposed to each other ; some of them must
be false and bad ; yet they all make the wilderness
blossom around them like the rose. The scientific
associations, one and all, go to wreck; but the
religious socialisms flourish as though the smiles of
Providence were upon them. What is the meaning
of this ? I interpret it thus : however false and
mutually repugnant the religious socialisms may be
in their details, they are all based on the theocratic
principle, — they all recognise the right of religious
inspiration to shape society and dictate the form of
family life. In this Mormons, Shakers, and Bible-
Communists agree. I believe this to be a true
NO YES ON SPIRITUAL LOVE. 185
principle and one that is dear to the heavens. For
the sake of this principle, it seems to me that the
invisible government has favoured even Popery
and Mohammedanism; and I expect that this
principle and not Republicanism, (the mere power
of human Law), will at last triumph in some form
here and throughout the world.
" John H. Noyes."
186
CHAPTER XXIL
CELESTIAL AFFINITIES.
I have given these words of Father Noyes on the
origin of Spiritual wifehood in America, because,
since this reverend gentleman is one of the chief
founders of Pauline Socialism in that country, his
opinions have a certain value in this connexion as
facts.
I must, however, guard myself against any
such inference as that, in my judgment, Father
Noyes has given in this statement a complete
view of the matter. Like nearly all American
divines, he fancies that the doctrine of natural
mates, between whom alone there can be true
wedlock of the soul, is a growth and property of
the Western soil ; a product of the highest form
of New-England Puritanism, having its root in
the stony ground about Plymouth Rock. To
such a theory, an historian of the Gothic family
would certainly demur ; whether the origin of
CELESTIAL AFFINITIES. 187
Spiritual wives were traced to Sydney Bigdon,
Hiram Sheldon, or John H. Noyes. In the
United States, this doctrine of spirit-brides has
found an open field and a multitude of con-
verts ; and enjoys in that republic the advan-
tages of a free pulpit and a free press. No
rationalistic Ober-Prasident could silence a New
York Ebel; no trimming bishop could remove a
Massachusetts Prince. In America, the preachers
find an open field, if they find no favour; hence
the quick and wide success which may greet a
new and seductive doctrine like that of Spiritual
wives. But this doctrine crossed the seas from
Europe to America; and although it can hardly
boast of such grand results in Germany and in
England as it shows in both the religious circles
and the rationalistic societies of the United
States, yet some traces of its presence may be
found in our day, in every country peopled by
men of Teutonic race.
The doctrine of Natural Mates and Spiritual
Love between the sexes is an old Gothic doctrine ;
one which published itself in the great Fraternity
of the Free Spirit ; which startled mankind in the
conduct of John of Leyden ; which appeared in the
sermons and the practices of Ann Lee ; which took
188 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
a special form in the speculations of Emmanuel
Swedenborg ; which found a voice in the artistic
work of Wolfgang von Gothe. This doctrine
was known in Augsburg and Leyden, in Man-
chester and Stockholm, in Frankfort and Weimar,
long before it was heard of in New Haven and
New York.
From the days in which those Brethren of the
Free Spirit tendered to their sisters in the Lord
the seraphic kiss of Spiritual love, until our own
times, when that soft and perilous privilege was
revived in many distant places ; first, by the
Mucker at Konigsberg, then by the Princeites
at Weymouth, afterwards by the Pauline social-
ists of Brimfield and Manlius ; a constant tradi-
tion of the superior rights and felicities conferred
by a marriage of souls, has been preserved
among the Gothic nations. This tradition has
proved its existence in many ways ; sometimes
cropping out in theory, sometimes in practice ;
here breaking out into license with Hans Matthie-
son, there dreaming off into fantasy with Jacob
Bohme. Under John of Leyden it took the shape
of polygamy; under Gerhard Tersteegen that of
personal union with the Holy Ghost. Sweden-
borg gave to it a large extension, a definite form,
CELESTIAL AFFINITIES. 189
and even a body of rules. Ann Lee made
use of it in her project for introducing a female
Messiah, and establishing on the new earth her
dogma of the leadership of woman. Gothe, who
seized so much of the finer spirit of his race,
made this old tradition of Natural mates assist,
if not the ends of his philosophy, at least the
purposes of his art.
Now, the forms into which this old Gothic
instinct has thrown itself in our own day, are
mainly two ; one Spiritual, the other Natural ;
the first finding its best expression in Swedenborg,
the other in Gothe. Under each of these two
forms, we have a series of schools and churches
springing up in the New America, putting senti-
ment to the proof, and turning dreams into facts ;
here running into plurality of wives, there into
denial of the passions, and here again into the
wildest license of free love.
The preachers of all these modes of Spiritual
marriage, profess (with some exceptions, hardly
worth a note) to find the sanctions of their creed
and practice in St. Paul ; for while our orthodox
divines have been weakly shutting their eyes on
that passage in which the Apostle speaks of his
female companion, the free critics of America have
190 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
been fastening their own interpretation on his
words. Yet the texts on which the two main
schools have severally built their systems of re-
ligious and social life, may be found much nearer
home than in the writings of St. Paul.
The Spiritualistic doctrine lies in Swedenborg ;
the Naturalistic doctrine lies in Gothe.
In the new heaven and the new earth imagined
by Swedenborg, and painted by him with so much
sensuous colour and voluptuous language, the
union of male and female is not only a Spiritual
fact, but the soul and motive of all celestial facts.
Without perfect marriage, there is no perfect rest
for either man or woman, even in heaven ; nothing
but a striving of the soul after distant joys ; joys
which can never be attained, except by the happy
blending of two souls in one everlasting covenant
of love. Heaven itself is nothing without love; less
than a land without moisture, a field without seed,
a world without sunshine. Love is its light and
life. Take away love, and heaven is a blank, a
waste, a ruin ; for love is the inner soul and
source of things ; which sends its radiance through
the world of spirits, much as the sun sends forth
its heat and light through the world of sense.
So firmly is this doctrine of the need of a true
CELESTIAL AFFINITIES. 191
marriage of souls in heaven held by Swedenborg,
and by those who follow him, that they represent
the happy man and wife, who have loved each
other well on earth, and come together in the after
life, in perfect innocence and ardour, as melting,
so to speak, into each other's essence ; so that
these blending souls are no longer visible as two
angels, but only as one angel ; a glorified and per-
fect being which appears in both the masculine and
the feminine form. Nay, so potent is the force of
love, that the followers of the Swedish seer main-
tain, not as a paradox, but a high Spiritual truth,
that the true husband and wife, thus happily con-
joined, are not merely known to others as one angel
only ; but appear to themselves as a single being ;
two in one, a consummate man ; unity in the spirit
and in the flesh. Such experience, the mystics
say, is rare on earth, only because perfect love, the
result of marriage between natural mates, is rare.
It is alleged by these mystics that, in the
present earthly life, marriages are seldom made
from Spiritual motives. Men are tempted into
marriage, more by birth, wealth, beauty, high con-
nexions, even opportunity, than by actual prompt-
ing of the spirit. Men take wives as they take
partners in business, colleagues in politics. Love
192 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
is treated as a trade. Even under such bad con-
ditions, many persons go through the matter with
a decent air ; for, though they soon find reason
to feel that they are not united with their partners
in the spirit, they think it well to hide their
sorrow, and to live in seeming comfort for the
sake of others — of their kindred, of their children,
of the world. If they cannot hide their misery
from themselves, they often succeed in hiding it
from their prying friends. This sort of tender
and poetic deceit is useful and even excellent ;
since, without it, the peace of families would be
continually disturbed. But it is not the less a
grief to those who practise it ; and happy are they
who have no need to pretend a satisfaction in
wedlock which they do not feel !
Those only, adds the seer, who find themselves
truly mated on the earth, have done for ever with
these trials and contentions of the spirit.
Souls may pass away from earth to heaven
under three different relations of sex and sex.
(1) They may pass away as children, in the virgin
state ; (2) they may pass away as men and women
who have been lawfully married without being spiri-
tually mated ; and (3) they may pass away as hus-
bands and wives who have attained to that stage
CELESTIAL AFFINITIES. 193
of consummate man, in which the male and female
has become one body and one soul. In each of
these three relations, the spirit has an experience
all its own.
(1) " I have heard from angels/' says Sweden-
borg, "that when a pair who have been educated in
heaven from childhood, have come into years, they
meet in some place by chance. When they be-
hold each other, they feel by a common instinct
that they are a pair. The youth says in his secret
heart, She is mine ; the damsel says in her secret
heart, He is mine. They accost each other, they
are happy, and betrothed."
(2) Nearly all the contracts made on earth, says
the Swede, are null and void from the beginning,
because these unions are not made with natural
pairs. When the man and the woman die, he says,
they remain consorts for a while in the land of souls,
until they find that they are truly not of kin.
Sometimes, in that upper world, the husband quits
his wife, sometimes the wife quits her husband ;
now and then they start from each other, like
opposite currents in a magnetic coil. What had
made these strangers one in name ? Perhaps they
had lived in the same town ; their families were
associates ; they were of corresponding age, sex,
VOL. II. o
194 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
fortune ; the man was rich, the woman lovely.
Tish ! cries the sage ; what are these vanities to
the Lord? After death, externals count for no-
thing. In the higher spheres no one is richer than
another, for every soul is heir to an unfading
crown ; no one stands nearer than his fellow, for
space is a thing unknown; no one is of higher
birth than the rest, for every soul is a son of
God.
In the after-life every one has to seek out his
mate, make himself known to her by signs, and
enter upon that bliss which crowns his final
search.
(3) Happiest of all is he who shall have found
and won his natural mate on earth. For him the
joys of heaven have come in his mortal days. God's
purposes are then wrought out in the living flesh,
and nothing in the scheme of his existence runs
to waste. Are there many such perfect unions
of soul with soul, of heart with heart? Yea,
many ; for God is bountiful to His children, and
their perfect bliss may be noted by the dis-
cerning eye.
The signs by which you may know a Spiritual
pair on earth are said to be mainly these three :
union from an early time in youth ; perfect love
CELESTIAL AFFINITIES. 195
and unbroken faith towards each other; constant
prayer that the Lord will make them and pre-
serve them one in body and in soul. When such
perfect lovers pass away into a higher state, they
will come together by a cogent law; and the
external garments being cast aside, they enter
gladly into that stage of their spiritual progress
in which husband and wife can part no more ; in
which they will exist as a single being — one
angel of both the male and female type.
That matches are made in heaven is not a
pleasantry with the Swedish seer. The Lord,
he says, provides similitudes for all — if not on
earth, where things so often arrange themselves
by chance, why then in heaven, where everything
comes to pass according to eternal laws, not in
obedience to the caprice of men and women.
Nature exists in pairs, and God has given all
creatures into life, as either male or female, one
for each — no more, no less. In paradise there was
one woman, one man. The perfect being, into
whose nostrils had been breathed the breath of
life, was parted into two halves ; this half male,
that half female ; one original, one derived ; each
necessary to the other, part of the other ; so that
the two beings which had been separated might
196 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
be considered as having a common life. As it was
in the lower Eden so it will be in the higher Eden.
In heaven there are no bachelors, no old maids, no
monks, no nuns, no pluralists, no celibates, no free
lovers. Each Adam lives in his Eve, and is content
in her, —
He for God only, she for God in him.
Thus, all the spirits of the just, whatever may-
have been their lot on earth, will meet and wed
their proper counterparts in heaven. God has
provided that for every male soul a female soul
shall be born, and heaven itself knows no sweeter
delight than springs from witnessing these re-
unions of the blest.
197
CHAPTER XXIII. .
NATURAL AFFINITIES.
Gothe has dealt with these Gothic instincts and
traditions in a purely scientific spirit ; though he
has used them mainly for the purposes of romantic
art. From him, in the main, the Free-lovers appear
to have derived both their philosophy and their
terms. Was the word " affinity " ever used before
his time for a natural mate?
Gothe appears to have had a strong belief in
the existence of some law of male and female
friendship and kinship higher than our actual
marriage would in every case now imply. Two
of his early tales, Werther s Burthen and Free
Affinities, were undertaken by him in order that
he might work out his ideas on this point, under
forms of social life and personal genius properly
adapted to the end which he kept in view.
In both these stories, it is clear that Gothe
sides with the hero who is straining out his life
against the conventional proprieties and moralities
198 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
of his time ; whence a dull and ignorant cry has
been raised against these noble works of art as
dangerous reading for the young ; as if dull and
ignorant people, wanting insight and imagination,
would not find the highest literature of every land,
be it profane or be it sacred — the work of Homer,
Dante, Shakespeare, Cervantes — the Bible, the
Talmud, the Vedas, the Koran — to be dangerous
reading for the young!
In the first of these stories, Werther finds, too
soon for his peace on earth, not too soon for his
hope in heaven, that Charlotte is his free affinity ;
that he and she are natural pairs, born for each
other, and parted by the accidents of time and
place. The great discovery is only made on the
eve of Charlotte's espousals with Albert ; and thus
the struggle of two souls for a union which can
never be brought about on earth makes up the
drama. Werther dies at last in a confident belief
that Charlotte is his natural mate, and that by the
law of their common organization she will rejoin
him in the skies.
In the second story (Wahl Vervandt-Schaften)
the same ideas are dealt with in what appears to
be a more material spirit. Nature supplies the
bases, science the illustrations of Free Affinities *
NATURAL AFFINITIES. 199
a tale which begins with a discourse on chemistry,
and ends in the tragic peace of death.
Gothe appears to have been pondering Plato's
fancy of the split men.
With a dry sense of fun, which in its own
grave style has never been excelled, except, per-
haps, in the writings of his rival, Francis Bacon,
Plato describes in the Banquet how the human race
became originally split into male and female. In
the good old times, before men grew wicked in
their thoughts, and heaven became alarmed for
its own safety, there was no such thing known
in the world as sex. Every living man was male
and female ; perfect in form, in faculty, in spirit.
The form in which he dwelt was a round ball of
flesh, having four hands, four feet, two faces, and
one brain. Every perfect thing, it is said by Gothe,
in passing, has the spherical form, from the sun
and stars down to a drop of water. Angles are
defects, and to round one's life is but a way of
making it lovely. In the sexless period, man, being
a ball of flesh, was a creature of inconceivable
strength and swiftness. He could fell an ox,
outrun a race-horse. When he wished to move
quickly, he thrust out his four arms and legs,
and rolled along the road like a wheel with eight
200 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
spokes which had lost its tire. But these strong
men, of no sex in particular, grew proud before
the faces of the gods ; so that, like Otus and
Ephialtus, they made an attempt to scale the
spheres, and cast the immortals from their thrones.
Zeus, in his anger, shot his bolts ; cleaving them
through the head downwards ; parting each round
wheel of flesh into two halves ; separating the male
side from the female side. Great was the agony
and loss of power ; the pain of cutting the two
sides asunder being intense ; and man, thus shorn
of #his rotundity, could neither wrestle with the
lion nor outspeed the elk. Each part of the man
had now to stand on two legs, — a feat of much
skill, the art of which he was slow to learn and
swift to lose. On his four legs he could either
walk or run, sleep or wake, play or rest. On
his two legs, he could neither roll nor sleep ;
neither could he stand very long nor walk very
far. All his movements became slow and painful.
Every step which he took only proved to him his
loss of power, and that the gods had laid upon
his sin a burden difficult to be borne.
But this daily misery of the flesh was not
the worst. Besides having to pass his life in try-
ing to stand on two legs, man found that he was
NATURAL AFFINITIES. 201
parted from his female counterpart; whom he
called, in the idiom of grief, his better half and
his dearer self. When the daring rotundities were
cleft in twain* the parts were scattered by celestial
wrath. Each wounded fragment sought its fellow
in the crowd, but the gods took care that much of
the search should be made in vain. This last blow
broke man's spirit. Alone in the world, and perched
on two legs, what could he do ? Once, indeed —
for the very worm on which you tread may turn —
he felt tempted in his pain to cry out against
Zeus ; but the king of gods rose up in his wrath
and said, that if man would not keep quiet on
these green fields of earth, but would storm up
against the stars, he should be slit once more
from the crown downwards, so that in future he
should have to stand on a single leg. Man heard
these words of the god with a whitened face ; and
Zeus was not provoked into a second launching
of his bolts.
All that was now left to man in his split
condition, beyond the acute remembrance of his
former bliss, was a yearning hope of being one
day able to rejoin his second self. Every man be-
came a seeker. The god, when parting men into
halves, had torn the fragments from each other,
202 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
and cast the pieces into chaos. Only a happy
few could find their mates. Most men had to
seek them long, and myriads never found them in
the flesh at all. Strangers came together in the
press, and for a little while imagined they were
pairs ; but time detected incongruities of soul, and
then the wearied spirits flew from each other in a
rage. When, in the rare happiness of his search, a
man fell in with his natural mate, a true marriage
of the spirit instantly took place. To this great
desire of the severed parts for union, Plato says,
has been given the name of Love.
And so, adds the sage, by way of moral, let
us take care not to offend the gods, lest we get
our noses slit down, and have to stand in future
on one leg.
Gothe, though he may have taken his hint from
Plato, treated his theory of natural mates in his
own way ; which was that of material science.
Eduard and Captain Otto are seated in the old
Schloss, reading a book of science, when Lotte,
Eduard's lovely wife, breaks in upon them.
" You were reading something about afiinities ;
I thought of two kinsfolk of mine, who are oc-
cupying my thoughts just now ; but, on turning to
the book, I see it is not about living things."
NATURAL AFFINITIES. 203
" It is only about earths and ores," answered
Eduard.
"Would you mind telling me what is meant
by affinities r asked the lady of Captain Otto.
" If you will let me," says the Captain, and
began his lesson :
" We see that all natural objects have a cer-
tain relation to themselves.
" We can make it clear to her, and to
ourselves," breaks in Eduard, " by examples.
Take water, oil, mercury ; in each you see a
certain unity, a connexion of parts, which is
never lost, except through forces acting from
without ; remove the force, and the parts become
one again."
" That is clear to me," ponders Lotte ; " rain-
drops run into streams, and globules of quicksilver
part and melt into each other ; and I see that as
everything has reference to itself, so it must have
to other things."
"True," adds the Captain; "and the nature
of the relation depends on the things ; which may
run together freely like old friends, or lie as
strangers side by side : those blending easily, like
wine and water ; these resisting every attempt to
unite them, like oil and water."
204 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
" How like some people that one knows ! " ex-
claims Lotte.
" But tliere are third parties in nature," says
her husband, " by the aid of which, those hostile
elements may be induced to combine."
" Yes," continues Otto, " by the help of an al-
kali, we can persuade water to combine with oil."
" Is not this power the thing you mean by an
affinity?" asks the lady.
" True," says Captain Otto, getting on to
perilous ground with his fair hearer ; " such
natures as, on coming near, lay hold of each other,
and modify each other, we call affinities. The
alkalies seek the acids, and form in combination a
new substance. Lime, you know, has the strongest
ardour for all kinds of acids, and if you give it a
chance, will be swift to combine with them."
" It seems to me," says Lotte, pondering, "that
these things are related to each other, not in the
blood, so to speak, so much as in the spirit."
"You have not heard the best," adds her
husband ; " those affinities which bring about
separations are of higher interest than the others."
"Take the case," says Otto, " of limestone ; a
more or less pure calcareous earth, in union with a
very delicate acid. If we put this bit of stone into
NATURAL AFFINITIES. 205
weak sulphuric acid, what have we? The lime
enters into union with the sulphuric acid and be-
comes gypsum ; the delicate acid escapes into the
air. This is a case of Free Affinity. "
Every reader of Gothe knows how the story-
runs from chemistry into love ; Captain Otto
coming in, like the sulphuric acid, as a separating
agent between Eduard and his charming wife ;
Eduard finding his own free affinity in Fraulein
Ottilie ; and the four friends who love and respect
each other making shipwreck of their lives : until
the two hapless victims of a conventional morality
are laid side by side in the chapel, where they find
peace and rest.
206
CHAPTER XXIV.
SCHOOL OF OWEN.
It is an odd fact in the history of this social
development, that the scientific phase of Free
Affinities, which in Europe came up later than
the Spiritual phase of eternal brides, should have
been the first to establish its empire in the
United States.
This scientific phase of Free Affinities came in
with Robert Owen, and may be said to have taken
root in the soil under the skilful planting of his son,
Robert Dale Owen, and that son's fellow- worker,
Frances Wright. To the socialism taught by these
preachers, may be traced the various schools of
Free Love which are now found flourishing in
Boston and New York.
About the time when Archdeacon Ebel was
preparing his marriage-feast for the Lamb in
Konigsberg, Robert Owen, of New Lanark fame,
was crossing the Atlantic Ocean from Liverpool,
SCHOOL OF OWEN. 207
with a view to bringing his scheme for the re-
generation of society under notice of the President
and people of the United States. Strong in his
faith, Owen appeared in Washington as the author
of a new science of life. The President was polite,
the people curious. Some good men and more
good women, felt their hearts expand towards his
dream of a new Eden in the far west ; a paradise
in which he told them there would be no longer
any war and crime, because there would be no
longer any soldiers and police. The great family
of man was to be governed in future by the law
of love. Owen's two watchwords, Harmony and
Association, passed from lip to lip, from page to
page, through a thousand organs of the pulpit
and the press, until a host of eager reformers had
more than half persuaded themselves that the
world could be saved by a phrase.
When Owen proposed to buy up the town of
New Harmony, founded in the wilds of Indiana
by Frederick Papp as a German religious com-
munity, he found many friends in Boston and
New York ready to assist him in the enterprise.
The Pappites, having failed as a trading society,
were induced to sell their vineyards, farms and
shanties on the Wabash river ; and a strong troop
208 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
of scientific socialists marched upon the ground
pledged to repair a disaster which Owen had felt
no scruple in describing as the necessary conse-
quence of trying to carry on human society in
a religious spirit.
The Lanark reformer made no secret of his
own unbelief; in fact, he spoke of the Bible as
a baneful book; yet he was received by the
churches, even by those in Puritan New England,
with a measure of silence and respect. He was
not a man on whom it would have been wise to
make open war. His fame was great, his aims
were lofty, and his life was pure. He had come
to offer a free people his gift of a new science ;
and the old conservative churches, wise in their
reserve and silence, had only to leave the enthu-
siast and his friends alone. Many who would not
have listened to Owen's philosophical heresies, were
anxious that his scheme of fraternal co-operation
should be fairly tried; and it was only through
the failure of his plans at New Harmony in
Indiana, followed by the similar failures of New
Orbiston in Lanarkshire, and Tytherly in Hants,
that he passed away, after some years, into
the dreary list of false pretenders to a mastery
over the secret resources of social art.
SCHOOL OF OWEN. 209
In the speeches of Robert Owen there was no
direct assault on marriage as an institution; but
the attack was scarcely veiled ; since the very first
conception of a socialistic state is such a relation of
the sexes as shall prevent men and women from
falling into selfish family groups. Family life is
eternally at war with social life. When you have a
private household, you must have personal property
to feed it ; hence a community of goods — the first
idea of a social state — has been found in every case
to imply a community of children and to promote
a community of wives. That you cannot have
socialism without introducing communism, is the
teaching of all experience, whether the trials have
been made on a large scale or on a small scale, in
the old world or in the new. All the Pentecostal
and Universal Churches have begun their career
with a strong disposition towards that fraternal
state in which private property is unknown ; some
have travelled along that line, adopting all the
conclusions to which the journey led them } wThile
others have turned back in alarm on seeing that
the fraternal theory was at war with all the sacred
traditions of home.
The Shakers founded their societies on the
ruins of family life. The Mormons, in order to
VOL. II. p
210 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
save their family life, have been forced to give up
their inclination towards a common property in the
Lord. The Princeites of Spaxton have to renounce
their old ways of thinking when they place their
feet in the Abode of Love. The Bible Communists
found their logical term in the doctrine, which they
adopted, of a common right in goods and wives.
All the social reformers who have striven to re-
concile the family group with the general fund
have failed ; though some of these reformers, like
the pioneers at Brook Farm, were men of consum-
mate abilities and unselfish aims.
For a long time this result of Owen's system
lay hid ; a thing latent and unnoticed ; it was only
when the theory came into contact with realities
that men saw how far the people who rushed into
these new Edens were driven into the assumption
of fresh relations with each other, beyond what
the law allowed.
Dale Owen (the son of Robert Owen) and his
female- companion, Frances Wright, threw off the
mask which had been worn by their party, and in
the memorable tour which they made through the
United States, as champions of a new order, they
boldly put the Bible, and all that has been founded
on its teaching, under ban and curse ; and in the
SCHOOL OF OWEN. 211
place of these old-world theories, advocated their
two great doctrines of Free Love and Free Divorce.
Dale Owen, who settled in America, soon
became one of its leading citizens ; filling high,
offices, both at home and abroad — magistrate, re-
presentative, senator, ambassador — until, by his
eloquence, his sagacity, and his daring, he has
come to occupy a position which is unknown to
the law, and is described, even by men who hate
him, as that of Privy Councillor to the republic.
Dale Owen was the soul of the democratic party,
while that party had a real life of its own. When
he parted from it, as he did on the questions of
negro freedom and of female suffrage, the party
splintered off into a dozen fragments — war demo-
crats, peace democrats, copperheads, Vallandig-
hamites, dead-beats, Copper- Johnsons, and the
like. On every point of policy, Dale Owen stands
in the front ; so far in front that sober men, lagging
far behind him in the march, are apt to think he is
always standing on the verge of chaos. This Privy
Councillor of the republic pleads for every sort of
equality ; that of husband and wife, that of Negro
and Saxon, that of earth and heaven. To him a
man is a man, whether he be male or female,
white or black ; and being a gentleman of fine
212 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
presence, of noble culture, and of great intellectual
power, he has the art of quickly persuading men to
accept his doctrines.
But the work which is most of all his own —
the fruit of his own spirit — was that which he
achieved in company with Frances Wright.
This clever and excitable woman had been
stung into frenzy by what she fancied were
two great discoveries of her own ; first, that the
earth is over-peopled ; and second, that the law of
marriage, now enforced by the church, makes every
woman who adopts it a slave. She found it was
her mission to make known these truths, and
being a charming speaker, as well as a strong
writer, she chose to make them known from both
the platform and the press. She was not, however,
a preacher of despair. Bad as things were, she
saw her way to a cure for all the evils under
which the world then groaned. The number of
mouths to be fed must be reduced ; and woman
must be freed from her bridal bonds.
In England, her native country, where she
first made public her discoveries, people laughed
at her ; they had heard female lecturers before her
day, and did not like them ; nay, they had heard
these very things proclaimed and illustrated by
SCHOOL OF OWEN. 213
men and women of far higher genius than Frances
Wright. The female reformer would have gone back
to her knitting in despair, had she not fallen in
with a true mate of her own belief in Dale Owen,
who was then about to leave his country for what
he thought was a new and better world. Female
teachers were not then a drug on the American
soil ; and Dale Owen proposed that the eloquent
rhapsodist should go with him to the United
States. She went, and she enjoyed a great
success. In the republic every one was free.
She brought out a paper, called The Free En-
quirer; she announced courses of lectures on
liberty in marriage and divorce ; when the shop-
women of Broadway, and the ladies of Fifth
Avenue, ran to hear their husbands denounced as
tyrants, and their wedding-rings described as
chains. In that country no state-church could
frown upon her ; no society could put a stigma
on her brow. She was free to teach and to preach,
to reason and to write. All these things she did in
a way to shock the more pious and conservative
minds ; yet with so much art that neither she, nor
her male adviser, was ever treated to the rough
injustice by which public opinion in America some-
times supplies the defects of law. Dale Owen
214 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
and Frances Wright were neither tarred and
feathered, nor set upon a rail, as had been done
with the Rev. Charles Mead and the Rev. John
B. Foot. In the northern cities, most of all in
New York, they began to found a school of re-
formers, bent on slackening the bonds of marriage ;
first, by acting on public opinion through the
press; afterwards by proposing measures of redress
for injured wives in the local legislative bodies.
The partners in this crusade against family life
divided the field of attack between them : Dale
taking the population question, Frances the mar-
riage question. Dale Owen wrote a book, called
Moral Physiology, in which he proposed a new
theory for limiting the number of mouths to be
fed. It was a daring book, and many pious people
denounced it as the spawn of hell ; but the abuse
of men who were known for their old-fashioned
virtues only helped it into wider notice. More
than by any other class, it is said to have been
read and pondered by the clergy. I have reason
to think it suggested the vagaries of the Rev.
Theophilus Gates ; and I happen to know that it
gave the first hint of his system to Father Noyes.
215
CHAPTER XXV.
SCHOOL OF FOURIER.
While Dale Owen and Frances Wright were
sowing their seed of scientific socialism through
the land, Albert Brisbane arrived in New York
with a gospel of social progress in his hand, which
affected to reconcile the two hostile principles of
association and personal property, and both these
principles with the more sacred dogma of family
life. Brisbane, a man of high character and re-
markable powers, had made a journey to Paris, in
order to study in the best quarters the new system
of society proposed by Charles Fourier.
In his own country, Fourier was as great a
failure as Robert Owen had been in England. But,
besides this fact of failure, there was so much of
like nature in the lives and in the systems of
these two men, that you could almost write a
history of one in the others name. Owen and
Fourier were born within a year of each other;
216 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
they sprang from the trading classes ; and the
only education they received was such as fits
men for the counting-house and the exchange.
They both engaged in business, and failed in it.
They were both induced to study the present
state of society by noticing the difficulties
which men find in the way of exchanging what
they have for what they need. Full of this
idea, they each went up from the country to
the capital : Owen to London ; Fourier to Paris.
Each had the good fortune to find one royal and
illustrious friend — Owen in the Duke of Kent,
Fourier in Charles the Tenth. Each was able to
surround himself with a number of eager and
obscure disciples, who seized his doctrine with
applause, and strove to explain it to the world.
For these regenerators of mankind were equally
wanting in power of expression and equally poor
in literary art. Young men and women went
about preaching their doctrines — Mrs. Frances
Wright explaining the system of Owen in Eng-
land, while Madame Clarisse Vigoreux was doing
the same service for Fourier in France. Each
saw newspapers born and buried in his cause ;
each outlived his name and fame in Europe ; and
each was destined, through disciples, to achieve
SCHOOL OF FOURIEK. 217
results in the New World which he had been
unable to secure in the Old.
Like Robert Owen, the French reformer was
wholly ignorant of modern science. When he ar-
rived in Paris he was received by the learned men
with scorn, and by the witty men with jokes and
laughter. The blunders in his books are almost
beyond belief; for, like his female followers, Eliza
Farnham and Elizabeth Denton, he had got his
facts about the universe from visions of the
night. Thus he told his disciples that the stars
and planets are living beings, like men and women,
with the same passions and desires, the same
hunger and thirst, the same fear and anger ; that
the stars make love to each other, come together
in bridal pairs, and send their offspring out
as colonists into space ; that sun, moon, and
planets, each in turn, has had a part in creating
what we see of earth ; the Sun having called into
being on its bosom the elephant, the diamond, and
the oak ; Jupiter, the cow, the topaz, and the
jonquil ; Saturn, the horse, the ruby, and the lily ;
while the Earth produced, by a kind of spon-
taneous generation, the dog, the violet, and the
opal. He told his wondering disciples that the
infant is at birth a mere animal, like a tadpole,
218 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
and has a soul given to it only with its teeth : that
this soul is subject to two sorts of immortality —
one simple, the other compound ; that men have
many lives, of many different kinds, so that in the
order of nature there is no preference and in-
justice ; that kings, queens, beauties, scholars,
princes, judges, and all other persons favoured in
the present life, were paupers, criminals, and luna-
tics, in the previous world ; that all those who are
now condemned by their birth to a life of pain,
hunger, misery, and disgrace, will, in the next
stage of existence, live on the brighter side of
nature, becoming lovely in person as well as rich
in the gifts of genius and of birth. A few months
only before Trevethick put his first iron horse
upon the road, Fourier, lamenting that man has
no easier and swifter way of travelling from Lyons
to Paris than by the old French diligence, pro-
phesied that nature would shortly produce some
new creatures of the land, the sea, and the air
called anti-lions, anti-whales, and anti-condors,
which mighty beasts, fishes and birds, should be
able, when duly tamed and trained, to draw men
along at the miraculous speed of thirty miles an
hour !
Fourier died in Paris, in the year 1837, at
SCHOOL OF FOURIER. 219
the age of fifty-five, exhausted in body and in
mind.
Such was the grand reformer of society whom
the brilliant Albert Brisbane introduced in 1842
to his countrymen by a series of public lectures in
New York. Horace Greeley, of the New York
Tribune, opened his pages to the preachers of
association on this new French model ; meetings
were held in Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore,
Cincinnati, as well as in New York ; and in less
than a year from the date of Brisbane's landing
in America, the whole country seemed to be a-flame
with zeal for this new French gospel. Fourier's
own writings were not read, and his ideas were
very little known. Public opinion was not in those
days strongly opposed to any fair investigation
of the problems of social life ; but there was in
this French writer a cynical disregard for domestic
virtue — as English and American men conceive
of domestic virtue — which would have jarred un-
pleasantly on the Puritan mind. Fourier's thoughts
were given to the public in very small doses ;
something was concealed, still more was modified,
not a little was denied. Henry J. Raymond, a
magnate of the New York press, afterwards so
famous as the confidential friend of Abraham
220 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
Lincoln, led a fierce attack on this French system ;
exposing, with a merciless logic, all its offences
against good sense, and showing that life in the
phalanx, as conceived by the founder of French
socialism was opposed in spirit, if not in fact, to
the existing marriage bond. Greeley, though he
could not deny that Fourier had contemplated a
freedom between the sexes hardly consistent with
a high repute for morality, protested that in the
phalanx proposed by Brisbane and supported by
himself, the original plans of the French theorist
had been so far modified as to bring them within
the range of American notions of moral right.
The fact remained, and in time it became known,
that Fourier's system could not be reconciled, any
more than Owens system could be reconciled,
with the partition of mankind into those special
groups called families, in which people live to-
gether, a life devised by nature, under the close
relation of husband and wife, of parent and child.
More than one experimental search after what
was called the better life had to be made before
all the world, including the seekers themselves,
were brought to admit the failure of this attempt
to combine associated labour with personal pro-
perty and domestic life. The first in date, and
SCHOOL OF FOURIER. 221
best in means, was a village at Red Bank, in
Monmouth County, New Jersey ; for which a
number of New York bankers were persuaded to
supply the funds. Six hundred acres of land were
bought for the company ; two hundred of which
could be easily brought under plough and spade.
The land was not rich ; but the dressing which it
most required, marl, was found in two large
beds on the estate. A stream ran through the
property, feeding a pretty lake, and serving to
turn a mill. Clumps of trees, and a deep furrow
in the ground, made the place naturally pictur-
esque. Five miles of sandy road led to the
tidal river, by which there was daily intercourse
with New York.
With funds supplied by the bankers, a big
house was built, on the model of a Saratoga
hostelry ; with rooms for a hundred and fifty
guests ; single rooms for bachelors and maids ;
double rooms for married folks ; and suites of rooms
for families. There was a common hall, a dining-
room, a dairy, a kitchen, a store-house, and other
offices, but no chapel or church.
Into this settlement of Red Bank, which they
called the North American Phalanx, a body of re-
forming zealots, drawn from various fclasses of
l l •: spnurr al wives,
society, includiiig an Episcopalian clergyman and
a Unitarian minister, began to move. They laid
themselves ont fox a better and a pleasant er life,
and yet with a strict resolution to make their
experiment pay.
The first thing to be done at Red Bank was
to create a new public opinion on the subject of
mannal labour ; so that the works which are com-
monly held in contempt, such as cleaning shoes,
milking cows, sweeping floors, and serving the
table, should be raised into the highest order of
employments. This was not so difficult as it
might seem. That which is done by the best,
soon comes to be thought the best A scholar, a
clergyman, a hanker, were selected to dean the
hoots and scrub the floors : the girls were called
into a room, and those who were judged to be the
loveliest and the cleverest were elected as a great
honour to wait upon the company. c How did you
like the service?' I asked a lady in New York,
who had been a waiter in the Phalanx 'Guess, I
liked it very much,* she answered : * in the first
place, all the pretty girls were waiters, and no one
who thought well of her beauty liked to he left
out : and then we all dined by ourselves after-
wards, w^en the stupids were gone, and we used
SCHOOL OF FOURIER. 223
to hare great fun.* It turned out just the same
among the men; and idle fellows who at first
liked to moon about and smoke, soon came to
slip into the laundry and beg, as a favour, from
one of the distinguished shoeblacks, permission to
polish off a dozen pairs of boots.
Too much is said to have been effected at Red
Bank for manual labour, and too little for the
higher purposes of lif a Religion was put aside as
obsolete ; and science, in the name of which these
reformers had thrown themselves upon the land,
was left untaught An old French teacher, himself
in want of many masters, was set to train the
boys and girls in useful knowledge ; but, in truth,
they learned nothing from him, not even how to
read and write.
AH the women at Red Bank wore the short
skirt and loose trousers invented by the ladies of
Oneida Creek ; and in the eyes of strangers they
looked in this attire exceedingly comely and pic-
turesque.
The attempt to found a social state in combi-
nation with the family group began to show signs
of failure the very instant the settlers reached
Red Bank ; though the community did not disperse
until they had spent the best part of their share-
224 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
holders' capital. Single men complained that they
had to work for children who were not their own.
Smart young maids perceived that they had to
bear the burdens, without sharing in the pleasures,
of married women. Folks with small families
objected to folks with large ones. What was
called the division of profits was seen to be a
joke ; since in most years there was nothing to
divide ; and when there chanced to be a surplus in
the till, no fair balance could be struck. When
the discontent had grown to a sufficient height,
the bubble burst, Bed Bank was sold to New
Jersey farmers, and the reformers of mankind re-
turned with chastened fancies to the humdrum
routine of city life.
A still more famous trial in fraternal living,
was that poetic picnic, so to say, which was pro-
posed by the Bev. George Bipley, carried out by a
number of New England men and women, and
used by Hawthorne as the scene of his Blithedale
Bomance. Bipley, a man who combines the finest
culture with the highest daring, told me the story of
this singular settlement ; in which he was assisted,
more or less closely, by men no less eminent than
Charming, Curtis, Parker, Emerson, Dana, Haw-
thorne, Dwight, and by a woman no less notable
SCHOOL OF FOURIER. 225
than Margaret Fuller. A true history of that
experiment, in which so many lights of American
literature lit their torches, is a pressing want,
which it may be hoped that the author of that
experiment will some day write.
These young enthusiasts of society were nearly
all Cambridge men, members of the Unitarian
Church ; and the movement which they commenced
at Brook Farm near Boston, was religious, edu-
cational, and artistic, as well as social. The men
and women who joined it hoped to live a better
and purer life than they had done in the great
city. They wanted to refine domestic manners,
to ennoble manual toil ; and to some extent they
achieved these expectations. They did not seek
to interfere with marriage ; nay, they guarded
that holy state with reverence ; yet the spirit of
fraternal association was found to weave itself
with infinite subtleties into the most tender re-
lations of man and woman. Fear came into the
common dwelling ; and even if this picnic of poets
and lovely women had not been a failure on other
grounds, the rivalries of Zenobia and Priscilla
would unquestionably have sent Brook Farm the
way of Red Bank.
VOL. H. Q
226
CHAPTER XXVI.
FREE LOVE.
There is only too much reason to fear that the
effect of all this teaching on the part of those who
sought after the better life — of Dale Owen and
Frances Wright, of Albert Brisbane and Clarisse
Vigoreux, of George Ripley and Margaret Fuller — ■
was a vast increase in America of those irregular
unions of men and women which, though known in
many parts of Europe, are nowhere half so dan-
gerous to public morals as in the United States.
When a man and woman either in France or
England dally with the thought of entering
into any of these lawless unions, which are known
in America as a state of Free Love — unions
contracted freely by the parties, but on a clear
understanding that they are time-bargains only,
made to last either for a fixed term, subject
to renewal, or simply for so long a time as the
partners please — they know very well that the
FREE LOVE. 227
world will not be with them, and that they can
only live the life they are choosing to adopt under
a social ban. In their own hearts, such a man and
woman may be able to find excuses for what they
do ; they may fancy that they lie under the strain
of some special wrong, for which the law can yield
them no redress ; and they may feel that social
wrong has driven them into setting all social laws
aside. But they do not pretend to think that what
they are doing is right, and that the world is false
and fiendish because it holds up before them the
chapters of an immutable moral code by which they
stand condemned. The woman who in England
claims to be a law unto herself, will yet daily and
hourly pray to God that her child may never have to
face that question of acting on the individual will.
In the United States it is not so. The great
disparity in the two sexes, which in that country
makes the female master of every situation, has
deprived society of the conservative force engen-
dered by fear and shame. No woman in that
country needs to care whether she offends or not.
If she is right in her own belief, that is enough;
she is hardly more responsible to her lover than to
her groom. Instead of having all society against
her, she finds a certain portion of it, and that of
228 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
a class distinguished in some degree by art and
culture, on her side. Free Love, instead of being
universally condemned, has in America its poets,
orators, and preachers ; its newspapers, lecture-halls,
excursions, pic-nics, and colonies — all of which help
to give it a certain standing and authority in her
eyes.
The poets of Free Love, chiefly females, are
numerous, but of no high rank in the diviner arts
of song. Their verse is simple, sensuous, natural,
with an occasional touch of beauty. Lizzie Doten,
Fanny Hyzer, T. N. Harris, and G. S. Burleigh, are
the names of four out of a hundred, who have
tuned their harps to make music of Free Love.
One specimen of this poetry may be welcome. It
is a declaration of love, divided into two parts ;
one part describing the love that will bless the
happy pair in free courtship, the second part de-
scribing that which will bless them in free union.
The sentiment is scientific. First part:
" Free Love.
" I will love thee as the flowers love,
That in the summer weather,
Each standing in its own place,
Lean rosy lips together,
FBEE LOVE. 229
And pour their sweet confession
Through a petal's bended palm,
With a breath that only deepens
The azure-lidded calm
Of the heavens bending o'er them,
And the blue-bells hung before them,
All whose odour in the silence is a psalm.
" I will love thee as the dews love,
In chambers of the lily,
Hung orb-like and unmeeting,
With their flashes bending stilly,
By the white shield of the petals
Held a little way apart ;
While all the air is sweeter,
For the yearning of each heart, —
That yet keep clear and crystal
Their globed spheres celestial,
While to and fro their glimmers ever dart.
" I will love thee as the stars love,
In sanctity enfolden,
That tune in constellations
Their harps divine and golden,
Across the heavens greeting
Their sisters from afar —
The Pleiades to Mazzaroth,
Star answering to star ;
With a love as high and holy
And apart from all the lowly —
Swaying to thee like the planets, without jar.
230 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
" I will love tliee as the spirits love,
Who, free of Earth and Heaven,
Wreathe white and pale-blue flowers
For the brows of the forgiven,
And are dear to one another
For the blessings they bestow
On the weary and the wasted
In our wilderness of woe ;
By thy good name with the angels,
And thy human heart's evangels,
Shall my love from holy silence to thee go."
" Free Marriage.
" I will love thee as the cloud loves —
The soft cloud of the summer ;
That winds its pearly arms round
The rosy-tinted comer,
Interwreathing till but one cloud
Hangs dove-like in the blue,
And throws no shadow earthward,
But only nectar dew
For the roses blushing under ;
And, purified from thunder,
Floats onward with the rich light melting through.
" I will love thee as the rays love,
That quiver down the ether,
That many-hued in solitude,
Are pure white knit together ;
FKEE LOVE. 231
And if the heavens darkeD,
Yet faint not to despair,
But bend their bow, hope-shafted,
To glorify the air, —
That do their simple duty,
Light-warm with love and beauty,
Not scorning any low plant anywhere.
" I will love thee as the sweets love,
From dewy rose and lily,
That fold together cloud-like,
On zephyrs riding stilly,
Till charmed bard and lover,
Drunk with the scented gales,
Name one sweet and another,
Not knowing which prevails ;
The winged airs caress them,
The hearts of all things bless them :
So will we float in love that never fails.
" I will love thee as the gods love —
The Father God and Mother,
Whose intermingled Being is
The life of every other, —
One, absolute in Two-ness,
The universal power,
"Wedding Love the never-ending,
Through planet, man, and flower ;
Through all our notes shall run this
Indissoluble oneness,
With music ever deepening every hour."
232 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
Captain Otto, Gothe's champion of affinities,
would have been content with these physical sym-
bols of a passion which so many of us think divine.
Under the teaching of this sort of song and
science, a class of American women has been
brought to confound the moral sense so far as to
think that it is right for a girl to obey her nature
as some of the religious zealots say it is right for
man to follow the leading of the Spirit. When
one of these emancipated females departs from
what the world would call the straight line of her
duty, she claims to be following ' the higher law/
and begs mankind to admire her courage and
applaud her act. Thus, it happens, that a lady
who prefers to live in temporary, rather than
in permanent marriage, with the man she loves,
does not quietly submit in America to a complete
exclusion from society. She asserts a right to
think for herself, in the matter of wedlock, as in
everything else. Is the moral question, she asks,
of higher note than the religious question? In
countries like Borne and Spain, she can under-
stand that any departure of either man or woman
from the usual rules, should be followed by a
social curse ; society in such countries being in-
spired and guided by an infallible church ; but in
FREE LOVE. 233
her own free republic, where the law knows
nothing of a church, either fallible or infallible,
who has tlfe right to launch a social curse ? If
a woman is free to make her own terms with
God, why should she not be free to make her own
terms with man ? Is heaven of less account than
earth ? Indeed, does not the higher liberty in-
volve the lower ? Free love is, she thinks, a
necessary sequence of free faith. Why, then, in
acting on her right, should she suffer a social
stigma ?
Such are the reasonings and the protests of a
host of female preachers and writers ; of ladies
like Frances Wright, Lizzie Doten, and Corah
Hatch.
The number of persons living openly in this
kind of free union is believed to be very great ;
so many that the churches and the law courts have
been compelled to recognise their existence.
While I was in Ohio a curious case of Free Love
occupied public attention. A man and woman
professing this principle, had lived together in
Cincinnati, made money, reared a family of
boys and girls, and then died. They had not been
married as the law directs. They had simply
gone to their circle, taken each others word, and
234 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
then begun to keep house. No form had been
used that could be called a contract. No entry
of their pledges had been made. It was simply
said in behalf of these children, that the parents
had undertaken, in the presence of some other
liberal spirits, to live together as long as they
liked. On these grounds the children claimed
the property left by their parents ; and the court
of law, after much consideration of the facts,
allowed their claim.
Some anger was excited by a decision which
seemed to put the natural right of these children
above the legal right. All circles declared the
verdict a blow against marriage.
Among the confessions placed in my hands by
Americans, is a paper by Mr. B. M. Lawrence, a
Free Lover, of Boston, in Massachusetts, from
which an extract may be given which will show
by an authentic case in what way these irregular
unions, called Free Love Bridals, are made :
A FREE LOVE WEDDING.
" Boston, Feb. 1867.
" Having mingled much with the world at large,
and with the reformers and spiritualists particu-
FREE LOVE. 235
larly, and seeing so much of domestic inharmony,
my mind was made up never to marry, when a
Bible Spiritual Medium came some miles to meet
me, sent, she said, like Peter to Cornelius, to
testify to me concerning the things of the coming
kingdom of heaven ; and she told me that the
believers must enter in in pairs, and that among
the things lacking in my case was a wife ! — that
I must and would soon find my mate, and, that
until then I would meet with nothing but dis-
appointments ; that I would know her soon, as
we should meet, etc. Sure enough, troubles
came ; ' fightings within, and fears without.'
A great fire at Syracuse burnt up the Journal
office, with, all our bills, cuts, and stereotype
plates. My partner, Mr. C, left me alone ; and
I concluded to go to a meeting of the Friends
of Progress at Stockport, N.Y., and by request,
I visited the farm of Mr. P., where the women
work out-of-doors, and they have some of the
community spirit.
" Here I met with a young music -teacher from
Quincy, Massachusetts, by the name of Priscilla
Jones ; strange as it may appear, I felt that
she was to become my wife as soon as I heard her
name spoken ; and two days later, at the foot of
236 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
Niagaras reef of rainbows, baptized by the mists
of heaven, we pledged ourselves to unite our
destinies, and work together for human, welfare,
so long as it was mutually agreeable ; and the
next Sunday at the close of the convention, we
publicly promised to live together as husband and
wife.
"B.M.L."
Mr. Lawrence and Miss Jones, pledging each
other, and uniting their destinies, under Niagara's
reef of rainbows, mean no more by this promise of
living as husband and wife, and working together
for human welfare, than that he and she will live
together so long as the fancy holds them !
The Free Lovers, who have their head-quarters
in New York, have various settlements throughout
the country, in which their principles are said to
reign supreme. The most famous, perhaps, of
these settlements, are the villages called Berlin
Heights and Modern Times.
Berlin Heights is a village in the State of
Ohio, in which bands of Free Lovers have settled
so as to be a comfort and protection to each other ;
also for the conveniences offered to hapless pairs by
a large matrimonial exchange. Many people come
FREE LOVE. 237
and go, and the population of Berlin Heights, I
am told, is always changing. No one likes to
stay there long ; the odour of the place being
rather rank, even in the nostrils of an emancipated
female. But the Free Lovers tell you that a
great many persons sympathise with the free life
on Berlin Heights, who in their social cowardice
shrink from writing their names in the visitors'
books.
A more important society of Free Lovers has
been brought together on Long Island, near New
York city, under the odd designation of Modern
Times. This village was founded by a reformer
named Pearl, and is considered as the head-
quarters of the American Comtists ; a body of
reformers who have taken up the work in which
Owen and Fourier failed. The dwellers in Modern
Times come out for every sort of new truth. They
have put down the past. It is hardly a figure of
speech to say, that as far as their power can back
their will, they are ready to repeal all laws and to
dethrone all gods. They affect the Positive Philo-
sophy ; and this affectation is the only positive
thing about them. The ten commandments, the
apostles' creed, the canons and decrees, the articles
of faith, have all been abolished, as rags and
238 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
shreds of superstition, in Modern Times. No man
has a right to intrude into his neighbour's house ;
for in this home of progressive spirits, conduct is
held to have the same rights as opinion. What
have you to do with me and mine ? Inside my
own door, I am lord and king. What if I take a
dozen wives? How these ladies choose to live,
is for themselves, and not for you, to say. What
business have you to take offence, because they
do not live according to your law? In Modern
Times, such questions meet with a soft reply. A
woman who is fair, a man who is discreet, has
nothing to fear from the moral and religious pas-
sions of his fellow-settlers. ' No questions asked '
is the motto of Modern Times.
239
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE GREAT HARMONIA.
After these schools of scientific reform had kept
the stage of public attention for many years,
insisting with noise and promise on saving society
whether it would or no, their claim to be the
true regenerators of their kind was suddenly in-
vaded by a new class of zealots, who announced
themselves as a native school of thinkers, not
the spawn of French and Scottish brains. These
new-comers were the Spiritualists, who derived
their gospel from a cobbler of Poughkeepsie, a
seer of genuine native grit.
Andrew Jackson Davis, this Poughkeepsie
craftsman, wrote a rhapsody in four stout volumes,
which he called The Great Harmonia, and which
some of his ignorant dupes appear to have thought
an original work. It was a mere parody of
Swedenborg's mystical dreams about the true
heaven and the true earth ; and though it has
240 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
taken the minds of many persons who were bent
on having a native creed, it must be rejected
by a critic from the list of primary and seminal
books. Swedenborg's Arcana Ccelestia, not Davis's
Great Harmonia, is the true source of American
Spiritualism. The latter work may have had its
part in nursing the fantasies of the Spirit-circles ;
for, while the Swedish seer must be credited with
much of what is noble and poetic in those circles,
the Poughkeepsie cobbler may be credited with
nearly all that is most grotesque and most profane.
The young dreamers who went out from Bos-
ton to picnic on Brook Farm, hoping to catch
some glimpses of the higher life, and prove
that daily duty could be treated as a fine
art, were the first to make known in America
how many lodes of gold lay hid in the illustrious
Swede's neglected works. Of course the writings
of Swedenborg were already known to a few
obscure zealots in Boston and New York; New
Jerusalem Churches having been founded long ago
in these cities, and in some other places ; but the
disciples who had been found by the noble Swede
in the United States were few in number and
poor in gifts. No man of mark had joined them.
Their priests were unlettered, their chapels obscure,
THE GREAT HARMONIA. 241
their journals without talent and without sale.
The name of Swedenborg was hardly so much
a power in the country as that of Zinzendorf
or that of Mack. But Ripley and the little
band of poets and scholars who went out into
the desert of Brook Farm, introduced him to
the intellectual world. In truth, the Swedish
seer was necessary to these idealists. Fourier,
a man without love and without a future, was too
hard and cold a reformer to fill their hearts. As
a ruler in the kitchen and on the farm they
thought him excellent ; but a good kitchen and
a fat farm were not to be all in all with these
high poetic natures. They wanted a new social
order, but they could not receive a social order
absolutely divorced like that of Fourier from every
connexion with a world to come.
They found in Swedenborg much that suited
their frame of mind. The Swede presented many
sides to a reader. To the godly, he offered himself
as a teacher of religion ; to the student, as a
scientific thinker ; to the mystic, as a visionary ;
to the sceptic, as a critic. Unitarians liked him
because he hinted that the Father and the Son
are one. Infidels praised him for rejecting nearly
half the Bible, and especially the writings of
VOL. II. R
242 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
St. Paul. To the idealists of Brook Farm lie
appeared as a great intelligence, which could re-
concile a phalanx with the higher powers. In the
combination of Fourier and Swedenborg they fan-
cied they could see the germs of a new order
of things, fruitful of good, alike to the body and
the soul. Hence they made much of Swedenborg
in their writings. They took from him their
motto ; they quoted his dreams ; they admired
his science ; they lauded his imagination ; nay,
some of the more eminent men among them de-
scribed him as being at once a great social re-
former and a great religious seer. Ripley called
his visions sublime ; Channing coupled him with
Fourier as a teacher of unity ; Dwight pronounced
him the Great Poet and High Priest.
The Rev. Henry James, a Brook Farm en-
thusiast, who scandalised society by making a
public confession of his call to the New Jerusalem,
filled many pages of The Harbinger with proofs
that there is so little difference between Fourier
and Swedenborg in practice, that a convert of
one reformer may admit the other reformer's
claims ; since Fourier's Passional series (a pretty
French name for Free Love) might be readily
made to run alongside of Swedenborg's toleration
THE GREAT HARMONIA. 243
of concubines. In fact, this reverend author, a
man of very high gifts in scholarship and elo-
quence, declared himself, on spiritual grounds, in
favour of a system of divorce, which is hardly
to be distinguished from divorce at will.
A still more eminent convert to Swedenborg s
gospel was George Bush, Professor of Hebrew and
Oriental Literature ; a man who had received his
training at Dartmouth and Princeton, where he
was ordained as a minister in the Presbyterian
Church. Bush's writings on the Old Testament
give him a high place among Biblical scholars.
When he became a convert to the Swedish gospel,
the whole world of New York ran after him ; and
many of the prophets of failing causes (such as
the Bev. James Boyle and the Rev. Charles Weld),
came about him, in the hope of catching some
sparks from this new celestial torch. Bipley and
his friends had given the Swedish dreamer pres-
tige, Bush and his followers gave him popularity.
Two years after the date of Bush's conversion,
Swedenborg had become a name of power in the
schools of Boston and New York.
It must be noted with care how little the New
Jerusalem churches had to do with this starting of
their prophet as a candidate for inspired honours in
244 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
tlie United States. Those old and humble bodies
were as nothing in the cause. Bush, as a man of
learning, was disliked and feared by the illiterate
priests ; and he repaid their hate with open
scorn and eloquent contempt. When crowds of
credulous and mystical disciples gathered round
his pulpit, they came about him, not from those
tiny chapels which the sect had built in nameless
streets, not from the colleges and schools of theo-
logy, so much as from the centres of Naturalistic
Socialism. Most of his converts were those followers
of Owen and Fourier, who had failed in the search
for a better life at New Harmony and Red Bank.
The hearts of these men were ripe in superstition.
Fourierites, who had refused to give the Father
a place in His own world, listened with eager
trouble to any poor trickster who professed to
communicate with the unseen world. Owenites,
who banished from their model societies the very
names of angel and spirit, received into New
Harmony every wandering biologist and mes-
merist who could bring them signs of the exist-
ence of Satanic life. Dr. Buchanan, one of these
vagrant operators, had a great success under the
wing of Dale Owen, who endorsed for the Ame-
rican public his sleight of hand. A clairvoyant,
THE GREAT HARMON! A. 245
an animal magnetizer, an electro-biologist, had a
good time, generally, at Red Bank.
Now Professor Bush caught up in his nets
these restless souls, who wanted a new gospel
without knowing where it could be found. Bush
had such a gospel ready in his hand ; and, being a
master of the two sacred languages, Hebrew and
Arabic, and a critical writer on the times of Moses
and Mohammed, it was not for the ignorant multi-
tude to think that such a man could be mistaken in
his text. A crowd of seekers took him at his word.
Yet, a live country like America could hardly
be expected to receive, on any large scale, an old
and worn philosophy from a foreign source, until
it had been stamped with a new and native
die. In order to gain free entry into her ports,
Swedenborgianism had to put on the livery of the
United States.
Unlike many perverts, Bush was no textual
fanatic. If he adopted the great Swede, his adop-
tion was that of the spirit rather than of the word.
The narrow bigotries of Salem Chapel, having no
place in his heart, found no echoes on his tongue.
Not content, like so many smaller men, to try
every truth that came in his way by one standard,
he never dreamed of closing his eyes on sur-
246 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
rounding facts, in fear lest they should grate on
his sacred text. All truths, he said, would be
found to go hand in hand ; therefore he kept his
heart open, like a poet; as keenly alive to the voice
without as to the throb within.
A strange wonder came upon New York
in the tricks of Kate and Margaret Fox, who
put Buchanan and the electro -biologists to sud-
den shame. Mysterious raps and. taps, touches
and sounds, became the fashion. A country in
which the oldest houses are not a century old
would seem to offer a very poor field for ghosts ;
but the spirits which haunt a wigwam and an
Indian lodge may easily find nooks and crannies
in a log house ; and therefore, when the ghostly
taps and thumps which had been heard by Kate
and Margaret Fox were duly noised abroad, every
old mill and farm in the province found itself
suddenly troubled by a ghost. Bush seized upon
this new marvel, and by his skill and daring got
the spirits, to which the Fox girls had given a
voice, completely subject to his will.
The learned Professor, it must be noted, had
been long familiar with the story of these ghostly
sounds, these demon tokens, these angelic visits.
Swedenborg had spent his life in company with
THE GREAT HARMONIA. 247
spirits. Most of his English pupils had been
blessed by angelic friends. In fact, the whole
round of experiences described by adepts in the
Progressive School of New York to-day was tra-
velled by the London disciples of the Swede from
thirty to sixty years ago. These English vision-
aries were visited by good spirits and bad spirits ;
by some who chose to rap, by others who preferred
to write. Samuel Noble, minister of Cross Street
Chapel, describes himself as having heard raps in
his room. The Rev. John Clowes professed to
write his sermons as an unconscious agent of the
spirits. Bush knew these things, and on the
strength of this knowledge he put forth a claim
upon all the ghostly tribe which had suddenly
leapt into life around him.
In 1847 he had published a book, in which he
placed the phenomena of Mesmer side by side with
the disclosures of Swedenborg; a book which is
the, true source of all the spiritual circles in the
United States.
" The object aimed at/' he explained, " is to
elevate the phenomena of mesmerism to a higher
plane than that on which they had been wont to
be contemplated. The fundamental ground assumed
is, that the most important facts disclosed in the
248 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
mesmeric state are of a spiritual nature, and can
only receive an adequate solution by being viewed
in connexion with the state of disembodied spirits
and the laws of their intercourse with each other."
The value of this volume lay in an appendix,
in which Professor Bush introduced to the American
public a new and a native seer, in Andrew Jack-
son Davis, then a young fellow of twenty. Bush
spoke of Davis in the highest terms ; pledging his
word that the young prophet was an honest man,
in possession of the noblest spiritual gifts. In a
short time Davis quitted his patron and set up
for himself as a rival prophet, producing the Great
Harmonia and other bulky works, the substance
of which was taken from Swedenborg. When
Bush saw reason to think his young friend no
better than a rogue, he took up his parable against
him ; but the shoemaker of Poughkeepsie beat the
Professor of Hebrew and Oriental Literature in
New York ; and the high movement in favour of
a more spiritual science, which began among the
poets of Brook Farm, and grew among the Pro-
fessors of Boston and New York, fell away into
the widely popular, but in no way intellectual
societies, which find their gospel in the Great
Harmonia, their leaders hi Home and Chace.
THE GREAT HARMONIA. 249
The social doctrine of the Great Harmonia is,
even more than the corresponding passage in
Swedenborg from which it is derived, hostile to
marriage ; and nearly all the people who call
themselves Harmonial Philosophers are found to
be frequently changing the partners of their joys
and griefs.
250
CHAPTEB XXVIII.
IN THE CIRCLES.
Davis, the new Yankee Prophet, was a cross be-
tween the hard Naturalism of Owen and Fourier,
and the dreamy Spirituality of Swedenborg. In
what is native — the form and method, not the sub-
stance of his system — the Poughkeepsie lad was
racy of the soil and consonant with his time. On
all the large subjects of man's thoughts, — on love
and life, on good and evil, on body and spirit,
on stars and suns, on wisdom and waste, on birth
and death, on earth and heaven, — he was little
beyond a faint echo of his great original. What
was new to him was the heat, the petulance, the
ignorance, the irreverence of his books. Sweden-
borg was a religious being, Davis a stranger to
religious life. The Swede was a reader of the
Bible, — a respecter of the past. Davis threw
away his Bible as a Gull's horn-book, and spurned
all records of our race as so much trash and false-
IN THE CIRCLES. 251
hood. To the Yankee Prophet the past was no-
thing, the present much, and the future more. Last
year being dead and gone, his hope was in the
year about to come. His science was crude, but
his aims were practical. Freedom of the spirit
meant to him a freedom that could be used. A
Yankee, he could not spend his life in dreams.
If spirits came to him at will, he would make
them work : if grace were given to him, he would
put it out for gain. Why was he a physician if
not to cure ? Why was he a prophet if not to
preach ? Why was he a searcher of hearts if not
to choose his own ?
Davis appears to have felt no scruple about
using his supernatural gifts for his personal gain ;
since he took fees for medical advice ; and helped
himself, through his angels, to the very first
woman whom he chanced to like.
This lady had the misfortune to be married ;
but what of that poor shred of legal difficulty ?
In the Spiritual circles, hearts are no more than
acids and alkalis, which draw near to each other
by a natural law ; on the principle which Captain
Otto explains to Lotte, — that of free affinities.
Davis found in this married lady his free affinity ;
and, after her death, he found a second affinity
252 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
of his soul in another married lady, whom he
claimed from a surprised and outraged husband as
his natural mate. This second elect ran away
from her husband, got off to Indiana, head-quar-
ters of the great Spiritual doctrine of Free Divorce,
and in that happy land of discontented wives
found a release from her hateful bonds.
One of the things which a man in the Spi-
ritual circles thinks himself most of all free to do
is to fall in love with his neighbours wife, — if
the seeking after natural mates can properly be
termed falling in love.
From my bundle of cases, two brief narratives
may be cited in illustration of the way in which
this spiritual mating comes about : —
CARPENTER S CONFESSION.
" March 80th, 1867.
"I was born in the State of New York, and
moved to the west when I was thirteen years old.
Our family settled in Wisconsin, and my folks
became intimately acquainted with a revivalist
preacher named Berner, whose teachings affected
me some. He was connected in his labours with
Charles De Groff, a Spiritualist from New York.
IN THE CIRCLES. 253
Afterwards I became a Swedenborgian, and con-
tinued in that belief for several years.
"In the spring of 1863, I moved with my
family to Minnesota, and formed the acquaintance
of Dr. Swain and his wife. She had been a
Swedenborgian, and was better versed in the doc-
trines of that set than I. She was now a Spirit-
ualist of the school headed by Andrew Jackson
Davis. She lent me books on the Harmonial
Philosophy written by Davis, and speedily in-
doctrinated me into the mysteries of Spiritualism.
She was a medium possessed of psychometrical
powers, and under her teachings I soon learnt that
it is wrong for men and women who are not
adapted to each other to live together. I had been
married seven years, and led a life of domestic
happiness, although my wife never sympathised
with my religious views. Under the teachings of
the Harmonial Philosophy, I was led to reflect a
great deal, and visited Mrs. Swain frequently to
converse on topics that interested me. My wife
became suspicious, and charged me with an im-
proper intimacy with Mrs. Swain. This was not
the case ; but as time wore on, I gradually expe-
rienced a diminution of affection for my wife, and
became more attached towards Mrs. Swain. Mrs.
254 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
Swain said that there was no compatibility be-
tween Dr. Swain and herself, and that she had
frequently thought of leaving him.
" The Harmonial Philosophy teaches in effect,
that persons who are not ' affinitized' are com-
mitting adultery in living as man and wife.
Davis, however, teaches that by proper means, in
many cases an e affinity' can be brought about, but
the general tendency of Spiritualism is to separate
those who are not congenial.
" During a year and a half I became very im-
pressible ; in fact a medium ; the invisible guides
impressed me with many ideas of a religious
nature, some of which tended to convince me of
the reality of the Spiritual world. Among other
things, I became strongly impressed with the
growing incompatibility between myself and my
wife ; and, on the other hand, with the growing
affinity between Mrs. Swain and myself. These
impressions I communicated from time to time to
Mrs. Swain, and she in turn told me of similar
impressions which she had in reference to me. . . .
My wife had ceased her suspicions. ... I learnt
from Mrs. Swain that many Spiritualists of note
had thus sought out their affinities, and had
abandoned the connexions which were inharmo-
IN THE CIRCLES. 255
nious. My course in the matter was determined by
what I then conceived to be religions duty. Mrs.
Swain told me of the doings of John M. Spear, with
whom she was acquainted. He divorced his first
wife on account of incompatibility, and lived with
Miss Clara Hinckley with whom he had discovered
an affinity. He went to England with her.
" After I had been acquainted with Dr. Swain
and his wife for two years, I was called by business
connexions to St. Paul, in Minnesota, where I
formed the acquaintance of several mediums ; one
was living with her affinity, another was mis-
matched and was in search of her affinity. There
were but two or three families of Spiritualists in
St. Paul who were not mis-mated. Nine-tenths
of all the mediums I ever knew were in this un-
settled state, either divorced or living with an
affinity, or in search of one. The majority of
Spiritualists teach Swedenborg's doctrine of one
affinity, appointed by Providence for all eternity,
although they do not blame people for consorting
when there is an attraction J else, how is the
affinity to be found? Another class, of whom
Warren Chace is the most noted example, travelled
from place to place, finding a great many affinities
everywhere. u Charles q Carpenter."
256 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
TOWLER S CONFESSION.
" Cleveland, March 25th, 1867.
" Fifteen years since, while a Universalist
preacher, I became a Spiritualist ; and speaking
of myself as an example, I here state that Spirit-
ualism undermined and destroyed my respect for
marriage. It led me to look on that institution
in the light of a doctrine of affinity, and to regard
it as a union or arrangement which the parties to
it were at liberty to make or remake to suit their
own notions of interest and convenience ; in short,
through Spiritualism, as presented to my mind,
marriage lost entirely its institutional and authori-
tative character, and there was substituted for it
an affinital relation, to exist or be dissolved at the
pleasure of the parties. This was the theoretical
view. In process of time, I became what is called
a Free Lover — meaning by that simply one who
holds that the individual has the right to make
and remake his or her connubial relations without
consulting any authority, religious or legal. This
always seemed to me, and does now seem to me,
to be the legitimate result of the doctrine of in-
IN THE CIRCLES. 25 /T
dividual sovereignty which Spiritualism unques-
tionably teaches.
" My acquaintance with Spiritualists was quite
extensive until within five or six years past, and
among those with whom I have been acquainted
the tendency of thought in regard to marriage has
been of the same caste. I am also acquainted
with most of the Free Lovers who have at one
time or another congregated at Berlin Heights in
this state, and also with many others who sym-
pathised with that movement scattered here and
there throughout the West. And though it cannot
be said with truth that all Spiritualists are Free
Lovers, yet it may be said that all Free Lovers,
with rare exceptions, are Spiritualists. There can
be no doubt in the mind of any one who has been
behind the scenes, that among the adherents of
Spiritualism there are many Free Lovers, prac-
tically, who would not like to be known and
reckoned as such. Indeed, of late years, Spirit-
ualists have been seeking to remove from their
system the stigma of teaching free love ; and
yet it is notorious, at least among themselves,
that some of those who are loudest in denouncing
that doctrine are practising what they profess to
repudiate. As I have defined free love above*
VOL. II. s
258 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
there is an abundance of Free Lovers amongst
Spiritualists.
" Among the lecturers and leaders in the
Spiritualistic movement with whom I have been
acquainted, I think the greater number have
either been divorced legally, or have found them-
selves unaffinitised, — in such cases seeming to
feel themselves at liberty to go outside of their
matrimonial relations for the love they could not
find therein. I could give many names, but pre-
fer not to do so, because the facts in my know-
ledge have in most instances been made to me
in a confidential manner ; so I content myself
with speaking of the matter in this general way.
" J. W. TOWLER."
Thus, by precept and by example, the Yankee
Prophet has taught his congregation of Spirit-
ualists and Harmonists — a congregation which
Judge Edmonds puts at the figure of four millions
— what he means by liberty of the spirit. The
practical issue of his teaching is expressed in the
coarse idiom of New York : —
"Every man has a right to do what he damned
pleases !"
259
CHAPTER XXIX.
LOOKING BACK.
What is the meaning of this singular development
of religious life in Germany, in England, in the
United States ? is a question which will present
itself to every mind. I do not presume to answer
it. We are only on the threshold of a great study ;
and a thousand facts may need to be considered in
the final verdict which are not yet within our ken.
But on looking back into that fascinating branch
of the history of our Christian society, which con-
cerns itself with the inner circle of man's passions,
we find some hints which may be useful when we
attempt to penetrate the meaning of what appears
to some a very sudden and alarming growth of
noxious things.
From the Apostles' day downward, the main
question in every church, so far as the church has
dealt with the laws of our family and social life,
has been put in this wise : — What can be done
260 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
with that always fierce and sometimes lawless
yearning of the heart called love ?
Man would be an easy thing to govern, if he
had no desires of the blood to disturb his pulse.
Passion makes us frail, even while it makes us
strong. The perfect being, conceived in the brain
of Plato, had no sex.
In the East and in the West, in the first
century and in the nineteenth century, at Jeru-
salem as at Antioch, in Pome as in Geneva, the
conservative churches have found themselves in
front of this disturbing force. In all ages they
have been compelled to study the means of flank-
ing an object, which they could not surmount, and
which seems to have been thrown by nature into
their path. Most of all, has this been the case in
Western Europe, where a special reading of the
sacred text has been combined with some frag-
ments of a Pagan creed. " Ah," the priests have
often cried in their dismay, " if man had not been
created male and female ! "
On nearly all sides, the existence of a celestial
order, under which there will be no such rite as
marriage, has been assumed as one of those points
about which there could be no dispute. That
celestial order is said to be the highest state in
LOOKING BACK. 261
which a created being can dwell. A true church,
it is supposed, must strive to reproduce that
heavenly order here below. If we would draw
nigh unto Him, we must do so on the lines of
approach which He has laid down. Do we not
daily ask, as our first boon, from the Father, that
His will may be done on earth even as it is done
in heaven ? What is that will, and how is it done
in heaven ?
Here lies the germ of nearly all our trouble
with the higher and nobler longings of the soul.
What is it that the Father asks from His sons ?
Is it His will that the household passions shall be
conquered, that no more young men shall be mar-
ried, that no more children shall be born ? Some
teachers hold so ; saying that the word of God is
clear and strong in favour of a celibate, unpro-
ductive life. Others, again, perceive a different
meaning in the sacred text. Before all, and after
all, it is for us a question of what is meant — a
point on which the most learned doctors differ,
since nature and inspiration seem to be here at
war.
All reasoners admit that the higher and the
lower worlds described in the Bible, are not the
same in kind ; and that the beings who people
262 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
them can hardly live by a common rule. In one
there is no change, in the other there is no rest.
Heaven feels no waste ; her angels sing to-day as
they sang in the dawn of time ; and no need exists
in their blessed state for renewing a life which
suffers no decline in a million years. Earth, on its
side, knows no pause ; her children perish, coming
and going like the flowers, so that her higher,
equally with her lower forms of life, can only be
preserved from failure by a delicate play of her
reproducing powers. When you have waste, it
would seem that you must have growth. When
things grow old, they must be redeemed by things
which are new. Age implies youth, and death
needs birth.
Where, then, lies the analogy between that
higher sphere and this nether orb ? How can the
things of earth be likened to the things of heaven ?
Nothing is surer than that a close imitation of
what is called celestial order, would, in a hundred
years, restore this globe to the dominion of savage
beasts.
Is that an end to be desired by godly men
in the interest of a nobler law and a better life ?
Some teachers have not shrunk from saying so ;
bold logicians, who would rather kill the world
LOOKING BACK. 263
than deny a text ; but the masses of men who
are neither saints nor critics, could never be
seduced by eloquent speech into adopting that
loveless and joyless theory of a perfect church.
Love of woman and pride of offspring are too
strongly rooted in the hearts of men for either
priest or priestess to pluck them out; except in
some few chosen cases, where other, and not more
saintly passions have been planted in the stead
of this love and pride.
The Church of Southern Europe made herself
the champion of this anti-social spirit. She
adopted slowly, but she held tenaciously, the
dogma that a celibate life is necessary to the dis-
charge of ministerial functions. She gradually
came to look on woman as a snare, on love as a
sin. She forbade her priests to enter on the duties
of husbands and fathers. She divided the world
into two great orders — the sacerdotal and the
secular ; and she made a rule that no member of
the sacred class should have anything to do with
woman in the way of love. Believing in a heaven
of monks and nuns, she strove to introduce on
earth a kingdom of monks and nuns. But in
striving after this image of celestial order she ran
herself upon a thousand rocks. Even in days when
264 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
she seemed to be working her will on earth, she
found the trials to which she exposed herself from
the revolt of human passion fatal to her peace,
and all but fatal to her power ; for a Church
depending on logic and authority for its very-
existence had to patronise a dogma which she
could not wholly defend, a practice which she
could not always enforce.
The first stage of Essenic Christianity, with its
love-feasts and its common stores, had hardly yet
passed into oblivion, before the Western Church
began to trifle with the first principles of domestic
order, by exalting the ascetic habits of a monk
into proofs of a higher calling and a nobler virtue
than belonged to the very best of married men.
Whence came this anti-social spirit, this war against
woman and against love ? Not from the Teacher
of Galilee. Not from His disciples. Not from the
earliest Fathers. One text, and only one, is drawn
from the New Testament in favour of separating
the clergy from the laity — saints by office from
•sinners by choice ; and that one text, some folks
assert, is one that tells for the opposite side.
;St. Paul declared that a bishop should be the hus-
band of one wife. What Paul meant by these
words has been much disputed ; one obvious ren-
LOOKING BACK. 265
-dering is, that Paul addressed his caution to the
church, not against the right of marriage, but
•against the wrong of polygamy ; which was then,
as it had been in olden time, a habit with his
countrymen, the Jews. It is certain that St. Paul
desired to have in his model bishop a man who
was a householder, a husband, and a father. " A
bishop must be blameless, the husband of one wife
.... one that ruleth well his own house, having
his children in subjection with all gravity. For if
a, man know not how to rule his own house, how
shall he take care of the Church of God ?" Such a
text lends no support to the Western theory of a
celibate and separate priesthood ; since it is clearly
. stated that the bishop must be a householder, like
other men ; a husband, like other men ; a father,
like other men. His care in governing his house
is made the measure of his right to govern in the
church. Household virtues and clerical virtues
are recognised as the same in kind. The Apostolic
Constitutions cite these words of Paul in such a
way as to imply that, in the third century, a single
man could not be raised to the sacred office. Paul's
rule appears to be, that a bishop must be the
husband of one wife.
Whence, then, did the notion of a world with-
266 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
out woman and without love descend into the
Church?
In nearly all those Eastern creeds against
which the new dispensation of our Lord made war,
there had been more or less of the spirit of renun-
ciation and asceticism. The Chaldean priests for-
bade their pupils to eat flesh, to drink wine, and to
marry wives. The Indian Brahman, after seeing
his grandson born, was bound to observe the strict-
est rule : to fast much, to pray often ; to put away
his spouse ; to relinquish all the pleasures of sense.
An Essenic Jew considered passion as a snare, and
in the higher grades of his sect he absolutely forbade
his scholar to indulge in the weakness of wedded
love. The priests of Isis were condemned to a
single wife, though the Egyptian custom, like the
Hebrew custom, allowed laymen to take as many
partners as they could get. Among the followers
of Gotama Buddha, the priests were bound by
vows of chastity, the breach of which vows was
punished by degradation from the sacred office.
The Greeks and Bomans had their vestals, and
the priests of Bhea had to offer a peculiar sacrifice
before her fane.
All such Pagan rites and rules would seem to
have been foreign, if not hostile, to the new dispen-
LOOKING BACK. 267
sation ; for the earlier records of the Church con-
tain ample proofs that for many generations, the
clergy of all ranks were free to marry, just as their
secular brethren were free. That proof is sown
upon the record; not in one place only; but here and
there, by chance and by the way ; not as evidence
of a fact, which it had not entered into any one's
heart to deny ; but for some secondary purpose
which the writer had in view. This kind of evi-
dence, as every lawyer knows, is of the very best.
Polycarp tells a story of Valens, a priest who got
into trouble on account of his wife. Irenseus men-
tions a deacon who received Marcus the magician
into his house, and was punished for his disobe-
dience to orders by the seduction of his beautiful
wife. Tertullian's letter to his wife on the duty of
living in a holy state is well known, and no one
doubts that when that letter was indited Tertullian
was a priest. Ignatius speaks of the many blessed
saints who had entered into marriage bonds ;
never doubting that a saint was equally a saint
whether he led a married or a single life. Cyprian
gives an account of Novatus, a priest who kicked
his wife in a fit of passion, and was tried for the
murder of his unborn child.
To pass from examples to the rules which
268 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
govern them, we may glance at the Apostolic
Constitutions ; records of the third century, which
contain full particulars as to the way in which
the clergy lived. Not one word is said in these
primitive articles of the Church as to the priest
being a celibate man. A bishop was to be the
husband of one wife ; if that wife died he was
not to marry again ; and this rule applied, not
only to a bishop, but to a deacon and a priest.
The article seems to have been directed against
that vice of all Jewish societies, polygamy ; a vice
prevailing in Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria,
the three chief centres of Jewish and Christian life.
For, it is expressly stated in these early Constitu-
tions, that a bishop, priest, or deacon, being a
married man at the time of his ordination, is to
be content with his partner, and not to seek out
for himself any other wives. If he be single, he
is to remain so. Men who filled the lower grades
of the clerical office, — the sub-deacon, the reader,
the singer, and the door-keeper — were commanded
to marry no more than one woman ; proof that
the prohibitions were directed against the pre-
vailing Jewish error of polygamy, not against the
primary law of family life.
In the Apostolic Canons, which present the
LOOKING BACK. 2G9
Church rules of a later age, perhaps of the fifth
century after Christ, we find that some changes
have crept in, though the spirit of the church is
still the same. All classes of priests may be
married men, with homes, but not harems, like
those unconverted Jews who scandalized even the
Pagan citizens of Rome. Some signs of a coming
change are found. It is no longer needful to
become a husband and father before trying to
become a bishop. A single man may aspire to the
highest offices in the church, and the fact of his
being alone in the world is a point, perhaps, in his
favour. Singers, readers, door-keepers, and the like,
are still most freely chosen from among fathers of
families ; and if such officers chance to be single
at the time of their election, they receive hints to
comply with the social rule. Not so, the higher
ranks. A man who is single when ordained, is
to remain so ; if married, he is to retain his wife.
The Church has come to resist all change of con-
dition as a mere excitement of the spirits un-
favourable to the chances of a godly life. A wedded
priest is expressly forbidden to put away his
spouse. "A bishop or a priest," says the Sixth
Canon, " may in no wise separate from his wife
under the pretext of religion ; if he puts her
270 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
away, he shall be excoimmmicated ; and if he per-
sists, he shall be deprived."
The social principle and household practice
taught in these Apostolic Canons have always
been upheld by the primitive Oriental Church.
271
CHAPTEE XXX.
WAR OF CREEDS.
From whatever source it may have been derived,
the anti-social principle, which regards woman as a
snare, and repels love as a sin, was adopted in
Rome. It was not a growth of the soil ; not a
choice of her own ; since it would seem to have
been against her genius, as it certainly was against
her laws. It came upon her from without ; from
the country which has supplied her in every age
with spiritual weapons and spiritual ideas ; from
Spain.
Spain is a bastard daughter of the East. The
blood of Tyre and of Jerusalem, no less than
that of Rome and Syracuse, is in her veins ; the
Phoenician and the Egyptian, like the Roman and
the Greek, having left their arts, their inspira-
tions, and their vices in her soil. Isis, Diana, and
Ashtaroth, have each a home in that sunny clime ;
not only in the streets of ^Cadiz, where the names
272 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
are still Phoenician ; not only in the convents of
Saguntum, where the men still drone a song once
chanted by the Vestals ; not only in the alleys of
Granada, where the gipsy dancers imitate, and
perhaps excel, the lascivious grace of Tantah ; but
in every city of the south and east ; under every
vine, and palm, and pomegranate ; in the hearts
of women, in the fancies of artists, in the reveries
of monks and priests. Allied in blood and genius
to the mystic East, Spain has in every age been
the seed-place of religious passions and religious
creeds. To her, the Latin Church owes nearly all
that marks her faith and discipline as things dis-
tinct from those of the Apostolic age. From her
fertile soil, came the rule of Celibacy, the practice of
Auricular Confession, the dogma of the Immaculate
Conception ; as well as the Mendicant Orders, the
Inquisition, and the Order of Jesus. Splendid as
her services have often been to the Church, it is
doubtful whether Home has not suffered more from
the friendship of Spain than from the enmity of all
her Teutonic foes. Always feared, and sometimes
baffled, by the Holy Chair, Spain has known how
to bide her time, to wear out her adversaries, to
seize her occasions, and at length to win her point.
Her last, but not her greatest stroke, has been to
WAR OF CREEDS. 273
force on the reluctant church, after a fight extend-
ing over many centuries, some part of her old wor-
ship of Ashtaroth ; the peculiarities of which she
has hardly veiled under a younger and softer
Syrian name.
Spain drew the first black line through the
•Christian household ; putting the clerk on one side,
the laic on another side ; dividing men who had
heretofore been brothers ; and raising that which
had been a simple calling to the level of a caste.
She began this work of isolation at Elvira, in the
year 305, by declaring that no priest should be
allowed to serve the altar until he had put away
his wife !
These words fell on the Church like flashes
from the sky. Most of the clergy were at that
time married men. The love of husband and wife
was held to be a good and holy thing ; and more
than half the bishops had entered into the matri-
monial state. By the canons which then ruled the
Church universal, a priest was sternly forbidden to
put away his spouse under any pretext of religious
scruple ; and one "\ ho persisted in his unsocial act
was to be suspended and deprived. Of course, in
so large a body as the Christian church, some dif-
ference of opinion might be found. Here a teacher
VOL. II. T
274 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
exalted matrimony at the cost of celibacy; there a
second teacher exalted celibacy at the expense of
matrimony ; but no national Church had yet pro-
claimed that the condition of a husband was a bar
to the exercise of sacred functions. The principle
of family life was thought to be divine. To doubt
the sanctity of honest love, as it exists between
man and woman, was in some sort to slander the
goodness of Heaven and the perfection of its work.
No paltering with this sacred element was suffered.
A priest who made a pretence of abstaining from
meat, from wine, and from love, as from things un-
lawful and unclean, was to be promptly denounced
and excommunicated by his church. Thus the
Spanish rule, proposed at Elvira, was, in form and
spirit, a declaration of war against the whole epi-
scopate and priesthood.
Nor was this rule the whole. Ostius, of Cor-
dova, procured a decree from the Council, to the
effect that no clerk should have a woman residing
beneath his roof, unless she were either his sister
or his daughter, and not even then until such
woman had taken upon herself a vow of virginity
for life. This clause appeared to be derived from
the religion of Diana rather than from that of
Christ. In the great temple of Saguntum, the
WAR OF CREEDS. 275
priests of Diana were bound to take the oaths of
chastity ; but among the followers of St. Peter, a
married saint, such vows as had been sworn by these
Pagan priests appeared to be anything but of God.
So far as they came into force, these articles of
Elvira put an end to the old love-feasts, in which
the sexes had always joined, and brought into dis-
repute the whole order of ministerial women. Up
to that day, the preacher had been aided in his
work and comforted in his home, not only by his
wife, the mother of his children, but by many
Marthas and Marys whom he found living in the
Bethanys to which he carried the torch of gospel
truth. Now, he was to have his life apart. A wall
of separation was to divide the layman from the
clerk. A priest was to have his compensation,
even as the vestal of a pagan city had her com-
pensation, in pomp, in dignity, in power ; but, like
that vestal, he was to flee from love as birds from
a fowler s snare. The Christian family was to be
divided, like the worshippers of Vesta and Diana„
into a sacred caste and a profane caste, the celibate
priests constituting an upper order, the married
laity a lower order; the servants of God being
protected from the thrall of women as from a trial
and temptation beyond the strength of ordinary
276 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
men to resist. In fact, an absolute separation from
the companionship of women, was to be taken in
future as the sign of a holy life.
Simple priests in Gaul and Italy heard with
wonder and laughter of such decrees being passed.
Elvira was a local council, the articles of which
had no authority out of Spain ; yet men of serious
minds, who prayed to have peace and unity in the
church, would see dark cause for apprehension in
the rise of such a spirit. Ashtaroth was the dar-
ling goddess of the south of Spain ; not many
years had passed since Santa Rutin a and Santa
Justina, saints so gloriously pictured by Murillo,
had been torn into shreds by a Seville mob, for
daring to insult their idol in the street. Who
could say what was to come? In her Cartha-
ginian form of Salambo, this popular goddess, the
queen of heaven, the lady of the crescent moon,
though called the patroness of chastity, was wor-
shipped with licentious rites, not in Seville and
Cadiz only, but in every province of southern
Spain. Her priests were eunuchs, yet they were
not chaste. Augustine, who saw these priests in
Carthage, told the Church that though they were
celibate men, they passed their lives in practising
the grossest forms of vice.
WAR OF CHEEDS. 277
From Elvira, this Phoenician dogma of a celi-
bate priesthood passed into Gaul, from Gaul into
Italy, from Italy into Helvetia ; meeting hi every
place with the same resistance ; sanctioned by one
bishop, condemned by another ; here gaining
ground, there losing it ; in one reign denounced
from the Papal chair, in the next reign supported
by the same ; gradually rooting itself in the soil ;
until the conversion of the Gothic races brought a
nobler genius and a new vitality into the Church
of Europe.
From the date of the Gothic conversion to that
of the Gothic reformation — a period, speaking
roughly, of a thousand years — the warfare against
a celibate clergy was conducted mainly by the
North against the South — mainly, not wholly.
Thousands of priests in the North adopted the
Spanish theory ; thousands of priests in the South
resisted it. Still the battle was mainly fought,
between the northern and the southern branches,
of the great Christian flock. Gaul and Italy,
though they were made the battle-fields of con-
tending cohorts, counted for little in the fray.
This fight between the Phoenician spirit and
the Gothic spirit was long and fierce ; lasting for a
thousand years, and only ending when the Church
278 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
was rent in twain. It was a fight in which
woman — her character, her purity, her equality —
was the prize.
Is the feminine part of human nature so de-
graded and degrading that a man who loves the
society of a wife is thereby unfit to approach the
altar of God ? That, under all disguises, was the
actual issue of the fray.
It is a pastime for philosophical observers to
note the shifts into which the adversaries in this
cause are often driven. Spain had to say her
worst of woman, and she said it with her best
malice, so that haters of the sex will find in the
books of her old divines a perfect armoury of
slander. In their pages a girl was represented as
a serpent, in which there was a lurking demon.
At her best she was only a fury and a cheat.
All the worst things in earth and heaven were
feminine ; all that were cruel, all that were false,
all that were heartless ; thus, the Harpies were
feminine, the Vices were feminine, the Fates were
feminine. Eve ate the apple, the daughters of Lot
debauched their sire, Asenath tempted Joseph,
Bathsheba led David into sin. Concubines were
the curse of Solomon. From first to last woman
had been a danger and delusion to the unsus-
WAR OF CREEDS. 279
pecting eye. Her heart was vain, her head was
light ; she was a thing of paint and patches, of
bangles and braids. Her eyes were bent to entice,
her feet were swift to go wrong, her words were
softened to deceive. Her veins were full of fire,
and those who came near her were always scorched.
Her thoughts were unchaste ; her mouth was
greedy for wine ; she threw out her lures to
entice men's souls. Painted and perfumed like a
harlot, she sat in the porches and the gateways
ready to make barter of her charms. All her
passions were seductive, all her inclinings for evil.
Her touch was a taint, her very breath was un-
clean. Nay, the desires of her heart were unna-
tural and demoniac ; since she preferred a demon
lover to a handsome youth of mortal parentage,
and would yield her beauty to an imp of darkness
rather than to a holy saint.
Men of Gothic race, on the other side, held
woman in the highest reverence. Taken as either
a mother or a wife, they looked on her, habitually,
as something finer and more precious than them-
selves. In their simple souls, they imagined that
the best of men must be all the better for having
won a good woman's love ; nay, that a wise hus-
band and father would be more likely to make a
280 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
good pastor, than a recluse who had neither wife
to soften, nor child to instruct his heart. An old
and mystic sentiment of their race inclined them
to believe that women have a quicker sense and
keener enjoyment of spiritual things than men ;
hence they never could be made to see how the
separation of priests from the daily and domestic
company of women, should work for good. In
their old mythologies, woman held a high and
almost a sacred place. She was oracle and seer.
She stood between men and God ; interpreter,
mediatrix ; a visible link, connecting the seen
with the unseen world. Woman was the subtler,
rarer spirit ; a charmer, a comforter ; while man,
at best, was but a warrior and a scald. This
lofty view of woman's place in nature, had been
brought by our Gothic fathers from the old religion
into the new ; and none of these men of northern
genius could let it go. For a thousand years they
fought for the right of woman to stand in honour,
as equal and as wife, by the side of priest and
bishop, just as she stood beside king and poet ;
urging that in a true Christian society, the clerk
and laic should be considered as men of one house-
hold, and that St. Peter's followers should be left
free to do as St. Peter himself had done.
WAR OF CREEDS. 281
Rome, taking part with the nearer race and
more exacting Church, condemned and swept
away these protests of the Northern men. Her
power to censure and coerce was great, because
her service to mankind had been so incessant and
so brilliant, that with very little strain of words,
the world might be said to have come to live in
her alone ; yet in her struggle to sustain this
joyless Spanish dogma she fought, at least with
her Gothic converts, a losing battle ; since she
had to meet and beat a force renewed by nature
from generation to generation. In the end, all
the great churches of Gothic origin cast that
canon from their door ; but not until they were
obliged to fling away with it the habits which
connected them with Rome.
Ages before Luther, Calvin, Cranmer, and
their comrades, found themselves compelled by
the public conscience, in their several countries,
to accept the pledge of marriage, a movement
had arisen in the North, which extended itself
into every country then peopled, even though it
were only slightly, by men of the Gothic race.
The men and women who made this stir in
the Church were known by different names ; in
Germany they were called the Sisterers, in
282 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
Flanders the Beguins, in Italy the Beghardi, in
England the Brethren of the Free Spirit, and in
Spain, at a later day, the Spirituistas. Not mnch
difference can be traced in their views and prac-
tices. They agreed in rejecting the idea that
woman is a snare. They agreed in rejecting the
idea that love is a sin, and family life unfit for a
minister of grace. They taught that the male
and female were created one flesh in the Lord,
and that in the Lord the woman should not be
separated from the man. They said, in word and
in deed, that true affection is not carnal, and that
brethren and sisters may dwell together, not sim-
ply without offence, but with actual increase of
their spiritual zeal.
283
CHAPTEK XXXI.
THE GOTHIC REVIVAL.
In our own day, all the high-church movements
run into some form of spiritual mysticism and
social innovation. When a revival breaks out,
the converted man finds himself in a new rela-
tion to God and to his wife.
The sentiment which underlies this state of
mind, long ago heard in the sermons of Ann Lee,
in the revelations of Swedenborg, in the stories
of Gothe, has sometimes found a voice in our
private life, — in the heart of our saddest and
straitest sects. Who will ever forget the pas-
sionate words in which Mary Gurney, pleading
for her name and fame against the loud and
general condemnation of her guilty flight from
her husband's house, avowed that she was led
into what the world condemned as her fatal
sin by genuine yearning for a truer spiritual
life than she could find in the staid and tran-
284 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
quil decorum of that husband's home ? All the
Teutonic seers and scribes have had more or less
of this mystic sense of a higher sexual affinity
than that of ordinary wedlock. Swedenborg re-
ports it as the law of his upper spheres. Gothe
gives the yearning after such a bliss to Werter,
and touches with the same delicious tenderness
the heart of his heroine Ottilie. In all our Gothic
capitals from Stockholm to London, from Berlin
to New York — we see a rapid slackening and
unwinding of the old-fashioned nuptial ties ; to
the great relief and delight of pupils in the schools
of Milton and Gothe, — to the very great scandal
and amazement of men who look on marriage
and divorce from the point of view held by men
of the Latin race.
A man in the south of Europe — a Sicilian ,.
an Andalucian, a Tuscan — can hardly ever be
brought to comprehend, much less to approve,,
the fuss we northern people make about liberty
of divorce. What, he asks, can it matter to a
man of sense whether he can divorce his wife or
not? Thinking but little of his marriage vows,
on earth, a man in the south of Europe has no
desire to saddle himself with the weight of a
partner beyond the grave. In his idiom, and in
THE GOTHIC REVIVAL. 285
his belief, a wife is an impediment. In his eyes,
women are much the same ; one female being ex-
actly like another, — with a difference only in the
height, the shape, the colour, and the hair. He
looks on many of them as charming, on most of them
as false, and on all of them as frail. His poets and
story-tellers inform him that the man who trusts
a woman is a fool. If he chances to have a wife,
it is rare indeed that he chooses her for himself.
His union is arranged for him by his mother, —
perhaps by his mother's priest. Love has no
concern in his choice, and from the habits of his
country he has no belief that the girl whom he
makes his wife will regard him in any other light
than her partner in a family and friendly game
of chance. He does not mean to be true to her,
and he hardly expects that she will be true to
him. He assumes that, in a year or so, she will
accept the services of a friend — a cavalier — who
will carry her shawl, escort her to the play, amuse
her with gossip and scandal, wait on her at mass ;
and, as he himself aspires to gain some soft reward
for services of a similar kind in other quarters,
he can never feel sure, act as he may, that Iago s
fate will not be his own. What then ? Is it not
better to shut his eyes ? Some years ago, in
286 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
glancing through a number of marriage contracts
in Florence, I was struck with what then appeared
to me a singular fact. Many of these papers
contained a clause in reference to that probable
cavaliere servente, which Byron long ago told his
countrymen they would never be able to under-
stand, because it is a thing of the Italian race.
In many of these contracts, a clause was intro-
duced defining the way in which the young bride,
still a girl in the cloister, should select her cava-
lier, when the time arrived for her to act after
the manner of her kind, so as to make the new
arrangement for her infidelity pleasant to her lord.
In brief, the husband was to have a veto on the
choice of his wife's lover. Was Byron wrong in
saying that Englishmen would never learn to un-
derstand Italian life ?
A man of the Latin race believes it the height
of wisdom to be patient with a woman's faults.
Now and then he may flash into jealous rage, and
when he does so, his ire may be swift and fatal.
But the husband who draws a knife against his
rival is regarded, at least in the politer cities, as a
savage. In one of the finest houses in Florence, a
pious and gentle woman once told me that no
Tuscan ever drew his poniard in the cause of love,
THE GOTHIC REVIVAL. 287
since jealousy was out of fashion, and the man
who troubled himself about other people's amuse-
ments, would be thought a fool. Even when the
knife is drawn against a rival, it is in the name of
some personal pique, not in revenge for an injury
felt in the soul. Commonly the injured man
is willing to dawdle on ; amusing himself in his
neighbours house, and allowing his wife a liberty
like his own. How can such a fellow be made to
understand Gothe and Milton ; to enter into the
spiritual yearnings of Werther for his mistress, or
to seize the English poet's passionate plea in favour
of divorce? What would he gain by any freer
rule ? Suppose he could put away one pretty
sinner and take a second in her stead. Would his
estate be better? Not a whit. The new bride
would behave exactly like the first. Found for
him by his mother, by his lawyer, by his con-
fessor, she would probably be an equal stranger
to his heart. She might love him for a time, with
the passionate animal fervour of the South. When
he fell away in his attentions, she would cool ;
when she found herself deserted, she would accept
the consolations freely offered to her hand. Why
should such a prospect tempt him ? Not feeling,
like a northern man, the want of a true marriage,
288 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
he has little or no impatience with the false. All
marriages appear to him the same in kind, —
the work of kinsmen, priests, and lawyers, not a
contract of the heart. Who ever heard one word
of the affections spoken by an Italian on the eve
of wedlock ? Often, he has hardly seen the girl
whom he is shortly to make his wife. From
some male or female agent he hears that she is
young, accomplished, rich. What more can he
want ? A nature fitted to his own ? Tush !
What he asks in a wife is not a counterpart to
himself, a soul in harmony with his own, but a
nice girl, with a good name, a fine estate, and a
complaisant priest. What cares he for her affini-
ties and genialities ? These things will arrange
themselves in time. Enough for him if the young
lady is likely to give him a son, to be discreet in
her amours, and not to worry him about going
with her to mass.
What is true of this Italian in his private life
is true, in a degree, of all his brethren in the
south of Europe. Members of a Christian society
which makes wedlock a bargain for life, and which
denies the possibility of divorce, they are only too
prone to take marriage as they find it, — as they
would accept either a blank or a prize from the
THE GOTHIC REVIVAL. 289
wheel of fortune. It is an affair of so much
money and so much time. It begins to-day ;
some future day it will end. Meantime there
are consolations for the weary, — since, when the
bond is kept to the letter, no one objects to its
being daily broken to the spirit. Why, then,
make ado ?
A man of Gothic blood cannot rest in this
lax philosophy. Full of subtle sympathies and
mystic yearnings towards the partner of his soul,
he throws himself into that future, in which he
cannot divorce himself, even by the power of
death, from the object of his present love. The
family life appears to him sacred, and he can
hardly think of heaven without having his wife
by his side to share it.
But while he sees in this true marriage of
souls a man's crown of glory, he also sees in the
false marriage of wives and husbands a man's
crown of thorns, from which the compassionate
hand of law should offer him release. Thus he
passes round to the conclusions of which we read.
The idea of nuptials for eternity implies the pos-
sibility of a true and a false marriage ; true mar-
riage implies the right to seek for the natural mate ;
and false marriage implies the liberty of divorce.
VOL. II. U
290 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
This is the circle in which he moves ; and
hence he may find a certain legitimacy in those ex-
cesses and aberrations of spiritual love which would
strike a Gaul as signs of nothing but disease.
In free countries like Prussia, England, and
the United States, changes of law must follow the
actual progress of public thought. Hence, all
through the north of Europe and America, we
see that the old laws of man and wife are being
modified ; the modifications having the common
purpose of helping to free unhappy couples, paired
by mistake, from vows which they cannot keep.
In England, as becomes the most conservative
branch of the Gothic race, we are moving slowly
along thig path of change ; we are not yet clear
about that union of husband and wife beyond the
grave ; but we are quickened by what we see
is being done in Germany and America, and we
shall probably keep in some sort of line with
these advancing wings of the Teutonic power.
Perhaps we have hardly come as yet, to see
how much these strange beginnings of a new life
are due to a sudden quickening of the Gothic
blood. Even in things which do not concern the
family life, we see how this Gothic race in Europe,
in America, and elsewhere, is stirred to its highest
THE GOTHIC REVIVAL. 291
reach, and to its lowest depths. Never, perhaps,
since our fathers came out of their pine-forests,
and threw themselves into the front of history,
has the Gothic family shown more stress and
storm of noble passion than in this present day.
It doubts, it fights, it pulls down, it builds
up, it emigrates, it criticises, it invents with a
power and thoroughness of heart unequalled in the
past. Everywhere it is gaining ground. Here
it founds an empire, there it invades the celestial
spheres. Nothing daunts it — nothing stops it.
One day it changes Central Europe by a battle ;
another day it wins America from the Latins by a
threat. In the social field it is no less active than
it is in the political field. All the strange social
trials which in our day excite the brain and scare
the imagination of timid people are its work.
Other breeds of men may have very high
qualities and very noble virtues. No one will
deny that the Celt has a fire, the Frank a skill,
the Tuscan a taste, to which their fair-haired rivals
in Berlin, London, and New York, have scarcely
any claim. They make splendid orators and sol-
diers ; their wit being only brighter than their
swords. In every form of art they hold their own ;
and in some of the loftiest nights of intellect they
292 SPIRITUAL WIVES.
bear away the palm. But in some things they
can only pretend to a lower rank. They are less
susceptible and have fewer relations with the
world of spirits. It is in these things that the
Gothic races are rich beyond compare ; in open-
ness of mind towards all the ghostly messen-
gers of fate — the voice that shrieks, the touch
that burns, the form that haunts. Poorer in art,
but richer in spiritual gifts, than many of their
fellows, the men of this Gothic race would seem to
have been armed by nature with the means for
proving all these theories which concern the
highest interests of our spiritual and social life.
APPENDIX
PROFESSOR SACHS' EVIDENCE.
I have been led to print Professor Sachs' Evidence in
full, and in the original, for three reasons.
In the first place, because this document is full of curious
and important details, of the highest interest for contem-
porary history, which personal and political considerations
have hitherto kept from the public eye. In the second
place, because it has been made the subject of many com-
ments on the part of Ebelian writers, particularly on the
part of Kanitz and Diestel, whose controversial writings are
absolutely unintelligible to strangers without it. In the
third place, because, though I have rejected some of the
facts, and many of the opinions here stated, it is the
foundation of much of my own narrative.
In availing myself of the permission to use, including
permission to print, this paper, and in putting it before the
reader, I believe that I am serving the interests of truth.
Eargtelltmg
DER
PIETISTISCHEN UMTRIEBE IN KONIGSBERG,
VON
PROFESSOR SACHS.
In der gegen den Herrn Archidiakonus Dr. Ebel schwebenden
Untersuchungssache bin ich sewohl von dem hiesigen Kb'nigl. Con-
sistorio, als auch spater von dem Kbnigl. Inquisitoriate als Zeuge
vernommen worden, nnd von der letztern Behorde vielfach. Eine
grosse Reihe von Fragen ist mir vorgelegt, nnd von rair mit
Gewissenhaftigkeit, ohne die mindeste persbnliche Erregtheit be-
antwortet nnd die Anssage selbst durch einen Eid bekraftigt
worden.
Hiermit konnte ich denn auch die Aufgabe, die mir in dieser
Sache gestellt war, fiir gelbst halten; denn ich selber habe nicht
die Aufforderung in mirgefiihlfc, als Klager gegen Ebelund seinen
Anhang aufzutreten, wie ich denn auch seit den 10 Jahren, die
ich aus jener Verbindung herausgelost, still und ruhig verlebtr
weder durch That noch Wort etwas Feindseliges gegen ihn und
die Seinigen unternommen habe ; ja, von ihnen ausgehendem Un-
glimpf gegen mich habe ich nichts Anderes als Gleichmuth ent-
gegengesetzt, den zu erringen mir nicht einmal schwer geworden
ist. Nur mit vertrauteren Freunden habe ich in dieser ganzen
Zeit zuweilen iiber jene Verbindungen und ihre grossen, beklagens-
•werthen Verirrungen gesprochen. Nehme ich nun gleichwohL
296 DARSTELLUNG DER
nnd freiwillig das Wort, und zwar urn Einiges mitzutheilen, das
dem Richter in psychologischer Beziehnng vielleicht dienen konnte,
so konnte mir dies den doppelten Vorwurf der innern Anmassung
und der ausseren Unberufenheit zuziehen. Theils aber ist die zu
machende Mittheilung der Form nach der Art, dass es dem Richter
ganz anheimgestellt bleibt, ob er davon einen Gebrauch machen
will und welchen, theils aber — und dies ist fiir mich der Bewegungs-
grnnd — scheint mir die ganze Sache, von der die Rede ist, eine
innerlich zu verwickelte, ungewohnliche, mit psychologischen Rath-
seln so sehr verhiillte, dass jedem, der nicht eigne und theuer
erkaufte Erfahrungen dariiber besitzt, grosse Schwierigkeiten in der
Auffassung und Beurtheilung begegnen mussten. Der Ausweg
aber, in verwickelten moralischen Verhaltnissen sich des Urtheils
iiber Andre zu entschlagen, ist dem Richter nicht gestattet. Je
wohlwollender, geistreicher, in vielfachen Verhaltnissen erfahrener
ich mir den Richter dieses Falles vorstelle, je mehr mit all den
vorziiglichen Eigenschaften ausgeriistet, die ihn zur Losung dieser
schwierigen Aufgabe eignen, desto mehr muss ich ihn mir auch als
einen solchen denken, dem jeder Beitrag zum Orientiren willkommen,
wenigstens nicht gleichgiiltig sein werde. Ich habe weder die
Absicht, anzuklagen, noch die, mich zu vertheidigen ; aber ich
werde von Anderen und von mir sprechen miissen, denn es handelt
sich von einer Sache, die von den Person en nicht abzulosen ist, ja die
Sache selbst ist Nichts als eben Verirrung der Personen : sieht man
von dieser ab, so hat jene gar keine Existenz, keinen Inhalt. Was
ich mitzutheilen habe, ist psychologischer Art; es bezieht sich also
auf Seelenverhaltnisse und Seelenzustande; auch von dieser Seite
her ist von den Personen nicht zu abstrahiren; denn nur was jene
bedingen, sind diese. — Ein Geistlicher wird angeklagt, ein Irrlehrer
zu sein, diese Irrlehre aber als Geheimlehre zu bchandeln. In
dieser Geheimlehre soil nicht bios Vieles enthalten sein, das der
evangelischen Kirchenlehre widerspricht, die Sittlichkeit verletzt,
der burgerlichen Gesellschaft verderblich, die Familien zerriittend
ist, sondern, er soil sich zur Verbreitung seiner Irr-und
Geheimlehre sehr bedenklicher, ja verfuhrerischer Mittel bedienen.
Wer sollte die Schwere einer solchen Anklage nicht empfinden,
und in wem sich nicht unmittelbar die Vermuthung des natiirlichen
Wohhvollens regen, es wiirde hierbei wohl wenigstens viel Ue-
bertiiebenes, Missdeutendes sein, vielleicht sogar auch Verfol-
gung aus bosem Willen gegen wahre Frommigkeit ! Haben die
PIETISTISCHEN UMTRIEBE IN KONIGSBERG. 29 7
Weisen und Frommen nicht von jeher Verfolgung und harte
Verlaumdung erfaliren ? Sind sie nicht immer angeklagt worden,
Verfiihrer zu sein ? Und wenn etwa die Erinnerung an
ahnliche Verirrungen in friiheren Zeiten die Moglichkeit solcher
Ereignisse ausser Zweifel setzen einen Schritt naher zur Sache
thun lasst, so muss sich doch bald und zunachst die Frage
erheben : wer ist die Person, die in unserer Zeit solche Lehre hat
aussinnen, lehren und verbreiten konnen ? Und wer sind diejenigen
Personen, die in unserer Zeit einen solchen Einfluss auf sich haben
ausii ben lassen konnen? Denn allerdings hat es viel Auffallendes,
dass das in Rede stehende Ereigniss eines unserer Zeit ist; nicht,
•als wenn ihr namentlich in religioser Beziehnng die Neigung zum
Falschen der mannichfachsten Art abginge ; von dieser vielmehr
ist sie nur zu sehr behaftet, und sie gerath in der That eben so
leicht in den falschen Pietismus, in die falsche Mystik, als in
falschen Rationalismus, wahrend doch wahre Religiositat Pietat
ein (geotfenbartes) Mysterium und lautere Rationalitat in vollkoni-
mener Vertraglichkeit in sich enthalt. Auffallend also und unserer
Zeit fremd scheint an jenem Ereignisse nur die Physikotheologie,
die Abenteuerlichkeit des rohen Anthropomorphismus von Seiten
der Lehre und die Verstecktheit, die jesuitische Methode der
Praxis. Ueber dieses Problem, das ungelost keinen Zugang zum
Verstehen der Sache lasst, kann, glaube ich, geniigender Aufschluss
gegeben werden.
Ebel — denn dieser ist der Trager der ganzen Sache, jetzt ein
Mann von etwa 52 Jahren, — ist eine urspriinglich vielfach begabte,
aber in keiner Weise zu einer reinen Entwickelung gelangte Natur.
Sein Vater, ein schlichter Landgeistlicher, hat, wie es scheint,
einen schwachen Einfluss auf seine Erziehung ausgeiibt ; dagegen
ist sein Grossvater schon ein Schwarmer gewesen, und, wie ich von
dessen Sohn selbst, dem Vater des in Rede stehenden Ebel, gehort,
Irrlehren halber vom geistlichen Amte entfernt worden. Wenig
vorbereitet, ist Ebel auf eine der hiesigen Schulen, die damals alle
in klaglichem Zustande waren, gekommen, und mit sehr geringen
Kenntnissen von ihr, wie spater von der Universitat entlassen
worden. Es ist dies einer der wichtigsten Umstande zu seiner
Erklarung nicht nur, sondern auch zu seiner Entschuldigung. Er
ist niemals aus dem Zustande der tiefsten Unwissenheit herausge-
kommen; er hat keine Erfahrung von der geistigen Arbeit, aber
auch nicht von dem geistigen Segen einer wahren Forschung ; er
298 DARSTELLUNG DEE,
weiss es nicht, was es heisse, und wie es thue, mit Problemen, mit
Zweifeln ringen ; er kennt nicht die innere Stellung und Haltung
des Geistes geistigen Aufgaben gegen iiber; er ist innerlich ohne
alien Schutz gegen Einfalle, gegen Halbheiten; ein tausendmal
dagewesener und widerlegter Irrthum, tauclit er ihm auf, wird als
Inspiration, als unzweifelhafteWahrheit ergriffen, denn — erignorirt
sie nicht etwa absichtlich, sondern thatseichlich : er kannte die
Geschichte in ihrem Inhalte nicht, und so ist eigentlich fiir ihn noch
Nichts geschehen. Es muss demnach zunachst festgehalten werden,
dass er — was sich aus alien den von ihm gehaltenen grosseren
Vortragen, wie sie sich abschriftlich wenigstens bei den Acten
finden werden, ergeben muss — in einer seltenen real en Unwissenheit
zu bleiben das Ungliick gehabt hat.
Dieses wurde fiir ihn ein urn so grosseres, als er der Anlage nach
von grosser Beweglichkeit und Reizbarkeit des Geistes sowohl als
des Gemuthes ist. Unter der Menge sich zu verlieren, war weder
seine Bestimmung noch seine Neigung. Bei grosser Gewandtheit
und Nettigkeit der ausseren Erscheinung verfehlte er nicht, einen
giinstigen Eindruck zu machen ; und, lebhaft wunschend, sich Raum
zu machen, ohne im Besitz wiirdiger Mittel dazu zu sein, nn-
aufgelegt, auch das friiher Versaumte durch nachholenden Fleiss
und intensivere Anstrengung zu ersetzen, bildete er an sich das-
jenige zu einer grossen Fertigkeit aus, was in der Gesellschaft ein
insinuantes Wesen genannt wird. Dies half ihm durch alle Ex-
amina durch, erwarb ihm einzelne Gonner und brachte ihn friihe
in's Amt als Landgeistlichen. Bevor aber in der Entwicklung
fortgeschritten werden kann, muss nur ein Moment angefiihrt wer-
den, das vom bestimmtesten Einflusse gewesen ist.
Friihe namlich, schon wahrend 'seines Aufenthaltes auf der
Universitat, machte Ebel die Bekanntschaft mit einem Manne, der
sich im Besitze einer Kenntniss glaubte, die vollkommen, durch
den Verstand zur Einsicht bringenden Aufschluss iiber alle Mys-
terien der Religion, der Natur und der Vernunft zu geben ver-
mochte, die er deshalb auch schlechthin Erkenntniss der Wahrheit
nannte : eine Erkenntniss, nach der sich die Weisesten und Er-
leuchtesten aller Zeiten gesehnt, von der auch einige Strahlen
auf die Auserwiihlten gefallen waren, die aber von Niemandem,
selfost von den Aposteln nicht in ihrer Vollstandigkeit erlangt
werden konnte ; denn dies war nur dem Fleisch gewordenen Para-
klet aufbehalten, und dieser sei eben er — Schonherr ; denn von
PIETISTISCHEN UMTRIEBE IN KONIGSBERG. 299
diesem ist nun die Rede ; dass er der Mensch gewordene Paraklet
sei, wurde aus dem Systeme bewiesen, und wiederum die Moglich-
keit dieses Systems sowie seine unumstossliche Wahrheit dadurch,
dass es ja nicht menschliche Weisheit, sondern gottliche Verkiin-
digung durch den vollendeten, Menscli gewordenen Paraklet sei ;
aus beiden aber, dem Dasein des Systems und des Paraklets folgte,
dass nun die vollkommene Wahrheit uber Alle, die ihrer theilhaf-
tig werden wollen, d. h. die zur gliiubigen Annahme des Systems
sich bereit finden wollen, ausgegossen werden konne, und dass,
sobald dies in einigem Umfange zu Stande gekommen sein werde,
das tausendjahrige Reich auf der Erde beginnen werde. Alle
Personen nun, die sich dem Schonherr naherten, oder wohl gar an-
schlossen, mussten natiirlich sehr bedeutende Personlichkeiten im
Geisterreiche sein, Vorherbestimmte, Auserwahlte, auf die schon in
den Biichern der Weissagung hingedeutet war.
So z. B. zweifelte Schonherr so wenig, das Diestel eine solche
Person sei, dass er sogar das ganz Spezielle hieruber herausfand:
er war einer der Engel aus cler Apokalypse, welche die Siegel bre-
chen, und so gewiss war er hieruber, dass er den Namen Heinrich
Diestel 'in Heinrich Siegelbrecher verwandelte. Dies habe ich von
Diestel selbst, der freilich keinen Anstand genommen hat, vor
einigen Jahren drucken zu lassen : er kenne das Schonherr'sche
System gar nicht. Dieses System nun aber, wie er es nannte,
diese Erkeimtniss der Wahrheit gewahrt Viel, ja Alles, wenn nur
eine Bedingung erfiillt wurde : die unbedingte Annahme der Gott-
lichkeit, also nothwendig auch die unmittelbare Wahrheit dersel-
ben ; fur sie durfte kein Beweis gefordert werden ; Unternehmun-
gen der Art waren Werke des Teufels, da sie selbst der Beweis,
und zwar der hochste, unmittelbarste, letzte war, mit ihr aber so
hin und angenommen, konnte Alles bewiesen werden. Bestiiti-
gungen freilich, oder was nur so scheinen oder irgend wie dahin
gewandt werden konnte, waren willkommen, wenn auch nicht
nothwendig. Und aus dieser Quelle stammt Einiges in dieser
Lehre, was mit wirklichen Thatsachen, wenn auch nur unvollstan-
dig aufgefassten, entstellten, oder mit physikalischen unci philo-
sophischen Theoremen, wenn auch falschen und liingst widerlegten,
einigen Zusammenhang hat. Unter den sehr wenigen Personen
namlich, die sich zu jener Zeit dem Schonherr angeschlossen hatten,
war ein junger Mann, dem es damals schon an einigen, wenn auch
nur unzusammenhangenden, nicht gehorig begriindeten Naturkennt-
300 DARSTELLUNG DEE,
irissen nicht ganzlich gefelilt hat; es ist dies der jetzige Oberlehrer
Bujack; dieser hat Manches suppeditirt, das raehr oder weniger
Schein hatte, und als ein Bemiihen, wenigstens einige Riicksicht
.auf die Thatsachen der Beobachtung zu nehmen, das Ansehn haben
kann. Bujack selbst ubrigens, in der eigenen Bildung fortschrei-
tend, hat sich langst von jenen Thorheiten und Schwindeleien
abgelost und zu einera achtungswerthen Gymnasiallehrer im Fache
•der elementaren Naturgeschichte entwiekelt.
Auf Ebel aber musste dies Verhaltniss ganz besonders und
bestimmend wirken. Geistig sehr reizbar und aufgeregt, nach
besonderer Bedeutsamkeit strebend, zur Theosophie (vielleicht schon
durch eine erbliche Anlage) hinneigend, forschungs-und arbeits-
.scheu, ohne Kenntniss wissenschaftlicher und eindringender Art
von der Theologie, Philosophic, Natur etc. : dabei gewiss nicht ohne
wahrhaftige religiose Erregung, fand er hiGr Nahrung und verlok-
kende Versuchung im Uebermasse. Es handelte sich zuvorderst
um gottliche Dinge und ihre tiefsten Tiefen ; diese durften nicht
gesucht werden, denn sie waren eben alle schon gefunden und auf-
gedeckt. Man wusste mehr und Grosseres als die von der Fin-
sterniss bedeckte Welt ; man war im Geisterreiche bezeichnet,
ausgezeichnet und auserwahlt ; vbllige Dispensation von dem miih-
samen Wege des Lernens, von dem Lehren, und iiberdies noch das
Lockende und innerlich Starkende, ja zum Trotz Anregende, das so
hiiufig da gefunden wird, wo sich eine ecclesia pressa bildet. Denn
in grosser und allgemeiner Missachtung als unwissender Schwarmer,
ja als ein geistesverwirrter, still delirirender Mann stand Schonherr
fast allgemein (in Leipzig hielt man es fiir rathsam, ihn in einer
Irrenanstalt zu detiniren). Der Stolz, ja der Hochmuth sucht
nicht ungern das Martyrerthum, namentlich, wenn es ein nicht gar
zu hartes ist; hier iiberdies war Trostung und irdische Trostung
ganz in der Nahe: sollte nicht bald und hier auf Erden und von
Konigsberg aus das Beich Gottes mit einem iiberschwenglichen
Masse von Geniissen des Leibes und der Seele beginnen ? Soil ten
nicht die Hauptpersonem (und Andere gab es in diesem kleinen
Kreise, " das kleine Hauflein," nicht) in einer Klirze von Freuden,
Ehren und Herrlichkeit gliinzen ? Hie und da einige Missachtung
z\\ tragen, war als letzte Gegenwehr, die der Teufel noch versuchte,
eben nicht schwer; Bibelworte liessen sich ja dafiir finden, und so
war es ja so verheissen.
In solchen Verhaltnissen und in solcher Richtung stand Ebel,
PIETISTISCHEN UMTRIEBE IN KONIGSBERG. 301
als er Landgeistlicher wurde. Dieser Wirkungskreis aber konnte
seinen Wiinschen nicht entsprechen. Das einfache Evangelium
predigen ? er hatte eine hohere Weisheit, die Erkenntniss der
Wahrheit. Mit Landleuten konnte er das neue Reich aufzubauen
nicht hoffen. Er bemiihte sich, eine Stelle in der Stadt zu erhal-
ten, und da die Prediger-und Religion s-lehrerstelle am hiesigen
Friedrichskollegium vakant wurde, bewarb er sich sehr angelegent-
lich darum, obwobl er seine okonomische Stellung dadurch ver-
schlimmerte. Nach einem schlecht iiberstandenen Examen gelangte
er zu diesem Amte. Die Kirche dieser Anstalt, ^eigentlich nur fiir
die Lehrer und Zoglinge derselben bestimmt, ist sehr klein, und,
einigermassen von Anderen besucht, ist sie leicht gefullt und bald
iiberfiillt. Bald in der That war dies auch hier der Fall. Das
kirchliche Verhaltniss in hiesiger Stadt um jene Zeit war namlich
im Allgemeinen eben durch die vorangegangenen erschutternden
Ereignisse des Krieges 1806-7 in eine innere Belebung jedenfalls,
aber auch in eine ausserlich sich beurkundende gerathen. Ausser
mehren wiirdigen Geistlichen, die immer ein mehr oder minder
bestimmtes Auditorium batten, zog damals besonders der Konsis-
torialrath Krause, nachmaliger Grossherzoglich-Weimar'scher Ge-
neralsuperintendent, sehr Viele an. Seine Predigten, die in dogma-
tischer Richtung verschieden beurtheilt werden konnten, sprachen
am Deutlichsten und Vornehmsten Etwas, dem Alle sich gem
unterwerfen, aus, zu welchem das Menschengemiith einen unwider-
stehlichen Zug hat, lautere Gottes-und Menschenliebe. Seine
Vortrage aber, wie seine Wirkungsweise iiberhaupt waren ruhiger
Art, betrachtend, ermahnend, selten ruhrend, nie erschutternd.
Seine Predigten lehnten sich alle an Bibelwahrheiten und Bibel-
spriiche, aber sie waren nicht iiberschuttet mit Bibel-und Lieder-
versen. Ganz anders war es mit den Predigten Ebel's. Hier sah
man einen jungen, schonen, stark bis zur Leidenschaft aufgeregten
Mann hintreten, vernahm ihn voll Eifer dringen auf das, was das
ganze, voile, reine Christenthum genannt wurde ; die Worte der
Bibel selbst driingten einander, dazwischen immer Anfuhrungen
aus frommen Gesangen, entschiedenes Yerwerfen alles desjenigen,
was nicht eben Christenthum und seine wahre Erkenntniss ist,
daher audi immerfort ein Ablehnen gegen alle Wissenschaft, die
nicht Erkenntniss der Wahrheit sei. (Dieser Ausdruck, selbst ein
biblischer, kam besonders haufig und gescharft vor.) Beden
solcher Art, mit leidenschaftlicher Warme, die nur zu leicht von
302 DARSTELLUNG DEE,
Rednern und Zuhorern fiir tiefe Begeisterang gehalten wird, vorge-
tragen, konnen nicht verfehlen, Eindruck zu machen, und das
thaten sie auch hier. Lernte man nun vollends Ebel personlich
kennen — und dies war sehr leiclit, denn er war iiberaus entgegen-
kommend — so befestigte und verstarkte sich jener Eindruck durch
einen entgegengesetzten. Denn inder personlichen Beriihrung war
er Toller Gesclimeidigke.it und Fiigsamkeit, Niclits von dogma-
tisclier Narrheit, wo er keine Neigung dafiir bemerkte ; Nichts von
gewohnter Orthodoxie, wo er mit nicht so Gesinnten zusammen-
traf ; kurz, er wurde Jedem bequem, Jedem gewissermassen gerecht,
nur drang er iiberall auf die Erkenntniss der Wahrheit. Und was
ist billiger, und was muss mehr und williger zugegeben werden,
als eben dies, wenn man noch nicht weiss, was der tiefere Sinn, oder
eigentlich welche ganzliche Verzichtung auf Sinn iiberhaupt es ist,
die hinter jenem so harmlosen Ausdruck sich verbirgt ? So erin-
nere ich mich, dass er mir in der ersten Zeit unserer Bekanntschaft,
da er mich vom Lobe Spinoza's, den ich eben damals zum ersten
Male naher kennen lernte, iiberstromen horte, und namentlich den
frommen Sinn dieses verkannten und verfolgten Mannes hervor-
heben, theilnehmend sagte und zustimmend: meinen armen Yater
haben sie auch verfolgt, weil er einige spinozistische Ansichten
angenotnmen hatte. Bei reiferer Einsicht spaterer Jahre bin ich
selbst von meinem Enthusiasmus fiir jenen ausgezeichneten Denker
zuriickgekommen, bei naherer Bekanntschaft mit Ebel habe ich es
aber bestimmt genug gesehen, dass er nicht die entfernteste Kennt-
niss des Spinoza und seiner Philosophic, oder auch nur seines
Lebens hatte ; damals aber machte es einen grossen, Herz gewin-
nenden Eindruck auf mich, einen strengglaubigen christlichen
Prediger mit so vieler Anerkennung von Spinoza sprechen zu horen.
Hie und da scheint er indess schon in jenen Zeiten sich von der
Behutsamkeit, die er so sehr cultivirt, entfernt zu haben; denn
wahrend er noch Prediger und Religionslehrer am Friedrichs-
kollegium war, ist eine Untersuchung gegen ihn wegen seines
Sehonherrianismus und wegen ungeziemend verachtlicher Aeusse-
rungen von der Kanzel her iiber die Wissenschaften und ihre Bestre-
bungen eingeleitet worden, doch ohne nachtheiligen Erfolg fiir ihn.
Bald darauf traf ihn sogar unter mehren Kandidaten zu einer
Adjunctenstelle eines Diakonats an der hiesigen Altsttidtischen
Kirche die Wahl. In dieser grossen Kirche wuchs auch die Zahl
seiner Zuhorer, ohne dass im Allgemeinen die offentliche Appre-
PIETISTISCHEN UMTMEBE IN KONIGSBERG. 303
hension wegen seines Zusammenhanges mit Schonherr sicli vermin-
derte. Dies geschah im Jahre 181 G, und im darauf folgenden Jahre
machte er in Gesellschaft Schonherr's und eines Lackfabrikanten
Clemens eine Reise nach dem nordlichen Deutschland, wie es schien,
anf Schonherr's Antrieb, urn nacbzuforschen, ob nicht weitere Ver-
bindungen zur Yerbreitung der Erkenntniss der Wahrheit anzu-
kniipfen seien. Dies fiel wohl ganz erfolglos aus, fiir Ebel aber war
diese Reise erfolg- und folgenreich. Denn in Schlesien lernte er die
Grafin Ida v. d. Groben kennen und begleitete sie von da zuriick
hierber in ihr vaterliches Haus zum damaligen Landhofmeister und
Oberprasidenten v. Auerswald. Von dieser ausgezeichneten, sehr
begabten Dame werde ich nacbher naher sprecben miissen. Hier
erinnere ich nur dies : obne die Verbindung mit dieser Dame ware
Ebel nie das geworden, was er nachher nur zu sehr geworden
1st : autokratiscbes Sectenhaupt. Denn Alles, was ibm ausser
der Neigung und dem Hocbmuthe dazu fehlt, Entscblossenbeit,
Muth, Charakterstarke, das hat sie in reichem Maasse, und
iibertrug es durch beharrlichen Einfluss auf ilm und durch eine
kuhnmeisterliche Behandlung aller Anderen zu deren absoluter
Unterwerfung unter Ebel, den sie selbst mit aller Aufrichtigkeit
und Ueberzeugungsstarke nicht bios als ihren Herrn und Meister,
sondern als Herrn und Meister schlechthin anerkannt ; hierdurch,
sage ich, fixirte sie ihn, und zwar ihn als besondere Person,
die es nicht unterlassen durfe, sich getlend zu machen, so wie die
Andern vorweg ihn als diese Person zu erkennen und anzuer-
kennen. Hiervon jedoch wird weiter das Nahere und in seinem
Zusammenhange mitgetheilt werden. Hier ist nur zu bemerken,
dass hier ein Einschnitt in die ganze Entwicklung Ebel's und seiner
mittel-und unmittelbaren Wirksamkeit eingetreten ist.
Die nachste Wirkung aber stellte sich dadurch heraus. Eben
diese Grafin v. d. Groben hatte ihren Mann,preussischen Lieutenant,
in der Schlacht bei Gr. Gorschen (ween ich nicht irre) durch den
Tod zu verlieren den tiefen Schmerz erfahren ; Jahre lang noch
hing sie diesem Sclmierze, wie es schien, mit fester Entschliessung
und in einer an's Melancholische granzenden Weise nach. Sie war
iiberhaupt in fruherer Zeit romantischem und phantastischem Wesen
sehr zugethan, und in dieser Art wurde nun auch die Trauer zu
einem Kultus, der romantisch-phantastisch von ihr ausgeiibt wurde.
Hire ganze edle Familie war in der grossten Sorge fur und um sie,
vermochte aber zu keinem andernden Einflusse auf sie zu gelangen.
304 DARSTELLUNG DEE,
Diese Frau mm fiihrte jetzt Ebel in den Kreis der Ihrlgen znriickr
aber als neue, kaum kenntliche Person, heiter, ruhig, hingebend,
theilnehmend und ohne alle Komantik, ohne Phantasterei, scheinbar
natiirlich und kindlich.
Die Eltern, entziickt und iiberrascht durch diese Veranderung,
f'uhlten sich zum grossten Danke gegeu. Ebel verpflichtet ; denn
von ihm, so sagte sie selbst, hatte sie Trost, Kuhe, Heiterkeit
empfangen, und zwar eben durch seine religiose Belehrung. In der
Familie von Auerswald fand dies um so grosseren Anklang, als
sie immer einen religiosen Zng gehabt und bewahrt hatte, und die
Sache wurde bald zu einer gemeinsamen der hoheren Familien-
kreise dieser Stadt. Ebel wurde ein Gegenstand ihrer besondereii
Betrachtimg, Beriicksichtigung und vor Allem der Besprechung.
Bis dahin war der nahere Umgang kein anderer als der mit den
Freunden Schonherr's, diese aber bestanden aus einigen Handwerks-
leuten, Diestel, Graf von Kanitz und aus Damen, besonders dem
Fraulein von Derschau, deren sp'ater nahere Erwiihnung geschehen
muss. Nun trat Ebel aber in mannigfachere Kreise, und vorziiglich
in den der hoheren Stande ein. Vielen vielleicht ware dies lieb und
erfreulich gewesen, Niemandem aber so sehr, als einem Manne wie
Ebel — eben ihm selbst. Seine geheimsten und innigsten Wunsche
gingen vor seinen Augen in Erf ul lung ; er erregte Aufmerksamkeit?
er empfing Beweise persb'nlicher Anerkennung, und sein grosstesy
ausgebildetstes Talent, die gesellschaftliche Geschmeidigkeit, konnte
sich nun glanzend entfalten und neue Triumphe bereiten. Die Frau
v. d. Groben begann aber sogleich ihre grosste Thatigkeit fiir ihn ;
von seinem Lobe, von anbetender Bewunderung seiner Giite, Liebe
und Frommigkeit iiberstrbmte nun in den begeistertsten Aus-
driicken ihr Mund, und doch Alles in einer Weise, wie es einer ge-
bilcleten und mit alien Vorziigen ihres hoheren Standes ausgeriisteten
Frau geziemend war, ohne irgend Verdacht erregen zu konnen.
Was war nun natiirlicher, als dass zunachst Frauen, namentlich aus
den befreundeten adligen Kreisen, zu Ebel, zunachst in seine Kirche,
dann auch in sein Haus gefiihrt wurden ? In dem Masse, als sich
nun ein naherer und der Art nach gebildeter Kreis um Ebel versam-
melte, in demselben Masse bildete sich auch einige Spannung
zwischen diesem und dem eigentlich Schonherrischen Kreise ; denn
seine Damen konnte Ebel doch nicht zu Schonherr fiihren, um
dessen Abends begonnenen und oft gegen Morgen erst sich endenden
Vortragen beiznwohnen ; auch konnte er sie der dort herrschenden
PIETISTISCHEN UMTBJEBE IN KONIGSBERG. 305
Disciplin nicht unterwerfen ; denn etwas strenge scheint diese bei
Schonherr allerdings gewesen zu sein, wenigstens war sie nicht st,
beschaffen, wie man sie fiir junge, fein gebildete Damen geeignet
halten kann. Anf seine Autoritat zu halten, fulilte Schonherr als
Paraklet sich berechtigt, und die Freiheit, die er Anderen gestatette,
bestand lediglich darin, dass sie, gleichfalls auserwahlte, in der
Apokalypse und anderen heiligen Schriften wohl bezeichnete Per-
sonen, hin und wieder einigen Einspruch thun, auch wohl eine halbe
Nacht hindurch mit ihm selbst und untereinander heftig zanken
durften, worauf sich dann aber Alles wieder in das alte Subordina-
•tionsverhaltniss einfdgen musste.
So wenigstens ist es mir in spateren Jahren — denn ich selbst habe
Schonherr' s Schwelle nie betreten — von Mitgliedern jenes Kreises
erzahlt worden. Tiefer aber lag noch ein anderer Grund zum
Zerwiirfniss zwischen Ebel und Schonherr. Ersterer sah sich allmah-
lig in die giinstige Lage versetzt, selbst Oberhaupt sein zu konnen,
und eines aus edleren Gliedern, jedenfalls aus angeseheneren und
angenehmeren Personen bestehenden Kreises ; in diesem wurde ihm
Verehrung, Unterwerfung, ja Anbetung entgegengebracht ; dort
sollte er ein unus ex multis sein, und unter welchen ! Da sollte er
neben einem Handschuhmacher, Kupferschmid, Lackfabrikanten,
Victualienhandler u. s. w. sitzen und sich mit diesen, zuweilen von
diesen ausschelten lassen ; denn auf Standesverschiedenheit legt
Ebel einem besonderen Werth ; in spateren Jahren horte ich selbst
mit Mehreren von ihm sagen : Christus habe es schlimmer als er
gehabt, der habe mit ungebildeten Leuten der untersten Volks-
klasse umgehen miissen, er aber habe Grafen, Grafinnen u. s. w. urn
sich. Auf solche Weise und aus solemn Griinden hauften sich denn
immer die Eeibungsmomente, bis endlich im Jahre 1819 Ebel sich
von Schonherr vollig trennte, die beiden Vornehmen jenes Kreises,
•den Grafen von Kanitz und das Fraulein von Derschau mit sich
nehmend, wie sie immer ganz besonders seiner Person angeschlossen
waren.
Nun fing Ebel an gegen Schonherr zu predigen (seine person-
lichen Angelegenheiten, die er fiir identisch mit denen Gottes hielt,
wurden alle Zeit von der Kanzel her wie in den hauslichen Zusam-
menkiinften verhandelt, mit dem Unterschiede nur, dass in der
Kirche die sogenannten draussen Stehenden nicht recht . merken
konnten, worauf es gehe, wer geziichtigt, wer gegeisselt ward.)
Nichts war gegen seine Lehre, diese wurde vielmehr durchaus
VOL. IL X
306 DARSTELLUNG DER
festgehalten und immer mehr nach ihrer ganzen abenteuerlichen
Grundlage ausgebildet — aber gegen seinen Bart (er trug einen
sehr langen und in der That schonen,) gegen seinen Rock (der
einen eigenen Schnitt, eine eigene Zusaramenfiigung hatte, wie
dies Schonherr als seiner geistigen Wiirde fiir angemessen und
nothwendig erforscht hatte,) gegen die Sonderbarkeiten seiner
'ausseren Erscheinung iiberhaupt, aber auch gegen seine Herrsch-
sucht, Undnldsamkeit, Heftigkeit u. s. w. Das Reich war nun
jedenfalls getheilt, die Parteien standen sich feindlich gegenuber,
Gemeinsames hatten sie nur am Lehrsystem ; wo aber die Kraft
und die Moglichkeit eines ausseren Gelingens gesetzt war, konnte
nicht gezweifelt werden. Dazu kommt noch, dass Schonherr ein
viel zu gradsinniger, aufrichtiger und im ganzen zu nobler Mann
war, urn sich irgend unedler Mittel fiir seine Zwecke zu bedienen ;
allmahlig fiel Alles von ihm ab, bis auf ihn selber ; denn er
beharrte bei sich bis an's Ende, ja im Todesmomente versicherte er
fest : ihn konne der leibliche so wenig als der geistige Tod treffen,
er sei ja der Mensch gewordene Paraklet, er werde nur umkleidet,
nicht entkleidet.
Ebel aber richtete sein Reich nun mit vieler Klugheit ein;
zuvorderst bemerkte er sehr richtig, dass, urn Zwist und Zer-
wurfniss zu vermeiden, Nichts von vorneherein wirksamer sein
konne, als keinen Widerspruch aufkommen zu lassen. Und dies
war anfanglich um so leichter zu erreichen, da der Kreis ausser
den Damen, die zu keinem Widerspruch, sondern nur zur innigsten
Anhanglichkeit fiir Ebel gestimmt waren, nur aus Kanitz bestand,
wenn man namlich von den naher Unterrichteten der eigentlichen
Verhaltnisse sprechen soil. Kanitz ist aber seiner ganzen Natur
nach zu Nichts so sehr geeignet, als zu einem Anhanger, da man
nicht weniger selbststandig sein kann, als er es eben ist. Ueber-
dies war Anfangs Alles voller Lieblichkeit und Freundlichkeit,
und wo einmal die Lehre als Unantastbares, Unzweifelhaftes fest-
stand, zu einem Widerspruche nicht leicht eine Veranlassung. Es
musste nun aber festgestellt werden, wer denn die Person des Ebel
sei, d. h., welche Stelle er im Geisterreiche, im Universum, also
nothwendig zunachst im Reiche Gottes einnehme. Dass es eine der
hochsten sein mlisse, verstand sich von selbst und aus der ganzen
Lehre ; Ebel selbst sagte : wie sollte ich denn wissen, wie die Welt
geschaffen ist, wenn ich nicht dabei gegenwartig gewesen ware ?
Da er nun jenes wusste, so konnte es auch an diesem nicht
PIETISTISCHEN TTMTRIEBE IN KONIGSBERG. 307
gefehlt haben. Es lag nahe, dass er eine Person aus der Trinitat
sein miisste ; der Vater aber konnte er nicht sein ; denn der bleibt
ewig in sich selbst verborgen, er ist ja ubrigens auch das erste
Urwesen (Feuer,) das in kerne Unibildung seiner selbst eingehen
konne ; einen Paraklet gab es schon, wenn man auch einraumen
musste, dass er sich seiner Wiirde und seiner Bestimmung un-
wiirdig, wenigstens dermalen erwiesen habe, aber er kann ja wohl
noch nmkehren, und man miisse, dass dies geschehe, fur ihn beten.
(Man hat allerdings, uberdenkt man dergleichen mit Euhe und im
Zusammenhange, Ursache, liber das Mass der Yerirrung und der
geistigen Vermessenheit zusammenzuschaudern ; denn wahrend die
Glaubigen der christlichen Kirche flehen, dass der heilige Geist
sie vertrete und fur sie beim Vater beten moge, wurde hier von
schwachen, siindhaften, an Haupt und Gliedern kranken Menschen
gebetet — fur den heiligen Geist selbst ! Und dabei und darin
eben erschienen sie sich barmherzig, versohnlich und liebend !)
Es konnte also die Person Ebel's keine andere sein als die Christi.
Herausgefunden hatte dies zuerst das Fraulein von Derschau
(nachher Grafin von Kanitz); mit freudiger Zustimmung als un-
mittelbar evident wurde es aufgenommen von der Frau Grafin von
der Groben; von Kanitz war kein Widerspruch zu erwarten. Nackt
und unumwunden wurde dies indess nicht Allen ausgesprochen, es
hiess nur: Ebel sei der Reprasentant des Heiligen und Reinen
im Universum, er sei der vollkommene Mensch, und zwar
sei dies seine neue Natur. In diesen verhiillenden Ausdriicken
jedoch liegt nicht nur jene Bestimmung, dass Ebel niimlich der zu
unserer Zeit erschienene Christus sei, sondern noch mehr einge-
schaltet, dass er der hoher ausgebildete, vollendete Christus sei !
Hiermit aber verhalt es sich der Lehre nach so : der zuerst er-
schienene Christus sei nur zum Theil Mensch geworden, seiner
Geburt nach niimlich aus der Maria, aber von keinem Menschen
gezeugt; da aber der Gottessohn auch vollkommener Menschensohn
werden muss, so muss ein Christus von einem Menschenpaare
gezeugt werden ; dieser Gezeugte aber muss, was durch die
menschliche Zeugung ihm Sundhaftes an- und eingeboren ist, von
sich abstreifen, und hiezu bedarf es der Hilfe, des Beistandes und
der Kraft aus dem zwar nicht vollkommenen, aber gekreuzigten
und versohnenden Christus. Hat nun der neue Christus es dahin
gebracht, diese seine neue Natur anzuziehen, so ist er der reine
und heilige und vollkommene Mensch. Er darf aber ja nicht
308 DARSTELLUNG DER
wieder von Anfechtungen aus der alten Natur sich bestricken
lassen. Und hieriiber wachten in der That mit der aussersten
Sorgfalt die beiden genannten Damen iiber Ebel. Dieser namlich
beliauptete immer, seine alte Natur bestande in der Unsicherheit
des Geraiitlis, Unterwiirfigkeit u. s. w. Daher durfte er dann,
wenn er seine neue Natur behaupten sollte, sich nur als fest,
bestimmt und als Herr zeigen. Und in Wahrheit, er gewann
hierin eine grosse Fertigkeit ! Was er nun auf diese Weise that,
das war eben, weil es in dieser Weise geschah, also aus der neuen
Natur, rein und selig. Noch eine andere Frage dariiber zu thun,
einen anderen Priifstein zu gebrauchen, war schlechthin un-
statthaft, weil es ein innerer Widerspruch gewesen ware ; wo
sollte denn ein Kriterium iiber das Heilige and Reine hieraus
hergenommen werden ?
Eine andere Frage aber ist die, was denn nun die Aufgabe
dieses Reinen und Heiligen in der That sei, was er thun, wodurch
er seine gottliche Natur vollziehen, diese selbst bewahren solle.
Aber dies ist vielmehr gar keine Frage : was konnte der Reine
und Heilige Anderes thun, als reinigen und heiligen? und was
konnte seine Sendung sonst bewahren als Reinigung und Heiligung?
Und ebenso wenig kann es, wenn man nur die Grundlage des
Lehrsystems, das ja die Erkenntniss der Wahrheit selbst ist, kennt,
zweifelhaft bleiben, welches das nachste Thun, das wichtlgste
Geschaft dieser Person sein miisse. Alles Uebel ist ja in die
Welt gekommen lediglich dadurch, dass der Teufel das zweite
(weibliche) Urwesen, Finsterniss, Wasser, verfiihrt, von den Ein-
fliissen des ersten Urwesens abgewendet hat; (denn woher der
Teufel selbst gekommen, was ihn verfiihrte, danach fragt kein
Mensch, oder es wird ihm geantwortet : der Hochmuth ; aus sich
.selbst musste geantwortet werden, wenn geantwortet werden sollte ;
aber man bedenke, was darin liegt : aus sich selbst !) Alles Uebel
also durch die Verfiihrung des weiblichen durch einen teuflischen
Einfluss des mannlichen, alle Rettung also durch Reinigung und
Heiligung cles Weiblichen, durch einen gottlichen mannlichen
Einfluss. Hiernach nun verstand sich eben nach-dem Lehrsysteme
Vieles, was die Ausfiihrung anlangt, von selbst. Zuvorderst konnte
es nicht die Meinung sein, dass Ebel als die bestimmte Person des
Heiligen und Reinen alle Frauenzimmer selbst heiligen und rei-
nigen kann, sondern nur die weiblichen Hauptnaturen ; diese aber
THraren nicht fern zu suchen ; es waren natlirlich diejenigen, die
PIETISTISCHEN UMTRIEBE IN KONIGSBERG. 309
sich zu ihm gefunden und im Lanfe der Zeit sicli nm ihn versamaomli
hatten. Drei hervorragende weibliche Wesen, die eben als solche
betrachtet wurden, welche schlcchthin zu Ebel gehorten, waren
aber in dieser Hinsicht besonders zu beriicksichtigen, da sie als
Hauptnaturen die Wirkung weiter tragen sollten; es waren dies
die Frau v. d. Groben, seine Frau als Lichtnatur; Fraulein Emilie
von Schrotter, seine Frau als Finsternissnatur ; und seine ange-
traute Frau, welche die Umfassung (ein Ausdruck, der viel bedeuten,
und oft ans der tiefsten Noth der Begriffslosigkeit helfen musste)
sein sollte. Ausserdem wurden nun noch viele andere weibliche
Wesen, insofern sie der bestimmten Heiligung und Reinigung
bedurften, nicht abgewiesen, auch dazu angehalten, wie eben die
verstorbene Griifin von Kanitz (friiher Friiulein v. Derschau),
Maria Consentius und nicht wenige Andere. Sodann war es auch
einleuchtend, wie diese Acte der Heiligung und Reinigung zu
vollbringen seien: es musste auf urwesentliche Weise, aber von dem
Reinen und Heiligen und an einer nach der Reinigung und Hei-
ligung Verlangenden geschehen. Die urwesentliche Weise aber
ist die geschlechtliche, das Reinigende ist das freie und klare
Bewusstsein. Die Acte mussten also geschlechtliche Beziehung
haben, und es musste dabei geredet werden ; denn das ist Bewusst-
sein. Das Geschlechtliche aber darf nicht bis zur Zeugung ge-
trieben werden ; denn nicht diese zunachst, sondern die Uebung im
Urwesentliehen auf reine und reinigende Weise war die Absicht. Also
nur bis zur Zeugung bin. — Sodann begriff es sich auch, dass diese
Acte nur mit denjenigen Damen vorgenommen werden konnten,
die nicht bloss erst unterichtet und eingeweiht waren, sondern sie
mussten auch ihre Siinden und namentlich in Beziehung auf ge-
schlechtliche Neigungen, Versuchungen u. s. w. bekannt, und auf
alle Weise sich als untergeben, willig und abhangig bewiesen haben.
Endlich aber war es auch einsichtlich, dass die Acte nicht mit
weiblichen Personen vorgenommen werden konnten und durften,
die eben in weiblicher, d. h. in geschlechtlicher Beziehung keiner
Zurechtstellung bedurften, weil sie eben in geschlechtlicher Riick-
sicht nicht mehr Frauen waren, also weder mit alten noch mit alt-
lichen. Mit solchen wurde dergleichen nicht nur nicht gethan,
sondern dariiber gegen sie vollkommenes Geheimniss beobachtet,
weil sie es nicht wiirden verstehen konnen.
Bei der Aufgabe, die ich mir hier gestellt babe, eine sehr ver-
wickelte und verworrene Sache in ihren psychologischen Momenten
310 D ARSTELLUNG DER
nachzuweisen, war der eben erb'rterte Pnnct derjenige, den in's
Wort zu fassen mich die grosste Ueberwindung gekostet hat ; denn
ekelhaft und widerwartig in der Erscheinung, grauelhaft dem
Wesen nach, aller Vernunft und unverzerrtem naturlichem Gefuhl
emporend, ist dieser Vorgang dennoch, was die Frauen anlangt,
nicht nnr nicht aus siindlichem fleischlichem Geliiste, ja nicht nur
aus guter und frommer Absicht hervorgegaugen, sondern (und dies
ist meine innerste, auf genaue Kenntniss der Personen gegriindete
Ueberzeugung) eine Verirrung, in die unedle weibliche Gemiither
gar nicht gerathen konnen, sondern eben nur edle, hochbegabte
und zur grossten Selbstverleugnung durch tiefe Religiositat fahig
gewordene. Ware von Abwiigung der Schuld die Rede, konnte
hiervon unter Menschen iiberall die Rede sein, so miisste das
Nichtschuldig iiber die Frauen ganz unbedenklich ausgesprochen
werden ; denn zur grobsten Versiindigung haben nicht nur die
feinsten Faden, sondern die edelsten Regungen hingefiihrt, und
Alles ist im Gefuhl der Selbstverleugnung urn der Wahrheit, um
Gottes willen geschehen. Und in der That konnte dem Richter,
der ein Urtheil aussprechen und deshalb auch die Verhaltnisse
innerlich erkennen muss, nichts Storenderes, nichts sein Urtheil
Triibenderes begegnen, als wenn ihm ein Gefuhl von Missachtung
gegen die in Rede stehenden Frauen erwachsen sollte ; nothwendig
wiirde ihm hiermit sogleich der richtige Einblick in das wahre
Verhaltniss desjenigen, was das Thun und was das Leiden, das
Wollen und das Handeln gewesen ist, sich schliessen, oder we-
nigstens verwirren und unsicher werden miissen. Ich kann aber
rait der freien Aussprache dieser meiner Ueberzeugung nicht so
verstanden, oder vielmehr so vollig missverstanden werden, als ge-
•dachte ich damit eine Vertheidigung in objectiver Hinsicht in
Beziehung der Frauen zu iibernehmen, oder die Schadlichkeit und
Verderblichkeit eines solchen Verhaltnisses irgend wie verkleinern
zu wollen. Niemand kann mehr iiberzeugt sein, wie entartend und
entartet dieses sei, an welchen Abgrund jene Frauen in der That
gefiihrt seien. Das aber sage ich, und von dessen Wahrheit durch-
dringend iiberzeugt, dass in subjectiver Beziehung die Frauen
schuldlos sind, dass sie in ihrem Wollen und Bestreben zu den
edlen und verehrlichsten ihres Geschlechts gehoren. Hinzufiigen
aber muss ich auch und mit der gleichen Festigkeit der auf die
speciellste Personenkenntniss begriindeten Ueberzeugung, dass es
«in grosses Gliick sei, ja, dass Gott sehr zu danken sei, dass es
PIETISTISCHEN UMTRIEBE IN KONIGSBERG. 311
nicht zu grosseren Graueln, nicht zu den schrecklichsten Hand-
lungen gekommen ist.
Denn es imterliegt, kennt man eben die Personen in ihrer
ganzen, waliren Eigenthiimlichkeit, nicht dem mindesten Zweifel,
dass diese Damen (namentlich aber die Frau Grafin von der Groben,
die edelste Natur von Allen) jede Handlung, und ancli die Schauder
erregendsten zu vollziehen geneigt sein wiirden, wenn Ebel sie ihnen
ernstlich gebote ; ja, sie wiirden es mit Freuden thun, nnd jede
innere Regung dagegen als Siinde, als Versuchung des Teufels
betrachten und besiegen. Was Ebel ihnen zu verschweigen auf-
giebt, wird keine Inquisition und keine Tortur ihnen iiber die
Lippen bringen. Ich verkenne nicht das hohe Maass des Fana-
tismus, der in diesen Personen ausgebildet ist, ich verkenne nicht
seine Schauder erregende, Alles zertrummernde Kraft, ich aner-
kenne aber die urspriinglich edlen Motive und beklage aus tiefstem
Herzen, dass edle Hingebung so sehr ihren wahren, wurdigenden
und adelnden Gegenstand verfehlt hat.
Nach dieser Zwischenbemerkung, die ich fur nothwendig hielt,
und von der ich wiinschen muss, dass sie den Richter innerlich
nicht unberiihrt lassen mochte, kann ich, zufrieden, das Wider-
strebendste des Ganzen abgethan zu haben, in meiner Darstellung
fortfahren. Wenn nun das Nachste und Wichtigste des heiligen
und reinen Ebel (man uberwinde mit mir den Widerwillen gegen
diese Identifizirung ; denn sie ist, eben wenn die Darstellung so
billig und richtig als moglich vom Standpunkte jener gegebenen
Grundverirrung ausgemacht werden soil, nothwendig) auf die Frauen
und die Reinigung der Frauen als zweiten Urwesens, in das eben
die Siinde eingedrungen, gerichtet ist, wenn dieses nur nach er-
theilter Belehrung u. s. w. durch die bestimmten, stufenweise fort-
schreitenden geschlechtlichen Acte bis zur Zeugung hin geschehen
kann, so entsteht die Frage : was hat er denn mit den Mannern
zu thun? An sie — das ist die einfache Antwort — hat er die
Lehre zu bringen, sie zu ermahnen, sie inne werden zu lassen, dass
sie aus dem zweiten verfuhrten Urwesen geboren sind und somit
die Siinde substantiell in sich tragen, sie zu schelten, heftig zu
schelten, aber auch ihnen zu schmeicheln, sie zu ermuntern, und
sie zu vestigiren, wenn sie zu Etwas zu gebrauchen sind, und da
dies Letztere niemals im Voraus zu bestimmen ist, so nur einst-
weilen zu fixiren. Das am Besten Berechnete aber hierbei war,
dass er selbst in der That mit Mannern sich am Wenigsten zu thun
312 DAESTELLUNG DER
machte, sondern sie an die Frauen wies, sie diesen zur Leitung
iibergab. Diese wurden zuvorderst als die Gefbrderten betrachtet,
und da hiess es denn : hie gilt es nicht Mann noch Frau, sondern
nur christliche Erfahrung nnd tiefe Erkenntniss ; wer hierin weiter
ist, der kann dem Andern rathen, ihn weisen und leiten, und es ist
dessen Pflicht, wenn es ihm lira wahres Christenthum zu thun ist,
sich jenem unterzuordnen, sei es Mann oder Frau. Yon dem Ge-
bote und Verbote : „taceat mulier in ecclesia" konnte hier schon
deshalb nicht die Eede sein, weil nicht bios ohne Frauen hier keine
Kirche gewesen ware, sondern in Wahrheit diese Kirche nur von
Frauen geleitet wurde, da genau genommen, Ebel selbst das, was
er geworden, nur durch Hingebung und Bestimmung der Frauen
geworden ist, freilich in ganz anderer Art und Weise als bei den
iibrigen. Von der Praxis, die nach und nach in diesem Kreise
ausgebildet und methodisch strenge gehandhabt worden ist, wird
spater zusammenhangend gesprochen werden ; hier kommt est nur
darauf an, nachzuweisen, was aus der Weisung der Manner an die
Frauen und durch die Unterordnung jener unter diese (wovon nur
selten und nur fur einzelne Momente Ausnahme gemacht wurde)
entstanden und fur Ebel und seine Zwecke gewonnen wurde. Zu-
nachst namlich war wohl hierdurch am Besten gesorgt, fur die
Einiibung der hochsten Verehrung und des tiefsten Gehorsams fur
die Person EbePs ; sodann aber war eben das, was an einer solchen
Stellung der Manner zu den Frauen als Verkehrung erscheinen
kann und es in der That auch ist, die wahre Zurechtstellung fur
jenen Kreis. Wenn Manner von Frauen liber die unentweichlichsten
Probleme der Philosophic belehrt werden sollten, so verstand e&
sich gleich von selbst, dass die Manner Alles, was sie sonst durch
Gelehrsamkeit, Forschung, eignes Studium wussten und hatten, bei
Seite liegen lassen mussten ; dies sind nicht Waffen, die Frauen re-
spectiren konnen, besonders nicht lehrende Frauen; all dergleichen
vielmehr musste vorweg als eitle Weisheit der verfinsterten Welt,,
als gelehrter Plunder weggeschoben sein und bleiben. Hiermit
war denn sogleich Alles aus den Handen gewunden, wodurch die
Abenteuerlichkeit der zu lehrenden Lehre hatte von vorn herein
zertrummert werden konnen. Sodann wurde jene Art des Unter-
ordnungsverhaltnisses fur nothig gefunden, weil es das Geeignetste
ist zur Demiithigung, diese aber selbst das Nothigste sei. Dass
die Frauen dadurch hochmiithig gemacht wurden, war kein Ein-
wand, da sie schon demuthig waren. Ferner wenn Manner Frauen
PIETISTISCHEN UMTRIEBE IN KONIGSBERG. 313"
Siindenbekenntnisse in den nacktesten, scharfsten Ausdriicken ab-
legen sollten, wenn dies wie natiirlich vorziiglich iiber die Grund-
verderbniss, die geschlechtliche geschehen musste, so stellte sich
dadurch sogleich ein Verhaltniss ein, das das unnatiirlichste an
sich und die Scham auf alle Weise zerstorend hier zum natiirlichen
wurde, das eben, weil es aller Natur widersprach, eben als die neue
Natur begriindend angesehen, gelobt und auf alle Weise gefordert
wurde. Je liberstromender man in dieser Hinsiclit war, je empo-
renderer Ausdriicke man sich bediente, desto hoher wurde man
gestellt, desto mehr als im wahren Ernst der Heilung stehend
wurde man betrachtet. Schien das Bekannte nicht wiclitig, d. h.
nicht arg genug, so erregte das Unzufriedenheit und wurde ein
Festhalten am Argen, ein Unterhandeln mit dem Teufel, Lauheit,.
arger als kalt und warm genannt, und nun begann das heftigste und
andringendste Pressen auf andere und gescharftere Bekenntnisse.
Kamen solche hervor, so wurde Gott gepriesen, der das Herz eines
Verstockten erweicht hatte. Wollte man daher Ruhe, um nicht zu
sagen Ruhm erlangen, so blieb nichts Anderes iibrig, als allenfalls
die Phantasie zu Hilfe zu nehmen und erdichtete Siinden als
wirkliche zu bekennen, ja, es wurden von den Damen sogar Siinden
proponirt, die man begangen haben mbchte, und die nun als be-
gangen zu beichten waren. — Wenigstens iet es mir — das darf ich
bei Gott dem Allerheiligsten versichern — so ergangen ; ich habe
Siinden mundlich und schriftlich bekannt, die ich nie begangen, die
mir zu bekennen von den Grafinnen v. d. Groben und von Kanitz auf-
gegeben wurde, zu denen sie mir die Ausdriicke, in denen sie bekannt
werden miissten, theils genannt, theils, wenn ich sie nicht scharf
genug getroffen hatte, corrigirt und emendirt haben. Unter welchen
Umstanden dies geschehen sei, wird weiter unten naher angegeben
werden. Welch ein Verhaltniss der Abhangigkeit hiedurch aber
gekniipft, ja wie sklavisch gebunden man dadurch werden, welche
Herrschaft der Herrschenden hierdurch begriindet werden musste^
das bedarf wohl gar keiner Erwahnung. Zwei andere Momente
miissen aber hiemit noch in Verbindung gebracht werden. Einmal
namlich konnte es nicht ausbleiben, dass bei einer solchen Stellung
der Frauen, bei den Lehren des Systems iiber die geschlechtlichen
Verhaltnisse und bei der Methode, diese in der Liebe zu reinigen
und zu heiligen, bei der volligen Niedergerissenheit aller gewohn-
lichen Schranken der Sitte und in Wahrheit audi der Sittlichkeit,
bei der Freiheit, die die Damen nicht bios gestatteten und gewahrten,
314 DARSTELLUNG DEE,
sohdern zum Theil sogar anboten und lehrten, bei alle dem, was
man Unverzwangtheit, Wesenheit und zur Freiheit der Kinder
Gottes gehorig nannte — bei alle dem, sage ich, konnte es nicht
ausbleiben, dass in Zeiten, in welchen man nicht gequalt wurde,
man nicht von innerem Ekel und Verdruss (die man aber innerlichst
verschlossen halten musste) gequalt war, nicht Regungen und
Aeusserungen sinnlicher Begierde sich einstellen sollten, denen
zwar die ehrendsten Namen beigelegt wurden, die dadurch aber
nicht aufhorten zu sein, was sie eben sind. Schon das unauf horliche
starke Kiissen und Umarmen, das gang und gebe war, die ungenirte
Art der korperlichen Annaherung auch da, wo von geschlechtlichen
Uebimgen zur Heiligung keine Rede war, sondern zu der gewohn-
lichen Art des Zusammenseins gehorte (denn in Gegenwart irgend
eines Fremden, draussen Stehenden trat das formlichste und zier-
lichste Ceremoniell ein), schon dies konnte nicht verfehlen, jene
Wirkung sinnlicher Erregung auszuiiben, zumal viele der Frauen
mit vielen Reizen des Aeusseren wie des Geistes ausgestattet waren.
Wer etwa sagen wollte, es sei ihm hierin anders ergangen, von dem
scheint es mir, dass er sich beliige oder wenigstens tausche. Ich
glaube nicht, dass es irgend Jemanden gebe, der die gewohnlichen
sittigen und sittlichen Schranken als fiir sich iiberniissig erachten
diirfte. Das andere Moment aber ist dies; dadurch, dass die
Manner den Frauen iiberwiesen waren zur Leitung und Belehrung,
hatte Ebel fiir seine Person den Vortheil, ganz in der Entfernung
bleiben zu konnen, von jedem Conflicte frei zu bleiben und
scheinbar eben nur geschehen zu lassen. Genaueste Kunde
musste ihm ja doch iiber Alles gegeben werden, nur blieb es ihm
bei der Verhandlungsweise ganz frei gelassen, ob und wie viel
directen Antheil er an einer Verhandlung nehmen wollte. Geschah
es z. B., dass sich einmal die Verhaltnisse der personlichen
Verhandlung ungiinstig verwickeln wollten, drohte etwa ein Ver-
lust, so trat er mit liberschuttender Freundlichkeit und Lieb-
kosung ein, alle Verwickelung wegschiebend, den ganzen Gegen-
stand fallen lassend, und Alles in lauter Lieblichkeit und Ruhrung
auflosend. Schien es dagegen ein anderes Mai, dass ein verstarkter
und stiirkster Angriff nothwendig sei, dann shritt er zornvoll, heftig,
auf 's Aeussertse erregt, mit Hollenstrafen und Verdammung urn
sich schleudernd ein. Mit eineni Worte, er hatte durch diese
Anordnung am Besten fiir das gesorgt, was seine bewundernswiirdig
ausgebildete Taktik ist, — das personliche Reserviren. Geschehen
PIETISTISCHEN UMTBIEBE IN KONIGSBERG. 315
musste ja doch immer, was er wollte, und wie er wollte. Noch
andere Vortheile geringerer, doch nicht zu verschmiihender Art
erwuclisen ihm aus dieser Stellung. Um die Verbindung mit
Mannern, namentlicli mit gelehrten oder iiberall ausgebildeten und
unterrichteten war es ihm eigentlich sehr zu thun ; theils sollte
dadurch sein Euf als wenig unterrichteter, hohlschwarmender
Mann widerlegt werden, theils sollte durch sie seine Lehre mit
Gelehrsamkeit und gutem Ansehen wohl aptirt, nach aussen ge-
tragen werden nnd verbreitet. Hatten ihm nur die Damen solche
Leute gut zugerichtet, d. h. so, dass sie geneigt schienen, den
Inhalt ihres Wissens anfzugeben, die Form aber beizubehalten fiir
einen anderen Inhalt, eben die Schonherr - Ebel'sche Lehre, so
waren sie hochst branchbar. Ebel selbst wollte daher nicht
gern gegen Gelehrsamkeit ankampfen, er wollte sie vielmehr
in Dienst nehmen, aber die Diener mussten ihm fertig geliefert
werden. Ja, einige Kleinigkeiten nahm er gleich nnd mit
Herablassung an. Er hat Mehreres drucken lassen, Predigten
u. s. w. ; bei mehren befinden sich Beilagen, Excurse, z. B. ex-
egetische Bemerkungen iiber Stellen des alten und neuen Testa-
ments ; er versteht aber schlechthin Nichts vom Griechischen, und
Hebraisch kann er nicht lesen; er gestattet es Andern, diese
gelehrten Bemerkungen ausznarbeiten, versteht sich in seinem
JSinn, und sie wurden anf seinen Namen gedruckt. Ebenso ist es
mit Citaten aus Philosophen, neueren Schriftstellern, ja mit der
Sprache selbst, die druckfahig zu machen, immer nicht unwesent-
licher Verbesserungen bedurfte. Diese wurden aber meistens von
den Damen, namentlicli von der Grafin von der Groben, die ein
nicht geringes Talent znr sprachlichen Darstellung besitzt, besorgt.
Treten nun aus diesen Verhaltnissen, Ansichten und Verfah-
rungsweisen genug Elemente hervor und zusammen, die das
Bedenkliche und Verderbliche des Ganzen hinreichend erkennbar
machen, so wurde Alles noch mehr verschlimmert durch die ver-
kehrteste Ansicht einer an sich vielleicht rein biblischen Lehre,
der vom Teufel. Es ist nicht meine Aufgabe, iiber diese Lehre
ein Urtheil auszusprechen ; mir selbst scheint sie in den Worten
der Bibel enthalten zu sein, ich weiss aber auch, dass es sehr
fromme christliche Gottesgelehrte, Bibelglaubige Theologen gegeben
hat. die die Lehre vom Teufel nicht nur nicht mit der Vernunft,
sondern auch nicht mit der heiligen Schrift und der Liebe Gottes
zu vereinigen gewusst und daher lieber den Teufel, als Vernunft,
316 D AKSTELLUNG DER
Schrift und die innige Ueberzeugung von der Liebe Gottes auf-
gegeben haben. Doch wie es sich damit verhalten mag, so viel
scheint jedenfalls gewiss, dass es immer ein bedenkliches Zeichen
ist, wenn ein Geistlicher fort und fort den Teufel citirt, mehr von,
ihm als von Christo spricht. Giebt es einen Teufel nocli jetzt,
und ist er immer noch, auch nach der Ersclieinung Christi und der
weiten Verbreitung dss Christenthums so sehr machtig, so werden
Menschen ihn wohl nicht iiberwinden, und jedenfalls ist's zweifel-
haft, ob die strengen Yertreter der Existenz des Teufels die in**
nigsten Verehrer und Diener Christi sind. Doch auch dies kann
hier ganz dahin gestellt sein ; denn Ebel und diejenigen, die ihm
folgen, machen von dieser Lehre eine Anwendung eigener Art^
Zwei Eigenschaften des Teufels seien es, die ganz besonders auf-
gefasst und beriicksichtigt werden miissten : dass er listig und der
Lugner Ton Haus aus ist. Durch List verfiihrte er das zweite-
Urwesen, durch sie und durch seine Liigen beriickt er noch immer
fort die Menschen und halt sie in der Finsterniss. Seid listig
wie die Schlangen, war Ebel's Wahlspruch und sein Losungswort ;.
denn von dem erkliirenden Zusatze : „ und ohne Falsch wie die
Tauben," davon dnrfte bei ihm, da es sich von selbst verstandr.
nicht die Eede sein. Zu belehren und zu bessern ist der Teufel
nicht, uberlisten muss man ihn ! Ihm Wahrheit entgegenstellen.
ist thorichte Einfalt, er kennt ja eigentlich die Wahrheit, aber will
sie nicht ; man muss ihn hintergehen und belugen und eben,
dadurch Gott dienen. Wiirde Jemand, der es leibhaft mit dem:
Teufel zu thun hatte, sich solcher Waffen und Vertheidigungs-
mittel bedienen, so konnte das immer geschehen und der Erfolg
abgewartet werden. Wird diese Taktik aber so gebraucht, dass-
man den Zwischensatz als Axiom eingeschoben hat : die Menschen,.
so lange sie noch nicht die Evkenntniss der Wahrheit haben, d. h..
so lange sie noch nicht die Lehre, die in diesem Kreise mit jenem
Namen belegt worden ist, angenommen haben, stehen nicht bios
in der Anfechtung vom Teufel, sondern in seiner Macht; man muss
also, eben um sie zu retten und aus ihnen Kinder Gottes zu
machen, den Teufel in ihnen bekampfen, gegen welchen sie selbst
ganz ohnmachtig sind, ihn entweder gar nicht kennend, oder ihn.
wohl gar verleugnend; so muss man eben sie selbst mit den
Waffen gegen den Teufel behandeln, bis sie die Erkenntniss der
Wahrheit gewonnen, d. h. angenommen und dadurch zum selbstiin-
digen Kampfe gegen den Feind ausgeriistet und zum gewissen.
PIETISTISCHEN UMTBIEBE IN KONIGSBERG. 317
Siege tiichtig gemacht sind. Es ist also ein ganz einfaches
Dilemma gestellt : entweder die Wahrheit, d. h. jene Erkenntniss
mit ihren Geheimnissen, ihren Aufschltissen, ihren Waffen wird
^ngenommen ; oder diese Wahrheit mit ihren Attributen und
Eigenschaften sind die Menschen, wie sie nun eben sind, und ohne
Tiele Yorbereitung anzunehmen, ja zu ertragen nicht fiihig ; so
lange aber dies nicht ist, stehen sie unwiderruflich, nothwendig und
"vvehrlos unter der Herrschaft des Teufels. Es bleibt demnach
oSTiclits iibrig als das Zweite zu jenem Dilemma : man muss den
Teufel in ihnen bekampfen, und zwar, so wie es ihm gebiihrt.
Wahrheit braucht er nicht, denn er kennt, aber will sie nicht, ja er
missbraucht sie, wenn er nur irgend kann ; iiberlisten muss man
ihn und so ihn mit sich selber schlagen ; ein Liigner ist er : wohl,
er muss iiberboten und getauscht werden. — Die Wahrheit
ist Gottes, die Luge ist des Teufels, Jedem also das Seinige;
■den Teufel mit Wahrheit angehen und bedienen, heisst Gott
verachten, und ihm seinen Theil, das ihm gebiihrende versagen,
-w'ahrend den Teufel iiberlisten und beliigen, Gott dienen und ihm
-das Seinige darbringen heisst. Es mus bei diesem Allen unvergessen
foleiben, dass diese Taktik eben gegen die Menschen, gegen alle
Menschen, die nicht die Erkenntniss der Wahrheit haben, auzuneh-
men sei. Welch ein Abgrund eroffnete sich hier ! Und doch
iiberredet man sich, so in der Wahrheit zu stehen, in der Liebe zu
handeln, und das Wohlgefallen Gottes sich sicher zu erwerben.
Was mm Ebel anlangt, so ist seine Stellung diese : er ist der
vollkommene Mensch, der Heilige und Reine, er hat die Wahrheit
,zum vollkommenen Theil, er ist sie. Ihm zur Seite stehen immer
einige Auserwahlte, sie haben die Erkenntniss der Wahrheit von
ihm erhalten, sie sind von ihm geheiligt worden, sie erfiillen ihre
Bestimmung, nicht nur Berufene, sondern Auserwahlte, derenjanur
wenige sind, zu sein ; ihre Namen werden einst glanzen, und ihrer ist
die Herrlichkeit. Ihm (Ebel) gegeniiber steht die Welt; zunachst
die Natur, aber nur durch die Siinde der Menschen seufzende
Kreatur; sodann aber die Menschen selbst, aber geblendet oder
verfinstert, was eines ist, durch den Teufel, der sich ja auch als
Engel des Lichts kleiden und wenn moglich, die Auserwahlten
selbst zum Falle bringen konne. Nun behauptet er freilich gar
nicht, dass es nicht unter diesen vielen Menschen auch viele Be-
rufene, Edelbegabte und durch den Geist mannigfach Erregte und
Angezogene gebe, aber urn so unglucklicher sind sie ; denn eben sie
318 DARSTELLUNG DEE,
werden von dem Feinde um so leichter getauscht; er lasst ilinen
eine gewisse Frommigkeit, ein gewisses Christenthum, einen ge-
wissen Eifer — aber Alles nur ohne und jenseits der Erkenntniss
der Wahrhcit, und so ist derm doch Alles vergeblich und todt und
eine leichte Beute des Teufels. Darum hoffte er immer und die
Seinen mit ilim, es werde in einer Kiirze (iiber die aber schon viele
Zeit vergangen ist) sich ein besonders gottliches Wunderzeichen an
ilim ofFenbaren, damit die Besseren wenigstens, die ihrer Natur nach
Berufenen und noch nicht Verstockten inne werden, wer er sei, und
dass in ihm die Wabrheit selbst sei, dass auf ihn gesehen, ihm
nachgewandelt werden miisse. Merkwiirdig ist's, dass in diesem
Kreise immer das Jahr 1836 als das entscheidende, als der Ein-
brucb des Tausendjahrigen Reichs mit seinen Vorkampfen betrachtet
worden ist. Zu dieser Wahnvorstellung haben indess sowohl die
Bengel'schen und die Jung-Stilling'schen Berecbnungen die Grund-
lagen hergegeben, als jene Annahme auf einer Reihe von
Begegnissen Ebel's und auf ihren zeitlicben Intervallen berubte.
In dieser Voraussetzung der nahe bevorstebenden Veranderung
scbeint man in jenem Kreise die sonst sorgfaltig geiibte Vorschrift
vernachlassigt und zu einem dreisteren Verfahren bestimmt worden
zu sein, wodurch denn allerdings eine Entscheidung, wenn aucli
nicbt iiber das menscbliche Geschlecbt, sondern iiber das Wirken
und Thun einiger Menscben, eben jener selbst sicli einzuleiten
scbeint. Kann nun wohl gefragt werden, wie Ebel die ibm Ge-
geniiberstehenden, d. h. Alle, die nicbt die Seinen sind, bebandle ?
Als Kinder des Teufefs ! Hieraus folgt keinesweges, dass er sie sebr
anfabre, wild anlasse und ziicbtige ; bierzu vielmebr muss man ilim
sell on naher geriickt sein ; er bebandelt sie, wenn sie Nichts
absichtlicli gegen ihn unternebmen, mit grosser Freundlicbkeit,
Milde, lockend ; er sucbt den Teufel zu tauschen, damit dieser ja
nicht merken moge, was denn eigentlich geschehen soil. Kommt
man naher, so werden reine, lautere, evangelische Wabrbeiten mit
aller Milde vorgetragen und Jedem begegnet, wie es ihm lieb, an-
genehm und wohlthuend sein kann. Ist man weiter gekommen, so
wird auf Reinigung von den Siinden und auf Einsicht in die Tiefen
der Erkenntniss gedrungen. Nun werden Sundenbekenntnisse
abgenommen, anfanglich nachsichtig und ruhig, dann immer strenger,
fordernder; die Blicke triiben sich. Die Begegnung wird gemessner,
drohender ; kurz, es kommt nun zu alle dem, was bereits oben gesehil-
dcrt worden ist. Wendet Jemand auf diesem Wege den Rucken, so
PIETISTISCHEN UMTRIEBE IN KONIGSBERG. 319
ist er verloren; es wird iiber ihn geseufzt, die Achseln gezuckt, er
ist zuriickgewichen vom Ernst der Heiligung und zuriickgekehrt in
die Finsterniss der Welt nnd ihre Verderbniss, er ist untreu und dem
Teufel verfallen. Wer sonst aber neutral steht, der wird eben als im
Schatten des Todes sitzend betrachtet, jedoch nicht angefeindet ; denn
es ist ja des Feindes Schuld und der Untreue ; denn das wird zu-
versichtlich angenommen, dass, wenn Niemand aus dieser Schule
untreu geworden ware, das Licht scbon weit verbreitet und Viele
gerettet, d. b. nabe und feme Anhanger Ebel's geworden wiiren.
Aber diejenigen aucb, die eben nicht angefeindet werden, iiber die
man aucb im Herzen keinen Groll triigt, baben desbalb docb auf
schlichte, wahrbafte Behandlung keinen Anspruch ; sie konnen ja
die Wahrheit nicht ertragen und werden vom Vater der Luge, der
die Wahrheit nicht will, beherrscht; sie werden, in sofern man mit
ihnen in Beriihrimg kommt, mit, " Weisheit" behandelt, d. h. man
giebt ihnen, was ihnen zukommt, ihnen deutlich ist. Dies aber
ist alles Andere eher als die Wahrheit ; mit anderen Worten, man
behandelt sie nach dem Princip : " seid king wie die Schlangen," was
eben die Anwendung der List, Unwahrheit u. s. w. in sich enthalt.
Wer ihnen aber entgegen tritt, entgegen zu treten scheint, sei es,
wer es wolle oder worin er wolle, gegen den ist nicht mehr wie
gegen einen Bewusstlosen, im Dienste des Feindes Stehenden zu
verfahren, sondern wie gegen einen mit seinem Willeri dem Feincle
Ergebenen; an dem kann nichts Gutes mehr gefunden werden, so
wenig als am Feinde selbst; welches Arge man von ihm aussage,
er hat es verdient, und es war schon a priori, wenn es auch auf
kerner Thatsache beruht, mit keiner bewiesen werden kann; diese
kann vorausgesetzt und schlechthin behauptet werden; denn er
ist ein Feind Gottes schlechthin, und ihn, soweit es geht, zu ver-
tilgen, ist 'gerecht. Seine Ehre schonen? Ehre eines Feindes
Gottes? Ehre eines Teufels? Und nicht bios er selbst kann
nach solchen Grundsatzen behandelt werden, sondern auch in
Beziehung auf ihn ist alles zum Zweck seiner Vernichtung
Dienende gestattet in der Behandlung Anderer.
Ich schweige ganz von der emporenden Weise, wie von Ebel
und den Seinen gegen mich, den Grafen von Finkenstein und Prof.
Olshausen verfahren worden ist, welche Alle doch nichts Feindliches
gegen ihn untemommen hatten, sondern sich nur, weil sie Grund
genug clazu in sich gefunden zu haben gewiss geworden waren, von
ihm getrennt hatten. Man griff ihre Personen, ihre sittliche und
320 DARSTELLUNG DER
biirgerliche Ehre, ja, so weit es gelingen wollte, selbst ihre iiussere
Existenz schonungslos, listig und mit den Waffen der Liige an.
Hievon aber, wie gesagt, ganz zu schweigen, so bietet die dermalige
Verfahrungsweise Ebel's und der Seinen, da nun einmal eine Unter-
euchung eingeleitet und, wie es scheint, unausweichbar und, wie
sich dann bei uns von selbst versteht, mit strenger Gerechtigkeit
hindurch gefiihrt werden soil, die klare und voile Anschaunng
sowohl von dem Grundsatzlichen als von dem Praktiscben dieser
Leute dar, wo sie es mit Gegnern zu thun zu haben glauben.
Zuvorderst namlicb hatte es ilmen doch nicht entgehen sollen, was
•Jedem offen vorliegt, dass namlicb Niemand gegen sie als Anklager
aufgetreten sei, Niemand Feindscbaft gegen sie hege, Niemand
Verfolgung gegen sie ube. Diestel, den Grafen von Finkenstein
(ichhabe diesen Mann seit mebr als 10 Jabren nur einmal zufallig
und wenig gesprocben, stebe eben so lange in keinem Briefwechsel
mit ihm, acbte ihn aber wie seine Gemablin sehr boch) mit den
grobsten und schmabendsten Briefen verfolgend, wird endlich durch
den Rechtskonsulenten des Grafen zur Zuriicknahme der Beleidi-
gungen aufgefordert, wenn er sicb keinem Injurien-Processe aus-
setzen wolle; er versagt dieses, und die Klage mit den dazu
notbigen Belegen wird der juristiscben zustiindigen Landes-
behorde iibergeben. Diese findet in den Belegen Dinge, die in
bedenklicber Beziehung zur Kircben-Disciplin stehn, und halt es
fiir ihre Pflicbt, biervon dem Consistorio Anzeige zu machen ;
dieses findet diese Momente nocb bedenklicher, untersucht dieselben,
soweit es ihm zustand, und jedenfalls mit aller der Zartheit und
Beriicksichtigung, die nur eine geistliche Behorde dem geistlichen
Gegenstande zuzuwenden vermag ; das Consistorium bericbtet
dariiber der vorgesetzten hochsten Behorde, und die Untersuchung
wird nun von Staatswegen angeordnet. Es giebt hier also gar
keinen Anklager. Doch nimmt zuvorderst Graf von Kanitz
keinen Anstand, in einem offentlichen Blatte, der allgemeinen Kir-
chenzeitung, den sittlichen Ruf des Grafen von Finkenstein, seines
Schwagers, und der Grafin von Finkenstein, seiner Nichte und
zugleich Schwiigerin, als in der ganzen Provinz libel bekannt
darzustellen, dabei auch allerlei andere, wenn auch etwas verdeckter
ausgesprochene Anschwarzungen anderer Personen zu insinuiren.
Zugleich erhebt sich freiwillig eine grosse Zahl der achtungswer-
thesten, zum Theil ihrer iiusseren Stellung nach ausgezeichnetsten
Manner der Provinz, offentlich bezeugend, dass Graf von Finkenstein
PIETISTISCHEN UMTRIEBE IN KONIGSBERG. 321
and seine Gemalilin nur als edle, sittlich hoch gestellte Personen
bekannt seien. Es wird eine Injurienklage gegen Graf von Kanitz
der zustandigen Landesbehorde iibergeben — er aber, ein loyaler
Unterthan, ein Staatsdiener (Tribunalsrath) und cbristlicher Mann,
wiirdigt seine Obrigkeit keiner Verantwortung, er stellt sich ihr gar
nicht, weil sie Diestel gegen Graf von Finkenstein verurtheit hatte.
So weit lautet dasjenige, was offentlich bekannt geworden ist. Aber
weiter. Die hb'chsten Orts angeordnete Untersuchung durch den
Kriminalsenat beginnt, Ebel und die Seinigen leugnen Alles und bis
auf das Geringste lierab ; gegen alle Zeugen wird protestirt ; sie sind
Liigner, Verleumder, Siindenschlemmer, ja zum Meineide bereit,
jeder Siinde fahig, scliuldig; es giebt kein Verhaltniss, das nicht
verletzt und beschimpft wird. Die vom Ricbter noting erachteten
Confrontationem verwandeln sich von Seiten Ebel's und der Seinigen
in die ehrenriihrendsten und jedes sittigen Anstandes ermangelnden
Zankereien ; von sich selbst aber sagen sie mundlich und shriftlich
mit einer Naivetat, welche die epische weit hinter sich lasst, das
Edelste und Hochste aus : an ihnen ist kein anderer Fehler als
hochstens ein Uebermaass von Tugend, das die argen Menschen
nicht ertragen kbnnen und sich deshalb emporen, auflehnen, und
weil nicht Uebles in Wahrheit vorzubringen sei, zur Luge und
Verleumdung greifen. Diese so bezeichneten Personen sind aber
keine aus der Hefe des Volks, keine ihren Mitbiirgern unbekannte
Menschen, es sind altere Leute, Geistliche, Gelehrte, Staatsdiener
u. s. w., fast Alle, oder wohl gar Alle Hausvater, und es giebt
keinen unter ihnen, der nicht in grosserem oder geringerem Maasse
sich offentlich Vertrauen erworben und darin bewahrt hatte. Alle
aber wurden schlechthin der Liige, der Verleumdung aufs Ent-
scheidendste beziichtigt ; von Keinem aber auch nur angenommen,
er konne vielleicht in einem Irrthume begriffen und wenigstens
subjectiv wahr sein. Nein, sie sind Alle Verleumder mit Bewusstsein
und bosem Willen ! Ach, wie leicht ware es doch eben diesen so
hart angelassenen Zeugen, sich das Lob der Wahrheit, ja, einen
ganzen Strahlenkranz hochster Lobeserhebungen als Menschen und
Christen zu erwerben, wenn es ihnen nur moglich gewesen ware
wirklich zu liigen ! wenn sie nur auch die Obrigkeit als vom bosen
Feinde besessen betrachtet und es angemessener gefunden batten,
sie zu beliigen ! wenn auch sie nnr gemeint hatten, es sei Gottes-
dienst und Wahrheitstreue, die Mittel durch den Zweck zu heiligen
und zu liigen, anstatt Wahrheit zu sagen ! wenn sie nur sich
VOL. II. Y
322 DARSTELLUNG DER
hatten iiberreden konnen, ein solches Yerfahren sei nicht liisterlicli
und im tiefsten Grande gottesleugnerisch ! wenn auch sie nur
Gotzen-mit Gottesdienst hatten verwechseln konnen !
Freilich, von Seiten Ebel's und der Seinen ist Nichts in dieser
Art unterlassen, Nichts fiir zu schwer gefunden worden, ja, was
man niclit fiir moglich unter gewissen Umstanden halten mochte,
es ist dennoch geschehen. Menschen zu beliigen — leider, dies
geschieht nicht seiten; die Obrigkeit hintergehen — auch dies ist
leider nichts Unerhortes ; wer aber auch nur an eine gottliche
Weltregierung glaubt, und wer mit der Geschichte der Menschen
und Yolker nur irgend wie auf eine wirklich innerliche Weise be-
kannt geworden ist, dem ist die hohe und gottliche Bedeutung der
Oberhaupter, Herrscher und Konige der Volker wenigstens so weit
im Gefuhle aufgegangen, dass er sich ihnen gegeniiber, namentlich,
wo es sich urn wichtige menschliche und gottliche Angelegenheiten
handelt, unmittelbar zur Wahrhaftigkeit genothigt fiihlt. Noch
jranz anders ist, wenn Sinn und Inhalt reinen Christenthums nicht
fehlt. Dieses, Idololatrie und Unvernunft jeder Art aufhebend,
fiihrt unmittelbar dahin, in der gottlichen Regierung der Welt
iiberall einen heiligen Willen und eine gottliche, auch der mensch-
lichen Vernunft willig sich entfaltende Ordnung zu erblicken.
Dieses Christenthum lehrt, innerlichst begreifen, dass bei aller
Gleichheit der Menschen vor Gott die Abstnfungen in der Erschei-
nung und Darstellung der menschlichen, fiir gottliche Zweeke exi-
stirenden Gesellschaft eine hohe und unantastbare Bedeutung haben,
und dass, wer sich in dieser gottlichen Weltordnung einem Andern
untergeordnet sieht, dies als seine gottliche, also auch selige
Bestimmnng anerkennen miisse, und seine Unterordnung ist in der
That, wo er auch stehe, immer nur eine Unterordnung gegen Gott ;
dieses also in sich Seligkeit und Freiheit, jenes Unseligkeit und
Knechtschaft. Wer seinem Konige daher sich tief, gern und mit
allem Bewusstsein unterordnet, dem begegnet Nichts von Knechts-
gefiihl, sondern er weiss es, dass dieses ein Akt seiner Freiheit ist,
dnrch welche er vor Gott dem Konige gleich wird. Und was die
hohere Menschenwiirde auch in der untergeordneten Stellung un-
verletzt und rein erhalt, ist ja eben das Recht nicht nur, sondern
auch die Verpflichtung gegen Jeden, am Allermeisten aber gegen
das Hochste nnd den Hochsten. Und so ist es auch indiesem Sinne
bestatigend, dass die Wahrheit das allein frei Machende sei. Ware
es nun wohl moglich, dass man von diesem Standpunkte aus unwahr
PIETISTISCHEN UMTRIEBE IN KONIGSBERG. 323
unci hintergehend unci absichtlich tiiuschend verfaliren konnte gegen
seine Obere, gegen seinen Konig selbst ? und ist dieser Standpunkt
nicht der verniinftig christliche ? Ich spreche hier noch gar nicht
von der Grosse des biirgerlicben Vergehens, wenn man den Konig
selbst zu tauschen sucht, nnd ebenso wenig andererseits yon clem
eben so thorichten als falschen Vorgeben dieser Sectengenossen,
dass sie vorzliglich, ja wohl einzig dem Throne wie dem ....
treu gesinnt ? und ergeben waxen ; denn leider sprecben so thorichte
mid vermessene Behauptungen auch Personen aus anderen, sonst in
aller Weise wahrhaft cbristlich und edel gesinnten Kreisen aus.
Aber was aus dem Kreise Ebel's eben in dieser Hinsicbt bei Gele-
genheit der eingeleiteten Untersucliung nach sebr glaubhaften
Nachrichten gescbeben sein soil, das verdient als cbarakteristisch
hervorgehoben zu werden; nicht als Anklage, aber als ein fiir die
psychologische Auffassung wichtiges Moment. Es giebt nicht nur
in unserm Vaterlande, sondern in ganz Deutschland, im ganzen
Europa keinen gebildeten Menschen, der es nicht wiisste, dass eben
unser Konig ein wahrhaft frommer sei, dem Gerechtigkeit und
Wahrheit das Theuerste und, was diesem entgegen, ein Grauel ist.
Nun an diesen, an unsern allverehrten Konig wendet man sich,
seine Gnade, seinen Schutz anrufend fiir einen frommen, von Liignern
und Verlaumdern hart verfolgten treuen Hirten einer christlichen
Gemeine. Wer wusste nicht, dass ein solcher Anruf das fromme
Herz unsres erhabenen Konigs erregen konnte ? Wie aber wagt
man es da von Verlaumdung, von Luge und von Verfolgung zu
reden, gegen den Konig selbst zu reden, wo Nichts vorge-
bracht ist, als was den Gewissenhaftesten der wohl erwogene
und mildeste Ausdruck des Thatsachlichen ist ? oder war der
Bittsteller selbst in einer Tauschung begriffen ? Dann hatte er
wenigstens leichtsinnig und unberufen gehandelt. Aber davon
ist hier keine Rede; der Graf von Kanitz hat es gethan, er,
der allerdings von Allem auf s Genaueste unterrichtet ist — aber
eben deshalb auch haarscharf und vollkommen bestimmt weiss, wie
verschonencl und auf alle Weise gemtissigt gegen Ebel und die Seinen
verfahren worden ist von denen, die er nun als Liigner anklagt, und
von seinem und auch unserm Konige. Er weiss es, dass Alles,
was geschehen, was ausgesagt worden ist, abgesehen von der voll-
kommensten Wahrheit desselben, von der Obrigkeit ausgesagt ist,
die nicht von Diesem oder Jenem zur Untersuchung durch eine
angebrachte Klage veranlasst, sondern von der hochsten Stelle dazu
324 DAPvSTELLTJNG DER
angewiesen worden ist, vor der aber zu erscheinen und auf ihre
Fragen zu antworten nach der Wahrheit, ja gar keine Wahl ge-
lassen, sondern schlechthin Pflicht ist. Und was gab es denn
schon zu schreien und die allerhochste Gnade anzurufen, wo die
Untersuchung noch schwebt und nach aller Vorschrift unsrer Ge-
setze gefiihrt ist ? Oder fiirchtet er die Justiz ? die Preussische
Justiz ? er, ein Preussischer Tribunalsrath ? Mochte er lieber eine
tiirkische gehandhabt haben ? Nun wahrlich, dann hatte er sich
nicht an den Konig von Preussen wenden sollen. Will ich aber
hiermit den Grafen von Kanitz als einen absichtlichen Yerbreclier
geschildert haben, weil er in der That Etwas, das eben Geschilderte,
begangen, das kaum anders als ein Verbrechen, und kein geringes,
genannt werden kann ? Das sei feme ! Beweisen aber kann es,
wie gestattet, wie schlechthin gestattet in der Lehre und in den
Grundsatzen es sei, ohne Unterschied Jeden mit Liigen behandeln
zu diirfen, wenn er nicht die Erkenntniss der "Wahrheit hat, und
wenn es dem Zwecke und dem Nutzen der Secte dienen kann.
Ferner : es wird glaubhaft berichtet, dass die Katechumenen Ebel's,
einige ihm nahe stehende Frauen, sodann aber anch raehre Andere
aufgefordert, ja recht eigentlich gepresst, von Mitgliedern der Secte
(diese zogen herum, urn Unterschriften auf eine sehr andrangende,
bedriingende Weise zu sammeln) sich mit Bittschriften an Seine
Majestat den Konig gewendet haben sollen, in denen die vollige
Unschuld und Eeinheit Ebel's und der Seinen bethenert und alles
gegen ihn Vorgebrachte als Liige und Verleumdung bezeichnet
worden ist. Nun ist Nichts gewisser, als dass weder in jenem
Kreise, noch von ihm ausgehend durch Andere Etwas geschehen
darf, am Wenigsten etwas Bedeutendes, ohne die ausdmckliche
Zustimmung und das bestimmte Geheiss Ebel's, theils wegen des
unbedingten Gehorsams, den man ihm schuldig zu sein glaubt,
theils der Ueberzeugung wegen, dass Nichts gelingen konne, das
nicht durch seine Billigung gewissermassen die Verheissung
erhalten hat. (Den wirklichen Charakter des Gehorsams in
diesem Kreise zu erkennen, kann auch dieser Zug dienen.) Dass
Schritte solcher Art wahrscheinlich iiberall, bei uns ganz verge-
bliche sind, versteht sich von selbst. Nicht aber von den Erfolgen,
sondern von den Motiven, Principien und Methoden des Verfahrens
dieser Secte ist hier die Eede. Und in dieser Beziehung muss es
zu fragen gestattet sein : hat es in dieser Beziehung viel, oder auch
nur wenig Aehnlichkeit mit dem eines Ehrenmannes, wenn etwa
PIETISTISCHEN UMTRIEBE IN KONIGSBERG. 325
eine Untersuchung iiber einen auf seine Ehre Bezug habenden Ge-
genstand cingeleitet ist, oder wohl gar eines Christen, der iiber
seinen Glauben, iiber seine Ueberzeugungen, iiber sein Leben selbst
Rechenschaft geben soil ? ist es nicht vielmehr gewiss, dass jeder
Ehrenmann, und um so mehr jeder fromme Christ (der doch wohl
ein Ehrenmann iiberdies ist) Nichts mehr wiinschen, Nichts mehr
befordern werde, als dass die Untersuchung moglichst genau,
strenge, und bis in's Einzelne eindringend ausfalle, damit er und
Wahrheit rein und unbefleckt hervorgehen mogen ? Weder ausser-
ordentliche Hilfe, noch Schutz der Hohen oder Hochsten werden
sie nachsuchen, noch weniger aber die Untersuchung zu unter-
driicken, noch zu ersticken suchen. Und soil ich wohl fragen, ob
sie zu tobenden Schimpfreden durch Ehrenkrankung Anderer ihre
Zuflucht nehmen werden ?
Ich glaube, es seien nun die bisherigen Ertauterungen so weit
fortgefuhrt und enthalten hinreichenden Stoff, um zur Ableitung
einiger wichtiger iibersichtlicher Resultate dienen zu konnen.
1. Nicht dem mindesten Zweifel scheint es unterworfen zu seinr
dass eine solche Gemeinschaft, wie die in hier in Rede stehende eine
religiose Secte genannt werden miisse.
2. Im hochsten Grade aber zweifelhaft ist's, ob ihr auch die
Benennung einer christlichen Secte beigelegt werden konne ; dena
was haben deren Grundlehren des Christenthums ausser der
Zufiilligkeit, gleicher Worte sich hier und da zu bedienen, denen
jedoch die auseinandergehendste, ja entgegengesetzte Bedeutung-
zukommt.
3. Es ist zwar von Ebel verschiedentlich behauptet worden, dass
zwischen seiner so genannten philosophischen Lehre und seiner
christlichen weiter keine Verbindung sei, jene sei etwas auf speku-
lativem Wege gewonnenes, diese eine christliche, im Glauben
befestigte. Es ist aber unbegrei^lich, wie man glauben konne,
hiermit nachdeukende Menschen tiiuschen zu konnen ; denn:
a. Der Weg, auf welchem man eine Ueberzengung gewonnen,
eine Wahrheit gefunden hat, ist in Beziehung auf Ueberzeugung
und Wahrheit selbst ganz gleichgiltig. Diese bleiben stehen und
konnen, wenn sie in sich selbst nicht aufgehoben werden, nicht
weggeschoben werden.
Wie, wenn Jemand etwa auf speculativem Wege die Ueber-
zeugung der Nichtexistenz Gottes gewonnen hiitte, konnte er
dabei Christ, ja christlicher Lehrer bleiben und, daruber zur Re-
326 DAKSTELLTJNG DEE,
chenschaft gezogen, antworten : philosophirend leugnc ich Gott,
aber auf der Kanzel und auf dem Altare bekenne ich ihn. Man
kann nicht entgegnen, Atheismus sei Etwas, zu dem man nur
durch den hochsten Trotz oder die hochste Unkunde aller Vernunft-
nnd Naturgesetze gelangen konne, eigentlich etwas Unmogliches,
der Vergleich mit einem solchen aber unstatthaft. Allerclings
mnsste jeder Atlieismus von der genannten Beschaffenlieit sein,
d. h. entweder in der Anwendung oder auf den Triimmern aller
Vernunft- und Naturgesetze aufgefiihrt worden sein ; hat aber die
Schonherr-Ebel'sche Lehre einem besseren, oder irgend einen Zu-
sammenhang mit Vernunft und Natur, yon der heiligen Schrift
ganz und gar abgesehen ?
b. Ebel hat gar keinen Anstand genommen, auch zu sagen,
seine sogenannte philosophische Lehre habe er nur problematisch
hingestellt. Nennt man aber wohl ein Problem Erkenntniss der
Wahrheit ? Ja, diese Vertheidigungsrede Ebel's, abgesehen von
ihrer vollkommenen wissenschaftlichen Unwahrheit, ist noch viel
schlimmer und ihn hiirter anklagend, ja, noch mehr iiberfiihrend,
als das Erste. Denn man bedenke, wie unendlich schwach, ja v,Tie
fast ohne eine christliche Ueberzeugung sein Glaube an die Worte
und Lehren des Evangeliums sein miisse, wenn sie sich nicht einmal
als hinreichend kraftig in ihm haben erweisen konnen, urn Etwas,
das weder mit den Gesetzen der Vernunft noch der Natur wohl ver-
einbar ist, das er iiberdies selbst nicht einmal mit der subject! ven
Ueberzeugung der Wahrheit angenommen hat, sondern nur filr etwas
Problematisches halt, vollig aus dem Wege raumen zu konnen.
c. Ebel hat aber in der That diese Erkenntniss nicht nur fur
wahr, fiir objectiv wahr gehalten, sondern auch filr den wahren und
einzigen Schliissel zur Einsicht in die Bibel, zu demjenigen, was er
lebendiges Christenthum genannt, und als dessen Ansatz er die
kirchliche Eechtglaubigkeit als nichtig und todt, die zu nichts
fiihren kann als hochstens zur Tauschung iiber sich selbst und
endlich zum Tode und Verderben zu nennen pflegte. In diesem
Shine wurden die orthodoxen und frommsten Geistlichen unserer
Stadt, z. B. der verstorbene Erzbischof Dr. Borowski, die beiden
Prediger der Altrossgartschen Kirche, Kahle und Weiss, der Pfarrer
Weiss, Hahn, als er bei uns war, als todte Christen, deren Wirk-
sarnkeit hochst verderblich sei, mit grossem Eifer und nicht gerin-
gem Zornmuthe geschildert. In diesem Sinne wurde auch mit der
grossten Verwerfung von dem Berlinischen Christentliuni ge-
PIETISTISCHEN TTMTRIEBE IN KONIGSBERG. 327
sprochen ; in eben diesem Sinne sprach Ebel immer viel gtinstiger
Yon den sogenannten Rationalisten ; denn, unzufrieden zwar mit
ihren Resultaten, lobte er doch an ihnen. dass sie sich wenigstens
docli nach anderen Beweismitteln umsahen, als eben die kirchliche
Orthodoxie iiberliefert; von ihnen daher meinte und hoffte er, sie
wlirden auch zur Erkenntniss der Wahrheit, d. h. zu seiner zu be-
wegen sein, wenn mann sie zuvor nur irgend wie zur personlichen
Unterwerfung bringen konnte.
d. In Wahrheit hat auch Ebel so wenig sein philosophisches
Credo (die mit dem Namen der Erkenntniss der Wahrheit belegte
Lehre) von seinem kirchlichen (denn evangelisch kann es nicht
genannt werden) getrennt, dass Jeder, der nur mit jenem einiger-
massen bekannt war, in der Predigt theils Andeutungen, theils aber
auch bestimmte Ausfiihrungen desselben, wenn auch in so ver-
deckter und in Bibelworte gehullter Weise, dass es den mit jener
Lehre Unbekannten verborgen bleibt, finden konnte und musste.
Ja, es verhalt sich auch so mit den meisten, wenn nicht mit alien
von Ebel durch den Druck bekannt gemachten Predigten.
4. Das Haupt dieser Secte ist Ebel, jedoch nicht so wie auch
andere Secten von jeher Haupter mid Vorsteher gehabt haben ;
denn er hat in seinem Kreise nicht bios wie die Haupter andrer Sec-
ten erne hohere menschliche Stellung, sondern gottliche Bedeutung,
wie das aus der Lehre selbst gefolgert, hierdurch aber wiederum die
Lehre begriindet, d. h. ohne Grund festgehalten, zunachst aber un-
bedingter Gehorsam fur und absolute Unterwerfung Aller unter
ihn herbeigefiihrt und mit der aussersten Strenge gefordert und
beobachtet worden ist. Das ist sattsam eben dargethan.
5. Stand aber einmal Ebel da als vollkommener Mensch, als
der Heilige und Reine (nicht bios dieses Kreises, sondern auch des
Universums) unserer Zeit, hat er nicht bios die Wahrheit, sondern
war er sie auch, war er nicht bios der Reine, sondern war eben seine
Wirkung auf Andere (d. h. auf das zweite Urwesen, also besonders
auf die Frauen)heiligend und reinigend, so ergab sich nun von selbst
a. Ob es wahr sei, was er sagte, lehrte, that, danach konnte ja
gar nicht gefragt werden; es war wahr, weil er es gesagt, gelehrt,
gethan hatte.
b. Sein L'mgang mit den Frauen ware nach sonstigen Beur-
theilungen unziichtig zu nennen gewesen, ja er selbst wusste fiir
Andere, selbst wenn sie nur im Entferntesten auf diese Weise ver-
fuhren, keine andere Benennung ; weil er aber der Reine war. so
328 DARSTELLTTNG DER
konnte audi sein Thun nicht unrein sein, und weil er der Heilige
war, nicht unheilig sein. Er beruft sich daher auch fort und fort
auf seine Reinheit, ja auf seine natiirliche Keuschheit (er, der sonst
immer behauptet und lehrt, von Natur sei an uns, d. h. an Allem
ausser ihm Alles bose und verderbt.)
.c. Als vollkommner Mensch war seine Natur, weise zu sein.
Weisheit aber besteht darin, Jeden so behandeln zu konnen, wie er
es eben braucht und ihm froramt ; es war also ein Vorzug, Jedem
ein Anderer zu sein, nicht, wie Paulus, Allen Alles. In der That
wechselte er die Farbe chamaleontisch, und seine Erscheinung war
mehr als die eines Proteus. Dass die Leute, dies bemerkend, ihn
stets fiir einen Falschen und Heuchler hielten, das erklarte er in
heiteren Stunden als eine schwere Finsterniss, die das Laud noch
deckt, wodurch aber die Weisheit in der Nothwendigkeit des Wech-
sels ihrer Erscheinung nicht erkannt werde ; in Stunden des Ver-
drusses aber wurde dies dadurch erklart,'dass irgend Jemand im
Kreise gesiindigt hat, ein verborgener Bann da sein musse, der eine
solche Verwirrung anrichte. Und deren gab es leider viele.
d. Der Heilige und Reine sollte doch nothwendig dem Bosen in
der Welt (dem Fiirsten der Welt, dem Teufel) entgegen wirken ;
dieser aber ist ein Liigner, diesem muss nun das Reich herbeizu-
fiihren, diejenige Gegenwehr entgegengesetzt werden, dnrch welche
er die Wahrheit mit Bewusstsein und aus freiem Willen zuriick
gewiesen hatte ; dies aber ist nur moglich durch die List, und zwar
eben durch die List der Wahrheit. Nnn beherrscht ja aber der
Teufel Alle, die nicht in der Erkenntniss der Wahrheit stehn, es
miissen also Alle mit List behandelt werden, d. h. iiberlistet, d. h.
der Teufel in ihnen bekiimpft werden.
Das grosse Maass der hierzu gebrauchten Lligen wurde dem
Dienste der Wahrheit zu Gute geschrieben, ohne das Gewissen
irgend wie zu beschwercn. Diesel be Weisheit wurde aber nicht
nur gegen die Draussenstehenden angewendet, sondern auch gegen
die Mitglieder des Kreises selbst; denn nur Wenige von ihnen
waren ja vollig hindurch gedrungen, die Meisten waren ja auch
angezogen und erweckt, doch nicht durchweg erleuchtet und zu
vollkommener Mannesstiirke herangereift ; auch sie waren ja noch
den Anfechtnngen des Feindes ansgesetzt, noch vielfach dnnkel
und zur Finsterniss geneigt, auch sie also mussten mit List be-
handelt werden. Zur gleichen Weisheit aber mm gehort es auch,
class jeder zum Kreise Gehorige, welche Stufe er auch inne habe
PIETTSTISCHEN UMTRIEBE IN KONIGSBERG. 329
in die Meinimg gesetzt und in ihr erhalten werde, ihm sei Alles
mitgetheilt, er wisse Alles, vor ihm habe man kein Geheimniss.
Wild er dennoch spiiter weiter gefiihrt, so wird ihm das fruhere
Vorenthalten als eine Handlung liebender Weisheit begreiflich ge-
macht, nun aber, das erfahrt er wieder, wisse er Alles. Wird man
miter solchen Behandlungen von einem'unheimlichen Gefiihle er-
griffen, und hat man noch nicht Energie zur entscheidenden Tren-
nung gewonnen, so bleibt Nichts iibrig, als dieses Unheimliche in
sich selbst heimlich zu verschliessen, da sonst die Begegnung duster
und rauh wird. Zu jener Energie aber gelangt man nur nach
vielen inneren Schmerzen und Kampfen ; denn wie ist doch dafiir
gesorgt worden, dass man sich zuvor gewissermassen gefangen gcge-
ben, und sich selbst in Fesseln geschlagen habe ? Zur Zeit, als
ich diesem Kreise noch angehorte, d. i. vor nun fast 11 Jahren, gab
es wohl nur 4 Mitglieder desselben, die zur vollkommenen Mannes-
starke, der Alles enthiillt werden, die Alles tragen konnte, gelangt
waren ; diese bestanden aus 3 Frauen : Grafinnen v. d. Groben, v.
Kanitz (diese letztere verstorben), Friiulein Emilie v. Schrotter; das
vierte Mitglied war freilich keine Frau, gewiss aber audi kein Mann ;
denn Graf v. Kanitz war dieses 4te Mitglied, und ihm tritt man
gewiss nicht zu nahe, wenn man ihm bei williger Einraumung man-
cher Eigenschaften, ja selbst Yorziige alles Mannliche abspricht.
Ich fahre nun in der Darstellung selbst fort. Eine solche in
Geheimniss sich hullende Verbindung konnte nicht bestehen, ohne
bemerkt, ohne beobachtet und beurtheilt zu werden. Dass die
Urtheile nicht gleich, iiber Manche ungerecht waren, ist naturlich,
und dariiber zu rechten ware unrecht. Worin aber Alle iiberein-
kommen, das war ein Gefiihl des Misstrauens und des Missachtens.
Ja, da Yiele unbefangen genug urtheilten, so kam es bald dahin,
dass sich die Annahme sehr verbreitete : Ebel ziehe unter dem
Scheme der Heiligkeit junge und hubsche Damen an sich, verhandle
mit ihnen in Worten Gottseliges, in der That Fleischliches und
grobst Sinnliches ; altere reiche Frauen mussten ihm die Tochter
zur Einweihung in die tiefere Frommigkeit zufiihren, dabei es aber
auch nicht an ausseren Opfern, Geschenken, an Geld und Sachen
fehlen lassen, reiche Grafen und andere Wohlhabende aber eben falls
angenehrne Opfer darbringen, Alle, die mit Ebel in Verbindung
standen, waren im Publicum mit dem Namen Mucker (Schein-
heilige) bezeichnet ; sie batten, in welchen Verhiiltnissen sie auch
stehen mochten, ungemeine Schwierigkeiten zu iiberwinden; man
330 DARSTELLUNG DEE
blieb gem ausser alien naheren Verhaltnissen mit ilmen. Yiele
legten sich auch nicht einmal den Zwang anf, ihr Misstrauen und
Missachten zn verbergen. Oft wurde in dem Kreise dariiber ge-
sprochen und in besseren Stimmungen von Ebel als Ermunterung
gedeutet : es ware die Schmach Cliristi, die man zu tragen hiitte,
die man willig und freudig auf sich nehmen miisse ; in triiben Stim-
mungen dagegen (und diese warden immer baufiger und am Meisten
iiber diejenigen ausgegossen, die dem Kreise langere Zeit an-
gehorten und den Erwartungen noch nicht entsprachen) waren sie,
hiess es, hindurch gedrungen, so wiirde auch Alles herrlich stehen.
Was sie aber hiitten than und leisten sollen, das blieb verborgen.
Es wurde geseufzt, Achsel gezuckt, gemurrt, etc. ; Ebel erklarte
voll Zorn, er miisse Alles leiden, ihm geschehe alles Wehe, ihm
dem Unschuldigen ; das Reich Gottes wiirde aufgehalten, nicht
durch die draussen stehenden Armen, die sich ja nicht helfen konn-
ten, da sie nicht die Erkenntniss der Wahrheit hatten, sondern
durch die Triigheit und Lassigkeit der Mitglieder des Kreises; dem
Reiche Gottes miisse Gewalt geschehen. Solcher und almlicher
heftiger Reden wurden viele gehalten ; die Damen blickten mit
Thriinen auf Ebel, den unschuldig Leidenden, Heiligen und Reinen.
Wer nach Sinn verlangte, ging leer aus, musste aber sehr still sein.
Nun jedenfalls nahm das Publicum immer mehr in der Ueberzeu-
gung zu, dass Ebel nicht derjenige sei, der er scheme, dass Un-
heilvolles im Hintergrunde liege ; da man nun iiberdies wusste,
dass die Anhiinger Ebel's, namentlich der weibliche Theil emsig mit
Werbungen sich beschaftigte, so waren Haus- und Familienvater
sehr wachsam ; denn es wurde fur ein Ungliick geachtet, wenn
Jemand in diesen Kreis herein<?ezc>^en wurde.
Wie sehr sich das friihe schon am hiesigen Orte so verhalten
habe, das bezeugen zwei Druckschriften des Herrn Consistorial-
rath Klihler ; er liess niimlich in den Jahren 1822, 23, wenn ich
nicht irre, 2 Hefte einer Schrift drucken, der er den Titel : Phila-
gathos gegeben. In geistreicher, gewandter und lebendiger Dar-
stellung, wie sie diesem ausgezeichneten Manne eigenthiimlieh ist,
werden die inneren Verhaltnisse dieser Verbindung, namentlich
Ebel in seiner Tendenz nicht nur, sondern auch seinem Thun nach
genau, ja fast portraithaft gezeichnet, Schein und Sein dieser Secte
wird philosophisch und physiologisch scharf aufgefasst und durch-
gefuhrt ; cler Schluss stellt eine Scene dar, die Schrecken und
Entsetzen erregt und dock kein Fictum ist. Das geringste Yer-
PIETISTISCHEN UMTRIEBE IN KONIGSBERG. 331
dienst dieser Schrift ist die poetisclie Erfindung, sie enthiilt viel-
mehr gar Nichts in Beziehung auf Sachen und Personen, was
niclit damals die ganz allgemeine Annahme in hiesiger Stadt gewe-
sen ware, deshalb gab es auch beim Erscheinen dieser Schrift kein
Rathen und kein Zweifeln, wer etwa mit diesem oder jenem Namen,
ja mit dieser oder jener Andeutung gemeint sein sollte, sondern
Alles vielmehr war sofort Allen klar, weil Allen znvor Alles be-
kannt war, wenigstens in der Voranssetzung als moraliscbe Ueber-
zeugung, wenn auch Niemand die juridische zu geben vermogend
war, noch weniger aber Jemand so leicht es vermocht hatte wie der
genannte Verfasser des Philagathos aus der vor den Augen des
Geistes schwebenden "VVirklichkeit das Wesentlichste herauszu-
greifen und mit geschickter, sichrer Hand es zur festen Betrach-
tung hinzustellen. Ja, es ist hochst merkwiirdig und fiir den
ersten Augenblick kaum glaublich, doch aber streng wahr und aus
der eben gegebenen Schilderung, wie die Mitglieder des Kreises
behandelt worden sind, begreiflich, dass in jener Schrift Manches
deutlich und bestimmt als innerer Yorgang des Kreises, als That-
sache angegeben worden ist, was unter den Mitgliedern selbst
Vielen, ja selbst schon Yorgeriickteren, z. B. Olshausen und mir
unbekannt gewesen ist, wenigstens damals ; denn spliter habe icli es
allerdings erfahren.
Alles bis hierher Bemerkte bezieht sich lediglich auf Ebel und
seine Erklarung, indessen ist hiemit auch in der That Alles fiir die
Erklarung der in Rede stehenden Sache nicht bios beriihrt worden,
sondern wirklich abgethan ; denn das erchiitternde Wort Ludwig's
XIY. " V etat c'est moi " konnte Ebel in Beziehung auf den von
ihm gebildeten Kreis mit viel grosserem Rechte sprechen. Nie,
und das ist die strengste Wahrheit, hat ein Despot willkiirlicher
geherrscht, nie ein Jesuitengeneral strengeren Gehorsam gefordert
und erhalten, nie ein Pabst so schnell und viel kanonisirt und
anathematisirt als Ebel.
Doch ist von einigen anderen Personen noch Erwahnung zn
thun ; es wird dies kurz geschehen konnen, zumal sie schon ange-
fiihrt sind und Einiges liber sie bemerket. Die Personen aber,
deren ich noch zu gedenken habe, sind : die verstorbene Griifin von
Kanitz (geb. von Derschau), die ^Grafin von der Groben, Graf von
Kanitz, Diestel und ich selbst.
1. Die nachherige Grafin von Kanitz, geb. von Derschau ist
die alteste Freundin Ebel's gewesen. Ihr Yater, den ich person-
332 DARSTELLUNG DER
licli nicht gekannt habe, ein preussischer Major, scheint ein Maim
der wackersten Art gewesen zu sein, von frommer christlicher Ge-
sinnung, dabei aber dem Mysteriosen (im besten Sinne) etwas
zugeneigt. Christlicli erzogen, vom verstorbenen Erzbischof von
Borowski unterrichtet und eingesegnet, lernte Friiulein von Der-
schau friihe, jedoch erst (wenn ich nicbt irre) nach dem Tode ihres
Vaters Ebel als Prediger kennen. Der junge, schone, fenrige
Redner macbte grossen Eindruck auf sie, und sie suchte seine per-
sonliche Bekanntschaft. Hier wurde sie inne, dass sie vorher das
Christenthum gar nicht gekannt babe ; in der That erhielt sie bald
ein neues. Sie hatte als breiteste Basis ihrer Natur eine starke
Sinnlichkeit, zu der sich als geistige Anlage eine sehr regsame,
durch keinen griindlichen Unterricht geregelte Phantasie gesellte.
In der Mitte ihres Wesens stand eine grosse Herzensfreundlichkeit ;
sie selbst sagte, sie sei zur Wollust geneigt. Ebel beruhigte sie,
indem er ihr begreiflich machte, jene an sich sei nicht Siinde, sie
werde es nur, wenn sie vom Feinde gemissbraucht wird, durch die
Erkenntniss der Wahrheit werde sie geheiligt und zur edlen Wesen-
haftigkeit erhoben. Friiher wurde sie mit Schonherr durch Ebel
bekannt; sie glaubte, sie sei das zu jenem gehorige Weib, sah
jedoch spater ihren Irrthum ein. Ganz und gar Ebel ergeben, in
ihm das Hochste erblickend und verehrend, wurde sie zu einer voll-
kommenen zweischneidigen Fanatikerin. Mit ihr zuerst hat Ebel
die sogenannten geschlechtlichen Reinigungen geiibt, und wie Ebel
mir erzahlt, wurden diese zuerst von ihr zur Sprache gebracht und
eingeleitet. Sie, ein stark sinnliches Weib und lange in ge-
schlechtlicher Erregung durch die sogenannten Reinigungsacte er-
halten, musste die Ehefrau eines Mannes wie Kanitz werden, weil
es ermittelt wurde, dass sie Beide schlechthin zusammengehoren
und zwar eben dadurch, dass sie die beiden Zeugen wiiren, von
denen in der Apokalypse gesprochen ist. Mit Freude ging sie das
Ehebiindniss ein, doch sehr bald sprach sie ihr innigstes Mitleiden
iiber Kanitz aus. Nur wenige Jahre lebte sie verheirathet, und in
den letzten Stunden ihres Lebens, in welchen ich bis zu ihrem
Verscheiden bei ihr gewesen und sie beobachtet habe, hat sie wohl
eine bedeutende Veriinderung erfahren. Ebel namlicb hatte mit
einem unendlichen Redestrome in sie hineingeredet, ihr Bestel-
lungen nach dem Himmel, besonclers an den Herrn Christus (wie er
eben dort ist) aufgetragen und sie ihn empfanglich hingebend und
aufmerksam, dann wenigstens geduldig angehort; nun aber bat sie
PIETISTISCHEN UMTRIEBE IN KONIGSBERG. 333
ihn, inne zu halten und ihr das heilige Abendmahl zu reichen, nach.
welchem sie verlange. Da er aber mit jenen Reden fortfuhr, so
wurden ihre Bitten dringender, endlich gebot sie ihm Stillschweigen
und die schleunige Reichung des Mahles. Diese Handlung wnrde
nun kirchlich vollzogen ; sie, dadurch sehr beruhigt, sprach kein
lautes Wort mehr, noch auch liess sie zu sich reden, sondern blieb
imtiefsten, andacbtigsten, stillen Gebete noch raehre Stunden, und
verschied sanft. Ich babe die moralische und feste Ueberzeugung,
dass Gott ihr redliches Herz angesehen nnd eben in dieser letzten
Stunde sie von allem Irrthume geheilt habe. Ruhe und Friede sei
mit ihr !
2. Grafin Ida von der Groben. Mehres und nicht Unwesent-
liches ist bereits im Yerlaufe dieser Darstellung zur Bezeichnung
ihrer ausgezeichneten Person! ichkeit bemerkt worden, einiges
gewiss jedoch zu einer vollkommenen Charakteristik nicht Zurei-
chendes muss noch hinzugefiigt werden. Schon in ihrer roman-
tisch-phantastischen Zeit, die bis zu ihrer naheren Verbindung
mit Ebel reicht, war in ihr eine besondere Charakterstarke zur
festesten Ausflihrung gefasster Vorsatze ausgebildet. Sie, sehr
jung verheirathet, von ausserst zartem Korperbau, von Natur
eigentlich sehr weichlich (was sich auch nach ihrer so genannten
Erweckung und als sie schon vollkommen geheiligt, die neue
Natur angezogen hatte, wiederum sehr deutlich zeigte,) fand es
fur ein ritterliches Weib ungeziemend, iiber korperliche Leiden
zu klagen, oder wohl gar Schmerzenslaute auszustossen. Sie
fasste daher den Vorsatz, auch in der Stunde der Geburtsnoth
sich keinen Schmerzenston entschliipfen zu lassen, und so fiihrte
sie es auch aus, obwohl, schon als Erstgebiirende hochst leidend,
sie auch noch eine kiinstliche Geburt zu iiberstehen hatte. Nach
vielen Jahren, als sie lange schon " im neuen Leben ,1 gestanden
hatte> litt sie an einer kleinen Eiteransammlung unter einem
Hiihnerauge ; es musste Etwas operirt werden, aber die ganze
Operation war keine andere, als die bei gewohnlichen Hiihner-
augen ; doch erfasste sie Furcht und Zagen, sie bat und beschwor
mich, doch nur ja recht schon end und vorsichtig zu verfahren.
Ich fiihre dies an und fiige zugleich etwas Allgemeines hinzu,
weil mir hierin etwas Charakteristisches, nicht bios der einzelnen
Person, sondern der ganzen Verbindung und ihres innerlichen
Zustandes zu liegen scheint. Seit fast 30 Jahren sehe ich taglich
Kranke, seit 26 Jahren bin ich Arzt, nie aber habe ich im kranken
334 DARSTELLUNG DER
Zustande Personen weichlicher und fnrchtsamer, ja audi nur so
weichlich und furchtsam sich benehraen gesehen als eben die
Mitglieder dieses Kreises, und zwar sind sie es in dem Maasse
mehr, je lioher sie im Kreise stehen und sich wirklich demselben
innerlich angeschlossen liaben. Obenan in dieser Beziehung stand
Ebel selbst, dann folgte Grafin Ida von der Groben. Sie haben
namlich die Ueberzengtmg, dass auch ibr Leib nunmehr eine viel
hohere Bedeutung habe, iiberdies in sicb selbst so veredelt und der
neuen Natur angemessen sei, dass gar nicbt gegen ibn zu kampfen,
seine Gefiihle nicbt zu unterdriicken und nicbt zu iiberwinden
seien, wohl aber mussten sie ibn ausserst sorgfaltig bewahren und
scbiitzen ; dagegen aber treffe sie Etwas, das um dasjenige sich
bewegt, was sie die Sache, ihre Sache, Gottes Sache nennen, und
erfordere dies eine Uebernahme korperlicher Schmcrzen, auch der
grossesten, so wurden sie gewiss ruhig und standbaft ertragen.
Doch ich will lieber nicht weiter im Plural reden ; denn weder von
Ebel selbst, noch von Kanitz, noch von Diestel glaube ich es recht,
von der Grafin v. d. Groben ist es aber gewiss, und eben so batten
sich die verstorbene Grafin von Kanitz und in gleicher Weise
Fraiilein Emilie v. Schrotter verbalten. Nun aber fabre ich fort :
diese Frau, diese wahrhaft edle Natur hat in Ebel Alles erblickt,
Alles gefnnden und erhalten, was sie irgend sich hat ersehen
konnen; er ist ibr Geliebter, ihr Mann, ihr Erloser, ja, wie es in
irgend einem anderen Zusammenhange gar nicht moglich ware,
ihr Gott; er ist ihr Inhalt auf Erden und im Himmel, fur Zeit
und Ewigkeit ihm zu dienen, ist ihr Freiheit ; ihm ein Opfer zu
bringen, ware ibr das Herzblut nicht zu theuer; sondern das
Liebste, ihm sich hinzngeben, ganz, widerstandlos ; in ihm voll-
kommen sich zu verlieren — was konnte ihr Hoheres begegnen, wie
konnte sie selbst sich besser und veredelter empfinden und finden,
als in ihm ! und wiirde Ebel ihr sagen : " Ida, gehe bin und senke
diesem Menschen den Dolch in's Herz " — sie wiirde ihn nur an-
blicken, um zu sehen, ob es sein Ernst sei ; fande sie dies, so ginge
sie hin und thiite es ; ist er denn Mensch, dass er irren konnte ?
Ja, sie thate mehr, mehr wenigstens als Selbstopfer : wiirde ihr
Ebel sagen : Ida, gehe hin, liebe diesen Menschen und gieb dich
ihm als Weib hin, auch dies wiirde sie, wenn vielleicht auch unter
Thriinen, aber doch ohne alien Zweifel und in willigstem Geborsam
thun. Dass diese Schilderung vollkommen wahr und sehr miissig
ausgedriickt sei, davon bin ich innigst und durch die genaueste
PIETISTISCHEN UMTBJEBE IN KONIGSBERG. 335
Kenntniss eben dieser Personlichkeit iiberzeugt. Zusammen-
schaudern muss freilich jeder Unbefangene dariiber, Jeder aber
auch, der dabei denkt, was ein mensehliches Herz ist, und was eine
menschliclie Seele, wird bekennen miissen, dass dieses Herz, diese
Seele ein Gegenstand wiirdiger Betrachtung sei und innigster
Tbeilnahme ; und Niemand wird leugnen, dass ein holier Grad
angestammten und ausgebiideten inneren Adels dazu gehort, um
so weit sich verirren, so tief fallen zu konnen. Aber webe dem
Verfiihrer ! er hat diese edle Seele, dieses treufeste Herz Gott
entwendet, ihm einen anderen hineingelogen ! — Eben diese Hinge-
bung aber, die gewiss eben so wenig gewahrt als angenommen
werden sollte, ist zu einer schweren Fessel fur Ebel selbst geworden.
Demi mit der grossten Strenge sieht nun die Griifin v. d. Groben
niclit nur darauf, dass Niemand aus dem Kreise die tiefste, ja recht
eigentlich gottliche Ehrerbietung und unbedingten Gehorsam ihm
verweigere, sondern er selbst darf sich keinen Augenblick mensch-
lichen Schwachen iiberlassen, d. h. nicht der Schwiiche, ein bios
gewohnlicher Mensch zu sein ; dies wird sogleich als eine sclmeli
zu beseitigende Anfeehtung aus der alten Natur gedeutet ; unter
sehr freundlicher Geberdung nimmt er dann audi eine solche
Mahnung an und tritt sogleich in die Stellung als vollkommener
Mensch wieder ein. Offenbar aber ist er in dem Wahne, den er
selbst ausgestreut (an den er selbst seiner Schlauheit und ausser-
lichen Tendenz nach niemals fest geglaubt hat,) immer enger und
enger eingeschlossen und gebunden. Sie selbst, wie es nun einmal
in ihr geworden, vermag nicht anders zu denken, zu sehen und zu
handeln ; kiime ihr eine Stimme vom Himmel mit dem Zurufe :
" Ebel hat dich getauscht, betrogen, er ist ein Mensch, ja ein sehr
siindhafter und verschmitzter Mensch," sie wiirde ihm als einem
feindlichen, aus der Holle kommend nicht glauben ; denn sie ist
iiberzeugt, ihren himmlischen Freund und Erloser, dessen Weib
zu sein sieja die selige Bestimmung hat, gefunden, mit Augen
gesehen und inbriinstig umschlungen zu haben, und er ist bei ihr,
und sie ist bei ihm ! Und nur in dieser festen Ueberzeugung kann
sie sich selbst fassen und begreifen ; unter jeder anderen Bedingung
miisste sie sich ja selbst als eine Prostituirte betrachten und ver-
abscheuen ! Freilich wiirde Ebel selbst seinen innersten Hochmuth
nur so weit brechen konnen, um von dem tiefen Elend, das er um
sich angerichtet, geriihrt und erweicht zu werden, wiirde er dann
noch etwas tiefer in sich blicken, mit welcher schlangenherzigen
336 DARSTELLUNG DER
Kiilte er es zugelassen, dass sich Strome der wiirmsten Liebe liber
ihn ergossen, ohne dass er einen Laut der Wahrheit, ein Wort
menschlicher Aufrichtigkeit zur Erwiederung gespendet, wiirde
es ihm dann vielleicht zura ersten Male seit langer, langer Zeit
bange urn's Herz und schliige Angst in seine verhartete Seele ein :
— dann wiirde er wohl vor Allen zu ihr, zu dieser getauschten,
edlen Frau hineilen, ihr zu Fiissen mit dem Bekenntnisse stiirzen,
dass er ein sehr schwacher, tief verschuldeter, unglucklicher Mensch,
dessen drei Kardinal-Laster, Augenlust, Fleischeslust und hoffarti-
ges Wesen, sein Innerstes zerwiihlt, dass er ein hochmiithiger,
wolliistiger und verschmitzter Pfaffe sei ! Ach, dass er es tliate !
sie wiirde ihm glauben und ihm vergeben, Ruhe aber und Verge-
bung fur sich selbst suchen und finden, wo sie allein nur zu suehen
und zu finden sind, bei dem allbarmherzigen Gott ; ihr Herz wiirde
stark genug sein, um diesen hartesten Schlag zu ertragen ; denn sie
ist stark, und es konnte ihr der Trost, beim Suchen des Guten und
Wahren in die tiefste Tauschung gestiirzt wrorden zu sein, nicht
entgehen. Einstweilen thut jedoch Ebel etwas Anderes : er behauptet
sich in seiner Truggestalt, liisst sich von seiner Umgebung und
gewiss am Meisten von der beklagenswerthen Grafin v. d. Groben
die tiefste Adoration gefallen,riihmt seine Keuschheit und Reinheit,
und kein menschlich wahres Wort kommt liber seine Lippen.
3. Graf von Kanitz. Seine Personlichkeit zieht zunachst
durch Milde, sodann durch seine feine Sitte an, welche ein gliick-
liches Erbtheil vieler Personen aus den hoheren Standen ist. Sein
Charakter hat nichts Ostensibles, sein Gemlith nichts Widerstre-
bendes. Aber man kann ihn lange gekannt, ihm sehr nahe
gestanden haben, ohne etwas Positives in ihm gefunden zu haben ;
man kann bei vollstandiger und nicht unangenehmer personlicher
Erscheinung nicht leerer von allem personlichen Inhalte sein, als
er es ist. Man kann nicht einmal sagen, er sei unselbststandig ;
denn man findet gar kein Selbst, dem er innerlich folgen, oder von
dem er sich entfernen konnte. Dabei ohne griindliche Kenntnisse
irgend einer Art, also ohne Stlitzung innerlich, ohne festen Anhalt
ausserlich. Seine Jugend fallt in die Zeit, in welcher die Alien
selbst sich jugendlich erweckt fiihlten, die Jugend aber zur reinsten
Flamme der Vaterlandsliebe aufgelodert und von einem allgemei-
nen religiosen Gefiihle ergriffen war. Von diesem damals in
ganz Deutschland, vorziiglich aber in unserm Vaterlande wehenden
Geiste ist auch er nach dem Masse seiner Empfanglichkeit berlihrt
PIETISTISCHEN UMTRIEBE IN KONIGSBERG. 337
worden ; er machte den Feldzug mit und kehrte mit einer militari-
schen Dekoration zuriick. Erne solche Personiichkeit hat nun das
natiirliche Bediirfniss zur Anlehnung gegen einen Andern, nur
weiss sie freilich niclit die reclite zu suchen und zu finden, jeden-
falls wird sie selber viel leichter hingenommen von Anderen, die
Absicliten, gute oder iible, haben und verfolgen. Kanitz
glaubt, Ebel gefunden zu haben, in Wahrheit aber hat Ebel
Kanitz genommen. Misslicheres, ja Ungliicklicheres hatte
sick fur Kanitz gar nicht ereignen konnen ; denn, an einen
so absichtsvollen, versatilen Mann angeschlossen, war jede Mog-
lichkeit fur ihn verloren, irgend wann oder irgend wo einen
Schwerpunkt in sich selbst zu finden. Und dies auch ist in
der That voliig unterblieben. Kanitz vermag Nichts, und thut
Nichts, als fort und fort gleichsam die Lection aufsagen, die Ebel
ihm aufgegeben, nicht zu lernen, sondern die Worte selbst sind
mitgegeben, das darf nur aufgesagt werden, und dies ist seit mehr
als 20 Jahren das ausschliessliche Thun des Grafen v. Kanitz.
Denn das ist freilich einerlei, ob er sagt und thut, was Ebel oder
durch ihn die Grafin v. d. Groben oder irgend Jemand, der zu Ebel
gehort und doch selbst noch irgend Etwas ist, ihm zu sagen oder
zu thun aufgegeben. Es kann daher allerdings sogar possierlich
erscheinen, wenn Jemand, der wie Graf von Kanitz so ganz und gar
den Eindruck absoluter Schwache macht, sich starker Ausdriicke
bedient ; es erklart sich aber ganz leicht dadurch, dass sie zur
Lection gehoren. Mit einem Worte, es kann eigentlich vom Gra-
fen von Kanitz gar nicht als von einer bestimmten geistigen Indi-
viduality die Rede sein, und eben nur dies ist's, was hier liber ihn
bemerkt werden musste. Wird einst Ebel entlarvt sein, dann wird
Kanitz wie aus einem Traume erwachen und dann ein formlich
harmloser, wohlwollender, giitiger Mensch sein, denn dazu hat er
die natiirliche Bestimmung und den reinen Zug des Herzens. Bis
dahin sagt und thut er, was Ebel ihm befiehlt.
4. Der Prediger Diestel. Weder eine tiefe, noch schwierige,
noch verwickelte Natur, ist's dennoch schwer, iiber diesen Mann zu
reden, wenn es darauf ankommt, ihn ps}7chologisch zu charakteri-
siren. Es wollen sich namlich hiezu nicht leicht und auch nicht,
wenn man sorgfaltig sucht, Ausdriicke finden, die bezeichnend waren
und doch nicht ent weder den Anstand etwas verletzend oder den
Verdacht erregend, dass sie ohne Noth zu stark seien. In solcher
Verlegenheit ist man immer, wenn man anstiindig und wahr sprechen
VOL. II. Z
338 DARSTELLUNG DER
soil von Personen, gegen welche Nichts ungeziemender sein kann,
als ungemessener, unmiissiger, oder wolil gar roher Ausdruck.
Von Verirrungen, selbst von der tiefsten, ja sogar von offenbaren
Schlechtigkeiten kann man, wenn es sein muss, vor den gebildet-
sten und fein gesinnten Personen ohne Verlegenheit sprechen ;
denn jene Dinge beziehen sich auf sittliche Zustande, die zu be-
trachten oft ein sittliches Gebot, niemals aber unwiirdig, am We-
nigsten widerwiirtig sein kann ; das Gemeine aber erregt Ekel.
Man denke sich einen Mann von einer ungemeinen natiirlichen
Grobheit mid einem heftig polternden Wesen, der eben nur in sol-
chem Anfaliren und Anlassen Anderer zum Gefiihle eigner Tuch-
tigkeit zu gelangen vermag ; dabei, wie harte und rohe Menschen
immer zu sein pllegen, eine knechtische Natur, d. h. in schmutziger
Unterwerfung sich wohl gefallend, wenn sie nur ausserhalb dieser
selben Zahmung Alles anfahren und angreifen kann, ja wohl zum
Theil hiezu von der eignen Herrschaft bestimmt ist. Innerlich
verworren, platt sinnlich, alle geistige Thatigkeit nur unter der
Form des Streites und diesen selbst nur als rohen Zank begreifend
und iibend — denkt man sich einen Solchen, so hat man die all-
gemeine Grundlage des Herrn Prediger Diestel, die freilich keine
zu einem rein menschlichen, noch weniger aber zu einem anziehenden
Charakter ist. Es muss aber noch hinzugenommen werden : er
hatte friiher Jura studirt, dann aber sich zum Studium der Theo-
logie gewendet; wiihrend dieses Studiums, noch auf der Universitat
ist er mit Schonherr in Verbindung getreten und, von diesem als
ein Engel aus der Apokalypse erkannt, Heinrich Siegelbrecher
genannt worden. Wie wenig tief oder nur mit wissenschaftlichem
Ernst er die Theologie studirt, zeigt eben seine friihe Verbindung
mit Schonherr, wie wenig er aber audi fur sich innerlich hingegeben
hat, beweist seine Trennung von Schonherr beim Eintritt in's geist-
liche Amt. (Landgeistlichen, auch mehren sehr voluminosen Be-
lehrungsbriefen, der kleinste fiillte ein ziemlich starkes Quartheft,
die Fraulein von Derschau, spatere Grafin von Kanitz, ihm ge-
schrieben, antwortete er weder miindlich noch schriftlich ; denn sie
drang auf ihn mit grossem Ernst, mit entschiedener, freilich phan-
tastischer Schiirfe ein, und da zog sich denn seine feige Natur zu-
riick, wie mun ja sogar von sonst wilden und reissenden Thieren
erzahlt, dass sie durch entschlossenen, ernst menschlichen Blick in
die Flucht getrieben werden.) So wandelte er denn lange hin, von
Wenigen bemerkt, aber, wie er nachher von sich selbst zur grossen
PIETISTISCHEN UMTRJEBE IN KONIGSBERG. 339
Bescliwerde derer, die es anzuhoren batten, erzahlte, in grosser Sorg-
losigkeit urn seinem sittlichen Zustand, in trager Hingebung an
seine Sinnlichkeit. Aber freilich war ihm fur sein Amt am Ange-
messensten und seiner Natur am Entsprechendsten, dass er ein
heftig polternder Prediger blieb, und hiezu war eine dogmatische
Anschliessnng an die kirchliche Orthodoxie am Bequemsten, so
wie ihm wohl friiher in der Verbindung mit Schonherr nicht dessen
Lehre an sich, sondern das damit verbundene Schimpfen, Verachten
und Wegwerfen alles Anderen das anziigliche Wesen zu sein
scheint. Im Jahre 1821 (wenn ich nicht irre, aueh schon friiher)
tritt er wiederum in eine neue Verbindung mit Ebel, mit dem er
jedoch, ausserlich einmal von diesem sehr verachtet, immer in eini-
gem Zusammenhange geblieben war. Das Nachste, was er nun
that, um seine Reue darzuthun, war ein Umherrennen zu den Mit-
gliedern des Kreises, um vor ihnen nicht sowohl Sundenbekenntnisse
abzulegen, als vielmehr wie ein Wasserkobold Strome von Sunden
aus sich herauszufluthen und herabzustiirzen. Was aber das wirk-
liche Thun anlangt, so hatte er dafiir ein besonderes Abkommen
mit sich getroffen. Es war z. B. nicht gestattet, Taback zu rauchen
oder zu schnupfen ; Letzteres hatte er nie gethan, Ersteres setzte
er aber auch jetzt noch fort. Wie aber erklart er dies ? er thue es,
um sich vor sich selbst zu demuthigen und sich im Siindengefuhle
zu erhalten. Es war ferner schwer verpont, Kinder zu zeugen voi-
der volligen Wiedergeburt (und zu dieser war kein miiimliches Glied
des Kreises — versteht sich, mit Ausnahme Ebel's — gelangt); Diestel
zeugte Kinder; warnm? wie erklart er dies? es sei abscheulich,
sagte er, aber es diene ihm, es fiihre ihn immer tiefer in die Ueber-
zeugung seiner Schwachheit, und dass er immer wieder von vorn
anfangen miisse.
Niemand im Kreise verkannte ihn damals, man sah ihn als einen
sehr fleischlichen Menschen an; Ebel gab sich mit ihm wenig, die
Anderen ungern ab ; die Heuchelei lag oben auf. So im Ganzen
blieb er, und so blieb es mit ihm bis zur Zeit meines Ausscheiclens
aus diesem Kreise, im August 1825. Ein Jahr spiiter haben sich
auch Olshausen und v. Tippelskirch aus dieser Verbindung heraus-
gelost, und da es dann wohl rathsam war, im Kreise selbst einige
Promotionen vorzunehmen, so mag Diestel wohl zu einer hoheren
Stellung berufen worden sein. Doch kann ich naturlich nicht sagen,
welche besondere Aufgabe man ihm gestellt, welches besondere Amt
man ihm iibcrtragen haben mag ; gewiss nur ist, dass er nichts
340 DAKSTELLUNG DER
Anderes thun konnte, als wozu er fahig ist, und was er denn audi
wirklich, so weit es zur ofFentlichen Erscheinung gevvorden ist,
gethan hat : er ist unglaublich grob, anfahrend, polternd, schmii-
liend gewesen, und natiirlich ganz aus dem oben naher angegebenen
taktischen Princip gegen den Teufel, d. h. er bezog sicli entschieclen
lligend auf das Zeugniss Gottes, dem er ja diente, wenn er im
Kampfe gegen den Teufel log.
Davon wimmelt es in seinen Schriften gegen Olshausen, die in
der That nur Schmiihschriften sind, von ihm jedoch kraftige, ja
erschiittemde genannt werden. Theils aus seiner Natur, theils aber
aus der verkehrtesten-Anwendung seiner juristischen Studien hat
er sich eine der widerwartigsten Arten ohnehin sclion unwiirdiger
und verachtlicher Rabulistereien hier ausgebildet, welche ihm nun
als Waffe zur Vertheidigung, ja als Stellvertreterin gesunder Logik
dienen muss, so wie ihm die ziigelloseste Grobheit als Surrogat der
Entschiedenheit gilt. Doch ich breche ab ; denn es ist in der That
unmoglich, iiber diesen Mann geziemend zu reden, wenn man nicht
in eine Ausdrucksweise gerathen soil, die man selbst eben so un-
ziemlich fur's Aussprechen, als fiir das Yernehmen halten muss.
5. Endlich sollte hier noch Einiges iiber mich selbst bemerkt
vcrden. Dass ich es aber nicht unternehmen werde, eine Schil-
.lerung von mir selbst zu entwerfen, versteht sich von selbst.
Denn von Vorziigen, die ich etwa hatte, zu reden, ware widerwartig,
und mich gegen die Anklage Ebel's und seiner Anhiinger zu
vertheidigen, unwiirdig. Seit einem Viertel Jahrhundert lebe ich
an hiesigem Orte als Arzt, seit 20 Jahren als akademischer Lehrer
bei der hiesigen Universitat ; es giebt keine Klasse der Einwohner
hier, die mich nicht kennt, mit der ich nicht in nliherer oder ent-
fernterer Beziehung gewesen ware ; es kennen mich meine Mit-
biirger, meine Berufs-und Amtsgenossen, es kennt mich iibrigens
auch Deutschland als wissenschaftlichen Schriftsteller meines Fachs.
Mogen Andere, mogen die, welche mich kennen mlissen, ein Ur-
theil iiber meinen menschlichen, sittlichen, biirgerlichen und wis-
senschaftlichen Charakter aussprechen, mogen sie entscheiden, ob
das, was Ebel und die Seinen iiber und gegen mich ausgesagt haben,
wahr sein kann oder gelogen sein muss.
Denn in der That, sie haben mich solcher Vergehungen, solches
Lebenswandels beziichtigt, die sich nicht verdecken lassen konnten,
von Allen also, die mich kennen, gekannt sein mussten, und wer
1st an einem Orte mehr gekannt als ein alter Arzt ? — Ich kenne
PIETISTISCHEN UMTRIEBE IN KONIGSBERG. 341
nicht einmal Alles, ja ich kenne nur einen Theil dessen, was Ebel
und sein Anhang gegen micli vorgebracht haben ; es ist dies aber
so entstellt, zum Theil so in Unwahrheit und bosliclie Deutung
gezogen, theils anch so rein erlogen, dass ich in den mannigfachen
Vermahnungen, die ich als Zeuge in dieser Untersuchungsangele-
genheit zu iiberstehen hatte, es mir vom Herrn Inquirenten erbeten
habe, mir eine genauere nnd weitere Kenntnissnahme der'Injurien,
Verleumdungen u. s. w., die jene Leute gegen mich vorgebracht,
zu erlassen ; dagegen mich zu vertheidigen hatte ich als etwas
Schimpfliches empfunden, Injurienklagen aber gegen Personen zu
erheben, die in Ehrenschandung Anderer ihr letztes Vertheidigungs-
und Rettungsmittel suchen, war ich nicht geneigt; und Alles zu
vermeiden, was vielieicht doch mich innerlich hiitte erregen konnen,
schien mir Pflicht. Nur Einiges will ich hier nennen und durch
wenige erlauternde Worte begleiten. Bancroft Library
a. Ebel hat gegen mich als Zeugen protestirt ; ich wiinschte,
die hohe Behorde hatte seine Protestation angenommen, da ich
alsdann grosser und schmerzlicher Unannehmlichkeiten iiberhoben
gewesen ware. Sein Grund aber, den er angab (andere und bessere
hatte er gewiss ; er wusste ja, dass ich ihn durchschaut, aber dies
verschwieg er kluglich,) war : ich sei notorisch sein Feind. Noto-
risch ! Wem ist dies bekannt ? warum nennt er nicht solche That-
sachen ? Was habe ich je, auch nach meiner Trennung von ihm,
Feindseliges gegen ihn unternommen ? warum nennt er nicht solche
Thatsachen? warum nicht eine einzige ? Ja, er, und nicht er
allein weiss es, dass ich, lange schon von ihm geschieden, nicht
aufgehort habe, wohlwollend gegen ihn gesinnt zu sein. Ich will
em Beispiel nennen : mehre Jahre nach unserer Trennung erkrankte
er schwer und litt sehr lange ; in der Stadt waren die schlimmsten,
ehrenruhrigsten Geriichte iiber Grund und Ursache seiner Krank-
heit verbreitet. Wie wenig aber, wie schwierig wenigstens ein
Arzt, der mit den friiheren Lebensverhaltnissen Ebel's nicht be-
kannt war, und dem aufrichtige Mittheilungen zu machen, er gewiss
nicht geneigt war, den wahren Grund des Uebels werde fmden, also
auch die entsprechende Behandlungsweise werde anwenden konnen,
konnte mir nicht entgehen. Oft nahm ich hieriiber Riicksprache
mit Olshausen, endlich entschloss ich mich, Ebel das Anerbieten
zu machen, mit seinem Arzte, einem mir sehr lieben Kollegen,
zusammenzutreteu, um auf die fur ihn schonendste Weise diesem
meine Ansicht von der Natur (wenn auch nicht von den moralischen
342 DARSTELLUNG DER
Ursachen) der Krankheit mitzutheilen. Ebel liess mir eine schrift-
liche Antwort durcli Diestel ertheilen, in welcher er das Aner-
bieten zwar ablehnte, aber fiir die grosse Liebe, die ichihm dadurch
zu erkennen gegeben, dankte, versichernd, sie habe ihm ausseror-
dentlich wohlgethan. Und nun nennt er micli seinen Feind ? seinen
notorischen Feind?
b. Ebel behauptet, der Verlust an Einnahme, den ich
durch die Trennung von ihm und den Seinen habe, schmerze
mich und mache mich ihm feindlich gesinnt. Ich sage Nichts
von der edlen Gesinnung, aus welcher solche Conjectur allein
entspringen kann, thatsachlich aber ist Folgendes : allerdings
habe ich aus friiher schon entwickelten natiirlichen Griinden aus-
serlich sehr durch meine -Verbindung mit ihm gelitten, und meine
Verhaltnisse sind dadurch sehr gedriickt gewesen ; dies jedoch mit
Anderem, viel Schwererem habe ich geduldig getragen. Seit ich
aber von ihm getrennt bin, sind mir freilich alle Ebelianer, von
denen ich sonst ein Einkommen durch arztliches Honorar gehabt,
entgangen ; mein Einkommen aber hat trotz diesem Verluste seit-
dem beinahe um das Dreifache sich vermehrt, was ich hiemit eidlich
versichere.
c. Ebel behauptet, er habe mir noch einige sogenannte arztliche
Freunde gelassen und somit auch ein Einkommen, was er durch ein
einziges Wort hatte auflieben konnen. Wahr ist hiervon nur, dass
mir allerdings noch einige arme Ebelianer blieben, aber bios, weil
er selbst sich immer mit den Armen wenig in Befreundung ein-
gelassen. Wenn ich 10 Thaler jahrlich fiir meine Gesammtein-
nahme von der damals mir gebliebenen Praxis bei Ebelianern von
Jemandem erhielte, so wiirde dieses mehr als um die Halfte zu-
kommen, was ich auch eidlich versichere.
d. Ebel hat behauptet, er konne, wenn ich ihm das Beichtsiegel
zu brechen gestatten wollte, Dinge von mir aussagen, die meine
Glaubhaftigkeit als Zeugen auf heben wiirden. Dies vielleicht bei-
spiellose Verfahren eines Geistlichen, dazu eines evangelischen, will
ich hier nicht beurtheilen ; es weiht und schiindet sich selbst hin-
reichend. Ich habe ihm diese Erlaubniss ertheilt unter der Bedin-
gung, dass mir seine Aussagen zur Einsicht mitgetheilt wiirden. Er
hat Nichts ausgesagt, wenigstens ist mir Nichts mitgetheilt worden,
was doch hatte geschehen miissen.
e. Diestel hat schriftliche Slindenbekenntnisse von mir zu den
Acten gegeben. Woher hat er jene Papiere ? sie sind von mir
PIETISTISCHEN UMTRIEBE IN KONIGSBERG. 343
niedergesehrieben und in den dazu bestimmten Ausdriicken nieder-
gescbrieben auf ausdriickliches und hartes Andringen der Grafin
v. d. Groben und der verstorbenen Grafin v. Kanitz ; dieser auch
liabe ich sie iibergeben. Zur Niederschreibung und Auslieferung
dieser mir grosstentheils aufgegebenen und aufgebiirdeten Siinden-
bekenntnisse bat man micb genothigt, wenige Tage, nachdem ich
das Ungliick gehabt, meine erste Frau durch den Tod zu verlieren,
also in einer innerlich getriibten und zerrissenen Gemiithsstimmung.
Zweimal batte ich in ich von Ebel und den Seinigen zuriickgezogen
(Kanitz sagt : weggeschlichen ; nur wer mich kennt, weiss, dass
man mir eben so gut, d. h. eben so unwahr nachsagen konnte : ich
floge, als dass ich schleiche). Jetzt sollte ich mit Stricken gebun-
den werden, und dazu benutzte man meine damalige Gemiithsstim-
mung. Ich habe diese mir jetzt vorgelegten Papiere nicht ansehen
mogen, weil sie mich zum Tbeil mit Indignation iiber mich selbst
wegen der Schwache, die ich damals gezeigt, erfiillten. Ich be-
merke nur das : wahrscheinlich hat man nur eine Auswahl von
jenen Papieren dem Ricbter iibergeben ; sind aber alle mitgetheilt,
so miissen sich darin mehrere sehr iible Dinge von und iiber Ebel
befinden, unter Anderm ein wirklicber Schurkenstreich ! Nnr
solche, eben diese Papiere bewahrt man auf (ich habe Alles, was
ich in Handen gebabt, bis auf ein Privatschreiben gleich nach
meiner Trennung zu verbrennen fiir Pflicht gehalten), handigt sie
nun aus und tragt sie zum Richter ! Und wer thut's ? Diestel,
ein Geistlicher, dem ich jene Papiere eingegeben ; Siindenbekennt-
nisse schleppt ein Geistlicher zum weltlichen Kichter ! ! — Wer kann
hierauf etwas Anderes sagen als : pfui ! niedertrachtig ! Und was
will er damit ? was sollen sie beweisen ? dass ich als Zeuge un-
glanbhaft sei, weil ich ein Sunder bin ? als solcher mich fiihle,
bekenne? so argumentirt ein Geistlicber? ein evangel i sch er ? so
argumentiren Personen, die strengere Beichte abgefordert haben,
als je in der katholischen Kirche geschehen ist ? hat man ihnen
nicht schon Gesinnungen als Siinden, als wirkliche Siinden bekennen
miissen ? Nun wahrlich, woriiber soil man sich bei solchem Yer-
fahren mehr wundern, iiber die Bosheit des Herzens oder iiber die
Verleugnung jeder christlichen Natur ?
/. Diestel hat Zeugen, 4 ungliickliche Frauenzimmer, alle alt,
alle von Natur wenig ausgestattet, korperlich sogar zum Theil
gezeicbnete Personen vor Gericht gefiihrt, um auszusagen, dass ich
sinnliche Begierden gegen sie gezeigt. Gelogen ! ekelhaft und
344 DARSTELLUNG, ETC.
dnmm gelogen ! Mlidchen z. B. (allerdings setir alte) sagen aus :
ich kiisse wie ein "Wolliistling ! Woher wissen Madchen so Etwas ?
welcher Geistliche, doch nein, welch er Pfaffe hat ihnen gesagt, dass
sie sogar deni Richter vorliigen sollen ? — Ein anderes altes Miid-
chen sagt : sie sei mir arztlich sehr verpflichtet, aber ich hiitte
arztlich sie doch vernachlassigt und sie dennoch geliebt ! — Eine
steinalte Frau, Mutter mehrer erwaclisener Kinder, eine Fran, die
ich nur Iirztlich wahrend einer Krankheit gesehen, in welch er sie
an heftigem Speichelfluss gelitten, sagt : ich habe sie gekiisst ;
wahrlich, dies hiitte nnr aus Barmherzigkeit und in grosster Selbst-
verleugnung geschehen konnen. — Doch genug von Dingen, die als
wahrhafte Tollheiten erscheinen miissten, wenn sie nicht dennoch
schlau und boshaft waxen ; denn im Protokoll stehen doch immer
Namen und bestimmte Angaben, aber nicht die Bilder der Perso-
nen, nicht ihre Yerhaltnisse ; es ware ja doch wohl moglich, den
Richter irre zu leiten !
Ich schliesse, wie ich begonnen, nicht Andere anzuklagen, nicht
mich vertheidigen wollend mit diesen Zeilen.
Eine dunkle, verwickelte Sache, die einer psychologischen
Erorterung bediirftig ist, wollte ich einigermassen erliiutern.
1st dies irgend wie erreicht, so ist der Schmerz, den ich beim
Niederschreiben empfunden, reichlich belohnt.
Konigsberg, den 15 July, 1836.
THE END.
LONDON:
STRANGEWAYS AND WALDEN, POINTERS,
2S Castle St. Leicester Sq.
NOTE TO THE FOURTH EDITION.
(To be read after the booh.)
So many persons have asked me for what is called
a "little help" in reading the story told in ' Spiri-
tual Wives/ that I am led to offer, by way of final
note, a few words on what the author meant to do,
and on what he takes to be the moral bearing of the
strange facts which it became his duty to set forth.
One day, when standing near the Holy Sepul-
chre, he saw two swarthy penitents start from their
knees and fly at each other's throat : knives flashed
out from belts ; mob rushed against mob ; and the
holy fane had to be cleared of these worshippers by
the Arab guard. " What is it all about V he
asked a Turk. The grave Oriental smiled : — " No
one can tell. The young men are converts and
full of pride. Their heads are turned ; they have
no longer any habits to curb their zeal ; they would
take the life of man, and call their crime the act
of God. Pesto ! they are mad"
At that time, he was studying on the spot the
first plantation on this earth of a Religion of Love.
And here was tragic proof of what spiritual pride
and ignorant zeal could make of even a religion of
love ! That reflection was the germ of his present
NOTE TO THE FOURTH EDITION.
book, to which further thought and wider travel
have given the actual name and shape.
" Spiritual Wives" was a term well known to
our old divines, by whom it was used to describe
the demons which enter into wandering and cor-
rupted hearts. Bishop Bale, in a famous passage,
tells that story of the "three spiritual wives" —
namely, Pride, Covetousness, and Lechery — whom
Bichard Lion Heart assigned to certain holy men.
The fanatics of our own time have given to the term
a new importance.
In this work an attempt is made to describe
the morbid growth of certain feelings, from their
birth in the revival camp to their wreck on the
domestic hearth ; to paint in its diseased activity
one of those passions which control the innermost
lives of men ; to show in what subtle and seduc-
tive ways the poison of spiritua] pride can work
into the heart ; and, in the end, to warn the young
seeker after a " newer way " and a " higher law "
what perils beset his feet the moment he quits the
safe old path of experience, on any imaginary
" leading of the spirit."
All the men and women whose lives are here
traced — from Archdeacon Ebel and Countess Ida,
down to the Rev. Abram C. Smith and Mary
Cragin — began by seeking for a higher kind of
good. They wandered into peril, not through
a will inclining them to evil, but through the
yearning to live a better and a purer life. They
fell by spiritual pride, by wishing to be " wiser
than what is written ;" and they passed into the
NOTE TO THE FOURTH EDITION.
stage of mental craze and moral death, through
having set their hearts on a perfection never to be
reached on earth.
It is this moral element in the story of their
lives which moves our pity for women like Countess
Ida and Mary Cragin.
Then, the facts of this story show us how re-
vivals test the conservative powers of church and
society in countries which are all of the highest
type, and have many fine elements of a common
life. A storm breaks out in England, Germany,
and the United States. In England that storm
sweeps by, and leaves the fabric of our church and
our society untouched. In Germany it produces
social wreck and ruin. In the United States it
gives rise to new forms of society and wild experi-
ments in domestic life. Why this difference of
result? Is it not mainly because in England
church and society are friendly, while in Germany
they are hostile, and in America indifferent ?
England can shake off men like Prince and
his followers, because her society is old, her
churches are the churches of her upper ranks, and
her religious condition is fixed by the action of her
educated lay mind. Germany cannot so quickly
put down men like Ebel and Diestel, because her
laymen and her theologians are at feud; the
church is not in real union with society ; and the
intellect of the country can only act on the divines
in open fields of conflict. The United States,
ignoring churches altogether as public bodies, have
hardly any means (in spite of their many and
NOTE TO THE FOURTH EDITION.
noble religious institutions) of controlling the
freaks of a revival preacher, except in the last
resort, when some rustic crowd of miners and
woodmen, maddened by what they think bad
doctrine and worse practice, rise on the saint, and
vindicate public morality with a bag of feathers
and a box of tar.
Is there not in all these details food for serious
thought ?
Yet a wise reader may find some comfort even
in the sad and fearful facts displayed. This doc-
trine of Spirit-brides is but one of our greatest
virtues run to waste. It is an offspring of that
Gothic race which invented Home, which elevated
Woman, which purified Chivalry ; and it springs,
indeed, from no other source than excess of rever-
ence and misdirected love. Under all the evils here
depicted, there lies a ground for rational hope of
better things. The best of men must have the
defects of their proper virtues ; must have these
defects on the scale of their superior gifts. It may
increase our pity and lessen our dismay — though
it need not deaden our sense of peril — to find how
many of our brethren have been led astray by
instincts which were once noble, as well as by mo-
tives which were originally pure.
To critics who suggest that my purpose may
have been to corrupt, and not to warn, I have
nothing to say. My writings during twenty years
are before the world.
W. HEPWORTH DIXON.
March 26, 1868.
i, Leicester Square, London,
October, 1882.
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