BOOKS OF THE DAY
Millennial Dawn
The Jehovah's Witnesses. By Herbert Hewitt Stroup. (Columbia University Press. $2.50; Oxford. 16s. 6d.) IT is a curious fact that the body of believers calling themselves Jehovah's Witnesses should have become known in England as conscientious objectors, making puzzles for the military tribunals: curious, because the sect, at least sixty years old in England, has increased over the world by means of a book-and-tract system far more extensive than any other devised by a modern religious movement.
During the last war and afterwards the authorities in many countries were driven to take notice of the International Bible Students. It was the second leader, " Judge " J. F. Rutherford, who in 1931 re-named his followers. The founder, " Pastor " C. T. Russell, had died in 1916. A little group of Adventists, near Pittsburgh, in 1872, gave Russell his start. Eight years later he opened a branch in Liverpool, and by 1884, when Zion's Watch Tower (the Society's publishing department) was founded, the business was considerable, and Russell had a world-wide audience for " millennial dawn." The publicity mechanism has been managed all along with results, in point of numbers, which the most ambitious advertising agency might envy. A first edition, issued from head- quarters in Brooklyn, N.Y., usually consists of several million copies. It is claimed that the circulation of Rutherford's writings has gone far above Ioo,000,000, in many tongues. Colporteurs by the thousand are in the service, persistently at work. This literature is offered as the sole repository of -" The Truth." Rutherford, who died in 1942, is its only source. He held the key to all mysteries. He alone is to be trusted as the guide to Bible truth and the will of Jehovah.
Mr. Stroup, who belongs to Brooklyn College and so is stationed hard by the Witnesses' centre, has worked through the material and taken pains to check his facts—no easy task, for the officials appear to be always on guard. It is odd, by the by, that Mr. Stroup should speak throughout of " the " Jehovah's Witnesses. Rutherford emerges from the record as a complete dictator, in entire command of the organisation as of the doctrine. No challenge to his teaching was allowed ; expulsion was the penalty for the smallest deviation. His system and methods were totalitarian. Rutherford, unlike the founder, was said to be cautious in prophecy ; yet for some years his newspaper advertising was hung on to the phrase, " Millions now living will never die."
in every country except Britain the Witnesses have borne persecu- tion. Many of them welcome it as a sign that the End is nigh. In numberless instances they have provoked hostility by their reck- less attacks upon the Churches. " Religion is a racket," said Ruther- ford, and the Witness preachers are apt to denounce religion, =- defined, as a leading agency of Satan. Rutherford's notion was that all forms of organisation—excepting, of course, his
own—are evil and self-corrupting. Every Government, in- cluding even the American, is doomed to extinction. The Wit- nesses enjoy their separateness and sense of superiority. The American Civil Liberties Union, vigilant in defence of civil rights, takes up their cause as a matter of public concern. They are not grateful, for government belongs of necessity to Satan's Kingdom, which is so soon to be overthrown. The Witnesses are forbidden to salute the Flag, and for this their children, by a judgement of the Supreme Court, can be excluded from the American schools.
The belief in an imminent Second Coming has always prevailed widely in America, and in large part it explains the movement's popular appeal. The Witnesses, in their door-to-door ministrations, are often welcomed in the neglected immigrant communities, and by many Jews, who note their unvarying use of the name Jehovah and their absorption in the Old Testament. Their theology is a mélange of Rutherford's own devising. He enlarged upon the joys of heaven and the non-existence of hell. He declared that on earth every one of Jehovah's purposes has been and is frustrated by the Devil, who after these aeons of success is to be destroyed with all his works. Without being aware of it, they hold the Manichaean doctrine in its most elementary form. The Witnesses build wholly upon the Bible, but they are startingly selective. St. Paul, for example, is described as the first great corrupter of the Gospel, and the Catholic Church is
reprobated as the creation of " Satan and Paul." Marriage is dis- couraged by the Witnesses. They condemn singing, with, of course.
all kinds of worldly amusement. Mr. Stroup explains that they are not pacifists by creed, since Jehovah, manifestly, has sanctioned many wars ; and, moreover, wars and revolutions must precede the final catastrophe. Rutherford went to jail for the line he took in the last war, and the Society's theory of the world conflict just ended is that God could not have been concerned with it. The logic is simple. The powers of this world are the organisation of Satan, and the Witnesses do not fight for them.
S. K. RATCLIFFE.
Previous page
