THE SHAKERS OR GIRLINGITES.
AATE do not quite agree with Mr. Auberon Herbert, who says TT in his letter to the Times of Tuesday that the difference between the poor Shakers, who have just been ejected from their house near Lymington for debt and general incapacity to manage their worldly affairs, and the "respectable" Christian world outside their gates, is chiefly this,—"that they [the Shakers] carried out their superstitions" logically, that is, that " they had the misfortune to believe absolutely in what they professed,"—while the Respect- ables do not. Nothing is easier, and to our minds, nothing is less con- vincing to any thoughtful man, than that sort of attack upon a large conception of a very complex matter which consists in panegyrising the earnestness of those who take a small and very fragmentary view of it as if it were the whole, and in condemning by implication the sincerity of everybody else. What do we cal the medical practitioners who ride a hobby, like exercise, or cold water, or electricity, or a particular regimen of living, to death, and make health depend on following the prescribed rules, except ignoramuses or quacks ? And it seems to us that whatever can be said against Christ's teaching, it can hardly be denied that it is as rich and Complex a thing, as much needing study as a whole, and the care- ful avoidance of fragmentary treatment and caricature, as the principles of medicine. To say that the followers of Mrs. Girling are -more like the early Christians,—say, for instance, the fol- lowers of St. Paul,—than any of the regular Christian Churches, is virtually to say, we suppose, that the early Christians came to such a dead-lock with the world around them as Mrs. Girling's followers have come to, which was not the case ; 'in- deed if they had, we should probably have never heard either of the Archbishops praying for rain, on whom Mr. Herbert is unjustly severe, or of Mrs. Girling and her friends, to.whom he is justly lenient. The early Church at Jerusalem, which had all things common, never seems to have mortgaged its property and forgotten to pay the interest till the mortgage was foreclosed. St. Paul, at all events, was evidently a man of business. He not only made tents successfully, so as to be "chargeable to no man," but he inculcated the most excellent business principles,—principles, in- deed, at once of worldly and unworldly wisdom,—on his unknown disciples at Rome :—" Render therefore to all their dues ; tribute to whom tribute is due, custom to whom custom, fear to whom fear, honour to whom honour. Owe no man anything, but to love one another." But while we do not think Mr. Herbert has had at all a great success in using Mrs. Girling and her followers as inexpensive missiles to cast at the heads 'of less eccentric Christian Churches, we heartily agree with him that the attempt to make her out insane because she takes up in a somewhat isolated and capricious fashion a knotty fragment or two of the Christian teaching, was a very monstrous one ; and also we agree with him entirely that it is exceedingly likely that a new generation may arise' which will look on "the superstitions of the educated as even more pitiable than the superstitions of the ignorant," though whether the former superstitions will then be illustrated by the superficial essays of orthodox prelates, or by those of heterodox automatists, we think it might be rather difficult hastily to determine. In any case, Mr. Auberon Herbert has acted with his usual kindliness and keen feeling-for misery, in giving the poor Shakers the offer of a large barn and outbuildings for temporary occupation, though be must have been aware that by doing so he was strengthening their belief,—and as he thinks, their superstition,—that God wonld answer their prayers ; indeed, it would probably be a special marvel to them that God should do so by making use of so sceptical and unbelieving an instrument for that purpose as himself.
With regard to the creed itself which has led all these poor people into their very unsuccessful speculations at Lymington, and now got them between the horns of a very disagreeable dilemma,—on the one hand, the disavowing of a faith to which they feel pledged by the loyalty of inward conviction,—and on the other, a very uncomfortable and gradual kind of starvation,— what strikes one most about it is not at all its affinity to the creed of the early Christians as that creed appears in the New Testament, for that was full of depth and spiritual shading, but the crude and hard simplicity it displays, the corporeality without any sensual feature,—in a word, the tendeney to degenerate from Christ's Gospelinto a creed of the type which we might suppose the "toiling millions of men sunk in labour and pain" to mould for themselves out of the more prominent physical elements of a greater creed. As a rule, of course, the beliefs of men on all subjects have been chiefly determined by the inspiration or the genius of the few. The many have been led, not leaders. Life and force, and often youth, and flashes of either genius or inspiration, have been necessary to trace out a great creed on any subject. And for the most part, the dull leaden experience of the masses of men before they grew into the light of such beliefs have not veri- fied such creeds, though the beliefs themselves have often power to transfigure and glorify what was previously leaden-hued experience. It takes a man whose life is more vivid than that of others, whose emotions are more intense, whose imagination is more easily kindled, whose conscience is more powerfully 'efficient, or whose intellect is more flexible and vigilant, to think-out the great thoughts, or receive the &eat flashes of illumination, which thenceforward touch the experience even of all the rest of the world with light. It is easier, for instance, for a ,man to whom all the events of life present some new and striking world of opportunity, to believe in the divine providence which guides his individual life, than it is for the creature of dull routine and wearing toil, to whom labour means weariness, and each new morning means only a new winding-up of the machine. Such a man may accept with joy the great gospel, " Now is my heart troubled, and what shall I say ? Father, save me from this hour. But for this cause came 1 to this hour. Father, glorify thy name,"—may find it shed a flood of light over his life ; but his own experience, previous to such a spring of the soul towards an authoritative announcement of the truth, would never for a moment have suggested it. It would never have occurred to him that the very key of the trouble and difficulty in earthly circumstances was the use of that trouble and difficulty for ends which nothing but trouble and difficulty, nay, nothing but that trouble and difficulty, could have answered. It takei either inspiration or the highest genius to find a meaning for ordinary human life which shall not be a depressing meaning. We might almost say that the world would hardly have had a religion, if there had been none but common minds with common experience,—not because .the common minds with the
common experience are incapable of accepting it, but be- cause it takes uncommon minds with uncommon experience to help them to interpret their own ordinary life rightly. Just as science would be impossible without an uncommon mind and uncommon powers of observation to find a key for common minds and common powers of observation, so the great ideal and religious faiths of the world would be impossible without the same help. Let an ordinary mind try to recast for itself the teaching either of science or of faith,—without constantly recurring to the luminous guidance of men more or less capable
of discovery,—and it is sure to show some great degeneration of conception, to grovel towards a dull, unillumined routine notion,— a routine notion that wants all life and vigour. It takes something much above us to show us what is ; nay, it takes a constant striving towards that which is above us to keep up the knowledge we have once attained of what is ; and nothing is more certain than the tendency in man, after the first great impression caused by a new working of the mind or heart has passed away, rapidly to lose all the depth and vividness of that impression, and quietly to substitute for it something far more in keeping with the dull. and spiritless experience which preceded the making of that impression.
Now the creed of the Girlingites seems to us just such a leaden corporeal recast of one knotty bit of Christianity, as would proceed from " the toiling millions of men sunk in labour and pain," though it is brightened up with a marvel or two and a very strong appeal to the faithfulness of honest hearts. Mrs. Girling, at least as she appears to have explained her creed in the presence of the Daily News' reporter, must have got hold of a very strong impression indeed that the gift of the Spirit of God is accompanied and signified by a complete renewal of the human body, so as to set it free from all that is .evil and perishable in it, and fit it for the immortal life. All her peculiar creed hinges somehow on the body. The dancing of the Shakers is believed to be the posses- sion of their bodies by the Holy Spirit. Their celibate life is due to the influence of the Holy Spirit on their bodies. It was a vision of Christ in the body from which Mrs. Girling dates her revelation. It has been by miraculous cures of bodily ailments that her belief in that revelation has been sustained and renewed. Here is the account of what she says :— " She then prayed earnestly for the Spirit of God to enlighten her, and after long and earnest pleading, at the midnight hour, in darkness and solitude, she received the Holy Spirit. She immediately experienced an entire change of body from top to toe. Eight years afterwards, at noonday, she saw a vision. She saw Christ in the clouds, and from Him received a revelation that she should not see death till He came, and also a commandment to preach this to all men. Addressing her- self pointedly, she said, with arm and finger extended. ' As clearry and surely as I see you and see your features, so clearly did I see the form and face of Christ, the Son of God. You may think me crazed, or what you like. I care not ; but I know as surely as_ I stand hero that my body shall never enter the ground. I do not say Christ will bo here
to-day, to-morrow, ' next week, or next year—for I know not when • but I do know I shall be alive when He comes. I have preached the truth to millions of people, and with God's grace will still preach the same to- night. Amongst you, my friends, are doubtless married men. I do not say you are wrong, God forbid. Marry and be given in marriage, but being sons of Adam, all your bodies must see death. Our bodies are already quickened by the Holy Spirit, and will not see death. I do not say you will receive condemnation at the day of resurrection, but each man as he acts in accordance; with his conscience so will he receive judgment and have different degrees of happiness. We who follow Christ cannot marry. We must live a celibate life, the same as Christ. I assure you we live in perfect purity when changed by the Holy Spirit. I have experienced many miraculous cures before the revelation of Christ—total paralysis of the body, blindness of one eye, a mouth drawn all on one side—all was cured in a marvellously short space of time."
And yet, as Mr. Auberon Herbert justly says, there is not a sign of insanity about her. She is not very successful, but she acts like successful generals and successful statesmen, in being rather anxious than not to be " interviewed " by newspaper reporters, and very desirous to make public all that she teaches. When she was examined by Dr. Adams in relation to her sanity, her coolness was admirable. She was simply " amused " at the doubt shown of it. She bantered the doctor rather skilfully about the "mes- meric " hypothesis of the Shakers' dances, and remarked that if she had really had any such mesmeric power, he would have been the person on whom she would certainly have displayed it. She utterly repudiated any expectation of a miracle to shelter her Shakers from the weather on the night of their expulsion, or to restore the ejected furniture to the house from which the sheriff's officers had taken it. She did not yet know, she said, what, under the circumstances that had taken place, she and the brethren would do, but "there were two things she claimed and would hove, —religious liberty and justice,"—a very British sentiment indeed, and not in the least wanting in either reasonabloness or savoir-faire. In fact, everything seems to show that Mrs. Girling is by no means a stupid person, while the strong attachment to and faith in her of all the brethren, proves in all probability that there is nothing of the impostor about her. It seems to us that this rather ignorant, but shrewd and very earnest person, has just recast an odd corner of the Christian teaching in a very corporeal sense which takes a strong hold of a certain small number of the " dim, common populations," by reason of the very audacious claim it makes to transfigure at once and for ever that toil-worn, much-enduring body which seems so paradoxical an appendage to the spiritual life. Probably no class feels the full "burden of the flesh" like the labouring class. The hard-tasked instrument of labour, weary, soiled, and ill-adjusted to any but strongly-marked efforts, looks exceedingly unlike the temple of a spiritual life. But Mrs. Girling's strange fanaticism takes, at all events, this bull by the horns. It takes St. Paul's teaching that the body is sacred because it is the temple of the Holy Spirit, and interprets it to mean that the Holy Spirit shows its physical dominion over it by shaking it about and impelling it to dance, and so transforming it that it will not pass through death, but be caught up to meet " the Lord in the air." That is an admirable instance of the .. degeneration of a spiritual truth, but it is hardly a worse super- stition than the belief that by mere eagerness to take hold of the proffered merits of Christ a man can secure for himself his salvation. The one is a degeneration due to the spell exercised by the weary body over the imagination of the marvel seeking labourer, the other a degeneration due to the spell exercised by the keen commercial faculty,—the love of an easy bargain,—over the imagination of the marvel-seeking trader. Both seem to us remarkable illustrations of that lowering of high faiths which must always come from reading them in the sense in which, if we could conceive it, the minds needing emancipation would themselves have tried to imagine such faiths,—in other words, from over- laying the new teaching with the very class of tyrannical concep- tions from which it is intended to set us free. There is no doubt a charm for these poor people in the mere idea that the Holy Spirit can directly move their bodies without the co-operation of their own minds,—the fascination consisting in the feeble and superstitious notion that it is to be closer to God to have Him govern the body without the concurrence of the mind than through the mind. Such superstitions are indeed almost always the compounds resulting from the fusion of faith with want of faith. The Girlingites present no exceptional case, though they present a case of a somewhat coarser kind of superstition than in the middle-classes we ordinarily meet with.
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