Among other matters, they hold that "the Jews are, by God's perpetual covenant, the royal nation;" that the obligation to observe the Sabbath passed away with the Jewish dispensation, and is "adverse to the advance of man into new and true arrangements;" that "the original organization instituted by Christ [the Primitive Church] is accessible to us, and that our main business as reformers is to open communication with that heavenly body;" and they "refer all their experience to the invisible hosts who are contending over them."
I must add, to explain the last sentence, that they are not Spiritualists in the sense in which that word is nowadays usually employed, and in which the Shakers are Spiritualists; but they hold that they are in a peculiar and direct manner under the guidance of God and good spirits. "Saving faith, according to the Bible, places man in such a relation to God that he is authorized to ask favors of him as a child asks favors of his father. Prayer without expectation of an answer is a performance not sanctioned by Scripture nor by common-sense. But prayer with expectation of an answer (that is, the prayer of faith) is impossible, on the supposition that 'the age of miracles is past,' and that God no longer interferes with the regular routine of nature." Hence their belief in what they call "Faith-cures," of which I shall speak further on.
Community of goods and of persons they hold to have been taught and commanded by Jesus: "Jesus Christ offers to save men from all evil—from sin and death itself; but he always states it as a necessary condition of their accepting his help that they shall forsake all other; and particularly that they shall get rid of their private property." Communism they hold therefore to be "the social state of the resurrection." The account on the sides of life and death arranges itself thus:
APOSTASY,
UNBELIEF
Obedience to
Mammon,