As an outsider I should say nothing was ever more uninteresting, nothing ever more calculated to alienate from religion intelligent young people, than the services conducted by the Sandemanians. The elders and deacons, excellent men undoubtedly, are singularly deficient in oratorical ability. I think the worst sermon I ever heard in my life was preached by one of them. They cannot even read the Bible in an impressive and edifying manner, nor is their psalmody much better. They have a literal version of the Psalms, and they sing them through, a couple of verses or so at a time. I give one specimen I heard, not the last time I attended there:—
“Moab I will My Wash-pot make,
O’er Edom cast my shoe;
Do thou, O land of Palestine,
Triumph, because of Me.”
The modern hymnology, of which all sections of
the Church are justly proud, exists in vain for them. Their church seems utterly destitute of intellectual vigour; and when, as in these days, brains are beginning to rule, the piety that rejects or ignores them is in danger. There is a relation between the Bible and modern thought of which the good people who preach dull sermons and make dull prayers up in Barnsbury have no idea.
THE SOUTHCOTTIANS.
Incredible as it may seem, there are, in these days of penny newspapers and universal enlightenment, Southcottians in London. They may be met with in the neighbourhood of Kennington Common, and in one of the forlornest spots in Islington, Elder Walk, Essex Road. Thence they issue documents worthy of Bedlam. I have now before me their “Midnight Cry, Behold the Bridegroom cometh.” And this august warning and bruising and inviting announcement is “to and for whomsoever it may concern of Mammon-crushed Israel.” One extract I fancy will suffice—one at any rate I must give, otherwise such religious lunacy will be held incredible.
“Oh, dutifully observe now, O all Israel, (namely) O Judah and Ephraim, that this Universal Marriage overture unto you, together with these Proxy Marriage lines and record, are made and offered you entirely because ‘I am’ and Jesus Christ is Life, Love, and Light everlasting, and because of His power and right to give, and the Son of Man’s to receive, and the worthy Woman to bring Him forth, and Israel’s to inherit,—viz., the promises unto Adam, Eve, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, and all their seed, who were originally the void waters and dark-faced deep until God said, Let there be Light and there was Light. And from henceforth there shall be Light, and both Light and Love abundantly in Heaven, here below as in Heaven above, for in the beginning God created Heaven and Earth, and did, and is, and will finish on the sixth day the same and all the host of them.”
The main instrument in the above precious compilation is Whatmore, one of Joanna Southcott’s chosen apostles. The paper referred to is issued from No. 9, Elder Walk, Essex Road, Islington, London, of Britannia Zion. It states, as far as I can gather, that in August last year something of importance was to take place. “A month since and the gauntlet has been successfully run; therefore, Whatmore, now has Thy lowly instrument Watmore Whatmore, John, to submit of and by Thy worthiness, O Lord God. Oh,
shall I submit a Song of Solomon, or a Lamentation of Thy Prophet Jeremiah, or a sermon of Thy immortalizing mount, unto Thy flock, O, O, O! Submit, love,” &c., &c. I gather that the mystery of God is to be finished speedily by unveiling His Bible word, and His codicil thereto by His spouse, “the wonderful Queen of prophets, Joanna Southcott, that thus sons and daughters by her womanhood may greatly replenish the earth, and that the poor now suffering from the murdering love of money in consequence of unjust stewardship may fare better in time to come.” This seems to be the only idea I can extract from the Southcottians. All mammon laws are to be abolished, money currency is to be destroyed, there is to be no more selling, martyring, and bartering of humanity and their requirements, “thus saith the Lord Jehovah, by J. Watmore Whatmore, and J. G. Grant, of Zion.”
As these prophets speak of the spouse of God, Eve the second, called Joanna Southcott, Queen of the prophets, who in 1802 opened her commission, and declared herself to be the woman spoken of in Revelation—“the Bride, the Lamb’s wife, and clothed with the sun”—let me briefly tell her story:—