The Joannites are now almost, if not wholly, extinct, leaving room for some newer outbreak of religious folly.
If we did not live at a period when such charlatans as Dr. Dowie and Mrs. Eddy have appeared, drawn about them crowds of adherents, and conjured tens of thousands of pounds out of their pockets, we should have supposed that such irruptions of religious mania, such eagerness to believe in a lie, such credulous clinging to an impostor, were a thing of the remote past. But the fools, like the poor, are always with us, and—
Still Dunce the Second reigns like Dunce the First.
SILVER PAP-BOAT PREPARED FOR THE COMING OF SHILOH,
PRESENTED TO JOANNA SOUTHCOTT IN JUNE, 1814
From the original in the collection of A. M. Broadley, Esq.
CRIB PRESENTED TO JOANNA SOUTHCOTT IN ANTICIPATION
OF THE BIRTH OF THE SHILOH BY BELIEVERS IN HER DIVINE MISSION AS
“A GOODWILL OFFERING BY FAITH TO THE PROMISED SEED”