The Philosophy of Mystery

by Walter Cooper Dendy

Even during the Commonwealth, the religious fanaticism of the Quakers carried the proselytes to such a pitch, that the preachers were thrown into excessive convulsions, and seemed possessed of demons. The churches were broken into, and the ministers insulted and attacked in the pulpits. Chains, and locks, and the pillory, which were inflicted on these mad people, failed, as it might be expected, in restoring their senses, although they bore them with the most astonishing fortitude. In their worshipping, the same eccentricities were seen: after a deep and long silence, a number of the devotees rose at once, and declaimed. The presumptuous imitation of the Saviour was a favourite illusion; and the forty-days’ fast sometimes terminated in death. Naylor, convinced of his divine identity, rode in procession on a mule, while his deluded proselytes spread their garments, and sang Hosannas to him. Nay, the purity of the female mind was so grossly perverted, that a Quakeress walked naked into a church, before Cromwell, as a sign to the people!

There was a letter in an “Aberdeen Herald,” dated Invergordon, Sept. 9, 1840, from which I quote this story:

“I had the curiosity to go to the church of Roskeen, last night, to observe the workings of a revival. I was prepared for something extraordinary, but certainly not for what I saw. The sobs, groans, loud weeping, fainting, shrieking, mingled in the most wild and unearthly discordance with the harsh cracked voice of the clergyman, who could only at intervals be heard above the general weeping and wailing. I was struck by the cries being all from young voices; and on examining a little more closely, I found that the performers were almost wholly children—girls, varying from five to fourteen years of age; a few young women, perhaps a dozen, but not a single man or lad. I stood for nearly half an hour by three girls, the eldest about twelve years of age, who were in the most utter distress, each vying with the other in despairing cries. Their mother came to them, but made no exertion to check their bursts of—I don’t know what to call it. In the church-yard there were lots of children in various stages of fainting. One poor girl seemed quite dead, and I insisted on one of the old crones, who was piously looking on, to go for some water, or to attempt something to give her relief, but was told, ‘It was no’ a case for water; it was the Lord, and he would do as he liked with her. She was seeing something we didna see, and hearing something we didna hear.’ She was lying on the ground, supported by her father. Indeed the poor ignorant parents have been worked upon until they believe they are highly honoured by the Lord, by having such signs of the Spirit manifested in their families. The service, if it may be called so, was in Gaelic.”

In the reign of the second George, Count Zinzendorf came from Germany and established the principles of the Hernhutters, or Moravians. These were debased by ceremonies, which they misnamed worship, of the most licentious character.

Like Mahomet, Zinzendorf proclaimed himself a prophet and a king, and in his presumption of an immediate appeal to, and answer from, the Saviour, in all matters of doubt, made a host of proselytes.

Ida. In our own day, another delirious profanation of the holy name of the Saviour has been exhibited, in the imitative monomania of Sir William Courtenay (as he was called), in Kent. In May, 1838, this wild enthusiast (whose beauty of feature and expression closely resembled the paintings of Christ by Guido and Carlo Dolce, and who, to heighten this resemblance, wore his hair and beard in a peculiar form, and clothed himself in a robe) gained by his art numerous disciples in Kent, who implicitly believed his divine nature and mission. His career was, however, soon closed in a very awful and bloody tragedy—the death of himself, of many of his followers, and of the military who were called out to secure him. His disciples, to the last, not only believed in his divine nature, but even after his interment were watching in implicit belief of his approaching resurrection!

The mania of the “unknown tongues” has almost equalled this delusion. If we presume to analyse, on the principles of philosophy or reason, those religious eccentricities, which seem, even in the mind of the fanatic, to spring from sincerity or conviction, they must yet, I suppose, be termed maniacal, and this without the slightest profanation of the Divine will. Evil, doubtless, is permitted for a wise purpose, and while we deplore its immediate effects, we must not hope to reveal its origin or its end.

At Brighton, some time ago, while at one of the Millennium chapels, the wife of Caird, who was then preaching, uttered a dismal howling of this unknown language, which paralysed some, and threw into convulsions many others of the congregation. A young French lady among them instantly was struck with maniacal despondency, and, after some infliction of self-torture, became delirious and died in a hospital.

We learn from Plutarch, that in Milesium there was once a prevalent fashion among the young girls to hang themselves; while the same mania once spread among the demoiselles of Lyons, to drown themselves in the Rhone. The Convulsionists of Paris, in 1724, not only inflicted self-torture, but in their wild delight solicited the bystanders to stone them.

The commission of a great or extraordinary crime to this day produces, not unfrequently, a kind of mania of imitation in the district in which it happened. I have known incidents, falsely called religious, to occasion similar events; and what is remarkable, the scene or place of the first event seemed to favour its repetition, by other persons approaching it. Thus a supposed miracle having been performed before the gate of the convent of St. Genevieve, such a number of similar occurrences happened on the same spot in a few days, that the police was compelled to post a peremptory notice on the gate, prohibiting any individual from working miracles on the place in question. When the locality was thus shut up, the thaumaturgia ceased. It is not long since we witnessed in Paris two events of a similar character. About four years ago, at the Hotel des Invalides, a veteran hung himself on the threshold of one of the doors of a corridor. No suicide had occurred in the establishment for two years previously, but in the succeeding fortnight five invalids hung themselves on the same cross-bar, and the governor was obliged to shut up the passage. During the last days of the empire, again, an individual ascended the column in the Place Vendome, and threw himself down and was dashed to pieces. The event excited a great sensation; and in the course of the ensuing week, four persons imitated the example, and the police were obliged to proscribe the entrance to the column. The same mania was almost induced by the suicide of a foolish girl, who leaped from the balcony of our own city column on Fish-street Hill. Indeed Monseigneur Mare, of Paris, alludes to a society enrolled for the mere purpose of suicide; and there was an annual ballot to decide which of these miserable creatures should be immolated as the suicide of the year!!