The Religious Craze at Port Albert.

Auckland Star, Volume XXVI, Issue 4530, 5 December 1884, Page 2

The Religious Craze at Port Albert.

The extraordinary doings at tho Port Albert camp meetings constituto another chapter in the history of aberrations bordering on insanity, of which every age nnd every kind of religion furnish examples. Such scenes are now, happily, rare, and when they do occur they rise to the dignity of a nine days' wonder. Some twenty-five years ago a long series of wild extravagant occurrences marked the progress of a " revival" in the North of Ireland; and the circumstances are still deeply engraven on the memory of thousands who witnessed them. Going further back, the earlier history of Methodism is full of stories which Port Albert has just now attempted to emulate. Tho lives of John Wesley's preachers afford much curious reading in this connection, and form a vory mine of information to tho historian of religious delusions. It will bo remembered that in Wesley's own day most amazing things happened at Haworth, where Grimshaw was incumbent ; that they were epidemic for a time, and then gradually ceased. An eminent modem physiologist has gathered together a convenient list of wild but transient vagaries, which is apropos of the present subject. He mentions " the Pythonic inspiration of tho Delphic priestesses; the ecstatic rovolations of Catholic and Protestant visionaries ; the flagellant precessions of the 13th and 14th centuries; the preaching epidemic among the Huguenotsio France, and more recently in Lutheran Sweden ; the strange performances of the convulsionnnires of St. Mddord, which havo been since almost paralleled at ' revivals.' and campmeetings; the dancing mania of the middle ages, the Tarentism of Southern Italy ; the TigTetier of Abyssinia, and tho leaping!) goo of Scotland in later times." The dancing mania was one of the most extraordinary of these freaks. It began in 1374 at Aix-la-Chapello, amonganumberofmen and women who had come out of Germany. They formed circles hand in hand in thostreets, and danced for hours, regardless of the onlookers. At length they would fall to tho ground exhausted, when they would (not unnaturally) complain of extreme oppression, and groaned, as if in the agonies of death. While dancing, they were heedless of all external influences ; they neither saw nor heard; but were haunted by visions and by spirits, whose names they shrieked out. The delusion spread to Cologne and to Metz, in which latter place it is said that eleven hundred of the possessed were dancing at one time. Somo of the poor deluded creatures knocked their brains out against walls, others throw themselvea into rivers, while many mora so injured thoir constitutions that they never afterwards recovered their former health. It is related by Zimmerman that a nun in a large French convent began to and at last they all met to mew together for hours at a time. This epidemic was cured by a timely threat of force. In a German nunnery, a nun began biting her companions, and soon all the rest fell to biting one another. The ma.iia spread through a great part of Germany, into Holland, and even to Rome itself. But to multiply examples is useless. All are sufficiently familiar with the pranks of which the human mind is capable. "Revivals" can take place without roarings, stragglings, half-insane delirium, and the doffing of decent clothing, as those conducted by Moody and Sankcy abundantly prove. These gentlemen have done more of what is called "evangelistic work " than any other persons 'iving, • but their labours have been performed in a seemly, orderly manner, and with a judicious discountenance of mere physical excitement. Mr Moody is gifted with strong common flense, and by its means he has executed many difficult tasks with honour and credit to himself. This much must be conceded by even those who differ most widely from his doctrines and his methods. He should be the model for revivalists to set before them. And then decency would not be shocked, nor the cause of religion and morality mode a laughing-stock—results which must infallibly accrue from such astounding occurrences as our Port Albert correspondent has so graphically described. Tho cure for emotional aberrations of the sort in question, and an antidote for morbid introspection, is activity. Set the body to work on some philanthropic charitable labour. , Thero is plenty to be done. Visiting the sick, rescuing prostatites, reforming drunkards, making clothes for the poor, sheltering the homeless—all these are more potent virtues, and more certainly calculated to advance the Kingdom of God, than going to Port Albert to roar and scream and wrestle oneself into a frenzy. '