"ELIJAH" DOWIE.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 65, 16 March 1907, Page 5

"ELIJAH" DOWIE.

THE FALL OP THE "PROPHET."

(By Telegraph.—Own Correspondent.)' WELLINGTON, this day. Mr. E. Lewis, who has been touring the North Island as the travelling correspondent of a syndicate of American metropolitan papers, headed by the "Indianopolis News," which is classed as one of the ten American papers of greatest influence, is now visiting this city as a newspaper reporter. Mr. Lewis was sent to Zion City last year when the home of Dowie crashed, and was. an eyewitness of that most picturesque revival headed by Glenn, Voliva, and others. To a "Post" reporter Mr. Lewis detailed some graphic statements concerning the undoing of Dowie and his attempts to recover himself in the eyes of his once deluded followers. "While the great meeting in Zion City was on," said Mr. Lewis, "and the mask being torn off, exposing to the 6000 faithful the financial rottenness of Zion City and the baseness of Dowie as a man, and his absolute unfitness, not only to be a spiritual leader, but much less even a financial director, that individual was coming up from Mexico on the fastest trains, a veritable cyclone, at each stop delivering denunciations on the revolutionaries, and charging his wile with the very lowest baseness. He announced that when he got to Zion City the people would flock to him, and that he would call down fire from Heaven to consume the others. When the train reached Zion City, however, Dowie was not on board, the cyclone had played out when it reached Chicago, 43 miles away, and he stopped there at last, seeing plainly the handwriting on the wall, and sent out worldly lawyers to bring down the vengeance of courts, instead of himself bringing down the consuming vengeance of Heaven. It was the beginning of tbe finish of Dowie. Another newspaper man, an officer, and nryself found the secret fort under the Dowie residence, Shiloh House, where his body is now. That fort was so ingeniously built that even the members of the Dowie household did not know that it existed under them. It is a fort with walls of cement three feet thick, and great double iron doors. This was the final straw—the people who had heard Dowie protest that he was afraid of no one, not even all the legions of hell, was after all a coward at heart. Zion City is wrecked. Dowie was a frenzied financier without- parallel. One example is enough. He sold 2,500,000 dollars of stock to the faithful for the erection of the big lace factory; he put 500,000 dollars into it, and no one knows where the other money went to. No could operate successfully on that basis. It was characteristic of tbe man. When I was there many people, among them many Australians and people from Africa, who had been wealthy, were thus reduced to a point where they had no money to buy bread, and had to be supported" by charity. In the courts at Chicago Dowie denied his father, claiming that lie was the illegitimate son of an earl. The lawyers found his father still living out in lowa, and brought liim into court. The two men were placed side by side. There was no mistaking—they were as much alike as two peas in a pod."