" ELIJAH DOWIE" IN NEW YORK.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLVI, Issue 78710, 11 January 1904, Page 4

" ELIJAH DOWIE" IN NEW YORK.

FAILURE OF THE INVASION.

ABUSE OF HIS FATHER AND MOTHER.

NEW YORK, Nov. 7.

The raid of the Rev. Johu Alexander Dowie upon New York was a failure (says the New York correspondent of the Melbourne Argus). " Elijah, the Bestorer," as he calls himself, came from Chicago in great state, travelling in a sumptuous private car, and uccompanied by eight, special trains bearing nearly 3500 of bis faithful Zionists. Our city could not take them seriously. For a lim9 his meetings in the Great Madisonsquare Garden drew large" audiences of thp curious, but his offensive language and ridiculous andes Boon drove away from his services all but a mere handful. Nothing equal to bis foul abuse ot tbe press and the clergy, and the Billingsgate which he poureel out upon au unsympathetic city had ever been heard upon a public platform in New York. His portrait had prepared our people 1 for a benign and dignified person. The new •• Elijah" is not that kind of man. At times it was charitable to suppose that he was insane. On tho other hand, hii followers were neatly dressed, qui-jt, and well behaved people. The women, who canvassed the entire city in little groups, distributing tracts at d welling -houses, were intelli gent, attractive, modest, and apparently sincere. We all wondered bow all these Zionists, men and woman could have become subservient to this disgusting mountebank. He accomplished nothing, although he had boasted that be would fill the great amphitheatre with converts, drive the devil from New York, take 50,000,000d01. back t6 Zion City, and festoun the walls of tho Garden with the crutches and canes of sufferers healed by faith. The raid coat him about ,250,000 dollars, ami his receipts were not enough to pay the gas bills. But the money loss will not embarrass him. The property of his church, at Zion City and elsewhere, stands in his name, and is probably woith 20,000,000 do). His wife and eon have sailed for England and Australia. You hud the man in Melbourne years nge, and some who remember his father, John Murray Dowie^maybe interested in " Elijah's " receut public repudiation of him. While the •• Restoration Host " was in New York, there wore published here some letters sent by " Elijah " and his business I agent to the father in J9OO and 1901, tb^ latter then residing, as he does now, in Essex, Sta£e of lowa. For a time, •' Elijah" gave his old fiither an allowance of 600dol. a year. This was discontinued, because the old gentleman and "Elijah's" wife could not agree. In one of his published letters, a very long one, "Elijah " exhausted his well-stocktd vooabulnry in abusing the old man, nnd asserted that the latier hud married his muther " only to give bet child a name." He denied that he had been born in wedlock, said that the idea of regarding the older Dowie as his. father, was •• too utterly horrible to contemplate," and offered to pay his passago to Adelaide if he would stay there.*

Speaking to the public in Madisonsquare Garden concerning these letters, Dowie did not hesitate to reflect upon his mother, paying that John Murray Dowie had confessed to him that his ("Elijah's") father was a British officer, who fell at the head of his regiment in the Crimean war. With tears streaming down his face, ha thanked God that his mother was in heaven, and that he had strength to tell this story. He fntimated that he was the rightful heir to " a ducal coronet," but declared that he would never seek bis birthright.

The elder Dowie, a man of 78 years, respected in the town where he resides, I now says that John Alexander's mother was a widow when she became his wife, that John Alexander was born in wedlock, and is his son ; that his birth is duly recorded at the registrar's office in Princesstreet, Edinburgh, and that he gave to ihia Hon the certificates of his mother's two marriages. John Alexander, he adds, always acknowledged and introduced him as his father until be declined to accept Mb doctrines. He thinks the mau, must be of unsopnd mmd. . The physical resemblance of the father to the son is very striking. The episode may thrpw some light upon this successful founder ot a new sect, who hae stated thaj he will revieit Australia next yeav, intending to make converts there. [When the news was published by cable message concerning Dowie 'a allegations about his parents, a brother in/ Adelaide, Mr. Andrew Dowie, characterised them aa ''all news to him." His father, he said, was Mr. John Murray Bowie, who wrta married' by the Bey. Dr. Hunter, of Trou Church, Edinburgh, and afterwards attended the Richmoud-placo Congregational Church at Edinburgh, of which he was a member and lay preacher for mony years. The late Mrs. Dowie was also a member there. ' She died in Adelaide about nine or tin years ago ]