THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, APRIL 7, 1906. THE DOWNFALL OF DOWIE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13146, 7 April 1906, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, APRIL 7, 1906. THE DOWNFALL OF DOWIE.

The downfall of the pretentious impostor whose blasphemous • claims have so long deluded a considerable number of credulous people is not in itself to be wondered at.. What is extraordinary is that a blatant fellow, by sheer weight of colossal impudence, should have succeeded in making such a stir in the world, and in gathering round him a following largely composed of entirely earnest, though weak-minded, men and women. It is another proof of the momentous fact that man abhors a spiritual vacuum, and that when ancient faiths are lightly discarded the human mind may easily fall a prey to the crudest superstitions. Yet, even while we recognise this, it is difficult to understand how such an impostor could 'have attained the considerable means of temporary success which was undoubtedly his. For in many of the peculiar isms" which have sprung from the wrecks of unquestioning beliefs there has been much to win the respect of all honest men. Misguided and erring as have been those * who have thus led in the pursuit of wandering fires, they have frequently been unmistakably disinterested and not to be accused of personal motives: But in the case of Dowio there has been no. such redeeming sincerity, for the very sufficient reason that the man has sedulously devoted his energies*to feathering his own nest, while * the, present revolt against his authority is based upon even more I sinister grounds. He „ has been a religious quack of the worst typo, ignorant, dogmatic, tyrannical, greedy ; and shameless, cloaking his schemes with pretensions that have shocked the reverential and scandalised -.the thoughtful. How has he managed to impose so long upon quite decent afad well-meaning people? We .can. only assume that this has been possible because on certain points he has cunningly excited their sympathies, and that the measure'of their credulity is the narrow intolerance by which they cannot conceive that one who agrees with them on, to them, vital issues can be in reality an arrant impostor. Because Dowie has declaimed against tobacco they are ready to believe his claims to apostleship and* even ranker bias-, phemies—particularly as they have

no belief that satisfies the cravings of the human mind. Dowie has manifestly taken advantage of the intolerance that still exists in an increasingly tolerant world. He has found that while insane attack upon human weaknesses estranges the more sober-minded majority, it appeals with vehement force to those who love to sit in judgment upon their fellows. The Decalogue we have always with us, and ' Dowie's method has consisted in a crafty confusing of its mortal sins with the venial offending*; that assume such disproportionate importance to intolerant and self-satisfied minds. To frizz the hair is as deadly a sin as to cut a throat. To drink a glass of beer or to smoke a pipe of tobacco separates the condemned .from the elect as surely as the unforgivable sin. This sort of thing has always appealed more or less to those who do not grasp the wonderful breadth of the Christian Faith, and who are always inclined to limit human conduct by their own distorted sense of what is right and what is wrong. But" Dowie went, further than this. He boldly took advantage of the "suggestion" theories with which scientific investigations have been familiarising the world, and made a bid with a championship of, Faith Healing for the support of those who have got tired of drugging. Upon this question none would wish to offend the sensibilities of the truly devout or to belittle the arguments advanced to prove the co-ordination of mind and matter. But we need have no reluctance in expressing an opinion upon the stupendous impudence of Dowie or upon the equally stupendous credulity of the thousands whose vague ideas fas to what might or might not be possible /ed them into a blind acceptance of his pretensions. When one pictures this wretched impostor, with the aims of a Cagliostro, and the effrontery of a Titus Oates, pretending, to cure his dupes by thinking of'them at the tick of the clock, there is no need to ask why human society is still far from being perfect. Men are still too burdened with folly to be able to avoid innumerable errors. That Dowie should have associated his imposition with industrial organisation means only that he is the child of his age. By gathering his dupes into Zion City he was able to persuade them to place their property in his hands. By no other process could j he have secured control of such wealth, and thus obtained the means for the, gratification of his innate,passion for luxury and display. His expeditions into Che wider world were always failures. Even in the seclusion of Zion City he has been unable to prevent his villainies from estranging those who once. accepted as inspired every , word that fell from his lips.

There ■-. is another point to be remembered in discussing Dowieism, which is that it arose in the United States, and could apparently only gather head in that country. Dowio is said to be an Australian, but could no more have formed a Zion City in these colonies than in the ; moon. Not because there are not credulous and intolerant colonials, but because the population is not great' enough',' the conditions not sufficiently contributory. ; Small parties have journeyed from these colonies to Zion City, but that is the limit of our direct interest in the impostor. In America, including Canada, there are over eighty millions who speak a common tongue, and of these eighty millions a large proportion have been torn from their ancestral society, complete in its social, religious, and industrial structure, and have been cast into a chaotic organisation in which they frequently find no anchorage for their spiritual thoughts. Among these. Dowie found dupes in sufficient numbers to make it possible, for him to form a " church." That Dowieism will be heard of no more may not be exactly true, for with a persistence worthy of a better cause some dupes are always found who will cling to such knaves to their last breath. But it cannot again be the remarkable imposition it has been. It is quite possible that in watching its rise, growth, decline and fall we have been observing the most noticeable instance of trickery and credulity in the whole Twentieth Century. *