FALSE PROPHETS.

Pahiatua Herald, Volume V, Issue 539, 3 September 1897, Page 4

FALSE PROPHETS.

.lUln 11 ulu.all, Hull de ui » tailor at Boitou-10-Moors, Lancashire, started tbe delusion that Christ’s second advent was at band, and that He would appear in tbe form of a woman. Shortly afterwards, Anna Lane, wife of a blacksmith, living in Toad-lane, adopted the views of Jane Wardlaw, but went far beyond them, and became known as the mother of the sect, who now began to be called Shaken, because they made a strange kind of dancing ail element of their worship. Anna Lee (whose husband’s name was Stanley) bad been a quuker, but her new doctrine bad no connection with her previous convictions. She professed to see visions, and in 1770 she declared that the Lord had appeared to her one night, and had be come one with her, so that whatever she said or did was His saying or doing. Her claim was to be the Bride of the Lamb, as seen by St - John, but her pretentions met with little acceptance in England, and she was inspired to seek a new home in America. To New York she went in 1774, accompanied by seven disciples, and her husband, who soon parted from her. Anna Lee went out into the wilderness of Niskenne, and founded the settlement of Water Vliet, which still exists. She made herself very obnoxious to the American Government, was arrested as a British spy and thrown into prison. Persecution increased her notoriety, and she became known as the ” Female Christ.” She died in 1788, but her followers protested she was not dead, only “ withdrawn from sight.” Joanna Southcott was born in Devonshire about 1750. She spent her young days as a domestic servant but in middle life took to uttering prophesies couched in coarse and uncouth prose or verse. She found followers in Exeter, but soon went up to London, where she obtained a wider field for the exercise of her talents. She drew her inspiration, like others of her kind, from the Apocalypse, and made a considerable income by the sale of seals, which were warranted to secure the salvation of those who purchased them. In the year 1814, being then over 60 years of age, she gave out that she was the divinely appointed mother of the Shiloh, and that his birth, on the ensuing 14tli October, would be the second coming of Christ. Her adherents then numbered about 10,000, and they provided a magnificent cradle for the expected infant. A crowd assembled at the predicted midnight, and only dispersed when they were informed that Mrs Soutlicott had fallen in a trance. On the 27th December, following she died. Iler followers refused to believe that she was dead, and would not allow her to be buried ; but when decomposition began to set in they consented to a post-mortem examination, which revealed dropsy as the cause of her death. The cradle was for many years exhibited in the Peel Park Museum, Salford.