THE LATEST RELIGIOUS HALLUCINATION. (New York Freeman Journal")

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XX, Issue 27, 22 April 1892, Page 7

THE LATEST RELIGIOUS HALLUCINATION. (New York Freeman Journal")

The older we grow the more tha necessity of an indisputable autho* rity like that of the Pope, in scriptural and doctrinal matters, is forced upon as. Scarcely a week passes over our he*da without some strange manifestation of tbe evil of private judgment which Protestantism brought into the world being brought to our attention. Today it may be Joe Smith and bis Mormon revelations, to-morrow it may be Schweinfest of Bockford, 111., in tbe character of a new ChrUt and tbe day after it may be a Lieutenant Totten, of New Haven, with his adventist calculations and absurdities ; but every time and n every form it is indicative of the woeful ness of man when left to himself. The strangest thing about these aberrations is that no matter how absurd they may be, the fundamental principle of Protestantism is so vitiating and disintegrating that every one of them readily finds followers, who all seem thoroughly honest in professions* The latest and most absurd of these hallucinations, which in reality has as much foundation for its existence as has any of the other thousand and one sects who differ in anything except in their innate hostility to the Catholic Church, is styled "Tbe Disciples of tbe Flying Boll." This queer upshot ia reported as making many converts in Michigan and Indiana and to be gathering tbe faithful to Detroit as " the City of Deliverance." The Bible of the so-called new and later house of Israel is •• The Flying Boll," by an Englishman, James J. Jezreel, who claims to b*a prophet, with apparently a single message, a warning of vague impending doom to all who do not join the "Flying Boll," and are not found within the City of Deliverance' on the day of the fulfilling of the Bcripturea. The local leader calls himself Michael XOver-Mills, whatever may be the meaning of that singular appellation, and this his *' inspired " proclamation to tbe faithful in Richmond, Ind. : " Dear ones, one and all, I send my love to ye. I have proved the Flying 801 lto be true, and that lam the first one of the 144,000. lam Michael, the Princei that was to rise up for the people of Ood to deliver Israel. If yon will search your Bible and 801 l you will know, without a doubt, that lam he, only a cleansed body for Cbrist to blow through." The missionaries of the Flying 801 l wear their hair long, and their beards fall over their breasts in patriarchal fashion. In Richmond alone there are about 100 converts, and many of them have already departed for tbe sacred city of Detroit.