Another Messiah

New Zealand Tablet, 1 October 1908, Page 10

Another Messiah

London's spinal column has been quivering on and off during the past four years with shocks of sensation produced by reflations regarding the doings of a new sham 'Messiah' and his chosen followers in a place in Somerset called ' The" Abode of Love.' The latest claimant is the head of a new Epicurean sect on whom the ordinary laws of morality seem to s.t very ,lghtly., lghtly . He (we are told) 'asserts his divine origin and is openly worshipped by some of his followers.' A great frenchman once advised a conceited friend of his, who was thinking of^ starting a new religion, to try the effect of being STtwc 1 ; /r s again on the third day - But in this dawn «>' the twenteth century no such inconvenient tests are needed loujours !<nu« CC -claims of sweeping audacity made the Eddy voma n In a few years a milUonaire , J 11. on the same dizzy financial position. The more phlegmatic and pract.cal English people are not so readily drawn by the magnet.sm of preposterous religious claims. Yet, a century ago «x thousand four hundred of them paid twelve shillings To a guinea each to that strange specimen of the religious visionary heTw ' f ° r bUS ° f SEaled PapCrS WWch assu - d OctoL ZCZ C T POl 'l S lfC CternaK ShC an " OUnCed that on Octobe, I 0( 1814 , sh e was to beconle the h for t°h ° r 7° f PCaCe ' A " eXpe " SivC> Cradle -as Pr P a r d for the expected princeling. But he never appeared. And two ays after the following Christmas Joanna Zt out by one of he thousand portals of death. 'Her followers,' we are told In T^ ni CVe Tf G W ° UW riSG fr ° m her «™£- of wo\V f nUmbf ' red ° Ver two hu »dred, with four pl ace , of wo. ship, and were not quite extinct in 1897.' The'makL It ■nd.v.dual private judgment the final court 'of appeal iTSo > eaves people 'tossed about by every wind of doctrin 'and Xh c V ,T n ;- t0 thC WHeS ° f P seudo -^-siahs in a way from