CHAPTER III

 

 

Dr. Dowie had proclaimed in "Leaves of Healing," with great gusto, that the famous old Methodist, Rev. Bartholomew Virrelt, had become a member of the Christian Catholic Church in Zion. It was one of his few triumphs in New York and he had made the most of it.

A few weeks later Dr. Henry R. Stanbridge had published in his paper, the New York "Christian World," a letter from Mr. Virrelt in which he denied having joined Dr. Dowie's Church or ever intending to. He had signed a statement of belief, he admitted, but that was so broad any Christian could sign it sin­cerely. In Dr. Stanbridge's editorial opinion, pun­gently expressed, this letter from his old friend Mr. Virrelt proved that Dr. Dowie was a plain, deliberate, malicious liar, as well as all the other unpleasant things Dr. Stanbridge had called him before and now called him again. Newspapers took up the chorus and glar­ing headlines spattered North America from coast to coast.

On the following Friday evening the General Over­seer met at Shiloh House with Overseers Goodheart, Darling, Bacon, and Jessup; Elders Shedd and Wild­beck; and Deacons Gaines, Halsey, Nolan, Shelbrace, and Harrow. The General Overseer read Dr. Stan­bridge's article, with Virrelt's letter. He then

 

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proceeded to examine Overseer Bacon, who had secured Virrelt's signature to an application for membership in the Christian Catholic Church in Zion Throughout the World. The overseer was certain that he had made it plain to Mr. Virrelt just what he was signing. The application itself was then produced and Overseer Ba­con identified the signature, which, he said, had been affixed in his presence. The paper was passed from hand to hand for all to see. Each of those present was asked to testify that he had been present in Carnegie Hall and had seen and heard the ceremony at which the Rev. Bartholomew Virrelt had been given and had willingly received the right hand of fellowship.

The General Overseer then said: "Now, I call upon all of you, who are witnesses to the shameful and de­liberate falsehoods of these two men, who have for many years named the name of Jesus and professed to be consecrated to His ministry, to say, as God sees your hearts, whether they are not guilty of grievous sin, which they have not hesitated to publish to all the world, and whether it is not my painful duty, as Eli­jah the Restorer and General Overseer of the Christian Catholic Church in Zion Throughout the World, to 'deliver them unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh.' I charge you to pronounce your verdict with all solemnity, praying unto God to endow you with His wisdom and keep your hearts and minds ever in His ways to do His Will, for, gentlemen, officers of the Church, this is a death sentence!"

After a brief prayer, he asked each one present for his verdict. These solemn men, looking scared, each concurred in the "death sentence."

 

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The General Overseer, taking off his skullcap, then, with great earnestness, pronounced the following sen­tence:

"I therefore, in the Name of the Lord, declare that Bartholomew Virrelt and Henry R. Stanbridge are guilty of willful, shameful, and deliberate falsehood.

"I publicly demand that they shall repent before God and man, branded as hypocrites and liars.

"I therefore will do that which the Apostle Paul directed the church at Corinth [I Corinthians, V, 3-5] to do in the case of a 'puffed up' and vile offender.

“In the Name of the Most High God, I deliver Henry R. Stanbridge and Bartholomew Virrelt unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that their spirits may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus!

"May God have mercy upon them in that Great Day, when the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed.

"May it be that ere their bodies perish, they shall truly repent and be saved!"

All this was published in "Leaves of Healing" the next morning.

And both men, although one of them was eighty years old, lived and flourished for years after John Alexander Dowie was in his grave.

 

 

CHAPTER IV

 

 

Early in March, 1903, the General Overseer had announced that he would conduct an Around the World mission during the first six months of 1904. Preparations for it had been going forward during months when all the world had been watching Zion make ready for the New York Visitation. In Australia Overseer Voliva was hiring' halls, expanding his Zion Guard, training his Zion White-Robed Choir, organizing and sending out his Zion Restora­tion Host, and arranging itineraries. In Europe, elders, evangelists, deacons, and deaconesses were making similar preparations. Some of these officers had been ordained in Chicago or Zion City and sent to Lon­don, Paris, Zurich, and other places, some had been ordained by the General Overseer on his visit to Europe in 1900-1901.

Mrs. Dowie, Gladstone, and Nancy Harrow had gone to Paris during the New York Visitation and would meet the General Overseer in Australia. Her­bert, John Harrow, Colonel Erdman, and Harold Winans would go with their leader.

Because he had been talking about buying several thousand acres of land in the South or Southwest, as a suitable agricultural adjunct to Zion City, the Gen­eral Overseer and party were given free use of a private car for their trip from Zion City to San

 

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Francisco. This was donated by the real-estate de­partment of one of the great transcontinental rail­roads.

January first, 1904, fell on Saturday, and they were to start on the morning of that day. The population of Zion City was to spend Friday night and the first six or seven hours of Saturday morning in Shiloh Tabernacle at the usual All Night with God. Because of this, all work in the town had ceased at noon on Friday.

Herbert had been busy at his desk, at various places in the city, in the General Overseer's office in the ad­ministration building, and in the study of Shiloh House, from eight o'clock Thursday morning until this Friday noon-the last day of the old year.

Now it was two o'clock of the short winter day. He knew he ought to go to his room and sleep until dinner time, since he would be up all night. But he was too restless to sleep. Wandering aimlessly about the empty offices, he picked up a magazine and stood idly turning its leaves. He had not even noted what magazine it was, when suddenly there leaped out at him the headline, "Dowie Analyzed and Classified." It was the "Century" for October, 1902-and this was the match, in the hands of Dr. Stanbridge, which had touched off the New York Visitation! Herbert had not read it for more than a year. Still only half conscious of what he did, he slid down into the su­perintendent's chair, turned on a light, and began to read.

Smoothly ran the great editor's sentences. Easily their meaning slipped past dozing sentinels into the

 

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ever-alert subconscious mind. Then came the verdict:

"If Dowie believes it, he is in the moonlit borderland of insanity." 

Herbert came awake as by a blinding flash. He believed Stanbridge!

All in a sickening moment a hundred scenes of the last few years passed in review. They had been inex­plicable. Now they were explained.

Dr. Dowie was going insane! Was, in fact, insane now!

How long had he been so?

How much of what Zion now believed was merely the delusion of a paranoiac?

Herbert felt as if solid earth had suddenly vanished from beneath his feet, or the sun had crashed down from the sky, leaving a universe in utter darkness.

Slowly, painfully, his conscious mind began to function. Since it was a human mind, it began to "reason" away that unwelcome flash of insight. Her­bert did not want to believe that his General Overseer was "in the moonlit borderland of insanity." There­fore, by dinner time, he had, with a fair degree of comfort, persuaded himself.

Herbert Renbrush was a different man after his half hour with Dr. Stanbridge in the dusk of that dy­ing year. He seemed to others-and even to himself -the same; but deep down in the foundations of his being there was a secret fire burning away that which had been built in by rationalization.

In Zion's affections those who boarded the private car "Angeleno" at Zion City station Saturday morn­ing, after the All Night with God and an excited

 

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breakfast, were distinguished men. In addition to the around-the-world group were Judge Shelbrace, Dea­con Johnson, Deacon Hosea Lampton, and Deacon Peter Z. Richardus, a wealthy man who was slated to become general manager of Zion Plantations when these should materialize.

The General Overseer was in his lightest mood. He joked, bantered, laughed, imitated a drunken man, and told some of his time-tried, sure-fire Scotch stories. The others joined in the fun. Everybody for­got that he had been up all through the night before, and it was after midnight when Dr. Dowie suddenly ordered the party to bed.

Herbert, in bed, laughed at his waking nightmare of Friday afternoon. "'Moonlit borderland!' Ho! ho! and ha! ha! Did you ever see a saner, sounder man? I must have been a little bughouse myself." And so he went to sleep.

Morning found the "Angeleno" running south­ward through Mississippi. Breakfast over, Dr. Dowie sent Colonel Erdman for his Bible and began family prayers. After Zion hymns, the General Overseer read and expounded a passage of Scripture for an hour, he and several others led in prayer, and then he began his sermon.

"We have been reading," he said, "of the Great and Dreadful Day of the Lord, now so close at hand, and of the glorious Millennium which will follow that Day.

"It is clear that those of us who are alive when the Millennium is ushered in, those who share in the First Resurrection at that time, will all wear the ‘glorified,'

 

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'incorruptible' body which St. Paul mentions. That body could be only our present, human body, created in the image of God, but freed from its weak­nesses, its imperfections, its liability to disease and death, and its bondage to old age-a body of won­drous beauty, symmetry, strength, vigor, and inex­haustible youth. And can you conceive such a body without full sexual powers and passions?

"Think well what this means. Throughout the Millennium we shall be the fathers of children-the offspring of clean, pure, healthy, vigorous youth. They will be beautiful, perfect children, a race such as this earth has never before seen."

There was much more-indeed, two hours more­ of this sermon, but this is the gist of it. A glorious picture of a thousand years of bliss! But somehow it did not inspire Dr. Dowie's audience. Perhaps there was too unpleasant a reminder of the popular notion of Mohammedan heaven-lovely hours for the faith­ful.

Arriving in New Orleans about noon, the party took carriages and went sight-seeing. That evening they were on their way to San Antonio, Texas, where the General Overseer preached to a large crowd. A week was spent in southern Texas, looking over vari­ous tracts of land, and then the "Angeleno" was off on its way to Los Angeles.

After leaving San Antonio the General Overseer began another sermon on the Millennium. His faith­ful deacons, secretly wishing he would keep off that subject and much more interested in the strange coun­try through which they were riding, looked out the

 

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windows. Suddenly the General Overseer stopped. "Erdman," he ordered, "pull down the window­-shades. This is of vital importance and I must have undivided attention."

Thus, for three hot, dusty hours they rode in semi­darkness while Dr. Dowie preached. '

"We have already seen that, during the Millennium, we shall have the glorious privilege and divinely im­posed duty of procreating the most beautiful, perfect children the world has ever known.

"I call your attention to a further fact. All through the ages, and even to-day, there have been and are many more good women than good men. So we shall find more women among the redeemed, those of the first resurrection. These women, with their strong, beautiful, youthful bodies will all be entitled to love. They will have the pure but strong passions of healthy young women. And there will not be enough men so that each can have a husband. This condition is foretold by the Prophet Isaiah.

“‘And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach. In that day shall the branch of the Lord be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely, for them that are escaped of Israel'

"It is clear, then, that men will, in all purity and holiness, have more than one wife. There is nothing in God's Word forbidding polygamy. On the con­trary, it was expressly commanded by God Himself under certain circumstances. I call your attention to

 

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Deuteronomy, twenty-five, five to nine, in which a man is required to marry his brother's widow, whether or not he already has a wife.

"In our present day conditions are much the same as they will be during the Millennium-there are many more good women than good men. These women are, of all women on earth, the best fitted to be mothers, and yet we see so many of them, beau­tiful, strong, godly women, denied that privilege be­cause there are no good men for them to marry. God and Zion need those children. Those women are di­vinely entitled to a husband's love. Why should we not permit the best men among us, the ablest, the most wealthy, to marry more than one wife, so that no good woman will be deprived of her God-given rights, so that God and Zion shall not be deprived of her children? We are preparing for the Millennium. Is it not our duty to prepare for it by living, as nearly as we can, as we shall live through the thousand years?

"I remember so well, several years ago, I visited the president of the Mormon Church in Salt Lake City. While I was in his office a fine, handsome young man came in, affectionately kissed the president, and was introduced to me as his son. His love and respect for his father were beautiful to see. When he had gone out, I congratulated the president upon his son. He thanked me and said, ‘God has blessed me with twenty-five more like him.' ‘And I,' I thought, sor­rowfully, ‘have only one!' "

The faces of those eight Zion men were a study. Dust had settled on them and had been streaked with

 

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perspiration. Bewilderment, horror, alarm, disgust were written on them. Dr. Dowie must have seen this, for he laughed, teasingly. "Does that shock you, my brethren? Well, do not be alarmed. I am only raising these questions, trying to lead you into a care­ful and prayerful study of the Scriptures relating to the Times of the End, of the Restoration of all things. We are in those times now and we bear a leading part in them. If we are to obey the Will of God, we must know what His will is."

 

Deacons Lampton and Richardus had seen, ad­mired, and bought purses in San Antonio. Now they proudly displayed them.

"What kind of leather is that?" Deacon Johnson wanted to know.

"Why, calfskin, I guess," answered Lampton, in­nocently.

"Calfskin your grandmother," laughed Colonel Erdman, "that's pigskin."

"Pigskin!" exclaimed their General Overseer, shocked. "Are you sure, Erdman?"

"Yes, General Overseer."

Others looked at the purses and agreed with him.

"Don't touch them," commanded the General Overseer. "You know God's Word, ‘Their carcasses ye shall not touch; they are unclean unto you.' “The offending purses were picked up on a fire shovel and thrown out of the window.