The Sun.
London, England, 1868-01-24 00:00:00

Mr. Hepworth Dixon's New Work.

Spiritual Wives.

By William Hepworth Dixon.

' Two Vols. llurst and Blackett.
This extraordinary book would have had an
especial attraction for our dear old friend, Mr.
Austin Caxton, and, upon coming into his hands,
would doubtless have suggested to him more

than one new section of remarkable interest

for his great work on " The History of Human

Error." Supposing it to have been carried by
him into his favourite chimney-corner in the
house-room at the Tower, on the opening of the
London book-box just arrived—we can imagine

even the gentle Blanche giving an indignant toss
of her pretty head upon catching a glimpse of
Mr. Dixon's title-page--we can fancy the equable

Mrs. Caxton herself aroused for a moment into

sympathetic indignation out of her accus-
tomed equanimity—we can picture to our-

selves Mr. Sluill4 the apothecary, and
Uncle Roland, and Pi3istratu3 the Anachronism,

exchanging amused glances with one another over
the indignant looks of the elder and the younger
matron, in contrast to the eager and delighted ab-
sorption of the senses of that large-minied and all-
assimilating philosopher. And, beyond all doubt,
Mr. Dixon's work is worthy of Mr. Caxton's exa -
mination. It is the last and not the least re-

markable contribution that has ever yet been
made towards that magnum opus "The
History of Human Error." It is the
production, especially and essentially of the

author of " New America,"—not of the biographer
of William Penn, or of Francis Blenn, or of the
Admiral and General Blake, or of Howard the
Philanthropist, but peculiarly and distinctively of

the celebrant of the Mormons and of the other

Religionists, or, as we should far rather prefer
to call them, the other Irreligionists, here and
there, all over New America. His purpose

in writing the book now submitted to our conside-
ration is, of course, of the noblest character. We

say of course--.a•ldressing ourselves to those with
whom the lita.ary labours of Mr. Dixon have long

since been familiar.

He has never yet, to oar

knowledge, written with other than with high, and
more than once with lofty, aspirations. His themes
here, however, as in his preceding work—as

in those two volumes about "New America,"

of which these two about " °Spiritual
Wives" may be regarded as the sequel—are

. -
suggestive, to ourselves at least, of the pro
foundest melancholy. They are, morally and in

tellectually, so many studies in morbid anatomy.
They are like adventures into the Land of Unreason.
They are like a record of the Experiences and Ob-
servations of a clear-eye 1, calm-spirited, perfectly
dispassionate Commissioner de Lunatico In-
quirendo. The depressing influence, however, to
which we cannot but acknowledge to hAve sue-

cuuibed during our examination of the pages of
this extraordinary work of Mr. Hepworth Dixo .'s
a work so extraordinary of its kind that, if "Sew
America" has already run into its Sixth or Sabinth
Edition, this one will not impossibly before long
have run into its Sixteenth or Seventeenth--arises
from the fact that the psychological hallucinations,
as we may call them, which our author has herein
delineated with wonderful minuteness, spring
directly out of what we cannot possibly designate
by any other words than those in which we
must here speak of them as so many
hideously revolting and blasphemous carica-
tures of Christianity. The. Insanity here-
in delineated is that of Religion Run Mad.

The intensely sane intellect of Mr. Dixon
regards the phenomena he has here undertaken
to describe so dispassionately, that he has evidenced
nowhere one particle of pity for the astounding
phantasies that have here and there met his observa-
tion. He simply describes. What he sees, what he
hears, what he deduces —he sets forth in a narrative
perfectly clear, plain, and unvarnished. He be-
gins with a distinct recognition of the fact, as he
here puts it, that "Three of the most singular move-
ments in the churches of our generation seem to
have been connected, more or less closely, with the
state of mind produced by Revivals; one in Ger-
many, one in England, and one in the United
States ; movements which resulted, among other
things, in the establishment of three singular
societies—the congregation of Pietists, vulgarly
called the Mocker, at Konigsberg, the brother-
hood of Prineeites at Spaxton, and the Bible Com-
munists at Oneida Creek." He then goes on to
remark that " these movements, which," as he says

with reason enough, " have a great deal in common,
began without concert in distant parts of the world
under separate church rules, and in widely different

social circumstances. The first movement was in
list Preussen ; the second in England ; the third
and most important in Massachusetts and New
York. They had these chief things in coalition :
they began in colleges, they affected the form of
family life, and they were carried on by clergymen ;
each movement in a place of learning and of theo-
logical study ; that in Germany at the Luther-
Kirch of Konigsberg, that in England at St. David's
College, that in the United States at Yale College.
These movements began to attract public notice
much about the same time; for Archdeacon Ebel,
the chief .founderof Muckerism, annorinced the year
1836 as the opening year of the personal reign of
Christ; in that year the Rev. Henry James Prince
became a student of divinity, founded the order of
Lampeter Brethren, and received his pretended gift
of the Holy Ghost; and Father Noyes published
the famous paper known as the Battle Ax 3 Let-
ter.' These three divines—one Lutheran, one An-
glican, one Congregational—began their work iu
perfect ignorance of each other. Ebel is now dead,
but I have reason to believe that when he proposed
his theory in the Luther church in his native city,
he had never heard the name of either Brother
Prince or of Father Noyes. I can answer for the
other two : until a few mouths ago Noyes never
heard of Ebel, and Prince had never heard of
Noyes." It is of these astounding people, and of
their congeners, as we may say, that Mr. Dixon
writes with rare ability, often eloquently, always
enthrallingly, in these two volumes about " Spiritual
Wives" and Carnal Paracletes. Here is one of the
latter—Mr.Prince of the Agapemo ne—as he has been
photographed by his bright-eyed observer—" The
gentleman," quOth he, " who is called by his fol-
lowers Beloved in the sensuous idiom of the Song
of Songs—is fifty-six years old, spare in person, of
middle height, with a pallid cheek, and the traces
of much pain and weariness on his wan cheek. His
face is very sweet, his manner very smooth. He
has about. him something of a woman's grace and
charm. His smile i 3 very soft, and the key of his
voice is low. He has the look of one who had
never yet been vexed into rage and strife. In his
eyes, which are apt to close, you see, as it were, a
light from some other sphere. He sat in the centre
of this group of men and women, rapt in his own
dreams, into which he fell the moment we sat down
before his warm and cheery fire. When the sound
of voices roused him, he crossed his hands upon his
black frock, put his shiny shoes on the rug, and bore
a luxurious part in my first long and singular con-
versation with the saints." The sanctuary of this
august being is elsewhere described just as vividly
—Mr. Dixon apparently finding some difficulty
(aud no Wender) in realising to himself, when he is
in it, that he is really and truly in the church
of these strange Religionists, for he exclaims :
" Yes, in the church; lounging on a red sofa, near a bright
tire, in the coloured light of high lancet windows, filled
with rich stained glass; soft cushions beneath my feet; a
oilliard table on my right hand; church furniture In oak
and brass about me; and above my head the sacred sym-
bol of the Lamb and Dove, flanked and supported by a
rack of billiard cues.
" This room, I know, was that in which the Great
,lanifestation had taken place ; that mystic rite through
which living flesh is said to have been reconciled to God.
Lovely to the eye, calming to the heart, this chamber was
Lnd is. The stained glass windows shut it in completely
'roue the world, allowing nothing less ethereal than the
ight of day to penetrate these wills. A rich red Persian
arpet covered the floor, in contrast with the dark brown
,aken roof. Red curtains draped the windows, the glass
.a which was painted with a mystical device : a lamb, a
,lon, and a dove -- the lion standing on a bed of roses, with
a banner ou which these worth are inscribed—
' Oh, Hail, Holy Love.'"

A soft-spoken raracleto iu a black frock-coate--