Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1871-09-30
A NEW IMposTOR.
An Australian Brigham Young
His Pretended Supernatural Pow.

An Australian Brigham Young
His Pretended Supernatural Pow
ers.
A new religious imposture is making
a great sensation in Australia. In Nun
awading an out-of-the-way corner of the
country, a man named Fisher has for
some years past claimed to be the true
Messiah; but his history and his preten-
sions have only recently been brought
to public notice, through the agency OF
one Bignell, who is himself curiosity.
1t appears that Bignell at first thought
he had found the true religion in the
Bible considered as a single book, and
Joined the sect of Christian sraelites,
who took out their first license in London
year or two ago, informing the magis-
trate that they held both Judaism and
Christianity to be of present obligation.
This sect has good many disciples in
Nunawading. Bignell seems to have
been for time under the influence of o
Mr.. Wroe, Of Nunawading, who is said
to have claimed variety of quasi
supernatural powers, among others that
of detecting true from a false Mes
siah, both of whom he seems to have
expected, even if he were not himself
the herald of the latter.
Bignell relates, with the most nques
tioning faith, that Mr. Wroe had pre-
dicted the day of his own death forty
years before it occurred, and had
anointed Louis Napoleon as a young
man and prophesied his rel On ovel
France, and evidently was gre ally exer
cised in his mind as to whist kind O.
being Mr.. Wroe could be. II e must, he
thinks, have been more than I'm ordinary
man. However, with all his veneration
for Wroe, he Joined Fisher, who gave
himself out to be the Messiah, procured
many disciples, and of course den handed
from them implicit obedience, b ut who
dispensed apparently with anythin g like
proof of his mission. Bignell had heard
that two men had once said that 4 Usher
had performed a miracle, and he had
himself seen him exercise mesm eric
power-which, he says, in strange ex
plosion of credulity, he stole from Q
surgeon named Guthrie Carr-but his
motive for believing in Fisher seems tc
have been nothing beyond Fisher ow. =
selfassertion, aided by an intense wisl
to believe in living revelation.
But it does not appear that Fisher mad
any message OF any kind to proclstIm
any doctrine to publish, any tiding to
bring, other than the blank fact that he,
Fisher, was an incarnation, not only OF
Jesus, but of King David also, and in
the latter capacity entitled to have jus
four wives. He does not seem to have
preached polygamy, except for himself
or to have started any new system OF
morality, or to have propagated creed
of any kind, except that the Bible was
literally true throughout, and that every
person now alive was the reproduction.
or rather
OF SOME BIBLICAL PERSON
AGE
the father of his three wives, for in
stance, being Abraham, and Bignell
himself, who was, he tells us, favored
apostle" +" being Absalom. Fisher, Mr..
Bignell thinks, selected that particular
parsonage as his anti-type, under an idea
that he might ultimately abandon the
sect, when the previous history of Absa-
lom, as related in Kings, would give the
new prophet an easy explanation of the
desertion. That was all.
There was no pretense of any new
doctrine to be derived from Els her, moth
ing to support his claims except the bold
assertion of two mutually con Trajectory
facts, and yet this man found disciples
earnest enough to beat a man whom he
pointed out to them as Jud as, and to
sacrifice their daughters to him. and
Bignell himself while denou ncing him
publicly evidently can not rid himself
of lurking belief in Fish er's super
natural powers, and says he must be a
very powerful mesmerist to e.cquire the
influence he has attained owe individu-
ais, and tells story which suggests his
belief that Fisher can suspeD d the laws
of health at pleasure.
This narrative is given at full length
in a respectable paper OF Melbourne, is
stated by the reporter TO hay been cor
roborated by those who he ard it, who
are townsmen of Fisher and strongly in
clined to lynch him, and is not in any
way inconsistent with what the world
has hitherto known of the history Of i'm
posture. Like Joe Smith, Brigham
Young, and many a smaller impostor,
Fisher trades upon the har,kering after
a new revelation to be embo died in some
concrete form, whether AS o sign in the
sky, or as a person, or as a written docu
ment, always something tangible, some
thing other than the effect of new teach
ing upon the hearts and lives Of those
who hear.
.N