Fulfilment of a Grand Prophecy - Hazrat Ahmad’s Challenge to John Alexander Dowie — Page 76
80 1906. Fulfillment of a Grand Prophecy. THE WEEK against the separation of the races, are really urging the negroes to regard sep aration as a badge of inferiority. . Zion in a Ferment. The troubles which have been smoldering in John. Alexander Dowie's community for many months past last week broke out into flames. The leader of the strange religious cult which is known as the Christian Catholic Church of Zion has been an autocrat from the beginning. He has displayed great skill in selecting from various sources the most effective devices for impressing with a sense of his power the sort of people whom he has succeeded in gathering together. Faith healing combined with time-clock devices for recording prayers, elaborate ritual skillfully combined with the informality of revival services, great industrial schemes combined with an arrangement by which the various undertakings are vested in him personally, h 825 community has used this power to deed the property to a different representative of Zion; and this action has been accompanied by a communication from the new leader informing him that he has been suspended from office. What he may accomplish by his personal presence when he reaches Zion it is impossible to say. At other critical stages in his career he has succeeded in rescuing himself from very grave difficulties; but now, with his most trusted lieutenants and even his wife and his son attacking him with bitterness and determination, he is in a position the only outcome of which appears to mean either his own retirement or the disintegration of the community he has constructed. The present condition of Dowieism illustrates the fact that superstition has within itself elements which bring it to destruction. . The Case of. Dr. Crapsey ". Our readers will recall a notable letter from the observances of fasts and certain forms. Rev. A. S. Crapsey, pubof abstinence combined with appeals to lished in The Outlook for September 2, some of the crudest passions and desires 1905, and the correspondence to which for self-indulgence, a complicated organ- it led. Charges of heresy were subse ism combined with a retention of su- quently preferred against Mr. Crapsey, preme power for himself, constitute some who is the rector of St. Andrew's Episcoof the methods by which he has built up pal Church in Rochester, New York, a city in Illinois and has created for These charges are based upon a volume himself a position which combines the written by lim entitled "Religion and function of an army general, an ecelesi Politics," and on a sermon preached by astical patriarch, a religious prophet, a him last December. His accusers aver miracle-worker, a fortune-teller, and a that Dr. Crassey denies the virgin birth corporation magnate. Financial adad- of Jesus, his resurrection, his miracles, verses seem now to be the cause of this and generally his divine origin and charautocrat's present difficulties. Added acter; in a word, the supernatural in to these are his physical disability, which Christianity. The charges were first has shaken the faith of some of his fol- brought before a Committee of Investilowers in the superabundance of his gation which decided that the evidence power to deal with the ills of the human did not justify a presentment. The · flesh, and the suspicious of his subordi Churchman" which is unquestionably ⚫ nates in office that he is inclined toward both the abhst and the most broadly polygamy. From the contradictory re- representative organ of the Episcopal ports in the daily papers this mach at Church, affirms that "to the overwhelmleast appears that he is separated from ing mass of churchmen and non-churchhis wife and son, and that divorce pro men this judgment will doubtless stand ceedings have been or are about to be as representing common justice, no mat commenced; that the community sym ter what the decision of the present pathizes with the wife; that the lieuten- court may be" "Dr. Crapsey has, howant to whom in his temporary absence ever, been presented for trial by the he gave a power of attorney involving Standing Committee of the Diocese to complete control of the property of the which his parish belongs, and the case + 龊 :