It was in this borderland of hysteria that the disciples of Matthias, the Elijah Piersons and Benjamin Folgers, passed their lives. Mr. and Mrs. Pierson were directors of the Magdalene institution. Of the two, he was the more fanatical and the diary he left of his conversations with the Lord is an extraordinary document in religious mania:
“Prayed for the harlots at Five Points: asked the Lord to give us all the ground whereon the soles of our feet had trod, and all the souls now alive who had heard our voices in that neighborhood.
“Answer. The Lord said, ‘You must go and fetch them out.’ The Lord said, concerning the two witnesses, ‘Thou art one and Sarah the other.’”
On another date, the petition is less practical, but the answer is equally satisfactory:
“O, Lord Jesus! I perceive that I have failed in exercising a spirit of love, patience, meekness, kindness, and condescension to my fellows, and especially a spirit of impertinence in disputation. Now, Lord Jesus, I confess to thee that this has been wrong, and I am heartily sorry for it, and beg thy forgiveness. O Lord! forgive me, and cleanse me from these sins: help me hereafter, Lord, to exercise the opposite graces in a double proportion.
“Answer. We have freely forgiven thee and cleansed thee from this unrighteousness.—Thy petition is granted, and thou shalt have help from us so as to enable thee to exercise these graces.”
On Sunday, the 28th of February, 1830, Mr. and Mrs. Pierson founded a church which met in their house on Bowery Hill and included two negresses as members. The physical exertions required of them by their religious and charitable enterprises were almost incredible. Throughout the winter they held daily prayer meetings which seem to have lasted 18 or 20 hours a day. When this rigor was abated, they spent their time in asylums and rescue missions. They fasted for long seasons and, when they did not fast, they ate only the minimum food necessary to keep them alive. By the middle of June, Sarah Pierson collapsed. On the 18th, her husband fasted and prayed for her and it seemed to him that the Lord said, “Sarah thy wife will recover.” This was an error, but before the error was discovered, another more important message came to him, this time without the interposition of prayer. Mr. Pierson, who was a prosperous merchant, was riding down to Wall Street in an omnibus when God spoke to him and said, “Thou art Elijah the Tishbite,” and instructed him, in biblical terms, to invite all the members of his church to come together. (It was at this time that the Folger family entered into the sect.)
Mrs. Pierson, regrettably, was dying. Her husband, who was reasonably devoted to her, read to the assemblage “a passage from the Epistle of James, ‘Is any sick among you? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him [with oil], in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and The Lord Shall Raise Him Up.’” Duly following the injunction, he anointed the body with oil in the name of the Lord. Mrs. Pierson did not recover but, immediately after her death, her husband saw a new sense in the scriptural passage, namely that his wife would die, but would experience immediate resurrection. Before a crowd of friends, he cried out, “O Lord God of Israel! thy own word declares that if the elders of the church anoint the sick and pray over him, the Lord shall raise him up. We have taken thee at thy word; we have anointed with oil, and prayed the prayer of faith, and thou knowest in this faith the dear woman died, and in this faith we thy children live. Now, Lord, we claim thy promise! God is not man that he should lie, and if this dear woman is not raised up this day, thy word will fall to the ground; thy promise is null and void; and these gainsaying infidels will rejoice, and go away triumphing in their belief. Lord God! thou canst not deny thyself. Thou knowest we have performed the conditions to the very letter. O Lord, now fulfill thy promise—now, Lord— O let not thy enemies blaspheme—show that thou hast Almighty power—thou canst raise the dead—we believe it, Lord. Come now, and make good thy word, and let this assembly see that there is a God in Israel!”
A number of women, standing around the coffin waiting eagerly for the miracle, touched the hands and face of the corpse from time to time, expecting to discover signs of returning life. As the prayer ended, a drop of blood issued from the nostril of the dead woman. This was taken for a sign of life, but a doctor present told them that it was the infallible evidence of death, and a token of incipient putrefaction. One of the faithful then interpreted the prophecy to mean that this beloved and lamented Christian shall “rise again—at the resurrection of the just.” Mr. Pierson delayed the interment until noon. After the funeral he believed she would be raised at midnight, and not only had her bedroom put in order and nightclothes laid out “as for the reception of a bride,” but also sent out to get delicacies that would please her. He continued to postpone the date of her resurrection and, later, he and one of his servants imagined that they talked with the dead woman. Throughout the year, he spoke also to the Lord, asking him what would happen if he gave up his business in order to prosecute the work and asking whether he could perform miracles and how many conversions he should make. The replies were all satisfactory. The usual sacred number of 144,000 was given as the limit of his prospective conversions.
Mr. Folger, the other favorite disciple, had suffered a bereavement at about the same time, and he and Pierson, drawn closely together were both peculiarly hospitable to the tall, bearded, and patriarchal stranger who now presented himself to them and declared himself to be God the father (through the spirit of Jesus of Nazareth) with power to forgive sins and communicate the Holy Ghost to those who believed in him. Just as the Piersons were convinced that they were the witnesses spoken of, so Matthias the newcomer, declared himself to be the angel spoken of in Revelations 14. He told them that he had been searching for two years for the true church, and now recognized them as its elders. The kingdom of God on earth had begun with Matthias’s public declaration in Albany, June, 1830. By June, 1857, all wars would cease, the judgment of mankind would be passed and the wicked would be destroyed. Coincidence of dates persuaded Pierson that Matthias was indeed the Messiah, for whom he, himself, was John the Baptist. As soon as the men had each recognized and accepted the divine mission of the other, and had washed each other’s feet, Matthias settled himself in the Pierson home and became the sole preacher of the church on Bowery Hill. His disciples let their beards grow long and, with Matthias, denounced (according to his somewhat loosely constructed notes):
“All who say that the Jews crucified Jesus.
All who say that the first day of the week is the Sabbath.
All who say that immersion with the clothes on is baptism.
All who say that sprinkling is baptism.
All who say preaching to women without their husbands.
All who drinketh wine in bowls.
All who eateth the Passover in a lower room.”
Among other things Matthias preached that the earth and all it contained belonged to him. In any case, all of the earth possessed by Pierson and Folger was now at his disposal. He lived in a luxury and pomp which must have fulfilled his early dreams. “He displayed fine cambric ruffles around his wrists and upon his bosom, and to a rich silken scarf, interwoven with gold, were suspended twelve golden tassels, emblematical of the twelve tribes of Israel. His fine linen night caps were wrought with curious skill of needle-work, with names of the twelve apostles embroidered thereon. Thus decked with finery at the expense of his two special disciples, and feasting on the choicest dainties, under pretext of sacraments, he lived upon, and with them.”
He prepared, with the money of his friends, to build the new Jerusalem, and went to one of the leading platemakers of New York to have a complete set of silver made with the lion of Judah as a crest. He carried an arm which he called the Sword of Gideon, but from which he failed to delete the e pluribus unum of the United States army. He was also provided with a six-foot rule to measure off property in Paradise. His preaching was extraordinary, his utterance was always in sharp sentences without exhortation or appeal. H
e had a nose for abominations. “They who teach women are of the wicked. The communion is all nonsense; so is prayer. Eating a nip of bread and drinking a little wine won’t do any good. . . . Everything that has the smell of woman will be destroyed. Woman is the capsheaf of the abomination of desolation—full of all deviltry. In a short time the world will take fire and dissolve—it is combustible already. . . . When you see anyone wring the neck of a fowl, instead of cutting off its head, he has not got the Holy Ghost. All who eat swine’s flesh are of the devil; and just as certain as he eats it, he will tell a lie in less than half an hour. If you eat a piece of pork, it will go crooked through you, and the Holy Ghost will not stay in you, but one or the other must leave the house pretty soon. The pork will be as crooked in you as the rams’ horns, and as great a nuisance as the hogs in the street.”[2]
Mr. Pierson at the same time continued to converse with his dead wife:
“Sunday, June 24, 1832. Second anniversary of the morning when I went to Sarah’s bedside, and in the name of the Lord, bid her arise and walk.
“She gave me her hand, arose from the bed, and walked round the room, and laid down again.
“It appeared to me that this was a pledge of her future resurrection. . . . [I asked] suppose I felt as a husband ought, in point of office. She said, I have peace, my Lord. Again, thou hast power, and this shall be a sign unto you that these things were real. It was according to her word. These things appeared real, except bodily presence.”
Matthias meanwhile revenged himself on the mocking crowds of a few years ago, by appearing at the Battery gate in a superb coach with a fine pair of horses. Sometimes walking to and fro, he would cause his friends to follow him at a reverential distance. His great height, his long wavy hair, his coarse curly beard and mustaches, and his green coat, figured vest and black pantaloons, with a sash of crimson silk around his waist, made him one of the most striking figures in the New York of the early Thirties.
Presently, friends of another disciple broke the harmony of the church and managed to have Matthias committed to the hospital for the insane at Bellevue. Here his beard was cut; but a relative got him out of Bellevue and he returned to the Pierson household. As crowds followed him to the door, he would mount to the steps and preach to them. If the negro servant Isabella annoyed him over some household economy, he would remain at home and preach to her the whole day. In March of 1833, Mr. Pierson received a disastrous order from the Lord. It was to give no more money to Matthias. Without breaking off relations with Pierson, Matthias, thereupon devoted himself to the Folger family. He had performed a miracle in driving out a devil of fever from Mrs. Folger and he now proposed that she should abandon her husband and marry him. The method was simple. In as much as Christian marriages were performed by ministers who confessed themselves sinners, they were in themselves illegal and it was in Matthias’s power to dissolve them. He went to live with the Folgers, richly promising them salvation, but it would seem that there were drawbacks. “He always took the meal time to preach, and generally preached so long that it was very difficult to find sufficient time to get through the duties. He often detained the breakfast-table until ten or eleven o’clock in the morning—say three to four hours; he would spend several hours at the dinner-table; and the supper (as the third meal was always called) table until eight, nine, ten, or eleven o’clock at night.”
Among the other peculiarities of life at the Folgers was Matthias’s habit of getting into a barrel of water, thereby sanctifying it, and from it sprinkling the naked women of his sect who stood by. His feeling about bathing was deep. He used to assist Mrs. Folger at her bath, she returning the courtesy for him. He followed the Folger family when they removed to Mount Pleasant and Pierson and Folger were preparing to give him a house in Greenwich Village when Folger when bankrupt, owing about $220,000. Matthias, who was not directly responsible for this turn in Folger’s affairs, promptly argued that, since all the property in the world belonged to the children of God, no true believer could owe anything to the Gentiles. Mr. Folger, however, persisted in thinking that what remained of his estate should go to satisfy his creditors. In the summer of 1834, Mr. Pierson, who was still solvent, began to suffer from peculiar fits, and Matthias exercised his power by making him arise and walk while still under the influence of epilepsy. Regaining consciousness, Mr. Pierson seemed gratified to hear of the miracle vouchsafed him.
By this time the relationship of Matthias and Mrs. Folger had been regulated. The husband, reluctant at first, was finally convinced that his wife and the Messiah were “matched spirits” and, by some ingenuity of logic, Mrs. Folger persuaded herself that she was a virgin, although she had borne children. This was necessary as a holy son had been promised to her and Matthias (the son, when it was born, proved to be a girl). Mr. Folger was further persuaded by another argument. If Mrs. Folger had found him lacking in attack, he himself could not resist the promise of a younger mate. Matthias sent him to bring down from Albany the daughter left behind when the prophet began his travels. Folger was prompt in execution of this plan but, on the way back, the daughter of Matthias revealed that she had very recently been married to a Mr. Laisdell. In spite of this, and in spite of the presence of a younger child who made the journey with them, Folger and the daughter of Matthias slept together on the way back to Sing Sing where the family was temporarily residing. Several days after they arrived, the child spoke out. Matthias whipped his daughter crying, “Take death with every stroke,” but eventually declared that the adultery which had been practiced nullified his daughter’s marriage, and she was therefore wedded to Folger. This was the position of affairs when Mr. Pierson died.
The events preceding his death were eventually looked into by the Grand Jury which discovered that just before the victim’s last attack, he had eaten freely of some blackberries in the picking and preparing of which Matthias and—it was hinted—his confederates had something to do. Matthias had eaten no blackberries, nor had Mrs. Folger, as she was not feeling well. Matthias preached throughout the meal and, near the close, Mrs. Folger managed to interject the remark that he had eaten no berries. He thereupon left the table in anger saying that the sons were honored and the daughters blessed themselves in the Father’s house, but that the Father did not receive the honor due him. He proceeded to preach with vehemence and severity until a late hour of the night. The next day Mr. Pierson became violently sick. Catherine, another inmate of the house, who had also eaten blackberries the day before, suffered from nausea and displayed all of Mr. Pierson’s symptoms with the exception of epilepsy. Matthias denounced Mrs. Folger and a negro servant for encouraging the devil by ministering to the invalids. Mr. Pierson himself had accepted Matthias’s idea that disease was the work of the devil and should be exorcised, not cured. For a few days Mr. Pierson was alternately better and worse. (The woman Catherine rested and dieted for a few days, escaping the attention of Matthias, and recovered.) On the following Monday morning, a breakfast consisting of coffee, bread and shad was taken to Mr. Pierson. It was the last meal the poor man ate. That night he was in great pain. Matthias, engaged in conversation, ordered a warm bath for the dying man, in the midst of which the colored woman, perceiving the symptoms of a fit, slapped Mr. Pierson in the face, saying, “Come out of your hellish sleep.” Some time later, Mrs. Folger ventured to say to Matthias that she felt uneasy about Pierson especially as no one had given him water to drink. Matthias thereupon took up a pint pitcher of water and, with the help of the colored woman, from a height of four or five feet, poured it into the mouth of Mr. Pierson. This caused “shocking noises or gurglings in the throat” and Mr. Pierson’s fits came in rapid succession. Shortly after one o’clock, Mrs. Folger heard Matthias going into Pierson’s room. She followed and met him coming out again. Mr. Pierson, he said, was dead. Even before the funeral, when Mr. Folger spoke of Pierson’s death, Matthias said that he would serve all his enemies in like manner, giving Folger to understand that, at a certain moment when Matthi
as had found Pierson objectionable, he had gone into his own room and made a sign, “as simple as the turn of a spoke of a chair,” which had sealed Pierson’s doom. Mrs. Folger’s testimony before the coroner was too frank to please Matthias and difficulties about the dead man’s property, caused an estrangement between them. Mrs. Folger resumed marital relations with her husband, but Matthias continued to live with them and was there on a day when he alone escaped a violent attack of sickness. Mrs. Folger remembered that, on that day, Matthias had refused to drink coffee. From that time, a member of the Folger family superintended the making of breakfast.
The Stammering Century Page 17
