It had always been orthodox doctrine that man would be wholly redeemed from sin at the Second Coming of Christ. By close application to the Scriptures, Noyes discovered that this event had already taken place, in the 70th year, at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem. This, the crucial point in his whole mechanism of salvation, is an obvious reaction against Millerism. It is a healthy refusal to be stampeded by one of the wildest excesses of religious frenzy. Noyes would ascend no mountain in a white shift to be that much nearer to Christ in the month of October, 1843. For him the last judgment of the Jewish Dispensation had already come. Those who now accepted Christ were without sin forever. Once he had succumbed to the hysteria of religion. If hysteria occurred again, he would be in a position to create it, not to suffer from it. On the 16th of April, 1834, the Association which had licensed Noyes to preach met at New Haven. “Mr. John H. Noyes at the request of the Association, made a statement of his peculiar opinions respecting the doctrine of Christian perfection; whereupon, on motion of Dr. Taylor, the following resolution was adopted:
“Whereas, Mr. Noyes had adopted views on the doctrine of Christian perfection, which in the opinion of this Association are erroneous, unscriptural, and inconsistent with his usefulness as a preacher of the gospel, and such as in his opinion are inconsistent with his retaining his license,
“Therefore, Resolved, that without impeaching the Christian character of Mr. Noyes this Association do hereby recall his license to preach the gospel.”
He stayed on for a time at New Haven, expounding his doctrine, and his letters home during this period are admirable pictures of his state of mind. He was, at heart, a radical pioneer. It was only the possession of a disciplined intelligence which kept him from becoming a fanatic and a faddist. He writes: “I had not only lost my standing in the Free Church, in the ministry, and in the college. My good name in the great world was gone. My friends were fast falling away. I was beginning to be indeed an outcast: yet I rejoiced and leaped for joy. Sincerely I declared that ‘I was glad when I got rid of my reputation.’ Some persons asked me whether I should continue to preach, now that the clergy had taken away my license. I replied, ‘I have taken away their license to sin, and they keep on sinning; so, though they have taken away my license to preach, I shall keep on preaching.’”
And to his mother, “As you desired to know my plans, I have told you all I know at present. Perhaps before to-morrow everything will be changed. I live by no sure rule of calculation except the faithfulness of God. Therefore, if you would have peace so far as I am concerned, you must make no calculations other than that. . . . ” And, more violently, to his sister: “Am I a boy or a man? Am I sane or crazy? Am I a wretch or a servant of God? If you think me a boy, or crazy, or reckless apostate, I commend your course, and only ask you to use care in forming your opinion of me. After that, use persuasion or force to bring me home or consign me to a hospital. But if you think me a man . . . I pray you believe . . . that I can best manage my own matters. . . . If this be so, if you are waiting for results (whether Perfectionism will prevail) and not looking at truth, nothing but sorrow is before you. . . . Let me say now for your special notice, that family considerations have become with me subordinate to my relations to God and, if there is any conflict between them, the first will be sacrificed without faltering. . . . I want it [money] not. . . . I know full well, if this letter does not cure her [his mother] it will trouble her. I commit the result to the Lord.” He had refused money from friends, but accepted a little from his father. Even this he rejects, unless it comes with grace: “I have not received money because my father has supplied me. What you have given I have received as a gratuity with thankfulness both to you and to my Father in heaven. If you are not interested in the object for which I live, I cannot ask or expect you to assist me.”
The theory of Perfectionism is at the root of all Noyes did, but it sounds so incredible that the best way to approach it is from its worst side. It was, as Noyes knew, being embraced by libertines, “not because they loved holiness, but because they were weary of . . . restraints. Perfectionism presented them a fine opportunity of giving full swing to carnality . . .” and, although Noyes condemned this licentiousness, he was the chief exponent of the religion on which it rested, and was held responsible. Perfectionism appeared simultaneously in many forms. His was New Haven Perfectionism, disciplined and directed; the others were New York and Massachusetts Perfectionism. It was out of the latter varieties that the first scandal came. Simon Lovett and Chauncey E. Dutton in the 1830’s were circulating through New England as missionaries of Perfectionism, and their early theory, according to common report, was opposed entirely to intercourse between the sexes. Another leader, Dr. Gridley, boasted that “he could carry a virgin in each hand, without the least stir of unholy passion.” At Delphi, in Central New York, Lucina Umphreville, a fascinating Perfectionist, had been teaching that “carnal union was not to be tolerated even in marriage.” Then, just as Noyes was beginning his labors, a regrettable event occurred. According to Hepworth Dixon, a mocking English reporter of Noyes’ Spiritual Wives, Noyes claimed that “at Brimfield, Mary Lincoln and Maria Brown visited Simon Lovett in his room; and they came out of the room in the innocence of Shakerism.” But Noyes’ own account of his flight from Brimfield and what happened after he left, is quite different. The young man who, a few years earlier, had decided to gratify the lust of the eye, was dismayed by a single kiss. The man who was shortly to claim that your wife is the bride of Christ, and so every man’s bride, struggled for twenty-four hours through the snow of a New England winter to put sixty miles between himself and— was it temptation? The case of Noyes is exceptionally complicated. His naturalness and common sense about sex are bounded on one side by an exceptional timidity: on the other, by an equally exceptional audacity. The two boundaries are often found together, but without the middle term; the ascetic is the inverted libertine. In Noyes we have the ascetic and the libertine and the common sensual man, all in one. In the Brimfield affair, which had grave consequences, the Puritan is uppermost:
“I was so near being actually present at this affair,” Noyes writes, “and so liable to be thought responsible for it and implicated in it, that I must now tell more particularly how and why I left Brimfield. From my first contact with the Massachusetts clique of Perfectionists at Southampton I had been aware of a seducing tendency to freedom of manners between the sexes. The expressions ‘brother,’ ‘sister,’ ‘beloved,’ ‘dearly beloved’ were in common use. One young woman kissed Simon Lovett the first time she ever saw him. At Brimfield there was a group of handsome, brilliant young women, and manners were equally free. By my position as preacher of the doctrines which had taken all by storm I was the object of attentions, which were seemingly innocent but which I soon began to suspect as dangerous. Finally one evening at a social gathering around William Tarbell’s fire his daughter, Hannah, in the midst of the general cheerfulness seemed downcast. I asked her what made her sad. She replied that she imagined I had no confidence in her. Thereupon I took a seat beside her and put my arm around her. As we separated she kissed me in token of recovery from her distrust. That night, while on my bed in prayer, I got a clear view of the situation, and I received what I believed to be ‘orders’ to withdraw. I left the next morning alone, without making known my intentions to anyone, and took a bee-line on foot through snow and cold—below zero—to Putney, sixty miles distant, which I reached within twenty-four hours.”
The affair he alludes to was the same visit referred to by Dixon to the attractive Lovett’s room. The two girls went with a purpose “by no means carnal”—in fact they were seeking a crowning demonstration of the spirit triumphing over the flesh. But, says Noyes sadly, “as usually happens in such presumptuous experiments . . . the flesh triumphed over the spirit.” A terrible scandal broke, and its first effect upon one of the victims affords another instance of the religio-sexual hysteria of the time, a parallel to the cases of Matthias
and his friends. Shocked by the failure of her faith and possibly by the tumult of sexual inhibitions suddenly broken down, and whipped by the scandal she had caused, Mary Lincoln had a vision of God destroying the whole town of Brimfield with fire from Heaven and called all true believers to flee to the mountains. Only one young woman, Flavilla Howard, went with her. Tramping through mud and rain in the night, the girls, as they approached the peak, cast off their clothing as they ran until, naked on the mountain top, they prayed God to stay the avenging bolts. “As a result of their intercession, they afterwards said, the city was saved.” The news from Brimfield quickly reached Delphi, New York, where, at the same time, Erasmus Stone was gratified by a disturbing vision. The combined impact overcame the Platonic prejudices of Lucina Umphreville, who was joined in “spiritual union” with Jarvis Rider, a Perfectionist preacher. Presently the other heroine of Brimfield, Maria Brown, visited Delphi, and Noyes tells us that soon the Platonic friendships became anything but Platonic.
It is the exceptional interest, and merit, of John Humphrey Noyes that, unlike most other prophets and reformers, he had in him a great capacity for growth. He could be as uncompromising as the stars in their courses; but he was not a fanatical radical, ridden by a theory to which facts must conform. It is characteristic of him that when Darwinism struck the world aghast with what seemed to many an untempered materialism, he went to the poetic root of the matter and accepted in Darwin the great idea of the plasticity of living forms. He was adaptable. Whatever happened to him gave change and development to his ideas. So it was with Brimfield. Psychologically, he was unprepared to accept fornication. He had not yet discovered sufficient sanctity. The Brimfield episode taught him, rapidly, to modify his Perfectionism until it became distinct from the more licentious forms, and to give it a discipline. Clearly, he wanted to keep his doctrine in his own hands. Whoever pushed it farther than himself was to be outlawed. One of the few traces of sectarian anger in his writings occurs in his final comment on Brimfield: “I confess that I sympathized to some extent with the spirit of the first letters that came to me about this affair, and sought to shelter rather than to condemn the young women who appealed to me against the storm of scandal which they had brought upon themselves. But in the sequel, as the irregularities continued and passed on into actual licentiousness and finally into propagandism, I renounced all sympathy with them, and did my best in subsequent years to stamp them out by word or deed.”
In Brimfield, the hysteria of Perfectionism had answered the hysteria of the religions of sin. At Putney, to which Noyes returned toward the close of the 1830’s, deep called again to deep, this time by way of miracles. These two episodes, Brimfield and Putney, are, as I have said, the worst manifestations of Perfectionism. They are noted first because they connect the new doctrine with the old and because, out of the excesses of the practice, we can arrive at some reasonable estimate of the theory. At Putney, Noyes founded, not an actual community, but a group of believers. He was not yet ready for a great organization, but had experienced the disasters of an impulsive gathering of disciples. “At this time,” he says, “I commenced in earnest the enterprise of repairing the disasters of Perfectionism, and establishing it on a permanent basis, not by preaching and stirring up excitement over a large field, as had been done at the beginning, nor by laboring to reorganize and discipline broken and corrupted regiments as I had done at different places, but by devoting myself to the particular instruction of a few simple-minded, unpretending believers, chiefly belonging to my father’s family. I had now come to regard the quality of the proselytes of holiness as more important than their quantity; and the quality which I preferred was not that meteoric brightness which I had so often seen miserably extinguished, but sober and even timid honesty. This I found in the little circle of believers at Putney; and the Bible School which I commenced among them in the winter of 1836–7 proved to be to me and to the cause of holiness the beginning of better days.”
Hostile critics imply that sexual irregularities in Noyes’ group offended the neighboring Vermonters, but when we recall that by this time persecution had driven the Mormons across the Mississippi and killed their prophet, we may assume that Noyes kept a firm hand on his disciples and that the mere nature of his doctrine was offensive enough to cause the indignation meetings that were held by the good Christians of Putney. Noyes was always sensitive to the opinion of the churches. On a later occasion, he gave up an essential of Perfectionist practice in order to save the rest from ecclesiastical persecution. But to the criticism of his townsmen at Putney he reacted pugnaciously. On the first of June, 1847, he startled his followers with this question: “Is not now the time for us to commence the testimony that the Kingdom of God has come—to proclaim boldly that God in His Character of Deliverer, Law-giver and Judge has come to this town and in this Association?”
The essential word is “testimony.” A witness was needed for the Lord, and that presently. This was in keeping with Noyes’ own idea of his church—that its only affiliations were with the primitive churches of the early Christian Era. It also fitted in with his very mildly expressed belief in his own personal relation with Divinity. In his proposal of marriage he had written that he had the “permission and goodwill” of God in making his offer. Without claiming direct inspiration, he obviously felt that, since he had found the secret of Sanctification, God was very close to him. A miracle was needed as proof.
It was needed also as a warning. Shrinking from the sexual debauches of Brimfield, Noyes could only discover one reason for them: that the Brimfield Perfectionists were not perfect, not entirely sanctified. He could not read them out of the church, for one of the principles of Perfectionism was the independence of each unit and of each individual. But he could cry out woe “unto him who abolishes the law of the apostasy before he stands in the holiness of the Resurrection”; that is, woe unto him who assumes the liberties of the sinless soul before he has actually accepted Christ. When one has really accepted Christ, it is Christ who acts, not the mortal alone, and so sin is impossible; but if one has not partaken of Christ, sin is inevitable. It is only in the Kingdom of God that utter freedom is granted; and Noyes, looking for that degree of freedom, needed proof that Putney was, at that moment, God’s Kingdom.
His need was fulfilled with gratifying promptness. It was made known on the first of June and, three weeks later to a day, the miracle occurred in the mystical healing of Harriet A. Hall, a chronic invalid. In many ways this is a more unhappy episode than the Brimfield seductions. It deeply implicates Noyes himself and shows a weak strain in an unexpected place—in his intellect. It associates him with the least impressive phenomena of revivalism. The healing power was exercised by Noyes and Mary Cragin and the testimony of the invalid is all that could be required. It reads more like a testimonial than like a testimony. “From a helpless, bed-ridden state, in which I was unable to move, or even to be moved without excruciating pain, I was instantly raised to a consciousness of perfect health. I was constrained to declare again and again that I was perfectly well. My eyes, which before could not bear the light, were opened to the blaze of day and became strong. My appetite was restored, and all pain removed.”
Noyes’ explanation is also according to rule. The woman, he says, “was completely bed-ridden, and almost blind, lying in nearly total darkness. . . . From this state, she was raised instantly, by the laying on of hands, and by the word of command, into strength which enables her to walk, to face the sun, and ride miles without inconvenience, and with excessive pleasure. . . . The cure of Mrs. Harriet Hall, is as unimpeachable as any of the miracles of the primitive church.” The difficulty here is that of all faith-healing: the cure took place, but we are not acquainted with all the particulars of the disease. It may have been one of the many which are properly treated by psychotherapy. The internal evidence is, however, unfavorable to Noyes. “The miracle is,” says Professor Warfield, “as obvious a sham as any of the thousands and thousands of sham mirac
les which disgrace the annals of the church, and not of the church only but of every popular religious movement throughout the world—differing only from other sham miracles in bearing on its brow the brand of fraud, as many of them do not. The part taken by Mary Cragin in this miracle—and others—is so barefacedly that of a play-actor, that one wonders that so shrewd a man as Noyes permitted the details to be made public.” There are two circumstances supporting this view, and one of them—the character of Mary Cragin—is fully analyzed by this critic. She was the wife of George Cragin, and their coming to join Noyes was considered a capital event. Cragin, as noted before, had been a revivalist under Finney and an active moral reformer in New York City. His wife shared his enthusiasms and was herself a zealous revivalist. Both eagerly accepted the Perfectionism of Noyes, for which their association with Finney had prepared them, and were converted to the new religion, going to live in the house of another ardent disciple, Abram C. Smith, at Rondout, where Mrs. Cragin became the spiritual wife, i.e., the mistress, of Smith. (The parallel to the unlovely story of Matthias and the Folgers is startling.) Noyes rebuked profligacy at Rondout as at Brimfield and the grateful, if not dignified, Cragin came with his restored wife to Putney.[2] To the outside world she seemed at the time a discredited witness. To us it still seems that she must have been an exceptionally prejudiced one. The best one can say of her is that her own spiritual excitement might well have worked on the excitement of the invalid.
The second circumstance to challenge the miracle is that Noyes never insisted upon it and that, after the Community went to Oneida, miracles were never again of primary importance. Possibly Noyes understood that, by claiming the highest proof, he was putting himself in the class of thousands of charlatans and was inviting a criticism having little to do with the genuine miracle of sanctification which he believed in. Or possibly the growth of his ideas and of his industries made further calls for proof unnecessary. The Perfectionists continued to believe that prayer was effective in curing disease, but they did not despise medical aid and accepted all the usual scientific measures for health. The affair at Putney was a desperate expedient, and an unsuccessful one. It not only diminishes Noyes’ intellectual stature, it is a rare mark of practical instability in him. The believers at Putney were, perforce, convinced, but the skepticism of outsiders was aggravated. Again there is a slight discrepancy in the accounts. Hinds says that no personal violence was offered to the group at Putney, but that Noyes and his followers considered it prudent to move. The exceptionally documented essay by Professor Warfield suggests the contrary: “Other miracles followed in rapid succession; and not content even with these, others still, alleged to have been wrought previously, were now brought forward and made public. But it was all in vain. The people were obdurate; and, having refused to believe Noyes and his followers, would not believe though many rose from their beds. Vigorous action was begun to rid the town of the scandal. Indignation meetings were held. The courts were set in motion; civil suits for damages were brought; the Grand Jury found a true bill and in the indictment thus made Noyes was arraigned on specific charges of adultery and held for trial on heavy bail. The result was, happily, the destruction of the obnoxious community at Putney. The suspension of the publication of the community’s journal—The Spiritual Magazine—was compelled. Immunity in the courts was bought at a heavy cost; the civil suits were satisfied by money payments out of court; before the criminal case came on, Noyes broke bail and fled beyond the jurisdiction of the court. The community itself began to scatter and in a year or so it was gone.”
The Stammering Century Page 22
