of warmth, awe, beautiful joy, and aspiration, drawn directly from the earnest soul, is the more gracious and attractive spectacle the critical estimate and rectification of those results by the standard of science, if a somewhat chillier task, is yet a noble and needful one, and still richer in the promise of future fruit.

ART. II. THE FEMALE CHURCH OF KÖNIGSBERG. Spiritual Wives. By WILLIAM HEPWORTH DIXON. London: Hurst & Blackett, 1868.

MR. WILLIAM HEPWORTH DIXON'S new book may be readily criticised and easily denounced. It makes a very long story where many readers will think there was unusual occasion for concise statements; and with this extended, and withal attractive, from a literary point of view, recital of spiritual disease of the most dangerous form, it can hardly be said to connect any saving resumé of sound principles. That Mr. Dixon has wilfully sinned herein, need not be assumed: we prefer to believe that he has seized upon the facts intercalated in his lively pages as material available for a study in morbid psychology, which he really thought instructive as well as entertaining; and that he has in considerable measure avoided the discussion of principles, because he was not prepared to carry it through.

The speed with which the book has come to us, from its author and from the press, may help to explain why we have a brilliant sketch, rather than a profound and rigorous discussion. The opening chapter speaks of " the present month of November, 1867; " the preface is dated "New-Year's Day, 1868;" and on the 1st of February the volumes arrived in Boston. English criticisms soon followed them,ly eulogistic, others hot with virtuous indignation. The traditional Podsnap of the "London Times" uttered the wrath and horror of conventional British propriety. Some other prominent and many obscure organs of British opinion fol

some warm

lowed in the same strain. And numbers of English correspondents, apparently taking their cue from the "Times," set up a howl more suggestive of a garret and bad ale, than of literary criticism. Such English journals, however, as the "Examiner," the "Star," the "London Review," the "Leader," the "Post," and the "Globe," spoke in terms of unqualified praise of the success with which Mr. Dixon had accomplished a difficult and delicate task.

The well-informed American reader, especially if he belong to any of the sects which make great account of revivals, or is interested in Spiritism or Socialism, will be repeatedly provoked by Mr. Dixon's singular misapprehension and misrepresentation of facts, and his wildly superficial generalizations. Thus he makes the passion for spiritual marriage the result, and the main result, of the "Great American Revival;" with about as much justice as one would make Benedict Arnold the fruit of the "Great American Revolution." His recital of events, in the history of obscure and sometimes contemptible fanatics, assumes a dignity wholly baseless. He writes as if American society were to be found in the back parlor of John Noyes, and the fruits of American civilization tasted by observing what a dozen crack-brained free-lovers have accomplished. Even when he cites the instances of persons of some worth and repute, he both misrepresents their position, and gives it a ridiculous importance. But these and other striking faults in Mr. Dixon's treatment of his theme do not alter the fact, that his book is one of interest and value, and is a well-meant and able contribution to the history of human nature. If it lead us to note more of the weakness and failure of man than of his strength and success, and weakness and failure where we would most see strength and success, the lesson may none the less be useful and important.

Two-thirds of Mr. Dixon's first volume is devoted to a story of singular fanaticism of piety and free-love in the old Prussian fortress-city of Königsberg. Leaving aside those chapters which evidently serve only to give a setting to the main events, we find in the front of the scene one

Schönherr, called the " Pauper Paraclete," because he claimed to be the incarnate "Comforter," and chose to live in the depths of poverty. To the eye of the world, this "Pauper Paraclete" was a pious, praying and exhorting vagabond, of tall figure, long beard, heavy masses of curly hair under a huge broad-brimmed hat. He thought himself, however, both a saint and a sage; and in this twofold character engaged the interest and allegiance of some of the most religious and most intelligent people of his time. In his character of philosopher, Schönherr announced his grand discovery, that nature is composed of masculine and feminine elements. Light he declared to be the vivifier, the male principle of the universe; and water, the female principle, the nurse. He preached, for practical side to this theory, that the day of carnal love is past, and that the desire of men and women to become husbands and wives is a sign of Beelzebub's empire in the heart. His notion was, that all things, as they are male and female, should come into heavenly spiritual union, without taint or stain of the earthly and sensual. He himself became spiritually attached to a lovely and high-born girl, destined to act a chief part in the drama to which Schönherr's life was but the prologue. To this fair disciple, who had been drawn to his conventicle by interest in his teaching, he wished to be united by a sort of Shaker bond. The lady was not unwilling, but her friends interfered. One of Schönherr's grand schemes, by which he proposed to manifest his divine. powers, was to build in faith a vessel such as the world had never seen, a cross between Noah's ark and a modern steamer. All his orders about it were. taken in visions of the night. It was to be called the "Swan," and was to prove the faith which removes mountains. It should be a celestial ship, able to sail against wind and tide, without oars, horses, or other moving-power than faith; and it was to surpass in speed the swiftest clipper. Substantial men were found who did not think this a crazy dream, merchants who gave him timber, and workmen who gave labor. The new ark was built and launched, but it would not even float.

It sank into the mud, and there lay until it was broken up. The ready explanation of Schönherr was, that the workmen had not had the requisite faith.

To the day of his death, which took place at the premature age of fifty-five, the "Pauper Paraclete" asserted that he could never die; seeing that he had already died, and was born again. The assertion was on his lips when he passed away. Such instance of the attempt to have the faith which removes mountains, may well cause reflection upon the ground in the New Testament on which delusion like this can be built. Edward Irving, who cannot be dismissed with Schönherr as a mere fanatic, took firm hold of what he believed the authority of Jesus; and himself also died full in the faith, not that he could never die, but that death for that time would be beaten off by his faith. It is one of the points around which gather perplexities that become terrible, when a literal faith comes to wreck amid overwhelming troubles of mortal life. It certainly seems as wise as it is necessary to let the rule ascribed to the Master be rigorously qualified by that uncompromising sentence of the apostolic disciple, that mountain-removing faith is nothing in itself, but has efficacy only as it is an organ and instrument of the spirit of love.

Before Schönherr's death, there had appeared among his disciples a man who was destined to be the Messiah of the notions to which he had been but a John Baptist in the wil derness. This man was Johannes Wilhelm Ebel, son of a pastor of one of the small lake-towns of East Prussia, who had been suspended from his office because of certain mystical ideas he had adopted on the coming of a Paraclete in the flesh. A lovely child, the young Ebel grew up a handsome youth, and through life had unusual personal attractions. He was, with great reluctance and many fears on the part of the old pastor, sent to Königsberg, the scene of Kant's activity and fame, to study divinity. The rule of the University was hostile to pietism; but Ebel more than kept his faith. He pored over the lives of the saints; and, with much dreaming and many reveries, meditated on the

speculations of the mystics. He found some work as a private tutor, and as a religious instructor in ladies' schools. A country curacy which was given him he did not like, because he missed the city life and the ladies' schools. Hence he accepted an opportunity to take an obscure and poor church in Königsberg, which he soon filled with a crowd of admirers. In no long time he was promoted to the high post of assistant in the great church of the city, where his fine figure, his winning manners, and eloquent tongue made him the adored leader of a congregation largely composed of aristocratic ladies. As a preacher he was bold, sentimental, and original; grave and profound when he chose to be, but often sportive and mirthful, and always bent on the awakening of souls. Mystical and dreamy, with a warm faith in things unseen, he was able to exercise a stupendous power over a certain class of female minds.

Ebel was a keen student of science and divinity; his opinions and position were conservative; his sympathies were aristocratic; yet he attached himself to Schönherr, and accepted the ravings of this unlettered fanatic as a second gospel. The theory of light and water, and the dogma of a Paraclete made flesh, Ebel cordially accepted. He sat at the beggar's board in the pot-house, preached his doctrine, fought his battles, made public declaration of faith in his theories, and trudged with him on journeys about the country. Schönherr was the prophet, Ebel the witness, of the new dispensation. In 1816, the prophet and his witness, with a single obscure disciple, a converted varnish-maker, set out on a mission to the cities of Prussia, thinking perhaps to go on until they should carry the gospel of the kingdom to the whole world. No success attended them, as they wandered on foot, through heat and dust, through frost and cold. Princes and people were alike indifferent. But on a day they obtained access to a young and beautiful woman, who was wearing her life out with heavy sorrow in a lonely Silesian castle. This woman, known afterwards as the Countess Ida, was Ebel's fate. She was the daughter of the High President of the province. As a girl of singular beauty, del