Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/187

Rh societies are conventual associations in a milder form, and upon the whole, as it appears to me, the most rational institutions, and the best adapted for their purpose of any of this class, in everything, excepting the dancing, which might be made considerably more rational, and much more accordant with its object.

The Elder Richard Bushrell gave me, at parting, a book containing the history of the origin and organisation of the Millennium Church, or United Society of Believers called Shakers. I see by it that the sect originated in France, where, during a religious revival in Dauphiné, about the close of the fifteenth century, a number of men and women were attacked by religious extacies, both of soul and body, which they regarded as the operations of the Holy Spirit, they being accompanied by visions and powerful inward admonitions to a holy, God-dedicated, ascetic life. Disquieted and persecuted in France, some of them fled to England. Anne Lee, the daughter of a smith, who seems, from her earliest years, to have had visions and inspirations like those which are related in the history of the Swedish saint, St. Brigitta, became known to these pious French exiles; though she could neither read nor write, yet she soon distinguished herself by her Biblical and other sacred knowledge. After long spiritual sufferings which had emaciated her body, she fell into a state of religious extacy, by which both soul and body re- gained new life, and during which she became the centre, the teacher and leader, of that little flock of scattered believers who had faith in the higher inspiration of this extatic condition. Strong faith and natural genius enabled this woman, devoid of all ordinary education, to reduce to a system that which had hitherto been merely isolated phenomena, and mere conjecture. Through her, and under her influence, the doctrines took a definite form, as thus. That as the world fell by the first Eve, so would it reinstate itself by the second Eve. Christ's second