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Show DECAY OF ORTHODOX PROTESTANTISM News that Mrs. Katherine Tingley intends to duplicate in Xewburyport, Mass., her theosophical colony at Point Loma, Cal., emphasizes the fact that the Xew England and original American states have been most prolific fields for the cultivation cultiva-tion of social, religious and sexual fads and heresies. here-sies. These original and essentially Protestant and Sectarian states which, not long ago claimed an educational supremacy over all America, have been the nursing mothers of more eccentric and bizarre religious idiosyncrasies than the rest of North and South America. Boston still advances a claim to be the intellectual center of the union, and yet, its newspapers print more advertisements of individuals in-dividuals claiming mysterious powers, of psychic, fakers, trance mediums and the like than those of any other city of a similar size in the world. There are spots of ground in Boston and Salem Sa-lem where the ashes of men and women and even of children, burnt for witchcraft in the seventeenth seven-teenth century, have changed the nature of the primitive soil. Xowhere else in North America was witchcraft practiced so fanatically, and nq-where nq-where else did it assume such frenzied and peculiar pecu-liar forms. Xew England, in 1843 and again in 1854, was afire with Millerism and its incredible prophecies. Here, too, spiritism, Shakerism, Minonism and Quakerism found fertile soil where the seeds of their weird and gloomy doctrines expanded into noxious spiritual weeds. At Xew Zion, Me., Elijah Sandford and Silas Holland established the "Ancient Church" and such was the gullibility of the rural worshipers that the state was compelled to intervene to savo them from the predatory schemes of Elijah and Moses incarnated in Holland and Sandford. The "free love" seed of spiritism struck deep into the inviting soil of Xew England, matured and flowered as in no other region or territory in Xorth America. In and about Boston, Mrs. Eddy's Ed-dy's Christian Science originated and expanded into the present colossal humbug. There, too, the "Brook's Farm" experiment of high and intellectual intellec-tual Communism was unavailingly tried and in Boston today the Ilindu-Brahamanitic cult of the-osophy, the-osophy, claiming astral affinity and psychic unity "with the gods, with the Christs, with the saints," thrives as in nowhere else on the American continent. conti-nent. In these sectarian states, Transcendentalism, Unitarianism, TJniversalism and Agnosticism reaped and now gather in their harvest from among the brightest minds of the clergy, the universities and the teaching professions. The historic and imperishable Catholic church alone in these states and amid this awful confusion of religious opinions presents the only example of religious unity for which our Divine Lord prayed. It is a suggestive fact that many of these strange religious systems and singular superstitions supersti-tions originated with the early settlers of Xew England and are perpetuated largely by their descendants. de-scendants. It is also worthy of notice that the great Catholic population, the Irish and French Canadians, have escaped these mental plagues and epidemics, are increasing in numbers and are dispossessing dis-possessing the Xew Englandcrs in the cities, towns and rural districts. When these facts were lately brought to the notice of the Xew York Christian Advocate, the editor had this to say in the course of a defensive and lengthy article: "High intelligence, town meetings, constant discussion dis-cussion will always produce quite a large proportion propor-tion of individuals almost hysterically hankering after some new thing, and if a solid, sensible and spiritual religion is established in such communities communi-ties if it be strict and uncompromising there will be a revulsion, which revulsion will leave a large number of people without any hold upon religion. re-ligion. Such persons are very liable to run a competitive com-petitive race with each other for the palm of the greatest intelligence, perception and insight, out of which come a proportion which are rattle-headed." Further on the writer would wish it to be understood un-derstood that, the more highly the intellect is developed de-veloped the more prone it is to novelties. "The Athenians," he continues, "were the most highly intelligent people of their- age. Xew England was described 1,500 years before it came into existence, 'And they took him (St. Paul) and brought him into Areopagus, saying, May we know what this new doctrine, whereof those speakest, is? For thou bringest strange things to our ears; we would know therefore what these things mean. For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing, but either to tell or to hear some new thing.' " Exactly. The Athenians had lost the knowledge of the true and only Cod and were groping in the dark, in search for truth and the "unknown God" of whom they had not heard. St. Paul came to make known to them the existence of God, the attributes at-tributes of God, the divinity of Jesus Christ, "and when they had heard of the resurrection of the dead, some indeed mocked; but others said, 'We will hear thee again concerning this matter.' " "Xew England was described 1,500 years before it came into existence." Again we say exactly so. Father Beare came I to Bangor, Me., in IS."), to make knr-u the knowledge knowl-edge of the true God to the Xew Englanders and the religion founded by our Divine Lord, and they covered him with hot tar and feathers and rode him naked on a fence-rail. He was not quite as lucky as St. Paul. He lost his mind and died in an insane asylum. Bishop Fitzpatrick preached to the people of Boston the doctrines of Jesus Christ and the teachings of his church, and they met his arguments with stones, breaking the windows of his cathedral, attacking the Irish immigrants of South Boston, burning the convent at Charlestown and hunting the sisters into a neighboring swamp where one of them perished from exposure. Their sons and grandsons are now taking1 their religion in liberal doses from the cunning hands of Mrs. Katherine Tingley, Mrs. Baker Eddy and Mrs. Annie Besant, heavily reinforced by the soul of Madame Blavatsky. The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are on edge. These so-called highly intellectual people are now, in religion re-ligion and in the supreme questions of the soul, led by sensational women, the pythonesess of Xew England paganism. Truly, whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. i |