ory of the present generation, many delusions have been propogated and received, to a considerable extent. The Shakers, styling themselves the "Millennium Church," a sect instituted by Ann Lee, in 1774, still maintain a respectable number. This "elect lady," as they sometimes styled her, was the head of the party, and gave them a new bible. They asserted that she spoke seventy-two different tongues, and conversed with the dead. Through her all blessings flowed to her followers. She appointed the sacred dance and the fantastic song; and consecrated shivering, swooning, and falling down, acts of acceptable devotion. They hold all things in common, rank marriage among the works of the flesh, and forbid all sexual intercourse.
In 1792, Richard Brothers published a book of prophecies and visions, and an account of his daily intercourse with God, in London. He too had his followers; and among them a member of the British Parliament, a profound scholar and one of the most learned men of his time. He even made a speech in the House of Commons, declaring his full belief in one of the craziest pieces of absurdity that was ever presented to a British populace.
Joanna Southcott, the most disgusting old hag that ever pretended to 'set up for herself,' in the business of blasphemy and dupe-making, was countenanced and encouraged by respectable and wealthy individuals in England; who, not only believed in the divine origin of her ministration, but swallowed with most implicit faith, her "Dialogue with the Devil," a farrago of filthy licentiousness that would suffuse the face of a fisherwoman. By her arts of deception she succeeded in procuring the certificate of a respectable physician that she was pregnant of the Holy Ghost.
In Scotland a few years since, a Miss Campbell pretended to have come back from the dead, having the "gift of tongues," was believed in by many of the Clergy and Bar,
