SHAKERS 811 in the third cycle, made God known as a Fa- ther ; and that in the last cycle, commencing with 1770, "God is revealed in the character of Mother, an eternal Mother, the hearing Spirit of all the creation of God." This last they regard as a revelation of God's affectional nature, as a manifestation of the divine love and tenderness. The Christs they helieve to be also dual, male and female, supramundane beings. Jesus, in their system, was a divinely instructed, pure, and perfect man, and by virtue of his anointing became Jesus Christ. Among the doctrines of the new revelation are the immortality of the soul, which Moses never taught, and the resurrection of the soul, by which they understand the quickening of the germ of a new and spiritual life, after the death of the first Adamic or generative life. All who marry and are given in marriage, or who in- dulge in the earthly procreative relation, they term " the children of this world," and follow- ers of the first Adam. They do not condemn them for living in the marriage relation, pro- vided they confine its use simply to the pur- pose of procreation, the production of offspring being the only justification of sexual inter- course ; all beyond that they designate as " the unfruitful works of darkness," and they sin- cerely condemn it as mere sensual gratification. But Shakers, as Christians, hold that they are called to lead a spiritual and holy life, not only free from all lust and carnal sexual indulgence, but even to rise above the order of natural and innocent human reproduction (proper enough for the "children of this world," and in a measure for gentile Christians), Shakers being the " children of the resurrection," daily dying to the generative nature, as Jesus and the apos- tles died to it, and thus becoming new crea- tures who are able to comprehend the " mys- teries of God." Another doctrine, in which they believe " Christ instructed Jesus," is hu- man brotherhood, and its development in a community of goods, according to the example of Jesus and his apostles. The doctrines of non-resistance, non-participation in any earthly government, and the necessity of a life of celi- bacy and virgin purity to a perfect Christianity, they regard as having been communicated to Jesus by a Christ Spirit ; and, though neglected by the church in the past, of prime obligation to the true believer. The second appearing of the Christ, "without sin unto salvation," they believe to have taken place, through Mother Ann Lee, in 1770. She, "by strictly obeying the light revealed in her, became righteous even as Jesus was righteous. She acknowledged Jesus Christ as her Head and Lord, and formed the same character as a spiritual woman that he did as a spiritual man." The necessity for the appearing of Christ in the female form re- sulted from the dual nature of Christ and of Deity. " Still it was not Jesus nor Ann, but the principles already stated, which were the foundation of the second Christian church. Their importance is derived from the fact of their being the first man and the first woman perfectly identified with the principles and spirit of Christ." This second appearing of Christ they hold to be the true resurrection state, and repudiate a physical resurrection as repugnant to science, reason, and Scripture. As they recognize four dispensations or cycles of human religious progress, so they believe there are heavens and hells to each cycle, which are still places of probation. The first dispensation, and its heaven and hell, were respectively for the good and wicked among the antediluvians, and the wicked of that cycle were "the spirits in prison" to whom Jesus preached in the interval between his death and ascension. The second dispensation (by Mo- ses) was designed to teach by revelation God's truth pertaining to the earth-life chiefly. The second hell they name Gehenna, and consign to it the Jews and heathen who died before the coming of Jesus ; the second heaven is paradise, where the thief on the cross had the promise of going after his death. They be- lieve that a perfect system of agriculture, hor- ticulture, and hygiene was gradually unfolded in the statutes of Moses, obedience to which, then and now, would give entire exemption from physical disease or bodily infirmity ; and that the principles contained in those laws and statutes are to-day as binding upon all Chris- tians as are the ten commandments. (The Shakers eat no pork.) All human sickness, they say, is the result of some physiological sin, direct or indirect, against the teachings of Moses. In proof of this position they cite the promise of Moses to Israel: in obedience, "the Lord thy God shall take all sickness away from the midst of thee ;" but in disobedience, he will " bring back upon thee all the diseases of the Egyptians," of which they were afraid, and of which diseases Moses had cured them in the wilderness, by means of the physiological treat- ment under which he put at least 2,000,000 persons, giving them for food simple manna, for drink and bathing cold water, and to breathe pure air in open well ventilated tents. The third dispensation is that of the church of the first appearing of Christ, and to its heaven Paul was caught up. The fourth heaven is now forming ; in it Jesus and Mother Ann re- side, and to it will all those go who have resist- ed temptation until all their evil propensities and lusts are destroyed, and the life of the gen- erative natural man is dead in them, for such are born of God and cannot sin. No one but Jesus had ever attained to this previous to the second appearing of Christ in Ann Lee. It is the heaven of heavens, and to it will be gath- ered not only all who accept the doctrines of the Shakers in this world, and attain to the new birth, but all those in the lower heavens and hells who shall yet accept them ; and when their decision is finally made, the lower heavens and hells and the earth will be destroyed, and only the fourth heaven for the true believers, and the fourth hell for the finally impenitent,
