gation, utterly damned, and thereupon disappears, swallowed up of darkness and

silence.

When we come to the teaching of Muggleton, we find ourselves in a tangled maze of nonsense far too inconsequential to allow of any intelligible account being given of it. Jacob Boehm's mistiest dreams are clearness itself compared with the English prophet's utterances. Others might talk of the divine cause or the divine power or the divine person, "fumbling exceedingly" and falling back in an intellectual swoon upon the stony bosom of the unknowable. Muggleton grimly told you that there was a personal Trinity in the universe God, man, and devil and each had his body. If you pressed him for further particulars he poured forth words that might mean anything, a metal

receive and ponder. Such as it was,. however, you had to accept or reject it at your peril. Why should an inspired prophet argue?

Muggleton lived twenty-six years after this last revolt, exercising unquestioned authority; an autocratic prophet to whom something like worship was offered even to the last. He was far advanced in his eighty-ninth year when he died. He was far on towards seventy when he was brought before Jeffreys, then recorder of London, and other justices, on a charge of blasphemy. Jeffreys was as yet a novice in those arts of which he became the acknowledged master a few years after, but already he quite equalled his future self in his savage brutality to the poor monomaniac. "He was a man," says Muggle-lic jargon which you were ordered to ton, "whose voice was very loud; but he is one of the worst devils in nature." The jury hesitated to bring in their verdict, knowing well enough what would follow, but Jeffreys's look and manner cowed them. The prophet was condemned to pay a fine of 500l., to stand in the pillory three times for two hours without the usual protection to his head, which those condemned to such a barbarous punishment were allowed. He was to have his books burned by the common hangman, and to remain in Newgate till his fine was paid. Only a man of an iron constitution could have come out of the ordeal with his life. Muggleton bore it all; remained in Newgate for a year, compounded for his fine in the sum of 100l., which his friends advanced, and was a free man on the 19th of July, 1677, a day which the Muggletonians observed as the prophet's Hegira.

As early as 1666 he had many followers on the Continent, and in that year the "Transcendant Spiritual Treatise " was translated into German by a convert who came over to London to confer with the sage. Except on very rare occasions he never left London, nor indeed the parish in which he was born. He pursued the trade of a tailor till late in life, but his books had sold largely, and he managed to get together a competence, and was at one time worried by his neighbors and fined for refusing to serve in some parish offices. There was a fund of sagacity about the man which appears frequently in his later letters, but an utter absence of all sentiment and all sympathy. He had no nerves - hard, stern, and curiously insensible to physical pain. He was absolutely fearless, with a constitution that could defy any hardship and bear any strain upon it.

Something must be set down to the circumstances in which he found himself,. and to the dreadfully chaotic condition which the moral sentiments and religious. beliefs of the multitude had been reduced to during the wild anarchy of the seventeenth century. There were two men in England who were quite certain · George Fox was one, Muggleton was the other. Everybody else was doubting, hesitating, groping for the light, moaning at the darkness. These two men knew; other people were seeking to know. George Fox went forth to win the world over from darkness to light. Muggleton stayed at home, he was the light. They that wanted' it must come to him to find it. All through England there was clamor and hubbub of many voices, men going to and fro, always on the move, trying experiments of all kinds. Here was one man, "a still strong man in a blatant land," who was calm, steadfast, unmovable, and always at home. He did not want you, whoever you were; he was perfectly_indifferent to you and your concerns. Preach? No! he never preached, he never cared to speak till he was spoken to. If you went to him as an oracle, then he spake as a God.

Moreover, when the Restoration came and the high pressure that had been kept up in some states of society was suddenly taken off, there was a frantic rage for pleasure, which included the wildest debauchery and the most idiotic attempt at amusement. Then, too, the haste to be rich agitated the minds of all classes. Westward ho! was the cry not only of Pilgrim Fathers but of reckless adven

turers of all kinds. From across the sea | kind of plaintive rhythm, and sounding as came the ships of Tarshish bringing gold, | you read them aloud like a Gregorian and silver, and ivory, and apes, and pea- chant. He died of natural decay, the cocks, and a thousand tales of El Dorado. machine worn out. His last words were, Londoners were mad "with the lust of "Now bath God sent death unto me." gain in the spirit of Cain." Muggleton They laid him on his bed, and he slept the prophet, with that long black hair of and woke not. Nearly two hundred and his and the sly grey eye and the resolute fifty of the faithful followed him to his lips, waited unmoved. Pleasure? If he grave. It is clear that the sect had not wondered at anything it was to know lost ground as time moved on. what meaning there could be in the word. Riches? What purpose could they serve? To him it seemed that the Decalogue contained one wholly superfluous enactment: why should men covet? There would have been some reason in limiting the number of the commandments to nine; nine is the product of three times three. Think of that! This man in that wicked age must have appeared to many a standing miracle, if only for this reason, that he was the one man in London who was content, passing his days in a stubborn rapture, as little inclined for play or laughter as the sphinx in the desert, which the sand storms can beat against but never stir.

So far from Muggleton's influence and authority growing less as he grew older, it went on steadily increasing; there was a mystery and an awe that gathered round him, and latterly he was regarded rather as an inspired oracle than as a seer. The voice of prophecy ceased; he had left his words on record for all future ages, but from day to day his advice was asked, and people soon found it was worth listening

to.

In the latter years of his life his let ters dealt with the ordinary affairs of men. People wrote to inquire about their matrimonial affairs, their quarrels, their business difficulties, whether they must conform to this or that enactment of the State, how they might outwit the perse cutors and skulk behind the law. Muggleton replies with surprising shrewdness and good sense, and now and then exhibits a familiarity with the quibs and quirks of the law that he can only have acquired by the necessity which suffering had laid upon him. His language is always rugged, for he had received little or no education; he is very unsafe in his grammar, but he has a plain, homely vocabuJary, forcible and copious, which, like most mystics, he was compelled to enrich on occasion, and which he does not scruple to enrich in his own way. His style certainly improves as he gets older, and in these letters one meets now and then with passages that are almost melodious, the sentences following one another in a

Not the least feature in this curious chapter of religious history is that the Muggletonians should have survived as a sect to our own days. As late as 1846 an elaborate index to the Muggletonian writings was issued, and the "Divine Songs of the Muggletonians," written exclusively by believers, show that there has been a strange continuity of composition among them, and that, too, such composi tion as ordinary mortals have never known the like of. Yet Muggleton never broke forth into verse. Joanna Southcott could not keep down her impulse to pour forth her soul in metre; Muggleton is never excited: the emotional had no charm for him. So, too, he never cared for music, he makes no allusion to it. Nay, he speaks slightingly of worship, of prayer and praise, especially of congregational worship. It was allowable in little men, a concession to the weak which the strong in the faith might be expected to dispense with sooner or later. For himself, isolated and self-contained, he could do without the aids to faith which the multitude ask for and find support in. He held himself aloof; he had no sympathy to offer, he asked for none; nay, he did not even need his followers, he could do without them. The question for them was, could they do without him? For more than two centuries they have kept on vehemently answering no!

Of late years a class of specialists has risen up among us who have treated us to quite a new philosophy — to wit, the philosophy of religion. To these thinkers I leave the construction of theories on Mug. gleton's place in the history of religion or philosophy; to them, too, I leave the question of what was the secret of his success and power. Much more interesting to me is the problem how the sect has gone on retaining its vitality. Perhaps the great secret of that permanence has been that Muggleton did not give his followers too much to believe or too much to do. He disdained details, he was never precise and meddlesome. If the Muggle. tonians wished to pray, let them; to sing, there was no objection; to meet together

in their conventicles, it was a harmless | along the chaussée for more than a mile
diversion. But they must manage these a strip of barley, a strip of tobacco, a
things themselves, and provide for diffi- mere slice of a potato field, making the
culties as they arose. It was no part of landscape look like a piece of magnified
the prophet's office to make by-laws which patchwork spread out in the sunshine.
might require to be altered any day. The women with their baskets strapped
Thus it came about that the sect was left to their backs were as busy or busier than
at Muggleton's death absolutely unfet- the men; they smoked no pipes, and took
tered by any petty restraints upon its free-less time to eat their dinners, and in the
dom of development. The believers must short intervals of rest that they allowed
manage their own affairs. There is one themselves, the bright knitting-needles
God and Muggleton is his prophet - that were brought out, and the blue stocking
was really the sum and substance of their grew an inch or so in length.
creed. That followed on a small scale
which is observable on a large scale
among the Moslems: the prophet's fol-
lowers found themselves more and more
thrown back upon their prophet till he
became almost an object of adoration.
The creed of Islam without Mahomet Gotthelf stood at the door of her house
would be to millions almost inconceiva-
ble; the Muggletonian God without Mug-
gleton would not be known..

AUGUSTUS Jessopp.

From The English Illustrated Magazine.
FRIEDE: A VILLAGE STORY.

The chaussée was planted with fruit trees, and the apples and pears hung in clusters on the branches: all round the valley rose the stately hills, clothed with thick forests.

It was late in the afternoon. Frau

and shaded her eyes from the dazzling light. The shouting of children and the cackling of geese had brought her away from the washtub, to enjoy a few moments' leisure and to look out for her little daughter Anna. A cloud of dust was being blown along the street, and running, waddling, screaming, and chattering, the geese advanced in an imposing army, while a few more venturesome THE village lay, gasping, so to speak, spirits spread their broad wings and flew, in the blazing August sunshine; the sky high over the heads of their companions, was bright blue, with never a cloud to be to the further end of the town. Frau seen over the distant hills; the dust was Gotthelf's was a corner house, and here an inch thick on the chaussée; it was splen- the geese divided, some of them filing off did harvest weather. Friede boasted a to the right, while the others sought their church (with a high-pitched roof and a homes in the wider street. That each massive tower), several shops, a pump, bird knew its own doorstep there could and one house of some pretensions, where be no doubt, for the children in charge of dwelt Herr Ernst Fintelmann, a landed the flock were far behind, and there was proprietor of consideration in the neigh-no one to interest himself concerning the borhood, and the owner of six cows and safety of his neighbor's property. as many oxen and horses as he needed for the cultivation of his fields. The houses in Friede were all built after the same fashion wooden frames with beams across and slanting-ways were filled up with brick or rubbish, according to the taste of the owner, or the length and depth of his purse; they had high roofs and small windows, and in most cases a courtyard at the back, where the cocks and hens roamed at their will, where the crops were stored, and the pigs lived during that short period of their existence, when they were not asleep in the street or being driven to find their dinners in the open country.

To-day the village was nearly deserted, the thrifty, hard-working peasants had been up since daybreak, working on their tiny plots of land, which lay stretched

At length, before the noise and the dust had fairly subsided, two majestic geese separated themselves from the others, and with long-stretched necks, strutted slowly past Frau Gotthelf into the back premises. Almost at the same moment a flaxen-haired child came running up to the house.

"Aennchen!" cried the mother, "come, thy coffee awaits thee; but casting a look down the street and another on the rosy face of her child, "only two? What hast thou done with the fat grey goose? Just Heaven! To think of returning without the grey goose that is to buy us firing for the winter!"

"She will come in good time, mother,' said the child; "she walked so slowly. I left her out beyond the old apple-tree. It is so hot!"

"Hot!" repeated the angry mother, hardening her heart to Anna's coaxing tones. "What an idea! a great maiden of seven years to stand and talk of the heat, when she has left the best goose in Friede to wander into the wide world alone! Go back and bring her home before you touch your supper. Quick!" She shut the door with a bang, and little Anna must perforce retrace her steps through the village and along the dusty road. She was a happy-tempered, healthy child, who had a character for being brave and headstrong beyond her years, the very first to lead the other children into mischief whenever it was possible. She trotted along, holding her stick tight in her hand, listening for the voice of the grey goose, and anxious for the sight of her broad back.

In vain Anna called and shouted. The road ran straight as a dart towards the next town, but there was no sign of the grey goose, on which the mother set such store. After a few seconds' reflection, she turned off along a footpath, that led across the fields to the forest. "I shall find her here," she said to herself and ran faster and faster.

once there had been a great castle close by, and a wicked Graf had lived there, who had quarrelled with his beautiful wife and ill-treated his children, and when he had driven them away from him, he came and lived alone on the hill, and saved the money that his sons should have had, and packed it in iron boxes and buried it. Then he died, and nobody knew where the money was hidden, though a great many people had come to look for it; and the story went on to say, that it could only be found at sunset, by some one who had suffered many things, and had been betrayed by his friends. Certainly this part of the legend was utterly incomprehensible to little Anna, who had suffered nothing in her short life except a good scolding now and then, when she tried her mother's patience beyond its limits; and then the dear mother always made up for it afterwards by a little extra petting. Anna felt sure that on her return there would be a nice warm supper ready for her, and she was yes, she was very hungry. A bright beam of light shone on the stone wall. What a pity that there should be so much gold stowed away underground; if Aennchen could only find some now, or Truly it was very hot, the bare fields even a few groschen, how delightful it offered no shelter from the rays of the would be to go home and say: "Müttersetting sun; and it was with a sigh chen, look what I have found for thee up of relief that Anna entered a cutting, on the hill!" She dropped her flowers where the trees grew close on the bank, and her stick. There was a narrow crack and threw a delightful shadow on the in the wall opposite, she would go and see ground. The hill was very steep, the what was on the other side of it. The path was a long one, but the peasant child little maiden pushed her way bravely knew no fear, she loved the wood and the through the grass and underwood, that great beech-trees, and the mosses and grew thick round the wall. A bramble ferns that met her eyes on either side. flew back in her face, almost blinding her By this time she had entirely forgotten for the moment, then she felt the ground her errand, and she stopped to pick the give way beneath her feet; she struggled flowers and to look at a long-tailed squir- and clung to the bushes, but the effort rel that darted across the path. It was was worse than useless. She had stumgetting late as she reached the clearing at bled unknowingly upon a long-disused the top of the hill; below her was the vil-lime-kiln. The loose earth (rendered dry lage with the smoke curling up into the clear sky; it looked so close, as if you could throw a stone into the wide street, she could see the carts and the neighbors coming home from the fields. Anna was tired now. She flung herself on the Peter Wessels had been sent with a ground and leaned against a ruined wall; | letter to a farm beyond the hill; his direct often and often she had been up here at way home was past the Grafenstein. the Grafenstein; the ruined walls and the Peter, too, had had his dreams about the forest round them belonged to Herr Fin- chests of gold, though he was a tall boy telmann so Peter Wessels had often who would be ten years old next new told her, and Peter ought to know, for he year; once he had consulted his uncle on was Herr Fintelmann's nephew, and some-the subject, and his uncle had laughed times was asked to drink coffee with him on Sunday afternoon. Peter had told marvellous stories of the Grafenstein;

by the intense heat) crumbled away under her weight, and she slid down some ten or twelve feet, to find herself unhurt, indeed, but alone in the cold and darkness, with just a gleam of daylight overhead.

and said, “As far as I am concerned the whole treasure of the Grafenstein is welcome to you." But that was more than a