The story of the founder and foundations of the Oneida Community, told in the fewest possible words, is this:
John Humphrey Noyes was born at Brattleboro, Vermont, in 1811. The great Finney Revival found him at twenty years of age, a college graduate, studying law, and sent him to study divinity, first at Andover and afterward at New Haven. Much study of the Bible, under the instructions of Moses Stuart, Edward Robinson and Nathaniel Taylor, and under the continued and increasing influence of the Revival afflatus, soon landed him in a new experience and new views of the way of salvation, which took the name of Perfectionism. This was in February, 1834. The next twelve years he spent in studying and teaching salvation from sin; chiefly at Putney, the residence of his father and family. Gradually a little school of believers gathered around him. His first permanent a.s.sociates were his mother, two sisters, and a brother. Then came the wives of himself and his brother, and the husbands of his two sisters. Then came George Cragin and his family from New York, and from time to time other families and individuals from various places. They built a chapel, and devoted much of their time to study, and much of their means to printing. So far, however, they were not in form or theory Socialists, but only Revivalists. In fact, during the whole period of the Fourier excitement, though they read the _Harbinger_ and the _Present_ and watched the movement with great interest, they kept their position as simple believers in Christianity, and steadfastly criticised Fourierism. Nevertheless during these same years they were gradually and almost unconsciously evolving their own social theory, and preparing for the trial of it. Though they rejected Fourierism, they drank copiously of the spirit of the _Harbinger_ and of the Socialists; and have always acknowledged that they received a great impulse from Brook Farm. Thus the Oneida Community really issued from a conjunction between the Revivalism of Orthodoxy and the Socialism of Unitarianism. In 1846, after the fire at Brook Farm, and when Fourierism was manifestly pa.s.sing away, the little church at Putney began cautiously to experiment in Communism. In the fall of 1847, when Brook Farm was breaking up, the Putney Community was also breaking up, but in the agonies, not of death, but of birth. Putney conservatism expelled it, and a Perfectionist Community, just begun at Oneida under the influence of the Putney school, received it.
The story of the Community since it thus a.s.sumed its present name and form, has been told in various Annual Reports, Hand-books, and even in the newspapers and Encyclopaedias, till it is in some sense public property. In the place of repeating it here, we will endeavor to give definite information on three points that are likely to be most interesting to the intelligent reader; viz: 1, the religious theory of the Community; 2, its social theory; and 3, its material results.
As the early experiences of the Community were of two kinds, religious and social, so each of these experiences produced a book. The religious book, called _The Berean_, was printed at Putney in 1847, and consisted mainly of articles published in the periodicals of the Putney school during the previous twelve years. The socialistic book, called _Bible Communism_, was published in 1848, a few months after the settlement at Oneida, and was the frankest possible disclosure of the theory of entire Communism, for which the Community was then under persecution. Both of these books have long been out of print. Our best way to give a faithful representation of the religious and social theories of the Community in the shortest form, will be, to rehea.r.s.e the contents of these books.
_Religious Theory._
[Table of Contents of _The Berean_ slightly expanded.]
CHAPTER I. The Bible: showing that it is the accredited organ of the Kingdom of Heaven, and justifying faith in it by demonstrating, 1, that Christ endorsed the Old Testament; and 2, that the writers of the New Testament were the official representatives of Christ, so that his credit is identified with theirs.
II. Infidelity among Reformers: tracing the history of the recent quarrel with the Bible in this country.
III. The Moral Character of Unbelief: showing that it is voluntary and criminal.
IV. The Harmony of Moses and Christ.
V. The Ultimate Ground of Faith: showing that while we are at first led into believing by the teachings of men and books, we attain final solid faith only by direct spiritual insight.
VI. The Guide of Interpretation: showing that the ultimate interpreter of the Bible is not the church, as the Papists hold, or the philologists, as the Protestants hold, but the Spirit of Truth promised in John 14: 26.
VII. Objections of Anti-Spiritualists: a criticism of Coleridge"s a.s.sertion that all pretensions to sensible experience of the Spirit are absurd.
VIII. The Faith once Delivered to the Saints: showing that Bible faith is always and everywhere faith in supernatural facts and sensible communications from G.o.d.
IX. The Age of Spiritualism: showing that the world is full of symptoms of the coming of a new era of spiritual discovery.
X. The Spiritual Nature of Man: showing that man has an invisible organization that is as substantial as his body.
XI. Animal Magnetism: showing that the phenomena of Mesmerism are as incredible as the Bible miracles.
XII. The Divine Nature: showing that G.o.d is dual, and that man, as male and female, is made in the image of G.o.d.
XIII. Creation: an act of G.o.d"s faith.
XIV. The Origin of Evil: showing that Christ"s theory was that evil comes from the Devil as good comes from G.o.d.
XV. The Parable of the Sower: ill.u.s.trating the preceding doctrine.
XVI. Parentage of Sin and Holiness: ill.u.s.trating the same doctrine.
XVII. The Cause and the Cure: showing that all diseases of body and soul are traceable to diabolical influence; and that all rational medication and salvation must overcome this cause.
XVIII. The Atonement: showing that Christ, in the sacrifice of himself, destroyed the power of the Devil.
XIX. The Cross of Christ: Continuation of the preceding.
XX. Bread of Life: showing that the eucharist symbolizes actual partic.i.p.ation in that flesh and blood of Christ "which came down from heaven."
XXI. The New Covenant: showing that a dispensation of grace commenced at the manifestation of Christ, entirely different from the preceding Jewish dispensation.
XXII. Salvation from Sin: showing that this was the special promise and gift of the new dispensation.
XXIII. Perfectionism: defining the term as referring to G.o.d"s righteousness, and not self-righteousness.
XXIV. "He that Committeth Sin is of the Devil:" showing that this means what it says.
XXV. Paul not Carnal: showing that he was an actual example of salvation from sin.
XXVI. A Hint to Temperance Men: showing that the common interpretation of the seventh chapter of Romans, which refers the confession "When I would do good evil is present with me," etc., to Christian experience, exactly suits the drunkard, and is the greatest obstacle to all reform.
XXVII. Paul"s Views of Law: showing that while he was a champion of the law as a standard of righteousness, he had no faith in its power to secure its own fulfillment, but believed in the grace of Christ as the end of the law, saving men from sin, which the law could not do.
XXVIII. Anti-Legality not Antinomianism: showing that the effectual government of G.o.d rules by grace and truth, and in displacing the law, fulfils the law.
XXIX. Two Kinds of Antinomianism: showing that the worst kind is that which cleaves to the law of commandments, and neglects the law of the Spirit of life.
x.x.x. The Second Birth: showing that this attainment includes salvation from sin, and was never experienced till the manifestation of Christ.
x.x.xI. The Two-Fold Nature of the Second Birth: showing that the "water and spirit" which are the elements of it, are not material water and air, but truth and grace, or intellectual and spiritual influences.
x.x.xII. Two Cla.s.ses of Believers: showing that there were in the Primitive Church two distinct grades of experience: one that of the carnal believers, called nepioi; the other that of the regenerate, called _teleioi_.
x.x.xIII. The Spiritual Man: showing that a stable mind, a loving heart and an unquenchable desire of progress, are the characteristics of the _teleioi_.
x.x.xIV. Spiritual p.u.b.erty: ill.u.s.trating regeneration by the change of life which takes place at natural p.u.b.erty.
x.x.xV. The Power of Christ"s Resurrection: showing that regeneration, i.e. salvation from sin, comes by faith in the resurrection of Christ, communicating to the believer the same power that raised Christ from the dead.
x.x.xVI. An Outline of all Experience: describing four grades, viz., 1, the natural state; 2, the legal state; 3, the spiritual state; 4, the glorified state.
x.x.xVII. The Way into the Holiest: showing that the life given by Christ has opened new access to G.o.d.
x.x.xVIII. Christian Faith: showing how it differs from Jewish faith; and how it is to be experienced.
x.x.xIX. Settlement with the Past: showing the Judaistic character of the experiences of popular modern saints, and appealing from them to the standards and examples of the Primitive Church.
XL. The Second Coming of Christ: showing that Christ predicted, and that the Primitive Church expected, this event to take place within one generation from his first coming; that all the signs of its approach which Christ foretold, actually came to pa.s.s before the close of the apostolic age; consequently that simple faith is compelled to affirm that he did come at the time appointed, and the mistake about the matter has not been in his predictions or the expectations of his disciples, but in the imaginations of the world as to the physical and public nature of the event.
XLI. A Criticism of Stuart"s Commentary on Romans 13: 11, and 2 Thessalonians 2: 1-8: showing that the premature excitement of the Thessalonians, instead of disproving the theory that the Second Advent was near at that time, confirms it.
XLII. "The Man of Sin:" showing that the diabolical power designated by this t.i.tle, was already at work when the epistle to the Thessalonians was written; that Paul himself was withstanding it; and that on his departure it was fully manifested.
XLIII. A Criticism of Robinson"s Commentary on the 24th and 25th chapters of Matthew: showing that the Second Coming is the theme of discourse from the 29th verse of the 24th chapter to the 31st of the 25th; and that then the prophecy pa.s.ses to the subsequent reign of Christ and the general judgment.