p. 21 | Insane Fanaticism

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 14, 1886

Insane Fanaticism.

A PECULIAR bit of grotesque fanaticism seems just now to have popped up among the Salvation Army ranks. A modern fakir of this organization, and of supposed great sanctity, has been posing before the public in Paris, some of whose antics cannot be those of a sane person—such, for instance, as standing three days and three nights at a time up to his neck in water, that he may the better commune with God. St. Simeon Stylites lived some thirty years high and dry on the top of a column, sixty feet above tide-water, that he might better commune with God, as being nearer Heaven, perhaps. But our nineteenth-century saint goes down to the water for the same purpose. After all, extremes meet, and in such matters a fool at one end indicates a fool at the other end. St. Simeon, though, has had several poems addressed to him—one by Tennyson. Our latter-day fakir can hardly expect to be so fortunate.—Christian at Work.