LAST DAYS OF DOWIE.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2038, 25 March 1907, Page 4

LAST DAYS OF DOWIE.

AN AMERICAN JOURNALIST’S STORY. Mr. E. J. Lewis, of Indianapolis, is ending a month’s study of Now Zealand laws in Wellington. Ho is in Now ■ Zealand ns tho travelling correspondent of a syndicate of American metropolitan papers, headed by tho Indianapolis News, which has tho reputation of being the most expensively edited afternoon newspaper in the United States, and is classed as ono of tho 10 American papers of greatest inlluonce. It lias also gained a reputation wider than na-

tional boundaries, been use its staff correspondent was the only war correspondent to get into and out of Port Arthur while it was besieged, and to give the world tho story of tho true conditions in that outpost of tho Russians. “So our old friend Dowie is dead?’ said Mr. Lewis, while talking to a Post reporter. “I liavo read the cablegrams and obituary notices with perhaps greater interest than other people in Wellington, because as a newspaper reporter I was sent to Zion" City last year, when the house of Dowie crashed, and was an eyewitness of that most picturesque revolt, led by Glenn Yoliva, fresh from Australia, and even participated in by Mrs. Dowie, who from tho platform in the great Zion City Tabernaclo told how her husband had gravitated to a point where he proposed to annex some more good-look-ing females to his household as wives and to commit tho whole cult to polygamy. I was there on tho Sunday that the revolutionists, led by Voliva, took charge of the Tabernacle. It was packed with over 0000 people, many of them still firm supporters of their prophet: Voliva bad not yet stripped the service of its gorgeous and military appearance. The Zion City guard, with Dowie, jun., “tho unkissed” at its head, and resplendent in enough gold braid to proclaim an admiral, came in with its impressive military display, and was followed by tho several hundred church officers, gathered from all parts of tho world, and all in their gorgeous gowns of silk and decorations. Then came in chanting the famous white-robed choir of 1300 people, which after much marching took its place as the great Tabernacle hand began to play its impressive music, and then came Yoliva and the seven high overseers, and Mrs Dowie, all in robes. Only the white-bearded prophet, with his marvellous robes, was missing. It was a sight more impressive than one sees in St. Peter’s, at Rome, and one that a person could never forget. The addresses by Voliva and Mrs. Dowie, and young Dowie, which followed, and were punctuated by applause and hisses and howls, made tho average newspaper man’s hair stand on end. The mask was torn off, and there was exposed to the GOOO faithful tho financial rottenness of Zion City, and the baseness of Dowie as a mail and his absolute unfitness, not only to he a spiritual leader, hutmuch less even a financial director. There was such a mass of testimony, accounts, letters, and statements by his own wife that at tho end of tho tlireo hours that the meeting sat there were five Dowie supporters left. The rain was hammering the steel roof, and the great crowd every few minutes was giving voice to its sentiments, or a few wore calling out, “That’s a lie,” only to he challenged by the great multitude or by the fiery Voliva. “It was decided that day that Dowie, who was due to arrive from Mexico two days later, should be denied entrance to any public building iu Zion City for the purpose of holding a meeting, and that if lie attempted to hold an open-air meeting no one should attend it. It was not only discrediting the prophet, but also locking him out of liis Zion. While the meeting was on, Dowie was coming up from Mexico on the fastest trains, a veritable cyclone, at each stop delivering denunciations on the revolutionaries, and charging his wife with the very lowest baseness. He announced that when he got to Zion City the people would flock to him, and that lie would call down fire from heaven to consume the others. When the train that Dowie was to arrive on came to a stop at Zion City there were not more than a half dozen Zionists there, nothing but a great crowd of newspaper reporters and photographers, the ‘curse of the damnable press,’ who wanted to see the fire come down, hut Dowie was not on hoard. The cyclone had played out when it reached Chicago, 43 miles away, and he stopped there, at last seeing plainly the handwriting on the wall, and sent out worldly lawyers to bring down the vengeance of the Courts, instead of himself bringing down the consuming vengeance of heaven. It was the beginning of the finish of Dowie.

“Another newspaper man, an officer, and myself found the secret fort under the Dowie residence, Shiloh House, whore his body is now, that was so ingeniously built that ,even the members of tho Dowie household did not know that it existed under them. It is a fort with walls of . cement 3ft thick, and great double iron doors. This was the last straw. The people who had heard Dowie protest that he was afraid of no one, not even of all the legions of hell, now saw that ho was, after all, a coward at heart. “Zion City is wrecked. Dowie was a frenzied financier, without parallel. One example is enough. He sold 2,500,000 dollars of stock to the faithful for the erection of tho big lace factory, and he put 500,000 dollars into it, and no one knows where the other money went to. No factory could operate successfully on that basis. It was characteristic of the man. When I was there many people, among them many Australasians and people from Africa, who had been wealthy, were thus reduced to a point where they had lio money to buy bread, and had to he supported by charity. “In the courts at Chicago Dowie denied his father, claiming that ho was the illegitimate sou of an earl. The lawyers found his father still living out in lowa, and brought him into Court. The two men' were placed side by side. There was no mistaking, they were as much alike as two peas in a pod.”