The Holiness Meeting at Port Albert.

Manawatu Standard, Volume IX, Issue 19, 20 December 1884, Page 2

The Holiness Meeting at Port Albert.

♦ ■■ ■ >,-....., STATEMENT BY A SETTLER... V(Auckland Herald.) . ; We publish the following statement . by a Port Albert settler regarding the recent Holiness meeting :— The scene of last Saturday morning, when some six or eight women might have been seen lying on the ground screaming and shrieking, "prophesying,'! with Mr Thomas and three or four other men standing over them shouting and yelling as frantic as they, will not be forgotten m the lifetime of those who witnessed it. The prevailing feeling is one of grief and shame. A half-geore of lunatics, some of them frantic maniacs, is a . pretty strong effect m four, days' wort," ' : and has sent a thrill of horror through this cbinmunity which I hope will be : felt sympathetically m Auckland. We earnestly hope that with a little rest and quiet all will recover. Already great .. Improvement is manifest. But the out- . rage on the moral and religious sense, especially on the jrwg people, will never be effaced. To me r the most shocking feature about the whole affair is the unblushing assertion and re-assertion that this is the work of God's Infinite Spirit. Not only has Mr Thomas claimed to speak by the Holy Ghost, to take eachstep by, the direct inspiration of the Holy Ghost (I shrink from writing such impiety), but the frantic screaming, shouting, and idiocy ot brains dazed by exeitementiand . religious (?) services, continued m one ' instance from six m the T morning till : ' three m the following morning, we ate told is the Spirit, and these' we are told are " full of the Holy Ghost 1 baptized with the Spirit and with fire !" If this be "a modern Pentecost," as Mr Thomas told us with unblushing effontery, may we never see another I ,