The Death of "Mother" Girling

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 180, 27 November 1886, Page 5

The Death of "Mother" Girling

■'So dear good Mothor Girling is dead at last," writes one who knew hor. " Tbe world could have spared batter many a wiser woman, No one who ever met hor, and seriously talked overtha strange ciauub '.vhich she unhesitatingly advanced, could fail to be impressed by the limpid purity oi her soul, and the t3nder, loving sympathy with which she regarded all mankind. It is now not, three months since I visited their little camp and drank tea with the poor frail creature who told you, with a quiet but weird look in her eyes, of the strange experiences which had left in her mind an absolute certainty that the was in very truth a new incarnation of the Deity. One of the angns cf this was to bo found in tho stigmata, which, as was the ca3a with many other ec3tatics in times past, appeared on her hands, feet, and sido. irhewaßtbe plain, hard-working wifo of a man in the lower middle cla&s in the Eastern counties when.tue mysterious vision appeared to her which was to ehaaga the whole course of her life. To those who spoke sympathetically with her, she was wont to describe with minute detail the extraordinary emotion which overwhelmed her at the moment when sho experienced the Divine call, as she regarded it. From that moment her uholo lift- was changed, and she went abcut proclaiming the new revelation which had been made to her, teaching, not as the scribes, but a3 one who, in hor own person, could speuk with absolute knowledge of the hidden mysteries. ' '• By her teaching Mr 3 Girling gathered around her a select company of men and women, belonging for the most part to the labouring classes. They learned to re gard her as their mother, and with tenderness, lovo and reverence For one fundamental tenet in her doctrioe was that nofc only was she immortal, but that all her follower?, upon whom rested the Eame divine influence which had overshadowed her, were proof against death. Last winter, however, in fhe DiUer cold and severe privations to which they were one of their number died, and the occurrence cast a gloom over the community which could not bo shaken off. The ground had shaken under their feet, and they could notreconcile tho death of their brother with the theory which up to that point had been accepted with the most implicit faith. "In the winter of 1874 the whole community, numbering some 130 souls, wore turned out on the wayside by sheriffs officer?, and dispossessed of their worldly good 3. Mr Auburn Herbert, with customary largo heavledne-js, took compassion upon the shivering Shakers, and afforded them accommodation for some time in his farm buildings at Ashley Arnewood. They remained until they were able to rent a little holding of their own. They obstinately refused to manufacture anything for sale. They rented forae little plot of poor land, which by unremitting industry they converted into a perfect garden. At the time of my visit, three months ago, the Shaker's holding was in a stato of the highest cultivation. The only trace of private ownership allowed to this strango community was in the flower beds. Each brother or pieter had his or her own flower bed, in which they giew flowers to their own liking. Everything else was in common. The plot was miserably insufficient; it was held on uncertain tenure; thoy might have been turned out at any moment, and all their goods confiscated'; but still the wilderness was converted into a flower garden, and the Shaker agriculture —or horticulture as it might almost be called— was the talk of the neighbourhood. Last winter, in the midst of the bitter cold, tho canvas-covered roof of her little dwelling lot in water, and sbe suffered very severely from chest affections. She i allied, and her family believed with an implicit, unquestioningfaiththatallwouldyetbewcll Inherconversation she was a 1 * firm as ever in asserting her supernatural pr3io>rativeB. She believed in herself to the lass. ]Sow that she has goae the little community which she ha 3 founded, and which at one time promised fair to have boon the germ of man j similar associations based upon brotherly love and agricultural communism, will disappear. There only remains to aoM one other fact, which to my thinking is by far' the moat extraordinary of all— namely, that although the young men and young women of the community lived together in the utmost freedom of intercourse—yet they succeeded in living a celebrated life,' and not a breath of scandal wag ever whispered against the more than monastic morality of the community ; and, although ' surrounded by many -envious and malicious neighbours, who would have been oaly too glad to have raised a scandal against' the ."hefetics," from first; to last there is not even a rumour that any of the Shakers failed in their standard of the most exacting chastity. * Married couples -who joined the sbciety ceased to live together. "

A Philadelphia girl had a beau she wanted to ahake\< «•• You "musn'ts stay laterthan 9 o'olock,'*:ahe: whispered, to him- the' other night ; 'supports early closing movementJ'^He tooiiuthe hint.