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The Shakers use what they call "Confession of sins to the elders;" the Amana people have an annual "untersuchung," or inquiry into the sins and the spiritual condition of the members; the Perfectionists use what they rightly call "Criticism" perhaps the most effective of all, as in it the subject is not left to tell his own tale, but sits at the oyer of his sins and disagreeable conduct, being judge rather than witness.
But the Perfectionists have a more keenly mercantile spirit than any of the other communal societies; they are, as I said before, essentially a manufacturing corporation. It is an important part of the commune's economies in living that it buys its supplies at wholesale.
The Circular contains each week extracts from journals kept in the two communities, and "Talks" by Noyes and others, with a variety of other matter relating to their belief and daily lives. They call themselves "Perfectionists."
Further, the Perfectionists were mightily shepherded by their chief Noyes, one of those chance attempts at the Superman which occur from time to time in spite of the interference of Man's blundering institutions.
They hold to the Bible as the "text-book of the Spirit of truth;" to "Jesus Christ as the eternal Son of God;" to "the apostles and Primitive Church as the exponents of the everlasting Gospel." They assert, further, that "the Gospel provides for complete salvation from sin" hence the name they assume of "Perfectionists."
The Perfectionists also encourage musical and theatrical entertainments, and make amusement so large a part of their lives that they have nearly half a dozen committees to devise and superintend them.
It is not so generally interesting a journal as the Oneida Circular, the organ of the Perfectionists, because the Shakers concern themselves almost exclusively with religious matters, and give in their paper but few details of their daily and practical life.
He slowly gathered about him a small company of believers, drawn from different parts of the country, and with their help made known his new faith in various publications, with such effect that though in 1847 he had only about forty persons in his own congregation, there appear to have been small gatherings of "Perfectionists" in other states, in correspondence with Noyes, and inclined to take him as their leader.
Judge, dearest Madam, by what I am going to confess, that I have a prodigious way to journey on, before a good person will think me tolerable; since though I have read in some of our perfectionists enough to make a better man than myself either run into madness or despair about the grace you mention, yet I cannot enter into the meaning of the word, nor into the modus of its operation.
Of all the communes I am now considering, only the Perfectionists of Oneida and Wallingford have established what can be fairly called unnatural sexual relations. At Icaria, Amana, Aurora, Bethel, and Zoar the family relation is held in honor, and each family has its own separate household. The Icarians even forbid celibacy.
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