An Afternoon With Dowie

1900

Among the great volume of mail which comes to us on the subject of the Dowie exposure, we have received the following communication, Which was written several months ago by Rev. Wm. Ashmore after he had made a personal visit to the Dowie Institute, and had published his impressions in the Journal-Messenger.

By Rev. William Ashmore

John Alexander Dowie's success in rallying a constituency and expanding himself is almost phenomenal. He has a large meeting house which seats a great crowd of people, and has also a hotel under his control, and is about starting, if he has not already started, a bank, as we are told. We have no Pauline precedents for any of these things, but then Mr. Dowie is said by his followers to be an advance on Paul. The main spoke in Mr. Dowie's wheel is the power of divine healing, which he claims he possesses in a remarkable degree and as a special gift of God. A great many cures are said to have been wrought, and the spaces on the walls of his church building are hung with crutches, and what seem to be bandages and discarded plasters, probably. They remind one of an enterprising corn-extractor at Dayton, O., who had a hundred or more corns and bunions which he had taken off the toes and feet of his customers, and was exhibiting them as an Indian brave does his scalps. It is this power of working cures which gives Mr. Dowie what influence he has with common people.

There is a deal of illusion here. That whole subject is by no means so fully ventilated as it ought to be, nor are discriminations made as they ought to be, and so people are blinded and misled. Dowie gives out that all other ministers deny the existence of special healing in answer to the prayer of faith, and that he alone advocates it, and furnishes instances of success. Many people believe his statements, and, knowing that there are well attested cases of healing that have come within the range of their own in formation, they are ready to conclude that Dowie is right and the ministers arc wrong.

But now that is not true. We all believe that God does answer the fervent prayer of his people for healing. We doubt if a minister can be found in the land who does not so believe, and who does not offer special prayer for that very purpose. There are few ministers who can not, in their own experience, point to some cases of remarkable answers to prayer of this very kind. Certainly every old minister can furnish illustrations, more or less. We offer prayers for the sick in our pulpits. We are sent for, and go and pray at their bedsides, and we have seen many cures recorded quite as remarkable as are any of the cases of Dowie, or Sweinfurth, or any other specialists of the kind. As for discarded canes and crutches and plasters and bandages, that have been thrown aside after the prayers of ordinary ministers, in the past century alone, and before Dowie ever was heard of, if they were all brought together and hung up and tacked on to the walls of Dowie's church, they would cover them so thick that there would not be a place left big enough to hold a corn plaster. Dowie's collection of trophies would dwindle into nothingness in comparison. But he makes a great parade of his, while other ministers do not, and so people think that nobody's prayers for the sick avail but Dowie's. The writer of this article holds that he himself was once brought back from the very grave's mouth, in special answer to special prayer, by brethren called in for that purpose, and quite as remarkably as any he has read of in Dowie's list; and all this in the ordinary ministry of the Word. If one wants to have more experience in divine healing, he would do well to seek out good earnest believers in prayer in his own church, and get them to pray for him, and not have to encounter the flippancy and vulgarity which we saw in John Alexander Dowie, and of which we shall speak hereafter.

What specially characterizes Mr. Dowie is his claiming to have a pre-eminence over all of God's praying ones, and his making of "divine healing," or miraculous healing a hobby to which all other things are made subsidiary; and we are obliged to conclude, a profitable, money-making hobby as well. However, it may be done, certain it is that there is nothing of a religious kind in Chicago which is made to pay so handsomely, in one way and another, as Dowie's "divine healing."

Mr. Dowie's love of "pre-eminence" is obvious to the most superficial observer. He is the "General Overseer" of the newly formed "Christian Catholic Church." He is the head, and will remain so. His picture appears constantly in his paper. His readers are not allowed to forget how he apears. On the day we were there he was, as usual, bidding defiance to his opponents, of whom there is an unlimited number, especially in the churches of God. Contending for his authority, he reached a climax. when he said, in a loud, defiant voice, they knew he had been specially "anointed by the Holy Ghost" for the work he was then doing; and, in almost a roar, he added: "I am God's prophet! I know I am!" This was said with none of the meekness or gentleness of Christ, and with none of the modest, even though firm, assertiveness of Peter and John and Paul, while defining themselves before their opponents; but with the swagger of a ring boxer. If his manner meant anything, it meant — as he shouted, "I am God's prophet!" and swung himself around with arm and fist like a scythe cutting a swath — "If any man disputes it, let him look out!" That fist might not have been so very dangerous, but the way it was flourished was suggestive of a bunged eye, or a bloody nose, or perhaps both. The whole procedure reminded me of Mahomet when he said: "God is God, and Mahomet is his prophet!"

Dowie is an Ishmaelite. He is against churches and ministers, one and all, savagely and without distinction. Anybody who opposes his claims comes in for vituperation. He would have it understood that he is "the great power of God," not only for Chicago, but for the nation at large, and, indeed, for the whole world! He is generating a class of harsh, unChrist-like, censorious followers, who, when they hear some one criticizing the extravagances of their leader's talk, at once begin to say — following an example set by himself — "The devil is at work." So he may be —but in whom, is another question.

—The Ram's Horn, March 17, 1900, p. 5.