on laws are to be abolished, money currency is to be destroyed, there
is to be no more selling, martyring, and bartering of humanity and their
requirements, "thus saith the Lord Jehovah, by J. Watmore Whatmore, and
J. G. Grant, of Zion."

As these prophets speak of the spouse of God, Eve the second, called
Joanna Southcott, Queen of the prophets, who in 1802 opened her
commission, and declared herself to be the woman spoken of in
Revelation--"the Bride, the Lamb's wife, and clothed with the sun"--let
me briefly tell her story:--

Joanna was born at Gettisham, in Devonshire. Her parents were in the
farming line, and members of the Established Church. She herself was in
service or in industrious employment, "without," writes her biographer,
"any other symptom of a disordered intellect than that she was attached
to the Methodists." Nevertheless, it was Mr. Pomeroy, the clergyman
whose church she attended at Exeter, who appears to have encouraged her
to print her prophecies and to assume spiritual gifts. The books which
she sent into the world were written partly in rhyme, all the verse and
the greater part of the prose being delivered in the character of the
Almighty. Her discourses were nothing else than a mere rhapsody of
texts--vulgar dreams and vulgar interpretations. Her fame spread, and
seven wise men from different parts of the country, the seven stars, came
to believe in her. Among the early believers were three clergymen, one
of them a man of fashion, fortune, and noble family. As her followers
supplied her with money and treated her with great reverence, the more
extravagant were her assertions and the loftier her claims. The scheme
of redemption was completed in her. If the tree of knowledge was
violated by Eve, the tree of life was reserved for Joanna. Her greatest
triumph was a conflict with the devil, which lasted a week. According to
her own account the devil had the worst of it. She gave him ten words
for one, and allowed him no time to speak. Very ungallantly, at the
termination of the dispute he remarked no man could tame a woman's
tongue; he said the sands of an hour-glass did not run faster. It was
better to dispute with a thousand men than one woman. After this dispute
Joanna is said--and her followers believed it--to have fasted forty days.

Shortly after commencing her mission, she published the following
declaration:--

"I, Joanna Southcott, am clearly convinced that my callin