HARRIS, TuomAs LAKE, a spiritualist and social reformer, was b. at Fenny Strat ford, Eng., May 15,1823. In 1827 his parents brought him with them to the United States and settled at Utica, N. Y. He was yet very young when his mother died, and his father failed in business, thus throwing him upon his own efforts for education and support. Ile began to write for the press at an early age. At 21 he renounced the Calvinistic for the Universalist faith, and became a preacher of the latter. His health soon after his settlement over a church at :Meriden, N. Y., lie went to Charleston, S. C., whence he returned a year later to New York to become a pastor of the Fourth Universalist church, but ill health compelled him soon to resign. Sometime afterwards lie organized in New York an " independent Christian society," to which he ministered until the advent of "spiritualism" in 1849-50. He soon became a believer and supporter of the new faith. Two or three volumes of poetry from his pen were attributed to spiritual inspiration. He joined a community at Mountain Cove, Va., where it was proposed to apply the principles and laws of spiritualism to social relations and business affairs of the members, but in 1855 he returned to his ministry in New York, and founded a periodical for the exposition of, his views. He became a dissenter from some of the doctrines of spiritualism as commonly understood. In 1857 he was, as lie believed, sub jected to sore temptations from evil spirits, whom lie saw and with whom lie conversed. He believed lie won a victory over these spirits and attained the power, without losing external consciousness, of holding converse with the dwellers in the heavenly spheres. In 1858 he visited England and Scotland, and preached and lectured in London. Man chester, Edinburgh, and Glasgow. In 1861 he retired with a few friends to Amenia, Dutchess co., and organized a community which grew into the "brotherhood of
the new life," and in 1867 was removed to Portland, Chautauqua co., N. Y., where 3Ir. Harris purchased for himself a tract of 1000 acres of land, and adjoining farms of the same extent for his associates. Among those who joined him were lady Oliphant and her son Mr. Laurence Oliphant, 3,1.r., from England. Owners of real estate culti vate it on their own account, community of property not being acknowledged. The " brotherhood " has no written creed or form of government. It is said to number more than 2000 people, mostly in Great Britain and on the continent, in India, and Japan, and to be held together by fraternal love and guided by an inspiration " from the Divine Spirit through the heavens," in fulfillment of a promise made "by the angel " to Swedenborg, They hold that man can he purified from sin and delivered from the power of evil spirits only through self-renunciation and a life of unselfish devotion to humanity, and that the church of the future will not be an ecclesiasticism, but a free society of people bound to each other by ties of fraternity and a common love of the Divine Being. They believe that God is two-in-one by the blending in him of the mater nal with the paternal character, and that those who become angels will find their counter parts of sex and be joined together for all eternity. Marriage, therefore, is by them held to be peculiarly sacred and divine, Mr. Harris's prose works are: Wisdom of Angels; Arcana of Christianity: Tenth and Life in Jesus; Modern Spiritualism—its Truth and Errors; Sermons and Lectures; Millennial Age; and Breath of God with Man. 11 is poetical works are: Starry 'leavens; Lyric of the Morning Land; Lyric of the Golden Age; Regina; llyn»iii of Spiritual Devotion.; and The Great Republic.