THE BEREAN: A MANUAL FOR THE HELP OF THOSE WHO SEEK THE FAITH OF THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH by Noyes, John Humphrey - 1847

Putney, Vt: Office of the Spiritual Magazine, 1847. First edition. 504pp.(old staining to some leaves) Original black small 4to cloth (new cloth spine) This compendium of all that Noyes had written, from the days of the New Haven "Perfectionist" ten years earlier, to the very first article he contributed to "The Spiritual Magazine" in 1846, has been characterized as the "Bible" of the Oneida Community. It crystallized into definite expression all the theological convictions Noyes had, for the past twelve years. "The Berean" is so closely packed with heresy that orthodox theologians still tear their hair and gnash their teeth over it. The thirty-sixth chapter of "The Berean" is entitled "An Outline of all Experience" and this might well serve as a description of the entire book. Noyes traces the march of the human spirit from primordial savagery through the bondage of externally imposed law, thence through the "spiritual" state and finally to the status of "glorification." Although this book was published less than a century and a half ago, it leads us at times into an almost medieval mentality; but in certain passages its wisdom projects us into a future not yet dreamed of. In a prose vivid, impassioned, occasionally brilliant, he sets forth his convictions concerning first and last things: the purpose of human life on this planet; the reality of rebirth into the universe of the Spirit; the three characteristics of the reborn man; the inadequacy of the Bible as the supreme and literal authority; the only path to the attainment of true and complete liberty; and the significance of the Second Coming of Christ as an accomplished event.