Shakers
a name given to an American sect of celibates of both sexes, founded by Ann Lee, an English emigrant, about 1776, from their using a kind of dance in their religious exercises, but who call themselves the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing. The chief settlement is at Mount Lebanon, N. Y. There are now less than 1,000 members. Their founder was called the Elect Lady, and Mother of all the Elect, and claimed to be the woman mentioned in Rev. xii. The Shakers profess to have passed through death and the resurrection into a state of grace -the resurrection order, in which the love which leads to marriage is not allowed, and are known as brothers and sisters. They abstain from wine and pork, live on the land and shun towns.
They cultivate the virtues of sobriety, prudence, and meekness, take no oaths, deprecate law, avoid contention, and repudiate war. They affect to hold communion with the dead, and believe in angels and spirits, not as a theological dogma, but as a practical fact. Their Church is based on these grand ideas:
The kingdom of heaven has come, Christ has actually appeared on earth; the personal rule of God has been restored; the old law is abolished; the command to multiply has ceased; Adam's sin has been atoned; the intercourse of heaven and earth has been restored; the curse is taken away from labor; the earth, and all that is on it, will be redeemed; angels 1 SHAKESPEARE and spirits have become, as of old, the familiars and ministers of men.
The name was also applied to an English Millenarian sect founded by Mrs. Mary Anne Girling, who gave out that she was a new incarnation of the Deity, and could never die. Her followers established a community on the borders of the New Forest; but Mrs. Girling died on Sept. 18, 1886, and her followers dispersed.