Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 August 1889 — INTO A FURNACE OF FIRE. [ARTICLE]

INTO A FURNACE OF FIRE.

A Remarkable Cnee of Religious Frenzy in Alabama. A special from Birmingham, Ala., says: The most remarkable religious craze pervades the country near Bessemer and the country Intermediate between that rapidly growing place and Birmingham. For some time past an old negro named Tobias Jackson has been proclaiming himself as Daniel the Prophet, and doing all kinds of singular, wild and queer things. The darkies in this section are ignorant and superstitious and Jackson’s actions and the great powers he claims to have been vested with filled with awe the simple-minded negroes. Saturday last he persuaded three young negro men that they were representatives of Shadrach, Meshack and Abednego, the three children of faith, who entered the fiery furnace of Nebuchadnezzar of old. He proclaimed that a furnace, where iron is malted and cast into all kinds of forms,was the furnace of Nebuchadnezzar, and that they could enter it and pass through without the smell of fire. The three negroes, calling themselves the three children of Israel,under the influence of the new prophet, deliberately entered the gate of the cupola of the furnace and rushed headlong before they could be stopped into the white heat of the melting iron. When they failed to come out Jackson, the prophet, proclaimed that he saw them rising lu the air with the smake of the furnace, attended by angels, and said that they would revisit the earth again next Sunday. The negroes propose to meet at church next Sunday and pray, awaiting the descent of the three children of Israel. The mother of one of them said, when asked about the matter: “I feel jes’ as sho’ my boy is in heaven as if 1 dond be’n dar and se’d him. Jackson, the prophet, commanded him to walk into de fiery furnace and he was ’bleeged ter ’bey ’im.” A Tragidj in West Virginia: The sequel to the finding last Friday ol the murdered bodies of a wid'ow, named Giilis,and her two daughters,nearly grown, living in McDowell county, West Virginia, has Just befcn learned. The Hollis brothers were suspected, and a vigilance committee was organized to punish them. The captain of a push boat that arrived down the Big Sandy, from Plkeaville, Tuesday, reports that the Hollis brothers were captured by the committee, hung’ up by the heels to the limb of a tree and then shot to death. ____________ i At Purvis, Miss., Friday, the jury found John L. Sullivan guilty of prize fighting. Sullivan may be imprisoned in the penitentiary fora year. His sentence hat not been pronounced.