Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 78:311 (Jul 1921)
Article: John Humphrey Noyes And His “Bible Communists”
Author: Benjamin B. Warfield

BSac 78:311 (July 1921) p. 319

John Humphrey Noyes And His “Bible Communists”

Benjamin B. Warfield

III. The Structure

It was in May, 1846, so Noyes tells us,1 that “entire communism” was put into practice, and the association which had enjoyed hitherto only a progressively increasing community in goods, entered upon the enjoyment also of a community of women, and so became really “a common family.” From this time every man in the association — it consisted then of from thirty to forty members, but was destined to grow to over three hundred2 — looked on every woman in it as his wife, and every woman looked on every man as her husband. When he wished to set this arrangement over against the “legality” of the exclusive “marriage of the world,” which he affirmed to be abrogated in the Kingdom of God, Noyes called it “free love.” When he wished, on the other hand, to defend it against the charge of “licentiousness,” he called it “pantogamy,” and insisted that it was as true a marriage as the “exclusive marriage of the world” itself, — only “complex marriage” instead of selfish individual marriage. The enormity of the arrangement will perhaps be best apprehended when we remind ourselves that the community was intended to include, and did, in point of fact, from the beginning include, men and women united to one another by the ties of the closest kinship. A historian of the community, having in mind apparently only the law of promiscuity which reigned in it, cries out in shocked amazement that men of apparently reputable standing could be found, as they were found, to take their wives and daughters with them into such an arrangement. We do not touch the bottom of this degradation, however, until we recall that under this engagement the father at once himself became the hus-

BSac 78:311 (July 1921) p. 320

band of his daughters and his daughters the wives of their father. Children growing up in the community were — though they might be brother and sister — the prospective husbands and wives of one another, as well as of their own parents. Noyes himself took into the community with him from its first formation at Putney, not only his brother, who at once became therefore sharer with him in all his marital relations, but two sisters, who became at once therefore the wives of both himself and his brother.3 We do not affirm that marital rights were ever actually exercised in such cases. Of that we know and can know nothing. Respect for humanity leads us to suppose it incredible that it could have been brought to that pass. But it is of the utmost importance that we should full...