"They fill up my vessel with power and strength-- Yea, make my cross easy, my peace of great length; My joy fall and perfect, my trouble but light, My gifts very many in which I delight. "I truly feel thankful for what I receive, In each holy promise I surely believe; They're able and willing to do all they've said, And by my kind Parents I choose to be led. "I love to feel simple, I love to feel low, I love to be kept in the path I should go; I love to be taught by my heavenly lead, That I may be holy and perfect indeed." I add another, which has the lively, quick rhythm in which the Shakers delight. It is called "Wisdom's Path: "I'll learn to walk in wisdom's ways, And in her path I'll spend my days; I'll learn to do what Mother says And follow her example. All pride and lust this will subdue, And every hateful passion too; This will destroy old Satan's crew That's seated in the temple. "Come, honest souls, let us unite And keep our conscience clear and white, For surely Mother does delight To own and bless her children. In Father's word let us go on, And bear our cross and do no wrong, In faith and love then we'll be strong To conquer every evil. "For love and union is our stay, We'll be strong and keep it day by day; Then we shall never go astray, We'll gain more love and union. Obedience will still increase, And every evil work will cease, We'll gain a true and solid peace, We'll live in Mother's union." I make no excuse for these quotations of Shaker hymns, for the books from which they are taken have been seen by very few outside of the order, and not even by all its members, as they are not now in common use. The Shakers have always professed to have intimate intercourse with the "spirit world." Elder Frederick Evans says in his autobiography that from the beginning the exercises in Shaker meetings were "singing and dancing, shaking, turning, and shouting, _speaking with new tongues and prophesying_." Elder Frederick himself, as he remarks, "was converted to Shakerism in 1830 by spiritual manifestations," having "visions" for three weeks, which converted him, as he relates, from materialism. He adds: "In 1837 to 1844 there was an influx from the 'spirit world,' 'confirming the faith of many disciples' who had lived among Believers for years, and extending throughout all the eighteen societies, making media by the dozen, whose various exercises, not to be suppressed even in their public meetings, rendered it imperatively necessary to close them all to the world during a period of seven years, in consequence of the then unprepared state of the people, to which the whole of the manifestations, and the meetings too, would have been as unadulterated 'foolishness,' or as inexplicable mysteries."