LIFE & JOURNAL - Christian Israelite Church

1819-1822
left it, and was greatly alarmed: I had also a message to the
Queen. After this I had no rest till I set off; but before I went I
was commanded to go to a small wood, a little distance from
my house, and get a palm stick, which was to be the first which
I cast my eyes on. Having made this known to Abraham
Holmes, the man who wrote my first visions, he asked me if he
might go with me to help me to choose it, to which I consented,
and he went with me: as soon as we got to the place, I saw a
palm stick in the fence, and I said, “This is the stick”, Abraham
Holmes said it was too ugly, he thought he could find a
handsomer than that, he would have a handsomer than that, or
none; and we found another but did not agree to get it.
Abraham Holmes went a little further, and said here are three at
one root, and I cut one down, and we returned; afterwards the
Spirit said to me that I ought to have got the first; “For I am not
a respecter of persons, if thou be a respecter of sticks.” A few
days after this I had a vision, which lasted about two hours, in
which I appeared as one dead; I was ordered to go to the place
where I got my stick, and be there about seven o’clock; I went
and sat down under the same tree; I sat nearly an hour, and
neither saw nor heard anything, and I thought I had stopped
long enough, and I rose up to go home; then I heard a noise as
though there were several waggons running on a rail road, laden
with iron bars, I thought the noise came from Wibsey-Low-
Moor Foundry, but to my thinking the noise came nearer and
nearer, till it seemed to be over my head, and continued for
nearly the space of an hour, at the same time all seemed to be
on fire, and I wondered afterwards that all the trees were not
consumed. I set off to go home, the sight and noise continuing,
and leaping off the top of a fence which I had to pass over, I
was as though I leapt into thick darkness, and I had my way to
find home. The day following I was struck as one dead, and
continued so about four hours, and I was commanded to go to
the place where I was the night before, and to be there about the
time I left. Abraham Holmes came to my house, and I told him
of it, and also what had been made known to me the day before,
and he asked me if I had any objections to him going with me,
and I consented for him to go, so he desired me to go over to his