Then turning to the slumberer, he said: “What seest thou, O Soul? Look! investigate! reveal! What seest thou concerning France and her ruler?”
“France will experience another Revolution. It will begin in Water and end in Blood and Fire! but the end will be delayed. Crown, Sceptre, Dynasty—all are swept away before the resistless tide of Political Reformation, and the last noble and priest shares the fate of the last crowned head—exile and death.”
“What of the other Nationalities?”
“Prussia, under a new régime, becomes indeed a Fatherland to her people; Belgium, Holland, and other of the Germanic lands, become consolidated with empires now existing; Spain’s night draws near—her colonies, erected into Black Republics, leave her to sink in loneliness, until at last she becomes, with Rome, an integral part of the great Italian Empire; Austria becomes dismembered; Hungary and Poland coalesce and form a new power on the earth; Turkey passes into Greek hands; Syria into Russian; England loses Canada, India, Oregon and Ireland, which latter becomes a Republic; the United States, rejoined, absorbs Canada, Mexico and all British America—her Black races found an empire which will extend from her southern borders to Brazil, under the rule of a series of Presidents; China, Christianized by the Taepings, becomes a first-class power in the East, blotting out Japan and a score of lesser kingdoms; while India and Australia become respectively an Empire and a Republic; and all this within sixty-three years from the seventh decade of the century!”
“What of Religious changes? Speak! Let us know!”
“All Religious systems in the world, outside of the Christian, will gravitate toward, and finally be wholly absorbed by it; and while this is taking place, there will be a quiet revolution occurring in that system itself; Catholicism, modified and divested of certain objectionable features, will become the right wing and conservative portion of the Religion of the entire world, while the radical portion of that Church, and of all other churches, will secede, rear the standard of Free Thought, proclaim the Religion of Reason, espouse the Reformatory men and principles of the age, declare itself a Positive, Eclectic, and Progressive Faith, abjuring the doctrines of Original Sin, the Adamic, Mosaic, Hebraic Atonement theories, and everything affirmative of Miracle, Final Judgment, and a Hell. This party will be in a minority, and the left wing of the grand Religious system of the world; it will constantly receive accessions of recruits from the other and barbaric element of society; but so rapid will be the human march, that the right flank of the grand army will constantly crowd the left and occupy its ground, while the latter will as constantly move on toward new fields, as new ideas are developed and seen.”
“Now, Prophet, what of thyself?”
“Speedy death, relief from sorrow, a lot with other men, and comparative happiness—on the other side of time.”
“What of the Rosicrucian System?”
“I have already sketched it under the name of the left wing. But ere long there will arise a great man—a German—a Prussian, who will declare that system to the world, and who will be the Man of the 19th century; and yet his astonishing power and influence will not be felt until he shall be dead and the twentieth century shall reach its third decade. That man lives to-day—in obscurity—totally unknown; he is in America, but will arise to his work in Europe, and will be to the intellectual and philosophical world, what Budha was to India, Plato to Greece, Thothmes III. to Egypt, Moses to Jewry, Mahomet to Arabia, Luther to Europe, and Columbus to the New World. This German is the coming man! He will first be heard of in New York city, in connection with a small, but powerful journal that will soon see the light, and begin its work in that great Metropolis. Supposing the whole field of possible human progress and achievement to be embraced within the circle of twenty-six, then this man’s field embraces the figures 3, 8, 1, 18, 12, 5, 19; 20, 18, 9, 14, 9, 21, 19,—and his motto will be TRY! The figures are easily solvable. This man will be simple, earnest and unostentatious, but firm, steadfast and uncompromising. His resources will be millions, and he will command all the gold he needs for the great work to be accomplished. He will boldly announce the grand Doctrines of the Third and culminating Temple of the Rosie Cross; and his followers will be as the sands of the sea in number, and their principles will, in time, be as resistless as its waves. He will begin his work personally, and by agency before this great Rebellion in behalf of Human Slavery shall have been ended. Mark that!”