In all human affairs, that takes the highest rank which has the greatest controlling and guiding power. The king, the statesman, the hero, the saintly founder of a religion, the philosopher that guides the course of human thought, and the scientist who gives us a greater command of nature, are the men whom we honor as the ministers of destiny.
When we speak of science, we accord the highest rank to that which gives the greatest comprehension of the world as it is—of its past and of its future. Geology and astronomy are the sciences which reach out into the illimitable alike in the present and past. Biology will do the same for the world of life when biology is completed by a knowledge of the centre of all life, the brain. But in its present acephalous condition it is but a fragment of science—a headless corpse, unfit to rank among complete sciences. Theology claims the highest rank of all, but based as it has been on the conceptions current in the dark ages, it has become, in the light of modern science, a crumbling ruin. Does psychometry compare with astronomy and geology in its scientific rank, or does it compare with the acephalous biology, which occupies all medical colleges?
It compares with neither. Like astronomy, it borders on the limitless; like geology, it reaches into the vast, undefined past; and like biology, it comprehends all life science; but unlike each, it has no limitation to any sphere. It is equally at home with living forms and with dead matter—equally at home in the humbler spheres of human life and human infirmity, and in the higher spheres of the spirit world, which we call heaven. It grasps all of biology, all of history, all of geology and astronomy, and far more than telescopes have revealed. It has no parallel in any science, for sciences are limited and defined in their scope, while psychometry is unlimited, transcending far all that collegians have called science, and all that they have deemed the limits of human capacities, for in psychometry the divinity in man becomes apparent, and the intellectual mastery of all things lifts human life to a higher plane than it has ever known before.
Psychometry is therefore in its nature and scope not classifiable among the sciences, since it reaches out above and beyond all, in a higher and broader sphere, and hence may truly be called the Divine science, for it is the expression of the Divine element in man. Wherein is Divine above human knowledge? And wherein is human above animal knowledge and understanding? The superiority in each case consists in a deeper and more interior comprehension of that which is, which realizes in the present the potentiality of the future, enabling us to act for future results and accomplish whatever is possible to our powers. That forecast, that comprehension through the present of that which is to be, constitutes foresight,—the essential element of wisdom; and in its grander manifestations it appears as prophecy. Prophecy, then, is the noblest aspect of psychometry; and if this prophetic power can be cultivated to its maximum possibilities, there is no reason why it should not become the guiding power of each individual life, and the guiding power for the destiny of nations. Moreover, in its prophetic role its superiority of rank is manifest, since it is then the instructor of all hearers,—the revealer of that in which they readily confess their ignorance.
Hence it was that St. Paul especially recommended the cultivation of prophecy as the most sacred and Divine of all religious exercises, saying, in 1 Corinthians xiv. 21-25: “If therefore the whole church be come together into one place, and all speak with tongues, and there come in those who are unlearned or unbelievers, will they not say ye are mad? But if all prophesy, and there come in one that believeth not, or one unlearned, he is convinced of all, he is judged of all: and thus are the secrets of his heart made manifest; and so falling down on his face, he will worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth.” This is a description of a congregation in which all are developed up to a psychometric and spiritual condition in which the truths of religion and the ministry of angels may have full power.
Wherever the highest order of religious sentiment is in active operation, prophecy becomes one of its results. It was so in Jewish history, and has been so in many eventful periods since.
George Fox had the most exalted religious sentiment of his time, and he had an eminently prophetic mind. All nations have had prophetic minds and well-attested prophecies. Egypt and India, Greece, Rome, France, England, and America, have their recorded prophecies, and in the height of ancient civilization prophecy commanded sufficient respect to influence the course of public events. Cicero expressed the general intelligence of the ancients in recognizing prophecy as a power of the human soul.
Modern materialism has ignored all this, and one of the noblest works to-day for a man of genius whose mind is sufficiently vigorous to throw off the trammels of collegiate ignorance and fashionable conservatism, would be to produce a volume upon prophecy, in which its vast historic development should be sketched.
The limitations of the Journal of Man do not permit me to introduce this historic matter which would be sufficient to exclude everything else from its pages, and I would merely refer to an almost forgotten example of the intuitive and prescient faculty connected with the introduction of Universalism into this country.
A worthy and pious farmer on the seacoast of Delaware, named Potter, built a church at his own expense, but having an advanced idea of the Divine benevolence, he could never find any preacher whose doctrines suited him. Nevertheless he was profoundly convinced that such a preacher would be sent to realize his hopes, and was not discouraged by the disbelief of his neighbors. His anticipation was strangely fulfilled. Rev. John Murray, almost crazed by the death of his wife, sailed from England for America in 1770, intending to abandon the pulpit entirely. The vessel put in at Philadelphia instead of New York, and as the stage for New York had left, Mr. Murray concluded to remain on the vessel and go to New York that way. But on the voyage they got lost in the fog, and got into Cranberry Inlet in a dangerous position. They went ashore, being out of provisions, and found a country tavern. Mr. Murray strolled along the coast, intending to get fish for the crew, and fell into company with Farmer Potter, who had a supply, and who at once told him, to his astonishment, that he was glad to meet him, and had been looking for him a long time. Potter decided at once that this was the minister he had been looking for, and of whom he had often spoken when telling his neighbors, “God will send me a preacher of a very different stamp from those who have heretofore preached in my house; that God who has put it into my heart to build this house will send one who shall deliver to me His own truth, who shall speak of Jesus Christ and His salvation.” Potter briefly sketched his own life and said: