And then will all those glorious and consoling prophecies recorded
in the scriptures of truth be fulfill'd--"He," the Lord, "shall
judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people; and they
shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into
pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up the sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more. The wolf also shall dwell
with the lamb; and the cow and the bear shall feed; and the lion
shall eat straw like the ox; and the sucking child shall play
the hole of the asp, and the wean'd child put his hand on the
cockatrice's den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy
mountain; for the earth," that is our earthly tabernacle, "shall be
full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea."
The exposition in the last sentence, that the terms of the texts are
not to be taken in their literal meaning, but in their spiritual one,
and allude to a certain wondrous exaltation of the body, through
religious influences, is significant, and is but one of a great number
of instances of much that is obscure, to "the world's people," in the
preachings of this remarkable man.
Then a word about his physical oratory, connected with the preceding.
If there is, as doubtless there is, an unnameable something behind
oratory, a fund within or atmosphere without, deeper than art, deeper
even than proof, that unnameable constitutional something Elias Hicks
emanated from his very heart to the hearts of his audience, or carried
with him, or probed into, and shook and arous'd in them--a sympathetic
germ, probably rapport, lurking in every human eligibility, which no
book, no rule, no statement has given or can give inherent knowledge,
intuition--not even the best speech, or best put forth, but launch'd
out only by powerful human magnetism:
Unheard by sharpest ear--unformed in clearest eye, or cunningest
mind,
Nor lore, nor fame, nor happiness, nor wealth,
And yet the pulse of every heart and life throughout the world,
incessantly,
Which you and I, and all, pursuing ever, ever miss;
Open, but still a secret--the real of the real--an illusion;
Costless, vouchsafed to each, yet never man the owner;
Which poets vainly seek to put in rhyme----historians in prose;
Which sculptor never chisel'd yet, nor painter painted;
Which vocalist never sung, nor orator nor actor ever utter' d.
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