Twentieth Century Fulfillments.

A Discourse Given Through the Mediumship of Cora L. V. Richmond,
before the Church of the Soul, Chicago, Illinois.
Delivered at the turn of the 20th Century

The 20th century fulfillments forms the theme around which our remarks will cluster this morning. "Whether there shall be prophecies," it is said, "they shall fail;" yet ultimately all prophecies come true.

Cyclic fulfillments are just as certain as the recurrence of the seasons and the revolutions of the planets, and their conjunctions, and the reappearance of comets.  It only remains for one to have knowledge of the great spiritual forces of the universe to understand that spiritual life contains all these prophecies and their fulfillments. A fact which you think is to be upon the earth, really is; and therefore it only needs the spirit vision, penetration and prescience to understand that which is to come to the earth already somewhere abides.

The 20th century has not only been the subject of great hopes, but is a century around which many prophecies have clustered; and it is really to be a century of great fulfillments.  These prophecies that have come in the guise of scientific predictions of various things that are to set the world in greater commotion; of that which is to supersede the noisy steam engine, and even the ferry and swift-winged electric appliances; these like many other things are in their turn to entirely pass out of use in the world and be superseded by still greater inventions. From day to day you have indications of this. Of course it will not be very distant that the navigation of the air will be a fixed possibility in the earth's atmosphere. Already its success is assured as a fact, it only remains to be appropriated as a means of transportation.  There is much more prospect of it now than there was in the first years of the steam railroad, that that would become the universal means of land transportation; or that electricity, when the telegraph was introduced in a hall in a little country town and it was actually found that a person could telegraph from one end of the room to the other, would reach such proportions that ultimately the earth would be too small for it to attain to its greatest possibilities. 

Now you are expecting wireless telegraphy; but this is only the precursor to that added telegraphy that will unite the earth with other planets. This has already been talked of. But electricity may not be the means of communication, nor even electrical "vibrations." There is a system of more subtle vibration between worlds, and when you discover and avail yourselves of that, as you have of the vibrations of electricity within the earth's atmosphere, you will have found the means of communicating with other planets.

Besides you have knowledge of communication with the minds of others; telepathy is no longer doubted, consequently there will be intercommunication between minds and minds upon the different planets as there now is communication between minds and minds upon the earth.

The solar engine is in the imminent future and is to supersede steam and electricity as well. Those rays of light that now seem to be squandered, or are held in solution somewhere, will be made available. Science has gone far to prove what John Ericson dreamed of many years ago: This solar light and heat will be conserved and used in the winter time, so you will have solar light and heat for your dwellings; and you will be able to temper the rays of the sun in the summer time, by having large reservoirs or receptacles to take the surplus light and heat from your streets and dwellings and thus make a suitable temperature during the entire year. The solar heat will be made available for the new motor power. The electric light, which you now consider so resplendent, will be superseded by this great solar light, which in many respects resembles the electrical vibrations.

All this will come in the early part of the 20th century. As the means of transportation increases in rapidity, communication with nations will increase in facility, and this will be one of the means for the obliteration of war. For, as we have many times said, with air-ships throwing bombs into fortifications there will be little possibility of resisting the encroachments of an approaching enemy.  Human intellect is using all of its force and power to concentrate and utilize the destructive substances of nature. So it will come to be a fact that war will be such a dangerous experiment that nations will hesitate to resort to it.  This, perhaps, more than any sense of brotherly love, will prevent nations from warring. Then, naturally, will follow courts of arbitration, and international congresses of arbitration, and at last the world will cease to see these formidable preparations for war.

In Psychical directions in the past century, especially the latter half of the past century, such manifestations  have occurred as to induce many people to believe that, externally (in the phenomenal sense), you are to have greater manifestations of psychic power than in the past.  We venture to differ with these. We think the increase  in psychic power will be with individuals; that perception of psychical principles will be to the unfoldment of the race. The race is to come into the heritage of those spiritual forces that have been denied you through superstition on the one hand and materialism on the other. Material religion and material science have both combined to deprive the human race of the legitimate exercise of spiritual power. Where known they have been appropriated by those who were supposed to be spiritually endowed as spiritual teachers and guides, who have been enrolled under some denominational sect. Religion has closed the door to individual spiritual experiences and made the race dependent for spiritual teaching upon external forms and theological training. All this has been interfered with, and much of it has been set aside in the last fifty years by the advent of modern Spiritualism.

Of course, just as soon as human lives become aware that religion is a spiritual expression and that each one is entitled to exercise any of the spiritual gifts that are in the universe; as soon as people become aware that prophets and seers and those endowed with spiritual gifts were  human beings; that these gifts, according to the growth  and needs of the human race will become more and more  the possession of humanity, that, in other words, all that  realm that has been clouded by ignorance, superstition and bigotry is being opened as a portion of the legitimate possession of the human race; the psychic growth of the world will be wonderful; instead of little children being  punished and treated by physicians because they have psychic power, it will be encouraged and strengthened,  and people will gradually learn that the possession of  psychic gifts is not a weakness but a strength, and that they only require recognition and the surrounding of the sensitive with as careful conditions as those with which you surround your chronometer or your compass to make you aware that they are among the rarest and best possessions of the human race.

Finally, as the world has entered upon a new psychic era, that psychic era is to culminate in a great degree in the 20th century. We mean to say, that a larger number of people upon the earth's surface will enter into the knowledge of spiritual things and possess psychic power; will understand psychic subjects, will know that these are a legitimate source of inquiry, and that the human mind may intuitively be open to receive influences, impressions and teachings from those who have passed from human life; that this will be no longer sacrilegious, nor sinful, nor forbidden, but it will be one of the great strides in human recognition. It is even so to-day. You cannot take up a magazine, scarcely a daily paper, without finding one or more articles impinging upon or actually treating of these subjects. All this open recognition of the spirit realm, instead of being a hindrance to humanity is a great help, a luminous background to human endeavor.

Edison and every great inventor admits freely that the inventions do not emanate from his own mind; that he is aware of receiving help; that behind him is some one who gives the impressions; that these impressions usually come, either in visions of the night or when the active duties of daily life are hushed and shut out; that all unexpectedly the point which he had been struggling for is at once revealed to the mind. Every great discoverer, like Herschell, in the discovery of the planet that formerly bore his name, freely admits that there is some a priori  knowledge or vision from the realm invisible. This knowledge is forced upon the outward consciousness.  All the realm of discovery, so-called, must be in the realm of  that which you invent or discover to-day, somewhere is actual knowledge—of those who are higher and wiser, an actual and practical reality. Whatever planet is beyond yours in unfoldment must have already in operation those forces and motors which you are striving for, and, no doubt, visitants from those worlds, either from the spirit realms surrounding them, or actual inhabitants, do approach the earth and give these impressions to those ready to receive them.

You cannot limit the powers of mind, you cannot restrain the intelligence that will speak, even across the spaces. Neither can human beings, unaided, claim to gather these truths from the great reservoir of unthinking invention. There never was a thought in the universe that was not thought by some intelligence. Neither was there an invention that was not perceived by some intelligence.  The primal source of every invention must be the Great Creative Intelligence; as intelligence is the only power that can discover, so intelligence is the only power that can impart discoveries. The steam engine did not go prancing around in the universe for some inventor to find it. It was the result of this great thought motor that is so much greater than the force of steam that in its presence steam becomes but a toy, a bauble merely. There are no great thoughts floating around for you to think them, but thought responds to thought by intelligence, personal and individual.

Those souls that are alive and are freighted with knowledge do not think their knowledge far away from earth and dole it out in parcels. Just as fast as human lives are ready they are ready to impart it. The teacher does not withhold knowledge from the little child through any selfishness or miserly instinct of keeping the knowledge to himself, but according to the growth and ability of the child imparts the lesson that is needed. So as human lives grow these lessons are waiting in the minds and thoughts of the higher intelligences for human beings to possess them.

The forces of nature, so-called, do not communicate themselves directly to intelligence without an intervening intelligence. These forces themselves you think unintelligent, but behind each pulsing orb, behind each manifestation of nature the great power of deific intelligence is manifest, and there man must find the secret source of his knowledge.

This 20th century is expected to wipe out war; that is largely to bring about the reign of peace; that is to see international arbitration; that is to witness the interchange of human commodities without commercial greed, without the spirit of barter these will not bring the millennium; human brotherhood on earth is to come to its fulfillment by better spiritual understanding.

Religion, when crystallized in any form, in any given theology, has not been able to bring this about in any general way, although it is quite certain that the early disciples lived together in a sort of fraternity. It is quite certain that the Quakers and the Shakers and many isolated religious bodies have at first illustrated that fraternal spirit; but it is usually at the sacrifice of some material or other law. The usual form has been too great asceticism, something that is not grounded in the usual needs and requirements of the human race. The monastic life of many religious bodies; the seclusion of the adepts in the East; the separation from their kind of many orders of Brotherhoods have made possible these ascetic and exalted lives, nevertheless they do not illustrate the general progress of the race. The Christ that ate and talked with publicans and sinners; the Christ that visited all classes of people, from the palace to the cottage; the Christ that found humanity where it was, this is the Spirit of that Truth that was to reach and renovate the world.

Of course there must be prophets and teachers, those who point the way and declare the truth, but the growth must be by the molding of the individual lives that make up the communities, the societies and nations. When these nations have outgrown war there can be no war; when they have outgrown certain kinds of selfishness in the lines of commercial dealing there can be no such methods as prevail to-day. These methods are not to blame. People talk about certain conditions in life as if the methods themselves were responsible. Creeds have been blamed by the materialists and the agnostics for the ignorance of the human race. You might as well blame the shell in which the young bird is incubating, and say, "the bird could fly if it were not for the shell."  Of course when the bird is ready to fly the shell will break. So there never was a creed strong enough to hold a person who had outgrown it. When you see multitudes flocking to the Romish church and to other churches, you may know it is their place of incubation; you may know that it is just the place adapted to their needs. 

That all attempts that seem to outsiders to keep people from thinking are really their shelter. It is very difficult for people to think when they are not able to think, they do not know how. The methods of knowing how to think and of growing toward it are not prevented by creed and dogma or a prison cell. Perhaps you could not write as Pascal did if you were in prison. Neither can you out of prison write as he did.

The restraining walls would not cause you not to write, but you have not grown to those heights, you have not  conquered in those spiritual ways. Those "mute in glorious Miltons" that we have read about so many times, those "flowers that are born to blush unseen and waste their sweetness on the desert air," are largely in the poet's imagination. If there is a Milton, even though blind, he will have visions of paradise; and if there are blossoms they bloom, not for eyes to see, but because to bloom is the loveliest and sweetest thing they can do. All this talk about genius being hidden away in some dark corner of the earth is a mistake. The New England rocks could not hold the genius of Webster, could not fetter the songs of  Longfellow nor could the rules and severe asceticism of Quakerism prevent Whittier from singing the songs of the people. Nowhere upon the earth is there a rocky cave in mountain or valley that can hide the eagle when it is ready to come forth. So when the people are ready this great inheritance is to be theirs.

There are present indications, which science is well aware of, that the earth is making ready for one of those great cyclic changes, to which we have referred. You are aware that not only in the conjunction of the planets and other great astronomical facts there are mutual influences that planets exert over one another, but there is that in astronomy called the "precession of the equinoxes."  You understand that the poles of the earth are gradually, gradually, gradually changing; that there must come a time when there will be a reaction, and with this change there must come that which is known as one of the great glacial  periods, where continents are destroyed, where the whole earth undergoes a geographical change, where, perhaps, only the Noahs, the precursors of the future generations will be preserved. Of course, there must always be left the seed of the human race, and of the animal kingdom, the germs of the plants, that which is to bring forth the future results. 

If people were not so anxious to find faults in the Old Testament instead of finding the inner, esoteric meaning,  they would know that the great Noachian deluge is but one of the traditions or records of a certain period of time, of a cycle in which there was a glacial deluge. We compute the time to be about 25,000 years between each of these great cyclic changes. We consider that the time since the last glacial deluge time is nearly passed, but it will not probably come to the cataclysm in the 20th century. 

The precursors, however are already here: In certain lines of prophecy, in the appearance of many religious zealots who see the "end of the  world" every few minutes and try to make ready for it; and among scientific people,  as well as among those who have studied these great cycles and their spiritual meaning; and we claim to be among those who have announced this great cyclic change. 

The precursors are already here: in the greater agitation and variation atmospherically; in the greater disturbances by land and sea; in the effect upon human lives, causing many mistakes to be made; more accidents upon railways, and street cars, and accidents upon the oceans, in the great physical epidemics, and moral epidemics. These great crimes are precursors of this change. These are days of culminations. There are just as great geniuses in crime as there are in inventions, and people also discover new ways of torturing their criminals; new ways of putting the criminals out of the way instead of teaching them how to do better. Electrocution is one of these discoveries that enable people to demonstrate (as they suppose in the interest of the law) the best method to torture each other, whether a matter of so-called, or miscalled, justice, or whether as a matter of revenge, which finds culmination in such a period as this.

Human lives will also seek to find many palliations for existing wrongs. But palliations are not cures. Social reforms are usually moral anesthetics. The science of materia medica has discovered a great many anesthetics and it is the present form of practice in materia medica to soothe the pain more frequently than to cure disease. It is left for the Christian Scientist, the Spiritual and Magnetic healer and that sort of people to cure the patients. Doctors are proficient in surgery and anesthetics, and that means that the causes of human ailments have not been removed, but palliatives are used.

Of course attention to the sanitary conditions of the crowded cities makes a good beginning. It is quite a discovery in the right direction when men and women of eminence are seeking today the knowledge of how you house your people, not your wretched poor, but your laboring people, your mechanics, your day laborers. To find in many instances in the densely populated portion of your city that there are more than one thousand people crowded into one block. Not where the buildings are the highest, but where they are so close together that at best they offer small chance for sanitary conditions. These houses are a much better solution than those discovered by the science of medicine, of that which has caused scarlet fever and typhoid fever to crop out in such places.

Scarlet fever and typhoid fever are sounds of alarm, they call upon you to cleanse the streets and clear out the places of filth. We propose to make it a part of our business to teach the necessity of letting in thc light, the daily light, thc sunlight, materially as well as spiritually, to clear out the “slums” and "levees," in fact the entire city of Chicago, and make it clean.  It will be a glorious century if this can be done.  London and New York have but partially solved the problem. It was a part of the genius of Napoleon the great to make Paris a beautiful city. He did it at the expense of the whole country, but he succeeded. If our city can be beautiful without injustice, try to make it so.

With added facilities of transportation you would be surprised if cities, in the sense they now exist, shall have no existence in another century. People will not then stay in cities unless they are obliged to, and nobody will be obliged to from lack of being able to see fields and have fresh air, cottages and homes, not houses and tenements.

What will it be then? It will be a race of people growing in the midst of the beautiful scenes of nature, appreciating the blue sky, the starry vault, the sunrises and the sunsets, the flower gardens, the fields and meadows. The whole country has room for homes for all the people. How beautiful it would be. Then the cities would only be occupied by shipping interests, railroads and commerce as distributing centers. We see that rapid means of transportation and changes in the methods of human life may bring this about.

Of course people swarm together for the experiences they get. It is only after the experience that they want to be isolated. The recluse of refined taste is the man or woman who has met the world and has been polished. They are great lapidaries, these cities of today, they rub off the refuse of ages. People rush together because they think they are lonesome, only to find there is no greater lonesomeness or barren desert than the crowded city. But people become humanized in that way. There are few that can appreciate the lonely grandeur of the Rocky Mountains, or the Alps. The vast prairies do not appeal to people until they have been ground out in the mill of humanity.

Consequently the next aim will be to civilize the cities, to make them tolerable places of abode, instead of intolerable. To make it possible for this aggregation of human beings to dwell together in a little better sort of way. Yet these people that are hived in so closely together are marvelously kind to one another. You turn a man away from your residence whom perhaps they would feed. There is fraternity and sympathy among them. Sometimes this is a great lesson to you. And, possibly, you will ascertain when you cast your ballot for the one that is to see to it that there are better means of housing these people, that it is not simply that they wish to be there, but because the grinding poverty, and the treadmill of daily toil does not offer any better place for them to live in.

You have a limited income, you live where you must. If your income were less you would have to live where they do.

Now the great problem is to have the income and the home combined for a place of comfort, fresh air and sunshine.

Spiritually there is a great deal of light being let in upon the earth. The upper lights have been turned on for more than half a century; the Hadean darkness has been dispersed, the great gaunt vaults of fear, and the horrible thoughts concerning death have been scattered. Yet there is still much to do.

Your cemeteries are places of disease; your crowded cities grow and include them. When the vaults of your spirits are opened you will understand that your friend is no more in the ground than enclosed by the garments they have worn when on earth, and you will have changed the whole aspect of that which relates to, so-called, funerals.

The 20th century will note, not only a marked change  in this respect, but you will perhaps be surprised when  you see that not only flowers for the wealthy but for all classes will come, blossoms of hope and joy, with the transition of the spirit from the body, and there will be no more this terrible form of grief and mourning.

Spiritual illumination has done much; spiritual communication has done much; the opening of the avenues of thought between the two worlds has done much, but more and more will be accomplished in the gradual growth of the people away from the thought of death. Life is continuous, changing, yet everlasting, and the transition of human beings from the earth to the future state will be accounted as a great occasion of rejoicing. It was our privilege to officiate just a few days ago after the transition of a young girl from human life, when she went singing songs of praise, and calling her loved ones about her, she told them not to mourn, that she would still be with them. Her vision was opened, she beheld those who came to her, and up to the last moment was talking cheeringly to those who were in human life.

There is to be a great reformation in Death.  More people will have visions; more people will understand that it is but another step in life; mourning shadows will grow less and less and the darkened pall will give place to rejoicing. The opening of the vision to the immortal world of those who are passing away is not new in the world but it will be more and more recognized. This taking of the next step will neither be dreaded before it comes nor mourned as annihilation after it comes. Such will be the illumination that will spread abroad almost imperceptibly over the world, as it has spread in the last fifty years. The hanging of flowers on the doors, the draping of the casket and room with blossoms, has done much to express this thought.

But really, dear friends, the best thing you could do for people is to give some blossoms while they stay with you, instead of spending a vast amount to make yourselves believe that death is beautiful. Let their lives be adorned with flowers; let the good things you say about them be said while they are here. Tell them how much you love them every day instead of keeping it stored away until their forms are silent; it will help them as well as you. It is a great deal better to do this while they are in human life than when the change comes. Then there is no lack of blossoms when they enter spirit life. The spirit of life is this blossoming.

Ah! It is the tombs and sepulchers that you find in daily life that makes you so full of grief when the loved are gone. But they do not go, they do not pass from you, they are in your midst, and whatever blossoms you bind their lives with, of hope and love and joy, these they possess when the time of transition comes.

Yes, Satan has been reformed in the last half century.  Now the old-time enemy of the world, Death is to be reformed, and Death as a reformer will take the right place in your thoughts and in your lives.

Flowers pass and fade, cornfields stand stark and bare, you have the harvest stored away carefully in the granaries, at least the farmers should have. But you do not house your treasures of love, nor harvest your fruits of kindness, therefore, when the change comes you feel the loss. But in the great storehouse of the spirit, in that which makes the fruitage and final triumph of life, you only cast aside the stalk, the leaves, the outward covering, the husks, the grain is yours.

This great treasure-house of the spirit lies all about you, environs and girds you round about with its ministering presences and powers, and all the great and wise and true who have passed on are helpers. Those who were not enlightened, who were unfortunate, who have not conquered, are in their own shadows. But the great burdens of the world you are continually aided and strengthened to bear.

The 20th century marks the death-knell of Death in the old-time theological sense. Churchyards and all their belongings will give place to knowledge of the realm of the spirit, of the light that is beyond, of the strength and beauty and greatness that abide there.

The 20th century is the precursor for the great cataclysm, for the glacial deluge, and all the forces of mind and spirit mark the epoch faster than matter does.  Therefore, there are culminations inwardly which will bring about a culmination in ways for devising peace; culminations in religion that will bring about a great deal of sectarian struggle to the new enlightenment of the race; culminations in commercial relations that will bring about a general readjustment, since nations will be so girdled around that they will be checkmated by other nations through the interchange of commerce. There will be great changes in the relation of capital and labor, since now they are divided. But a man will stand for more than a dollar. and humanity will stand for more than money. The time is coming when these forces will be allied of necessity, and necessity will bring about equalization and growth.

Fraternity cannot be compelled, but fraternity will gradually take the place of selfish aggregation. As soon as people understand that each is included as a part of the whole. You fight the world now, the “I” being against all the rest. It was a great proposition in science when the sun was made the center of the solar system, instead of the earth. It left the earth because science found it was too small to be the center of so much magnificence. When the center found its own place the universe seemed to be better adjusted. Now the “I” is supposed to be the center of the universe in every human mind. Just as soon as that is changed and the “I” is relegated to its own place, as a part of the whole—the soul preserving its identity—the universe will run smoother with you. The whole human family will not be against you, you will be one with it.

There is a vast reciprocity of souls, a mighty community of eternal intelligences, of which you as a soul, are a part, no smaller, no greater than any other soul.  Your interests are no more important and no less important than others.  And you, as one of that immense number of souls, move in response to Infinite law. Nations, communities, personal interests, all are governed by this great purpose.

When you understand it; when you know this, all this rebellion and warfare and striving against the Infinite purpose and against the small petty personal experiences will vanish. If you walk the thorn-path, others have walked and are walking it. If you have a hard task to perform, others have hard tasks. If you have great grief, others have grief also. There is no isolation in sorrow or in joy. A common pulsation runs throughout the universe and through the races for the mighty purpose of human experience.

This 20th century, releasing many things that have been chained in the past, will yield greater beginnings than you suppose; will teach each human life that he or she is no better, no worse in the great economy of souls than demons or archangels; each is only a state of growth and expression.

When James Phillip Bailey made Lucifer at last to be restored as an angel of light, it was a great spiritual lesson.  When Sir Edwin Arnold makes the Magdalen the principal  expounder of the teachings of the Master, it is a great spiritual lesson. No one is higher or lower, ultimately, primarily; and the various conditions of human life are but that you may find expression in some century like the 20th century and see how you long have moved with one mighty purpose toward that event, that in itself is no greater than thousands of events that have preceded it, or will follow it: that all culminating periods have nations of people like yours.

At some time in the garden of earth the lily blossoms; but for that lily there is the darkness that hides the germ, the bursting forth of the shoot, the transmutation and transfiguration toward the flower, then finally the opening of the blossom, the one supreme event of that lily's life. Yet to those who gaze on fields of lilies miles and miles in extent that one lily means little or nothing, yet it is the one event.

Somewhere in the Garden of Life the great immortal Lily of Love has its hiding place in the darkness, in the midst of rocks and thorns and briars, possibly hidden away, and no one suspects that it is there. There is struggle and there is growth; the stalk comes forth then the leaves, and finally, for that life the supreme moment arrives, the white Lily of Love has awakened, has blossomed. Yet to those who watch thousands and millions of completions of souls this is but an event, usual and common, but it is the supreme moment for that life; not an angel would turn away, nor an eye be filled with scorn in all the heavenly company to see the blossom of immortal love in any and every human life.

So, beloved friends, this century will shape itself  to great fulfillments; but there were other ages and will be more of equal importance. And as you are standing upon the threshold now beholding the mighty mysteries of the past, remember it may be that this immortal Lily of Fraternal Love will blossom upon the Earth, and human life will reveal it in the gardens of earth, and that angels will bend and at last behold it.

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