4/55 SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATIONS A BRIEF RECORD OF MY OWN EXPERIENCES By Sir WM. EARNSHAW COOPER, CIE.
- That as many of the great men who have moved across the world’s stage during the last few thousand years have been richly endowed with psychic powers of a nature that enabled them to ” walk very near to God,” it would be a pardonable ambition if the sons of this age sought to emulate those great heroes of ancient times. The greatest of these was Jesus the Christ; and, although He performed works the like of which the world had never beheld, yet He laid claim to no powers that others might not possess. We have the Master’s word for it that the possession of great spiritual power was but a question of faith, of belief.
” He that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do, because I go unto My Father. ” Further on we have the dictum of the Apostle Peter: ” Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons; But in every nation he that feareth Him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him.”
If these plain words of the Christ and His apostle mean anything it is this, that, irrespective of race or creed, he who is possessed of a whole-souled, convincing, all-compelling belief, will be in a position to develop and maintain an amount of psychic force, or spiritual power which, to the unitiated, uninstructed,
and worldly-minded sons of a degenerate race, will be regarded as—superhuman. To such it would be futile to point out that these so-called superhuman powers have been possessed and freely exercised by an innumerable company of men in all ages and in many countries, because they would exclaim—”
Ah ! these men were especially chosen of God for certain purposes, but He does not work in that way now.” So specious a method of reasoning would not only satisfy the speaker, but, as a rule, his hearers as well, and so the Word of God would thus lightly be set aside and His plain purpose foolishly ignored. The words : “
If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place and it shall remove ; and nothing shall be impossible unto you ” have no more meaning to the vast majority of the human race to-day than they had to those to whom the gracious message was uttered nineteen hundred years ago.
Unbelief is the rule now, but as there is a silver lining to every cloud ‘ so is there a hope dawning upon the horizon of doubt and scepticism that promises to break into a glorious floodlight of Truth, enabling men to see clearly and not as now, ‘ through a glass darkly.’ For this reason I hold that he who can assist his brother to a realisation of the Truth should withhold nothing from him, even at some hurt to himself.