n outpouring. It was at a woods-meeting up
among the hills where quite a number of us had our say, and then
my friend's turn came. She was well on in years then, but the old
fire still burned clear, and God's breath touched her out of
heaven and she prophesied. I suppose she spoke for two hours, but
after the first moment she never faltered or failed to hold the
multitude spell-bound, and waiting on her words. Yet there was
not the least hint of premeditation, while there was boundless
wealth of meditation in her deep, pregnant thoughts. I have said
she prophesied, no other term would answer to her speech. Her
eyes had seen the coming glory of the Lord, and she testified
that she had seen; and this was all the more wonderful to me,
because it was the habit of her mind in later years to reason, as
President McCosh does, from premise to conclusion. But she had
seen a vision there sitting in the August splendor with the voice
of God's presence whispering in the trees, and the vision had set
the heart high above the brain. These were care-worn and
work-worn folks she saw about her with knotted hands resting on
the staff, or folded quietly on the lap. They had nearly done the
good day's work, and now preacher and prophet were needed to tell
them what that day's work meant, where they keep the books for
us, and so it was not a speech, but a psalm of life.
Mrs. Mott was safe at all points in taking Elias Hicks for a teacher
of morals, as he was pronounced on every reform. On the question of
woman's rights, he says:
If Paul said of women preachers what we find in Corinthians and
Timothy, I judge that he had no allusion at all to their
preaching or prophesying in the churches; and if he had, we have
no right to admit it as sound doctrine, as it contradicts a
number of his own declarations (and the general testimony of
Scripture), which are more rational and clear, as in the
fourteenth chapter of Romans; and in Philippians where he speaks
of the women who labored with him in the Gospel; and in 1st
Corinthians where he speaks of women praying and prophesying; and
Paul assures us that male and female are one in Christ. Also
under the law there were prophetesses as well as prophets, and
the effusion of the Spirit in the latter days as prophesied by
Joel was to b
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