THE MAN 



THE SPIRIT OF PROPHECY 



Doctor Hopkins was more than a scientist; he was a 

 prophet. He valued science not for itself but for what it could 

 be made to do, and he was a preacher in the matter of mak- 

 ing it work. 



He was a prophet, too, in looking beyond the immediate 

 and into the future. He depended upon no impulses and he 

 practiced no incantations, but armed with "absolute truth" 

 derived from asking questions of nature, and fortified by ir- 

 resistible logic, he thundered against the sins of the fathers 

 as the prophets of old thundered against corruption. 



I have heard him likened to Joseph, whose part he took 

 in a play one time, and indeed he had the same prophetic 

 vision in providing against the lean years. If we follow his 

 teachings the lean kine will grow fat and never refuse to yield 

 their sustenance. 



I have heard him likened to Saint Paul, whose footsteps 

 he literally retraced during the last few months of his life. 

 And indeed the similarity is great. Like Saint Paul he gave 

 most of his life to a work which was not of his choosing, but 

 to which he was called for the headship of the department 

 and the professorship in which he rendered his great service 

 were tendered him by cable when he was a young man study- 

 ing the chemistry of starch three thousand miles away. 



Like Saint Paul he entered into larger life and saw a vision 

 of greater things than had been in the minds of the masters 

 under whom he had sat. Like him he turned abruptly and 

 gave all that he had to the new call, and like him he had a 

 vision of a new heaven and a new earth. No wonder the com- 

 mon people of Greece, seeing him walking the fields and work- 

 ing wonders, called him a God. 



Such was the man who walked and labored among us and 

 who has gone to his reward. His place will not be filled, but 

 will remain a blessed memory. 



