May
Lavater's unpublished correspondence with Empress Mary of Russia
Sixth LetterAttached is another letter from the invisible world! May it, like the previous ones, be enjoyed by you and have a healthy effect on you!
Let us constantly aspire towards a more intimate communion with the purest love that is manifested in man, and glorified in Jesus, the Nazarene!
Much revered Empress, our future bliss is in our power once we are granted the grace to understand that only love can give us supreme happiness, and that faith alone in divine love brings forth in our hearts the feeling that makes us happy eternally, the faith that develops, refines, and completes our capacity to love.
I still have many themes to communicate to you. I will try to accelerate the continuation of what I have started to tell you, and I would consider myself very happy if I could hope to have been able to occupy some moments of your precious life, pleasantly and usefully.
Johann-Kaspar Lavater
Zurich, December 16th, 1798
Letter from a deceased to his friend
My beloved, first I must warn you that, of the thousand things that, stimulated by a noble curiosity, you wish to learn from me, and that I would have so longed for to be able to tell you, I hardly dare to communicate only one, since I do not depend on myself, absolutely. My will depends, as I have already told you, on the will of Him who is the supreme wisdom. My relationship with you is based only on your love. This wisdom, this personified love, often pushes us, me and my thousand times thousand guests of a happiness, that becomes continually higher and more intoxicating, towards the still mortal men, and makes us enter with them in relations that are certainly pleasant to us, although very often obscured and not always pure and holy enough. Take from me a few notions about these relations. I do not know how I will manage to make you understand this great truth that will probably astonish you very much, despite its reality, that is: our own happiness often depends, relatively of course, on the moral state of those whom we left on Earth and with whom we establish direct relations.
Their religious sentiment attracts us; their wickedness repels us.
We rejoice in their pure and noble joys, that is, their spiritual and selfless joys. Their love contributes to our happiness; thus, we feel like if not a suffering, at least a decrease in pleasure, when they allow themselves to be involved in the shadows by their sensuality, their egoism, their animal passions, or the impurity of their desires.
My friend, I beg you to stop before these words: be involved in the shadows.
Every divine thought produces a ray of light that springs from the loving man, and that is only seen and understood by loving and radiant natures. Every kind of love has its own particular ray of light. This ray, joining the halo that surrounds the saints, makes it even more magnificent and more pleasant to the sight. The degree of our own bliss or the happiness we feel from our existence often depends on the degree of this clarity and amenity. With the disappearance of love, this light fade and with that the element of happiness of those we love. A man who becomes a stranger to love is involved in shadows, in the most literal and positive sense of the word; he becomes more material, consequently more elemental, earthlier, and the darkness of night covers him with its veil. Life, or what is the same for us: the love of man, produces the degree of his light, his luminous purity, his identity with light, the magnificence of his nature.
These latter qualities alone make our relationship with him possible and intimate. Light attracts light. It is impossible for us to act on dark souls. All unloving natures seem dark to us. The life of every mortal, his true life, is like his love; his light resembles his love; from his light flows our communion with him and his with us. Our element is light, the secret of which is not understood by any mortal. We attract and are attracted to it. This outfit, this organ, this vehicle, this element, in which resides the primitive force that produces everything, light in a word, forms for us the characteristic feature of all natures.
We enlighten in the measure of our love; we are recognized by this clarity, and we are drawn to all loving and radiant creatures like us. By the effect of an imperceptible movement, by giving a certain direction to our rays, we can give birth in creatures that are sympathetic to us more human ideas, to arouse actions, more noble and higher feelings; but we do not have the power to force or dominate anybody, nor to impose our will on men whose will are completely independent of ours. Human free-will is sacred to us. It is impossible for us to impart a single ray of our pure light to a man who lacks sensitivity, that has no sense, no organ to be able to receive anything from us. How sensitive a man is depends on - oh! allow me to repeat it to you in each of my letters - his ability to receive light, his sympathy with all luminous creatures, and with their primordial prototype. From the absence of light arises the inability to approach the sources of light, while thousands of luminous natures can be attracted to one similar nature.
The Man-Jesus, resplendent with light and love, was the luminous focus that incessantly attracted legions of angels to him. Dark, selfish natures attract dark, coarse, light-deprived, malevolent Spirits to themselves, and are further poisoned by them, while loving souls become even purer and more loving, through their contact with good and loving Spirits.
Sleeping Jacob, filled with virtuous feelings, sees the angels of the Lord coming in crowds towards him, and the dark soul of Judas Iscariot gives the leader of the Dark Spirits the right, I would say even the power, to enter the dark atmosphere of his hateful nature. Radiant Spirits abound where there is an Elysium; legions of dark spirits swarm among dark souls.
My beloved, think carefully about what I have just told you. You will find many applications of it in the biblical books, that contain still intact truths, as well as instructions of the greatest importance, concerning the relations that exist between mortals and immortals, between the material world and the spiritual world.
It is up to you alone to find yourself under the beneficent influence of the loving Spirits or to keep them away from you; you can keep them with you or force them to leave you. It is up to you to make me happier or less happy.
You must understand now that every loving being becomes happier, when he meets a being just as loving as him; that the happiest and purest of beings becomes less happy, when he recognizes a lessening of love in the loved one; that love opens the heart to love, and that the absence of this feeling makes it more difficult, often even impossible, the access to any intimate communication.
If you want to make me, already enjoying supreme happiness, even happier, become even better. By this, you will make me more radiant and will be able to sympathize more with all the radiant and immortal natures. They will hasten to come to you; their light will unite with yours and yours with theirs; their presence will make you purer, more radiant, more lively, and what will be difficult for you to believe, but not less positive for that, by the effect of your light, that will radiate from you, they will become more luminous themselves, more vivacious, happier with their existence, and by the effect of your love, even more loving.
My beloved, there is an imperishable relationship between what you call the visible and the invisible worlds, an incessant communion between the inhabitants of Earth and those of heaven, who know how to love, a reciprocal beneficial action of each of these worlds on the other.
As you carefully meditate and analyze this idea, you will increasingly recognize its truth, urgency, and holiness.
Do not forget, brother of Earth: you visibly live in a world that is still invisible to you!
Do not forget it! In the world of loving spirits, they will rejoice with your growth in pure and selfless love!
We are near you when you believe we are far away. A loving being is never alone and isolated.
The light of love pierces the darkness of the material world, to enter a less material world.
Loving and luminous Spirits are always found in the neighborhood of love and light.
These words of Christ are literally true: "Where two or three meet in my name, I will be with them."
It is also undoubtedly true that we can afflict the Spirit of God with our selfishness, and rejoice him with our true love, according to the deep meaning of these words: “Whatever you bind on Earth is bound with heaven; whatever you loosen on Earth will also be loosened in heaven.” You loosen with egoism, you bind with charity, that is, with love. You approach and you walk away from us. Nothing is more clearly understood in heaven than the love of those who love on Earth.
Nothing is more attractive to the blessed Spirits belonging to all degrees of perfection than the love of the children of Earth.
You, who are still called mortals, through love you can bring heaven down to Earth.
You could enter an infinitely more intimate communication with us than you can imagine, blessed, if your souls were opened to our influence by the impulses of the heart.
I am often with you, my beloved! I like to find myself in your sphere of light.
Allow me to say a few more words in confidence to you.
When you get angry, the light that radiates from you, the moment you think of those you love or those who are suffering, darkens, and then I am forced to turn away from you, for no loving Spirit can bear the darkness of anger. Lately, I had to leave you. I lost sight of you, so to speak, and walked towards another friend, or rather the light of his love drew me to him. He prayed, shedding tears for a beneficent family, momentarily fallen in the greatest distress and that he was unable to help. Oh! His earthly body already appeared shiny to me; it was as if a dazzling clarity flooded him. Our Lord approached him, and a ray of his Spirit fell into that light. How happy I was to be able to immerse myself in that halo, and re-tempered by that light, to be able to inspire in his soul the hope of imminent help! I seemed to hear a voice deep in his soul, saying to him: “Don't be afraid! Believe! You will taste the joy of being able to relieve those to whom you have just prayed to God. He stood up, full of joy after his prayer. At the same time, I was drawn to another radiant being, also in prayer… It was the noble soul of a virgin who prayed and said: “Lord! teach me to do good according to your will." I could and I dared to inspire her with the following idea:
“Wouldn't I do well by sending this charitable man that I know, a little money so that he can use, even today, for the benefit of some poor family?"
She clung to this idea with childish joy; she received it as she would have received an angel descended from heaven. That virtuous and charitable soul collected a rather considerable sum; then she wrote a very affectionate little letter to the address of the one who had just prayed, and who received it, as well as the money, barely an hour after her prayer, shedding tears of joy and filled with deep gratitude to God!
I followed him, experiencing supreme happiness myself and rejoicing in his light. He arrived at the poor family's door. "Will God have mercy on us?", asked the pious wife of her pious husband. - "Yes, he will have pity on us, as we had pity on others." - Hearing this answer from the husband, the one who had prayed was filled with joy; he opened the door, and suffocated by his emotion, he could hardly utter these words: “Yes, he will have pity on you, as you yourselves have had pity on the poor; here is a pledge of God's mercy. The Lord sees the righteous and hears their pleas."
With what a bright light shone all the assistants; when after reading the little letter, they raised their eyes and arms to the sky! Masses of Spirits hastened to arrive from all sides. How we rejoiced! How we kissed! How we praised God and praised him! How we all became more perfect, more loving!
You soon shone again; I could, and I dared to come near you; you had done three things that gave me the right to approach you and cheer you up. You had shed tears of shame at your anger; you had thought about and were seriously moved on the means of being able to control yourself; you had sincerely asked for forgiveness from the one whom your anger had offended, and you were looking for how you could compensate him by giving him some satisfaction. This concern restored calm to your heart, cheerfulness to your eyes, light to your body.
You can judge, by this example, if we are still well informed about what the friends we have left on earth do, and how much we care about their moral state; you must also understand now the solidarity that exists between the visible world and the invisible world, and that it depends on you to give us joys or to afflict us.
Oh! my beloved, if you could comprehend this great truth, that a noble and pure love finds its finest reward in itself; that the purest pleasures, the enjoyment of God, are only the product of a more refined feeling, you would hasten to purify yourself from all that is egoism.
In writing this to you, a feeling of foresight that never deceives me, teaches me that at this moment you are in an excellent moral disposition, since you are thinking of a work of charity. Each of your actions, your thoughts, carries a particular stamp, instantly understood, and appreciated by all discarnate Spirits. May God help you!
I wrote this on December 16th, 1798.”
It would be superfluous to stress the importance of these letters from Lavater, that have excited the keenest interest everywhere. They attest, on his part, not only knowledge of the fundamental principles of Spiritism, but a fair appreciation of its moral consequences. On a few points only, he seems to have had slightly different ideas from what we know today, but the cause of these discrepancies, which, by the way, are perhaps more due to form than to substance, is explained in the following communication he gave to the Parisian Society. We will not raise them, because everyone understood them; the essential thing to note is that, long before the official appearance of Spiritism, men whose high intelligence could not be called into question, had had the intuition of it. If they did not use the word, it is because it did not exist.
We will, however, draw attention to a point that might seem strange: it is the theory according to which the happiness of the Spirits is subordinated to the purity of feelings of the incarnate, and that it is altered by the slightest imperfection of those. If this were so, considering what men are, there would be no truly happy Spirits, and true happiness would not exist in the next world any more than on Earth. Spirits must suffer from the faults of men, since they know them to be perfectible. Imperfect men are for them like children whose education has not been completed, and for whom they have a mission to work, they who have also gone through the ranks of imperfection. But if we consider what the principle developed in this letter may have that is too absolute, we cannot help recognizing in it a very deep meaning, an admirable understanding of the laws that govern the relations between the visible and the invisible world, and the nuances that characterize the degree of advancement of the incarnate or discarnate Spirits.
Current opinion of Lavater about Spiritism
Oral communication through Mr. Morin, in spontaneous somnambulism
Since the divine mercy allowed me, humble creature, to receive revelation through the messengers of the immensity, to this day the years have, one by one, fallen into the abyss of time; and as they flowed, the knowledge of men also increased, and their intellectual horizon widened.
Since the few pages that were read to you were given to me, many more pages have been given all over the world on the same subject and by the same means. Do not think that I, humble among all, claim to have been the first to have the distinguished honor of receiving such a favor; no; others before me had also received the revelation; but, like me, alas! they did not fully understand parts of it. It is necessary, gentlemen, to consider the time, the degree of moral instruction, and above all the degree of philosophical emancipation of the peoples.
The Spirits, of which I am happy to be a part today, also form peoples and worlds, but they have no races; they study, they see, and their studies can unquestionably be larger, broader than the studies of men; but, nevertheless, they always start from the acquired knowledge, and from the peak of the moral and intellectual progress of the time and the environment in which they live. If the Spirits, these divine messengers, come daily to give you instructions of a higher order, it is because the generality of the beings who receive them can understand them. As a result of their preparation, there are moments in which men do not need to wait for the eternity of a century to understand. Since one can see a rapidly improving moral level, a sort of attraction carries them towards a certain current of ideas that they must assimilate, whose goal they must aspire; but such moments are short, and it is up to men to take advantage of them.
I said that it was necessary to take the times into account, and especially the degree of philosophical emancipation that the time entailed. Grateful to the Divinity, that had enabled me to acquire certain knowledge, by a special favor and more quickly than other men who started from the same point, I received communications from the Spirits. But, the first education, the narrow minded teachings, the tradition and customs weighed on me; despite my aspirations to acquire a freedom, an independence of mind that I desired, an attractive magnet for the Spirits who came to communicate with me, not knowing the science that has since been revealed to you, I could only attract beings with similar ideas and aspirations, and which, with although with a wider horizon, nevertheless had the same limited view. Hence, I confess, the few errors that you may have noticed in what came to you from me; but the substance, the main body, is it not, gentlemen, in conformity with everything that has since been revealed to you by these messengers of whom I spoke earlier?
An incarnate spirit, instinctively brought to good, a fervent nature taking hold of a thought that brought me to the truth, unfortunately so quickly as those that led me to the error, it is perhaps there the motive that caused the inaccuracies of my communications, not having the control of the points of comparison to rectify them; for a revelation to be perfect, it must be addressed to a perfect man, and there is none; It is therefore only from the whole that we can extract the elements of the truth: this is what you were able to do; but, in my time, could one form a set of a few pieces of truth, of a few exceptional communications? No. I am happy to have been one of the privileged of the last century; to have obtained some of these communications through my direct intermediary, and most of them by means of a medium, a friend of mine, completely foreign to the language of the soul, and as we must say everything, even to that of good.
Happy to share these ideas with intelligences that I believed to be above mine, a door was opened to me; I seized it with enthusiasm, and all the revelations of life beyond the grave were, by me, brought to the knowledge of an Empress who, in her turn, brought them to the knowledge of her entourage, and so forth.
Believe it, Spiritism was not revealed spontaneously; like everything that came out of the hands of God, it developed gradually, slowly, surely. It was as an embryo in the first germ of things, and it grew with this germ until it was strong enough to subdivide itself ad infinitum, and to spread its fertilizing and regenerating seed everywhere. It is through Spiritism that you will be happy, that the happiness of the peoples will be assured; what did I say? the happiness of all worlds; for Spiritism, a word that I did not know, is called to make great revolutions! But rest assured; these revolutions will never bloody their flag; they are moral, intellectual revolutions; gigantic revolutions, more irresistible than those provoked by weapons, by which everything is so much called to be transformed, that all that you know is only a weak sketch of what they will produce. Spiritism is such a vast a word, so great, by everything that it contains, that it seems to me that a man who would know all its depth could not pronounce it without respect.
Gentlemen, I, a very small Spirit, despite the great intelligence that you grant me, and about those much superior ones that it is given to me to contemplate, I come to say to you: do you believe then that it is by chance that you may have heard this evening what Lavater had obtained and written? No, it is not by chance that the hand of my perispirit has surely directed them towards you. But if these few thoughts have come to your knowledge through me, do not think that I sought in them a useless satisfaction of my self-love; no, far from that; the goal was greater, and even the thought of bringing them to the universal knowledge of Earth did not come from me. This knowledge had its uses; it must have serious consequences, that is why it has been given to you to spread it. In the smallest things lies the germ of the greatest renovations. I am happy, gentlemen, that I have been given the right to give you an idea of the impact that these few reflections, these communications, that are very poor compared to those you are currently obtaining, will have; and if I can see the result, if I'm happy, why wouldn't you be?
I will come back, gentlemen, and what I said this evening is so insignificant compared to what I have a mission to teach you, that I hardly dare to tell you: it is Lavater.
Question: We thank you for the explanations you have kindly given us, and we will be very happy to count on you henceforth among our teaching Spirits. We will receive your instructions with the greatest gratitude. In the meantime, allow us a simple question about your communication today:
1st - You say that the Empress brought these ideas to the knowledge of those around her, and so forth. Could it be for this initiative, from the highest echelons of society, that the Spiritist doctrine must meet so many sympathies among the social leaders in Russia?
2nd - A point that I am astonished not to see mentioned in your letters, is the great principle of reincarnation, one of the natural laws that most testifies of the justice and the goodness of God.
Answer: It is evident that the influence of the Empress and of some other great characters was predominant in determining, in Russia, the development of the philosophical movement in the spiritualist direction; but, if the thought of the princes of Earth often determines the thought of the great who find themselves under their dependence, it is not the same with the small ones. Those who have the chance to develop progressive ideas among the people are the sons of the people; it is they who will make triumph the principles of solidarity and charity everywhere, that are the basis of Spiritism.
So, God, in his wisdom, has staggered the elements of progress; they are above, below, in all forms, and prepared to fight every resistance. Thus, they undergo a constant back and forth movement that cannot fail to establish the harmony of feelings between the upper and lower classes, and to make the principles of authority and freedom succeed in solidarity.
The peoples are, as you know, formed by Spirits who have a certain affinity of ideas among themselves, that to a greater or lesser degree predispose them to assimilate ideas of this or that order, because these very ideas are in a latent state in them, only waiting for an opportunity to develop. The Russian people and many others are in this case regarding Spiritism; if the movement is seconded instead of being hindered, ten years would not pass before all individuals, without exception, were Spiritists. But these very fetters are useful in tempering the movement that, somewhat slowed down, is given more thoughts. The Omnipotence, by whose will everything is accomplished, will be able to remove obstacles when the time is right. Spiritism will one day be the universal faith, and they will be astonished that it has not always been so.
As for the principle of earthly reincarnation, I admit that my initiation had not gotten there, and no doubt on purpose, because I would not have failed to make it a subject of my instructions to the Empress, like with other revelations, and perhaps that would have been premature. Those who preside over the ascending movement know well what they are doing. The principles are born one by one, according to the times, places, and individuals, and it was reserved to your time to see them united in a solid, logical, and unassailable bundle.
Lavater.
Education beyond the grave
We got this letter from Caen:
Question: Is it you, sir, the parish priest who is preventing this family from reading?
Answer: Yes, it's me; I constantly watch over the flock entrusted to my care; I have seen you for a long time wanting to instruct my penitents in your sad doctrine; who gave you the right to teach? Did you study for it?
Question: Tell us, Mr. Priest, are you in heaven?
Answer: No; I am not pure enough to see God.
Question: Are you in the flames of purgatory then?
Answer: No since I am not suffering.
Question: Have you seen hell?
Answer: You make me tremble! you trouble me! I can't answer you, because you might tell me that I must be in one of these three things. I tremble at the thought of what you are saying, and yet I am drawn to you by the logic of your reasoning. I will come back and discuss with you.
He did come back many times, indeed; we discussed, and he understood so well that he was taken by enthusiasm. Lately he was crying out, "Yes, I am a Spiritist now, tell everyone who teaches. Ah! how I would like them to understand God as this angel made him known to me!”
He was talking about Carita, who had come to us, and before whom he had fallen on his knees, saying that it was not a Spirit, but an angel. From that moment on, he has taken on the mission of educating those who claim to educate others."
Our correspondent adds the following fact:
“Among the Spirits who come into our circle, we had Doctor X…, who takes hold of our medium, and who is like a child; you have to give him explanations aout everything; he advances, he understands, and he is full of enthusiasm; he goes to the scholars he had known; he wants to explain to them what he sees, what he knows now, but they do not understand it; so he gets angry and calls them ignorant. One day, in a meeting of ten people, he took hold of the child, as usual (the medium girl, by whom he speaks and acts); he asked me who I was and why I had so much knowledge without having learned anything; he took my head with his hands and said: "Here is matter, I recognize myself in it, but how am I here? How can I make this organization speak that is not mine, though? You talk to me about the soul, but where is the soul that inhabits this body?
After having pointed out to him the fluidic link that unites the Spirit to the body during life, he suddenly exclaimed, speaking of the young medium girl: “I know this child, I have seen her at home; her heart was sick; how is it that it is not anymore? Tell me who healed her?” I pointed out to him that he was wrong and that he had never seen her. “No,” he said, “I'm not mistaken, and the proof is that I stung her arm, and she didn't feel any pain."
When the young girl was awake, we asked her if she had known the doctor and if she had consulted with him. “I don't know,” she replied, “if it was him, but being in Paris, I was taken to see a famous doctor whose name and address I do not remember.”
His ideas change quickly; it is now a Spirit in the delirium of the happiness of what he knows; he would like to prove to everyone that our teaching is incontestable. What worries him especially is the question of fluids. “I want,” he said, “to be healed like your friend; I don’t want to use poisons; I never took them.” Today he studies man, no longer in his organism, but in his soul; he made us tell him how the union of soul and body worked at conception, and he seemed very happy. The good doctor Demeure came next, and told us not to be surprised at the questions, sometimes childish, that he could ask us: "he is,” he said, “like a child who must be taught to read in the great book of nature; but since he is, at the same time, a great intelligence, he learns quickly, and we contribute to it on our side."
These two examples confirm these three great principles revealed by Spiritism, namely:
1st - That the soul keeps, in the world of the Spirits, for a somewhat long time, the ideas and prejudices that it had during its earthly life.
2nd - That it changes, progresses, and acquires new knowledge in the world of the Spirits.
3rd - That the incarnate can contribute to the progress of the discarnate Spirits.
These principles are the result of innumerable observation and of capital importance, in that they overturn all ideas implanted by religious beliefs on the stationary and final state of the Spirits after death. Once progress in the spiritual state is demonstrated, all beliefs based on the perpetuity of any uniform situation, fall before the authority of the facts. They also fall before the philosophical reason that says that progress is a law of nature, and that the stationary state of Spirits would be both the denial of this law and that of the justice of God.
Progressing the Spirit outside incarnation, another not less capital consequence follows, that by returning to earth, it brings the double gains of previous existences and that of erraticity. That is how the progress of generations is accomplished.
It is indisputable that when the doctor and the priest mentioned above are reborn, they will bring ideas and opinions quite different from those that they had in the existence that they had just left; one will no longer be fanatic, the other will no longer be materialistic, and both will be Spiritists. The same can be said of Dr. Morel Lavallé, the Bishop of Barcelona and so many others. There is, herefore, utility for the future of society, in dealing with the education of Spirits.
Doctor Philippeau
Impressions of a materialist doctor in the world of the Spirits
Questions from the doctor: Spiritism teaches me that we must hope, love, forgive; I would do all these things if I knew how to go about it, to begin with. We must hope, what? We must forgive, what and whom? We must love, who? Answer me.
Philippeau
Reply: We must hope for the mercy of God, that is infinite; you must forgive those who have offended you; you have to love your neighbor as yourself; it is necessary to love God, so that God loves you and forgives you; we must pray to him and give him thanks for all his kindness, for all your miseries, for misery and happiness everything comes to us from him, that is to say, everything comes to us from him as we have deserved.
He who has atoned, later will have his reward; everything has its reason for being, and God, who is sovereignly good and just, gives to each according to their works. Loving and praying, that is all life, all eternity.
Saint Victory
Doctor. I would like, with all my soul, to satisfy you, madam, but I am very afraid that I cannot entirely; yet I will try.
Once I was dead, materially speaking, I thought it was all over; therefore, when my matter was inert, I was seized, terrified, at the feeling that I was still alive.
I saw these men carry me away, and I said to myself: But I am not dead! They therefore do not see, these imbeciles of doctors, that I live, that I breathe, that I walk, that I look at them, that I follow them, these people who come to my funeral! ... Who is it then that they are burying? … It's not me… I heard one and another saying: “poor Philippeau,” they said, “he did a lot of healing; he did kill some of them; today it's his turn; when death is there, we lose our time. It was in vain that I shouted: "but Philippeau did not die like that; I am not dead! They couldn't hear me; they couldn't see me.
Three days passed like this; I was gone from the world, and I felt more alive than ever. Either by chance or Providence, my eyes fell on a brochure by Allan Kardec; I read his descriptions on Spiritism, and I said to myself: could I be, by chance, a Spirit? ... I read, I reread, and I then understood the transformation of my being: I was no longer a man, but a Spirit! … Yes; but then what did I have to do in this new world? In this new sphere? ... I wandered, I searched: I found the void, the dark, the abyss at last.
What had I done, when I left the world, to come and live in this darkness? … Hell is dark, and it is in this hell that I fell? … Why? … Because I worked my whole life? my life? Because I have used my life to heal one and another, to save them when my science allowed it? … No! no! … Why then? Why? … Seek! seek! … Nothing; I do not find anything.
I then reread Allan Kardec: hope, forgive and love, that is the solution. Now I understand the rest; what I had not understood, what I had denied: God, the invisible and supreme Being, I must pray to him; what I had done for science, I must do for God; that I study, that I accomplish my spiritual mission. I still vaguely understand these things, and I see long struggles in my mind, for a whole new world is opening to me, and I step back, frightened at what I must go through. However, we must atone, you say; this land has been very painful to me, for it took me more trouble than you can imagine to get to where I have arrived! Ambition was my only drive; I wanted it, and I got it.
Now everything must be redone. I did the exact opposite of what was needed. I learned, I dug science, not out of love for science, but out of ambition, to be more than the others, to be talked about. I took care of my neighbor, not to relieve him, but to enrich myself; I have, in a word, been all about matter, when one must be all Spirit. What are my works today? Wealth, science; nothing! nothing! Everything must be redone.
Will I have the courage? Will I have the strength, the means, the facility? ... The spiritual world in which I walk is an enigma; prayer is unknown to me; what to do? who will help me? You, perhaps, who have already answered me ... Watch it! the task is hard, difficult, the student sometimes rebellious ... However, I will try to give in to your good reasons and thank you in advance for your kindness.
Philippeau
Spiritism everywhere
The Countess of Monte Cristo
With this title, La Petite Presse publishes a serial novel in which we find the following passages, extracts from chapters XXX and XXXI:
“My paradise, dear mother," said her dying daughter to the Countess of Monte Cristo, "it will be to stay near you, near you!" still alive in your thoughts, listening to you and answering you, chatting in a low voice with your souls.
When the flower smells in the garden, and you bring it to your lips, I will be in the flower, and I will receive the kiss!" I will also be the ray, the passing breath, the sounding murmur. The wind that will shake your hair will be my caress; the scent of flowering lilacs will rise towards your window, it will be my breath; the distant song that will make you cry, it be my voice! …
Mother do not blaspheme! No anger against God! Alas! perhaps these anger and blasphemy would separate us forever.
As long as you stay down here, I will make myself your companion in exile; but later, when resigned to the wishes of our Father who is in heaven, you in your turn will have closed your eyes so as not to reopen them, then I will in turn be at your bedside, awaiting for your freedom; and intoxicated with eternal joy, our two hearts, united forever, entwined for eternity, will fly the same flight towards a merciful sky. Do you understand this joy, mother? Never leave one another, always love each other, always! To form, so to speak, two distinct beings and a single being, at the same time: to be you and me at the same time? To love and know that one is loved, and that the measure of the love that one inspires is the same that one feels?
Here below, we do not know each other; I ignore you as you ignore me; our two bodies are an obstacle between our two Spirits; we only see ourselves confusedly through the veil of flesh. But up there, we'll clearly read each other's hearts. And knowing how much we love each other is true paradise, you see!
Alas! All these promises of a mystical and infinite happiness, far from calming the anxieties of Helena, only made them more intense, by making her measure the value of good that she was going to miss.
At intervals, however, at the breath of these inspired words, Helena’s soul almost flew to the serene heights where Pippione's hovered. Her tears stopped, her calm returned to her disturbed bosom; it seemed to her that invisible beings were floating in the room, whispering the words to Blanche, as she pronounced them.
The child had fallen asleep, and in her dream, she seemed to be conversing with someone you couldn't see, listening to voices that only she could hear, and responding to them.
Suddenly, an abrupt tremble shook her frail limbs, she opened her large eyes wide and called her mother, who was dreaming, leaning on the window.
She approached the bed, and Pippione grabbed her hand with an already damp hand from the last sweats.
“The time has come," she said. “This is the last night. They call me, I hear them! I would like to stay still, poor mother, but I cannot, their will is stronger than mine; they are up there waving to me.”
- Madness! exclaimed Helena! Vision! Dream! You, die today, tonight, in my arms! Is that possible?
“- No, not die," said Pippione; “be born! I come out of the dream instead of entering it; the nightmare is over, I wake up. Oh! if you only knew how beautiful it is, and what light shines here, beside which your sun is but a black spot!”
She let herself fall on the cushions, remained silent for a moment, then continued:
"- The moments that I have to spend with you are short. I want you all to be here to tell me what you call an eternal farewell, that is just a brief goodbye. Everybody, do you hear me well? You first, the good doctor, Ursula, and Cyprienne, and Joseph.”
This name was pronounced lower than the others, it was the last breath, the last human regret of Pippione. From that moment, she belonged entirely to heaven…
…………………..
"- It was my daughter!
“- It was! … Repeated Doctor Ozam, in an almost fatherly voice, drawing Helena to his chest. It was! … So it is no longer… What is left here? A little half-decomposed flesh, nerves that vibrate no more, blood that thickens, eyes without gaze, a speechless throat, ears that no longer hear, a little mud! Your daughter! This corpse in which fertile nature already makes inferior life germinate, that will disseminate its elements? - Your daughter, this mud that tomorrow will turn green in the weeds, will flower in roses, and will restore to the ground all the living forces that it has stolen from her? No, no - this is not your daughter! This is only the delicate and charming outfit that she had created to go through our life of hardships, a rag that she disdainfully abandoned, like a worn dress that one throws away! If you want to have a vivid memory of your daughter, poor lady, you must look elsewhere… and higher.
“So, you believe it too, doctor,” she asked, “in this other life? You were said to be a materialist.”
“The doctor smirked softly. "Maybe I am, but not the way you mean it."
“It is not in another life that I believe, but in eternal life, in the life that has not begun and that, therefore, will have no end. – In the beginning, each of the beings equal to the others, educates, so to speak, their soul, and improves their faculties and power, in proportion to their merits and actions. Immediate consequence of this argumentation: this more perfect soul also aggregates a more perfect envelope all around itself. A day arrives when then finally this envelope is no longer sufficient, and then, the soul breaks the body, as they say.
But does she break it to find another more in line with her needs and her new qualities? Where? Who knows? Perhaps in one of those superior worlds that shine on our heads, in a world where she will find a more perfect body, endowed with more sensitive organs, thereby even better and happier!
……………….
We ourselves, perfect beings, from the first day endowed with all the senses that put us in touch with external nature, how much effort do we not need! What latent labors are not necessary for the child to become a man, the ignorant and weak being, king of Earth! And endlessly, until death, the courageous and the good ones persevere in this arduous way of work; they expand their intelligence by the study, their heart by dedication. That is the mysterious work of the human chrysalis, the work by which it acquires the power and the right to break the envelope of the body and to rise with wings."
Observation: The author, who had up until now kept anonymous, is Mr. du Boys, a young dramatic writer; from certain almost textual expressions, we can obviously see that he was inspired by the Doctrine.
Baron Clootz
“In the other world, where I live since the terrible day of March 24th, 1794, that I admit, disillusioned me a little about men and things, only the word war has the privilege of reminding me the concerns of earthly policy. What I liked the most, what am I saying? What I adored and served when I lived on your planet, it was the brotherhood of peoples and peace. To this great object of study and love, I made a rather serious pledge: my head, to which my hundred thousand pounds of income that to the eyes of many people added an important value. What even consoled me somewhat, as I climbed the steps of the scaffolding, were the considerations by which Saint-Just had just justified my arrest. It was said there, if I remember correctly, that henceforth peace, justice and integrity would be on the agenda. I would have given my life, I declare it out loud, without hesitation, and twice rather than once, to obtain half of that result. And please notice that my sacrifice was more complete and deeper than most of my colleagues could have been. I was in good faith and kept respect for justice at the bottom of my heart; but, without speaking of the cults that horrified me, the Supreme Being of Robespierre himself irritated my nerves, and the future life had for me the appearance of a pretty fairy tale. You will probably ask me what it is. Was I wrong? Was I right? This is the great secret of the dead. Judge for yourself at your own risk. It seems, however, that I was going a little too far, since I am permitted to write to you, on this solemn occasion."
Since the article is exclusively political, and outside our scope, we only quote this fragment to show that in these very serious issues, we can take advantage of the idea of the dead addressing the living, to continue with their interrupted relationships. Spiritism sees this fiction being realized at every moment. It is more than likely that it was Spiritism that gave this idea; moreover, if it would be given as real, Spiritism would not disavow it.
Metempsychosis
“Do you know the cause of the noises that reach us? said Mrs. Des Genêts. Is this some new scene of unleashed tigers that these gentlemen are preparing for us?
- Relax, dear friend, everything is safe: our living and our dead. Hear the lovely melody of the nightingale singing in this willow tree! Perhaps it is the soul of one of our martyrs that hovers around us, in this loving form. The dead have these privileges; and I readily persuade myself that they often come back to those they loved.
- Oh! if you were telling the truth! exclaimed Mrs. Des Genêts eagerly.
- I sincerely believe it, said the young Duchess. It is so good to believe in reassuring things! Besides, my father, who is very enlightened, as you are aware, assured me that this belief had been spread long ago by great philosophers. Lesage himself believes in it too.”
This passage is taken from a serial novel entitled: Le Cachot de la Tour des pins[1], by Paulin Capmal, published by La Liberté on November 4th, 1867. Here, the idea is not borrowed from the Spiritist doctrine, that has always taught and proved that the human soul cannot be reborn in an animal body, that does not prevent certain critics, who have not read the first word of Spiritism, from repeating that it professes the metempsychosis; but it is still the thought of the individual soul surviving the body, returning in a tangible form to those whom it has loved. If the idea is not Spiritist, it is at least spiritualistic, and it would still be better to believe in metempsychosis than to believe in the void. This belief, at least, is not hopeless like materialism; it has nothing immoral, on the contrary; it has led all the peoples who have professed it to treat animals with gentleness and benevolence. This exclamation: It is so good to believe in reassuring things, is the great secret of the success of Spiritism.
[1] The dungeon of the pine trees tower (T.N.)
Funeral of Mr. Marc Michel
The Temps, on March 27th, 1868, reads:
“Yesterday, at the funeral of Mr. Marc Michel, Mr. Jules Adenis said goodbye, in the name of the Society of Dramatic Authors, to the writer whom the joyous and light comedy has just lost.
I find this sentence in his speech:
It was Ferdinand Langlé who recently preceded the one we mourn today in the grave… And who knows? Who can tell? … just as we are following this mortal remains here, perhaps Langlé's soul came to receive Marc Michel's soul on the threshold of eternity.
It is certainly my fault, of my too lighthearted Spirit, but I confess that it is difficult for me to imagine, with the proper seriousness, the soul of the author of the Deaf, of the Bedfellow, of A leech, of the Gatekeepers' Strike, coming to receive, on the threshold of eternity, the soul of the author of Maman Sabouleux, of Mesdames de Montenfriche, of a Bengal Tiger and of the Champbaudet Station.
X. Feyrnet.”
The thought expressed by Mr. Jules Adenis is of the purest Spiritism. Let us suppose that the author of the article, Mr. Feyrnet, who has difficulty maintaining a suitable solemnity on hearing that the soul of Mr. Lauglé is perhaps present, and coming to receive the soul of Marc Michel, had spoken in turn, and expressed himself as follows: "Gentlemen, you have just heard that the soul of our friend Langlé is here, that it sees us and hears us!" He would just add that it can talk to us. Don't believe a word of it; Langlé's soul no longer exists; or it has melted into the immensity, that amounts to the same thing. Nothing is left of Marc Michel; it will be the same with you, when you die, as well as with your parents and with your friends. Hoping that they are waiting for you, that they will come to receive you when you leave life, that is madness, superstition, illuminism. The positive thing is this: When you're dead, it's all over. Which of the two speakers would have found the most sympathy among those present? Which would have dried the most tears, given the most courage and resignation to the afflicted? Wouldn't the unfortunate man, who no longer waits for relief in this world, be justified in saying to him: "If this is so, let's end life as soon as possible?” We must feel sorry for Mr. Feyrnet not be able to keep his seriousness at the idea that his father and his mother, if he has lost them, are still living, that they are watching at his bedside, and that he will see them again.
A dream
Extracted from Le Figaro, April 12th, 1868:
“However extraordinary the following account may seem, the author, by declaring to have received it from vice-president of the legislative body himself (Baron Jérôme David), gives these words an incontestable authority.
During his stay in Saint-Cyr, David witnessed a duel between two of his classmates, Lambert and Poirée. The latter was hurt by a sword and was taken to the infirmary to be treated, where his friend David went up to see him every day.
One morning, Poirée seemed singularly disturbed to him; he pressed him with questions and ended by wresting from him the confession that his emotion came from a simple nightmare.
I dreamed that we were at the edge of a river, I received a bullet in the forehead, above the eye, and you supported me in your arms; I was in a lot of pain and felt like I was dying; I recommended my wife and my children to you when I woke up.
My dear, you have a fever, replied David laughing; get well, you are in your bed, you are not married, and you do not have a bullet above your eye; it is quite a dream; do not torment yourself like this if you want to get well quickly.
- It is singular, Poirée whispered, I have never believed in dreams, I do not believe in them, and yet I am upset.
Ten years later, the French army landed in Crimea; the Saint-Cyrians had lost sight of each other. David, an orderly officer attached to Prince Napoleon's division, was ordered to go, and discover a passage up the Alma. To prevent the Russians from taking him prisoner, this recognition was supported by a company of hunters, taken from the nearest regiment. The Russians rained down a hail of bullets on the escort men, who returned fire in retaliation.
Within ten minutes one of our officers rolled to the ground, mortally wounded. Captain David jumped off his horse and ran to pick him up; he leaned his head on his left arm and, untangling the gourd hanging from his belt, he brought it to the lips of the wounded man. A gaping hole above the eye stained the face with blood; a soldier brought a little water and poured it on the head of the dying man, who was already moaning.
David looks with attention at the features he seems to recognize; a name is pronounced next to him; there is no more doubt, it's him, it's Poirée! He calls him, his eyes open, the dying man in turn recognizes Saint-Cyr's comrade ...
- David! you here? ... The dream ... my wife ...
These interrupted words were not finished as the head was already falling inert on David's arm. Poirée was dead, leaving his wife and children to the memory and friendship of David.
I would not dare to tell such a story if I had not heard it myself from the honorable vice-president of the legislative body.
Vox populi.”
Why does the narrator add these words: Vox populi? We could understand them like this: facts of such a nature are so frequent that they are attested by the voice of the people, that is, by a general permit.
Knocking Spirits in Russia
“Do you believe in knocking Spirits?" For me, not at all; and yet I have just seen a material fact, palpable, that goes so far outside the rules of common sense, and so in disagreement with the principles of stability and gravity, that my fourth-grade teacher instilled in me, that I do not know which one of the two is more affected, the Spirit or me. - Our editorial secretary received a decent-looking gentleman the other day, of an age that he could not attribute to him the idea of a bad joke; after greeting, introduction, etc.; the whole works finished, this gentleman says that he comes to our office to seek advice; that what happens to him is so much outside all the facts of social life, that he believes to be his duty to publish it.
“My house,” he said, “is full of knocking Spirits; every night around ten o'clock, they start their exercises, carrying the heavier objects, hitting, jumping, and in a word, turning my whole apartment upside down. I had appealed to the police, a soldier slept in my house for several nights, the disorder did not stop, although at each alarm he drew his saber in a threatening manner. My house is isolated, I have only one servant, my wife, and my daughter, and when these facts happen, we are gathered. I live in a very distant street, in Vassili-Ostroff.”
I had entered during the conversation and listened to him with a gaping mouth; I told you, I don't believe in knocking Spirits, but that, not at all. I explained to this gentleman that to publicize these facts, we still had to be convinced of their existence, and suggested to go and find out myself. We made an appointment for the evening, and at nine o'clock I was at my man's house. I am ushered into a small living room, furnished comfortably enough; I examine the arrangement of the rooms: there were only four, including a kitchen, the whole thing occupying the entire middle floor of a wooden house; no one lives above, the bottom is occupied by a store. Around ten o'clock we were together in the living room, my man, his wife, his daughter, the cook, and me. Half an hour, nothing new! Suddenly a door opens and a galosh falls in the middle of the room; I believed in an accomplice, and wanted to make sure that the staircase was empty, when my galosh jumps on a piece of furniture and from there back onto the floor; then it was the turn of the chairs in the adjoining room, that had no exit except through the one we occupied, and which I had just found perfectly empty. At the end of only an hour the silence was reestablished, and the Spirit, the Spirits, the skillful friend, or God knows what, disappeared, leaving us in a bewilderment that, I assure you, had nothing to do with a game. Here are the facts, I have seen them, with my own eyes; I am not responsible for explaining them to you; If you want to find the explanation yourself, we have all the information you need to go and make your observations on the spot.
Henri de Brenne.”
The details given by the newspapers on the scourge that is currently decimating the Arab populations of Algeria are not exaggerated and are confirmed by every private correspondence. One of our subscribers from Setif, Mr. Dumas, was kind enough to send us a photograph showing the crowd of natives gathered in front of the house where they are distributing aid. The image, of a heartbreaking reality, is accompanied by the following printed instructions:
“After the successively calamitous years that our great colony has gone through, an even more terrible scourge has come down on it: famine.
The first harsh winter had hardly made itself felt when we saw the Arabs dying of hunger at our doors; they arrive in large groups, half-naked, exhausted bodies, weeping with hunger and cold, imploring public commiseration, disputing with the voracity of the dogs some debris thrown with the dirt on the public highway.
Although reduced to brutal extremes themselves, the inhabitants of Setif cannot contemplate such deep misery with an impassive eye. Immediately, and spontaneously, a charitable commission was organized under the chairmanship of Mr. Bizet, parish priest of Setif; a subscription was opened, each one gives his mite, and consequently daily help has been distributed in the presbytery, to two hundred and fifty native women or children.
In the last days of January, while an abundant and long-desired snowfall fell on our regions, we were able to do even better. A stove has been installed in a large room; there, the members of the commission distribute food twice a day, no longer to two hundred and fifty, but to five hundred native women or children; these unfortunate people finally find an asylum and a shelter there.
But unfortunately, the Europeans are obliged, and quite reluctantly, to limit their aid to women and children ... To alleviate all the miseries, it would take a good part of the wheat that the powerful Qaids hold in their silos; however, they hope to be able to continue their distributions until the middle of April."
If we did not open, in this circumstance, a special subscription at the offices of the Spiritist Review, it is because we knew that our brothers in belief were not the last ones to take their offering to the offices of their circumscription, opened for this purpose by the authorities. Donations sent to us for this purpose have been deposited there.
Captain Bourgès, stationed at Laghouat, writes the following on this subject:
“For several years, the plagues have followed one another in Algeria: earthquakes, invasion of locusts, cholera, drought, typhus, famine, deep misery have come in turn to reach the natives that, now atone their improvidence and fanaticism. Men and animals even starve and die silently. Starvation spreads in Morocco and Tunisia; I believe that Algeria is more affected, though. You would not believe how touching is to see these haggard and frail bodies everywhere, looking for their food, and fighting for it with stray dogs. In the morning, these living skeletons run around the camp and rush to the manure to extract the barley grains undigested by the horses, and on which they feed instantly. Others chew on bones to suck on the gelatin that may still be there or eat the rare grass that grows around the oasis. From the midst of this misery arises a hideous debauchery that reaches the bottom of the colony, and spreads in material bodies those corrosive wounds that must have been the leprosy of antiquity. My eyes close so as not to see so much shame, and my soul ascends to the Heavenly Father to pray for him to preserve the good from the impure contact, and to give weak men the strength not to be drawn into this unhealthy abyss.
Humanity is still a long way from the moral progress that some philosophers believe has already been accomplished. I see around me only Epicureans who do not want to hear about the Spirit; they do not want to get out of animality; their pride attributes to itself a noble origin, and yet their acts clearly say what they once were.
By seeing what is happening, one would really believe that the Arab race is called upon to disappear from Earth, for despite the charity that we exercise towards it and the help that is brought, it takes pleasure in its laziness, without any feeling of gratitude. This physical misery, resulting from moral wounds, still has its use. The selfish, obsessed, always elbowed by the miserable that follows him, ends up opening his hand, and his touched heart at last feels the sweet joys brought by charity. A feeling that will not be erased has just been born, and perhaps even that of gratitude will arise in the heart of the one that is assisted. A sympathetic bond is then formed; new help comes along to give life to the unfortunate man that was perishing, and from discouragement he moves on to hope. What appeared to be an evil gave birth to a good: one less selfish and one more courageous man.”
The Spirits were not mistaken when they announced that plagues of all kinds would ravage Earth. We know that Algeria is not the only country that has suffered. In the Spiritist Review of July 1867, we described the terrible disease that had been raging for a year in Mauritius; a recent letter says that the disease has been added to new misfortunes, and many other countries are now victims of disastrous events.
Should we accuse the Providence of all these miseries? No, but ignorance, carelessness, the result of ignorance, selfishness, pride, and the passions of men. God only wants the good; he did everything for the good; he gave men the means to be happy: it is up to them to apply them if they do not want to acquire experience at their own expense. It would be easy to demonstrate that all scourges could be averted, or at least mitigated to paralyze their effects; this is what we will do later in a special book. Men should only blame themselves for the evils they endure; Algeria offers us, at this time, a remarkable example: it is the Arab populations, lighthearted and improvident, brutalized by fanaticism, that suffer from famine, while the Europeans knew how to protect themselves from it; but there are other not less disastrous scourges, against which the latter have not yet been able to guard themselves.
The very violence of the evil will force men to seek the remedy, and when they have uselessly exhausted the palliatives, they will understand the need to attack the evil at its own root, by heroic means. This will be one of the results of the transformation that is taking place in humanity.
But it will be asked, what does the happiness of future generations matter to those who suffer now? They will have had the trouble and the others the benefit; they will have worked, borne the burden of all the miseries inseparable from ignorance, prepared the ways, and the others, because God will have given birth to them in better times, will reap. What does the healthier regime, under which we live, do to the victims of the atrocities of the Middle Ages? Can we call it justice?
It is a fact that, until this day, no philosophy, no religious doctrine had solved this serious question, of such a powerful interest, however, for humanity. Spiritism alone provides a rational solution through reincarnation, this key to so many problems that were believed to be insoluble. By the fact of the plurality of existences, the generations that succeed one another are composed of the same spiritual individualities that are reborn at different times, benefiting from the improvements that they themselves have prepared, from the experience that they have acquired in the past. It is not new men that are born; these are the same men who are reborn more advanced. Each generation working for the future works, in fact, for its own benefit. The Middle Ages were assuredly a very calamitous period; the men of that time, living again today, benefit from the progress made, and are happier, because they have better institutions; but who made these institutions better? The very ones who once had bad ones; those of today who will have to live again later, in an even more refined environment, will reap what they have sown; they will be more enlightened, and neither their sufferings nor their previous labors will have been wasted. What a courage, what a resignation wouldn’t this idea, inculcated in the Spirits, give to men! (See Genesis, chap. XVIII, items 34 and 35).
Spiritist Dissertations
Oral communication in spontaneous somnambulism – medium Mr. Dubois
Lyon, February 2nd, 1868
Where are we today? Where is the light? Everything is dark, everything is cloudy around us. Yesterday was the past; tomorrow is the future; today is the present… What distinguishes these three days? We lived yesterday, we still live today, we will live tomorrow, and always in the same circle. Where does this humanity come from, and where is it going to? Mystery that will not be clarified until tomorrow.
Moses is the past; Christ, the present; the coming Messiah, who is the next day, has not appeared yet … Moses had to fight idolatry; Christ, the Pharisees; the Messiah to come will also have his adversaries: disbelief, skepticism, materialism, atheism, and all the vices that afflict mankind… Three eras that mark the progress of humanity; subsidiary parentheses that follow one another; yesterday it was Moses, today it is Christ, and tomorrow it will be the new Messiah.
I say that it is Christ today, because it is his word, his doctrine, his charity, all his sublime teachings that must be spread everywhere; because you see for yourselves, humanity has not made much progress. Barely eighteen centuries separate us from Christ: eighteen centuries of darkness, tyranny, pride, and ambition.
Consider the past, the present, tomorrow you will contemplate your future ... Idolaters of the past, Pharisees of the present, adversaries of tomorrow, light shines to all peoples, to all worlds, to all individuals, and you do not want to see it!
Creature, you put it off today, the present; you await the accomplishment of the announced miracles; you will see them come true. Soon the whole Earth will tremble… the twentieth century will obfuscate the shine of previous centuries, for it will see the fulfillment of what has been predicted.
The Messiah that must preside over the great regenerating movement of Earth has been born, but he has not yet revealed his mission, and we are not allowed to say his name, nor the country where he lives; he will announce himself by his works, and men will tremble at his mighty voice, for the number of the righteous is still very small.
Bond yourselves to matter, men of selfishness and ambition who live only to satisfy your passions and your worldly desires; time is short for you; hold it, hug it, for yesterday is past, today is setting, and tomorrow will be here soon.
Alas! Pharisee of the present, you are still waiting. Let the thunder roar, you are not terrified before the forerunner lightning that dazzles your eyes. You who indulge yourself in selfishness and pride, who persist in the past and in the present, your future will be to be rejected onto another world so that your Spirit can one day arrive at the perfection to which God calls you.
You, Spiritists, who are here, who receive the instructions of the Spirits, be patient, docile, aware of your actions; do not hesitate; calmly wait for this tomorrow that must deliver you from all persecutions. God, for whom nothing is hidden, who reads hearts, sees you and will not forsake you; the hour is approaching, and soon we will be in the tomorrow.
But this Messiah who is to come, is he Christ himself? A question difficult to understand at the present time, to be clarified tomorrow. Like a good father, God who is all wisdom, does not impose all the work on one of his children. He assigns each one with his task, according to the needs of the world to which he sends them. Are we to conclude that the new Messiah will not be as great or as powerful as Christ? It would be absurd; but wait until the hour strikes to understand the work of the invisible messengers who came to clear the path, for the Spirits have done an immense job. It is Spiritism that must remove the large stones that could hinder the passage of the one that must come. This man will be mighty and strong, and many Spirits are on Earth to smooth out the way, and to accomplish what has been foretold.
Will this new Messiah be called Christ? This is a question I cannot answer; wait untill tomorrow. How many things I would still have to reveal to you! But I stop because tomorrow has not come yet; we are barely before midnight.
Friends who are here, all of you longing for your moral advancement, work on yourselves to regenerate yourselves, so that the Master will find you ready. Courage, brothers, for your pain will not be wasted; work to break the bonds of matter that prevent the Spirit from progressing.
Have faith, for it surely leads man to the goal of his journey. Love, because the love to your brothers is to love God. Watch and pray; the prayer strengthens the Spirit who yields to discouragement. Ask your Heavenly Father for the strength to overcome obstacles and temptations. Arm yourself against your faults; get ready, for tomorrow is not far away. The dawn of the century marked by God for the fulfillment of the facts that must change the face of this world begins to emerge on the horizon.
The Spirit of Faith