Parisian Society of Spiritist Studies, medium Mrs. Costel
Pantheism or the incarnation of the Spirit, the idea in the shape, is the first step of Paganism towards the law of love revealed by Jesus. Greedy for pleasures, intoxicated by the exterior beauty, antiquity almost did not see beyond its own eyes. Sensuality and lust made it ignore the melancholies that stem from the uneasiness of doubt and repressed love. Antiquity feared the gods whose smoothed images decorated the living rooms of their homes. Slavery and war corroded it from inside and outside. The outstanding sounds and beauties of nature hopelessly invited mankind to understand its magnificence although nature was also feared or worshiped like the gods. The sacred woods attended the horrors of the oracles and not a single mortal separated the benefits of their solitude from the religious ideas that shook the tree and had the stone shuddered.
It is convenient to study Pantheism from two angles. First the infinite separation of the divine nature divided in all parts of creation, getting together again in the tiniest details as much as in its magnificence, in other words, a flagrant confusion between the work and the worker. Then in second place comes the assimilation of humanity, or even better, its absorption in matter. Former Pantheism had the divinities incarnate; modern Pantheism assimilates mankind to the animal kingdom and give rise to the creating molecules from the ardent oven where vegetation is born, confusing results with the principle.
God is the order that human confusion could not disturb. Everything has its place: sap to the trees, thought to brains. Not a single idea, child of the times, is serendipitously left abandoned. It has its path, a close relationship that finds its meaning connecting to the past and inviting the future. The history of religious beliefs is the proof of this absolute truth for there has not been any idolatry, system or fanaticism that would not have had its imperious and powerful reason of being. They all advanced towards light, all converged to the same objective and they will all come to confound, like the waters of a long river reaching the vast and deep sea of the Spiritist unity. Thus Pantheism the precursor of Catholicism carried the seed of God’s universality. It inspired in people fraternity towards nature, a fraternity that would be taught by Jesus and to be practiced with one another, a sacred fraternity that today is reinforced by Spiritism that victoriously reconnects the earthly creatures to the spiritual world.
I truly say this to you that the law of love slowly and continuously unfolds its infinite spirals. It is that law that in the mysterious rites of Indian religions divinizes the animal, sanctifying it for its weakness and humble services. It was that law that populated the purified homes with familiar gods. It is that law that makes each religion spell out one word of the divine alphabet.
But the proclamation of the universal idea that summarizes them all was reserved to Jesus. The Savior announced love and made it stronger than death. He said to mankind: “Love one another; love in pain, joy and misery; love nature, your first initiator; love the animals, your humble companions; love what begins, love what ends.
The verb of the Eternal is called love and it embraces in an inextinguishable kindness the Earth that you dwell and the Heavens that will receive you purified and triumphant.
Lazarus
