The Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1862

Mr. Sanson, one of our colleagues, died on April 21^st, 1862 after more than a year of painful suffering. Foreseeing his death he addressed the Society with a letter dated August 27^th, 1860 from which we extracted the following passage:


“Dear and honorable President,


In case of surprise for the separation of my soul from the body, I have the honor of reminding you of a wish I expressed around a year ago: the evocation of my spirit as soon as possible and as many times as you consider adequate so that, as a very useless member of our Society during my current life on this planet, I can be useful in the other world, by allowing you to study phase per phase in these evocations the several circumstances that follow what is vulgarly called death and that for us, the Spiritists, is nothing more than a transformation under the impenetrable sight of God, but always useful to the proposed objective.


Besides this authorization and request to give me the honor of this kind of spiritual autopsy that my insignificant advancement as a spirit will perhaps render sterile, a situation in which your wisdom will stop the evocations after a certain number, I personally dare ask you and all of my colleagues to beg the Almighty so that I may have the assistance of the good Spirits with their benevolent advices, particularly St. Louis, our spiritual president, with the objective of guiding me with the choice and moment of a reincarnation, since this is already reason for a great concern on my side. I tremble before the possibility of deceiving me regarding my spiritual strength, and to ask God, and too soon, and too presumptuously, for a bodily condition in which I could not justify the divine goodness, which, instead of serving to my own advancement would extend my station on Earth or elsewhere in case I failed.”

“However, having total confidence in our Creator’s indulgent equity and kindness and of his divine son, and finally waiting humbly and with resignation the atonement of my faults with the exception of those forgiven by the Eternal’s mercy. I also repeat that my greatest concern is the overpowering fear of making a mistake regarding the choice of reincarnation, in the event that I am not helped and guided by benevolent and saint Spirits, that might consider me worthy of their intervention. I also hope that your evocations and support will help me in this selection in the event that I am making this decision alone. Thus, I take the liberty of recommending myself to you, dear President, and to all of our honorable colleagues from the Spiritist Society of Paris…”


……………………………………….


In order to comply with the wishes of our colleague to be evoked as soon as possible after his passing we went to the mortuary chamber together with a few members of the Society and the following conversation took place in the presence of the body, one hour before the burial. Our


objective was twofold: the satisfaction of his last wishes while observing once more the situation of the soul at a time so close to death and all that in an eminently intelligent and enlightened person, profoundly conscious of the Spiritist truths. We wanted to attest the influence of such beliefs upon the state of the spirit by collecting his first impressions. As it will be seen our wait was not useless. Everybody will find, as we did, an elevated teaching stemming out of his description of the instant of transition. We must add, however, that not all Spirits would be able to describe that phenomenon with such clarity as he did. Mr. Sanson witnessed his own death, his own rebirth, a rare circumstance thanks to the elevation of his spirit.

OBSERVATION: These first words had just been pronounced and the spirit responded even before the question was completed. Moreover he answered and without being asked about the concern voiced by some attendees and about the suitability of reading such a communication at the cemetery, considering that certain people did not share our opinions. – A. Oh! My friend, I know because I saw you yesterday and I see you today and I greatly appreciate it. Thank you! Thank you! Speak so that they can understand me and may like you. Have no fear since they respect death. Speak so that the non-believers have faith. Good-bye. Speak up. Have courage and confidence and I hope my children convert to this reverenced belief!

So long!

J. Sanson


During the funeral ceremony at the cemetery he dictated the following:


“Have no fear of death my friends. It is just a phase if you lived your life well; it is a fortune if you have atoned and accomplished them well. I repeat this to you: Courage and good will! Give just a mediocre importance to earthly wealth and you shall be rewarded. One cannot enjoy too much without causing harm to the well being of others and without causing great harm to oneself. May Earth be a light burden! ”


NOTE: After the ceremony some members of the Society got together and spontaneously received the following and far from expected communication:


“My name is Bernardo and I lived in Passy which was just a village in the year 96 (1796). I was a poor devil. I used to teach and God knows the difficulties I had to endure. What a prolonged nuisance! Long years of concern and suffering! I cursed God, the devil and people in general and women in particular. None of them came to me and said: Courage, patience! I had to live alone, always alone, and evilness made me evil. Since those days I wonder around places where I lived and where I died. I heard you today. Your prayers touched me profoundly. You followed a good and honorable spirit and everything that you did and said touched me. We were in large numbers and we all prayed for you, for the future of your sacred beliefs. Pray for us who need help. Sanson’s spirit that followed us promised that you would send us your thoughts. I wish to reincarnate so that my trial can be useful and adequate to my future in the world of the Spirits. So long my friends. I say so because you love those in suffering. I wish you good thoughts and a happy future.”


It seemed to us proper to mention this episode because it was related to the evocation of Mr. Sanson and because it contains a great subject for our instruction. We believe it is our duty to recommend this spirit to the prayers of every true Spiritist. Those prayers can fortify him in his resolutions.


The conversation with Mr. Sanson continued during the session at the Society on the first Friday after April 25^th and must still continue. We take the opportunity of his good will and his enlightenment in order to obtain new clarifications about the invisible world as accurate as possible when compared to the visible one and particularly about his transition from one to the other, something that is of general interest since everyone and without exception must go through this. Mr. Sanson kindly offered to be at our services with his continued benevolence.


His answers form a detailed instruction set whose importance is even greater given that it comes from the personal experience of someone that has just gone through the transition, analyzing his sensations and expressing them with elegance, profoundness and clarity. The set of communications will be published in the next issue.


Something important that must be pointed out is the fact that the medium who served as intermediary on the very day of his funeral and the following days, Mr. Leymarie, had never seen Mr. Sanson before and did not know his character or customs. He did not know whether Mr. Sanson had children and even less so if they shared his ideas about Spiritism. He then refers to that in a very spontaneous way and his character is expressed through the pencil without any influence of imagination.


This fact demonstrates that communications are not based on the thoughts from the source medium. Bernardo, the medium, had no background on Mr. Sanson and yet scribed the communication from Sanson. Everyone thought that it would likely come from one of his customary Spirits like Baluze or Sonnet. In time we would ask who would have produced any thought that could somehow reflect in that communication.


Speech given by Mr. Allan Kardec at the funeral services of Mr. Sanson


Ladies and gentlemen and dear colleagues from the Parisian Society of Spiritist Studies:


It is the first time that we bring a colleague to his last dwelling. This one to whom we came to say farewell is familiar to you and you were able to appreciate his eminent qualities. By remembering them here I would just say what is known by all: eminently righteous heart, unyielding loyalty, his life was that of a good man in the full extent of the word. I believe he shall not be rebuked by anyone. Those qualities would shine even further for his great goodness and extreme benevolence. Given that, would there be the need for him to have practiced remarkable actions and have left a name to posterity? It would not give a better place in the world where he lives now. If now we do not lay garlands onto his tomb all of us here who met him deposit wreaths of sincerity from their Spirits and the most precious crowns: love and respect.


Know this, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Sanson was a man of rare intelligence and of a great fairness in his appreciations, augmented by a broad and profound education. A man of a remarkable simplicity he found in his inner self the elements for a strong intellectual activity in his researches and inventions that were certainly very ingenious but that unfortunately did not bring him the expected results.


He was one of those men who never got upset. Although his position had prevented him from enjoying the sweetness of life, he always had a good sense of humor. I believe it is not an exaggeration to say that he was the true philosopher: not the cynical philosopher but the one who is always happy with his condition and never tempted by what he lacks.


Deep inside himself he maintained a strong character but in his final years it was significantly strengthened by his Spiritists beliefs. These ideas helped him to withstand long and cruel sufferings with a Christian patience and resignation. There isn’t a single one among us that has not learned from his calmness and unalterable serenity. He had forecasted his end long ago but far from showing desperation he looked forward to that as the moment of his liberation.


Ah! At these moments of truth the Spiritist faith provides a strength that only those who have it understand. And Mr. Sanson had it in the highest degree.


What is the Spiritist faith then? Some of you who hear me now may be asking.


The Spiritist faith is an intimate conviction that we have a soul; that the soul or spirit, that are the same thing, outlives the body; that the soul is happy or unhappy according to the good or bad that was practiced during one’s life. Some may say that everybody knows that. Yes, with the exception of those who believe that everything ends when we die and these count on larger numbers than one would think in this century! Thus, in the opinion of the latter, the mortal remains before us that some say shall be reduced to dust are all that is left from the one we are saying farewell now. Then, what is it that we are paying tribute to now? A cadaver? Since of his intelligence, his thought, the qualities that made him love, nothing will remain, everything will be annihilated. The same will happen to us when we die.


Hasn’t this idea of obliviousness waiting for us something very overpowering and glacial?


Who before this open grave does not feel the goose bumps just by thinking that tomorrow perhaps the same may happen to us and that after a few shovels of earth thrown over our body it will all be over forever; that there will be no more thoughts, feelings and love? However, besides those who deny there is an even larger number of those who doubt for not having a positive certainty and to whom doubt is a torture.


All of you who firmly believed that Mr. Sanson had a soul what is it that you believe that has become of him? Where is he? What is he doing? Ah! You say, if we only knew there would never be any doubt in our heart! Probe well the bottom of your hearts and convince yourselves that more than one among you have already spoke from your inner self about a future life: “And if it were not like that?” You say that because you do not understand it, because the idea you have about it cannot be conciliated with reason.


Spiritism comes to explain it, so to speak, making it so tangible and evident that one can no longer deny it as one cannot deny light.


What has become of the soul of our friend, then? It is here, by our side, hearing us; penetrating our minds and judging our thoughts and feelings that animate each one in this sad ceremony. The soul is not what people commonly believe to be like a flame, a spark, something vague and undefined. You will not see it wondering around at night like in the superstitious stories. No. It has a form, a body as it had when alive, but a vaporous body, invisible to our rough senses but that in certain cases becomes visible. When alive the soul had a secondary envelope, heavy, material and destructible. When this envelope is worn out and cannot function any more it breaks down like the skin of a ripe fruit and the soul leaves as if leaving behind old working clothes. It is that envelope of Mr. Sanson’s soul that made him suffer and that lays down there on the bottom of the grave. It is all that remains from that body. But he kept his ethereal, radiant and indestructible envelope, a body that is no longer subjected to ailments and diseases. That is how he is among us.


But you must not believe that he is alone. There are thousands here in the same situation, watching our farewell and congratulating the newcomer for having been liberated from the miseries of Earth, in such a way that if the veil that covers them right now could have been removed we would see a whole crowd around us, elbowing us and among them we would see Mr. Sanson no longer weak and lying down on his sick bed but strong, alert and moving around effortlessly at the speed of thoughts and without the barrage of any obstacle.


These souls or Spirits constitute the invisible world in which we also live unconsciously. That is how our lost relatives and friends are closer to us than if they had gone to a distant country when alive.


What Spiritism does it to put that invisible world in evidence through the relationships that can be established with that and because we find our loved ones there. Then it is no longer a vague memory: it is a positive proof. Now, a proof of the invisible world is a proof of a future life. Once that certainty is acquired the ideas change completely for the importance of our earthly life diminishes as that of the forthcoming life increases. That is the faith that Mr. Sanson had in the invisible world. He saw it and understood it so well that death to him was no more than a portal that must be transposed from a painful and miserable life to a blessed one.


Hence the serenity of his final moments was at the same time the result of his absolute confidence in a future life that he had already foreseen and an irreproachable conscience telling him that he owned nobody or nothing.


He acquired such a faith with Spiritism for it is necessary to say that before the time when he got to know this reassuring science he was not exactly materialistic but he was skeptical. His doubts, however, disappeared before the evidence of the facts that he witnessed and since then everything changed for him.


Placing himself aside from the material life in his thoughts he saw this life but like an unfortunate day among an infinite number of happy days. Far from complaining about the hardships of life he blessed the sufferings as trials that were necessary to accelerate his progress.


Dear Mr. Sanson! You are the witness of the sincerity of all us who met you and whose affection remains. In the name of all of my present and absent colleagues; in the name of all of your relatives and friends I say goodbye but not an eternal goodbye since it would be blasphemy against the Providence and a negation of future life. We the Spiritists less than anybody else we must not pronounce such a word.


Therefore, so long my dear Mr. Sanson. We wish you may enjoy now the deserved happiness in the world where you are and come to reach out to us when our time comes to move to that world.


Allow me, ladies and gentlemen, to say a short prayer by this grave before it is sealed.


“May your mercy Almighty God reach the soul of Mr. Sanson that you have just claimed! May the trials that he has endured on Earth count on his favor and our prayers mitigate and shorten the penalties that he might still suffer as a spirit. Good Spirits who came to receive this soul and particularly you, his guardian angel, assist this soul helping him with the separation from matter. Give him light and consciousness of himself in order to move him away from the confusion that follows the passage from the corporeal to the spiritual life. Inspire in him regret for the faults that he may have committed and may he have the desire to repair them so as to speed up his progress towards a blessed eternal life.”


“Soul of Mr. Sanson that have just entered the world of the Spirits, you are here among us. You see and hear us since between you and us there is only the perishable body that you have just left behind and that will soon become dust. That body, instrument of so much pain, is still by your side. You see it like the prisoner sees the chains from which he has been freed. You left the dense envelope subject to the vicissitudes and death and you kept the ethereal envelope, imperishable and unreachable by the sufferings. If you no longer live the life of the body you live the life of the spirit that is exempt from the miseries that afflict humanity.”


“You no longer bear the veil that hides from our eyes the splendors of the life of the spirit. From now on you can contemplate new wonders while we are still surrounded by darkness.”


“Go freely and explore the spaces and visit the worlds while we drag down here on Earth, retained by the material body like a heavy burden to us. The horizon of infinity will unfold before you and before such a greatness you will understand the vanity of our earthly desires, of our worldly ambitions and futile joys that humanity transforms into delights. Death is no more than a short material separation between us. From this exile where the will of God still keeps us and the duties that we still must carry out we follow you in our thoughts up until the moment when we are allowed to meet you again as you have yourself reunited with those that preceded you. If we cannot go to where you are you can come to us. Come then to those that love you and were loved by you. Help them in the trials of their lives. Wake for those who are dear to you. Protect them according to your possibilities and mitigate their sorrows through your thoughts that you are now happy and through the reassuring certainty that we shall one day meet again in a better world.”


“We hope that from now on and for your own future happiness that you become unreachable by the worldly resentments! You must then forgive tho against you as they forgive you for your own faults against them! Amen”

Captain Nivrac, deceased on February 11^th, 1862

Evoked by request of his friend, Cap. Blou, member of the Society medium Mr. Leymarie

Mr. Nivrac was a man of broad, serious education and a remarkable intelligence. Captain Blou had briefly spoken to him about Spiritism and offered him the whole collection of books about the subject. He used to look at all these things as utopias and those who follow them as dreamers.


On February 1^st he was walking with one of his comrades discussing this subject as usual when walking by a shop window they saw the book Spiritism in its simplest expression.


Good inspiration, said Mr. Blou. He bought it. He would certainly not have bought it if I were with them.


From that day Mr. Nivrac read The Spirits’ Book, The Mediums’ Book and some issues of The Spiritist Review. He was touched in his heart and spirit. Far from attacking it, he now came to ask me questions and among the officers he became an eager advocate of Spiritism to the point that for eight days Spiritism was the only subject of his conversations. He really wanted to take part in one session when death surprised him without any apparent cause from a disease. On Tuesday, February 11^th, he was having a shower and ended up dying in the arms of a doctor.


“Isn’t that the hand of God”, asks Captain Blou, “…allowing my friend to have his eyes opened to the light before his death?”

OBSERVATION: The spirit advances the question that was going to be asked which was: “Although we do not have the pleasure of having met you, we asked you to come in the name of your friend and our colleague, Captain Blou, thus we would be delighted if you could speak with us in case you are okay with that.”

2. Are you happy…? (the spirit does not allow us to finish the question that would terminate like this: for having met Spiritism before your death?) – A. I am happy because I believed before I died. I remember the discussions I had with you, my friend, because I rejected every new idea. In reality I was shaken. I used to tell my wife, my daughter that it was madness to listen to that kind of stupidity and that I considered you to be disturbed. That is how I used to think but fortunately I was able to believe and wait. My position is happier because God allows me a much anticipated advancement.

3. How come a little brochure of only a few pages had more authority upon you than the words of your good friend that you must have trusted? – A. I was shaken because the idea of a better life is at the bottom line of every religion. I believed instinctively but the ideas of the soldier had modified my thoughts. That is all. When I read the brochure it touched me. I thought that those concepts revealed such a clear and concise doctrine is goodness. Future seemed less somber to me. I believed because I should and the brochure touched my heart.

4. What was the cause of your death? – A. I died of a stroke. Several reasons were given: it was an effusion of the brain. It was my time and I had to leave.

5. Could you describe your sensations at the time of death and later after your awakening?
– A. The transition from life to death is painful but quick. We have a presentment of everything that may happen. Your whole life shows up before you like in a mirage. We feel like recovering the past in order to clear up the bad days. Such thoughts follow us in the spontaneous transition from life to death and death is nothing more than another life. The light stuns you. I was confused with ideas. I was not a perfect spirit. Nonetheless I was able to recover awareness and I thank God for having enlightened me before I died.


OBSERVATION: Such an image of the passage from life to death has a shocking analogy with the one given by Mr. Sanson. Notice, however, that this is a different medium.

7. Is it useless to ask you if… (the spirit here does not allow the conclusion of the question which would be: visit your wife and daughter but you cannot be seen or heard. Would you like us to transmit any message to them?) – A. No doubt, I am always near them. I encourage them to be patient and say: Courage, my friend! Dry your tears out and smile to God who will give you the strength. Think that my existence is an advancement, a purification and that I need the support of your prayers. With all my heart I wish a new incarnation and despite the fact that the physical separation is painful remember that I love you and that you are alone and need good health and much resignation to keep up. However, I will be by your side to encourage you, bless and love you.

8. We are sure that your comrades from the regiment would also be happy to receive some words from you. I add another question to this one that perhaps you may include it in your answer. Up until now Spiritism has almost not propagated with the army with the exception of a few officers. Do you think it could also be useful among the soldiers? What would be the result? – A. It is necessary that the mind becomes serious so that the body may follow suit. I understand that the officers were the first to accept these philosophical and sensible solutions given in The Spirits’ Book. Through that reading the officer understands better his duty; becomes more serious and less prone to mock people’s families; he gets used to an internal order and eating and drinking are no long the main drivers of his life. The sub-officers will learn from them and propagate Spiritism. They will do it if they wish to do so. I tell them this: March on! Always forward! This is a new battlefield of humanity but without casualties, without the machine gun and with harmony, love and duty at all times. The soldier shall become a liberal person, in the good sense. There will be courage and good-will that make the worker a good citizen, a person of God. Therefore, follow the new route! Be apostles according to God and address seek the tireless propagator of Spiritism, the author of the little book that enlightened me.

OBSERVATION: On a different occasion the following communication was given with respect to the influence of Spiritism upon a soldier:

“A soldier that becomes a Spiritist is easier to be commanded, more obedient, more disciplined for obedience will be a duty with the sanction of reason whereas in the majority of cases it is no more than the result of embarrassment. They will no longer be given to the excesses that very frequently lead to sedition and disrespect to authority. The same happens to all those who are subordinate, regardless of their classes: workers, employees, and others. They will carry out their duties with more consciousness when they become aware of the causes that led them to that position on Earth and the rewards that wait for the humble ones on the next life.


Unfortunately only a few believe in the next life and that is why they do everything to the present one. If disbelief is a social ulcer that is even more so in the lower classes of society where there is no counter balance of education and respect to other’s opinion. When those who are invited to the exercise of authority, regardless of their title, understand it through the Spiritist ideas, they will make every effort to drive their subordination through the right path.


Be patient though! This will come.

Maximilian V…, a twelve year old child commits suicide for love

It was published in the Siècle on January 13^th, 1862:


“Maximilian V…, a twelve year old young man, lived with his parents at Rue des Cordiers and was employed as a upholsterer apprentice. He had the habit of reading series of novels. Every break in his job was utilized for his readings that super excited his imagination and inspired in him ideas beyond his age. That is how he imagined to have fallen in love with a young lady that he had the occasion of seeing from time to time and who had never thought that she could have inspired such a feeling in the young man. Hopeless to see the dreams produced by his readings come true, he then decided to kill himself. Yesterday a servant of the house where he was doing his training found him lifeless in a little room on the third floor where he was working alone. He had hung himself with a rope that he had tied on a beam with a huge nail.”


The circumstances of that death at such an early age made us think that the evocation of that boy could provide us with matter for a useful study. The evocation was carried out at the Society on January 24^th last through the medium Mr. E. Vézy.

There is a difficult moral problem in this case that is impossible to be solved by the arguments of common philosophy and even less so by a materialistic philosophy. They may say that everything can be explained by assuming that it was a premature child. But this explains nothing. It is absolutely the same as saying that the day breaks because the sun is up. Where does this early maturity come from? Why do certain children go beyond their normal age on the development of passions and intelligence? This is one of the difficulties that stop every philosophy because its solution always leaves an unsolved question and we can always ask why. Once the existence of the soul and its development before this existence is admitted and everything else is explained in the most natural way. With such principle we go back to the actual cause and the source of everything.

1. (To the spiritual guide of the medium) – Can you tell us if we are allowed to evoke the spirit of the young man that we have just mentioned? – A. Yes. I will guide him because he suffers. May this communication be a lesson and serve you as an example.

2. (To Maximilian) – Are you aware of your situation? – A. I do not know well where I am. There is something in front of me like a veil. I speak but I do not know how and how I am heard. But what was until recently obscure I can see now. I was suffering but at this moment I feel relieved.

3. Do you remember well the circumstances of your death? – A. It is all too vague to me. I know I was committing suicide without a reason. Nonetheless as a poet from another incarnation I had a kind of intuition of my previous life. I created dreams and chimeras. I was in love.

4. How could it be that you got to such an extreme? – A. I have just responded to that.

5. It is remarkable that a 12 year old boy could be led to suicide particularly for a reason like that one. – A. You are a strange people! Haven’t I said that I was a poet in another incarnation and that my faculties had become ampler and more developed than on others? Oh! In the darkness that surrounds me I see this sylph of my worldly dreams passing by and that is the punishment that God inflicts upon me; I see her going by, beautiful and frivolous as always and I, intoxicated by madness and love I want to throw myself… but ah! I feel like I am in chains… I call… but that is in vain. She does not even turn to look at me… Oh! I suffer so much!

6. Can you describe your sensation when you recognized yourself in the world of the Spirits? – A. Yes, now that I am in touch with you I can. My body was there, inert and cold and I was gliding around it. I cried warm tears. The tears of a soul must surprise you. Oh! They are scorching hot! Yes, I cried because I had just acknowledged the enormity of my mistake and the greatness of God! Nevertheless, I was not sure about my death and I thought that my eyes could open. Elvira! I called… supposing that I could see her… Ah! I love her since long ago. I will always love her! Who cares if I have to suffer forever if I can one day have her in other incarnations?

7. What are your sensations for being here? – A. It does me good and bad at the same time. It is good because I know you share my suffering. It is bad because despite my desire to please you accepting your prayers I cannot do that because I would be forced to follow a different route, different from that of my dreams.

8. What can we do to help you? – A. Pray because prayer is the divine drizzle that refreshes the heart of our poor souls in punishment and suffering. Pray. However, I feel like you remove my love from my heart, replacing it by God’s love… I do not know… I believe… Look! I cry now… Ah! Pray for me!

9. (To the guide of the medium) – What is the punishment of this spirit for having committed suicide? Given his age, is his action as liable as others who commit suicide? A. The punishment will be terrible because his is more liable then others. He already had great faculties; the power of loving God and doing good. If those who commit suicide suffer long punishments God punishes even more those who kill themselves with great ideas in their minds and hearts.

10.. You said that Maximilian’s punishment will be terrible. Can you tell us how it is going to be? It seems that it has already started. Will it be worse than his current sufferings? A. No doubt since he feels a devouring fire and it will only stop through the works of prayer and repentance.

OBSERVATION: He feels a devouring fire. Isn’t that the image of the flames of hell, presented as a material fire?

11. Is there a possibility of having his punishment alleviated? – A. Yes, by praying for him and particularly if Maximilian joins your prayers.

12. Does the object of his passion share his feelings? Are these two beings destined to unite one day? If so, what are the conditions of such a union and what are the obstacles that preclude it now? – A. Do the poets love women on Earth? They believe so for an hour or a day. What they really love is the ideal; a chimera created by their eager imagination, a love that cannot be satisfied but by God. When they meet a beautiful child who will never be theirs they say that reality has taken over the dream. If they get back to their senses, however, they fall from the ethereal regions of matter and since they no longer recognize the object of their dreams they then create other fantasies.

13. (To Maximilian) – We would still like to ask you a few other questions that might bring you some comfort. What was the time when you lived as a poet? Was your name well known? – A. During Louis XV kingdom. I was poor and unknown and loved a woman, an angel that I saw strolling at the park on a spring day. Since then I have only seen her in my dreams and my dreams promised me that she would be mine one day.

14. The name Elvira sounds very romantic to us leading us to think that it is a fictitious name. – A. Yes, it was a real woman. I know her name because a gentleman that passed by called her Elvira. Ah! She was exactly like the woman in my imagination. I still see her, always beautiful and astounding nice. She can make me forget God just to see and follow her.

15. You suffer and can still suffer for a long time. It is up to you to shorten your misery. – A. Who cares about my sufferings? You do not know what an unaccomplished desire is! Are my desires bodily like? Nevertheless they burn me just by the thought of her, even stronger than if I thought of God.

16. We are sincerely sorry for that. You must become useful and think more of God in order to work towards your own advancement. It is necessary that you request a reincarnation just to repair your mistakes and the uselessness of your last existences. We are not asking you to forget Elvira but that you think of her less exclusively and a little bit more of God who can abbreviate your torments if you do what it takes. We will support you in your endeavors through our prayers. – A. Thank you! Pray and try to remove Elvira from my heart. I will perhaps thank you one day.

Dear Mr. Allan Kardec,

I read your first publications about Spiritism with a lot of suspicion, even with a feeling of disbelief. Later I read them again with great attention like I did with your next publications, as they appeared.


I must go straight to the point and say that I used to belong to the materialistic school of thought because out of all philosophical sects it was the one that showed more tolerance and never resourced to arms to defend a God who said through the Master: “…they will prove to be my disciples by loving one another.” In addition, the majority of those who taught religion and moral to the young minds seemed to be more determined to scare the souls than teach them to be good and wait for the reward to their sacrifices and sufferings.


Hence the most materialistic people of all times and particularly the philosophers of the last century, the majority of which illuminated Arts and Sciences, increased the number of their proselytes since education emancipated people. The void was chosen when compared to the eternal sufferings.


It is natural that the miserable person makes this comparison. If the comparison brings advantages then one will doubt everything else. In fact when we learn to see vice in the opulence and virtue in misery and when one does not have a reasoned doctrine proven by facts than desperation takes over one’s soul and the question that follows is what is the benefit of virtue and one does attribute the scruples of conscience to prejudices and to our initial education.


Since I ignore what you are going to do with this letter I wish you to feel free to do whatever you like but I believe to be useful to let people know the causes that led to my conversion.


I had a vague idea about magnetism. Some considered it something serious and real, others treated it as something foolish. Therefore I gave no importance to the matter.


Later I heard about the dancing and talking tables all over the place but everyone handled that subject as they did with magnetism hence I gave no importance either.


Nevertheless a totally unforeseeable circumstance brought to my knowledge the “Treatise of Magnetism and Somnambulism” by Mr. Aubin Gauthier. I read the book with a biased mind against its content to the point that the explanations given there seemed extraordinary and impossible to me.


However, when I got to the page in which that honest man says: “We do not want people just to believe in our word. Try it following the principles that we indicated here and if you confirm the veracity of what we advanced in the book all we want is that you act in good faith and agree with us.”


That language with such a logical certainty, only possible in a practical person, paralyzed me, submitted my mind to reflection and forced me to carry out the experiments.


I initially started with a sixteen-year-old teenager of my own family, attaining results that were beyond expectation. As it is difficult to describe the confusion that it caused in my mind, I suspected myself and asked if that boy was not tricked me who was horse playing and making fun and confusing me since he could detect my intentions.


Just to make sure, I employed some indicated precautions and found a magnetizer. I got confirmation that the boy was under magnetic influence. That first experiment encouraged me so much that I totally dedicated myself to the science. I had the opportunity to observe every phenomenon while I could also attest the existence of an invisible agent that produced them.


Which agent is that? Who controls it? What is its essence? Why it is not visible? These are questions that I could not answer but that led me to read everything that was written pro and con the turning tables since I said to myself if there is an invisible agent that can produce the effects that I witnessed than another agent or even perhaps the same agent could produce the effects that I was observing from which one can conclude that it was all possible. Today I believe although I have not seen anything yet.


Given the effects that are produced all these things are as remarkable as Spiritism and the critics very frankly opposed and in a way that it would not shake any conviction.


Nonetheless what really characterize this doctrine from the material effects are the moral effects. To me it is evident that every person who is honestly involved with this doctrine becomes better if a good person or is forcibly led to modify her character if a bad person.


In the early days hope was not more than the gallows where miserable people were hung. With Spiritism hope is consolation, suffering is an atonement and the spirit patiently withstand the miseries instead of rebelling against the designs of Providence, without cursing God or humanity and always marching towards perfection. Had I learned these principles and I certainly would not have gone through the school of materialism that I have fortunately left behind!


As you see, dear Sir, regardless of the brutality of my own struggles I have converted and you are one of those who contributed to that the most. Make a note of that in your records because that is not one of the smallest. From now on you can count on me as one of your followers.


Gauzy, former military officer Rue Saint-Louis 23, Batignolles, Paris


Note - This conversion is another example of the most common cause of unbelief. As long as things that reason repels are said to be absolute truths there will be unbelievers and materialists. To make one believe, it is necessary to make one understand. Our century so desires and we must march with the century if we do not want to succumb. But to make one understand, everything must be logical: principles and consequences. Mr. Gauzy enunciates a great truth in saying that the individual prefers the idea of nothingness, which puts an end to his sufferings, to the prospect of endless torments, to which it is so difficult to escape. Thus, one tries to enjoy as much as possible while on Earth. Ask a man who suffers greatly what he prefers: to die immediately or to live in pain fifty years; his choice will not be dubious. Who wants to prove too much, proves nothing; by the force of exaggerating the penalties, we end up no longer believing. We are sure that there are many people who agree with us, saying that the doctrine of the devil and eternal punishment made the largest number of materialists; that the belief of a God who created beings to destine the vast majority of them to hopeless tortures, for temporary faults, made the largest number of atheists.

A lady’s answer to a priest about Spiritism

Our friends from Bordeaux tell us that a vicar from that city wrote the letter below on January 8^th to a very ill and elderly lady. We are formally authorized to publish it as well as the reply that followed.

“Madam,

I am sorry that I could not have exchanged some private ideas yesterday about certain religious practices that are contrary to the teachings of the sacred Church. There was a lot of talk about that in your family and in another circle. I would feel happy, Madam, to learn that the only thing you feel about such diabolical superstitions is repugnance and that you are always and sincerely connected to the unchanging dogmas of the Catholic religion.


Yours sincerely, etc.

“X”


Response


“My dear Vicar,


Since my mother is too ill to be able to personally respond to your kind letter dated 8^th of the current month I promptly do it for her and in her name in order to satisfy your solicitude with respect to the dangers that might surround her and her family.


Dear Sir, in my house there is no religious practice that might bother the most devout Catholics unless the respect and faith towards the dead, my faith in the immortality of the soul, a boundless trust in the love and mercy of God and a strict observation of the sacred doctrine of Jesus, as much as allowed by my human nature, unless they are reproachable practices before the sacred Catholic Church.


“With respect to what people may say about my family, even in a circle, I am appeased. Not there or elsewhere they will never say that any of us has done things that will shame them or make them hide as I am not ashamed and I do not hide for the admission of the development and clarity that the Spiritist manifestations spread, to me and many others, about points that were obscure to my intelligence regarding everything that seemed to be part of nature. To those diabolical superstitions I owe a sincere belief, with acknowledgment, in all miracles that the Church gives us as articles of faith and that up until now I kept as symbols, or better saying, I confess, as fantasies. I owe them the quietness of my soul, unreachable up until now irrespective of my efforts. I owe them my faith, a limitless faith, without reflection, without comments, the same faith that the Church commands its children, as the Lord must d s the one that the divine Savior preached by word and example.


Thus, rest assured my dear Sir! The Good Shepherd gathered around the indifferent sheep, those who followed mechanically and out of habit, and that now follow him and will always do with love and appreciation. The divine Master forgave St. Thomas for not having believed before seeing. Then! Still in our days he comes to allow the non-believers to touch him and feel his hands and it is with an immense love that those who were skeptical now approach in order to kiss his bleeding feet and thank the good and merciful father for allowing that these immutable truths become touchable so as to strengthen the weak and clarify the blind who even refused to see the light that has been shining for many centuries.


Allow me now to rehabilitate my mother to the eyes of the sacred Church. In my whole family it is only me and my husband who are fortunate to follow such a path that each one has the freedom of judging from their own standpoint. I then quickly reassure you about that.


As for myself I personally found a lot of strength and consolation in the touchable certainty that those who we loved and cried for are always around us, preaching the love of God above all, the love to our fellow human beings, charity in all of its facets, abnegation, forgetfulness of calumnies and paying evil with good (which does not seem to distant from the dogmas of the Church).


Whatever happens down here I cling to what I know, to what I have seen, asking God to send His consolations to those like myself who dared not think about the mysteries of religion, afraid that this poor human reason that cannot admit but what it can understand could destroy the beliefs that habit made me look like I had.


I then thank our Lord whose unquestionable might and benevolence allow the saints and angels to become visible now to rescue people from denial and doubt something that the devil had the permission to do in order to veer them off the good path since the creation of the world.


To God everything is possible, even miracles. I now recognize that with joy and confidence.


Receive, my dear vicar, my sincere thanks for your attention towards us and believe me that I eagerly wish to see the same faith and love that I now strongly feel penetrating everyone’s hearts.


Yours sincerely,


Émilie Colignon”


OBSERVATION: There is no need for us to comment this letter, allowing each person to appreciate it as they will. The only thing we must mention is that we are aware of a large number of them with the same meaning. The passage that follows from one of those letters may summarize them if not with respect to the terms but at least with respect to the meaning.


“Although I was born and baptized in the Roman Catholic Church thirty years ago, that is since the first communion, I had forgotten my prayers and the path to the Church. In short I believed nothing but the reality of the material life. For a grace of Heavens, I finally see Spiritism opening my eyes. Today the facts spoke with me. I not only believe in God and in the soul but also in a future life that can be fortunate or unhappy; I believe in a fair and good God that punishes bad deeds and not wrong beliefs.

Like a mute person that recovers the ability to speak I now remember my prayers and I pray but no longer with the lips and without understanding what I am saying but with my heart, intelligence, faith and love. Not long ago I even admitted to carrying out an act of wickedness as long as I sought the sacraments of the Church. Today I believe that I humbly do a God-pleasing good deed. You reject me even in the tribunal of penitence. Before anything else you demand from me a formal denial of the Spiritist ideas. You want to renounce to the opportunity of talking to my beloved son who I lost and who came to bring me such reassuring and sweet words. You want me to declare that the child that I recognized as if he were alive right before me that he was the devil. No! A mother cannot be so grossly mistaken.


However, Mr. Vicar, I was convinced about a future life by the very words of that child that led me back to the Church! How come you want me to believe that it was the devil? If that had to be the last word of the Church we then ask what is going to happen when everybody is Spiritist?


You stigmatized me from the heights of your pulpit; you pointed your finger at me; you led a crowd of fanatical against me; you forced a poor woman that shares my beliefs to lose her bread winning job, telling her that she would get help if she stopped seeing me, expecting to beat her by hunger. Honestly, Mr. Vicar, would Jesus Christ have done the same?


You say that you act according to your conscience. Do not be afraid for I will not commit any violence but in turn be happy considering that I behave according to my own.


You sent me away from the Church. I will not try to force my way back there because the prayer pleases God everywhere.


Let me just tell you about the causes that have kept me away from the Church for a long time; that raised doubt in my spirit and from there total denial. If now I am cursed, as you say, you will see who bears the responsibility…”


OBSERVATION: The reflections that come out of such things can be summarized in two words: Fatal imprudence! Fatal blindness!


We browsed a manuscript entitled “Memories of a non-believer”. It is a curious report of the causes that lead people to materialistic ideas and the means b ided back to faith. We still do not know if the author will have it published.

A correspondence from Crefeld, Prussia, dated January 25^th, 1862 and inserted in the

“Constitutionnel” on February 4^th, carries the following fact:


“A poor widow, mother of three, comes to a bakery and insistently requests that a bread be sold to her on the basis of a future payment. The baker refuses. The widow diminishes her request to half a loaf and finally to a pound of bread so that she can feed her starving children. The baker refuses once again and leaves the place moving towards the back of the bakery. Believing that nobody was watching the woman grabs the bread and leaves. The theft, however, is promptly witnessed and the case taken to the police.


A police officer goes to the widow’s house and surprises her as she is slicing the bread for her children. She does not deny the theft and apologizes given her dire situation. Although criticizing the harshness of the baker, the officer insists that she follow him to interview with the police chief.


The widow asks for a few minutes so that she can get changed. She goes to her room. After some time and after losing his patience, the officer decides to open the door. The unfortunate widow was lying down on the floor covered in blood. She had ended her own life with the same knife that she was using to cut the bread to her children.”


The news was read at the session of the Society on February 14^th, 1862 and a proposal was made to have the poor lady evoked when she spontaneously manifested herself giving the communication that follows. It is common to have Spirits communicating in such a way when their names are discussed in the sessions. There is no doubt that they are attracted by our thoughts that is a kind of tacit evocation. They know that we are talking about them and so they come. If they find an adequate time or a medium, they will communicate. From that it follows that there is no need to be a medium or even a Spiritist in order to attract the Spirits that populate our thoughts.


“God was good to the poor hallucinated and I come to thank you for your demonstrations of sympathy. Ah! Before the misery and hunger of my poor little ones I lost it and failed. I said to myself: If you are not capable of feeding your children and the baker refuses the bread to those who cannot pay; if you have no money or work, then die! If you are no longer with them someone else will come to help them.


In fact public charity has now adopted those poor orphans. God forgave me because he saw that I lost my mind in the fierce desperation. I was the innocent victim of an evil society, very badly organized. Ah! Thank God for having allowed you to be born in this great county of France where charity will find and mitigate all miseries.


Pray for me so that I can soon repair my own fault that I did not cowardly but out of maternal love. Our protector Spirits are so nice! They reassure me, give me strength and courage saying that my sacrifice did not displease the Great Spirit that under the eyes and the hand of God presides over the destines of humanity.”

Poor Mary

(Medium Mr. d’Ambel)

After this communication, Spirit Lamennais made the following assessment of the fact in question:


“That unfortunate woman is a victim of your world, of your laws and society. God judges the souls but also the times and circumstances; He judges forcible actions and desperation; He judges what is behind the appearances. I dare say that the miserable woman did not die out of a crime but for her scruples, fear and shame. When human justice is inexorable, it judges material facts but the divine justice probes the bottom of one’s heart and the conscience.


It would be nice that in certain privileged minds a special gift could be developed not for the courts but for the advancement of certain persons. The gift is a kind of somnambulism of the mind that can frequently uncover hidden things but that is neglected and attenuated by those used to a routine of negligence and a lack of faith.


It is certain that a medium of such a kind, when examining that poor lady would have said: The woman is blessed by God for she suffers and the man is cursed since he refused the bread. Oh God! When shall we have all of your gifts recognized and practiced? The one who refused the bread shall be punished to the eyes of your justice because Jesus said: Truly, I say to you, as you did feed one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.

Lamennais, medium Mr. A. Didier

Spiritist Society of Paris, April 1862, medium Mr. E. Vezy

Note: Several well-known Russian personalities had come to spend the winter in Paris, specifically with the intent of completing their Spiritist instruction. They were received as members of the Society with that objective so that they could attend the sessions regularly. Some had already left, among them Prince Dimitry G… Others were about to leave. Such a circumstance gave rise to the following spontaneous communication:

Go and teach, said the Lord. Tonight I address you, children of the great family in formation. Go back to your homeland and to your families. At home remember that another father, the Heavenly Father, wanted to communicate and become known to you. Go and, most importantly, always have the seeds ready to be sowed in the fields that you are going to open in the land. Your homeland is called upon to become great and strong not only through literature and sciences, by the geniuses and the numbers, but still for its love and devotion to the Creator of all things.

May your charity then spread widely and strongly! Have no fear when openly spreading it around you. Know that the practice of charity requires the alms but also the heart. That is the immense source of good, the source of emanations that will warm up those who suffer around us! Go and preach the Gospel, you the new apostles of Christ. God gave you a higher place so that you can be seen and heard and your words understood.

However, you must always keep an eye on Heavens and on Earth, that is, God and humanity, so that you can achieve the great objective that you have proposed and count on our support.

The field is vast. Go, then, and sow so that we can harvest soon.


You can announce around that the great kingdom will come soon, a kingdom of happiness and satisfaction to all of those who wish to believe and love.

Before you leave take this advice, the last one we give you under this beautiful and beloved skies of France! This is a good-bye of friends who will continue to help you in your tough journey. Our invisible hands, however, will make it easier to you and with courage, perseverance and good will you will see the obstacles tumbling before your eyes.

There will be much admiration and awe when these words are heard from you: we are all brothers who must help one another in our journey! They will smile when realize the doctrine that you profess and will whisper this: They say beautiful things, but aren’t they like the milestones that indicate the way without covering the full length of the pathway?

You must show them. Show them that the Spiritist, this new apostle of Christ, is not in the middle of the road just to point the direction but to take the axe face the toughest forests to clear the way and move the thorns away from those who follow behind.

Yes, the new disciples of Jesus must be strong; must walk steadily with active hands. There is no barrier ahead. They must all tumble before their efforts and blows. The clingers and creepers of the dense forest will break yielding a skylight!

That will be the consolation and happiness.


What a reward you are receiving! The blessed Spirits will say: Bravo, bravo! My dear children, you will soon join us and soon we will call you our brothers because you accomplished the mission that you voluntarily called upon yourselves. God has great awards to those who work in His field. He gives the harvest to everyone who has contributed to the great work!

Go in peace then. Go with our blessings. May our blessings bring you happiness and courage! Do not forget your brothers from the Society of France. They all support you and your homeland that Spiritism will strengthen. Go. The good Spirits assist you!

St. Augustine

Spiritist Society of Alger, medium Mr. B…

Q. Why do we feel embarrassed in our conversations with the Spirits of persons that were very dear to us, an embarrassment that we would never feel when they were alive? – A. Because you are material and we are not any more. I will make a comparison that, like all others, will not be absolutely exact but it will be enough to explain what I mean. Suppose you fall in love with a woman, like in one of those novels, that only the romantic writers are capable of creating while to us it does not differ much from what we know in the infinity of spaces. Let us continue with the supposition. After having had the ineffable happiness of speaking and seeing her every day a given circumstance happens where you will no longer see her and that you must be content for being able to hear her. Do you believe that your love would resist without any significant reaction to a situation like that, prolonged indefinitely? Be honest with yourself that it would somehow be shaken or diminished. Let us continue. You not only cannot see that beautiful companion but you can no longer hear her because she was kidnapped. You are not allowed to get close to her. Now you extend this situation for a few years and you will see what happens.

Let’s continue with this line of thinking. Imagine now that the woman that you loved is dead. She has been buried in the darkness of the tomb for a long time now. A new change happens in you. I do not mean to say that the passion is over but what I mean to say is that it has at least been transformed. It is such that if, for a frightening moment, you were able to see the woman for whom you cry so much and not as a hateful spectrum that rests in the cemetery but with the form that you loved and cherished her so much, are you sure that your first impression before the apparition would not be that of profound horror? As you see, my friend, the passions and vivid affections are not possible in their full extension but among creatures of the same nature like among living worldly beings and among the Spirits. I do not mean to say that your affection is erased with death. I say that it changes with nature and takes on another form. In a word I want to say that in your world you keep a good memory of those that you loved but the material world in which you live does not allow you to understand or practice a love that is not materialized and that such a kind of love is naturally impossible between you and us, thus making you feel awkward and cold in your relationship with us. If you still need to be convinced just read again some Spiritist conversation among relatives, friends and acquaintances. You will find it so cold that it could freeze the inhabitants of the arctic. We do not do that willingly and that does not make us sad as long as we are sufficiently elevated in the Spiritist hierarchy to notice and understand it. However, it is unavoidable that it may have some influence on our behavior towards you. Do you remember Hanifa’s story who was able to communicate with her dear daughter that she missed so much, asking her this first question: Is there a treasure in this house? What a nice mystification she received! That one was not stolen.

My friend! I believe I have said enough to explain the causes of discomfort that necessarily exists between you and us. I could have said more. I could have said, for example, that we see all of your imperfections and the impurities of your body and your soul and that in turn you are aware of what we know. Confess that this is embarrassing to both sides. Put together two lovers inside this glass box where everything is out both morally and physically and you can then imagine the result.

As for ourselves, driven by a feeling of charity that you cannot understand, we are to you like that good mother to whom the filth and the ailments of her crying child that keeps her awake do not allow her to forget even for a moment her sublime maternal instincts. We see you weak, ugly and bad, however we love you and do our utmost to help you advance. You are not fair, though, since you fear more than you love us.

Désiré Léglise,

Algerian poet deceased in 1851

Spiritist Society of Lyon, Group Villon, medium Mrs. Bouilland

A spirit was forced to leave Earth, a place that he could not have visited given the fact that he was from a much inferior region. He had, however, asked to endure a trial and God did not refuse his request. Well! His hopes when coming to this world did not come true and his brute nature dominated him every day, staining his passage with greater faults. For a long time the guiding Spirits of mankind tried to veer him off from the bad path but then, tired of the attempt they finally left the unfortunate spirit on his own, almost fearing for any contact with him.


Nonetheless, everything comes to an end. Sooner or later everything comes out in the open and the repressive justice of the world imposes the eye for an eye penalty. This time it was not a head for another head though. It was one for a hundred. Yesterday, after having spent fifty years on Earth that spirit would return to the space and meet the Supreme Judge that weighs in one’s faults much more inexorably than people would do on this planet. The guardian Spirits hopelessly tried to avoid the penalty by trying to introduce some regret in that rebellious soul. They hopelessly brought to him the Spirits of his whole family. Each one tried to extract at least a sigh of sorrow from him. The fatal moment was near and nothing moved that soul of bronze, somewhat inhuman. Yet, a single sign of regret before leaving this life behind could have mitigated his sufferings, already condemned to lose his life by the worldly justice, and condemned by God to an endless remorse, a horrible torture like the vulture devouring a heart that revives incessantly.


While the Spirits worked tirelessly to bring out of him at least a thought of repentance, another spirit, an enthralling spirit, highly gifted with sensitivity and sublime tenderness glided around a very dear head, a head that was alive and said: "Think of the unfortunate who will die; tell me about him."


When charity is sympathetic, when two Spirits agree as if they were one, the mind is kind of charged with electricity. Soon after that the incarnate spirit said to the messenger of love: "My child, try to inspire a little remorse in this miserable that is about to die; go and console him!"


And thinking of everything that the miserable man would have to suffer in his atonement, a sneaky teardrop escapes from the eyes of the one who alone at that early hour awoke thinking of that impure creature who would momentarily meet his fate. The gentle messenger collected that charitable teardrop in the palm of his little hand, and in a quick flight carried it over to the tabernacle containing similar relics, and prayed like that:


"Lord, an impious is about to die; you condemned him, but you said: "I forgive where there is remorse and I grant indulgence when there is repentance." Here is a teardrop of true charity, which has gone through the heart in the eyes of the person I love the most in the world. I bring this teardrop: it is the pric ften the heart of the cold soul that will atone for his crimes.

- Go, replied the Master; go my child. This blessed teardrop can pay many ransoms.


The sweet child left and went to the place of execution of that criminal. What the child said to that man only God knows; what happened in the mind of that pariah of society nobody understood but he opened his eyes to light and saw before him a horrifying past. The very man who feared no instrument of death, who smiled before his condemnation, he raised his eyes and a thick and painful teardrop dropped like lead from his eyes.


After this mute demonstration that her prayers had been heard the angel of charity extended her white wings over the miserable man, collected the teardrop and seemingly said: “Oh unfortunate one! You will suffer less. I take your redemption with me!”


What a contrast can be inspired by the charity of our Creator! The most abject creature, at the bottom of the stairwell, and the purest angel about to enter the world of the elected ones, and just a sign is needed to extend her visible protection upon that scum of society.


From the Almighty tribunal, God blessed that touching scene and all of us surrounding the child said: “Go and collect your award.”


The gentle messenger rose to heavens and with the scorching hot teardrop in her hands she could say:

Parisian Society of Spiritist Studies, Group Faucherand, medium Mr. E. Vézy

It is me alright but not that mocking spirit of other times. The little king from the eighteenth century who dominated through his mind and genius so many sovereigns no longer bears that sarcastic smile on his lips, a smile that used to scare friends and foes alike! My cynicism has gone before the revelation of the great things that I thought I knew but that I really found in the grave!

Poor minds, too narrow to contain so many wonders! Humans, be quiet and humiliate yourselves before such a supreme power! Observe and admire! That is what you can do. How come you want to penetrate the secrets of God and his work? Despite all of your efforts, doesn’t your reason shatters before the atom and the little grain of sand that cannot be defined?

I spent my life looking for and trying to understand God and His principle. My reason failed me and I came to the point not of denying God but His glory, His might and greatness. I explained Him as if developing with time. A heavenly intuition told me that I should reject such a mistake but I did not listen and became the apostle of a false doctrine… Do you know why? Because in the confusion and turmoil of my thoughts, in that constant struggle I could only see one thing: my name, engraved at the entrance of the temple of all nations! I only saw the glory promised by the universal youth that surrounded me seemingly enjoying the delightful essence of the doctrine that I taught them.

Pushed, however, by I do not know which kind of remorse in my conscience I wanted to stop but it was too late. Like every utopia, we are dragged by every system that we embrace. It first follows the currents but later it drags and breaks us down, and the downfall is sometimes quick and brutal.

Believe me, all of you here who are seeking the truth, you will find it when you uproot from your hearts the love for the shinning metal, the silly self-love and pride that make your eyes shine.

Have no fear to fight and defy the error on the new avenue where you walk now, whenever it presents itself to you. Isn’t that monstrous to preconize a doctrine against which one would dare not defend by the simple fact that people know that we made disciples and that they have gone beyond our beliefs?

As you see my friends, this Voltaire is no longer the same as that one of the eighteenth century. I am more Christian for I am here to make you forget my glory and remember what I was in my youth and what I loved in my childhood.

Oh! I loved so much to get lost in the world of my thoughts! My lively and eager imagination visited the vales of the Middle East looking for the one you call the Redeemer… I enjoyed visiting

the places where he had been. And that Christ seemed great and sublime to me amidst the crowds! I believed to hear his powerful voice, teaching the peoples of Galilee, at the shores of Tiberias and Judea!

Later on, in my sleepless nights, how many times did I stand up to open an old Bible and read its sacred pages once again! I then bended by forehead to the cross, this eternal symbol of redemption that unit Earth and Heavens, the creature to the Father! How many times did I admire God’s power, breaking into many parts in a way, and whose spark incarnates to become so small and just to deliver its soul at the Calvary in atonement! August victim whose divinity I denied and yet who made me say:

Your God that you betrayed,


Your God to whom you say blasphemes;

To you, to the universe, He died in those places!

I suffer but I atone the resistance that I used to oppose to God. My mission was to instruct and clarify. I did that in the beginning but my focus disappeared from my hands when the time came for the illumination.

Fortunate children of the nineteenth century, you are given the opportunity to see the light beam of truth.

Make sure you see that light in the right way for it will show heavenly shades to you and its clarity will be divine.

Voltaire

My friends, I allowed one of your great philosophers to speak for me, the one who was the principal architect of the error. I wanted him to tell you where to find light. What do you think? They will all come to tell you: “There is no wisdom without love and charity”. Tell me which doctrine can teach better than Spiritism? It would never be too much to remind you that love and charity are the two supreme virtues that bond together the creature to the Creator, as Voltaire says. Oh! What a mystery and what a sublime bond! Minuscule germ from Earth that can become so powerful that in their glory they can reach the throne of the Eternal!

St. Augustine