The Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1862

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