Spiritist dissertations
The conquest of the future
Group from Sainte-Gemme-Tarn, medium Mr. C…
The Spiritist idea is growing. It will soon cover the French soil from North to South, from East to West. The milestones are set apart accordingly. You are the landmarks. You shall have the honor of delineating the route to be followed by your neighbors with our advices. Be united not only through a common thought but also with a common action. The phase of experimentation and observation is over. Now is time for application. You must act and act fearlessly. Do not look backwards. On the contrary, stare at the future and contemplate the objective and the obstacles in your way. If you waste time counting your steps instead of advancing rapidly you will fail your mission. Take the traveler’s cane and move on! But do not travel alone. May the whole Spiritist army, this vanguard of the evangelical doctrine, travel together.
Unite, consult one another and fly towards the conquest of the future.
Hippolyte Fortoul
The Pentecost Group from Sainte-Gemme-Tarn, medium Mr. C…
The Spirit of God breathes upon the world so as to regenerate His children. If God does not show up any more like tongs of fire as in the time of the apostles He is not less present among you. Pray with all your heart to the Almighty so that you are worthy and take advantage of the moral benefits and every imperishable gift that God found adequate to spread over the heads of the apostles of Christ. Ask and you shall be given, and nothing that you may ask to the benefit of your moral progress will be denied. Once more, pray with all your heart but allow your heart to speak and not your lips; or even if your lips move may they only repeat what your heart is saying. Once animated by the Spirit of God your happiness will be so great that you cannot imagine. It depends on you to achieve that. From that moment your days will be just considered as a stretch of the path to achieve the destiny and where, at the end of the day, are going to receive your meal and a shelter for the night. The small amount of relative importance that you must associate to the earthly things must not distract you from your very serious material duties. In the eyes of God it is a serious mistake if you do not consciously perform your everyday duties. Nothing that has come out of God’s hands must be neglected. Within limits you must enjoy the material assets that you were given. You duty is to share them with your brothers and sisters who were precluded from them and do not keep them exclusively to you. A pure conscience, a boundless charity and a limitless humility, that is the best prayer to attract the Saint Spirit. It is the true Veni Creator but that does not mean that the one sung at the church is not a prayer that will be blessed whenever it comes from the heart; as it has been said many times the intention is everything, the form is nothing. Pray through your actions so that the Saint Spirit comes to visit you and spill upon your soul the strength that gives you the faith necessary to overcome the miseries of human existence on Earth and to reach out to those brothers and sisters whose weaknesses of spirit preclude them from seeing the light, without which you can only grope around, risking to shock against every obstacle spread on your way. The true happiness sought by everyone is there, reachable by everybody. It is a matter of will to reach it.
Make your firm and good resolutions and then you shall not lack the Spirit of God, rest assured. Love your neighbor as yourself for the love of God and you will have dignified the very day when the Saint Spirit came to visit the apostles of Christianity.
Hyppolyte Fortoul
Forgiveness - Parisian Society of Spiritist Studies – medium Mr. A. Didier
How can one find the strength to forgive? The sublimity of forgiveness is the death of Christ on the Golgotha. I have already told you that Jesus summarized in his life all human struggles and anguishes. All of those who deserved the Christian name died with forgiveness in their lips. The defenders of the oppressed liberties, the martyrs of great causes and truths have understood so much the elevation and sublimity of his life that they did not fail at the last minute and forgave. If Augustus forgiveness is not entirely sublime historically, the Augustus of Corneille, the great tragic, owns himself and the universe for he forgives. Ah! How petty those who owned the world and did not forgive! How great the one who had all spiritual humanities in the future centuries and forgave! Forgiveness is an inspiration and sometimes an advice given by the Spirits. Unfortunate are those who shut their ears to that voice. They are punished, as the Scriptures say, because they had ears and did not hear. Then! If you want to forgive, if you feel weak before yourself, contemplate the death of Christ. The one who knows oneself easily wins the battle against oneself. That is why a great prince of old wisdom knew to know himself, before anything else. The athletes were taught the safe ways of winning the great battles before they were sent to the fields of war. In the academia Socrates taught that there was a Supreme Being and later on and centuries before Jesus he taught the whole Greek nation to die and forgive.
A vicious and weak person does not forgive. Someone used to the personal fights, to the fair thoughts and reflections easily forgives.
Lamennais
Vengeance - Parisian Society of Spiritist Studies – medium Mr. de B…M…
Vengeance pleases the heart, said the poet. Oh! Blind people who give free ride to the ugliest passions. You believe to harm your neighbor with your blows and do not notice that they come back against you. It is not only a crime but also an absurd misunderstanding. Brothers, it is like bad feelings, hatred, jealousy, children of pride, the means utilized by the Spirits of darkness to attract to them those who they feel may escape them. It is the most infallible instrument of moral ruin that could reach human’s hands by the enemies who rejoice with their moral defeat.
You must all resist, children of Earth, to this wicked attraction, and rest assured that if someone has deserved your rage, it is not in the heat of the anger that you will find peace of mind. Deliver it to the hands of the Almighty and He will pronounce with respect to your rights and the justice of your cause. There is something degrading and impious to the spirit in vengeance. No, vengeance is not compatible with perfection. While someone keeps such feelings they will stay in the basements of the spiritual world. But you shall not be the eternal toy of that unfortunate passion. I guarantee that the abolition of the false notion of the eternal hell, or better saying, the eternal penalties that have served as a pretext or at least as an excuse to acts of vengeance, it will be the dawn of a new era of tolerance and kindness that shall not be long to extend even to regions that lack a moral life.
Could humans condemn vengeance when God was presented to them as someone jealous and vindictive that personally promotes the eternal tortures? Stop people; stop insulting the Divinity, transferring to God your own ignoble passions. You shall then be, oh inhabitants of Earth, a God blessed people. You who hear me you must proceed in a liberating way, a way that frees the soul from the shameful actions contrary to charity so that you may deserve to be admitted at the sacred sanctuary whose doors can only be opened by charity.
Pierre Ange, protector spirit
