The Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1862

Of all the works of Humanity, the most preferred are the ones that closely link human beings to the Creator and when the human being is constantly led to admire the divine works created by God omnipotent hands. It is a human duty to continually adore and worship the One who gave our Spirits the means of improvement to achieve supreme happiness, which is the final objective of all of us.

Even though intellectuals give humanity the means of elevating in intelligence, there is great danger with this advantage. History demonstrates that danger and how many evils it may engineer.

You are gifted with a superior intelligence. In that regard you are closer to the Divinity than your brothers and sisters in humanity and even though you are capable of denying that very Divinity or to think of Divinity in a way that is exactly the opposite of reality. It is never too much to say: Pride is the worst enemy of the human beings. If you had a thousand mouths, they all should repeat that endlessly. God created you all simple and ignorant.* You must advance in the safest possible way. That is entirely on you since God will never deny a grace to the one who asks for it in good faith.

Every human condition may equally lead you to the desired objective if you walk the path of justice and if you do not bend your conscience before the will of your caprices. Nevertheless, there are conditions in which it is more difficult to advance than in others. Hence God will take into account those who have chosen a slippery path but who walked through that without tripping or at least who have done their humanly possible to avoid slipping and to stand still.

There is where sincere faith is needed, an uncommon strength to resist the calls to leave the just path; that is also the opportunity to provide great help to the unfortunate brothers and sisters in journey. Ah! There is great merit to the one who touches the swamp without staining the clothes or oneself. It is necessary that a very pure flame shines internally. What a reward is then reserved after leaving this earthly life!**

* This statement relative to the primitive state of the souls was formulated for the first time in The Spirits’ Book and is nowadays repeated in the communications everywhere. It is thus consecrated both by the agreement and the logic since no other principle would better explain God’s justice. By giving everyone the same starting point it also gave them the same task to achieve the target. Nobody is privileged by nature. Given the free-will some progress faster than others. Such principle of justice cannot conciliate with the theory of creation of the soul at the time of birth of the body. That principle contains in itself the plurality of the existences for if the soul precedes the body it means that it has lived already.

** Some are surprised by the fact that the Spirits may choose a reincarnation in one of those environments surrounded by corruption. Among those living in such lower condition of society there are some who are there for sympathy and to satisfy their ignoble inclinations; others are there on a mission or on duty in other to help their brothers and sisters out of the quagmire and to have more merit themselves by fighting the dangerous invitations. Their reward will be proportional to the fierceness of the battles. It is the same situation of the worker that is paid in proportion to the dangers of the job.

May those in a similar condition give serious thoughts to these words; may they understand well their meaning and a true revolution will take place with the subtle impulses of the heart replacing the pressures of selfishness. Who shall transform the old self into a new self, as asked in the Gospels? What is needed to accomplish such a miracle? They must report their thoughts to what they are destined to be after death.

They are all convinced that tomorrow may not come but horrified by the somber and gloomy pictures of the eternal penalties in which they refuse to believe out of intuition. They let it go and follow the currents of present life. They are led by the febrile greed of always accumulating by all means, licit or not. They ruthlessly ruin the life of a breadwinner and nourish their vices with resources that could feed a whole town for a few days. Their eyes are deviated from the fatal day! Ah, if they could face it cold-bloodedly they would change so much! How fast would they return the stolen black bread to the legitimate owner, the bread that was unjustly used to grow an unjust fortune!

What is it that is necessary then? The Spiritist light is needed. One must say as the great general said about a great nation: Spiritism is like the sun. It blinds those who cannot look at it! Those who call themselves Christians and who reject Spiritism are perfectly blind people.

What is the mission of the doctrine that is currently sowed by the invincible hands of the Creator? It is to bring the unbelievers to faith, the desperate ones to hope and the selfish to charity. They believe to be Christians and say anathema to the doctrine of Jesus. They say that it is the disguised devil preaching such a doctrine in this world. Blind and miserable ones! Poor sick people! May God, in His inextinguishable goodness, stop their blindness and illnesses!

Who told you it was the evil spirit? Who? You know nothing about it. Have you asked God to clarify you about this? You did not or if you did it was with a preconceived idea. The evil spirit! You know who told you that? It was pride, the evil spirit itself – that is revolting! – make you condemn the Spirit of God represented by the good Spirits, God’s envoys to regenerate the world!

Analyze the issue and according to the established rule, condemn or acquit. Ah! If at least you wanted to give a hard look to the inevitable results brought about by Spiritism! If you wanted to see people embracing one another like brothers and sisters, convinced that sooner or later they shall come to terms with God regarding their own personal missions! If you wanted to see charity replacing selfishness all over the place, work replacing laziness since work is part of human nature. God turned work into a duty from which one cannot escape without breaching the divine laws. If you wanted to see the miserable ones who say on one side: “Since we are damned in this world and in the next let us be criminals and enjoy; and those who take away other people’s fortune say: the soul is just a word. God does not exist. If there is nothing to expect after death let us just enjoy this life. The world is made up of exploiters and exploited. I would rather be among the former than the latter. After me are just the floods.”


If you look at these two characters that represent pillage and deception, the kind of deception that leads to jail; if you saw them transformed by the belief in the immortality of the soul taught by Spiritism, would you still say that it was the evil spirit?

I see disdain in your lips and I can even hear you saying: “We are the ones who preach the immortality and we have the credit for that. They will always trust us better than those empty dreamers who are if not deceivers at least dreamers who believe that the dead left their graves and came to communicate with them.”

We always give the same answer to that: Investigate and, if convinced in good-faith, there will be no lack of that if you are sincere and instead of slander you will praise. That will be much more in agreement with God’s law.

God’s law! You believe to be the only depositary of those laws hence it surprises you that other people take the initiative that according to your beliefs should be exclusively yours. Listen to what the Spirits who are the envoys of God have to say:

“The ones who seriously face their duties will be blessed for they will have accomplished the works advised and determined by the divine Master. The ones who saw a human objective in priesthood will not be damned although they might have cursed others, but God reserves a more just punishment for you. A day will come when you will have to publically explain the Spiritist phenomena and that day will come soon. You will then meet the judgment since you have built your own tribunal. Who is the judge? God Himself since nothing happens without His consent. Now you see where the evil spirit, that is pride, has led you! Instead of worshiping and praying you resist against the will of the only one that has the right to say: I wish. Nonetheless you say that it is the devil saying: I wish! And now, if you insist that it is just the manifestation of the bad Spirits remember the words of the Master who was accused of expelling the evil Spirits in the name of Beelzebub: Every kingdom that is divided against itself shall be destroyed.”

Hippolyte Fortoul

Parisian Society of Spiritist Studies, August 8^th, 1862 – medium Mr. Leymarie

Be suspicious of the smarmy ones. Race of liars. Incarnations of two faces that lie to deceive. Unfortunate are the ones who listen to them and believe for the concept of truth is perverted in them. Nevertheless, how many people are misguided by that deceitful adulation! They pay attention to the villain who praises their own weaknesses whilst rejecting the sincere friend to tell them the truth and give them good advice; they attract the false friend and keep away the real and selfless one. These people are satisfied by adulation, by the approval of everything, getting applause even for the most absurd of all things. And – this is really strange – they refuse really sensible advice and believe in the lies from the first one that shows up as long as those lies flatter their own ideas. What would you expect? They want to be deceived and so they are. They often acknowledge the consequences but the evil is done and sometimes without remedy.

Where does it come from? The causes are numerous. First and without denial it is pride that blinds these individuals as they consider themselves infallible. They easily consider themselves the model of commonsense. Then comes a lack of judgment that does not allow them to separate right from wrong. Pride is also there to stain their poor judgment. Without pride they would mistrust themselves seeking the advice of those with more experience. You must understand also that the bad Spirits are not oblivious to the situation and take the opportunity to mystify and trick them.

Who would more easily fall into those traps than the flattered proud one? Pride to them is like a lack of armor as greed is to others. They are skillful in taking advantage of that but they also make attempts with the stronger ones from a moral point of view.

Do you want to avoid the influence of the bad Spirits? Rise, rise in virtue to the point where they cannot reach you and then they are the ones who are going to fear you. However, if you stick to the tip of the rope they will find ways of forcing your defeat; they will call you with sweet voices, they will flatter your plumage and like the crow you will drop the cheese.

Sonnet

Parisian Society of Spiritist Studies, August 8^th, 1862 – medium Mr. Leymarie

Seek moderation and conciseness in the word; a few words, many things. Language is like harmony: the more we try to complicate it the less melodious it will be. True science is always the one that touches the mass of intelligent people rather than a few proud sybarites, intelligent people that for a long time have been veered off from the true beautiful path, a path of simplicity. Following the example of their Master, the disciples of Jesus acquired this profound knowledge of speaking well, sober and concisely and their speech, like that of the Master, was marked by such subtleness, by a depth that in our days when we see ourselves surrounded by lies those words still turn the voice of Christ and the apostles into inimitable role models of concision and accuracy.

But truth came down from above. Like the apostles of the first days of the Christian era, the superior Spirits come to teach and guide us. The Spirits’ Book contains a whole revolution because it is concise and sober: a few words, lots of things; no flowers of rhetoric or images but only great and strong thoughts that give strength and consolation. That is why its reading is enjoyable and easily understood. That is the trait of the superior Spirits who dictated it.

Why then there are so many communications coming from Spirits that call themselves superiors, full of insensible things, plentiful of empty phrases, pages that say nothing? Rest assured that these are not superior Spirits but pseudo-wise Spirits who believe in replacing their lack of thoughts by empty words; the depth of ideas by obscurity. They cannot seduce anyone except who believe to have gold when they actually have brass and judge the beauty of a woman by her shinning outfit. Be suspicious then of the Spirits that use complicated and confusing language that requires a lot of effort to understand. You will acknowledge true superiority in the concise, clear and intelligible style that does not require power of imagination. Do not measure the importance of the communications by their extension but by the summation of ideas that they contain in a short text. To assess real superiority you must account for the words and ideas – I refer to just, sound and logical ideas – and the comparison will give you the exact measure.

Barbaret, familiar spirit

Parisian Society of Spiritist Studies – medium Mr. A. Didier

The human being is limited in intelligence and sensations. Without being able to understand things beyond certain limits the human being pronounces the sacramental word: Supernatural.

The word supernatural in the new science that you are studying is a conventional word. It does exist but explains nothing. In fact, what is the meaning of the word supernatural? Outside of nature; beyond what is understood by us. Nothing is more insensible than the application of that word to everything that is beyond us. To someone that thinks the word supernatural is not definitive. It is vague; it induces presentiment.

The banal phrase of the ignorant unbeliever is well known: “It is supernatural. Reason tells us…etc.” But what is the reason? Ah! When nature grows and acts sovereignly showing us unknown treasures reason becomes irrational and absurd since it persists despite the facts. Well, if something happens it is allowed by nature. Nature has certainly sublime manifestations to us but these are still very restrictive if we enter the domain of the unknown. Ah! You want to excavate nature, find the origin of things – the rerum cause – and still believe it to be unnecessary to keep your trivial reason aside? You must be joking, ladies and gentlemen. What is human reason other than the way of thinking in this world? If you travel from planet to planet do you believe that your reason should follow you? No, ladies and gentlemen. The only reason that you must have amongst all these phenomena is to keep cold blood and observation and start from that point of view and not from the point of view of disbelief.

We have touched very serious subjects lately as you remember but we have not concluded from this that it is only evil that comes from humanity. After many struggles and discussions we also see good thoughts, a new faith and new hope. Spiritism, as I told you recently, is the light that from now on must illuminate every intellectual being devoted to progress.

Prayer shall be the only dogma and the only practice of Spiritism, that is, harmony and simplicity. The art shall be new for it will be fertilized by new ideas. Believe that every work that is inspired by a philosophical-religious idea is always a powerful and sound manifestation. Christ shall always be humanity but not the suffering humanity: He will be the triumphant humanity.

Lamennais