The Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1863

What sometimes precludes you from correcting a defect or a vice is exactly the fact that you do not notice that you carry it. While you see the tiniest faults of your neighbor, of your brother, not even suspecting that you bear the same faults perhaps a hundred times greater than theirs. That is nothing more than the consequence of pride that leads all imperfect creatures to only see good things in themselves. You should analyze yourselves as if it was not you. Imagine for example that what you did to your brother had been done by him to you. Put yourself in his place. What would you do? Respond without a preconceived idea for I suppose you want to find the truth. By doing so I am certain that you will frequently find out about your own defects that you had not noticed before. Be honest with yourselves; get to know your character but do not flatter it because adulated kids become bad and the adulators are the first one to experiment the effects. Go back to the bag where you keep your defects and the defects of others. Bring yours to the top and keep the others behind and observe well if that is not keeping your head down when you have that load before your eyes.

La Fontaine

God did establish differences among the created souls. May the equality of rights serve them as the principle of friendship that is nothing more than the unity of tendencies and feelings! True friendship only exists between virtuous persons, united under the protection of the Almighty to encourage one another for the accomplishment of their duties. Every truly Christian heart carries the feeling of friendship. Such a virtue, however, finds in the selfishness of the vicious souls the tripping stone, like the fallen seed upon the arid rock that is infecund for the good.

Have your soul surrounded by the protecting fence of a faithful prayer, so that the internal as well as the external enemy cannot penetrate. The prayer elevates one’s soul to God, releasing from all human concerns, transporting to a state of tranquility and peace that cannot be provided by the world. The more confident and fervent the prayer the more it is heard and pleasing to God.

When the human soul is entirely penetrated by the holy zeal it reaches heavens through the devoted prayer and the passions, the inner enemies, as well as the vices of the world, the exterior enemies, are powerless to break the protecting walls.

Friends, pray to God with confidence from the bottom of your hearts, with faith and truth!

You ask me about the future of Spiritism and what shall be the place that it will have in the world. It will not have a place only. It will encompass the world. Spiritism is in the air, in space and in nature. It is the key to the dome of the social edifice. You can forecast its future based on its past and present. Spiritism is the works of God. You humans gave it a name; God gave you reason when the time came because Spiritism is the immutable law of the Creator. God has been inspiring Spiritism since mankind has achieved intelligence and from time to time has sent advanced Spirits to Earth with the initial insights about the influence of Spiritism. If they did not succeed it was due to the fact that human intelligence was not sufficiently advanced. But that was not sufficient to preclude them from sowing the idea leaving behind their names and actions as milestones on a road for the traveler to find the route. Look behind and see how many times God has already tried the Spiritist influence as a means of moral betterment.

What else was Christianity eighteen centuries ago if not Spiritism? The only difference is in the name. The idea is the same. It was only mankind that altered the works of God through free-will. Nature dominated bringing along the error. Later on, Spiritism struggled to germinate but the terrain was sterile and the seed broke hurting the head of the God assigned sowers. Intelligence developed with time and the field could be cultivated since the time for sowing again is near. Everyone admits that Spiritism spreads out. Even the nonbelievers understand it and if they do not confess and keep their eyes closed it is because the obfuscating light of Spiritism makes them blind. But God protects His work. He sustains it with His powerful sight; He encourages it and soon all peoples will be Spiritists because it contains the universality of all beliefs. Spiritism is the great leveler that advances to level plane all heresies. It is led by sympathy; it is followed by agreement, by love and fraternity; it advances without commotion and without revolution; it comes to destroy nothing, to knock nothing down in the social fabric; it comes to renovate everything.

There is no contradiction here: By becoming better people, we will aspire to better laws. The businessman will understand that the worker has the same essence as his own, then introducing sooth and wise regulations in their commercial relationships. The social relationships will change very naturally between wealth and mediocrity. With the absence of progress the Spiritist will understand that there is something more important than wealth, breaking the idea of accumulation that generates greed and the poor will certainly benefit from the reduction of selfishness. I don’t say that there will not rejection of this idea; that all will evolve universally fertilized by the wave of Spiritism. There will still be deniers and fallen angels for mankind has free-will and although there is no lack of advice many of them will only see from their narrow point of view that restricts the horizon of greed, not willing to yield to evidence. Bad for them. Be sorry for them, enlighten them because you are not judges and only God can criticize their conduct.

By the future that I show you for Spiritism, you can evaluate the influence it will have upon the masses. How are you organized, morally speaking? Have you balanced your qualities and defects? Neutral and lighthearted people populate a good chunk of Earth. Do the good individuals account for the majority? It is doubtful. Among the ones with a foot on the good side and the other on the bad side of the scale, the neutral ones, there are many that can swing both feet to the good side, the first step that quickly leads to more advanced stages.

There is still a group of bad creatures in this world but that tends to diminish every day. When people understand that the “eye for an eye” is the immutable law of God, a much more severe law than the toughest human laws; more terrible and logical than the eternal flames of hell in which they no longer believe, they will then fear that reciprocity of the penalties and will then think twice before doing the wrong thing.

When the criminal mind may foresee his fate through the Spiritist manifestation, he shall back up before the idea of a crime for he will know that God oversees everything and that the crime, although it may go without punishment on Earth, one day that impunity will have to be paid for and very dearly.

All hateful crimes will then disappear one day from the face of humanity, giving rise to concord and fraternity that have been preached to you for centuries. Your legislation will then be kinder in proportion to the moral betterment; slavery and death penalty will have no place in your laws only remaining as memories of the tortures of inquisition. Hence regenerated people will only be concerned with their intellectual progress. Since there will no longer be selfishness the scientific discoveries that frequently require the concourse of many minds will develop rapidly, and they will say: “Never mind the name of the one that does good; the important thing is that good gets done! For in reality what frequently stops your scientists in their ascending march of progress is their ego, the ambition of seeing their names attached to the works. That is the future and the influence Spiritism will have upon the peoples of Earth.

A philosopher from the other world.