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The Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1863 > September > Spiritist dissertations > Purgatory
Parisian Society of Spiritist Studies, July 31st 1863
Medium Mr. Alfred Didier
“The Catholic religion shows purgatory to us as a place where the soul that suffers terrible punishments alleviate its faults and gradually claims, through pain, its rights to eternal life. Splendid image, the most perfect and truer of the great dogmatic trinity of hell, purgatory and paradise! Despite its desperate severities the Church understood that it needed a mid-ground between the eternal punishment and eternal happiness. The Church confused, however, in that strange setting, the infinite and progressive time, that is only one, with three limited and incomprehensible situations.
Spiritism adds to religion, or even better, to the entirely humanitarian teachings, the means of realizing that ideal humanity. In the philosophical deviations of our times there is more than one Spiritist germ; the skeptical philosophers whose advices are not towards the definite happiness of humanity but to the destruction of every human and divine belief work towards the universal trend of Spiritism more than one may think.
It is a path, however, where there isn’t much of heavens; where there is almost no future life but where there is at least material and egoistic tranquility in this life, clearly understood by the legislator and, if not a saint at least as a humanitarian philanthropist.
Now, it is necessary to know if in its latent state, say in the extracorporeal life that could be called intra-worlds, if the measure of knowledge and clairvoyant sagacity of the superior Spirits and the universal progress are as efficient as it is the earthly one.
Such a fundamental question to Spiritism has been poorly resolved up until now with answers about details. As the Church says it is not only a place of atonement but a universal spot where the souls fear with anguish or accept with hope the existences that unfolds before them. That is just the beginning of purgatory, that important stage of the life of the soul that we believe has not been well explained and not event mentioned by the Catholic dogmas.”
Lamennais
Medium Mr. Alfred Didier
“The Catholic religion shows purgatory to us as a place where the soul that suffers terrible punishments alleviate its faults and gradually claims, through pain, its rights to eternal life. Splendid image, the most perfect and truer of the great dogmatic trinity of hell, purgatory and paradise! Despite its desperate severities the Church understood that it needed a mid-ground between the eternal punishment and eternal happiness. The Church confused, however, in that strange setting, the infinite and progressive time, that is only one, with three limited and incomprehensible situations.
Spiritism adds to religion, or even better, to the entirely humanitarian teachings, the means of realizing that ideal humanity. In the philosophical deviations of our times there is more than one Spiritist germ; the skeptical philosophers whose advices are not towards the definite happiness of humanity but to the destruction of every human and divine belief work towards the universal trend of Spiritism more than one may think.
It is a path, however, where there isn’t much of heavens; where there is almost no future life but where there is at least material and egoistic tranquility in this life, clearly understood by the legislator and, if not a saint at least as a humanitarian philanthropist.
Now, it is necessary to know if in its latent state, say in the extracorporeal life that could be called intra-worlds, if the measure of knowledge and clairvoyant sagacity of the superior Spirits and the universal progress are as efficient as it is the earthly one.
Such a fundamental question to Spiritism has been poorly resolved up until now with answers about details. As the Church says it is not only a place of atonement but a universal spot where the souls fear with anguish or accept with hope the existences that unfolds before them. That is just the beginning of purgatory, that important stage of the life of the soul that we believe has not been well explained and not event mentioned by the Catholic dogmas.”
Lamennais