You are in:
The Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1863 > October > Spiritist dissertations > The false devout
Private meeting, March 10th, 1863
Medium Mrs. Costel
My memory has just been evoked by my portrait and my poems; twice touched in my feminine vanity and self-love of poetry, I want to acknowledge your benevolence, sketching in broad traces the silhouette of the false devout that are to religion what the falsely honest woman is to society. The subject is in the picture of my literary studies whose nuance was expressed in Lady Tartufe.
The false devout sacrifice appearance and betray the true; they show a dry heart with humid eyes, their purse is closed and their hand open; they speak of the neighbor with good will, criticizing their actions in a sweet way, exaggerating the bad and diminishing the merit. Eager on the acquisition of mundane things they cling on imaginary treasures that death disperses, neglecting the true values that serve the righteous ones and form the wealth of eternity.
The hypocrite of devotion is the reptile of the moral world. Vis and low they avoid the faults punished by public vendetta, committing criminal acts in the shadow. How many destroyed and spoiled families! How much betrayed trust! How many tears, and even how much blood!
Comedy is the opposite of tragedy. Evil marches behind the buffoon and the false devout have inept creatures by followers, only acting by imitations: like in the mirror they reflect the physiognomy of their neighbors. They take themselves seriously; deceive themselves; ridicule their beliefs in their shyness; exalt what they doubt; show ostentation and light up little hidden candles to which they give much more importance than to the virtue of the sacred host.
The false devout are the true atheist of virtue, of hope, of nature and of God. They deny the true and affirm the false. Meanwhile, death will carry them blotted out of the make-up, and covered with tinsel which disguised them, and throw them panting in full day light.
Delphine de Girardin
Medium Mrs. Costel
My memory has just been evoked by my portrait and my poems; twice touched in my feminine vanity and self-love of poetry, I want to acknowledge your benevolence, sketching in broad traces the silhouette of the false devout that are to religion what the falsely honest woman is to society. The subject is in the picture of my literary studies whose nuance was expressed in Lady Tartufe.
The false devout sacrifice appearance and betray the true; they show a dry heart with humid eyes, their purse is closed and their hand open; they speak of the neighbor with good will, criticizing their actions in a sweet way, exaggerating the bad and diminishing the merit. Eager on the acquisition of mundane things they cling on imaginary treasures that death disperses, neglecting the true values that serve the righteous ones and form the wealth of eternity.
The hypocrite of devotion is the reptile of the moral world. Vis and low they avoid the faults punished by public vendetta, committing criminal acts in the shadow. How many destroyed and spoiled families! How much betrayed trust! How many tears, and even how much blood!
Comedy is the opposite of tragedy. Evil marches behind the buffoon and the false devout have inept creatures by followers, only acting by imitations: like in the mirror they reflect the physiognomy of their neighbors. They take themselves seriously; deceive themselves; ridicule their beliefs in their shyness; exalt what they doubt; show ostentation and light up little hidden candles to which they give much more importance than to the virtue of the sacred host.
The false devout are the true atheist of virtue, of hope, of nature and of God. They deny the true and affirm the false. Meanwhile, death will carry them blotted out of the make-up, and covered with tinsel which disguised them, and throw them panting in full day light.
Delphine de Girardin