Part I

“The command of an Army is entrusted only to a skilled general, capable of directing it. Do you think God is less prudent than men?”

In the last days of his passage among us, when the stormy clouds of the calvary were already glimpsed on the horizon, the Christ of God gathered the apostles in order to transmit to them his final instructions. A profound connoisseur of human psychology, and letting overflow all the love that came to him from his soul, the Master reassured the disciples and promised that he would not leave them orphans. If you love me — Jesus said on that occasion — keep my commandments; and I will pray to my Father and He will send you another Comforter, so that it may remain eternally with you: the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees nor knows it. You, however, will know it, because it will remain with you and will be in you. But the Comforter, which is the Holy Spirit, whom my Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will make you remember all that I have told you. 4 had it come earlier, it would have collided against all-powerful materialism; in a more remote time, it would have been smothered by blind fanaticism. It presents itself at the [right] moment […] in which the spiritualist reaction, provoked by the very excesses of materialism, was already taking hold of all minds […] preoccupied with the future of Humanity.

Our life — he said on a certain occasion — is wholly one of labor and study, and even the moments of repose we consecrate to work […]. Like so many others, we bring our stone to the edifice that is rising, though without making of it a step to attain whatever it may be. Let others bring more stones than we; let others work as much and better than we, and we shall see them with sincere joy. What we want, above all, is the triumph of truth, come whence it may, for we do not have the pretension of seeing the light alone […]. 18 entrusts important missions only to those whom He knows capable of fulfilling them, since great missions are heavy burdens that would crush the man too weak to carry them. As in all things, the master must know more than the disciple; in order to make Humanity advance morally and intellectually, men superior in intelligence and morality are needed, which is why Spirits already advanced are always chosen for these missions, Spirits who have undergone their trials in other existences, since, if they were not superior to the milieu in which they have to act, their action would be null. 19