64 to 66.

[XVII]

(Pages)

The strange phenomena we are now witnessing do not result from a discovery owing to chance.

The Spirits tell us that there is in this fact, which in a short time has assumed such considerable proportions, something providential.

They declare that they are charged, from now on, with instructing men and with overthrowing errors and prejudices, no longer by means of allegories and symbolic figures, but in language clear and intelligible to all; 4 no longer over an isolated point of the globe, but over the entire surface of the Earth. According to them, these manifestations are the prelude to the transformation of Humanity.

Be that as it may, we cannot deny that we find, in the teachings of the superior Spirits, the precepts of a sublime morality, which is nothing but the development and explanation of the morality of Christ and whose effect is to make men better.

There are persons who find this morality insufficient, saying that there is nothing new in it; it is common morality.

One would expect on the part of the Spirits something more grandiose, more extraordinary; something, in short, that would depart from the commonplace.

We have little to answer them. We will say, to begin with, that we are presenting here only a summary and that, should they wish to know the complete Doctrine, they will need to take the trouble to study it and, above all, to meditate on its applications.

The basis upon which this morality rests is simple, it is true; but it is by its very simplicity that it is sublime:

God made His code in few words.

It is known, that too is true: it is the morality that is taught everywhere. Why, then, is it practiced so little?

More than one among those who consider it paltry would perhaps be a little disappointed if they were constrained to practice, in the rigor of the term, this simple precept, so puerile in their eyes: Do not do to others what you would not wish to be done to you, and, above all, to repair all that they have done in violating this norm.

Of two things, one: either they find this precept too rigorous, or they consider it too lenient.

In the first case, one might believe that they would be most content to see it replaced by something capable of freeing them from an obligation that, let us admit, is rather inconvenient for a great many people; 15 in the second, it is that they apparently already practice it scrupulously, and that they are more severe toward themselves than God Himself.

Well then! However gentle this obligation may be, God contents Himself with it and, when man so wills, with these few words He will make of his globe a Promised Land.

As for us, we hold that the Spirits give us proof of their superiority precisely by confirming the words of Christ and by announcing that they are charged with hastening the end of the reign of selfishness and replacing it with that of justice.

We do not believe that it is possible for anyone to become sincerely convinced of the existence and the manifestation of the Spirits without promoting a serious change in himself and without facing the future with confidence.

This belief, therefore, can lead man only to the path of good, for it shows us the nullity of earthly things alongside the infinite that awaits us; 20 it places in the first rank of the conditions of our future happiness love and charity toward our fellow creatures, causing the passions that liken us to the brute to dissolve.

ALLAN KARDEC