Example 2 - AUGUSTE MICHEL.

He was a wealthy young man, a bohemian, enjoying material life broadly and exclusively. Although intelligent, indifference toward serious things was his characteristic trait.

Without malice, rather good than bad, he made himself esteemed by his companions in revelry, being noted in society for his qualities as a man of the world; he did no good, but neither did he do evil.

He died as a result of a fall from the carriage in which he was riding. Evoked a few days after his death by a medium who indirectly knew him, he successively gave the following communications:

March 8, 1863. — “For now I have only managed to release myself, and I can hardly speak to you. The fall that caused the death of my body profoundly disturbed my Spirit.

This cruel uncertainty about my future troubles me. The painful bodily suffering I experienced is nothing in comparison to this disturbance.

Pray that God may forgive me. Oh! what pain! Oh! thanks be, my God! what pain! Farewell.”

March 18. — “I have come to you before, but I could only speak with difficulty. At present, I can still scarcely communicate with you. You are the only medium of whom I can ask prayers, so that the goodness of God may free me from this disturbance.

Why suffer still, when the body no longer suffers? Why does this horrendous pain, this terrible anguish, always exist? Pray, oh! pray that God may grant me rest…

Oh! what cruel uncertainty! I am still bound to the body. Only with difficulty can I see where I should be; my body is there, and why do I too always remain there?

Come pray over it so that I may rid myself of this cruel prison… God will forgive me, I hope.

I see the Spirits who are beside you, and through them I can speak to you. Pray for me.”

April 6. — “It is I who come to ask that you pray for me. Will it be necessary for you to go to the place where my body lies, in order to implore the Almighty to calm my sufferings? I suffer! Oh! how I suffer! Go to that place — thus it must be — and address a prayer to the Lord that He may forgive me.

I see that I shall be able to be more tranquil, but I return incessantly to the place where they laid what belonged to me.”

The medium, attaching no importance to the request made of him to pray over the grave, had failed to comply. However, going there later, he received a communication in that very place.

May 11. — “Here I was waiting for you. I awaited your coming to the place where my Spirit seems bound to its envelope, in order to implore the God of mercy and goodness to calm my sufferings.

You can benefit me with your prayers, do not forget it, I beseech you. I see how much my life was contrary to what it ought to have been; I see the faults committed.

I was in the world a useless being; I made no profitable use of my faculties; my fortune served only the satisfaction of my passions, my caprices of luxury, and my vanity; I thought only of the pleasures of the body, despising those of the soul and the soul itself.

Will the mercy of God descend even to me, a poor Spirit who suffers the consequences of his earthly faults? Pray that He may forgive me, freeing me from the pains that still afflict me.

I thank you for having come here to pray for me.”

June 8. — “I can speak, and I thank God who grants me this. I have understood my faults and hope that God will forgive me.

Always walk through life in conformity with the belief that sustains you, because it holds in store for you, in the future, a rest that I do not yet have. Thank you for your prayers. Until we meet again.”

The Spirit’s insistence that prayers be said over his grave is a notable particularity, but one that had its reason for being if we take into account the tenacity of the ties that bound him to the body, and the difficulty of his release, in consequence of the materiality of his existence.

It is understandable that prayer, being nearer, could exert a kind of more powerful magnetic action toward aiding the release. Does not the almost general custom of praying beside corpses arise from the unconscious intuition of such an effect? In that case, the efficacy of prayer would attain a result at once moral and material.