Example 1 - JOSEPH BRÉ.

— Dear grandfather, can you tell me how you find yourself in the world of the Spirits, giving me any details useful to our progress?

A. Whatever you wish, dear daughter. I am expiating my disbelief; yet great is the goodness of God, who takes the circumstances into account. I suffer, but not as you might imagine: it is the chagrin of not having made better use of my time there on Earth.

— How so? Did you not always live honestly?

A. Yes, in the judgment of men; 2 but there is an abyss between honesty before men and honesty before God. And since you wish to instruct yourself, I will try to demonstrate to you the difference.

There, among you, he is reputed honest who respects the laws of his country, a respect arbitrary for many. Honest is he who does not openly harm his neighbor, even though he often robs him of his happiness and his honor, since the penal code and public opinion do not reach the hypocritical culprit.

By being able to have an epitaph of virtue engraved on the tombstone, many think they have paid their debt to Humanity! What an error! That is not enough: to be honest before God, to have respected the laws of men, it is necessary above all not to have transgressed the divine laws.

Honest in the eyes of God will be he who, possessed of abnegation and love, consecrates his existence to the good, to the progress of his fellow beings; he who, animated by a zeal without limits, is active in life; active in the fulfillment of material duties, teaching and exemplifying to others the love of work; active in good deeds, without forgetting his condition as a servant from whom the Lord will one day demand an account of the use of his time; active, finally, in the practice of the love of God and of neighbor.

Thus the man honest before God must carefully avoid biting words, poison hidden beneath flowers, which destroys reputations and crushes a man, often covering him with ridicule.

The man honest according to God must always keep his heart closed to any germs of pride, of envy, of ambition.

He must be patient and benevolent toward those who assail him; 9 he must forgive from the depths of his soul, without effort and above all without ostentation, whoever offends him; 10 he must love his Creator in all His creatures; he must, in short, practice the concise and grand precept summed up in the love of God above all things and of neighbor as of oneself.

There, dear daughter, is approximately what the man honest before God must be. Well then: would I have been such? No. I confess without blushing that I failed in many of these duties; that I did not have the necessary activity; that the forgetting of God impelled me to other faults, which, by not being liable to human laws, are nonetheless violations of the law of God.

Understanding it, I suffered much, and thus it is that today, more consoled, I await the mercy of that God of goodness, who scrutinizes my repentance.

Transmit, dear daughter, repeat all that stands here to as many as have their conscience burdened, that they may repair their faults by dint of good works, so that the mercy of God may extend over them. His paternal eyes will reckon their trials. His mighty hand will erase their faults.