Example 16 - Mrs. ANAÏS GOURDON.

— She was very young and remarkable for the gentleness of her character and the eminent moral qualities that distinguished her, having died in November of 1860. She belonged to a family of miners from the outskirts of Saint-Étienne, a circumstance that makes her spiritual position interesting.

Evocation: — A. Present.

Your father and your husband asked me to evoke you, and they would deem themselves happy if they could obtain a communication.

A. I too am happy to give it.

Why did you so soon withdraw yourself from the affections of your family?

A. Because I finished my earthly trials.

Can you sometimes see your relatives?

A. Oh! I am always at their side.

Are you happy as a Spirit?

A. I am happy. I love and I hope. The Heavens inspire no fear in me, and full of confidence I await white wings to raise me up to them.

What do you mean by white wings?

A. To become a pure Spirit, to shine like the celestial messengers who dazzle me.

The wings of angels, archangels, and seraphim, who are nothing more than pure Spirits, are evidently only an attribute imagined by men to give an idea of the swiftness with which they transport themselves, since their ethereal nature exempts them from any support to cleave through space.

Nevertheless, they can appear to men with such an accessory in order to correspond to their thought, just as Spirits clothe themselves in earthly appearance in order to make themselves knowable.

Can your relatives do anything on your behalf?

A. They can, dear brothers, by no longer saddening me with their laments, for they know that I am not altogether lost to them. I wish that the remembrance of my being may be soft and sweet to them. I passed over the Earth like a flower, and nothing sorrowful should remain from that passage.

How can your language be so poetic, and so little in harmony with the position you held on Earth?

A. It is because it is my soul that speaks.

Yes, I had acquired knowledge, and God often permits delicate Spirits to incarnate among the most rustic men, in order to give them a foretaste of the refinements within their reach, which they will understand later on.

Without this explanation, so logical and consonant with God's solicitude toward His creatures, it would be difficult to understand what at first sight would seem an anomaly. Indeed, what could be more beautiful, poetic, and graceful than the language of this young woman raised among rough laborers?

The opposite often occurs: — inferior Spirits incarnate among the most advanced men, but with an opposite aim. It is with a view to their own advancement that God places them in contact with an enlightened environment, and sometimes also as an instrument of trial for that world.

What other philosophy can resolve such problems?