THE CHRIST CONSOLER.

The light yoke. — The Consoler promised.

— INSTRUCTIONS FROM THE SPIRITS: Advent of the Spirit of Truth.

The light yoke.

Come unto me, all you who are afflicted and burdened, and I will relieve you. — Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart, and you shall find rest for your souls, for my yoke is gentle and my burden light. (Saint Matthew, chapter XI, vv. 28 to 30.)

All sufferings: miseries, disappointments, physical pains, the loss of beloved beings, find consolation in faith in the future, in confidence in the justice of God, which the Christ came to teach to men.

Upon him who, on the contrary, expects nothing after this life, or who simply doubts, afflictions fall with all their weight, and no hope mitigates his bitterness.

It was this that led Jesus to say: Come unto me, all you who are weary, and I will relieve you. Nevertheless, he makes his assistance and the happiness he promises to the afflicted depend upon a condition. That condition lies in the law taught by him; 4 his yoke is the observance of that law; but this yoke is light and the law is gentle, for it imposes only, as a duty, love and charity.

The Consoler promised.

If you love me, keep my commandments; — and I will pray to my Father, and he will send you another Consoler, that he may abide with you eternally:

— The Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see him and absolutely does not know him. But as for you, you shall know him, because he will remain with you and will be in you. — But the Consoler, who 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. (Saint John, chapter XIV, vv. 15 to 17 and 26.)

Jesus promises another consoler: the Spirit of Truth, whom the world does not yet know, because it is not mature enough to understand him, a consoler whom the Father will send to teach all things and to recall what the Christ has said.

If, therefore, the Spirit of Truth had to come later to teach all things, it is because the Christ had not said everything; if he comes to recall what the Christ said, it is because what he said had been forgotten or poorly understood.

Spiritism comes, at the foretold time, to fulfill the promise of the Christ: the Spirit of Truth presides over its advent; 4 he calls men to the observance of the law; he teaches all things, making understood what Jesus said only in parables.

The Christ warned: “Let those who have ears to hear, hear.” Spiritism comes to open the eyes and the ears, since it speaks without figures or allegories; it lifts the veil intentionally cast over certain mysteries; 6 it comes, finally, to bring supreme consolation to the disinherited of the Earth and to all who suffer, attributing a just cause and a useful purpose to all pains.

The Christ said: “Blessed are the afflicted, for they shall be consoled.” But how can anyone feel happy in suffering, if he does not know why he suffers? Spiritism shows the cause of sufferings in previous existences and in the destination of the Earth, where man expiates his past. It shows the purpose of sufferings, pointing to them as salutary crises that produce the cure and as a means of purification that guarantees happiness in future existences. Man understands that he deserved to suffer and finds the suffering just. He knows that it aids his advancement and accepts it without murmuring, as the worker accepts the labor that will secure him his wages.

Spiritism gives him unshakable faith in the future, and poignant doubt no longer takes possession of his soul. By giving him a view of things from on high, the importance of earthly vicissitudes vanishes into the vast and splendid horizon that it makes him behold, and the prospect of the happiness awaiting him gives him patience, resignation, and the courage to go to the end of the road.

Thus, Spiritism realizes what Jesus said of the promised Consoler: knowledge of things, making man know whence he comes, where he goes, and why he is on the Earth; it draws him toward the true principles of the law of God and consoles through faith and hope.

INSTRUCTIONS FROM THE SPIRITS.

Advent of the Spirit of Truth.

I come, as of old to the straying children of Israel, to bring you the truth and dispel the darkness. Listen to me. Spiritism, as my word did in ancient times, must remind the incredulous that above them reigns the immutable truth: the good God, the great God, who makes the plants germinate and the waves rise.

I revealed the divine doctrine. Like a reaper, I gathered into sheaves the good scattered within Humanity and said: Come unto me, all you who suffer.

But, ungrateful, men turned away from the straight and broad path that leads to the kingdom of my Father and ventured upon the rough trails of impiety.

My Father does not wish to annihilate the human race; he wishes that, helping one another, the dead and the living, that is, dead according to the flesh, since death does not exist, you may succor one another mutually, and that there be heard no longer the voice of the prophets and the apostles, but that of those who no longer live on the Earth, crying out: Pray and believe! for death is the resurrection, life being the sought-after trial during which the virtues you have cultivated will grow and develop like the cedar.

Weak men, who understand the darkness of your intelligences, do not push away the torch that divine clemency places in your hands to light your path and lead you back, lost children, to the bosom of your Father.

I feel myself too greatly moved with compassion for your miseries, for your immense weakness, to refrain from extending a helping hand to the unfortunate strayed ones who, beholding Heaven, fall into the abysses of error.

Believe, love, meditate upon the things that are revealed to you; do not mix the tares with the good seed, the utopias with the truths.

Spiritists! love one another, this is the first teaching; instruct yourselves, this is the second.

In Christianity all truths are found; of human origin are the errors that became rooted in it; 9 behold, from beyond the tomb, which you deemed nothingness, voices cry out to you: Brothers! nothing perishes. Jesus Christ is the vanquisher of evil; be the vanquishers of impiety. — (THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH. Paris, 1860.) n

I come to instruct and console the poor disinherited. I come to tell them to raise their resignation to the level of their trials, to weep, since pain was sacred in the Garden of Olives; but to hope, for to them also the consoling angels will come to wipe away their tears.

Workers, trace your furrow; on the following day resume the toilsome labor of the day before; the work of your hands provides earthly bread for your bodies; your souls, however, are not forgotten; and I, the divine gardener, cultivate them in the silence of your thoughts; 3 when the hour of rest sounds, and the thread of life slips from your hands and your eyes close to the light, you will feel my precious seed arise and germinate within you.

Nothing is lost in the kingdom of our Father, and your sweat and miseries form the treasure that will make you rich in the higher Spheres, where light replaces darkness and where the most stripped among you all will perhaps be the most resplendent.

Verily I say unto you: those who carry their burdens and assist their brothers are my well-beloved; 6 instruct yourselves in the precious doctrine that dispels the error of revolts and shows you the sublime purpose of human trial.

As the wind sweeps away the dust, may the breath of the Spirits likewise dispel your spites against the rich of the world, who are, not rarely, very wretched, since they find themselves subject to trials more dangerous than yours.

I am with you and my apostle instructs you.

Drink from the living fount of love and prepare yourselves, captives of life, to cast yourselves one day, free and joyful, into the bosom of him who created you weak in order to make you perfectible and who wishes that you yourselves shape your own malleable clay, so that you may be the artificers of your immortality. — (THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH. Paris, 1861.)

I am the great physician of souls and I come to bring you the remedy that will cure you; 2 the weak, the suffering, and the infirm are my favorite children; I come to save them.

Come, then, unto me, you who suffer and find yourselves oppressed, and you shall be relieved and consoled; 4 do not seek strength and consolation elsewhere, for the world is powerless to give them.

God addresses a supreme appeal to your hearts, by means of Spiritism; listen to it.

May impiety, falsehood, error, and incredulity be uprooted from your aching souls. They are monsters that suck your purest blood and that open in you wounds almost always mortal. May you, in the future, humble and submissive to the Creator, practice his divine law.

Love and pray; be docile to the Spirits of the Lord; invoke him from the depths of your hearts. He will then send you his well-beloved Son, to instruct you and to say these good words: Here I am; I come to you, because you called me. — (THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH. Bordeaux, 1861.)

God consoles the humble and gives strength to the afflicted who ask it of him. His power covers the Earth and, everywhere, beside each tear he has placed a balm that consoles.

Abnegation and devotion are a continual prayer and contain a profound teaching; 3 human wisdom resides in these two words. May all suffering Spirits understand this truth, instead of crying out against their pains, against the moral sufferings that in this world fall to you as your share. Take, then, as your motto these two words: devotion and abnegation, and you shall be strong, for they sum up all the duties that charity and humility impose upon you.

The sense of duty fulfilled will give your spirit rest and resignation. The heart then beats better, the soul grows serene, and the body is shielded from faintings, for the body feels itself the less strong the more profoundly the spirit is stricken. — (THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH. Havre, 1863.) [1]

[This message, in its complete form, is in “The Mediums' Book,” and at the end of it there is a “Note”

by the Codifier concerning its spiritual author.]