A STRANGE MORALITY.

Whoever does not hate his father and his mother. — To forsake father, mother, and children.

— To leave the dead to bury their dead.

— I came not to bring peace, but division.

Whoever does not hate his father and his mother.

As a great multitude of people walked in his footsteps, Jesus, turning, said to them: If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and his mother, his wife and his children, his brothers and sisters, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. — And whoever does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. — Thus, he among you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. (St.

Luke, chapter XIV, vv. 25 to 27 and 33.)

He who loves his father or his mother more than me is not worthy of me; he who loves his son or his daughter more than me, is not worthy of me. (St.

Matthew, chapter X v. 37.)

Certain words, indeed very rare, attributed to the Christ, make such a singular contrast with his habitual manner of speaking that one instinctively rejects their literal sense, without the sublimity of his doctrine suffering any harm.

Written after his death, since none of the Gospels was composed while he was alive, one may legitimately believe that, in cases such as this, the substance of his thought was not well expressed, or, what is no less probable, that the original sense, passing from one language to another, must have undergone some alteration. It is enough for an error to have been committed once for the copyists to have repeated it, as often happens with regard to historical facts.

The term hate, in this sentence of St. Luke: If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and his mother, is included in that hypothesis. It will occur to no one to attribute it to Jesus. It will therefore be superfluous to discuss it and, still less, to attempt to justify it. It would matter, first, to know whether he pronounced it and, if so, whether, in the language in which he expressed himself, the word in question had the same value as in ours.

In this passage of St. John: “He who hates his life, in this world, preserves it for life eternal,” it is beyond doubt that it does not express the idea we attribute to it.

The Hebrew language was not rich and contained many words with several meanings. Such, for example, is the one that, in Genesis, designates the phases of creation: it served, at the same time, to express any period of time and the daily revolution. Hence, later, its translation by the term day and the belief that the world was the work of six times twenty-four hours. Such, also, is the word by which a camel and a cable were designated, since cables were made of camel's hair.

Hence its having been translated by the term camel, in the allegory of the eye of a needle. n (See chapter XVI:

no. 2.)

It is fitting, moreover, to attend to the customs and the character of peoples, by reason of the great influence they have on the particular genius of their idioms. Without this knowledge, the true sense of certain words often escapes us. From one language to another, the same term takes on greater or lesser force. It may, in one, involve insult or blasphemy, and lack importance in another, according to the idea it arouses. In the same language, some words lose their value with the passing of the centuries. That is why a rigorously literal translation does not always perfectly express the thought and why, in order to preserve exactness, one must sometimes employ not corresponding terms, but other equivalents, or paraphrases.

These notes find special application in the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures and, in particular, of the Gospels. If we do not take into account the milieu in which Jesus lived, we are exposed to misunderstandings about the value of certain expressions and certain facts, as a consequence of the habit one has of likening others to oneself.

In any case, the term hate must be stripped of its modern acceptation, as being contrary to the spirit of the teaching of Jesus. (See also chapter XIV: no. 5 and following.)

To forsake his father, his mother, and his children.

He who shall have left, for my name's sake, his house, his brothers, or his sisters, or his father, or his mother, or his wife, or his children, or his lands, shall receive a hundredfold of all this and shall have for his inheritance life eternal. (St.

Matthew, chapter XIX, v. 29.)

Then Peter said to him: As for us, you see that we have left everything and followed you.

— Jesus observed to him: I say to you, in truth, that no one shall leave, for the kingdom of God, his house, or his father, or his mother, or his brothers, or his wife, or his children, — who shall not receive even in this world much more, and in the age to come life eternal. (St.

Luke, chapter XVIII, vv. 28 to 30.)

Another said to him: Lord, I will follow you; but allow me first to dispose of what I have in my house. — Jesus answered him: Whoever, having put his hand to the plow, looks back, is not fit for the kingdom of God. (St.

Luke, chapter IX, vv. 61 and 62.)

Without discussing the words, one must here seek the thought, which was, evidently, this: “The interests of the future life prevail over all interests and all human considerations,” 3 because this thought is in accord with the substance of the doctrine of Jesus, whereas the idea of a renunciation of the family would be the negation of that doctrine.

Do we not, moreover, have before our eyes the application of these maxims in the sacrifice of family interests and affections to those of the Fatherland? Is he, perchance, blamed who leaves his father, his mother, his brothers, his wife, his children, to march in defense of his country? Is he not, on the contrary, recognized as having great merit in tearing himself away from the sweetness of the domestic hearth, from the bonds of friendship, in order to fulfill a duty?

It is that, in such a case, there are duties that take precedence over other duties.

Does the law not impose upon the daughter the obligation to leave her parents in order to accompany her husband? The world teems with cases in which the most painful separations are necessary. Yet not for that are the affections broken. Distance diminishes neither the respect nor the solicitude of the child toward the parents, nor the tenderness of these toward that one.

One sees, therefore, that, even taken literally, except for the term hate, those words would not be a negation of the commandment that prescribes to man to honor his father and his mother, nor of paternal affection; with all the more reason would they not be so, if taken according to the spirit.

Their aim was to show, by means of a hyperbole, how imperious for the creature is the duty of occupying oneself with the future life. Besides, they would be little shocking to a people and in an age in which, as a consequence of the customs, the bonds of family were less strong than within a morally more advanced civilization. These bonds, weaker among primitive peoples, grow stronger with the development of sensibility and moral sense.

Separation itself is necessary to progress. Thus families, like races, degenerate as soon as they do not intercross, as soon as they are not grafted upon one another. This is a law of Nature, as much in the interest of moral progress as in that of physical progress.

Here, things are considered only from the earthly point of view;

Spiritism makes us see them from a higher standpoint, showing that the true bonds of affection are those of the Spirit and not those of the body; that those bonds are not broken by separation, nor even by the death of the body; that they grow stronger in the spiritual life, through the purification of the Spirit, a consoling truth from which creatures draw great strength to bear the vicissitudes of life. (Chap. IV, no. 18; chapter XIV, no. 8.)

To leave to the dead the care of burying their dead.

He said to another: Follow me; and the other answered: Lord, allow me first to go and bury my father. — Jesus retorted to him: Leave to the dead the care of burying their dead; as for you, go and announce the kingdom of God. (St.

Luke, chapter IX, vv. 59 and 60.)

What can these words mean: “Leave to the dead the care of burying their dead?” The preceding considerations show, in the first place, that, in the circumstances in which they were uttered, they could not contain censure of the one who considered it a duty of filial piety to go and bury his father. They have, nevertheless, a profound sense, which only a more complete knowledge of the spiritual life could render perceptible.

The spiritual life is, in effect, the true life, it is the normal life of the Spirit, the earthly existence being for it transitory and fleeting, a kind of death, when compared to the splendor and the activity of the other.

The body is no more than a coarse garment that temporarily covers the Spirit, a true fetter that binds it to the earthly soil, from which it feels happy to free itself.

The respect that is consecrated to the dead is not inspired by matter; it is, through remembrance, the absent Spirit that infuses it; it is analogous to that which one devotes to the objects that belonged to him, that he touched, and that the persons attached to him keep as relics.

This was what that man could not understand by himself; Jesus teaches it to him, saying: Do not concern yourself with the body, think rather of the Spirit; go and teach the kingdom of God; go and tell men that their homeland is not the Earth, but Heaven, since only there does the true life unfold. I came not to bring peace, but division.

Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the Earth; I came not to bring peace, but the sword; — for I came to separate the son from his father, the daughter from her mother, the daughter-in-law from her mother-in-law; — and a man shall have for enemies those of his own household. (St.

Matthew, chapter X, vv. 34 to 36.)

I came to cast fire upon the Earth; and what do I desire but that it be kindled? — I have to be baptized with a baptism, and how I feel desirous that it be accomplished!

Do you judge that I have come to bring peace to the Earth? No, I affirm to you; on the contrary, I came to bring division; — for, henceforth, if there are in a house five persons, they shall be divided one against another:

three against two and two against three. — The father shall be in division with the son, and the son with the father, the mother with the daughter and the daughter with the mother, the mother-in-law with the daughter-in-law and the daughter-in-law with the mother-in-law. (St.

Luke, chapter XII, vv. 49 to 53.)

Is it indeed possible that Jesus, the personification of gentleness and goodness, Jesus, who never ceased to preach love of one's neighbor, should have said: I came not to bring peace, but the sword; I came to separate the son from the father, the wife from the husband; I came to cast fire upon the Earth and I am in haste that it be kindled?

Are not these words in flagrant contradiction with his teachings?

Would there not be blasphemy in attributing to him the language of a bloodthirsty and devastating conqueror? No, there is neither blasphemy nor contradiction in these words, for it was indeed he who pronounced them, and they bear witness to his lofty wisdom. Only, somewhat ambiguous, the form does not express his thought with exactness, which gave occasion for people to be mistaken regarding their true sense. Taken literally they would tend to transform his mission, wholly of peace, into another of disturbance and discord, an absurd consequence, which good sense rejects, since Jesus could not contradict himself.

(chapter XIV, no. 6.)

Every new idea necessarily encounters opposition and there is none that becomes established without struggles. Now, in such cases, the resistance is always proportional to the importance of the foreseen results, because, the greater it is, the more numerous are the interests it wounds.

If it is notoriously false, if it is judged free of consequences, no one is alarmed; all let it pass, certain that it lacks vitality.

If, however, it is true, if it rests on a solid base, if a future is foreseen for it, a secret presentiment warns its antagonists that it constitutes a danger for them and for the order of things in whose maintenance they are engaged. They hurl themselves, then, against it and against its adherents.

Thus, then, the measure of the importance and of the results of a new idea is found in the emotion that its appearance causes, in the violence of the opposition it provokes, as well as in the degree and the persistence of the anger of its adversaries.

Jesus came to proclaim a doctrine that would undermine at the base the abuses on which lived the Pharisees, the scribes, and the priests of his time. They therefore immolated him, certain that, in killing the man, they would kill the idea. This, however, survived, because it was true; it grew great, because it corresponded to the designs of God and, born in a small and obscure town of Judea, it went to plant its standard in the very capital of the pagan world, in the face of its most relentless enemies, of those who most strove to combat it, because it subverted secular beliefs to which they clung much more out of interest than out of conviction. Struggles of the most terrible kind awaited its apostles there; the victims were innumerable; the idea, nevertheless, grew ever greater and triumphed, because, as truth, it surpassed those that preceded it.

It is to be noted that Christianity arose when Paganism had already entered into decline and was struggling against the lights of reason. It was still practiced for form's sake; the belief, however, had disappeared; only personal interest sustained it.

Now, interest is tenacious; it never yields to evidence; it grows the more irritated the more peremptory and demonstrative of its error are the arguments opposed to it. It knows full well that it is wrong, but that does not shake it, since true faith is not in its soul. What it most fears is light, which gives sight to the blind. Error is profitable to it; it clings to it and defends it.

Had not Socrates, too, taught a doctrine to a certain extent analogous to that of the Christ? Why did his doctrine not prevail in that age, within one of the most intelligent peoples of the Earth? It is that the time had not yet come. He sowed in unploughed soil; Paganism was not yet worn out.

The Christ received his mission at a propitious time. Much was lacking, it is true, for all the men of his age to be at the height of Christian ideas, but there was among them a more general aptitude to assimilate them, since one was already beginning to feel the void that vulgar beliefs left in the soul. Socrates and Plato had opened the way and predisposed minds. (See, in the Introduction, item IV: Socrates and Plato, precursors of the Christian idea and of Spiritism.)

Unfortunately, the adherents of the new doctrine did not agree as to the interpretation of the words of the Master, veiled, most often, by allegory and by the figures of language. Hence the birth, without delay, of numerous sects, all claiming to possess, exclusively, the truth, and the insufficiency of eighteen centuries to bring them into agreement.

Forgetting the most important of the divine precepts, the one that Jesus placed as the cornerstone of his edifice and as the express condition of salvation: charity, fraternity, and love of one's neighbor, those sects cast anathema upon one another, and hurled themselves one against another, the stronger crushing the weaker, drowning them in blood, annihilating them in tortures and in the flames of the stake.

Victors over paganism, the Christians, from persecuted that they were, made themselves persecutors. By iron and fire did they set about planting the cross of the spotless Lamb in the two worlds.

It is a constant fact that religious wars were the most cruel, caused more victims than political wars; in no others were so many acts of atrocity and of barbarism committed.

Does the blame fall upon the doctrine of the Christ? No, certainly, for it formally condemns all violence. Did he ever say to his disciples: Go, kill, massacre, burn those who do not believe as you do? No; what, on the contrary, he said to them was: All men are brothers and God is supremely merciful; love your neighbor; love your enemies; do good to those who persecute you.

He said to them, moreover: Whoever kills with the sword shall perish by the sword. The responsibility, therefore, does not belong to the doctrine of Jesus, but to those who interpreted it falsely and transformed it into an instrument fit to satisfy their passions; it belongs to those who scorned these words: My kingdom is not of this world.

In his profound wisdom, he had the foresight of what would happen. But these things were inevitable, because inherent to the inferiority of human nature, which could not transform itself suddenly. It was necessary for Christianity to pass through this long and cruel trial of eighteen centuries, in order to show all its strength, seeing that, despite all the evil committed in its name, it came out of it pure. It was never in question. The invectives always fell back upon those who abused it. At each act of intolerance, it has always been said: If Christianity were better understood and better practiced, this would not occur.

When Jesus declares: Do not believe that I have come to bring peace, but rather division, his thought was this: “Do not believe that my doctrine will establish itself peacefully; it will bring bloody struggles, having for pretext my name, because men will not have understood me, or will not have wished to understand me;

brothers, separated by their respective beliefs, will draw the sword one against another and division will reign within one and the same family, whose members do not share the same belief.

I came to cast fire upon the Earth in order to purge it of errors and prejudices, in the same way that fire is set to a field in order to destroy the weeds in it, and I am in haste that the fire be kindled so that the purification may be more rapid, seeing that from the conflict truth will come forth triumphant; 4 to war will succeed peace; to the hatred of parties, universal fraternity; to the darkness of fanaticism, the light of enlightened faith.

Then, when the field is prepared, I will send you the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, who will come to reestablish all things, that is, who, making known the true sense of my words, which the more enlightened men will at last be able to understand, will put an end to the fratricidal struggle that disunites the children of the same God.

Weary, at last, of a combat without result, which brings with it only desolation and disturbance even into the bosom of families, men will recognize where their true interests lie, with regard to this world and to the other. They will see on which side are the friends and the enemies of their tranquility. All will then place themselves under the same banner: that of charity, and things will be reestablished on the Earth, in accordance with the truth and the principles that I have taught you.”

Spiritism comes to realize, in the foreseen age, the promises of the Christ. Yet it cannot do so without destroying the abuses. Like Jesus, it runs up against pride, egoism, ambition, cupidity, blind fanaticism, which, driven to their last entrenchments, try to bar its path and stir up obstacles and persecutions against it;

it too, therefore, has to combat; but the time of bloody struggles and persecutions has passed; those it will have to suffer are all of a moral order and their end is near; 3 the first lasted centuries; these will last only a few years, because the light, instead of departing from a single focus, bursts forth from all points of the Globe and will more promptly open the eyes of the blind.

These words of Jesus must, then, be understood with reference to the wraths that his doctrine would provoke, to the momentary conflicts to which it was going to give cause, to the struggles it would have to sustain before becoming firmly established, as happened to the Hebrews before entering the Promised Land, and not as deriving from a premeditated design on his part to sow disorder and confusion.

The evil would come from men and not from him, who was like the physician who presents himself to cure, but whose remedies provoke a salutary crisis, attacking the bad humors of the sick person. [1] Non odit, in Latin: Kaï ou miseï in Greek, does not mean to hate, but rather to love less. What the Greek verb miseïn expresses, the Hebrew verb, of which Jesus must have made use, expresses still better. This verb does not mean only to hate, but also to love less, not to love equally, as much as another. In the Syriac dialect, of which, it is said, Jesus made more frequent use, this meaning is still better marked. It is in this sense that Genesis (chapter XXIX, vv. 30 and 31) says: “And Jacob also loved Rachel more than Leah, and Jehovah, seeing that Leah was hated…” It is evident that the true sense here is: less loved. Thus it should be translated. In many other Hebrew passages and, above all, Syriac ones, the same verb is employed in the sense of not loving as much as another, so that it would be a contradiction in sense to translate it by to hate, which has another well-determined acceptation. The text of St. Matthew, moreover, removes all difficulty. (Note of Mr. Pezzani.)