SEEK AND YOU WILL FIND.

Help yourself, and Heaven will help you. — Behold the birds of the air.

— Do not toil for the possession of gold.

Help yourself, and Heaven will help you.

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock at the door and it will be opened to you; for whoever asks receives, and whoever seeks finds, and to him who knocks at the door it will be opened. What man among you would give a stone to the son who asks him for bread? — or, if he asks for a fish, would give him a serpent? — Now, if, being evil as you are, you know how to give good things to your children, is it not logical that, with all the more reason, your Father who is in Heaven would give true goods to those who ask Him for them? (Saint Matthew, chapter VII, vv. 7 to 11.)

From the earthly point of view, the maxim: Seek and you will find is analogous to this other one: Help yourself, and Heaven will help you.

It is the principle of the law of labor and, consequently, of the law of progress, for progress is the child of labor, since labor sets in action the forces of intelligence.

In the infancy of Humanity, man applies his intelligence only to the search for food, for the means of preserving himself from the inclemencies of weather and of defending himself from his enemies. God, however, gave him, beyond what He granted to the animal, the incessant desire for the better, and it is this desire that impels him to the search for the means of improving his position, that leads him to discoveries, to inventions, to the perfecting of Science, for it is Science that provides him with what he lacks.

Through his researches, his intelligence is enlarged, his morality is purified. To the needs of the body succeed those of the spirit: after material food, he needs spiritual food. It is thus that man passes from savagery to civilization.

But very little, even imperceptible in a great number of them, is the progress that each one accomplishes individually in the course of life. How then could Humanity progress, without the preexistence and the reexistence of the soul?

If souls departed every day, never to return, Humanity would renew itself incessantly with the primitive elements, having to do everything, to learn everything. There would be, in that case, no reason for man to find himself more advanced today than in the first ages of the world, since at each birth all the intellectual labor would have to begin anew.

On the contrary, returning with the progress it has already accomplished and acquiring each time something more, the soul passes gradually from barbarism to material civilization and from this to moral civilization. (See:

chapter IV, no. 17.)

If God had exempted man from the labor of the body, his limbs would have atrophied; 2 if He had exempted him from the labor of the intelligence, his spirit would have remained in infancy, in the state of animal instinct;

for this reason He made labor a necessity for him and said to him: Seek and you will find; work and you will produce; 4 in this way you will be the child of your works, you will have the merit of them and you will be rewarded according to what you have done.

By virtue of this principle, the Spirits do not hasten to spare man the labor of researches, bringing him, already made and ready to be used, discoveries and inventions, so that he need do no more than take what they place in his hands, without even the trouble of stooping to pick it up, nor even that of thinking.

If it were so, the laziest could enrich himself and the most ignorant become learned at the cost of nothing, and both attribute to themselves the merit of what they did not do.

No, the Spirits do not come to exempt man from the law of labor: they come solely to show him the goal he must reach and the path that leads to it, saying to him: Walk and you will arrive. You will come upon stones;

look and remove them yourself; we will give you the strength necessary, if you wish to employ it. (The Mediums' Book, part 2, chapter XXVI, no. 291 and following.)

From the moral point of view, these words of Jesus mean:

Ask for the light that may illuminate your path and it will be given to you; 3 ask for strength to resist evil and you will have it; 4 ask for the assistance of the good Spirits and they will come to accompany you and, like the angel of Tobias, will guide you; 5 ask for good counsel and it will never be refused you; 6 knock at our door and it will be opened to you; but ask sincerely, with faith, confidence and fervor; 7 present yourselves with humility and not with arrogance, without which you will be abandoned to your own forces and the falls you suffer will be the punishment of your pride.

Such is the meaning of the words: seek and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you. Behold the birds of the air.

Do not lay up treasures on Earth, where rust and worms consume them and where thieves dig them up and steal them; — lay up treasures in Heaven, where neither rust nor worms consume them; — for where your treasure is, there also is your heart. This is why I tell you: Do not be anxious about knowing where you will find what to eat for the sustenance of your life, nor whence you will draw garments to cover your body. Is not life more than food and the body more than garments? Behold the birds of the air: they neither sow, nor reap, nor store anything in granaries; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more than they? — And which of you can, with all his efforts, add a cubit to his stature? Why also are you anxious about clothing? Behold how the lilies of the fields grow: they neither labor nor spin; — yet I declare to you that not even Solomon, in all his glory, was ever clothed like one of them. — Now, if God takes care to clothe in this manner the grass of the fields, which exists today and tomorrow will be cast into the furnace, how much greater care will He not take to clothe you, O men of little faith! Do not be anxious, then, saying: What shall we eat? or: What shall we drink? or: with what shall we be clothed? — as the pagans do, who go about in search of all these things; for your Father knows that you have need of them. Seek first the kingdom of Heaven and its justice, and all these things will be given to you in addition. — Thus, then, do not become anxious about the day of tomorrow, for tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for each day is its own evil. (Saint Matthew, chapter VI, vv. 19 to 21 and 25 to 34.)

Interpreted literally, these words would be the negation of all foresight, of all labor and, consequently, of all progress.

With such a principle, man would limit himself to waiting passively.

His physical and intellectual forces would remain inactive; 3 if such were his normal condition on Earth, he would never have come out of the primitive state and, if he made of this condition his law for the present time, it would only befit him to live without doing anything.

This could not have been the thought of Jesus, for it would be in contradiction with what He said at other times, with the very laws of Nature. God created man without garments and without shelter, but gave him intelligence to fabricate them. (chapter XIV, no. 6; chapter XXV, no. 2.)

One must not, therefore, see in these words more than a poetic allegory of Providence, which never leaves to abandonment those who trust in it, wishing, nevertheless, that they, for their part, should labor.

If it does not always come with material aid, it inspires the ideas by which the means of getting out of difficulty are found. (chapter XXVII, no. 8.)

God knows our needs and provides for them, as is necessary;

man, however, insatiable in his desires, does not always know how to content himself with what he has: the necessary does not suffice him; he demands the superfluous; Providence, then, leaves him to himself; 9 frequently, he becomes unhappy through his own fault and through having disregarded the voice that warned him through conscience; and God lets him suffer the consequences, so that they may serve him as a lesson for the future.

(chapter V, no. 4.)

The Earth will produce enough to feed all its inhabitants, when men know how to administer, according to the laws of justice, of charity and of love of neighbor, the goods that it gives; 2 when fraternity reigns among peoples, as among the provinces of one same empire, the momentary superfluity of one will supply the momentary insufficiency of the other; and each one will have what is necessary.

The rich man, then, will consider himself as one who possesses a great quantity of seeds; if he scatters them, they will produce a hundredfold for himself and for others; if, however, he eats the seeds alone, if he wastes them and lets the excess of what he has eaten perish, they will produce nothing, and there will not be enough for all; if he heaps them up in his granary, the worms will devour them; 4 hence Jesus said: Do not lay up treasures on Earth, for they are perishable; lay them up in Heaven, where they are eternal.

In other terms: do not attach to material goods more importance than to spiritual ones, and know how to sacrifice the former to the latter. (chapter XVI, no. 7 and following.)

Charity and fraternity are not decreed by laws. If both are not in the heart, selfishness will always reign there. It falls to Spiritism to make them penetrate into it. Do not toil for the possession of gold.

Do not toil to possess gold, or silver, or any other coin in your pockets. — Do not prepare a bag for the journey, nor two garments, nor sandals, nor staffs, for he who labors deserves to be sustained.

On entering any city or village, seek to learn who is worthy to lodge you and remain in his house until you depart again. — On entering the house, greet it thus: May peace be in this house. — If the house is worthy of it, your peace will come upon it; if it is not, your peace will return to you. When anyone does not wish to receive you, nor listen to you, shake off, on leaving that house or city, the dust of your feet. — I tell you, in truth: on the day of judgment, Sodom and Gomorrah will be treated less rigorously than this city. (Saint Matthew, chapter X, vv. 9 to 15.)

In that epoch, there was nothing strange in these words that Jesus addressed to His apostles, when He sent them, for the first time, to announce the good news. They were in accord with the patriarchal customs of the Orient, where the traveler always found welcome in the tent.

But then travelers were rare; among modern peoples, the development of circulation came to create new customs; those of ancient times are preserved only in distant countries, where the great movement has not yet penetrated; and if Jesus returned today, He could no longer say to His apostles: Set out on your way without provisions.

Alongside the proper sense, these words hold a very profound moral sense. In uttering them, Jesus taught His disciples to trust in Providence; 4 moreover, they, having nothing, would not awaken covetousness in those who received them; 5 it was a means of distinguishing the charitable from the selfish; this is why He said to them: "Seek to learn who is worthy to lodge you" or: 6 who is humane enough to shelter the traveler who has nothing with which to pay, for these are worthy to hear your words; 7 it is by their charity that you will recognize them.

As for those who would not wish to receive them, nor hear them, did He perhaps recommend to the apostles that they curse them, that they impose themselves upon them, that they use violence and constraint to convert them? No; He commanded, purely and simply, that they go away, in search of persons of good will.

The same is said today by Spiritism to its adherents: 10 do no violence to any conscience; 11 force no one to abandon his belief in order to adopt yours;

do not anathematize those who do not think as you do; 13 welcome those who come to you and leave in peace those who repel you.

Remember the words of the Christ; formerly, Heaven was taken by violence;

today it is taken by gentleness. (chapter IV, no. 10 and 11.)