MY KINGDOM IS NOT OF THIS WORLD.

The future life.

— The royalty of Jesus.

— The point of view.

— INSTRUCTIONS OF THE SPIRITS: An earthly royalty.

Pilate, having entered the palace again and brought Jesus into his presence, asked him: Are you the king of the Jews? — Jesus answered him: My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my people would have fought to prevent me from falling into the hands of the Jews; but my kingdom is not yet here.

Pilate then said to him: You are, then, a king? — Jesus answered him:

You say it: I am a king; I was not born and did not come into this world except to bear witness to the truth. He who belongs to the truth listens to my voice. (Saint John, chapter XVIII, vv. 33, 36, and 37.)

The future life.

By these words, Jesus clearly refers to the future life, which he presents, in all circumstances, as the goal to which Humanity will come and as that which must constitute the object of man's greatest preoccupations on Earth; 2 all his maxims relate to this great principle. Indeed, without the future life, the greater part of his moral precepts would have no reason for being, whence it comes that those who do not believe in the future life, imagining that he spoke only of the present life, do not understand them, or consider them childish.

This dogma can therefore be regarded as the axis of the teaching of Christ, for which reason it has been placed in one of the first positions at the front of this work. For it must be the point of aim of all men; it alone justifies the anomalies of earthly life and shows itself to be in accord with the justice of God.

The Jews had only very imprecise ideas about the future life. They believed in angels, considering them privileged beings of Creation; they did not know, however, that men can one day become angels and share in the happiness of these.

According to them, the observance of the laws of God was rewarded with earthly goods, with the supremacy of the nation to which they belonged, with victories over their enemies. The public calamities and the defeats were the punishment for disobedience to those laws.

Moses could not have said more than that to a pastoral and ignorant people, who needed to be moved, above all, by the things of this world. Later, Jesus revealed to him that there is another world, where the justice of God follows its course; 4 this is the world that he promises to those who fulfill the commandments of God and where the good will find their reward. There is his kingdom; there is where he is found in his glory and to where he would return when he left the Earth.

Jesus, however, conforming his teaching to the state of the men of his time, did not judge it fitting to give them complete light, perceiving that they would be dazzled, since they would not understand it. He limited himself to presenting the future life, in a certain way, only as a principle, as a Law of Nature whose action no one can escape.

Every Christian, then, necessarily believes in the future life; but the idea that many form of it is still vague, incomplete, and, for that very reason, false on various points. For a great number of persons, there is, in this respect, no more than a belief, lacking absolute certainty, whence the doubts and even the incredulity.

Spiritism has come to complete, on this point, as on several others, the teaching of Christ, doing so when men already show themselves mature enough to apprehend the truth.

With Spiritism, the future life ceases to be a simple article of faith, a mere hypothesis; it becomes a material reality, which the facts demonstrate, since those who describe it in all its phases and in all its vicissitudes are eyewitnesses, and in such a way that, besides making any doubt on this matter impossible, they grant to the most common intelligence the possibility of imagining it in its true aspect, as everyone imagines a country whose detailed description they read; 9 now, the description of the future life is made so circumstantially, the conditions, fortunate or unfortunate, of the existence of those who are found there, as they themselves depict them, are so rational, that everyone here, in spite of himself, recognizes and declares to himself that it cannot be otherwise, for, this being so, the true justice of God becomes manifest. The royalty of Jesus.

That the kingdom of Jesus is not of this world everyone understands; but, also on Earth, will he not have a royalty? The title of king does not always imply the exercise of temporal power. This title is given, by unanimous consent, to all those who, by their genius, rise to the first rank in any order of ideas, to all those who dominate their century and influence the progress of Humanity.

It is in this sense that one is accustomed to say: the king or prince of philosophers, of artists, of poets, of writers, etc. Does this royalty, springing from personal merit, consecrated by posterity, not often reveal a far greater preponderance than that which the royal crown encircles?

The first is imperishable, while this other is the plaything of vicissitudes; the generations that succeed one another bless the first forever, whereas, at times, they curse the other.

This one, the earthly, ends with life; the moral royalty is prolonged and maintains its power, governing, above all, after death.

Under this aspect, is Jesus not a more powerful king than the potentates of the Earth? He was right, then, to say to Pilate, as he did: I am a king, but my kingdom is not of this world. The point of view.

The clear and precise idea that one forms of the future life provides an unshakable faith in what is to come, a faith that carries enormous consequences upon the moralization of men, because it completely changes the point of view under which they regard earthly life.

For one who places himself, in thought, in the spiritual life, which is indefinite, corporeal life becomes a simple passage, a brief stay in a still ungrateful country.

The vicissitudes and tribulations of this life are no more than incidents that he endures with patience, knowing them to be of short duration, since a more fortunate state must follow them.

Death will have nothing more that is terrifying; it ceases to be the door that opens to nothingness and becomes the one that gives onto liberation, through which the exile enters a dwelling of blessedness and of peace.

Knowing his stay in the place where he is found to be temporary and not definitive, he pays less attention to the preoccupations of life, resulting for him from this a calm of spirit that takes from that life much of its bitterness.

By the simple fact of doubting the future life, man directs all his thoughts toward earthly life. Without any certainty as to what is to come, he gives everything to the present.

Discerning no good more precious than those of the Earth, he becomes like the child who sees nothing beyond his toys. And there is nothing he will not do to obtain the only goods that appear to him to be real; 8 the loss of the least of them causes him stinging grief; a mistake, a disappointment, an unsatisfied ambition, an injustice of which he is the victim, wounded pride or vanity are so many torments, which transform his existence into a perennial anguish, he inflicting upon himself, in this way, a true torture of every instant.

Placing the point of view from which he considers corporeal life in the very place where he finds himself there, everything that surrounds him assumes vast proportions. The evil that strikes him, like the good that touches others, acquires great importance in his eyes.

To one who is within the interior of a city, everything seems great to him: thus the men who occupy the high positions, as well as the monuments. But let him climb a mountain, and at once men and things will seem very small to him.

This is what happens to one who regards earthly life from the point of view of the future life; Humanity, as much as the stars of the firmament, is lost in immensity. He perceives then that the great and the small are confounded, like ants upon a little mound of earth; that proletarians and potentates are of the same stature, and he laments that these ephemeral creatures give themselves over to so many labors to conquer a place that will elevate them so little and that they will keep for so short a time.

From this it follows that the importance given to earthly goods is always in inverse ratio to faith in the future life.

If everyone thought in this manner, one would say, everything on Earth would be in peril, since no one would any longer occupy himself with earthly things. No; man, instinctively, seeks his well-being and, although certain that he will remain only for a short time in the place where he is found, he takes care to be there as well, or as little badly, as is possible for him;

there is no one who, coming upon a thorn beneath his hand, does not withdraw it, so as not to prick himself. Now, the desire for well-being forces man to improve everything, impelled as he is by the instinct of progress and of conservation, which is in the laws of Nature.

He, then, works out of necessity, out of taste, and out of duty, obeying, in this way, the designs of Providence which, for such an end, placed him on Earth.

Simply, one who is preoccupied with the future attaches only relative importance to the present and easily consoles himself for his failures, thinking of the destiny that awaits him.

God, consequently, does not condemn earthly enjoyments; he condemns, rather, the abuse of these enjoyments to the detriment of the things of the soul.

It is against such abuses that those forearm themselves who apply to themselves these words of Jesus: My kingdom is not of this world.

One who identifies himself with the future life resembles the rich man who loses a small sum without emotion; 8 one whose thoughts are concentrated on earthly life resembles the poor man who loses all that he possesses and despairs.

Spiritism dilates thought and opens new horizons for it; 2 instead of that narrow and mean vision, which concentrates it on the present life, which makes of the instant we live on Earth the sole and fragile axis of the eternal future, Spiritism shows that this life is no more than one link in the harmonious and magnificent whole of the work of the Creator; 3 it shows the solidarity that joins together all the existences of one same being, all the beings of one same world, and the beings of all worlds. It thus grants a basis and a reason for being to universal fraternity, whereas the doctrine of the creation of the soul at the occasion of the birth of each body makes all beings strangers to one another.

This solidarity among the parts of one same whole explains what presents itself as inexplicable, so long as one considers only a single point. This whole, at the time of Christ, men would not have been able to understand, which is why he reserved for other times the making of it known. INSTRUCTIONS OF THE SPIRITS.

An earthly royalty.

Who better than I can understand the truth of these words of Our Lord: My kingdom is not of this world? Pride was my ruin on Earth. Who, then, would understand the utter worthlessness of the kingdoms of the Earth, if I did not understand it?

What did I bring with me from my earthly royalty? Nothing, absolutely nothing; 3 and, as if to make the lesson more terrible, it did not even accompany me to the tomb! A queen among men, as a queen I thought I would enter the kingdom of the Heavens! What disillusion! 4 what humiliation, when, instead of being received here as a sovereign, I saw above me, but far above, men whom I judged insignificant and whom I despised, because they had no noble blood!

Oh! how I then understood the sterility of the honors and grandeurs that with such avidity are courted on Earth!

To earn a place in this kingdom, abnegation is necessary, humility, charity in all its celestial practice, benevolence toward all; 7 you are not asked what you were, nor what position you occupied, but what good you did, how many tears you wiped away.

Oh! Jesus, you said it, your kingdom is not of this world, because it is necessary to suffer to reach Heaven, to which the steps of a throne bring no one nearer. To it lead only the most painful paths of life. Seek, then, its road, through the heather and the thorns, not amid the flowers.

Men run to attain earthly goods, as if they were to keep them forever. Here, however, all the illusions vanish. Soon they perceive that they grasped only a shadow and despised the only real and lasting goods, the only ones that profit them in the celestial abode, the only ones that can grant them access to it.

Have compassion on those who have not won the kingdom of the Heavens; help them with your prayers, for prayer brings man near to the Most High; it is the bond of union between Heaven and Earth: do not forget it. — (A QUEEN OF FRANCE. Havre, 1863.)