LAW OF ADORATION.

The aim of adoration.

— 2. Outward adoration. — 3. The contemplative life. — 4. On prayer. — 5. Polytheism.

— 6. Sacrifices.

The aim of adoration.

In what does adoration consist?

“In the elevation of thought to God.

By adoration, man draws his soul near to Him.”

Does adoration arise from an innate sentiment, or is it the fruit of teaching?

“An innate sentiment, like that of the existence of God.

The consciousness of his weakness leads man to bow before Him who can protect him.”

Have there been peoples destitute of all sentiment of adoration?

“No, for there have never been peoples of atheists.

All understand that above everything there is a Supreme Being.”

May the natural law be regarded as the originating source of adoration?

“Adoration is in the natural law, 2 for it results from a sentiment innate in man.

It is for this reason that it exists among all peoples, though under different forms.”

Outward adoration.

Does adoration need outward manifestations?

“True adoration is of the heart.

In all your actions, remember always that the Lord has His gaze upon you.”

a — Is outward adoration useful?

“Yes, if it does not consist in a vain pretense. It is always useful to set a good example.

But those who do so only out of affectation and self-love, belying with their conduct their apparent piety, set a bad example and do not imagine the harm they cause.”

Does God have a preference for those who adore Him in this or that manner?

“God prefers those who adore Him from the bottom of their heart, with sincerity, doing good and avoiding evil, to those who think they honor Him with ceremonies that do not make them better toward their fellow men.

“All men are brothers and children of God. He draws to Himself all who obey His laws, whatever the form under which they express them.

“He is a hypocrite whose piety is reduced to outward acts. He sets a bad example, anyone whose adoration is affected and contradicts his conduct.

“I declare to you that he has religion only on the lips and not in the soul, who professes to adore Christ but who is proud, envious, and jealous, hard and implacable toward others, or ambitious for the goods of this world.

God, who sees all, will say: he who knows the truth is a hundred times more guilty of the evil he does than the ignorant savage who lives in the desert. And as such will he be treated on the day of justice.

If a blind man, passing by, knocks you down, you will forgive him; if it is a man who sees perfectly well, you will complain, and rightly so.

“Do not ask, then, whether there is some form of adoration that is more fitting, for that would be tantamount to asking whether it pleases God more to be adored in one language than in another.

Once more I say to you: songs do not reach Him except when they pass through the door of the heart.”

Does he deserve censure who practices a religion in which he does not believe from the bottom of his heart, doing so only out of human respect and so as not to scandalize those who think differently?

“In this, as in many other things, the intention constitutes the rule.

He does not act wrongly who, in so doing, has in view only respecting the beliefs of others. He acts better than one who ridicules them, because in that case he fails in charity.

But he who practices it out of interest and ambition makes himself despicable in the eyes of God and of men.

God cannot be pleased by those who feign to humble themselves before Him solely to win the applause of men.”

Is individual adoration preferable to adoration in common?

“United by the communion of thoughts and sentiments, men have greater strength to draw the good Spirits to themselves. The same happens when they gather to adore God.

Do not believe, however, that private adoration is less valuable, for each one can adore God by thinking of Him.”

The contemplative life.

Do those who devote themselves to the contemplative life have any merit before God, since they do no harm and think only of God?

“No, for, although it is true that they do no evil, it is also true that they do no good and are useless.

Moreover, not to do good is already an evil.

God wills that man think of Him, but He does not will that man think only of Him, for He has imposed upon him duties to fulfill on Earth.

He who spends all his time in meditation and contemplation does nothing meritorious in the eyes of God, because he lives a life entirely personal and useless to Humanity, and God will demand of him an account of the good he has not done.”

On prayer.

Is prayer pleasing to God?

“Prayer is always pleasing to God when dictated by the heart, for, to Him, the intention is everything.

Thus, the prayer of the inmost self is preferable to Him over the prayer that is read, however beautiful it may be, if it is read more with the lips than with the heart.

Prayer pleases Him when said with faith, with fervor and sincerity. But do not believe that He is touched by that of the frivolous, proud, and selfish man, unless it signifies, on his part, an act of sincere repentance and of true humility.”

What is the general character of prayer?

“Prayer is an act of adoration.

To pray to God is to think of Him; it is to draw near to Him; it is to place oneself in communication with Him.

By means of prayer we may set ourselves three things: to praise, to ask, to give thanks.”

Does prayer make man better?

“Yes, for he who prays with fervor and confidence makes himself stronger against the temptations of evil, 2 and God sends him good Spirits to assist him. This is a help that is never refused him when asked for with sincerity.”

a — How is it that certain persons who pray much are, nevertheless, of bad character, jealous, envious, impertinent, lacking in benevolence and indulgence, and even, sometimes, vicious?

“The essential thing is not to pray much, but to pray well.

Such persons suppose that all the merit lies in the length of the prayer, and they close their eyes to their own faults.

They make of prayer an occupation, an employment of time, but never a study of themselves.

The ineffectiveness, in such cases, is not in the remedy, but in the manner in which they apply it.”

Can we usefully ask God to forgive our faults?

“God knows how to discern good from evil; prayer does not hide faults.

He who asks God forgiveness for his faults obtains it only by changing his conduct.

Good actions are the best prayer, for acts are worth more than words.”

Can one usefully pray for another?

“The Spirit of the one who prays acts through his will to do good. By means of prayer he draws to himself the good Spirits, and these associate themselves with the good he wishes to do.”

Thought and will represent in us a power of action that reaches far beyond the limits of our corporeal sphere. The prayer we make for another is an act of that will. If it is ardent and sincere, it can call, to the aid of the one for whom we pray, the good Spirits, who will come to suggest good thoughts to him and to give the strength that his body and his soul may need.

But here too, the prayer of the heart is everything; that of the lips is worth nothing.

Can the prayers that we make for ourselves change the nature of our trials and divert their course?

“Your trials are in the hands of God, and there are some that must be borne to the end; but God always takes resignation into account.

Prayer brings the good Spirits near to you, and, these giving you the strength to bear them courageously, they seem less harsh to you.

We have said that prayer is never useless when well made, because it strengthens the one who prays, which already constitutes a great result. Help yourself and Heaven will help you, as you well know.

Moreover, it is not possible for God to change the order of nature at the whim of each one, for what, from your petty point of view and that of your ephemeral life, seems to you a great evil is almost always a great good in the general order of the Universe.

Besides, of how many evils does man himself become the very author, through his improvidence or through his faults? He is punished in that wherein he sinned.

Nevertheless, just supplications are granted more often than you suppose.

You ordinarily think that God has not heard you because He has not worked a miracle in your favor, whereas He assists you by means so natural that they seem to you the work of chance or of the force of things.

Often too, indeed most often, He suggests to you the idea that brings you out of the difficulty by your own effort.”

Is it useful that we pray for the dead and for the suffering Spirits? And, in this case, how can our prayers afford them relief and shorten their sufferings? Do they have the power to soften the justice of God?

“Prayer cannot have the effect of changing the designs of God, 2 but the soul for whom one prays experiences relief, because it thus receives a testimony of the interest it inspires in the one who pleads for it, and also because the unhappy one always feels a refreshment when he finds charitable souls who have compassion on his sufferings.

On the other hand, by means of prayer, the one who prays urges the unhappy one to repentance and to the desire to do what is necessary in order to be happy.

It is in this sense that his pain may be shortened for him, if, on his part, he seconds the prayer with goodwill.

The desire to improve, awakened by prayer, draws toward the suffering Spirit better Spirits, who go to enlighten him, console him, and give him hope.

Jesus prayed for the lost sheep, showing you, in that way, how guilty you would become if you did not do the same for those who most need your prayers.”

What should be thought of the opinion of those who reject prayer on behalf of the dead, because it is not prescribed in the Gospel?

“To men Christ said: Love one another. This recommendation contains that of man employing every possible means to bear witness to other men of affection, without His having entered into details as to the manner of attaining that end.

If it is true that nothing can make the Creator, the image of perfect justice, fail to apply that justice to all the actions of the Spirit, it is no less true that the prayer you address to Him on behalf of the one who inspires affection in you constitutes, for that one, a testimony that you remember him, a testimony that will necessarily contribute to softening his sufferings and consoling him. As soon as he manifests the slightest repentance, but only then, he is succored.

Never, however, will he be left in ignorance that a sympathetic soul has occupied itself with him. On the contrary, he will be left in the sweet belief that the intercession of that soul was useful to him. From this there necessarily results, on his part, a sentiment of gratitude and affection for the one who gave him that proof of friendship or of piety.

In consequence, there will grow in the one and in the other, reciprocally, the love that Christ recommended to men. Both, then, will thus have made themselves obedient to the law of love and of union of all beings, the divine law from which will result unity, the aim and the end of the Spirits.” n

Can one pray to the Spirits?

“One can pray to the good Spirits, as being the messengers of God and the executors of His will.

Their power, however, is in proportion to the superiority they have attained, and it always emanates from the Lord of all things, without whose permission nothing is done.

This is why the prayers that are addressed to them are only effective if well accepted by God.”

Polytheism.

Why is it that, despite being false, the polytheistic belief is one of the most ancient and widespread?

“The conception of a single God could not exist in man except as the result of the development of his ideas.

Incapable, through his ignorance, of conceiving an immaterial being, without determinate form, acting upon matter, man conferred upon Him attributes of corporeal nature, that is, a form and an aspect, and from then on everything that seemed to surpass the limits of common intelligence was, for him, a divinity.

Everything he did not understand had to be the work of a supernatural power. From there to believing in as many distinct powers as the effects he observed was but a single step.

In every age, however, there have been instructed men who understood that the existence of these multiple powers governing the world, without a superior direction, was impossible, and who, in consequence, rose to the conception of a single God.”

Having occurred in every age and being known from the earliest ages of the world, have the Spiritist phenomena not contributed to the diffusion of belief in the plurality of gods?

“Without doubt, for, calling god everything that was superhuman, men held the Spirits to be gods.

From this it came that, when a man, by his actions, by his genius, or by an occult power that the common people could not manage to understand, distinguished himself from the rest, they made of him a god and, upon his death, rendered him worship.”

The word god had, among the ancients, a very broad meaning. It did not indicate, as at present, a personification of the Lord of Nature. It was a generic qualification given to every being existing outside the conditions of Humanity.

Now, the Spiritist manifestations having revealed to them the existence of incorporeal beings acting as a power of Nature, to these beings they gave the name of gods, as we now give them that of Spirits.

A pure question of words, with the sole difference that, in the ignorance in which they found themselves, intentionally maintained by those who had an interest in it, they erected very lucrative temples and altars to such gods, whereas today we regard them as mere creatures like ourselves, more or less perfect and stripped of their earthly envelopes.

If we study attentively the various attributes of the pagan divinities, we will recognize, without effort, all those with which we see the Spirits endowed in the different degrees of the spiritist scale, the physical state in which they find themselves in the higher worlds, all the properties of the perispirit, and the roles they play in the things of Earth.

Coming to illuminate the world with its divine light, Christianity did not propose to destroy a thing that is in Nature. It directed, however, adoration toward Him to whom it is due.

As for the Spirits, the remembrance of them has perpetuated itself, according to the peoples, under various names, and their manifestations, which have never ceased to occur, were interpreted in different ways and often exploited under the prestige of mystery.

While for religion these manifestations were miraculous phenomena, for the incredulous they were always frauds. Today, thanks to a more serious study, made in the full light of midday, Spiritism, cleansed of the superstitious ideas that obscured it for centuries, reveals to us one of the greatest and most sublime principles of Nature. Sacrifices.

The use of human sacrifices goes back to the highest Antiquity. How is it explained that man was led to believe that such things could please God?

“First, because he did not understand God as being the source of goodness.

In primitive peoples, matter overrides spirit; they give themselves over to the instincts of the wild animal. That is why, in general, they are cruel; it is because in them the moral sense is not yet developed.

In the second place, it is natural that primitive men believed that a living creature had much more value, in the eyes of God, than a material body. This is what led them to immolate, first, animals, and, later, men. In conformity with the false belief they held, they thought that the value of the sacrifice was proportional to the importance of the victim.

In material life, as you generally practice it, if you have to offer someone a gift, you will always choose it of all the greater value the more affection and consideration you wish to bear witness to that someone. So it had to be, with regard to God, among ignorant men.”

a — So that the sacrifices of animals preceded the human sacrifices?

“About this there can be not the least doubt.”

b — Then, according to the explanation you have just given, it was not from a sentiment of cruelty that human sacrifices originated?

“No; they originated from an erroneous idea as to the manner of pleasing God. Consider what happened with Abraham.

With the passing of time, men came to abuse these practices, immolating their common enemies, and even their particular enemies.

God, however, never demanded sacrifices, neither of men, nor even of animals.

There is no way to imagine that worship can be rendered to Him through the useless destruction of His creatures.”

Could it be that human sacrifices practiced with pious intention may at some time have been pleasing to God?

“No, never.

But God judges by the intention. Men being ignorant, it was natural that they should suppose they were practicing a praiseworthy act by immolating their fellow men. In these cases, God attended solely to the idea that presided over the act and not to the act itself.

In proportion as they improved, men had to recognize the error in which they labored and to reprove such sacrifices, with which the ideas of enlightened Spirits could not conform.

I say — enlightened, because the Spirits then had the material veil enveloping them; but, by means of free will, it was possible for them to glimpse their origins and their end, and many, by intuition, already understood the evil they were practicing, although for that reason they did not cease to practice it, in order to satisfy their passions.”

What should we think of the so-called holy wars? Can the sentiment that impels fanatical peoples, with a view to pleasing God, to exterminate as much as possible those who do not share their beliefs, be likened, as to its origin, to the sentiment that incited them in former times to sacrifice their fellow men?

“They are impelled by the bad Spirits and, in making war on their fellow men, they contravene the will of God, who commands that each one love his brother as himself.

All religions, or rather all peoples, adore one same God, whatever the name they give Him.

Why then should one make war on another, on the ground that the latter’s religion is different from his own, or because it has not yet attained the degree of progress of that of cultured peoples?

If peoples are excusable for not believing in the word of Him whom the Spirit of God animated and whom God sent, above all those who did not see Him and did not witness His acts, how can you expect them to believe in that word of peace, when you go to bring it to them sword in hand? They must be enlightened, and we must strive to make them know the doctrine of the Savior, through persuasion and with gentleness, never by fire and sword.

The majority of you do not believe in the communications we have with certain mortals; how would you wish strangers to believe in your word, when you belie with your acts the doctrine you preach?”

Did the offering made to God of the fruits of the earth have, in His eyes, more merit than the sacrifice of animals?

“I have already answered you, declaring that God judges according to the intention and that, for Him, the fact had little importance.

It was evidently more pleasing to God that they should offer Him the fruits of the earth, instead of the blood of victims.

As we have said and shall always repeat, the prayer uttered from the bottom of the soul is a hundred times more pleasing to God than all the offerings you can make to Him.

I repeat that the intention is everything, that the fact is worth nothing.”

Would it not be a means of making these offerings pleasing to God to consecrate them to alleviating the sufferings of those who lack what is necessary, and, in this case, would not the sacrifice of animals, practiced with a useful end, become meritorious, whereas it was abusive when it served no purpose, or only profited those who needed nothing? Would there not be something truly pious in consecrating to the poor the first fruits of the goods that God grants us on Earth?

“God always blesses those who do good. The best means of honoring Him consists in alleviating the sufferings of the poor and the afflicted.

I do not mean by this that He disapproves of the ceremonies you practice in order to address your prayers to Him. Much money, however, is spent there which could be employed more usefully than it is.

God loves simplicity in everything.

The man who holds to outward things and not to the heart is a Spirit of narrow views. Say, in conscience, whether God should attend more to the form than to the substance.” [1] Answer given by Mr. Monod (Spirit), a Protestant pastor in Paris, who died in April 1856. The previous answer, No. 664, is from the Spirit Saint Louis.