FUTURE PUNISHMENTS AND ENJOYMENTS.

Nothingness. Future life.

— 2. Intuition of future punishments and enjoyments. — 3. God's intervention in punishments and rewards. — 4. Nature of future punishments and enjoyments. — 5. Temporal punishments. — 6. Expiation and repentance. — 7. Duration of future punishments. — 8. Resurrection of the flesh. — 9. Paradise, hell and purgatory.

Nothingness.

Future life.

Why does man instinctively have a horror of nothingness?

“Because nothingness does not exist.”

Whence arises in man the instinctive feeling of a future life?

“We have already said it: before incarnating, the Spirit knew all these things, and the soul retains a vague remembrance of what it knows and of what it saw in the spiritual state.” (no. 393.)

In all times, man has been concerned with his future beyond the tomb, and this is quite natural. Whatever importance he may attach to the present life, he cannot escape considering how short and, above all, how precarious this life is, since at every instant it is liable to be interrupted, no certainty being granted him about the following day.

What will become of him after the fatal instant? This is a grave question, for it is not merely a matter of a few years, but of eternity.

He who must spend a long time in a foreign country concerns himself with the situation in which he will find himself there. How, then, should we not be concerned with the one in which we will find ourselves on leaving this world, since it is forever?

The idea of nothingness has something in it that is repugnant to reason. The man who is most carefree during life, when the supreme moment arrives, asks himself what is going to become of him and, in spite of himself, hopes.

To believe in God without admitting a future life would be a contradiction.

The feeling of a better existence resides in the innermost being of all men, and it is not possible that God placed it there in vain.

The future life implies the preservation of our individuality after death. Indeed, what would it matter to us to survive the body if our moral essence were to be lost in the ocean of the infinite? The consequences, for us, would be the same as if we had to vanish into nothingness.

Intuition of future punishments and enjoyments.

Whence originates the belief, which we meet among all peoples, in the existence of future punishments and rewards?

“It is always the same thing: a presentiment of reality, brought to man by the Spirit incarnated within him. For, know it well, it is not in vain that an inner voice speaks to you. Your error consists in not paying it enough attention. You would become better if you thought about it much, and often.”

Which feeling dominates the majority of men at the moment of death: doubt, fear, or hope?

“Doubt, in hardened skeptics; fear, in the guilty; hope, in men of good will.”

How can there be skeptics, since the soul brings to man the feeling of spiritual things?

“They are far fewer in number than is believed. Many pose as strong spirits during life, only out of pride. At the moment of death, however, they cease to be so boastful.”

The responsibility for our acts is the consequence of the reality of the future life.

Reason and justice tell us that, in the sharing of the happiness to which all aspire, the good and the wicked cannot be confounded together.

It is not possible that God should will that some enjoy, without labor, blessings that others attain only through effort and perseverance.

The idea that, through the wisdom of his laws, God gives us of his justice and his goodness does not allow us to believe that the just and the wicked are in the same category in his eyes, nor to doubt that they will receive, some day, the one a reward, the other a punishment, for the good or the evil they have done.

That is why the innate feeling we have of justice gives us the intuition of future punishments and rewards. God's intervention in punishments and rewards.

Does God concern himself personally with each man? Is he not too great and we too small for each individual in particular to have, in his eyes, any importance?

“God concerns himself with all the beings he created, however small they may be. Nothing, for his goodness, is devoid of value.”

But is it necessary for God to take notice of each one of our acts in order to reward or punish us? Are these acts not, for the most part, insignificant to him?

“God has his laws to govern all your actions. If you violate them, yours is the fault.

Undoubtedly, when a man commits any excess whatsoever, God does not pronounce a judgment against him, saying to him, for example: You have been gluttonous, I am going to punish you. He has drawn a limit; illnesses and often death are the consequence of excesses. There is the punishment; it is the result of the infraction of the law. So it is in all things.”

All our actions are submitted to the laws of God. There is none, however insignificant it may seem to us, that may not be a violation of those laws.

If we suffer the consequences of that violation, we have only ourselves to complain of, since we thus make ourselves the authors of our future happiness or of our future unhappiness.

This truth becomes evident by means of the following apologue:

“A father gave his son education and instruction, that is, the means to guide himself. He gives him a field to cultivate and says to him: Here are the rule that you must follow and all the instruments necessary for making this field fertile and ensuring your existence. I have given you instruction so that you may understand this rule. If you follow it, your field will produce much and will provide you with repose in old age. If you disdain it, you will produce nothing and will die of hunger. Having said this, he lets him act freely.”

Is it not true that this field will produce in proportion to the care devoted to its cultivation, and that all negligence will result in detriment to the harvest? In old age, therefore, the son will be fortunate or unfortunate, according to whether he has followed or not the rule that his father traced for him.

God is even more provident, for he warns us, at every instant, that we are doing good or evil. He sends us Spirits to inspire us, but we do not listen to them.

There is this further difference: God always grants man, by granting him new existences, the means to repair his past errors, whereas for the son of whom we spoke, if he used his time badly, no recourse remains. Nature of future punishments and enjoyments.

Do the punishments and enjoyments of the soul after death have anything material about them?

“They cannot be material, common sense says so, since the soul is not matter.

Those punishments and those enjoyments have nothing carnal about them; nevertheless, they are a thousand times more vivid than those you experience on Earth, because the Spirit, once freed, is more impressionable. Then matter no longer dulls its sensations.” (237 to 257.)

Why does man sometimes form so coarse and absurd an idea of the punishments and enjoyments of the future life?

“An intelligence that has not yet developed enough. Does the child understand things as the adult does? Moreover, this also depends on what has been taught him: there is where there is need of a reform.

“Your language is most incomplete for expressing what is outside of you. One then had to resort to comparisons, and you took as reality the images and figures that served for those comparisons. But as man instructs himself, he comes to understand better what his language cannot express.”

In what does the happiness of the good Spirits consist?

“In knowing all things; in feeling neither hatred, nor jealousy, nor envy, nor ambition, nor any of the passions that cause the unhappiness of men.

The love that unites them is for them a source of supreme happiness.

They do not experience the needs, nor the sufferings, nor the anguishes of material life.

They are happy for the good they do.

However, the happiness of the Spirits is proportional to the elevation of each.

Only the pure Spirits enjoy, it is true, supreme happiness, but not all the others are unhappy.

Between the wicked and the perfect there is an infinity of degrees in which the enjoyments are relative to the moral state.

Those who are already quite advanced understand the bliss of those who preceded them and aspire to attain it. But this aspiration constitutes for them a cause of emulation, not of jealousy. They know that attaining it depends on them, and to attain it they labor, but with the calm of a tranquil conscience, and they consider themselves fortunate in not having to suffer what the wicked suffer.”

You cite, among the conditions of the happiness of the good Spirits, the absence of material needs. But does not the satisfaction of those needs represent for man a source of enjoyments?

“Yes, the enjoyment of the animal. When you cannot satisfy those needs, you undergo a torture.”

What should be understood when it is said that the pure Spirits are gathered in the bosom of God and occupied in singing his praises?

“It is an allegory indicating the understanding they have of the perfections of God, because they see and understand him, but which, like many others, should not be taken literally.

Everything in Nature, from the grain of sand, sings, that is, proclaims the power, the wisdom and the goodness of God.

Do not believe, however, that the blessed Spirits are in contemplation for all eternity. It would be a stupid and monotonous beatitude.

It would be, moreover, the happiness of the egoist, since their existence would be a uselessness without end.

They are exempt from the tribulations of corporeal life: that is already an enjoyment.

Then, as we said, they know and know all things; they give useful employment to the intelligence they have acquired, aiding the progress of other Spirits. That is their occupation, which is at the same time an enjoyment.”

In what do the sufferings of the inferior Spirits consist?

“They are as varied as the causes that determine them and proportioned to the degree of inferiority, as the enjoyments are to that of superiority.

They may be summed up thus: To envy what they lack in order to be happy, and not to obtain it; to see happiness and not be able to attain it; regret, jealousy, rage, despair, occasioned by what prevents them from being fortunate; remorse, indefinable moral anxiety.

They desire all the enjoyments and cannot satisfy them: there is what tortures them.”

Is the influence that Spirits exercise upon one another always good?

“Always good, of course, on the part of the good Spirits. The perverse Spirits, those seek to turn from the path of good and of repentance those who seem to them susceptible of letting themselves be led, and who are, very often, those whom they themselves dragged into evil during terrestrial life.”

a — Thus, death does not deliver us from temptation?

“No, but the action of the wicked Spirits is always less upon other Spirits than upon men, because they lack the aid of the material passions.”

How do the wicked Spirits proceed to tempt other Spirits, since they cannot play upon the passions?

“The passions do not exist materially, but they exist in the thought of the backward Spirits.

The wicked give nourishment to those thoughts, leading their victims to the places where the spectacle of those passions and of all that may excite them is offered to them.”

a — But of what use are those passions, if they no longer have a real object?

“In that precisely lies their torment: the miser sees gold that it is not given him to possess; the debauchee, orgies in which he cannot take part; the proud one, honors that cause him envy and which he cannot enjoy.”

What are the greatest sufferings to which the wicked Spirits find themselves subject?

“There is no possible description of the moral tortures that constitute the punishment of certain crimes. Even he who suffers them would have difficulty giving you an idea of them. Undoubtedly, however, the most horrible consists in their thinking that they are condemned without remission.”

Of the punishments and enjoyments of the soul after death man forms a more or less elevated idea, according to the state of his intelligence. The more he develops, the more this idea is refined and cleansed of matter; he understands things from a more rational point of view, ceasing to take literally the images of a figurative language.

In teaching us that the soul is a wholly spiritual being, reason, better enlightened, tells us, for that very reason, that it cannot be reached by the impressions that act only upon matter. It does not follow, however, from this, that it is exempt from sufferings, nor that it does not receive the punishment of its faults.

The spirit communications had as a result to show the future state of the soul, no longer in theory, but in reality. They place before our eyes all the vicissitudes of the life beyond the tomb. At the same time, however, they show them to us as perfectly logical consequences of terrestrial life and, although stripped of the fantastic apparatus that the imagination of men created, they are no less personal for those who made bad use of their faculties. Infinite is the variety of these consequences.

But, as a general thesis, it may be said: each one is punished by that in which he sinned.

Thus it is that some are so by the incessant vision of the evil they did; others, by regret, by fear, by shame, by doubt, by isolation, by darkness, by separation from the beings who are dear to them, etc.

Whence proceeds the doctrine of eternal fire?

“An image, like so many others, taken as reality.”

a — But will not the fear of that fire produce a good result?

“See whether it serves as a curb, even among those who teach it. If you teach things that later reason comes to repel, you will produce an impression that will be neither lasting nor salutary.”

Powerless, in his language, to define the nature of those sufferings, man found no comparison more forceful than that of fire, since, for him, fire is the type of the cruelest torment and the symbol of the most violent action. That is why the belief in eternal fire dates from the most remote Antiquity, the modern peoples having inherited it from the most ancient. That is also why man says, in his figurative language: the fire of the passions; to burn with love, with jealousy, etc.

Do the inferior Spirits understand the happiness of the just?

“Yes, and that is for them a torment, because they understand that they are deprived of it by their own fault. Thence it results that the Spirit, freed from matter, aspires to a new corporeal life, since each existence, if it be well employed, somewhat shortens the duration of that torment. It is then that it proceeds to the choice of the trials by means of which it may expiate its faults.

For, know it, the Spirit suffers for all the evil it practiced, or of which it was the voluntary cause, for all the good it could have done and did not do, and for all the evil that results from not having done good.

“For the wandering Spirit, there are no longer veils. It finds itself as though having emerged from a fog, and sees what distances it from happiness. It then suffers more, because it understands how guilty it was. It no longer has illusions: it sees things in their reality.”

In erraticity, the Spirit perceives, on one side, all its past existences; on the other, the future that is promised to it, and it perceives what it lacks in order to attain it. It is like a traveler who reaches the summit of a mountain: he sees the path he has traversed and the one that remains for him to traverse, in order to reach the end of his journey.

Does not the spectacle of the sufferings of the inferior Spirits constitute, for the good ones, a cause of affliction, and in that case, what becomes of their happiness, if it is thus disturbed?

“It does not constitute a motive of affliction, since they know that the evil will have an end. They aid the others to improve themselves and extend their hands to them. That is their occupation, an occupation that provides them enjoyment when they are successful.”

a — This is conceivable on the part of Spirits that are strangers or indifferent. But does not the spectacle of the sorrows and the sufferings of those whom they loved on Earth disturb their happiness?

“If they did not see those sufferings, it would be because you were strangers to them after death. Now, religion tells you that the souls see you. But they consider your sufferings from another point of view. They know that these are useful to your progress, if you bear them with resignation. They grieve, therefore, much more over the lack of courage that retards you, than over the sufferings considered in themselves, all of them passing.”

Since the Spirits cannot reciprocally hide their thoughts and all the acts of life are known, should one deduce that the guilty one is perpetually in the presence of his victim?

“It cannot be otherwise, common sense says so.”

a — Will this divulgence of all our reprehensible acts and the constant presence of those who were the victims of them be a punishment for the guilty one?

“Greater than is thought, but only until the guilty one has expiated his faults, whether as a Spirit, or as a man, in new corporeal existences.”

When we find ourselves in the world of the Spirits, our whole past being manifest, the good and the evil we have done will be equally known.

In vain will he who has practiced evil try to escape the gaze of his victims: their inevitable presence will be for him a punishment and an incessant remorse, until he has expiated his errors, whereas the man of good will everywhere finds only friendly and benevolent gazes.

For the wicked man, there is no greater torment, on Earth, than the presence of his victims, which is why he continually avoids them. What will it be when, the illusion of the passions dissipated, he understands the evil he did, sees his most secret acts laid bare, his hypocrisy unmasked, and cannot withdraw from the sight of them? While the soul of the perverse man is prey to shame, to regret and to remorse, that of the just one enjoys perfect serenity.

Does the remembrance of the faults that the soul, when imperfect, may have committed not disturb its happiness, even after it has purified itself?

“No, because it has redeemed its faults and emerged victorious from the trials to which it submitted itself for that purpose.”

Will the trials through which it still has to pass to complete its purification not be, for the soul, a cause of painful apprehension that alters its happiness?

“For the soul still stained, they are. Thence it comes that it cannot enjoy perfect happiness, except when it is completely pure.

For the one, however, that has already raised itself, there is nothing painful in thinking of the trials that it still has to suffer.”

The soul that has reached a certain degree of purity enjoys happiness. A feeling of grateful satisfaction dominates it. It feels happy for all that it sees, for all that surrounds it. The veil that hid the mysteries and the marvels of the Creation is lifted from it, and the divine perfections appear to it in all their splendor.

Does the bond of sympathy that unites the Spirits of the same order constitute for them a source of happiness?

“The Spirits among whom there is reciprocal sympathy for good find in their union one of the greatest enjoyments, since they do not fear to see it disturbed by egoism.

They form, in the wholly spiritual world, families through the identity of feelings, and in this consists spiritual happiness, in the same way that in your world you group yourselves into categories and experience a certain pleasure when you find yourselves gathered.

In the pure and sincere affection that each one devotes to the others and of which he is in turn the object, they have a wellspring of happiness, for there there are no false friends, nor hypocrites.”

Man enjoys the first fruits of that happiness on Earth, when he meets souls with which he can blend in a pure and holy union.

In a more purified life, ineffable and unlimited will be that enjoyment, for there he will find only sympathetic souls, which egoism will not render cold.

For, in Nature, all is love: it is egoism that kills it.

With respect to the future state of the Spirit, will there be a difference between one who, in life, fears death and another who faces it with indifference and even with joy?

“The difference can be very great. Nevertheless, it is often effaced in the face of the causes determining that fear or that desire. Whether he fear it or desire it, man may be impelled by very diverse feelings, and it is these feelings that influence the state of the Spirit. It is evident, for example, that in one who desires death solely because he sees in it the end of his tribulations, there is a kind of complaint against Providence and against the trials that it behooves him to bear.”

Will it be necessary that we profess Spiritism and believe in the spirit manifestations in order to have our lot in the future life assured?

“If it were so, it would follow that all those who do not believe, or who have not had occasion to enlighten themselves, would be disinherited, which would be absurd.

Only good assures the future lot.

Now, good is always good, whatever may be the path that leads to it.”

The belief in Spiritism helps man to improve himself, firming his ideas on certain points of the future. It hastens the advancement of individuals and of the masses, because it enables us to inform ourselves of what we will be one day. It is a point of support, a light that guides us.

Spiritism teaches man to bear trials with patience and resignation; it turns him away from the acts that may retard his happiness, but no one says that, without it, happiness cannot be attained. Temporal punishments.

Does the Spirit that expiates its faults in a new existence not experience material sufferings? Is it then accurate to say that, after death, there are for the soul only moral sufferings?

“It is quite true that, when the soul is reincarnated, the tribulations of life are a suffering for it; but only the body suffers materially.

“Speaking of someone who has died, you are accustomed to say that he ceased to suffer.

This does not always express reality. As a Spirit, he is exempt from physical pains; but, such be the faults he may have committed, he may be subject to sharper moral pains and may come to be even more unhappy in a new existence.

The wicked rich man will have to beg alms and will find himself grappling with all the privations arising from misery; the proud one, with all humiliations; he who abuses his authority and treats his subordinates with contempt and harshness will find himself forced to obey a superior harsher than he was.

All the punishments and tribulations of life are an expiation of the faults of another existence, when they are not the consequence of those of the present life. As soon as you have departed from here, you will understand it.

“The man who considers himself happy on Earth, because he can satisfy his passions, is the one who employs the fewest efforts to improve himself.

Often he begins his expiation already in that same life of ephemeral happiness, but he will certainly expiate in another existence as material as that one.”

Are the vicissitudes of life always the punishment of present faults?

“No; we have already said it: they are trials imposed by God, or that you yourselves chose as Spirits, before incarnating, for the expiation of faults committed in another existence, because the infraction of the laws of God, and above all of the law of justice, never remains unpunished. If it is not punished in this existence, it will necessarily be so in another. That is why one who seems just to you often suffers. It is the punishment of his past.”

Does the reincarnation of the soul in a less coarse world constitute a reward?

“It is the consequence of its purification, for as they purify themselves, the Spirits come to incarnate in worlds more and more perfect, until they have totally stripped themselves of matter and washed themselves of all impurities, in order to eternally enjoy the happiness of the pure Spirits, in the bosom of God.”

In the worlds where existence is less material than in this one, the needs are less coarse and the physical sufferings less acute.

There, men do not know the wicked passions which, in the inferior worlds, make them enemies of one another.

Having no motive for hatred or jealousy, they live in peace, because they practice the law of justice, love and charity.

They do not know the vexations and cares that are born of envy, of pride and of egoism, causes of the torment of our terrestrial existence.

Can the Spirit that has progressed in its terrestrial existence reincarnate at some time in the same world?

“Yes; provided it has not succeeded in completing its mission, it may itself ask that it be granted to complete it in a new existence. But, then, it is no longer subject to an expiation.”

What happens to the man who, while doing no evil, also does nothing to free himself from the influence of matter?

“Since he takes no step toward perfection, he has to begin again an existence of a nature identical to the preceding one. He remains stationary, thus being able to prolong the sufferings of expiation.”

There are persons whose life flows by in perfect calm; who, needing to do nothing for themselves, keep themselves free of cares. Will that fortunate existence prove that they have nothing to expiate from a previous existence?

“Do you know many such persons? You are mistaken if you think that there are a great number of them. Not rarely, the calm is only apparent. Perhaps they chose such an existence, but, when they leave it, they perceive that it did not serve them for progressing. Then, like the idler, they lament the lost time.

Know that the Spirit cannot acquire knowledge and raise itself except by exercising its activity. If it falls asleep in indolence, it does not advance. It resembles one who (according to your usages) needs to work and who goes off to stroll or to lie down, with the intention of doing nothing.

Know also that each one will have to render account of the voluntary uselessness of his existence, a uselessness always fatal to future happiness.

For each one, the total of that future happiness corresponds to the sum of the good he may have done, that of the unhappiness being in proportion to the evil he may have practiced and to those whom he may have made unhappy.”

There are persons who, although they are not positively wicked, make unhappy, by their characters, all those who surround them. What consequences will accrue to them from this?

“Unquestionably, those persons are not good. They will expiate their faults, having always before their sight those whom they made unhappy, this serving for them as a reproach. Then, in another existence, they will suffer what they made others suffer.”

Expiation and repentance.

Does repentance occur in the corporeal state or in the spiritual state?

“In the spiritual state; but it can also occur in the corporeal state, when you well understand the difference between good and evil.”

What is the consequence of repentance in the spiritual state?

“That the repentant one desires a new incarnation in order to purify itself. The Spirit understands the imperfections that deprive it of being happy, and therefore it aspires to a new existence in which it may expiate its faults.”

What consequence does repentance produce in the corporeal state?

“To make that, already in the present life, the Spirit progress, if it has time to repair its faults. When conscience reproaches it and shows it an imperfection, man can always improve himself.”

Are there not men who have only the instinct of evil and are inaccessible to repentance?

“I have already told you that every Spirit has to progress incessantly. He who, in this life, has only the instinct of evil, will have in another that of good, and it is for that that he is reborn many times, for it is necessary that all progress and reach the goal.

The difference is only in that some take more time than others, because they so will it. He who has only the instinct of good has already purified himself, since perhaps he had that of evil in an earlier existence.”

Does the perverse man, who did not recognize his faults during life, always recognize them after death?

“He always recognizes them and, then, he suffers more, because he feels within himself all the evil he practiced, or of which he was voluntarily the cause. Nevertheless, repentance is not always immediate. There are Spirits that obstinately remain on the bad path, notwithstanding the sufferings they undergo. But, sooner or later, they will recognize that the path they took was wrong, and repentance will come. To enlighten them the good Spirits labor, and you too can labor.”

Will there be Spirits that, without being wicked, keep themselves indifferent to their lot?

“There are Spirits that occupy themselves with nothing useful. They are in a state of waiting. But, in that case, they suffer proportionally. There having to be progress in everything, in them progress manifests itself through pain.”

a — Do those Spirits not desire to shorten their sufferings?

“They desire it, no doubt, but they lack energy enough to will what can relieve them. How many individuals are there counted, among you, who prefer to die of misery rather than to work?”

Since the Spirits see the evil that results to them from their imperfections, how is it explained that there are those who aggravate their situations and prolong the state of inferiority in which they find themselves, doing evil as Spirits, turning men from the good path?

“Thus do those of tardy repentance proceed. It may also happen that, after having repented, the Spirit lets itself be dragged anew toward the path of evil, by other Spirits still more backward.”

There are seen Spirits of notorious inferiority, accessible to good feelings and sensitive to the prayers that are made for them. How is it explained that other Spirits, whom we should suppose more enlightened, reveal a hardness and a cynicism over which nothing succeeds in triumphing?

“Prayer has effect only upon the Spirit that repents.

With respect to those who, impelled by pride, revolt against God and persist in their aberrations, even coming to exaggerate them, as some unhappy Spirits do, prayer can do nothing and will be able to do nothing, except on the day when a gleam of repentance is produced in them.”

One should not lose sight of the fact that the Spirit does not transform itself suddenly, after the death of the body. If it lived a reprehensible life, it is because it was imperfect. Now, death does not make it immediately perfect. It may, therefore, persist in its errors, in its false opinions, in its prejudices, until it has enlightened itself through study, through reflection and through suffering.

Is expiation accomplished in the corporeal state or in the spiritual state?

“Expiation is accomplished during corporeal existence, by means of the trials to which the Spirit finds itself submitted and, in spiritual life, by the moral sufferings inherent in the state of inferiority of the Spirit.”

Is repentance during life sufficient for the faults of the Spirit to be effaced and for it to find grace before God?

“Repentance contributes to the improvement of the Spirit, but it has to expiate its past.”

a — If, in face of this, a criminal were to say that, since it behooves him in any case to expiate his past, he has no need to repent, what would result to him from this?

“That his expiation would become longer and more painful, once he becomes obstinate in evil.”

Can we, already from this life, go on redeeming our faults?

“Yes, by repairing them. But do not believe that you redeem them by means of some puerile privations, or by distributing in alms what you possess, after you have died, when you no longer need anything.

God gives no value to a sterile repentance, always easy, and which costs only the effort of beating the breast.

The loss of a little finger, when one is rendering a service, effaces more faults than the torment of the flesh borne for years, with an exclusively personal objective.

“Only by means of good is evil repaired, and the reparation presents no merit if it touches man neither in his pride, nor in his material interests.

“Of what use is it, for his justification, that he restore, after dying, the goods ill acquired, when they have become useless to him and he drew from them every advantage?

“Of what use is it to him to deprive himself of some futile enjoyments, of some superfluities, if the harm he caused to another remains intact?

“Of what use is it to him, finally, to humble himself before God, if, before men, he keeps his pride?”

Will there be no merit in ensuring, for after our death, useful employment for the goods we possess?

“No merit is not the term. That is always better than nothing. But the error is in that he who gives only after being dead is almost always more egoistic than generous. He wishes to have the fruit of good, without the labor of practicing it.

A double advantage is drawn by him who, in life, deprives himself of something: the merit of the sacrifice and the pleasure of seeing happy those who owe their happiness to him.

But there is egoism saying to him: What you give you take from your enjoyments;

and, since egoism speaks louder than disinterestedness and charity, man keeps what he possesses, pleading his personal needs and the demands of his position!

Ah! pity him who does not know the pleasure of giving; he finds himself truly deprived of one of the purest and gentlest enjoyments. In submitting him to the trial of riches, so slippery and dangerous for his future, God saw fit to grant him, as compensation, the bliss of generosity, which already in this world he may enjoy.”

What must he do who, at the point of death, recognizes his faults, when he no longer has time to repair them? Does it suffice him in that case to repent?

“Repentance hastens his rehabilitation, but does not absolve him. Does not the future, which is never closed to him, unfold before him?”

Duration of future punishments.

Is the duration of the sufferings of the guilty one, in the future life, arbitrary or subject to some law?

“God never acts capriciously, and everything, in the Universe, is governed by laws, in which his wisdom and his goodness are revealed.”

On what is the duration of the sufferings of the guilty one based?

“On the time necessary for him to improve himself. The state of suffering or of happiness being proportioned to the degree of purification of the Spirit, the duration and the nature of its sufferings depend on the time it takes in improving itself. As it progresses and as its feelings are purified, its sufferings diminish and change in nature.” Saint Louis.

To the suffering Spirit, does time appear as long, or less long, than when it was alive?

“It appears longer to it: for it sleep does not exist. Only for the Spirits that have already reached a certain degree of purification does time, so to speak, efface itself before the infinite.”

Can the sufferings of the Spirit last eternally?

“They could, if it could be eternally wicked, that is, if it never repented and improved, it would suffer eternally. But God did not create beings having for their destiny to remain perpetually devoted to evil. He created them all simple and ignorant only, all of them, however, having to progress in a time more or less long, according to what proceeds from the will of each one.

The will may be more or less tardy, in the same way that there are children more or less precocious, but, sooner or later, it appears, by effect of the irresistible need that the Spirit feels to emerge from inferiority and to become happy.

Eminently wise and magnanimous, then, is the law that governs the duration of punishments, for it subordinates that duration to the efforts of the Spirit.

It never deprives it of its free will: if it makes bad use of this, it suffers the consequences.” Saint Louis.

Will there be Spirits that never repent?

“There are those of very tardy repentance; but, to claim that they will never improve would be to deny the law of progress and to say that the child cannot become a man.”

Saint Louis.

Does the duration of punishments always depend on the will of the Spirit? Are there not some that are imposed upon it for a determined time?

“Yes, punishments may be imposed upon the Spirit for a determined time; but God, who wills only the good of his creatures, always welcomes repentance, and the desire that the Spirit may manifest to improve itself never remains fruitless.”

Saint Louis.

Thus, the punishments imposed are never so for all eternity?

“Interrogate your common sense, your reason, and ask them whether a perpetual condemnation, motivated by a few moments of error, would not be the negation of the goodness of God. What is, indeed, the duration of life, even when of a hundred years, in the face of eternity?

Eternity! Do you well understand this word? Sufferings, tortures without end, without hope, on account of a few faults! Does your judgment not repel such an idea?

That the ancients considered the Lord of the Universe a terrible, jealous and vengeful God, is conceivable. In the ignorance in which they found themselves, they attributed to the divinity the passions of men. That, however, is not the God of the Christians, who classifies as primordial virtues love, charity, mercy, the forgetting of offenses.

Could he lack the qualities whose possession he prescribes, as a duty, to his creatures? Will there not be contradiction in attributing to him infinite goodness and likewise infinite vengeance? You say that, above all, he is just and that man does not understand his justice. But justice does not exclude goodness, and he would not be good if he condemned to eternal and horrible punishments the majority of his creatures. Would he have the right to make justice an obligation for his children, if he did not give them the means to understand it?

Besides, in making the duration of punishments depend on the efforts of the guilty one, is there not all the sublimity of justice united with goodness? There is where the truth of this sentence is found: “To each according to his works.” Saint Augustine.

“Apply yourselves, by all the means within your reach, to combating, to annihilating the idea of the eternity of punishments, an idea blasphemous of the justice and the goodness of God, a fecund germ of incredulity, of materialism and of indifference, which have invaded the human masses, ever since intelligences began to develop. The Spirit, on the point of enlightening itself, or even merely roughened out, soon apprehended its monstrous injustice. Its reason repels it and, then, it is rare that it does not include in the same repudiation both the punishment that revolts it and the God to whom it is attributed. Thence the countless evils that have fallen upon you and to which we come to bring a remedy.

The task we point out to you will be all the easier inasmuch as it is certain that all the authorities on whom the defenders of such a belief rely have all avoided pronouncing themselves formally on the matter. Neither the councils nor the Fathers of the Church resolved that grave question. Although, according to the Evangelists, and taking literally the emblematic words of the Christ, he threatened the guilty with a fire that is not extinguished, with an eternal fire, absolutely nothing is found in his words capable of proving that he condemned them eternally.

“Poor strayed sheep, learn to see the good Shepherd approaching you, who, far from banishing you forever from his presence, comes personally to meet you, to lead you back to the fold. Prodigal children, leave your voluntary exile; direct your steps toward the paternal dwelling. The Father extends his arms to you and is always ready to celebrate your return to the bosom of the family.” Lamennais.

“Wars of words! wars of words! Is the blood you have made flow not yet enough! Will it still be necessary that the stakes be relit? They argue over words: eternity of punishments, eternity of chastisements. Are you then ignorant that what today you understand by eternity is not what the ancients understood and designated by that term? Let the theologian consult the sources, and there he will discover, like all of you, that the Hebrew text did not attribute this signification to the word that the Greeks, the Latins and the moderns translated as punishments without end, irremissible.

Eternity of chastisements corresponds to the eternity of evil. Yes, as long as evil exists among men, chastisements will subsist.

It matters that the sacred texts be interpreted in the relative sense. The eternity of punishments is, then, relative and not absolute.

Let the day come when all men, through repentance, clothe themselves in the tunic of innocence, and from that day there will cease to be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Limited you have, it is true, your human reason, but, such as you have it, it is a gift of God and, with the aid of that reason, there will be no man of good faith who understands the eternity of chastisements otherwise. What then! It would be necessary to admit evil as eternal.

Only God is eternal and could not have created eternal evil; otherwise, it would be necessary to take from him the most magnificent of his attributes: sovereign power, for he is not sovereignly powerful who creates an element destructive of his works.

Humanity! Humanity! plunge no more your sad gazes into the depths of the Earth, seek not there the chastisements. Weep, hope, expiate and take refuge in the idea of a God intrinsically good, absolutely powerful, essentially just.” Plato.

“To gravitate toward the divine unity, that is the end of Humanity. To attain it, three things are necessary: Justice, Love and Science. Three things are opposed and contrary to it: ignorance, hatred and injustice.

Well then! I tell you, in truth, that you give the lie to these fundamental principles, compromising the idea of God, by exaggerating his severity to him. Doubly you compromise it, by letting penetrate into the Spirit of the creature the supposition that there is in it more clemency, more virtue, love and true justice than you attribute to the infinite being.

You even destroy the idea of hell, rendering it ridiculous and inadmissible to your beliefs, as is to your hearts the hideous spectacle of the executions, of the stakes and of the tortures of the Middle Ages! What then! When the era of blind reprisals has been forever banished from human legislations, is it that you hope to maintain it in the ideal?

Oh! believe me, brothers in God and in Jesus Christ, believe me: either you resign yourselves to letting all your dogmas perish in your hands, in preference to their being modified, or else, vivify them, opening them to the beneficent effluvia that the Good ones, at this moment, pour into them.

The idea of hell, with its burning furnaces, with its boiling cauldrons, may be tolerated, that is, pardonable in an age of iron; but, in the nineteenth century, it is no more than a vain phantom, fit, at most, to frighten little children, and which these, on growing a little, soon cease to believe. If you persist in that terrifying mythology, you will engender incredulity, the mother of all social disorganization.

I tremble, glimpsing a whole social order shaken and crumbling upon its foundations, for lack of penal sanction. Men of ardent and living faith, vanguard of the day of light, set to work, not to maintain fables that have grown old and discredited, but to revive, to revivify the true penal sanction, under forms befitting your customs, your feelings and the lights of your epoch.

“Who is, indeed, the guilty one? It is he who, by a deviation, by a false movement of the soul, departs from the objective of the creation, which consists in the harmonious cult of the beautiful, of the good, idealized by the human archetype, by the Man-god, by Jesus Christ.

“What is the chastisement? The natural consequence, derived from that false movement; a certain sum of pains necessary to make him disgusted with his deformity, through the experiencing of suffering.

The chastisement is the goad that stimulates the soul, through bitterness, to bend back upon itself and to seek the port of salvation.

The chastisement has for its only end rehabilitation, redemption. To will it eternal, for a fault that is not eternal, is to deny it all reason for being.

“Oh! in truth I tell you, cease, cease to place in parallel, in its eternity, Good, the essence of the Creator, with Evil, the essence of the creature. It would be to create an unjustifiable penalty. Affirm, on the contrary, the gradual mitigation of the chastisements and of the punishments through the transgressions, and you will consecrate the divine unity, having united feeling and reason.” Paul, the Apostle.

With the attraction of rewards and the fear of chastisements, one seeks to stimulate man toward good and to turn him away from evil. If those chastisements, however, are presented to him in such a way that his reason refuses to admit them, they will have no influence over him. Far from it, he will reject everything: the form and the substance. If, on the contrary, the future is presented to him in a logical manner, he will not repel it. Spiritism gives him that explanation.

The doctrine of the eternity of punishments, in an absolute sense, makes of the Supreme Being an implacable God. Would it be logical to say, of a sovereign, that he is very good, very magnanimous, very indulgent, that he wills only the happiness of those who surround him, but who at the same time is jealous, vengeful, of inflexible rigor and who punishes with the extreme chastisement three quarters of his subjects, for an offense, or an infraction of his laws, even when practiced by those who did not know them? Would there not be contradiction there? Now, can God be less good than a man would be?

Another contradiction. Since God knows all, he knew, in creating a soul, whether it would come to fail or not. It, then, from its formation, was destined to eternal unhappiness. Is this possible, rational?

With the doctrine of relative punishments, everything is justified. God knew, no doubt, that it would fail, but gave it the means to instruct itself by its own experience, by means of its own faults.

It is necessary that it expiate its errors, in order to firm itself better in good, but the door of hope does not close upon it forever, and God makes that its redemption depend on the efforts it employs to attain it.

This everyone can understand, and the most meticulous logic can admit it. There would be fewer skeptics, if the future punishments were presented from this point of view.

In ordinary language, the word eternal is often employed figuratively, to designate a thing of long duration, whose end is not foreseen, although it is well known that this end exists. We say, for example, the eternal ices of the high mountains, of the poles, although we know, on one hand, that the physical world may have an end and, on the other hand, that the state of those regions may change through the normal displacement of the axis of the Earth, or through a cataclysm. Thus, in this case, the word eternal does not mean perpetual to infinity. When we suffer from a lasting infirmity, we say that our ailment is eternal. What is there, then, to wonder at in Spirits that have been suffering for years, for centuries, even for millennia, also expressing themselves thus? Let us not forget, above all, that, their inferiority not permitting them to discern the extreme point of the path, they will have to suffer always, which is for them a punishment.

Moreover, the doctrine of material fire, of the furnaces and of the tortures, taken from the Tartarus of paganism, is completely abandoned by high theology, and only in the schools are those terrifying allegorical pictures still presented as positive truths, by some men more zealous than instructed, who thus commit a grave error, for the youthful imaginations, freeing themselves from the terrors, may go on to increase the number of the unbelievers.

Theology recognizes today that the word fire is used figuratively and that it should be understood as signifying moral fire.

Those who have followed, like us, the vicissitudes of the life and of the sufferings beyond the tomb, through the spirit communications, have been able to convince themselves that, by having nothing material about them, they are no less poignant.

Even with respect to duration, some theologians begin to admit it in the restrictive sense indicated above and think that, indeed, the word eternal may refer to the punishments in themselves, as a consequence of an immutable law, and not to their application to each individual. On the day when Religion admits this interpretation, as well as some others also resulting from the progress of the lights, it will gather many strayed sheep.

Resurrection of the flesh.

Will the dogma of the resurrection of the flesh be the consecration of the reincarnation taught by the Spirits?

“How would you have it be otherwise? As happens with so many others, these words seem out of place, in the understanding of some persons, only because they take them literally. They lead, for that reason, to incredulity.

Give them a logical interpretation and those whom you call freethinkers will admit them without difficulty, precisely for the reason that they reflect. For, do not deceive yourselves, what those freethinkers most ask and desire is to believe. They have, like the others, or, perhaps, more than the others, the thirst for the future, but they cannot admit what science contradicts.

The doctrine of the plurality of existences is consonant with the justice of God; it alone explains what, without it, is inexplicable. How could you claim that its principle was not in religion itself?”

Thus, by the dogma of the resurrection of the flesh, the Church itself teaches the doctrine of reincarnation?

“It is evident. Moreover, that doctrine follows from many things that have passed unnoticed and which shortly will be understood in this sense. It will soon be recognized that Spiritism springs forth at every step from the very text of the sacred Scriptures.

The Spirits, therefore, do not come to subvert religion, as some claim. They come, on the contrary, to confirm it, to sanction it by irrefutable proofs.

Since, however, the times have come for no longer employing figurative language, they express themselves without allegories and give to things a clear and precise sense, which may not be subject to any false interpretation. That is why, some time from now, much greater than it is today will be the number of persons sincerely religious and believing.” Saint Louis.

Effectively, Science demonstrates the impossibility of resurrection, according to the ordinary idea. If the remains of the human body were preserved homogeneous, although dispersed and reduced to dust, one could still conceive that they might be reunited at a given moment. Things, however, do not happen thus. The body is formed of diverse elements: oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, etc. By decomposition, those elements disperse, but in order to serve the formation of new bodies, in such a way that one same molecule, of carbon, for example, will have entered into the composition of many thousands of different bodies (we speak only of human bodies, without taking into account those of animals); that an individual perhaps has in his body molecules that already belonged to men of the primitive ages of the world; that those same organic molecules that you absorb in food come, possibly, from the body of some other individual whom you knew, and so on. Matter existing in a definite quantity and its combinations being indefinite, how could each one of those bodies reconstitute itself with the same elements? There is there a material impossibility.

Rationally, then, the resurrection of the flesh cannot be admitted, except as a symbolic figure of the phenomenon of reincarnation. And, then, there is nothing more that deviates from reason, that is in contradiction with the data of Science.

It is true that, according to the dogma, that resurrection will occur only at the end of time, whereas, according to the Spiritist Doctrine, it occurs every day.

But, in that picture of the final judgment, will there not be a great and beautiful image hiding, beneath the veil of allegory, one of those immutable truths, in the presence of which there will cease to be skeptics, once the true signification is restored to them? Let them deign to meditate on the spiritist theory regarding the future of souls and regarding the lot that befalls them, by effect of the different trials it behooves them to suffer, and they will see that, with the exception of simultaneity, the judgment that condemns or absolves them is not a fiction, as the unbelievers think.

Let us note further that that theory is the natural consequence of the plurality of the worlds, today perfectly admitted, whereas, according to the doctrine of the final judgment, the Earth passes for the only inhabited world. Paradise, hell and purgatory.

Will there be in the Universe circumscribed places for the punishments and enjoyments of the Spirits, according to their merits?

“We have already answered this question. The punishments and the enjoyments are inherent in the degree of perfection of the Spirits. Each one draws from himself the principle of his happiness or of his misfortune. And since they are everywhere, no circumscribed or enclosed place exists especially destined to one or the other thing. As for the incarnates, these are more or less happy or unhappy, according as the world in which they dwell is more or less advanced.” a — In accordance, then, with what you have just said, hell and paradise do not exist, such as man imagines them?

“They are simple allegories: everywhere there are fortunate and unfortunate Spirits. Nevertheless, as we have also already said, the Spirits of one same order gather together by sympathy; but they may gather wherever they wish, when they are perfect.”

The absolute localization of the regions of the punishments and of the rewards exists only in the imagination of man. It proceeds from his tendency to materialize and circumscribe the things whose infinite essence it is not possible for him to understand.

What should be understood by purgatory?

“Physical and moral pains: the time of expiation. Almost always, it is on Earth that you make your purgatory and that God obliges you to expiate your faults.”

What man calls purgatory is likewise an allegory, and should be understood as such, not a determined place, but the state of the imperfect Spirits, who find themselves in expiation until they attain complete purification, which will raise them to the category of the blessed Spirits.

That purification operating by means of the various incarnations, purgatory consists in the trials of corporeal life.

How is it explained that Spirits whose superiority is revealed in the language they use have answered very serious persons, regarding hell and purgatory, in conformity with the current ideas?

“It is that they speak a language that can be understood by the persons who interrogate them. When these show themselves imbued with certain ideas, they avoid shocking them too abruptly, in order not to wound their convictions. If a Spirit were to tell a Muslim, without oratorical precautions, that Muhammad was not a prophet, he would be very badly received.” a — One conceives that the Spirits who wish to instruct us proceed thus. But how is it explained that, interrogated about the situation in which they found themselves, some Spirits have answered that they suffered the tortures of hell, or of purgatory?

“When they are inferior and not yet completely dematerialized, the Spirits retain a part of their terrestrial ideas and, to give their impressions, they make use of the terms that are familiar to them. They find themselves in a milieu that permits them only imperfectly to sound the future. That is the cause of some wandering, or recently disincarnated, Spirits speaking as they would do if they were incarnated.

Hell can be translated as a life of trials, extremely painful, with the uncertainty of there being another better one; 3 purgatory, as a life also of trials, but with the consciousness of a better future.

When you experience a great pain, are you not accustomed to say that you suffer like one of the damned? All this is only words and always said in a figurative sense.”

What should be understood by a soul in pain?

“A wandering and suffering soul, uncertain of its future, and to which you can provide the relief that it often solicits, coming to communicate with you.”

In what sense should the word heaven be understood?

“Do you think that it is a place, like the Elysian Fields of the ancients, where all the good Spirits are promiscuously agglomerated, with no other concern than that of enjoying, for all eternity, a passive happiness? No; it is universal space; it is the planets, the stars and all the superior worlds, where the Spirits fully enjoy their faculties, without the tribulations of material life, nor the anguishes peculiar to inferiority.”

Some Spirits have said that they were dwelling in the fourth, the fifth heaven, etc. What did they mean by this?

“By asking them which Heaven they dwell in, you form an idea of many heavens arranged like the stories of a house. They, then, answer in accordance with your language. But, by these words — fourth and fifth heavens — they express different degrees of purification and, consequently, of happiness.

It is exactly as when one asks a Spirit whether it is in hell. If it is suffering, it will say — yes, because, for it, hell is synonymous with suffering. It knows, however, very well that it is not a furnace. A pagan would say he is in Tartarus.”

The same occurs with other analogous expressions, such as: city of flowers, city of the elect, first, second, or third sphere, etc., which are only allegories used by some Spirits, whether as figures, or, sometimes, through ignorance of the reality of things, and even of the simplest scientific notions.

In accordance with the restricted idea that was formerly formed of the places of the punishments and of the rewards and, above all, in accordance with the opinion that the Earth was the center of the Universe, that the firmament formed a vault and that there was a region of the stars, heaven was situated on high and hell below. Thence the expressions: to ascend to heaven, to be in the highest of the heavens, to be cast down into the hells.

Today, that Science has demonstrated that the Earth is only, among so many millions of others, one of the smallest worlds, without special importance; that it has traced the history of its formation and described its constitution; that it has proved that space is infinite, that there is no high nor low in the Universe, one has had to renounce situating Heaven above the clouds and hell in the inferior places.

As for purgatory, no place had been designated for it. It was reserved for Spiritism to give of all this the most rational, most grandiose, and at the same time most consoling explanation for Humanity. One may thus say that we carry within ourselves our hell and our paradise. Purgatory we find in incarnation, in corporeal or physical lives.

In what sense should these words of the Christ be understood: My kingdom is not of this world?

“In answering thus, the Christ spoke in a figurative sense. He meant that his reign is exercised only over pure and disinterested hearts. He is wherever the love of good dominates. But, avid for the things of this world and attached to the goods of the Earth, men are not with him.”

Will the reign of good ever be able to be established on Earth?

“Good will reign on Earth when, among the Spirits that come to dwell in it, the good ones predominate, because, then, they will make love and justice reign there, the source of good and of happiness.

By means of moral progress and by practicing the laws of God, man will attract to the Earth the good Spirits and will turn away from it the wicked ones. These, however, will not leave it, except when from it are banished pride and egoism.

“Foretold was the transformation of Humanity, and you are nearing the moment in which it will occur, a moment whose arrival is hastened by all the men who aid progress.

That transformation will be verified, by means of the incarnation of better Spirits, who will constitute on Earth a new generation.

Then, the Spirits of the wicked, whom death goes on reaping day by day, and all those who try to halt the march of things, will be excluded from there, since they would come to be out of place among the men of good will, whose happiness they would disturb. They will go to new worlds, less advanced, to carry out painful missions, laboring for their own advancement, at the same time that they will labor for that of their brothers still more backward.

In this banishment of Spirits from the transformed Earth, do you not perceive the sublime allegory of Paradise lost, and in the coming of man to the Earth in such conditions, bearing within himself the germ of his passions and the vestiges of his primitive inferiority, do you not discover the no less sublime allegory of original sin?

Considered from this point of view, original sin is connected with the still imperfect nature of man who, thus, is responsible only for himself, for his own faults and not for those of his parents.

“All of you, men of faith and of good will, labor, therefore, with courage and zeal in the great work of regeneration, for you will reap a hundredfold the grain that you may have sown.

Woe to those who close their eyes to the light! They prepare for themselves long centuries of darkness and disappointments. Woe to those who make of the goods of this world the source of all their joys! They will have to suffer privations far more numerous than the enjoyments of which they availed themselves!

Woe, above all, to the egoists! They will find no one to help them carry the burden of their miseries.” Saint Louis.