REGENERATION OF HUMANITY.

Events are precipitating with rapidity, wherefore we no longer say to you, as formerly: “The times are approaching.” Now, we say: “The times have come.”

Do not suppose that our words refer to a new deluge, nor to a cataclysm, nor to a general upheaval. Partial revolutions of the globe have occurred in all epochs and still occur, because they stem from its constitution, but they do not represent the signs of the times.

Nevertheless, all that is foretold in the Gospel must be fulfilled, and at this moment it is being fulfilled, as you will recognize later. But take the announced signs only as figures, which must be understood according to the spirit and not according to the letter. All the Scriptures enclose great truths beneath the veil of allegory, and it is by clinging to the letter that the commentators have gone astray. They lacked the key to understand their true meaning. That key lies in the discoveries of Science and in the Laws of the invisible world, which Spiritism comes to reveal. From now on, with the aid of these new knowledge, that which was obscure will become clear and intelligible. Everything follows the natural order of things, and the immutable laws of God will not be subverted. You will not see miracles, nor prodigies, nor supernatural facts, in the sense vulgarly given to those words.

Do not look to the sky in search of the precursory signs, for you will see none, and those who announce them to you will be deceiving you. Look around you, among men: it is there that you will discover them.

Do you not feel that something like a wind is blowing over the Earth and stirring all Spirits? The world finds itself in expectation and as if in the grip of a vague presentiment that the tempest is approaching.

Do not believe, however, in the end of the material world. The Earth has progressed since its transformation; it has yet to progress and not to be destroyed. Humanity, however, has reached one of the periods of its transformation, and the terrestrial world is going to rise in the hierarchy of worlds.

What is being prepared, then, is not the end of the material world, but the end of the moral world. It is the old world, the world of prejudices, of pride, of egoism and of fanaticism, that is crumbling. Each day carries away some debris. All of it will end with the generation that is passing, and the new generation will raise the new edifice, which the following generations will consolidate and complete.

From a world of expiation, the Earth will one day be changed into a happy world, and to inhabit it will be a reward instead of being a punishment. The reign of good will succeed the reign of evil.

In order that men may be happy on Earth, it is necessary that it be peopled solely by good Spirits, incarnate and disincarnate, who aspire only to good. As that time has now come, a great emigration is at this moment taking place among those who inhabit it. Those who practice evil for evil's sake, strangers to the sentiment of good, will find themselves excluded from it, because they would again bring upon it disturbances and confusions that would constitute an obstacle to progress. They will go to expiate their hardening in inferior worlds, to which they will carry the knowledge they have acquired, having as their mission to make them advance. They will be replaced on Earth by better Spirits who will make justice, peace, and fraternity reign among themselves. The Earth, we have said, will not be transformed by a cataclysm that would suddenly annihilate a generation. The present one will disappear gradually and the new one will succeed it in the same way, without there being any change in the natural order of things. Everything, then, outwardly, will proceed as usual, with a single difference, capital though it be: that a portion of the Spirits who incarnated upon it will no longer incarnate. In each child that is born, in place of a backward Spirit prone to evil, there will incarnate a more advanced Spirit prone to good. It is, therefore, much less a matter of a new corporeal generation than of a new generation of Spirits. Thus, disappointed will be those who count on the transformation resulting from supernatural and marvelous effects. The present epoch is that of transition; the elements of the two generations are mingled. Placed at the intermediate point, you witness the departure of one and the arrival of the other, and each is already marked in the world by the characters proper to it.

The two generations that succeed one another have ideas and ways of seeing entirely opposed. By the nature of the moral dispositions, however, and above all by the intuitive and innate dispositions, it becomes easy to distinguish to which of the two each individual belongs.

Having to found the era of moral progress, the new generation is distinguished by an intelligence and a reason that are generally precocious, joined to the innate sentiment of good and to spiritualist beliefs, which is an indubitable sign of a certain degree of prior advancement. It will be composed not only of eminently superior Spirits, but of Spirits who, having already progressed, are predisposed to assimilate progressive ideas and apt to second the regenerating movement.

What, on the contrary, distinguishes the backward Spirits is, first, revolt against God, through the negation of Providence and of any power above Humanity; then, an instinctive propensity for the degrading passions, for the anti-fraternal sentiments of pride, hatred, jealousy, cupidity, in short, the predominance of attachment to all that is material.

It is of these vices that the Earth must be purged, through the removal of those who refuse to amend themselves, since they are incompatible with the reign of fraternity, and men of good would always suffer from contact with these creatures. Once the Earth is rid of them, the others will walk unimpeded toward the better future that is reserved for them in this world, in reward for their efforts and their perseverance, until a still more complete purification opens to them the portal of the superior worlds.

With reference to this emigration of Spirits, let no one claim that all backward Spirits will be expelled from the Earth and relegated to inferior worlds. Many, on the contrary, will return here, because many will yield to the empire of circumstances and of example; in them, the husk is more spoiled than the kernel. Once withdrawn from the influence of matter and from the prejudices of the corporeal world, they, for the most part, will see things in a manner entirely different from how they saw them when alive, according to the numerous cases you have already appraised. For this, they will have to help them the good Spirits, who take an interest in them and who strive to enlighten them and to show them how wrong was the path they trod. Through your prayers and exhortations, you can contribute much to their improvement, because there is a perpetual solidarity between the dead and the living. Those Spirits, consequently, will be able to return and will feel happy, because this will be a reward for them. What does it matter what they have been and done, if they are found animated by better sentiments? Far from showing themselves hostile to society, they will be its useful auxiliaries, since they will belong to the new generation.

There will be, then, no definitive exclusion except of the substantially rebellious Spirits, of those whom pride and egoism, more than ignorance, have rendered deaf to the appeals of good and of reason. Even these, however, will not be condemned to perpetual inferiority. A day will come when they will repudiate the past and open their eyes to the light.

Thus, pray for these hardened ones, so that they may amend themselves while there is still time, since the day of expiation is approaching.

Unfortunately, the majority, failing to recognize the voice of God, will persist in their blindness, and the resistance they will come to oppose will mask, by means of terrible struggles, the end of the reign of those who constitute it. Bewildered, they will run to their own ruin; they will provoke destructions that will give rise to a countless number of scourges and calamities, so that, without willing it, they will hasten the advent of the era of renewal.

And, as though the destruction were not operating with sufficient rapidity, suicides will multiply in unheard-of proportions, even among children. Madness will never have struck so great a quantity of men who, even before dying, will be struck from the number of the living. These are the true signs of the times, and all this will be fulfilled through the chain of circumstances, as we have already said, without there being the slightest derogation from the laws of Nature.

Nevertheless, through the dark cloud that envelops you, and in whose bosom the tempest growls, you can already see dawning the first rays of the new era. Fraternity is laying its foundations at all points of the globe, and peoples are extending their hands to one another; barbarism is becoming familiar through contact with civilization; the prejudices of races and of sects, which caused the shedding of waves of blood, are being extinguished; fanaticism and intolerance are losing ground, while liberty of conscience is being introduced into customs and is becoming a right. Everywhere ideas are fermenting; evil is perceived and remedies are tried to overcome it, but many walk without a compass and lose themselves in utopias. The world finds itself engaged in an immense labor of gestation that has already lasted a century; in this labor, still confused, one notes, nevertheless, that the tendency toward a determined end predominates: that of unity and uniformity, which predispose to confraternization. There too you have signs of the times. But, whereas the others are those of the agonies of the past, these last are the first cries of the child being born, the precursors of the dawn that the next century will see breaking, for then the new generation will be in all its vigor. As much as the physiognomy of the nineteenth century differs from that of the eighteenth, under certain points of view, so will that of the twentieth differ from that of the nineteenth, under other points of view.

Innate faith will be one of the distinctive characters of the new generation, not the exclusive and blind faith that divides men, but reasoned faith, which enlightens and fortifies, which unites them and merges them in a common sentiment of love for God and for one's neighbor. With the generation that is being extinguished will disappear the last vestiges of incredulity and of fanaticism, equally contrary to moral and social progress.

Spiritism is the path that leads to renewal, because it destroys the two greatest obstacles that oppose that renewal: incredulity and fanaticism, because it affords a solid and enlightened faith; it develops all the sentiments and all the ideas that correspond to the ways of seeing of the new generation, wherefore, in the heart of its representatives, it will be found innate and in a state of intuition. Thus, the new era will see it grow great and prosper by the very force of things. It will become the basis of all beliefs, the point of support of all institutions.

But, from here until then, how many struggles it will still have to sustain against its two greatest enemies: incredulity and fanaticism which — singular thing! — join hands to bring it down. It is because the two foresee its future and, in consequence, the ruin of both. That is the reason why they fear it; they already see it raising, upon the debris of the old egoistic world, the banner around which all peoples will gather. In the divine maxim: Outside charity there is no salvation, they read their own condemnation, for that maxim is the symbol of the new fraternal alliance proclaimed by the Christ. It presents itself to them like the fatal words of the feast of Belshazzar. Yet they ought to bless that maxim, for it defends them from all reprisals on the part of those who persecute them. Such, however, is not the case: a blind force impels them to reject the only thing capable of saving them. What can they do against the ascendancy of the opinion that repudiates them? Spiritism will emerge triumphant from the struggle, rest assured, for it lies within the laws of Nature, and cannot, for that very reason, perish. Observe the multiplicity of means by which the idea spreads and penetrates everywhere; believe that these means are not fortuitous, but providential. That which, at first sight, ought to be prejudicial to it is exactly what aids its propagation.

Before long, champions will arise who will aloud proclaim themselves such, among those of greatest consideration and most accredited, who, with the authority of their names and of their examples, will support it, imposing silence upon those who detract it, for no one will dare to treat them as madmen. These men study it in silence and will appear when the opportune moment has come. Until then, it is good that they keep apart.

Before long, you will also see the arts drawing near to it, as to a most rich mine, and translating the thoughts and the horizons it makes manifest, by means of painting, music, poetry, and literature. You have already been told that there will one day be Spiritist art, as there was pagan art and Christian art. It is a great truth, for the greatest geniuses will draw their inspiration from it. Before long, you will see the first sketches of Spiritist art, which later will occupy the place that befits it.

Spiritists, the future is yours and that of all men of heart and devotion. Do not be alarmed by the obstacles, for there is none that can hamper the designs of Providence. Work without rest and thank God for having placed you in the vanguard of the new phalanx. It is a post of honor that you yourselves solicited and of which you must show yourselves worthy by your courage, by your perseverance, and by your devotion. Happy are those who succumb in this struggle against force; shame, on the contrary, will await, in the world of Spirits, those who succumb through weakness or pusillanimity. Struggles, moreover, are necessary to strengthen the soul; contact with evil makes one better appreciate the advantages of good. Without struggles, which stimulate the faculties, the Spirit would give itself over to a heedlessness fatal to its advancement. Struggles against the elements develop the physical forces and the intelligence; struggles against evil develop the moral forces.