Counsels

In former times they would have crucified you, burned you, tortured you. The gallows has been torn down; the stake, extinguished; the instruments of torture, destroyed; the terrible weapon of ridicule, so powerful against falsehood, will be blunted before the truth; its most fearsome enemies have been enclosed within an insurmountable circle. Indeed, to deny the reality of our manifestations would be to deny revelation, which is the foundation of all religions; to attribute them to the demon, to claim that the Spirit of evil comes to confirm and develop the Gospel, to exhort you to good and to the practice of every virtue, is simply and happily to prove that he does not exist. Every kingdom divided against itself shall perish. There remain the evil Spirits. Never will a good tree produce bad fruit; never will a bad tree produce good fruit. You have nothing better to do than to answer them as the Christ answered his persecutors, when they leveled against him the same accusations; and, like him, to pray God to forgive them, for they know not what they do. The Spirit of Truth. n (Another, dictated to Mr. Roze and read at the Society.)

France carries the standard of progress and must guide the other nations: thus do past and contemporary events prove it. You have been chosen to be the mirror that must receive and reflect the divine light, which must illuminate the Earth, until now plunged into the darkness of ignorance and falsehood. But if you are not animated by love of neighbor and by a boundless disinterestedness; if the desire to know and propagate the truth, whose ways you must open to posterity, is not the sole motive guiding your labors; if the slightest inward thought of pride, egoism, and material interest finds a place in your hearts, we shall use you only as the craftsman who provisionally employs a defective tool; we shall come to you until we have found or brought forth a center richer than you in virtues, more congenial to the phalanx of Spirits whom God has sent to reveal the truth to men of good will. Think seriously upon this; descend into your hearts, sound their most intimate recesses, and energetically cast out the evil passions that drive us away. Failing that, withdraw, before you compromise the labors of your brothers by your presence, or by that of the Spirits you would bring with you. The Spirit of Truth.

[1]

[v.

Spirit of Truth.]