Spiritist Review — 1860 · Allan Kardec
Chapter 40 of 148
The dwelling of the elect
Your thought is still absorbed by the things of the Earth. If you wish to listen to us, you must forget them. Let us try to converse from on high; may your Spirit rise toward those regions, the dwelling of the Elect of the Lord. Behold those worlds that await all mortals, whose places are marked according to the merit they will have. What happiness for the one who delights in holy things, in the great teachings given in the name of God! O men! How small you are, compared to the Spirits freed from matter, who hover in the spaces occupied by the glory of the Lord! Happy are those who will be called to inhabit the worlds where matter is no more than a name; where all is ethereal and translucent; where footsteps are no longer heard. Celestial music is the only splendor that reaches the senses, so perfect that they capture the slightest sounds, provided these be called harmony! What lightness, that of all the beings beloved by God! How they traverse, delighted, those enchanted places, transformed into refuges! There, there are no more discords, nor jealousy, nor hatred. Love has become the bond destined to unite among themselves all created beings; and that love, which fills their hearts, has no other limit than God Himself, who is the end, and in whom are summed up faith, love, and charity. A friend.
(Another, by the same.)
Your forgetfulness afflicted me. Do not leave me again for so long without calling upon me. I feel disposed to converse with you and to give you counsel. Beware of believing everything that other Spirits might say to you; perhaps they will drag you along a bad path. Above all, be prudent, so that God may not take away the mission with which He has charged you to accomplish, namely: to help bring to the knowledge of men the revelation of the existence of the Spirits around them. Not all are in a condition to appreciate and understand the lofty import of things whose knowledge God does not yet permit save to the elect. A day will come when this science, full of consolation and grandeur, will be shared by all of Humanity, when not a single unbeliever will any longer be found. Men, then, will only be able to understand a truth so palpable that it will not be cast into doubt for a single instant by the simplest of mortals. I tell you, in truth, that half a century will not pass before the eyes and ears of all are opened to this great truth: the Spirits circulate in space and occupy different worlds, according to their merit in the eyes of God; true life is in death, it being necessary that man be redeemed several times before obtaining eternal life, to which all must come, through a greater or lesser number of centuries of sufferings, according to whether they have been more or less faithful to the voice of the Lord. A friend.