Vanity

I want to speak of vanity, which mingles with all human actions. It taints the gentlest thoughts; it invades the heart and the brain. A malign plant, it smothers goodness in its birth; all qualities are annihilated by its poison. To struggle against it, one must practice prayer; it alone gives us strength and humility. Ungrateful men! You forget God incessantly. He is for you nothing but the help implored in affliction, and never the friend invited to the banquet of joy. To light the day He gave you the sun, glorious radiance, and to brighten the night, the stars, golden flowers. Everywhere, alongside the elements necessary to Humanity, He placed the luxury necessary to the beauty of His work. God treated you as a generous host would do who, to receive his guests, multiplies the luxury of his mansion and the abundance of the feast. What do you do, you who have only your heart to offer Him? Far from honoring Him with your virtues and joys, far from offering Him the firstfruits of your hopes, you do not desire Him and only invite Him to penetrate your heart when mourning and bitter disappointments have worked upon you and left their marks. Ungrateful ones! What do you wait for to love your God? Misfortune and abandonment. Rather offer Him your heart, free of sorrows; offer Him, as men standing, and not as kneeling slaves, your love purified of fear, and in the hour of danger He will remember you, who did not forget Him in the hour of happiness. GEORGES. (Familiar Spirit.)

– HUMAN MISERY.

Human misery does not lie in the uncertainty of events, which now raise us up, now cast us down. It resides entirely in the avid and insatiable heart, which incessantly aspires to receive, which laments the dryness of others and never remembers its own aridity. That misfortune of aspiring higher than oneself, that misfortune of not being able to satisfy oneself with the dearest joys, that misfortune, I say, constitutes human misery. What does the brain matter, what do the most brilliant faculties matter, if they are always overshadowed by the bitter and insatiable desire that something endlessly escapes one? The shadow floats beside the body, happiness floats beside the soul, unattainable to it. You should, however, neither lament nor curse your fate; because that shadow, that happiness, fleeting and mobile as the wave, by the ardor and the anguish that it deposits in the heart, gives us the proof of the divinity imprisoned in Humanity. Love, then, sorrow and its vivifying poetry, which makes your Spirits vibrate with the remembrance of the eternal homeland. The human heart is a chalice full of tears; but the dawn comes, and it will drink the water of your hearts; for you it will be the life that will dazzle your eyes, blinded by the obscurity of the carnal prison. Courage! Each day is a liberation; march along the painful path; march, following with your gaze the marvelous star of hope. GEORGES. (Familiar Spirit.)

– SADNESS AND GRIEF.

(Through Mrs. Lesc…, medium.)

It is an error to yield frequently to sadness. Do not deceive yourselves: grief is the firm and honest feeling that takes hold of the man struck in his heart or in his interests; but tedious sadness is merely the physical manifestation of the blood in its slowness or rapidity of course. Sadness covers with its name much egoism, many weaknesses; it weakens the Spirit that abandons itself to it. Grief, on the contrary, is the bread of the strong. This bitter nourishment feeds the faculties of the spirit and diminishes the animal part. Do not seek the martyrdom of the body, but be avid for the torment of the soul. Men understand that they must move their legs and arms to maintain the life of the body, but they do not understand that they must suffer to exercise the moral faculties. Happiness, or merely joy, are such transient guests of Humanity that you cannot, without being crushed by them, bear their presence, however light it may be. You were made to suffer and to dream incessantly of happiness, for you are birds without wings, weighted to the ground, who look at the sky and desire space. GEORGES. (Familiar Spirit.)

Observation. – These two communications enclose, incontestably, very beautiful thoughts and images of great elevation; but they seem to us written under the sway of ideas somewhat somber and somewhat misanthropic. One would say there is in them the expression of an embittered heart. The Spirit who dictated them died a few years ago. In life he was a friend of the medium, of whom, after death, he became the familiar genius. He was a painter of talent, whose life had been calm and very carefree. But who knows whether it would have been the same in his previous existence? Be that as it may, all his communications attest to much depth and wisdom. One might think they were the reflection of the medium's character. Mrs. Lesc… is, incontestably, a very serious woman and above the common, in many respects, and it is this, no doubt – apart from her mediumistic faculty – that wins her the sympathy of the good Spirits. But the following communication, obtained at the Society, proves that she can receive others of a very varied character.