Epistle of Erastus to the Lyonese Spiritists

It is not without the most heartfelt emotion that I come to converse with you, dear Spiritists of the Lyonese group. I feel myself filled with sympathy and tenderness in a milieu such as yours, where all social conditions join hands, and I am happy to be able to announce to you that all of us, the initiators of Spiritism in France, shall attend with the most lively joy your fraternal love-feasts, to which we have been invited by John and Irenaeus, your eminent spiritual guides. Ah! these love-feasts awaken in my heart the memory of those in which we all gathered together, one thousand eight hundred years ago, when we combated the dissolute customs of Roman paganism and already commented upon the teachings and parables of the Son of Man, put to death for the propagation of a holy idea, upon the wood of infamy! If the Most High, my friends, by the effect of His infinite mercy, would permit the memory of the past to shine forth for an instant in your numbed memories, you would recall that epoch, illustrated by the holy martyrs of the Lyonese pleiad: Sanctus, Alexander, Attalus, Episode; the gentle and courageous Blandina; Irenaeus, the intrepid bishop, of whom many among you then formed the retinue, applauding their heroism and intoning praises to the Lord; you would also recall that several of those who hear me watered with their blood the Lyonese soil, this fertile land that Eucherius and Gregory of Tours called the homeland of the martyrs. I shall not name them; but you may consider those who, in your groups, fulfill a mission, an apostolate, as having already been martyrs of the propagation of the egalitarian idea, taught from atop Golgotha by our well-beloved Christ! Today, dear disciples, he who was consecrated by Saint Paul comes to tell you that your mission is always the same, for Roman paganism, still standing, still vigorous, still entwines the world, as the ivy enlaces the oak. You must, therefore, spread among your unfortunate brothers, slaves of their passions or of the passions of others, the sound and consoling doctrine that my friends and I have come to reveal to you, through our mediums of all countries. Despite this, we observe that the times have progressed, the customs are no longer the same, and Humanity has grown; for today, if you were the target of persecution, it would no longer emanate from a tyrannical and envious power, as in the time of the primitive church, but from interests leagued against the idea and against you, the apostles of the idea. I have just pronounced the word egalitarian. I deem it useful to dwell upon it a little, because we have absolutely not come to preach, in your midst, impracticable utopias, and also because, on the contrary, we energetically repel everything that seems to be connected with the prescriptions of an antisocial communism; above all, we are essentially propagandists of individual liberty, indispensable to the development of the incarnate; consequently, declared enemies of everything that approaches those conventual legislations, which brutally annihilate individuals. Although I address an audience composed in part of artisans and proletarians, I know that their consciences, enlightened by the radiations of the Spiritist truth, have already repelled all communion with the antisocial theories advanced in support of the word equality. Be that as it may, I must restore to it its Christian signification, such as it was explained by him who said: “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.” Well then, Spiritists! the equality proclaimed by the Christ, and which we ourselves profess in your beloved groups, is equality before the justice of God, that is to say, our right, according to our duty fulfilled, to rise in the hierarchy of the Spirits and one day to attain the advanced worlds, where perfect happiness reigns. For this, neither birth nor fortune is taken into account; the poor and the weak attain it, as do the rich and the powerful, because some carry away materially no more than others; and as there no one buys his place and his pardon with money, the rights are equal for all. Equality before God: behold the true equality. You will not be asked what you possessed, but the use you made of what you possessed. Now, the more you possess, the longer and more difficult will be the accounts you will have to render of your stewardship. Thus, then, according to your existences of missions, of trials or of chastisements in the earthly regions, each of you, in accordance with good or bad works, will progress on the scale of beings or will recommence, sooner or later, his existence, should he have strayed. In consequence, I repeat, in proclaiming the sacred dogma of equality, we have not come to teach that here on Earth you must all be equal in wealth, knowledge and happiness, but rather that you will all arrive, when the hour sounds and according to your merits, at the happiness of the elect, the portion of the choice souls who have fulfilled their duties. My dear Spiritists, behold the equality to which you all have a right, that to which emancipating Spiritism will lead you, that to which I invite you with all my strength. To attain it, what must you do? Obey these two sublime words: love and charity, which admirably summarize the law and the prophets. Love and charity! Ah! he who, according to his conscience, fulfills the prescriptions of this divine maxim will be sure to rise, to swiftly traverse the steps of Jacob’s ladder and soon to attain the elevated spheres, from whence he will be able to adore, contemplate and comprehend the majesty of the Eternal.

You cannot believe how sweet and pleasant it is for us to preside over your banquet, where the rich man and the artisan rub elbows, toasting to fraternity; where the Jew, the Catholic and the Protestant may sit at the same paschal communion. You cannot imagine how proud I feel to distribute to each of you the praises and the encouragement that the Spirit of Truth, our well-beloved master, has ordered me to confer upon your pious cohorts. To you, Dijoud, and to your worthy companion; and to all of you, devoted missionaries, who spread the benefits of Spiritism, thank you for your concurrence and for your zeal; but nobility obliges, my brothers, above all that of the heart, and you would be very culpable, very criminal, if you were to fail, in the future, in your holy missions. You will not fail; I have as a guarantee the good that you have accomplished and that which remains for you to do. But it is to you, my well-beloved brothers of the daily labor, that I reserve my most sincere felicitations, because, well I know it, you painfully climb your Golgotha, bearing, like the Christ, your dolorous cross. What could I tell you more laudatory than to recall the courage and the resignation with which you endure the unheard-of disasters that the fratricidal, yet necessary, struggle of the two Americas engenders in your midst? Ah! no one can deny that the beneficent influence of Spiritism already makes itself felt; it has penetrated, with hope and faith, into the environment of the workshops; and when we recall the times of the last reign, in which, as soon as work was lacking, the workers descended from the Croix-Rousse to the Terreaux , in tumultuous groups, presaging riots whose repression was terrible, we must thank God for the new revelation. Indeed, according to that vulgar image, which they employ in their picturesque language, often one must dance before the buffet; then they say, tightening their belts: Ah! we shall eat tomorrow!!! Well do I know that public and private charity bestirs itself and does what is possible; but it is not therein that the true remedy lies. Humanity needs something better, which is why, if Christianity advocated equality and the egalitarian laws, Spiritism encloses within its flanks fraternity and its laws, a grandiose and durable work that the future centuries will bless. Remember, my friends, that the Christ chose his apostles among the least of men, and these, stronger than the Caesars, conquered the world for the Christian idea. To you, then, falls the holy work of enlightening your workshop companions and propagating our sublime doctrine, which makes men so strong in adversity, so that the Spirit of evil and of revolt may not come to arouse hatred and vengeance in the heart of your brothers not yet touched by the Spiritist grace. This work belongs to you entirely, my dear friends; I know that you will accomplish it with the same zeal and the same ardor dictated by the consciousness of a duty to fulfill. One day History, grateful, will write in its annals that the workers of Lyon, illumined by Spiritism, deserved much of the homeland in 1861 and 1862, by the courage and resignation with which they endured the sad consequences of the slaveholding struggles between the disunited States of America. What does it matter! These times of struggles and of trials, my children, are blessed by God, sent to develop courage, patience and energy; to hasten the elevation and the perfecting of the terrestrial orb and of the Spirits imprisoned in the carnal bonds of matter. Go now; the trench is opened in the Old World; upon its ruins you will acclaim the Spiritist era of fraternity, which shows you the object and the end of human miseries, consoling and fortifying your hearts against struggle and adversity; you will confound the incredulous and the impious, and you will thank God for the share of your misfortunes and of your trials, because these bring you nearer to eternal happiness. It remains for me still to give you some counsels – although your guides have often already given them to you – but which my personal position and the present circumstance advise me to recall to you anew. My friends, here I address all the Spiritists, all the groups, so that no division, no dissidence, no schism may arise among you, but, on the contrary, that a solidary belief may animate you and reunite you all, for this is necessary to the development of our beneficent doctrine. I feel a sort of will that constrains me to preach to you concord and union, for in this, as in everything, union makes strength, and you have need to be fortress and union, so that you may be able to confront the tempests that approach. And you have need not only of union among yourselves, but also with your brothers of all countries. This is why I exhort you to follow the example given to you by the Spiritists of Bordeaux, whose particular groups all form the satellites of a central group; it was that central group that asked to enter into communion with the initiating Society of Paris, the first to receive the elements of a body of doctrine and to lay the serious bases for the study of Spiritism, which all of us, Spiritists, profess throughout the whole world.

I know that what I tell you here will not be lost; moreover, I am referring entirely to the counsels you have already received, and will yet receive, from your excellent spiritual guides, who will direct you in this salutary way, for it is necessary that the light radiate from the center to the periphery and from the latter to the center, so that all may profit and benefit from the labors of each one. Moreover, it is incontestable that, by submitting to the crucible of reason and logic all the data and all the communications of the Spirits, it will be easy to repel the absurd and the erroneous. A medium may be fascinated, a group deceived; nevertheless, the severe control of the other groups, the acquired science and the moral authority of the heads of groups, as well as the communications of the principal mediums, which receive a stamp of logic and of authenticity from our best Spirits, will rapidly do justice to the falsified and crafty dictations, emanating from a horde of deceiving, imperfect or evil Spirits. Repel them pitilessly, and likewise all those Spirits who counsel with exclusivity, preaching division and isolation. Almost always they are vain and mediocre Spirits, who tend to impose themselves upon weak and credulous men, lavishing upon them exaggerated praises, in order to fascinate them and keep them under domination. Generally they are Spirits thirsting for power, who, public or private despots when alive, still wish to have victims to tyrannize after death. My friends, distrust, in general, the communications that bear a character of mysticism or of strangeness, or that prescribe bizarre ceremonies and acts; then there is always a motive for legitimate suspicion. On the other hand, rest assured that a truth, when it must be revealed to Humanity, is, so to speak, instantaneously communicated in all the serious groups, which possess serious mediums. Finally, I believe it good to repeat that no one is a perfect medium if he is obsessed; obsession is one of the greatest reefs, and there is manifest obsession when a medium is not apt to receive communications except from a special Spirit, however high the latter may seek to place himself. In consequence, every medium, every group that deems itself privileged by communications that they alone can receive, or that are subject to practices bordering on superstition, find themselves indubitably under the dominion of a very well characterized obsession. I say all this, my friends, because there exist in the world mediums fascinated by perfidious Spirits. Unmask pitilessly those Spirits, if they yet dare to profane venerated names, of which they take possession like thieves and with which they proudly adorn themselves, as lackeys do with the clothes of their masters; nail them to the pillory without pity, should they persist in turning honest Christians, zealous Spiritists, from the good path, whose good faith they have deluded. In a word, let me repeat what I have already counseled to the Parisian Spiritists: it is better to repel ten truths for some time than to admit a single falsehood, a single erroneous theory, because you might, upon that theory and that falsehood, edify a whole system, which would crumble at the first breath of truth, as if it were a monument edified upon shifting sand, whereas if today you reject certain truths, certain principles, because they are not demonstrated to you with clarity, soon a brutal fact or an irrefutable demonstration will come to establish their authenticity. To John, to Irenaeus, to Blandina, as well as to all your protecting Spirits falls the task of forewarning you henceforth against the false prophets of erraticity. The great emancipating Spirit who presides over our labors, under the gaze of the Almighty, will provide for this, you may believe me. As for me, although I am more particularly attached to the Parisian groups, I shall come some times to converse with you and shall always follow your particular labors with interest.

We expect much of the Lyonese province, and we know that you will not fail, neither some nor others, in your respective missions. Remember that Christianity, brought by the Caesarian legions, cast, nearly two thousand years ago, the first seeds of the Christian renovation in Vienne and Lyon, whence they propagated rapidly to Northern Gaul. Today progress must be accomplished in a new radiation, that is to say, from the North to the South. To the work, then, Lyonese! It is necessary that truth triumph, and it is not without a legitimate impatience that we await the hour when the silver trumpet will sound, to announce to us your first combat and your first victory.

Permit me now to thank you for the recollection with which you have heard me and the sympathetic welcome you have granted me. May God Almighty, Lord of us all, grant you His benevolence, spreading upon you and upon His very humble servant the treasures of His infinite mercy. Farewell! Lyonese, I bless you!

Erastus.

[1]

Translator’s note: For some persons, this testimony of Erastus reinforces the opinion, defended now and then, that the Spirit of Truth would be the Christ himself. [See the Spiritist Review of July 1866, on the qualification of Spirit of Truth.]

[2] Translator’s note: Erastus alludes to the War of Secession, in the United States, begun in 1861.

[3] Translator’s note: Emphasis ours.

[4] Translator’s note: In the original: danser devant le buffet – a vulgar image meaning: to have nothing to eat, to go through difficulties, to be in destitution.

[5] [Erastus’s reflections from this paragraph onward are likewise found in the Mediums’ Book, chapter 31.]

[6] Translator’s note: Erastus does not refer to Vienna, the capital of Austria, but to the French city of the same name, set on the banks of the Rhône, rich in vestiges of the epoch of the Roman domination.

[7]

[see Thomas Erastus.]