First epistle of Erastus to the Spiritists of Bordeaux.

May the peace of the Lord be with you, my good friends, so that nothing may come to disturb the good harmony that must reign in a center of sincere Spiritists! I know how profound your faith in God is and how fervent you are as adherents of the new revelation. This is why I tell you, with all the effusion of my tenderness, that all of us would be disconsolate – we who are, under the direction of the Spirit of Truth, the initiators of Spiritism in France – if the concord, of which you have until now given brilliant proofs, were to disappear from your midst; if you had not given the example of a solid fraternity; if, in short, you were not a serious and important center of the great French Spiritist communion, I would have left this question in the shadows. But if I have raised it, it is because I have plausible reasons to invite you to maintain union, peace and unity of doctrine among your various groups. Yes, my dear disciples, I diligently take advantage of this occasion, which we ourselves prepared, to show you how disastrous to the development of Spiritism it would be, and what scandal it would cause among your brothers in other lands, the news of a schism in the center which we have been delighted to mention until now, for its spirit of fraternity, to all the other groups, formed or in formation. I am not unaware, as you must not be unaware, that they will resort to every means to sow division among you; that they will set traps for you; that they will scatter ambushes of every sort on your path; that they will set you against one another, in order to foment division and lead to a rupture, deplorable in every respect. But you will be able to avoid all this by practicing the sublime precepts of the law of love and charity, first of all before yourselves and, then, before all. No; I am convinced that you will not give the enemies of our holy cause the satisfaction of saying: “Behold those Spiritists of Bordeaux, whom they showed us as marching in the vanguard of the new believers. They do not even know how to be in agreement among themselves!” This, my dear friends, is where they await you and where they await us all. Your excellent guides have already told you: You will have to struggle not only against the proud, the egoists, the materialists and all those unfortunate ones who are imbued with the spirit of the age, but, still and above all, against the throng of deceiving Spirits who, finding in your midst a rare gathering of mediums – for in this regard you are the most favored – will soon come to assail you: some, with dissertations skillfully contrived, in which, thanks to a few pious flourishes, they will insinuate heresy or some subversive principle; others, with communications openly hostile to the teachings given by the true missionaries of the Spirit of Truth. Ah! believe me, do not fear to unmask the rogues who, new Tartuffes, would introduce themselves among you under the mask of religion; be equally merciless toward the devouring wolves, who would conceal themselves under sheep's skins. With the help of God, whom you never invoke in vain, and with the assistance of the good Spirits who protect you, you will remain unshakable in your faith; the evil Spirits will find you invulnerable and, when they see their arrows grow less sharp against the love and charity that animate your heart, they will withdraw, confounded, from a campaign where they will have reaped nothing but impotence and shame. Regarding as subversive every doctrine contrary to the morality of the Gospel and to the general prescriptions of the Decalogue, which are summed up in this concise law: Love God above all things and your neighbor as yourself, you will remain invariably united. Moreover, in everything one must know how to submit to the common law: it falls to no one to withdraw himself or to wish to impose his opinion and his sentiment, when these are not accepted by the other members of one and the same Spiritist family; and in this I earnestly invite you to model yourselves upon the usages and regulations of the Society for Spiritist Studies of Paris, where no one, whatever his position, age, services rendered or authority acquired, may substitute, by his personal initiative, that of the Society of which he is a part and, a fortiori, engage it in anything whatsoever, by expedients which it has not approved. This said, it is incontestable that the adherents of one and the same group must have a just deference toward the wisdom and the experience acquired. Experience is not the attribute of the oldest, nor of the wisest, but of the one who has occupied himself longest and most profitably for all with our consoling philosophy. As for wisdom, it falls to you to examine those who, among you, best follow and practice the precepts and the laws. Nevertheless, my friends, before following your own inspirations, do not forget that you have your counsels and your ethereal advisers to consult, and these will never fail you, when you solicit them fervently and with an aim of general interest. For this, you need good mediums, and here I see them excellent, among whom you have only to choose. I certainly know perfectly well that Mrs. and Miss Cazemajoux and some others possess mediumistic qualities in the highest degree, and no region, I repeat to you here, is better favored in this respect than Bordeaux. I had to make you hear a voice somewhat more severe, my well-beloved, inasmuch as the Spirit of Truth, master of us all, expects more of you. Remember that you are part of the Spiritist vanguard and that, just as with the general staff, the vanguard owes to all the example of an absolute submission to the established discipline. Ah! your task is not easy, for it is to you that the work belongs of bringing, with a vigorous hand, the axe to the somber forests of materialism and of pursuing to their last entrenchments the coalesced material interests. New Jasons, march to the conquest of the true golden fleece, that is, of those new and fruitful ideas which must regenerate the world; but then, you no longer march in your own interest, nor even in the interest of the present generation, but above all in the interest of the future generations, for whom you prepare the way. There is in this work a sign of abnegation and of grandeur that will strike future centuries with admiration and gratitude, for which God, believe me, will know how to take account of you. I had to speak as I spoke because I address creatures who listen to reason; men who seriously pursue an eminently useful end: the improvement and the emancipation of the human race; in short, Spiritists who teach and preach by example, that the best means to arrive there lies in the practice of the true Christian virtues. I had to speak to you thus because it was necessary to warn you against a danger, which it was my duty to point out; I come to fulfill it. Thus, now, I can face the future without disquiet, because I am convinced that my words will profit all and each; and that egoism, self-love and vanity will, henceforth, have no power over hearts where, without any limit, true fraternity reigns.

You will remember, Spiritists of Bordeaux, that your union is the true path toward universal union and fraternity. In this respect I feel happy, very happy, to be able to observe clearly that Spiritism has made you take a step forward. Receive, then, our compliments, for here I speak in the name of all the Spirits who preside over the great work of human regeneration, for having, by your initiative, opened a new field of exploration and a new cause of certainty for the studies of the phenomena of beyond the tomb, by your request for affiliation, no longer as isolated individuals, but as a compact group, with the initiating Society of Paris. By the importance of this initiative, I recognize the high wisdom of your principal guides and I give thanks to the gentle Fénelon and his faithful auxiliaries Georges and Marius, who with him preside over your pious study meetings. I take advantage of this circumstance likewise to bear a brilliant testimony to the Spirits Ferdinand and Félicia, whom you all know. Although these worthy collaborators have only done good for the sake of good, it is well that you should know that it is to these modest pioneers, seconded by the humble Marcelin, that our holy doctrine owes its having prospered so rapidly in Bordeaux and in the southwest of France.

Yes, my faithful believers, your admirable initiative will be followed, I well know, by all the Spiritist groups formed with seriousness. It is, then, an immense step forward. You have understood, and all your brothers will understand as you do, what advantages, what progress, what propaganda will result from the adoption of a uniform program for the works and studies of the doctrine that we reveal to you. Let it be well understood, despite this, that each group will preserve its originality and its particular initiative; but, apart from its particular works, it will have to occupy itself with various questions of general interest, submitted to its examination by the central Society, and to resolve several difficulties whose solution, until now, could not be obtained from the Spirits, for reasons that it would be useless to develop here. I would fear to offend you if I emphasized to your eyes the consequences that will come from the simultaneous works; who will dare, then, to contest a truth, when it is confirmed by the unanimity or by the majority of the mediumistic answers, obtained simultaneously in Lyon, Bordeaux, Constantinople, Metz, Brussels, Sens, Mexico, Carlsruhe, Marseille, Toulouse, Mâcon, Sétif, Algiers, Oran, Cracow, Moscow, Saint Petersburg, as in Paris?

I have entertained you with the rough frankness that I employ to speak to your brothers in Paris. Nevertheless, I will not leave you without testifying my sympathies, justly won, to this patriarchal family, where excellent Spirits, charged with your spiritual direction, have begun to make their eloquent words heard. I mentioned the Sabò family, which, with an unalterable constancy and piety, knew how to pass through the painful trials with which God afflicted it, with the aim of elevating it and making it apt for its present mission. Neither must I forget the devoted concurrence of all those who, in their respective spheres, contributed to the propagation of our consoling doctrine. Continue all of you, my friends, to march resolutely on the open path; it will surely lead you to the ethereal spheres of perfect happiness, where I will mark a meeting with you. In the name of the Spirit of Truth, who loves you, I bless you, Spiritists of Bordeaux!

Erastus. n [1]

[v. Thomas Erastus.]