The suicide of an atheist.

— M. J. B. D… was an educated man, but saturated in the extreme with materialist ideas, believing neither in God nor in the existence of the soul. He drowned himself voluntarily two years ago. He was evoked at the request of the family.

Evocation.

Answer. – I suffer! I am a condemned man.

We were led to evoke you in the name of one of your relatives, who desires to know your fate. Could you tell us whether this evocation is painful or agreeable to you?

Answer. – Painful.

Was your death voluntary?

Answer. – Yes.

Observation. – The Spirit writes with extreme difficulty. The handwriting is thick, irregular, convulsive, and almost unintelligible. On finishing the writing he flies into a rage, breaks the pencil, and tears up the paper.

Be calm, for we shall all pray to God for you.

Answer. – I am forced to believe in this God.

What motive could have led you to suicide?

Answer. – The tedium of a life without hope.

Observation. – Suicide is conceivable when life is without hope; one then seeks to flee from it at any price. With Spiritism, on the contrary, hope is strengthened because the future unfolds before us. Suicide ceases to have a purpose, once it is recognized that, by such a means, one escapes from one evil only to fall into another a hundred times worse. This is why Spiritism has snatched many people from a voluntary death. Are they wrong? Are they dreamers who seek in it, above all, the moral and philosophical end? Greatly guilty are those who strive to make people believe, with scientific sophisms and on the pretext of a false reason, in that despairing idea, source of so many crimes and evils, that everything ends with life. These will be responsible not only for their own errors, but equally for all the evils to which they have given cause.

You wished to escape the vicissitudes of life… Have you gained anything? Are you now happier?

Answer. – Why does nothingness not exist?

Have the goodness to describe to us as best you can your present situation.

Answer. – I suffer from the constraint I am under of believing in all that I denied. My Spirit is as in a brazier, horribly tormented.

Whence came your materialist ideas of former times?

Answer. – In a previous incarnation I had been wicked, and for that reason I condemned myself, in the following one, to the torments of uncertainty, and thus it was that I committed suicide.

Observation. – Here there is a whole corollary of ideas. Many times we ask ourselves how there can be materialists when, having passed through the spiritual world, they should have an intuition of it; now, it is precisely that intuition which is refused to certain Spirits who, retaining their pride, do not repent of their faults. One must not forget that the Earth is a place of expiation. This is the reason why it contains so many wicked Spirits, incarnated.

When you drowned yourself, what ideas did you have of the consequences? What reflections did you make at that moment?

Answer. – None, for everything was nothingness to me. It was afterward that I saw that, having served out the whole sentence, I should have to suffer still more.

Now are you well convinced of the existence of God, of the soul, and of the future life?

Answer. – Ah! All this torments me greatly.

Have you seen again your wife and your brother?

Answer. – Oh! no.

And why not?

Answer. – Why confound our despairs? People are exiled in misfortune and reunite only in happiness; that is how it is.

Would the presence of your brother trouble you, whom we could draw near to you?

Answer. – Do not do it, for I do not deserve it.

Why do you object?

Answer. – Because he too is not happy.

You fear his presence, and yet it could only be beneficial to you.

Answer. – No; later.

Your relative asks whether you were present at your burial, and whether you were satisfied with what he did on the occasion.

Answer. – Yes.

Have you any message for your relatives?

Answer. – That they pray for me.

It seems that in the circle of your relations there are some who share your opinions. Do you wish us to tell them anything about it?

Answer. – Oh! the wretches! May they be able to believe in another existence—this is all I can wish them. If they could appreciate my sad position, they would reflect much.

EVOCATION OF ANOTHER MATERIALIST, BROTHER OF THE PRECEDING.

(Evocation of a brother of the preceding, who professed the same theories, but who did not commit suicide. Though also unhappy, this one presents himself more calmly; his writing is clear and legible.)

Evocation – May the picture of our sufferings be a useful lesson, persuading you of the reality of another existence, in which are expiated the faults arising from incredulity!

Do you, and your brother whom we have just evoked, see each other?

Answer. – No; he flees from me.

You are calmer than your brother. Could you give us a more precise description of your sufferings?

Answer. – Do you not suffer there on Earth in your pride, in your self-love, when obliged to acknowledge your errors? Does your Spirit not revolt at the idea of humbling yourselves before whoever demonstrates your error to you? Well then! Judge how much the Spirit must suffer who throughout his whole life persuaded himself that nothing existed beyond himself, and that his reason always prevailed over all others. Finding himself suddenly in the face of the imposing truth, that Spirit feels annihilated, humiliated. To this is added still the remorse of having for so long forgotten the existence of a God so good, so indulgent. The situation is unbearable; there is neither calm nor repose; one finds a little tranquility only at the moment when divine grace, that is, the love of God, touches us, for pride takes such hold of us, that it altogether dulls us, to the point that much time is still needed before we completely strip ourselves of that fatal garment. Only the prayer of our brothers can help us in these throes.

Do you wish to speak of the incarnated brothers, or of the Spirits?

Answer. – Of both.

While we were conversing with your brother, one of the persons here present prayed for him; was that prayer profitable to him?

Answer. – It will not be lost. If he now refuses grace, he will not do likewise when he is in a condition to have recourse to that divine panacea.

— Transmitting the result of these two evocations to the person who had requested them of us, we received from him the following reply:

“You cannot imagine, my dear sir, the great benefit derived from the evocation of my father-in-law and of my uncle. We recognized them perfectly. The handwriting of the first, above all, is of a remarkable analogy with the one he had in life, all the more so since, during the last months that he spent with us, that handwriting was halting and indecipherable. There one finds the same form of the downstrokes, of the flourish, and of certain letters, principally the d, f, o, p, q, t. As for the vocabulary and the style, the resemblance is even more striking; for us the analogy is complete, only with greater knowledge of God, of the soul, and of eternity which he so formally denied of old. No doubts remain to us, therefore, as to his identity. God will be glorified by the greater firmness of our beliefs in Spiritism, and our incarnated and disincarnated brothers will become better. The identity of his brother is also no less evident; in the change from atheist to believer, we recognized his character, his style, his manner of speaking. One word, above all, awakened our attention—panacea—his favorite expression, repeated at every instant. “I showed these two communications to several persons, who no less marveled at their veracity, but the incredulous, holding the same opinions as my relatives, these would desire still more categorical answers.

“They wished, for example, that M. D… should refer to the place where he was buried, where he drowned himself, how he was found, etc. In order to convince them, would it not be possible for you to make a new evocation, asking where and how he committed suicide, how long he was submerged, in what place they found the corpse, where he was interred, in what manner, whether he was buried civilly or religiously? Deign, dear sir, to insist on a categorical answer to these questions, for they are essential for those who still doubt. I am convinced that they will yield, in that case, immense results. “I make haste so that this may be delivered to you on Friday morning, so that the evocation may be made at the session of the Society of that same day… etc.”

— We reproduce this letter on account of the confirmation of identity, and here we append to it our reply for the instruction of persons not familiar with communications from beyond the tomb.

“The questions you asked us to address anew to the Spirit of your father-in-law are, incontestably, dictated by a praiseworthy intention, namely that of convincing the incredulous, seeing that in you there no longer exists any sentiment of doubt or curiosity. Nevertheless, a more thorough knowledge of the Spiritist science would make you judge these questions superfluous. In the first place, in asking me to obtain a categorical answer, you show that you are unaware of the circumstance that we cannot govern the Spirits at our pleasure. Know that they answer us when and how they will, and also as they can. The liberty of their action is greater still than when incarnated, since they possess more effective means of evading the moral constraint that we might happen to wish to exercise over them. The best proofs of identity are those they furnish spontaneously, of themselves, or else those arising from the circumstances themselves. The latter, it is almost useless to provoke. According to what you affirm, your relative proved his identity in an irrefutable manner; consequently, his refusal to answer questions that may, and with reason, be considered superfluous, aiming to satisfy the curiosity of persons who are indifferent to him, is more than probable. The answer might well be the one that others have given in similar cases, that is: ‘why ask things that you already know?’ “To this I will add that the disturbance and the sufferings that overwhelm him must be aggravated by investigations of this kind, which correspond perfectly to wishing to constrain a sick man, who can scarcely think and speak, to recount the minutiae of his life, thus failing in the considerations inspired by his own state. “As for the objective you allege, be assured that everything would be negative. The proofs of identity furnished are far more valuable, inasmuch as they were spontaneous, and not premeditated beforehand. Now, if these could not satisfy the incredulous, much less would questions already prearranged, of whose connivance they might suspect. “There are persons whom nothing can convince. These could see your father-in-law with their own eyes, and would continue to suppose themselves victims of a hallucination. The best that can be done for them is to leave them in peace and not waste time in superfluous discourses. We can only pity them, for sooner or later they will learn for themselves how much it costs to have repelled the light that God sends them. It is above all against these that God displays His severity. “Two words more, sir, on your request for an evocation on the same day on which I was to receive the letter. Evocations are not made thus, in haste; the Spirits do not always answer our call; for that it is necessary that they be able or be willing; besides this, a medium is needed who suits them and who has the special aptitude required; that this medium be available at a given moment, that the setting be congenial to the Spirit, etc. These are circumstances for which we can never answer and which it is important to know when one wishes to do a serious thing.” [1] Translator's note: See Heaven and Hell, 2nd part, chapter V: An atheist.