Correspondence.

Rome, March 2, 1861.

Sir, For about four years I have been occupying myself here with the spiritist manifestations and I have the happiness of counting within the family a good medium, who gives us communications of a superior order. We have read and reread your The Spirits' Book, which provides us joy and consolation, giving us the most sublime and admissible notions of the future life. If I could doubt of the latter, the proofs that I now have are more than sufficient to consolidate my faith. I have lost persons who were very dear to me and I have the inestimable happiness of knowing that they are happy and I can correspond with them. To tell of the joy I experienced from this is inexpressible. The first time they gave me manifest signs of their presence, I exclaimed: Then it is true that not everything dies with the body! I owe to you, sir, the having given me that confidence. Believe in my eternal gratitude for the good you have done me, because, in spite of myself, the future tormented me. The idea of nothingness was horrible and, apart from nothingness, I found only a tormenting uncertainty. No more doubt, now; it seems that I have been reborn to life; all my apprehensions have dissipated and my confidence in God has returned stronger than ever. I hope much that, thanks to you, my children will not have the same torments, for they are nourished with the truths which the growing reason can only fortify within them. Nevertheless, we lacked a sure guide for the practice. If I did not fear to importune you, long since I would already have asked you for the counsels of your experience. Fortunately your The Mediums' Book came to fill that gap, and now we march with a firmer step, for we are forewarned against the reefs that may be encountered. I am sending you, sir, some samples of the communications we recently received. They were written in Italian and no doubt lost in the translation. Despite this I will be very grateful if you tell me what you think of them, should you favor me with a reply. It will be an encouragement for us. I beg you to excuse me, sir, this long letter and believe in the testimony of sympathy of your devoted, Count X…

Note. – The profusion of matters forces us to postpone the publication of the communications transmitted by Count X…, among whose number there are some admirable ones. We extract only the following answers, given by one of the Spirits who manifested to him:

– Question. Do you know The Spirits' Book?

Answer. – How would the Spirits not know their work? They all know it.

– That is very natural in relation to those who worked on it. But as for the other Spirits?

Answer. – There is among the Spirits a communion of thoughts and a solidarity that you cannot comprehend, men, you who nourish yourselves in egoism and see only through the narrow windows of your prison.

– Did you work on it?

Answer. – No; not personally, but I knew it was to be made and that other Spirits, far above me, were charged with that mission.

– What results will it produce?

Answer. – It is a tree that has already cast fecund seeds over all the Earth. These seeds germinate; soon they will ripen and in a short time the fruits will be harvested.

– Is the opposition of its detractors not to be feared?

Answer. – When the clouds that obscure the Sun dissipate, it shines with more vigor.

– Then these clouds will be dissipated?

Answer. – A single breath of God suffices.

– Thus, in your opinion, Spiritism will become a general belief?

Answer. – Say universal.

– Nevertheless, there are men who seem very difficult to convince.

Answer. – There are those who will never be in this life, but daily death carries them off.

– Will others not come in their place, and who will be as incredulous as they?

Answer. – God wills the triumph of good over evil, of truth over error, just as He announced. His reign must come; His ways are impenetrable. But believe well that, for Him, to will is to be able.

– Will Spiritism some day be accepted here?

Answer. – It will be accepted and will flourish. (At the same instant the Spirit directs the pencil over the penultimate answer and underlines it forcefully).

– What can be the usefulness of Spiritism for the triumph of good over evil? For this does the law of Christ not suffice?

Answer. – Certainly this law would suffice, if they practiced it. But, how many do so? How many have of faith only the appearance? Thus, God seeing that His law was ignored and misunderstood and that, in spite of that law, man goes on precipitating himself ever more into the abyss of incredulity, willed to give him a new mark of His infinite goodness, multiplying before his eyes the proofs of the future through the brilliant manifestations of which he is a witness, warning them on all sides through those very ones who left the Earth and come to tell them: We live. In the presence of such testimonies, those who resist will have no excuse; they will expiate their blindness and their pride through new existences in inferior worlds, which will be more painful, until at last they open their eyes to the light. Believe well that, among those who suffer on Earth, there are many who expiate past existences.

– Can Spiritism be looked upon as a new law?

Answer. – No, it is not a new law. The interpretations that men have given of the law of Christ have generated struggles that are contrary to its spirit. God no longer wills that the law of love be a pretext for disorder and fratricidal struggles. Expressing itself without circumlocution and without allegories, Spiritism is destined to restore the unity of belief; it is, then, the confirmation and the clarification of Christianity, which is and will always be the divine law, the one that must reign over all the Earth, whose propagation is going to become easier through this powerful auxiliary.