Awaken

I shall speak of the symptoms and predictions that, everywhere, announce the coming of the great events that our century holds. In their touching goodness, the Spirits, messengers of God, warn the Spirit of men, as the pains forewarn the mother of the proximity of childbirth. These signs, often disdained and yet always justified, at this moment multiply to infinity. Why do you all feel the prophetic Spirit stirring your hearts and shaking your consciences? Why the uncertainties? Why the faintings that trouble hearts? Why the awakening of the public spirit which, everywhere, raises its proud banner? Why? It is because the times are come; it is because the reign of materialism is giving way and is going to collapse; it is because the pleasures of the body, soon to be disdained, will give place to the reign of the idea; it is because the social edifice is worm-eaten and will be replaced by the young and triumphant legion of Spiritist ideas, which will make fruitful the sterile consciences and the mute hearts. Let these words, ceaselessly repeated, not find you distracted and indifferent. After the laborer has sown, gather the precious ears of grain that are born. Do not say: life follows its course and a normal march. Our fathers saw nothing of what is announced to us today: we will see no more than they. Let us adore what they adored, or, rather, let us replace adoration with vain formulas, and all will be well. Speaking thus, you sleep. Awaken, for it is not the trumpet of the last judgment that will echo in your ears, but the voice of truth. It is not a question of death conquered and humiliated, it is a question of present life, or rather, of eternal life; do not forget it, and awaken. Helvétius. n [1]

[cf.

Claude Adrien Helvétius.]