Vacation of the Spiritist Society of Paris

You are going to separate for some time, but the good Spirits will always be with those who ask them for help and support.

If each of you leaves the table of the master, it is not only for exercise or repose, but also to serve, wherever you may spread, the great humanitarian cause, beneath whose banner you have come to take shelter.

You well understand that for the fervent Spiritist there are no fixed hours for study; his whole life is no more than an hour, too short for the work to which he dedicates himself: the intellectual development of the human races!…

The branches do not detach from the trunk because they move away from it; on the contrary, they give place to new shoots that unite them and make them interdependent.

Take advantage of this vacation that is going to disperse you, to become even more fervent, after the example of the apostles of the Christ; go forth from this cenacle strong and courageous; may your faith and your good works bind around you thousands of believers, who will bless the light that you will spread around you. Courage! Courage! on the day of the encounter, when the oriflamme of Spiritism calls you to combat and unfurls above your heads, may each one have around him the adepts he shall have formed beneath his banner, and the good Spirits will count their number and bear it to God! Do not sleep, then, Spiritists, at the hour of the siesta; watch and pray! I have already told you, and other voices will repeat it to you, the clock of the centuries strikes, a vibration resounds, calling those who are in the night. Woe to those who are unwilling to sharpen their ears to listen to it! O Spiritists, go awaken the sleepers and tell them that they are going to be surprised by the waves of the sea that rises with dull and terrible roarings; go tell them to choose a more illuminated and more solid place, for behold, the stars decline and all Nature moves, trembles, and is agitated!… But after the darkness, behold the light; those who shall not have wished to see or to hear will at that hour migrate to inferior worlds to expiate and to await for a long time, very long, the new stars that must rise and enlighten them! Time will seem to them an eternity, since they will not glimpse the end of their pains until the day when they begin to believe and to understand. Spiritists, I will no longer call you children, but men, brave and courageous men! Soldiers of the new faith: fight valiantly; arm your arm with the lance of charity and cover your body with the shield of love. Enter the lists! be alert! despise error and falsehood and extend your hand to those who ask you: “Where is the light?” Tell them that those who walk guided by the star of Spiritism are not pusillanimous, do not fear mirages, and accept as laws only that which cold and sound reason ordains; that charity is their device and that they divest themselves only for their brothers in the name of universal solidarity and never to gain a paradise, which they know very well they cannot possess until they have expiated sufficiently!… that they may know God and that, above all, they may know that He is immutable in His justice and, consequently, cannot pardon a life of accumulated faults for a second of repentance, just as He cannot punish an hour of sacrilege with an eternity of torment!… Yes, Spiritists, count the years of repentance by the number of stars; the golden age will come for him who has known how to count them!…

Go, then, workers and soldiers, and may each one return with the stone or the pebble that is to aid the construction of the new edifice. In truth I say to you: this time you will no longer have to fear confusion, even though wishing to raise up to heaven the tower that is to crown it; on the contrary, God will extend His hand upon your path, in order to put you under shelter from the hurricanes. Behold the second hour of the day, behold the servants who come again on behalf of the Master to seek workers; you who are idle, come! do not wait for the last hour!…

Saint Augustine. n [1]

[see Saint Augustine.]