Can the Spirit recoil before the trial?

A lady of our acquaintance writes to us the following:

“One day my daughter received the following spontaneous communication from a Spirit, who began by signing Euphrosine Bretel. As such a name reminded us of no one, we asked: Who are you? — I am a poor Spirit in suffering; I need prayers. I address myself to you because you knew me when I was but a child.

“We made an effort to recall, and I thought I remembered that that family name was that of a little girl of nine or ten years, who was in the same boarding school as my daughter and who had fallen ill shortly after my daughter’s arrival. Her father came to fetch her by carriage, and the children kept the memory of that sick child, all wrapped up and plaintive; she died at home. In despair, her mother soon followed her. The father went blind from so much weeping and died in the same year. As soon as we imagined we had recognized the name, the Spirit wrote: “It is I. My last existence was to be a terrible trial, but I recoiled in cowardice and since then I suffer always. I beg you to pray to God that He grant me the grace of a new trial, to which I will submit, however hard it may be. I am so unhappy! I love my father and my mother and they have a horror of me; they flee from me, and my chastisement is to seek them ceaselessly, only to see myself repulsed. I came to you because my memory has not entirely been effaced from your mind and, of those who can pray for me, you are the only one who knows Spiritism. Farewell! do not forget me; soon we shall see each other.” My daughter then asked her, jesting: “Must I, then, die within a short time?” To this the Spirit answered: “Long for you, time has no measure for us.” — We verified afterward that the given name and the family name were perfectly exact.

“I ask, now, whether it is possible for an incarnate Spirit to recoil before a trial already begun.”

To this question we answer: Yes. Spirits often recoil before the trials they have chosen; they have not the courage to endure them, and even to face them, when the moment has come. Therein lies the cause of the majority of suicides. They recoil still when they lament and despair, thus losing the benefits of the trial. This is why Spiritism, in making known the cause, the object, and the consequences of the tribulations of life, gives, at the same time, so many consolations and so much courage, turning away the thought of shortening one’s days. What philosophy has produced such a result upon men?