Reply to a mental question.

An excellent medium of Maine-et-Loire, whom we know personally, wrote to us the following:

“One of our friends, a man of the least believing, but with an immense desire to enlighten himself, asked us one day whether he could evoke a Spirit without naming it, and whether this one could answer questions addressed to it by thought, without the medium having the least knowledge of them. We answered that this was possible, provided the Spirit consented to it, which does not always happen. Concerning this I obtained the following answer: “I cannot say what you ask of me, because God does not permit it. Nonetheless, I can tell you that I suffer: it is a general pain in all the limbs, which must surprise you, since with death the body rots in the earth; but we have another body — spiritual — which does not die, which makes us suffer as much as if we had our corporeal [material] body. I suffer, but I do not expect to suffer always. Since it is necessary to satisfy the justice of God, it is necessary to resign ourselves in this life or in the other. I did not deprive myself sufficiently on Earth, which compels me to repair the lost time. Do not imitate me, for you would prepare for yourselves centuries of torments. Eternity is a serious thing and, unfortunately, one does not think of it as much as would be needful. How regrettable it is when we forget a matter as important as salvation! Think on this! Your former priest, A… T…”

“It was indeed the priest whom our friend wished to evoke. Here are the three questions he wished to ask:

“What to think of the divinity of Jesus Christ?

“Is the soul immortal?

“What means to employ to expiate faults and avoid punishment?

“By the style we recognized our priest perfectly; above all the expression spiritual body shows that it is the Spirit of a good country priest, whose education left something to be desired.”

Observation. – Answers to mental questions are very common facts, and all the more interesting in that they are, for the unbeliever of good faith, one of the most conclusive proofs of the intervention of a hidden intelligence; however, as is wont to happen with the majority of Spiritist phenomena, they are rarely obtained at will, whereas they occur spontaneously at every moment. In the above-cited case, the Spirit saw fit to lend itself to that role, which is very rare, because, as is known, Spirits do not like questions of curiosity and of trial; they condescend to them only when there is usefulness, and often they do not judge them as we do. Since they do not submit to the caprice of men, we must count on their goodwill for the production of phenomena. It is necessary, so to speak, to seize them in passing and not to provoke them. For this we need patience and perseverance; and it is for this reason that Spirits recognize the serious observers who are truly desirous of instructing themselves. They concern themselves little with superficial persons, who think that it suffices to ask in order to be answered immediately.