Free will and divine prescience

There is a great law that dominates the whole Universe: the law of Progress. It is in virtue of this law that man, an essentially imperfect creature, must, like everything that exists on our globe, traverse all the phases that separate him from perfection. Without doubt God knows how much time each one will take to reach the end; but as all progress must result from an effort attempted to realize it, there would be no merit if man did not have the liberty to take this or that path. In effect, true merit can result only from a work operated by the Spirit to overcome a more or less considerable resistance. As each one is ignorant of the number of existences consecrated to his moral advancement, no one can prejudge in this great question, and it is there, above all, that the infinite goodness of our celestial Father shines in an admirable manner, who, notwithstanding the free will that he conferred upon us, sowed along our path signposts that illuminate the deviations. It is, then, by a remnant of the predominance of matter that many men persist in remaining deaf to the warnings that reach them from all sides, preferring to spend in deceptive and ephemeral pleasures a life that had been granted to them for the progress of their Spirit. One could not affirm, without blasphemy, that God willed the unhappiness of his creatures, since the unhappy always expiate, whether for a previous life badly employed, or for their refusal to follow the good path, when this was clearly indicated to them.

Thus, it depends on each one to shorten the trial that he must suffer. For this, sure guides, quite numerous, are granted to him, so that he is entirely responsible for his refusal to follow their counsels; and even in this case, there exists a sure means of softening a merited punishment, by giving signs of sincere repentance and resorting to prayer, which never fails to be answered, when made with fervor. Free will, then, exists really in man, but with a guide: the conscience. All you who have access to the great focus of the new science, do not neglect to penetrate yourselves with the eloquent truths that it reveals to you, and with the admirable principles that are its consequence; follow them faithfully: it is there, above all, that your free will shines.

Think, on the one hand, of the fatal consequences that you will drag upon yourselves by refusing to follow the good path, as well as of the magnificent rewards that await you, should you obey the instructions of the good Spirits; it is there that the divine prescience will shine, in its turn.

Men strive uselessly to seek the truth by all the means that they judge to have in Science; this truth that seems to escape them walks always at their side and the blind do not perceive it!

Wise Spirits of all countries, to whom it is given to raise the corner of the veil, do not neglect the means that are offered to you by Providence! Provoke our manifestations; make that, above all, your brothers less favored than you profit from them; inculcate in all the precepts that reach you from the spiritual world, and you will have well merited, because you will have contributed on a large scale to the realization of the designs of Providence. Familiar Spirit.