The sermons continue but do not resemble one another

On 7 March 1863 we were written from Chauny:

“Sir, “I am going to try to give you the analysis of a sermon that was preached to us yesterday by the abbé X…, a stranger to our parish. This priest, an otherwise good preacher, explained, as far as it was possible to do so, what God is and what the Spirits are. He could not have been unaware that there was a great number of Spiritists in the audience, so that we had keen satisfaction in hearing the Spirits spoken of and their relations with the living.

“I do not explain in any other way, he said, all the miraculous facts, all the visions, all the presentiments, except by the contact of those who are dear to us and who preceded us into the tomb. And, if I did not fear to lift a very mysterious veil, or to speak to you of things that would not be understood by all, I would expand much further upon this subject. I feel myself inspired and, obeying the voice of conscience, it would never be too much to advise you to keep a good remembrance of my words: To believe in that God from whom all Spirits emanate and in whom we shall all one day be reunited.

“This sermon, sir, pronounced in an inflection of gentleness, of benevolence, and of conviction, went much more to the heart than the furious discourses, in which we vainly seek the charity preached by the Christ; it was within the reach of all intelligences, which is why all understood it and came away comforted, instead of being left sad and disheartened by the pictures of hell and of eternal punishments and so many other themes in flagrant contradiction with sound reason.

“Accept, etc.

V…”

Thanks be to God this sermon is not the only one of its kind; our attention has already been called to several others in the same sense, more or less pronounced, that were preached in Paris and in the Departments; and, a bizarre thing, in a diametrically opposite sense, preached on the same day, in the same city, and almost at the same hour. This has nothing surprising about it, because there are many enlightened ecclesiastics, who understand that religion will only have to lose in its authority if it positions itself against the irresistible march of things and that, like all institutions, it must accompany the progress of ideas, under penalty of receiving, later, the contradiction of accomplished facts. Now, as for Spiritism, it is impossible that many of these gentlemen should not have convinced themselves of the reality of things; personally we know more than one in this case. One of them said to us the other day: “They may forbid me to speak in favor of Spiritism; but to oblige me to speak against my conviction, to say that all this is the work of the demon, when I have the material proof to the contrary, is what I will never do.” From this divergence of opinion a capital fact stands out: that the exclusive doctrine of the devil is an individual opinion, which will necessarily have to bow before experience and general opinion. It is possible that some persist in their ideas until in extremis; but they will pass away and, with them, their words.