The Future of Spiritism

You ask me what the future of Spiritism will be and what place it will occupy in the world. It will not occupy merely a place, but will fill the entire world. Spiritism is in the air, in space, in Nature. It is the cornerstone of the social edifice. You can foretell its future by its past and its present. Spiritism is the work of God. You, men, gave it a name and God gave you reason when the time came, because Spiritism is the immutable law of the Creator. Ever since man had intelligence God inspired Spiritism in him and, from epoch to epoch, sent to Earth advanced Spirits, who tried out in their corporeal nature the influence of Spiritism. If such men did not triumph, it was because human intelligence was not yet sufficiently perfected; but they did not for that reason give up implanting the idea, leaving behind them their names and their deeds, like markers indicating the way upon a road, so that the traveler might find his path. Look back and you will see how many times God has already tried the spiritist influence as a moral improvement.

What was Christianity eighteen centuries ago, if not Spiritism? Only the name is different, but the thought is the same. It is only that man, with free will, distorted the work of God.

Nature was preponderant and error came to implant itself in that preponderance. Then, Spiritism strove to germinate, but the ground was uncultivated and the seed broke, wounding the brows of the sowers whom God had charged with spreading it. With time intelligence grew, the field could be cleared, for the epoch approaches in which the ground must be sown anew. All admit that Spiritism is spreading; even the most incredulous understand it and, if they do not confess it, and if they close their eyes, it is because the dazzling light of Spiritism blinds them. But God protects His work, sustains it with His powerful gaze, encourages it, and soon all peoples will be Spiritists, because therein is found the universality of all beliefs.

Spiritism is the great leveler, which advances to level all heresies. It is led by sympathy, followed by concord, love, fraternity; it advances without upheavals and without revolution. It comes to destroy nothing, to subvert nothing in the social organization: it comes to renew everything. Do not see in this a contradiction: becoming better, men will think about better laws; understanding that the worker is of the same essence as his own, the master will introduce gentler and wiser laws into his commercial dealings; social relations themselves will be transformed very naturally between fortune and mediocrity. The Spirit not being able to constitute itself an heir, the Spiritist will feel that there is something more important for him than wealth, freeing himself from the idea of accumulating, which engenders cupidity, and, certainly, the poor man will still profit from this diminution of selfishness. I will not say that there are no rebels to these ideas and that all must grow, universally fecundated by the wave of Spiritism. There will still exist the refractory and fallen angels, for man has free will and, in spite of not lacking counsel, many of them, seeing only from their point of view, which restricts the horizon to cupidity, will not wish to yield to the evidence. Unfortunate ones! Lament them, enlighten them, for you are not judges and only God has authority to censure their conduct.

By the future that I show you for Spiritism, you can judge of the influence that it will exercise upon the masses. How are you organized, morally speaking? Have you made the statistics of your faults and of your qualities? Frivolous and neutral men populate a good part of the Earth. Do the benevolent represent the majority? It is doubtful; but among the neutral, that is, among those who are with one foot on the scale of good and the other on that of evil, many can put both on the tray of benevolence, which is the first step that can lead them rapidly to the more advanced regions. There is still on the globe a portion of evil beings which, however, tends to diminish each day. When men are perfectly imbued with the idea that the law of retaliation is the immutable law that God inflicts upon them, a law far more terrible than your most terrible terrestrial laws, far more frightful and more logical than the eternal flames of hell, in which they no longer believe, they will fear this reciprocity of penalties and will think twice before committing a reprehensible act. When, through the spiritist manifestation, the criminal can foretell the fate that awaits him, he will draw back before the idea of crime, for he will know that God sees all and that the crime, even if it remained unpunished on Earth, one day he will have to pay very dearly for that impunity. Then all those odious crimes, which from time to time come to mark indelibly the brow of Humanity, will disappear to give place to the concord, to the fraternity that for centuries have been proclaimed to you. Your legislation will soften in proportion to the moral improvement, and slavery and the death penalty will remain in your laws only as a remembrance of the tortures of the Inquisition. Thus regenerated, man will be able to occupy himself more with his intellectual progress; selfishness no longer existing, scientific discoveries, which often require the concurrence of several intelligences, will develop rapidly, each one saying: “What matter who produces the good, provided that the good be produced!” Because, in effect, what often holds back your learned men in their ascending march toward progress, if not personalism, the ambition to link one’s name to one’s work? Such is the future and the influence of Spiritism among the peoples of the Earth. (A philosopher of the other world.)