On expiation and trial.

— Moulins, July 8, 1863.

Sir and venerated master, I come to submit to your judgment a question that was debated in our small group and that we could not resolve by our own lights; even the Spirits we consulted did not answer categorically enough to remove our doubt. I have drawn up a short note, which I take the liberty of forwarding to you, in which I have gathered the reasons for my personal opinion, which differs from that of several colleagues. The opinion of the latter is that expiation occurs even during incarnation, basing themselves on the fact that such an expression has been employed in many communications and, notably, in The Spirits' Book. I appeal, then, to your kindness, asking that you give your opinion on this question. For us your decision will be law, and each of us will gladly sacrifice his own way of seeing, in order to place himself under the banner that you have planted and that you uphold in so firm and so wise a manner.

Receive, sir and dear master, etc.

T. T.

“Various communications, given by different Spirits, indiscriminately qualify as expiations or as trials the ills and tribulations that form the lot of each of us during incarnation on Earth. It results from such an application that two words, very different in their meaning, would convey the same idea, causing a certain confusion, no doubt of little importance to dematerialized Spirits, but which, among the incarnate, gives rise to discussions that it would be well to put an end to by means of a clear and precise definition and by explanations furnished by the superior Spirits, which would fix this point of doctrine in an irrevocable manner. “Taking these two words first in their absolute sense, it seems that expiation would be the punishment, the penalty imposed for the redemption of a fault, with perfect knowledge, on the part of the guilty one being punished, of the cause of that punishment, that is, of the fault to be expiated. It is understood that, in this sense, expiation is always imposed by God.

“Trial implies no idea of reparation; it may be voluntary or imposed, but it is not the rigorous and immediate consequence of faults committed.

“Trial is a means of ascertaining the state of a thing, in order to recognize whether it is of good quality. Thus one submits to a trial a cable, a bridge, a piece of artillery, not because of its prior state, but to make sure whether they are suited to the service for which they are intended.

“In the same way, and by extension, the trials of life have been called the whole of the physical or moral means that reveal the existence or the absence of qualities of the soul, that establish its perfection or the progress it has made toward that final perfection.

“It seems, then, logical to admit that expiation properly speaking, in the absolute sense of the term, occurs in the spiritual life, after disincarnation or bodily death; that it may be more or less long, more or less painful, according to the gravity of the faults; but that it is complete in the other world and always ends in an ardent desire to obtain a new incarnation, during which the trials chosen or imposed are to afford the soul the progress toward perfection that its previous faults prevented from being achieved. “Thus, then, it would not be fitting to admit that there is expiation on Earth, nor even that it could exist exceptionally, because one would have to admit, also, the knowledge of the faults being punished. Now, that knowledge exists only in the life beyond the grave. Expiation, without such knowledge, would be a useless barbarity and would be reconciled neither with the justice nor with the goodness of God.

“During incarnation one can conceive of nothing but trials, since, whatever the ills and tribulations of the Earth may be, it is impossible to consider them as being able to constitute an expiation sufficient for faults of any gravity. Is it possible to imagine that a guilty man, delivered to the justice of men, would be well punished if he were condemned to live like the most unfortunate of creatures? Let us not, then, exaggerate the importance of the ills of this world so as to grant ourselves the merit of having endured them. The trial consists more in the manner in which the ills were borne than in their intensity, which, like earthly happiness, is always relative for each individual. “The distinctive characters of expiation and of trial are that the former is always imposed and its cause must be known by the one who undergoes it, while the latter may be voluntary, that is, chosen by the Spirit, or even imposed by God in the absence of choice. Moreover, it can be conceived perfectly without a known cause, since it is not necessarily the consequence of past faults.

“In a word: expiation covers the past; trial opens the future.

“The July issue of the Spiritist Review contains an article entitled: Earthly Expiation, which would seem to be contrary to the opinion expressed above. However, reading it attentively, one will see that the true expiation takes place in the spirit life and that the position occupied by Max in his last incarnation is really nothing but the kind of trials that he chose or that were imposed upon him, and from which he emerged victorious; but that, throughout that entire incarnation, being ignorant of his prior position, he could in no way profit from an expiation without an object. “Perhaps this is more a question of words than of principles. Indeed, it has often been said: “Do not cling to the words; see the depth of the thought.” In any case, for us who understand one another by means of words, it is fitting that we be well fixed on the sense we attach to them.”

— Reply – The distinction established by the author of the note above, between the character of expiation and that of trials, is perfectly just. However, we could not share his opinion as regards the application of this theory to the situation of man on Earth.

Expiation necessarily implies the idea of a punishment more or less painful, the result of a fault committed; trial always implies that of an inferiority real or presumed, since one who has reached the culminating point to which he aspires no longer needs trials. In certain cases, trial is merged with expiation, that is, expiation may serve as a trial, and reciprocally. The candidate who presents himself to receive a degree undergoes a trial. If he fails, he will have to begin a painful labor anew; this new labor is the punishment of the negligence he showed in the first; the second trial thus becomes an expiation. For the condemned man to whom a reduction or a commutation of sentence is held out if he conducts himself well, the penalty is, at the same time, an expiation for his fault and a trial for his future lot. If, upon his release from prison, he is no better, the trial is null and a new punishment will set in motion a new trial. Considering now man on Earth, we see that he there endures ills of every sort, often cruel ones. These ills have a cause. Now, unless we attribute them to the caprice of the Creator, we are forced to admit that the cause lies in ourselves, and that the miseries we experience cannot be the result of our virtues; therefore, they have their source in our imperfections. If a Spirit incarnates on Earth amid fortune, honors, and all material pleasures, it may be said that he undergoes the trial of allurement; for the one who falls into misfortune through his bad conduct or improvidence, it is the expiation of his present faults, and it may be said that he is punished where he sinned. But what is to be said of the one who, from birth, is in a struggle with needs and privations, who drags out a miserable existence without hope of improvement, who succumbs beneath the weight of congenital infirmities, without having done anything, ostensibly, to deserve such a lot? Whether it be a trial or an expiation, the position is no less painful and would be no more just from the point of view of our correspondent, since, if man does not remember the fault, neither does he remember having chosen the trial. One must, then, seek elsewhere the solution of the question. Since every effect has a cause, human miseries are effects that must have a cause; if it is not in the present life, it must be in a previous life. Moreover, admitting the justice of God, such effects must have a more or less intimate relation with the preceding acts, of which they are, at the same time, punishment for the past and trial for the future. They are expiations in the sense that they are the consequence of a fault, and trials in relation to the profit one draws from them. Reason tells us that God cannot strike an innocent. If, then, we are struck, it is because we are not innocent: the ill we feel is the punishment, the manner in which we bear it is the trial. But it often happens that the fault is not found in this life. Then one accuses the justice of God, denies his goodness, even doubts his existence. There, precisely, lies the most slippery trial: doubt concerning the Divinity. Whoever admits a God supremely just and good must say that he can act only with wisdom, even in that which we do not understand, and that, if we suffer a penalty, it is because we deserve it; it is, then, an expiation. Spiritism, by the great law of the plurality of existences, completely lifts the veil over what this question left in obscurity. It teaches us that if the fault was not committed in this life, it was committed in another, and thus that the justice of God follows its course, punishing us where we had sinned.

— Next comes the grave question of forgetfulness which, according to our correspondent, removes from the ills of life the character of expiation. This is an error.

Give them whatever name you wish: you will never make them cease to be the consequence of a fault. If you are ignorant of it, Spiritism teaches it to you. As to the forgetfulness of the faults themselves, it does not have the consequences you attribute to it. We have demonstrated elsewhere [see The Story of a Servant,] that the precise remembrance of those faults would have inconveniences extremely grave, since it would trouble us, would humiliate us in our own eyes and in those of our neighbor; it would bring disturbance into social relations and, by that very fact, would fetter our free will. On the other hand, forgetfulness is not so absolute as is supposed; it occurs only in the exterior life of relation, in the interest of Humanity itself; but the spiritual life undergoes no break in continuity. Whether in erraticity or in moments of emancipation, the Spirit remembers perfectly, and that remembrance leaves him an intuition that translates itself by the voice of conscience, which warns him of what he ought or ought not to do. If he does not listen to it, he is, then, guilty. Moreover, Spiritism gives man a means of going back to his past, if not to the precise acts, at least to the general characters of those acts, which have remained more or less faded in the present life. From the tribulations he endures, from the expiations and trials, he must conclude that he was guilty; from the nature of those tribulations, aided by the study of his instinctive tendencies and relying on the principle that the most just punishment is the consequence of the fault, he can deduce his moral past;

his bad tendencies teach him what remains imperfect to correct in himself. The present life is for him a new point of departure; he arrives there rich or poor in good qualities; it suffices him, then, to study himself in order to see what he lacks and to say: “If I am punished, it is because I have sinned,”

and the punishment itself will tell him what he has done. Let us cite a comparison:

Let us suppose a man condemned to so many years of forced labor, undergoing a special punishment more or less rigorous, according to his fault; let us suppose, further, that on entering the prison he loses the remembrance of the acts that led him there. He will be able to say: “If I am in prison, it is because I am guilty, since virtuous people are not put here. Let us, then, try to become good, so as not to return when we leave here.” Does he wish to know what he has done? By studying the penal law, he will know which crimes lead there, for no one is put in irons for a trifle. From the duration and the severity of the penalty, he will conclude the kind of crimes he must have committed. To have a more exact idea, he will have only to study those toward which he will feel himself instinctively drawn. He will know, then, what he must henceforth avoid in order to keep his liberty, and to this he will be further stimulated by the exhortations of the men of goodness, charged with instructing him and directing him in the good path. If he does not profit from it, he will suffer the consequences. Such is the situation of man on Earth, where, as much as the convict in chains, he cannot have been placed by reason of his perfections, considering that he is unhappy and obliged to labor. God multiplies for him the teachings according to his advancement; he warns him incessantly and even goes so far as to strike him, in order to rouse him from his torpor, and the one who persists in his hardening cannot excuse himself by his ignorance.

— In summary, if certain situations of human life have, more particularly, the character of trials, others have, in an incontestable manner, that of punishment, and every punishment can serve as a trial.

It is an error to think that the essential character of expiation is that of being imposed. We see daily in life voluntary expiations, not to speak of the monks who mortify themselves and scourge themselves with the discipline and the hair shirt. There is, then, nothing irrational in admitting that a Spirit, in erraticity, chooses or requests an earthly existence that will lead him to repair his past errors. If such an existence had been imposed upon him, it would have been no less just, despite the momentary absence of remembrance, for the reasons developed above. The miseries of the Earth are, then, expiation, by their effective and material side, and trials, by their moral consequences. Whatever name be given to them, the result must be the same: improvement. In the presence of so important an object, it would be puerile to make a question of principle out of a play on words. This would prove that one attaches more importance to the words than to the thing. We take pleasure in answering serious questions and in elucidating them, when possible. Discussion is as useful with persons of good faith, who have studied and who wish to go deeply into things, since it is to work for the progress of the science, as it is idle with those who judge without knowing and who wish to know without taking the trouble to learn.