Saint Athanasius, a Spiritist without knowing it.

— The following passage, taken from Saint Athanasius, patriarch of Alexandria, one of the fathers of the Greek Church, seems to have been written under the inspiration of the Spiritist ideas of today:

“The soul does not die, but the body dies when the soul withdraws from it. The soul is to itself its own mover; the movement of the soul is its life. Even when it is a prisoner in the body and as if bound to it, it does not shrink to its narrow proportions and does not enclose itself there. But often, when the body lies motionless and as if inanimate, the soul remains awake by its own virtue; and, going out of matter, notwithstanding still bound to it, it conceives, contemplates existences beyond the earthly globe; it sees the saints freed from the envelope of bodies, it sees the angels and ascends to them in the liberty of its pure innocence. “Entirely separated from the body, and when it shall please God to take from it the chain that is imposed upon it, will it not have, I ask you, a much clearer vision of its immortal nature? If even today, and in the fetters of the flesh, it already lives a wholly exterior life, it will live much more so after the death of the body, thanks to God who, by his Word, made it thus. It understands, embraces within itself the ideas of eternity, of infinity, for it is immortal. Just as the body, which is mortal, perceives only what is material and perishable, so too the soul, which sees and meditates upon immortal things, is necessarily immortal in itself and will live forever, because the thoughts and the images of immortality never leave it and are within it like a living focus, which nourishes and assures its immortality.” (Sanct. Athan. Oper., t. 1, p. 32. – Villemain, Tableau of Christian eloquence in the 4th century.) n

— Indeed, is this not an exact description of the exterior irradiation of the soul during corporeal life, and of its emancipation in sleep, in ecstasy, in somnambulism, and in catalepsy? Spiritism says exactly the same thing, and proves it by experience.

With the scattered ideas contained in the Bible, in the Gospels, and in the Fathers of the Church, not to mention the profane writers, the whole of the modern Spiritist doctrine can be constituted. The commentaries made on these writings were generally made from an exclusive point of view and with preconceived ideas, and many saw in them only what they wished to see, or they lacked the key necessary to see anything else; but today Spiritism is the key that gives the true sense of the poorly understood passages. Until now these fragments are gathered partially, but a day will come when men of patience and learning, and whose authority cannot be disregarded, will make of this study the object of a special and complete work, which will cast light upon all these questions, causing all to submit before the clearly demonstrated evidence. This considerable work — I believe I may say — will be the work of eminent members of the Church, who will receive this mission, because they will understand that religion must be progressive like Humanity, under penalty of being surpassed, because, as in politics, there are retrograde ideas in religion. In such a case, not to advance is to retreat. What makes the incredulous is precisely the fact that religion places itself outside the scientific and progressive movement. It does more: it declares this movement the work of the devil and has always combated it. From this it has resulted that Science, being repelled by religion, in turn repelled religion. Hence an antagonism that will not cease until religion understands that it must not only march with progress, but be an element of progress. All will believe in God, when it no longer presents Him in contradiction with the laws of Nature, which are His work. [1]

[Tableau de l'éloquence chrétienne au IVe siècle — Google Books.]