The Spirits in Spain.

— I come to you so that you may have the kindness to commend me to God in your prayers, because I suffer and I wish that the charitable incarnate souls would have compassion on a poor Spirit who asks God for forgiveness. For a long time I gave myself over to evil; today, however, I come to say to the Spirits who do so: Cease, impure souls, your iniquities; cease being incredulous and leading a wandering life such as yours; cease doing evil, because God says to the good Spirits: “Go and purify those perverse souls, who have never known good; evil must cease, because the times are near when the Earth must be improved. For it to be better, the stained souls who daily come to populate it must purify themselves, so as to inhabit the Earth again, better and more charitable.” This is what God said to His good Spirits. And I, who was one of the cruelest in obsession, today come to say to those who do what I used to do: Strayed souls, follow me; ask forgiveness of God and of those pure souls who extend their arm to you; implore, and God will forgive you; but forgive also, and repent. Forgiveness is so sweet! Ah! if you knew it, you would not delay an instant in withdrawing from the mire of evil where you are mired; you would fly at once into the arms of the angels who are near you. Cease, cease, brothers, repent.

My friends, allow me to give you that name, though you do not know me. I am one of those Spirits who did everything except good; but for each sin, mercy; and, since God grants me forgiveness and the angels call me brother, I hope that you, who practice charity, will pray for me, for I have to undergo very hard trials; but they are deserved.

Q. – Have you set out on the path of good a long time ago?

Answer. – No, my friends; only a short time ago, for I am the obsessing Spirit of the girl of Marmande. I am Jules; I come to ask the charitable souls to pray for me and to say to my former companions: “Stop! Do no more evil, because God forgives repentant sinners; repent and you shall be absolved. I come to bring you the words of peace; receive from the angel here present the holy baptism, as I received it.”

I leave you, dear friends, commending that you not forget me in your good prayers. Farewell.

Jules.

— Having asked the Spirit whether that of Little Cárita, his protectress, accompanied him, he answered in the affirmative. We asked this good Spirit to say a few words concerning the obsessions which we have combated for so long. Here is what he told us:

“My friends, the obsessions that torment those poor incarnate souls are very painful, above all for mediums, who wish to use their faculties to do good and cannot, because wicked Spirits have fallen upon them and give them no peace; but one must wait for those obsessions to reach their end. Pray much, ask God, goodness itself, to deign to shorten your sufferings and your trials. Evoke, beloved souls, those strayed Spirits; pray for them; moralize them; ask the good Spirits for counsel. You are well accompanied; do you not have near you several of those ethereal souls who watch over you, protect you, and seek to make you progress, so that you may draw near to God? In this lies their task; they work incessantly to prepare for you the path, which never ends. If you are not delivered, my dear friends, perhaps you are not yet purified enough for the task you imposed upon yourselves. You freely chose your trial and you must strive to bring it to a good conclusion, because the Spirits guide you and sustain you to help you end your earthly life in holiness, purifying yourselves through the expiation of suffering and through charity. “Farewell, dear friends. I leave you, praying to God for you and for those poor obsessed ones, and I ask Him that you may always be protected by the purified Spirits of your group. (See the Review of February, March, and June of 1864: Cure of the young obsessed woman of Marmande).”

Little Cárita. n

— Here are two Spirits who violated the order and crossed the Pyrenees without permission, paying no heed to the pastoral letter of Monsignor Pantaleão, and, even more, without having been called or evoked. It is true that the pastoral letter had not yet appeared; now we shall see whether they will be less audacious. One might say that, even if they were not called at that meeting, they were accustomed to doing so at others and that, finding the door open, they took advantage to enter; but it will not be long, if they have not already done so, before we see them introduce themselves, there as elsewhere, as in Poitiers, for example, among people who have never heard of Spiritism and even among those who, scrupulous observers of the pastoral letter, close to them the entrance of their houses, in spite of the bigwigs. Since such Spirits permitted themselves this affront, we shall ask the Lord Bishop what is ridiculous in the fact, and where is the filthy cynicism which, in his opinion, is the fruit of Spiritism: a young woman of Marmande, who, neither she nor her parents thinking of the Spirits, who perhaps did not even believe in them, is stricken, for the past year, with a terrible, bizarre illness, before which Science is powerless. Some Spiritists believe they recognize the action of an evil Spirit; they attempt her cure without medicines, through prayer and through the evocation of that evil Spirit. In five days, not only do they restore her health, but they lead the evil Spirit to good. Where is the evil? where the absurdity? Then, this same Spirit comes to Barcelona, without being called, to ask for prayers to complete his purification; he gives himself as an example and exhorts his former companions to renounce evil; the good Spirit who accompanies him preaches evangelical morality. Even there, what is ridiculous and filthy? What is ridiculous, you say, is to believe in the manifestation of the Spirits. But what are these two beings who have just communicated? An effect of the imagination? No, for no one was thinking of them, nor of the fact of which they have just spoken. When you have died, Monsignor, you will see things otherwise, and we shall pray God to enlighten you; as He did with your predecessor, today one of the protectors of Spiritism in Barcelona. Among the communications given by him to the Spiritist Society of Paris, here is the first which, although already published in this Review, will be reproduced for the edification of those who do not know it. (See the Review of August of 1862: Death of the Bishop of Barcelona; and, as for the details of the auto-da-fé, the issues of November and December of 1861.)

“Aided by your spiritual chief (Saint Louis), I was able to come and teach you by my example and to say to you: Reject none of the ideas announced, because one day, a day that will last and weigh like a century, those accumulated ideas will cry out like the voice of the angel: Cain, what have you done with your brother? What have you done with our power, which was to console and elevate Humanity? The man who voluntarily lives blind and deaf in spirit, as others are in body, will suffer, will expiate, and will be reborn to begin again the intellectual labor which his laziness and his pride led him to avoid; and that terrible voice said to me: You burned the ideas, and the ideas will burn you. Pray for me. Pray, because the prayer addressed to God by the persecuted on behalf of the persecutor is pleasing to Him. “He who was a bishop and who is no more than a penitent.”

The Spirits do not stop in Barcelona; Madrid, Cadiz, Seville, Murcia and many other cities receive their communications, to which the auto-da-fé gave a new impulse, increasing the number of adherents. Without having the gift of prophecy, we can say with certainty that, in less than half a century, all of Spain will be Spiritist.

(Murcia, (Spain), June 28, 1864.)

— Question to a protecting Spirit – Could you speak about the state of the incarnate souls in worlds superior to ours?

Answer – As a point of comparison with yours, I take a world appreciably more advanced, where belief in God, in the immortality of the soul, in the succession of existences to attain perfection, are so many truths recognized and understood by all, where the communication of corporeal beings with the hidden world is, for that very reason, very easy. There the beings are less material than on your Earth, and are not subject to all the necessities that weigh upon you; they form the transition between the corporeal and the incorporeal. There are no barriers separating the peoples, nor wars; all live in peace, practicing among themselves charity and true fraternity; human laws there are useless; each one carries within himself his conscience, which is his tribunal. Evil is rare and even that evil would be almost good for you. In relation to you they would be perfect, but they are still far from divine perfection; they still need several incarnations on various orbs to complete their purification. He who on Earth seems perfect to you would be considered a rebel and a criminal in the world of which I speak to you. Your great sages would there be the lowest ignoramuses. In the superior worlds the productions of Nature have nothing in common with those of your globe; everything there is suited to the less material organization of the inhabitants. It is not by the sweat of the brow and by manual labor that they draw their food. The soil produces naturally what is necessary to them. Yet they are not inactive, but their occupations are quite different from yours. Having no need to provide for the needs of the body, they attend to those of the Spirit; each one understanding why he was created, they are positively certain of their future and work without respite for their own improvement and for the purification of their soul. There death is considered a benefit. The day on which the soul leaves its envelope is a happy day. One knows where one is going; one passes first, in order to go farther on to await the parents, the friends, and the sympathetic Spirits left behind.

Land of peace, happy dwelling, where the vicissitudes of material life are unknown, where the tranquility of the soul is not disturbed by ambition, nor by the thirst for riches, happy are those who inhabit you! They attain the end they have pursued for so many centuries; they see, they know, they understand; they rejoice in thinking of the future that awaits them and work with more ardor to arrive more promptly.

A Protecting Spirit.

— This communication offers nothing that has not already been said about the advanced worlds; but it is no less interesting to see the concordance established in the teaching of the Spirits at the various points of the globe. With such elements, how could the unity of the doctrine not come about?

Until now, the fundamental points of the doctrine being constituted, the Spirits have little new to say; they can only repeat them in other terms, develop and comment on the same subjects, which establishes a certain uniformity in their teachings. Before approaching new questions, they leave to those that are resolved the time to identify themselves with thought. But, to the extent that the moment is propitious for taking a step forward, we see them approach new subjects which, earlier, would have been premature.

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[v. Cárita.]