A family of monsters.

— They write from Brunswick to the Pays:

“A peasant woman from the vicinity of Lutter has just given birth to a child with all the appearances of a monkey, for its body is almost entirely covered with thick black hairs, and not even the face is exempt from that strange vegetation.

“Married for twelve years, and although admirably formed, this unfortunate lady has not yet given birth to a single child who was not stricken with more or less horrible infirmities.

“Her eldest daughter, ten years old, is completely hunchbacked and her physiognomy seems copied, feature by feature, from that of Punchinello. Her second child is a boy of seven; he is crippled in the legs. The third, who is about to turn five, is a deaf-mute and an idiot. Finally the fourth, two and a half years old, is completely blind.

“What can be the cause of this strange phenomenon? Here is a point that Science must clarify.

“The father is a perfectly constituted man and has all the appearances of the most robust health, and nothing can explain the sort of fatality that weighs upon his race.”

(Moniteur of July 29 of 1864.)

— “Here is a point,” says the newspaper, “that Science must clarify.” There are many other points before which Science remains powerless, not to mention those of Morzine and of Poitiers. The reason for this is very simple: it is that she obstinately seeks the causes only in matter, taking into account only the laws she knows. With regard to certain phenomena she is in the position in which she would find herself if she had not gone beyond the physics of Aristotle, if she had been ignorant of the law of gravitation or that of electricity. Where was religion when it was ignorant of the law of the movement of the heavenly bodies? Where are even today those who are ignorant of the geological law of the formation of the globe?

Two forces share the world: Spirit and matter. Spirit has its laws, as matter has its own. Now, reacting incessantly one upon the other, it results that certain material phenomena have as their cause the action of Spirit and that the ones cannot be perfectly understood if the others are not taken into account. Beyond the tangible laws there is another which plays a capital role in the world: that which establishes the relations between the visible world and the invisible world. When Science recognizes the existence of this law, it will find in it the solution of a multitude of phenomena against which it dashes itself uselessly.

Monstrosities, like all congenital infirmities, certainly have a physiological cause, which is within the province of material science; but, supposing that this comes to discover the secret of those deviations of Nature, there will always remain the problem of the first cause and the reconciliation of the fact with the justice of God. If Science says that this does not concern it, religion cannot say the same. When Science demonstrates the existence of a fact, it falls to religion the duty of seeking therein the proof of sovereign wisdom. Has it ever sounded, from the point of view of divine equity, the mystery of those anomalous existences? of those fatalities that seem to pursue certain families, without known present causes? No, because it feels its impotence and is terrified by those questions perilous for its absolute dogmas. Until now they had accepted the fact without going further; but today they think, they reflect, they want to know; they question Science, which searches in the fibers and remains mute; they question religion, which answers: Impenetrable mystery! Well then! Spiritism comes to unveil that mystery and to bring forth from it the dazzling justice of God; it proves that those souls disinherited from birth in this world have already lived and are expiating, in different bodies, their past faults. Observation demonstrates it and reason says it, since one could not admit that they were punished upon leaving the hands of the Creator, when they had as yet done nothing.

Very well, they will say, for the being who is born thus. But what of the parents? that mother who gives birth to wretched beings? who is deprived of the joy of having a single child who does her honor and whom she can show with pride? To this Spiritism answers: Justice of God, expiation, trial for her maternal tenderness, for it is a very great trial to see around oneself only little monsters, instead of graceful children. And it adds: There is not a single infraction of the laws of God that does not, sooner or later, have its disastrous consequences, on Earth or in the world of the Spirits, in this or in a following life. For the same reason, there is not a single vicissitude of life that is not the consequence and the punishment of a past fault, and so it will be for each one, as long as he has not repented, expiated, and repaired the evil he did; he returns to Earth to expiate and repair; it falls to him to improve himself enough so as not to return to it again as one condemned. Often God makes use of him who is punished to punish others; it is thus that the Spirits of those children, as a punishment, having to incarnate in deformed bodies, are, without knowing it, instruments of expiation for the mother who gave birth to them. That distributive justice, proportioned to the duration of the evil, is preferable to that of eternal, irremissible penalties, which close to all, and forever, the path of repentance and reparation.

— The above fact having been read at the Spiritist Society of Paris, as a subject of philosophical study, a Spirit gave the following explanation:

(Society of Paris, July 29, 1864.)

If you could see the hidden forces that set your world in motion, you would understand how everything is linked together, from the smallest to the greatest things; you would understand, above all, the intimate connection that exists between the physical world and the moral world, that great law of Nature; you would see the multitude of intelligences that preside over all facts and use them so that they serve the realization of the purposes of the Creator. Suppose yourself for an instant before a beehive whose bees were invisible; the work that you would see carried out daily would cause you admiration and, perhaps, you would exclaim: Singular effect of chance! Well then! you are really in the presence of an immense workshop, conducted by innumerable legions of workers, invisible to you, of whom some are no more than manual laborers, who obey and execute, while others command and direct, each one in his sphere of action, proportioned to his development and to his advancement and, thus, little by little, up to the supreme will, which impels everything. Thus is explained the action of the Divinity in the most insignificant details. Like temporal sovereigns, God has His ministers, and these, subordinate agents, secondary cogs of the great government of the Universe. If, in a well-administered country, the last hovel feels the effects of the wisdom and the solicitude of the head of State, how much more must the infinite wisdom of the Most High extend to the smallest details of Creation!

Do not believe, then, that that woman of whom you have just spoken is a victim of chance or of a blind fatality. No; what happens to her has its reason for being – be well convinced of it. She is punished in her pride; she despised the weak and the infirm; she was hard toward beings fallen into misfortune, from whom she turned her eyes with repulsion, instead of enveloping them in a look of commiseration; she took vanity in the physical beauty of her children, at the expense of less favored mothers; she showed them off with pride, because in her eyes the beauty of the body had more value than the beauty of the soul; thus, she developed in them vices, which delayed their advancement, instead of developing the qualities of the heart. It is for this that God permitted that, in her present existence, she should have only deformed children, so that maternal tenderness might help her to overcome her repugnance for the unfortunate. For her this is a punishment and a means of advancement; but in that very punishment there shine, at the same time, the justice and the goodness of God, who punishes with one hand, but incessantly gives to the guilty one, with the other, the means of redeeming themselves. A Protecting Spirit.