Commemorative session at the Society of Paris.

First Part: Opening prayer. Invitation. — Second Part: Instructions of the Spirits. I. John the Evangelist. — II. Sanson.

— III. Hobach.

— IV. Lalouze.

— V. Anonymous.

— VI. Costeau.

— VII. Aimée Brédard. — VIII. Saint Augustine. — IX. A Spirit.

[First Part. — Opening prayer. Invitation.]

At the beginning of the session a prayer special to the circumstance replaced the general invocation that serves as an introduction to the ordinary sessions. It was conceived as follows:

Glory to God, sovereign lord of all things!

Lord, we ask that you spread your holy blessing over this Assembly.

We glorify you and thank you because it pleased you to enlighten our path by the divine light of Spiritism.

Thanks to this light, doubt and incredulity have disappeared from our spirit and will also disappear from this world; the future life is a reality and we march without uncertainty toward the future that is reserved for us.

We know where we came from and where we are going, and why we are on Earth.

We know the cause of our miseries and we understand that everything is wisdom and justice in your works.

We know that the death of the body does not interrupt the life of the Spirit, but that it opens to it the true life; that it destroys no sincere affection; that those who are dear to us are not lost to us and that we will find them again in the world of the Spirits. We know that while we wait, they are at our side; that they see us and hear us and can continue their relations with us. Help us, Lord, to spread among our brothers of Earth, who are still in ignorance, the benefits of this holy belief, because it calms all sorrows, gives consolation to the afflicted, courage, resignation and hope in the greatest bitternesses of life.

Deign to extend your mercy over our deceased brothers and over all the Spirits who commend themselves to our prayers, whatever the belief they may have had on Earth.

Grant that our benevolent thought may bring relief, consolation and hope to those who suffer.

Next the President addresses the following allocution to the Spirits:

Dear Spirits of our former colleagues: Jobard, Sanson, Costeau, Hobach and Poudra:

In inviting you to this commemorative meeting, our aim is not only to give you a proof of our remembrance, which, as you know, is always dear to our memory; we have come, above all, to congratulate you on the position you occupy in the world of the Spirits and to thank you for the excellent instructions that, from time to time, you come to give us since your departure. The Society rejoices to know you happy; it is honored to have counted you among its members, and to count you now among its counselors of the invisible world.

We appreciate the wisdom of your communications and we will always be happy every time you judge it good to come and take part in our works.

To this testimony of gratitude we associate all the good Spirits who, habitually or occasionally, come to bring us the tribute of their lights: John the Evangelist, Erastus, Lamennais, Georges, François-Nicolas Madeleine, Saint Augustine, Sonnet, Baluze, Vianney – the curé d'Ars, Jean Raynaud, Delphine de Girardin, Mesmer and those who take only the qualification of Spirit. We owe a particular tribute of recognition to our spiritual guide and president, who on Earth was Saint Louis. We thank him for having deigned to take our society under his patronage and for the evident marks of protection that he has given us. We likewise beg him to assist us in this circumstance.

Our thought extends to all the adepts and apostles of the new doctrine, who have left the Earth, especially to those who are personally known to us, namely: N. N…

To all those whom God permits to come and hear us, we say:

Dear brothers in belief, who have preceded us in the world of the Spirits: we unite in thought to give you a testimony of sympathy and to draw upon you the blessings of the Almighty.

We thank him for the grace he granted you of being enlightened by the light of truth before leaving the Earth, because this light guided you to the entrance into the spiritual life. The faith and confidence in God that it gave you preserved you from the disturbance and the anguishes that accompany the separation of those who are afflicted by doubt and incredulity. It gave you courage and resignation in the trials of terrestrial life; it showed the aim and the necessity of good, the inevitable consequences of evil, and now you reap its fruits.

You left the Earth without regret, knowing that you were going to find goods infinitely more precious than those you left here; you left it with the firm certainty of finding again the objects of your affections and of being able to return, in Spirit, to sustain and console those who remained behind. In short, you are in the world of the Spirits, as in a country that was known to you in advance. We are very happy to have seen our beliefs confirmed by all those among you who came to communicate; none came to say that he had been deluded in his hopes and that we were mistaken about the future. On the contrary, all said that the invisible world had indescribable splendors, and that their expectations had been surpassed. To you, who now enjoy the happiness of having had faith, and who receive the reward of your submission to the law of God, come to the aid of our brothers of Earth who are still in the darkness. Be the missionaries of the Spirit of Truth, for the progress of Humanity and for the fulfillment of the designs of the Most High. Our thought is not limited to our brothers in Spiritism; all men are brothers, whatever their belief.

If we were exclusive, we would be neither Spiritists nor Christians. This is why we include in our prayers, in our exhortations and in our congratulations, according to the state in which they find themselves, all the Spirits to whom our assistance may be useful, whether or not they shared our beliefs when incarnated. The knowledge of Spiritism is not indispensable to future happiness, because it does not have the privilege of making the elect. It is a means of arriving more easily and with more security at the goal, by the reasoned faith that it gives and by the charity that it inspires; it illuminates the path, and man, no longer walking blindly, marches with more security; by it good and evil are better understood, for it gives more strength to practice the one and to avoid the other. To be agreeable to God, it suffices to observe his laws, that is, to practice charity, which sums them all up. Now, charity can be practiced by everyone. To strip oneself of all the vices and of all the inclinations contrary to charity is, then, the essential condition of salvation. After this allocution, special prayers, in part taken from the Imitation of the Gospel (numbers

and following), were said for each category of Spirits, with the designation of the names of those to whom they were dedicated. The series ended with the Lord's Prayer developed. (See the Review of August 1864.)

Then the mediums put themselves at the disposal of the Spirits who wished to manifest themselves. No particular evocation was made.

We give, below, the principal communications received.

[Second Part. — Instructions of the Spirits.]

I.

My children, a close communion binds the living to the deceased. Death continues the work begun and does not break the ties of the heart. This certainty enriches the treasure of love poured out in creation.

The human progress obtained at the price of painful sacrifices and bloody hecatombs brings man closer to the Divine Word and makes him spell out the sacred word which, issued from the lips of Jesus, revived fainting Humanity. Love is the law of Spiritism; it dilates the heart and makes one actively love those who disappear in the vague penumbra of the tomb. Spiritism is not a vain sound, issued from mortal lips and that a breath may carry away; it is the strong and severe faith, proclaimed by Moses on Sinai, a law affirmed by the martyrs, drunk with hope, a law discussed by the anxious philosophers and which, finally, the Spirits come to proclaim.

Spiritists! the great name of Jesus must float like a banner above your teachings. Before you existed, the Savior carried the revelation in his bosom, and his word, prudently measured, indicated each of the stages that you traverse today. The mysteries will crumble at the prophetic breath that makes your intelligences vibrate, as once the walls of Jericho. Unite by intention, as you do in this blessed meeting. The ardent electricity released from the heart fills the distance that separates us and dissipates the vapors of doubt, of personalism and of indifference, which often obscure the spiritual faculty.

Love and pray for your works.

John the Evangelist. n (Medium: Mrs. Costel.)

II.

My good friends, your prayers and your recollection have attracted near you numerous Spirits, to whom you have done much good. A meeting such as yours has a force of attraction so efficacious that the vibrations of your thought stirred all the points of space. A multitude of your brothers, little advanced or in suffering, followed the superior Spirits; before having heard you, they were without faith; now they hope and believe. United with mine, their voices will know, henceforth, how to bless you; they know you strong before the trials; like you, they will want to merit eternal life, the life of God. You forgot no one, dear president. As far as I am personally concerned, I am proud of the good welcome that my name received among the former fellow students. I have always heard it said that a curious person, listening at the door, never heard anyone praise him; and yet, we are invisible witnesses; our number is infinite; what we hear, contrary to the earthly fashion, is forgiveness, prayer, benevolence; it is the practice of charity, the noblest of mottoes. May your example spread like a beloved echo, so that all the Spirits in suffering, anywhere, may hear words that may guide them to the eternal truths!

It is said that Paris is a city of noise and of forgetfulness; the mystics claim that it is a modern Babylon. I protest very loudly, for Paris is the city of laborious thoughts, of fertile ideas and of noble sentiments. It is the city that radiates upon the Universe; it will always teach the great principles, the great self-denials and the solid virtues. Above all, see in it the great city, especially on this day, when each one has a tear for his dear absent ones; it has set aside its multiple life to go and recollect itself in the necropolises, and that human river, silent, reflective, goes to pray over the remains of those who were dear to it; and before that pious procession, the unbeliever himself is seized with respect. It is said that Paris is not Spiritist. Seek a city in the Universe where the most modest tomb is more venerated, more flowered. It is that the city of great achievements feels better the painful losses; its tears are sincere and concede nothing to appearance. Certainly Paris is a city of pleasures for certain people, but it is also the city of work and of ideas for the greater number. It is not materialist by nature. It is she who gives the Spiritist light to the Universe, and this light will return to her increased, purified. All peoples will come to seek among you the truths of Spiritism, preferable to the futile and vain pleasures and to the exhibitions, which leave nothing to the spirit. There is in the air a rational idea, approved by all progressive persons: that everyone ought to know how to read. However beautiful it may be, our doctrine encounters an obstacle in ignorance. Thus our duty, of all of us Spiritists, is to diminish the number of our ignorant brothers, so that The Spirits' Book may not become a dead letter for so many pariahs. To work at spreading instruction among the masses is, at the same time, to open the way to Spiritism and to destroy the element of fanaticism; it is to diminish by so much the dragging-down of ignorance; it is to create men who will live and die well. This great act of charity accomplished, I will no longer have the sorrow of seeing return, on this day of the dead, so many backward Spirits, who ask reincarnation in order to know and to accomplish the mission promised to their new faculties. And such Spirits, become intelligent, will be able, in their turn, to go to other worlds to teach and to give the bread of life, the knowledge that makes them worthy of God. Legions of the ignorant implore you: they are your dead; do not forget what they ask. Your prayers will be useful to them, but your actions are called to render them a more essential service.

Farewell, brothers. Your devoted fellow student, Sanson.

(Medium: Mr. Leymarie.)

III.

Day of happiness for the Spirits of the Lord, who gather to address to God prayers for the Spirits, because this holy communion of thoughts is reproduced, also, in the superior regions! Oh! yes, happy the poor disinherited ones who understand the aim of our prayers, uttered to hasten their progress! Thanks to Spiritism, many have already entered the path of repentance and have been able to improve. It is this grace descended upon the Earth that opened their hearts to regret and gave them the hope of coming one day near to us. Thank you, all of you, Christian Spiritists, for having asked God and obtained that we might come to say to you: Courage! The Spirits who come to thank you for this good thought have profited from it and today feel very happy. I will say, in particular, to my good friend Canu: Rejoice to know that your friend Hobach finds himself here, surrounded by friendly and protecting Spirits who, attracted by sympathy, come to raise their souls to the Creator, for everything comes from Him and to Him must return. Let us seek, then, the sincere meetings, in order to profit from the teachings that are given there, and that the invisible ones and the incarnate ones may progress toward the infinite, that is, toward the Supreme Being, who created us for good and for the progressive march of his works. Yes, a thousand times thank you, for I read in all hearts the sentiments of those who loved us particularly; but, also, let those who weep dry their tears, because they will come to find us again in a better world, where the law of justice reigns sovereign, since there it emanates from God. Hobach.

(Medium: Mrs. Patet.)

IV.

Friends and brothers in Spiritism, you are gathered on this day to address to the Lord vows and prayers for the Spirits who are dear to you and who fulfilled their mission here. Among them, my friends, many accomplished that task worthily and received the reward of their work in that life of expiation and of misery. Oh! my dear Spiritists, these watch over you; they protect you and today take part in your vows and supplications that you address to our common Father. For the most part they are among you, happy to see the recollection in which you are at this solemn moment. But it is, above all, for the Spirits who did not understand their mission in this world of passage that you must raise your thoughts and your prayers. Oh! these need friendly hearts and compassionate souls to give them a remembrance, a prayer, but a sincere prayer, which rises up to the throne of the Eternal! Ah! how many of these Spirits are forsaken, forgotten, even by those who ought to think most of them; even by very close relatives! It is that these, my friends, are not Spiritists; they do not know the effect that the action of prayer can produce upon the Spirit. No: they do not know charity, they do not believe in another existence after this one, they believe that death leaves nothing after itself. How many go, in these days of mourning, with a cold and dry heart, to the tombs of those they knew! They go there, but out of habit, out of propriety; their soul feels no hope; they do not even think that those souls, to whom they come to fulfill a duty, are there, near them, awaiting a prayer come from the heart. Oh! my friends, supply with your prayers what your brothers do not do. They see in death only the remains – the body – and forget that the soul lives always. Pray, because your prayers will be heard by the Most High.

A Spirit who also asks part of your prayers.

Lalouze.

(Medium: Mrs. Lampérière.)

V.

Dear friends, how many thanksgivings do we not owe you in return for your good and generous prayers!

Oh! yes, we are grateful for so much devotion, so much charity. At no time were prayers so warm, so fervent, listened to and carried on the white wings of the pure Spirits to the divine throne. At no time did men better understand the usefulness of prayer in common, whose moral force weighs upon the imperfect Spirits who come, every time you gather, to draw from your generous and fraternal focus. Because there is no distinction there; the small, the disinherited of the Earth are received by you like the great, like the princes; pray for the poor, as for the rich. Oh! divine fraternity, grow always, until you attain the sublime regenerator, sent to lead men in the straight path, from which they had strayed for so many centuries! Knock and it shall be opened to you, said Jesus; ask and it shall be given to you. Yes, lash your passions and the ray of divine charity will flood your soul. Ask for faith and it will come to you. Ask for patience and it will be granted to you. In short, ask for all the virtues necessary to strip yourselves of the old man, who must disappear forever to give place to the man of good. I am a Spirit unknown to you and I have appropriated this hand thanks to the charity of Saint Joseph.

[Without name.]

(Medium: Mr. Lampérière.)

VI.

My dearest wife, I have seen your sighs, your tears. Always weeping! I have also seen your prayers; allow me to thank you for them. Come, dear friend, console yourself. As you see, you disturb my happiness. Console yourself, then, because you are happier than many others: you have brothers who love you, happy to see you come among them. See, my child, how much you are blessed among all. I have nothing but to praise you, my brothers, for the good welcome that is everywhere given to my wife. I thank you for all that you do for her… and also for me, for having called me today!… I was among the first to sustain and propagate with all my strength this holy doctrine. Ah! if I had known what I now know and see! Believe, believe, that is all I can say to you. Do everything to teach it and to draw hearts to you. Nothing is more beautiful, nothing is so true as what your books teach. Costeau.

(Medium: Miss Béguet.)

VII.

Thank you all, beloved brothers, for your good remembrance and for your prayers. Thank you, dear president, for the happy initiative that you took, in having prayer made for all, in one and the same communion of ideas and thoughts. [See:

On the communion of thought. Concerning the commemoration of the dead.]

Yes, we are all here; we hear, happy, your sincere prayers, addressed to the Father of mercy, in favor of each one of us. Yes, we are happy because the prayer made with sincerity rises to God and from Him we receive the strength necessary to combat the bad influences that the frivolous Spirits seek to make felt by those who work with energy for the holy work.

Those prayers were for us like a solemn appeal, and we find ourselves all gathered at your side. From afar, as from near, we hastened to that happy appeal. It is desirable that your example be followed by all the serious centers, because those prayers, made with so much sincerity and disinterestedness, rise to God like holy effluvia and pour out upon each one of us. Thank you once more, my friends; although my name has not been pronounced, you see that here I am. This must prove to you that we are happy and numerous.

The mother of an honorary member of your Society, Aimée Brédard, of Bordeaux.

(Medium: Mrs. Delanne.)

VIII.

My good friends, after the prayers that you have just heard, and with which you associated yourselves with all your heart, I would have preferred to see each of you withdraw into the pious silence that prayer leaves in your heart. You raised your souls to God, for all those who departed from the Earth; you established sweet remembrances with the past and, in this present, do you not feel yourselves stronger? Did you not just now feel, while your souls rose to heaven in a common impulse, the warm breath of other souls, mingling their prayers with yours? Did you not become impregnated with them? Why not recollect yourselves in that silent perfume from beyond the tomb, instead of asking for our voices? To live with those sweet thoughts arising from the sacred effluvia of prayer, is that not happiness enough? But I understand that this mute language does not suffice for you. The tepid zephyrs are not sufficient for the loving heart that asks of the echoes a voice that answers its voice. I forgive you this desire, which is moreover very just. Why could not each one of you enjoy a second of the benefit that his new faith grants him, of communicating with those who are dear to him, through the mediums? But, how numerous is your assembly, for the small quantity of hands that can write! Among your friends, which are the fortunate ones who can say that they will hear their voices? I see here a number of Spirits much more considerable than that of the incarnate; they press around each of our intermediaries: Georges, Sanson, Costeau, Jobard, Dauban, Paul, Émile, and a hundred others, whose names I cannot say, find themselves here and would like to speak with you. I restrain their impulses and say to all that I will be the intermediary between them and you; they want it and you, dear friends, do you not also desire it? I will try to be a father for some and a mother for others; for still others a son, a daughter, a husband, a wife, and for all a friend, a brother who loves you and who would like your hearts, gathered into one, to form a single thought, a single soul, answering this communion of spirit, concentrated in my thought and in my soul. Ah! your dear dead did not wait for this day to come to each of you; at every instant do you not feel them pressing at your side, giving you, through that voice you call conscience, the chaste and divine secrets of duty? Do you not feel them draw nearer to you in your hours of sadness and of faintness? They say to you: Courage! and above all to you, Spiritists, they show you the heavens and the innumerable stars that roll in the firmament, in sign of alliance between the Lord and you. No, my dear friends, they do not leave you in thought. To you, mother, your daughter comes to say: I departed first, as the branch that the tempest breaks detaches from the vigorous trunk, but I still live from your sap and from your love in the immensity; and in this rosary of pearls that my soul carries, are there not some emeralds that came to me from you? Father, I hear your son say to you: I departed in order to return and to help you, in your prayer, to love God better. I departed so that your brow would not bow before the great dispenser of all things. He wished to recall himself to you, by making you hear the modulations from beyond the tomb of the voice of your son. Brother, I hear your brother recount to you the merrymakings of old, the struggles, the joys, the sufferings. I am in the beyond, he says, but I am not dead. I prepared the way for you: in it there is more glory than on Earth. Cast off your purple mantle and put on the mantle of sackcloth to make the journey. The Lord loves poverty more than riches. I hear sweet sighs answering your whispers: those of the lover answering the beloved; those of the husband to the wife. Beautiful harmony!

Rejoice, then! How many happy tears! How many touching impulses! Wife, you have felt your hands pressed by the invisible hands of your husbands; at this hour they come to renew the oath to love you always; they come to say to you what I myself said: that death does not break the ties of the heart and that unions continue beyond the tomb. How I would like to name each of these dear dead; but I cannot! Listen yourselves to their voices. Each of you will recognize them in the sacred concert that rises to Heaven. Together, they sing a hymn of thanksgiving to the Lord.

Saint Augustine. n (Medium: Mr. E. Vézy.)

IX.

My medium being unable to lend his assistance to all the Spirits, I come in place of a Spirit who perhaps would have wished to communicate. In this meeting especially dedicated to the absent, I want to give you some advice on the manner of proceeding in order to obtain answers really emanating from the Spirits called. There are here many mediums and many Spirits desirous of communicating. Yet, few will be able to do so, because they will not have had time to establish the fluidic communication with them. The identity of the communications is a thing difficult to establish, and rarely can you be perfectly sure of that identity. However, if you would lend a little help to the Spirits, by preparing yourselves beforehand for the evocations, there would more often be real identity. The fluids must always be similar; without that similitude there is no possible communication. But you, mediums, possess many diverse fluids; among these, some could be used by the Spirits, if they were given time to influence them. Generally one calls this one or that one point-blank, without having called him by thought, without having offered him one's fluidic apparatus, without having left him time to dispose it so as to echo in unison his own thoughts. Do you believe you do good by acting thus? No, because they are obliged to make use of your familiar Spirits as intermediaries and, naturally, you cannot recognize them in so positive a manner; thus, you are reduced only to noting thoughts at times very different from those they had in life, without any particularity that reveals to you an identity. Believe me, when you wish to evoke, think for some time beforehand of those you wish to call, in order to offer them better means of communicating personally. I speak in the name of all who are the family and friends of my medium, and I come to thank the President for the words full of sincerity that he pronounced for all. Certainly there is happiness in uniting oneself with so many desires and benevolent wills; and all of us, Spirits inclined to good and instructor Spirits, consider it a duty to fulfill the missions that are confided to us by him and by all the Spiritist hearts. (See further on.)

A Spirit.

(Medium: Miss A. C.)

[1]

[see John the Evangelist.]

[2] [see Saint Augustine.]