Correspondence from beyond the tomb.

— For the understanding of the principal fact in question, we extract the following passage from the letter of one of our subscribers; it is, moreover, a simple and touching expression of the consolations that the afflicted draw from Spiritism:

“Allow me to tell you how much Spiritism has relieved me, in giving me the certainty of seeing again in a better world a being I loved with a love without limits, a dear brother, dead in the flower of his age. How consoling is the thought that he whose death we lament is often near us, sustaining us when we are crushed under the weight of grief, rejoicing when faith in the future lets us glimpse a certain reunion! Initiated some years ago into the admirable precepts of Spiritism, I had accepted all its truths and strove to live here in such a way as to hasten my advancement. My good resolutions had been taken very sincerely; I confess, however, that not possessing the necessary elements to fortify and sustain my belief in the communication of the Spirits, little by little I had become accustomed, not to rejecting it, but to regarding it with more indifference. It is that misfortune until then was unknown to me. Today, when it has pleased God to send me a painful trial, I have drawn from Spiritism precious consolations and I feel the need to thank you for it most particularly, as the first propagator of this holy doctrine. “The doctrine of Spiritism not being a simple hypothesis, but resting on patent facts within everyone’s reach, the consolations it provides consist not only in the certainty of seeing again the beloved persons, but also and above all in the possibility of corresponding with them and obtaining from them salutary teachings.”

— Thus convinced, the living brother wrote to the dead brother the following letter, soliciting the reply through a medium:

N…, March 14, 1865.

My well-beloved brother, It is impossible for me to tell you how happy I was to read the letter you sent me through the medium of S… I communicated it to our poor parents, whom you greatly afflicted, in leaving them in so unexpected a manner. They asked me to write to you again, to ask you for new details about your present existence, so that they may be able to believe, through proofs you will easily give, in the reality of the teaching of the Spirits. But, before all else, draw near to them, inspire in them resignation and faith in the future; console them, for they need to be consoled, broken as they are by so unexpected a blow. As for me, O my well-beloved brother, I shall always be happy when you are permitted to give your news. Today I come to ask you for new details about your illness, your death, and your awakening in the world of the Spirits. Which Spirits came to receive you on the threshold of the invisible world? Did you see our grandfather again? Is he happy? Did you see again and recognize our relatives, dead before you, even those you had not known on Earth? Were you present at your burial? What impression did you feel? I ask you to give me some details about that sad ceremony, such as will not permit our parents to doubt your identity. Could you say whether some member of our family will become a medium? Would you not wish to communicate through one of us?

I cannot understand that you do not wish to continue your studies of music, which you cultivated with such ardor on Earth; for us it would be a sweet consolation if you would finish, through a medium, the psalms you began to set to music in Paris.

You were able to verify the immense void caused by your death in the heart of us all. I beg you to inspire in your parents the courage necessary not to succumb in this terrible trial; be often with them and give your news. As for me, God knows how much I wept. Despite my belief in Spiritism, there are moments when I cannot accustom myself to the idea of seeing you no more on Earth, and when I would give my life to be able to clasp you to my heart.

Farewell, my noble friend. Think sometimes of him whose thoughts are constantly directed toward you, and who will do his utmost to be judged worthy of being one day reunited with you.

I embrace you and clasp you to my heart.

Your devoted brother, B…

Note. – In a preceding communication given to the parents, through another medium, it had been said that the young man did not wish to continue his musical studies in the world of the Spirits.

Reply of the dead brother to the living brother.

Here I am, my good brother; but you are very demanding. Even with the best good will I cannot answer, in a single evocation, the numerous questions you address to me. Do you not know, then, that it is sometimes very difficult for Spirits to transmit thought through certain mediums little apt to receive clearly, in their brain, the photographic impression of the thoughts of certain Spirits and who, denaturing them, give them a stamp of falseness, which leads the interested parties to the most formal denial of the manifestations? This is very little flattering and profoundly saddens those who, for lack of suitable instruments, are powerless to give sufficient signs of identity. Believe me, good brother, evoke me in the family. With a little good will and a few persevering attempts, you yourself will be able to converse with me at will. I am almost always near you, because I know that you are a Spiritist and I have confidence in you. It is certain that sympathy attracts sympathy and that one cannot be expansive with a medium one sees for the first time. Nevertheless, I shall strive to satisfy you.

My death, which afflicts you, was the end of the captivity of my soul. Your love, your solicitude, your tenderness had made sweet my exile on Earth. But, in my most beautiful moments of musical inspiration, I turned my gaze toward the luminous regions, where all is harmony, absorbed in listening to the distant chords of the celestial melody that flooded me with sweet vibrations. How many times I was enraptured in those rapturous reveries, to which I owed the success of my musical studies, which I continue here! It would be an extraordinary error to believe that individual aptitude is lost in the spirit world; on the contrary, it is perfected, in order then to carry that perfection to the planets where those Spirits are called to live. Weep no more, all of you, well-beloved parents! What good do tears serve? To weaken, to discourage souls. I departed first, but you will come to find me. Is this certainty not powerful enough to console you? The rose, which exhaled its perfumes upon the oak, dies as I did, after having lived but little, strewing the soil with withered petals. But, in its turn, the oak dies and has the fate of the rose that wept and whose living colors harmonize with its somber foliage.

A little while yet and you will come to me; then we shall sing the Song of Songs and praise God in His works. Together we shall be happy if you resign yourselves to the trial that afflicts you.

He who was your brother on Earth and loves you always, B…

— Several important teachings stand out from this communication. The first is the difficulty of the Spirit in expressing itself with the aid of the instrument given to it. We know this medium personally, who for a long time has been giving proofs of strength and flexibility of the faculty, above all in what concerns private evocations. It is what may be called a reliable and well-assisted medium. Whence comes, then, this impediment? It is that the facility of communications depends on the degree of fluidic affinity existing between the Spirit and the medium. Thus, each medium is more or less apt to receive the impression or the impulsion of the thought of this or that Spirit; he may be a good instrument for one and a bad one for another, and this fact in no way diminishes his qualities, for the condition is more organic than moral. Thus, then, the Spirits seek by preference the instruments with which they vibrate in unison; to impose upon them the first that appears and to believe that they can make use of them indifferently would be the same thing as obliging a pianist to play the violin: by virtue of knowing music, he must be capable of playing all the instruments. Without this harmony, the only one that can lead to the fluidic assimilation, as necessary in tiptology as in writing, the communications are either impossible, or incomplete, or false. In default of the Spirit, who cannot be seen, if he cannot manifest himself freely, others will not be lacking, always ready to seize the occasion, and who care little for the truth of what they say. This fluidic assimilation is sometimes completely impossible between certain Spirits and certain mediums; other times, and this is the most ordinary case, it is established only gradually and with time, which explains why the Spirits who habitually manifest themselves to a medium do so with more facility, and why the first communications almost always attest to a certain difficulty and are less explicit. It is, then, demonstrated, both by theory and by experience, that there are no longer universal mediums for evocations, just as there are none apt for all kinds of manifestations. He who claimed to receive at will and at the right moment the communications of all Spirits and, consequently, to satisfy the legitimate desires of all who wish to commune with the beings dear to them, would give proof either of radical ignorance of the most elementary principles of the science, or of charlatanism and, in any case, of a presumption incompatible with the essential qualities of a good medium. One could believe in this at a certain time, but today the progress of theoretical and practical science demonstrates, in principle, its impossibility. When a Spirit communicates for the first time to a medium, without any difficulty, this is due to an exceptional or prior fluidic affinity between the Spirit and his interpreter. It is, then, an error to impose a medium upon the Spirit one wishes to invoke. One must leave to him the choice of his instrument. But, they will ask, how to do when one has only a single medium, which is very frequent? First, to be content with what one has and to abstain from what one does not have. It is not in the power of the Spiritist science to change the normal conditions of the manifestations, just as it does not fall to chemistry to change those of the combination of the elements.

However, there is here a means of attenuating the difficulty. In principle, when it is a matter of a new evocation, the medium must always evoke his spiritual guide beforehand, and inquire whether it is possible. In the affirmative case, ask the evoked Spirit whether he finds in the medium the necessary aptitude to receive and transmit his thought. If there is difficulty or impossibility, ask him to do it through the medium’s guide or to be assisted by him. In this case, the thought of the Spirit arrives secondhand, that is, after having passed through two media. One understands, then, how important it is that the medium be well assisted, because if he is assisted by an obsessing Spirit, ignorant or proud, the communication will be altered. Here, the personal qualities of the medium necessarily play an important role, by the nature of the Spirits he attracts to himself. The most unworthy mediums may dispose of powerful faculties; the most reliable, however, are those who join to that strength the best sympathies in the invisible world. Now, these sympathies are in no way guaranteed by the more or less imposing names of the Spirits who sign the communications received by mediumistic means. These principles are founded at once on logic and on experience. The very difficulties they reveal prove that the practice of Spiritism must not be treated lightly.

Another fact stands out equally from the above communication: it is the confirmation of the principle that intelligent Spirits pursue in the spiritual life the works and studies they undertook in the corporeal life.

This is why we give preference, in the communications we publish, to those from which a useful teaching can emerge. As for the letter of the living brother to his dead brother, it is an ingenuous and touching expression of sincere faith in the survival of the soul, in the presence of the beings dear to us, and in the possibility of continuing with them the relations of affection that united us to them.

No doubt the unbelievers will laugh at what, in their eyes, is a puerile credulity. Whatever they may do, the nothingness they extol will never have charm for the masses, because it breaks the heart and annihilates the most holy affections; it freezes, instead of warming; it terrifies and drives to despair, instead of fortifying and consoling.

As their diatribes against Spiritism have for their axis the terrifying doctrine of nothingness, one should not be astonished at their impotence in turning the masses away from the new ideas. Between a doctrine of despair and a consoling one, the choice of the majority could not be doubtful.

After the horrible catastrophe of the church of Santiago de Chile, in 1864, there was found in it a box of letters, in which the faithful deposited the missives they addressed to the Holy Virgin. Could one establish a parity between the fact that excited the verve of the mockers and the letter above? Surely not. Nevertheless, the error was not that of those who believed in the possibility of corresponding with the other world, but that of those who exploited that belief, replying to the letters previously sealed. There are few superstitions that do not have their starting point in a truth denatured by ignorance. Accused of resuscitating them, Spiritism comes, on the contrary, to reduce them to their just value.