Departure of an adversary of Spiritism for the world of Spirits.

— We are written from V…:

“Some time ago an ecclesiastic died in our vicinity. He was a declared adversary of Spiritism, but not one of those raging adversaries, of whom so many are seen, who make up for the lack of good arguments with violence and insult. He was an educated man, of superior intelligence. He fought it with talent, without acrimony and without departing from propriety. Unfortunately for him, and in spite of all his learning and incontestable merit, he could only oppose to it the ordinary commonplaces and, to overthrow it, he found none of those arguments that bring to the mind of the masses an irresistible conviction. His fixed idea, or at least the one he sought to make prevail, was that Spiritism would have only its day; that its rapid propagation was nothing but a passing enthusiasm, and that it would fall like all utopian ideas. “We had the idea of evoking him in our small circle. His communication seemed to us instructive in several respects, which is why we send it to you. In our opinion it bears an incontestable seal of identity.

— “Here is the communication:

Q. – (To the medium’s guide). Would you have the kindness to say whether we may evoke the Reverend Abbé D…?

Answer. – Yes; he will come. But, although persuaded of the reality of your teachings, of which death has convinced him, he will still try to prove to you the uselessness of your efforts to spread them in a serious manner. There he is, ready to rely on momentary dissensions raised by some brothers who have gone astray, to prove to you the insanity of your doctrine. Listen to him; his language will make known to you the manner in which you must speak to him.

— Evocation – Dear Spirit D…, we hope that, with the help of God and the good Spirits, you will deign to communicate with us. As you can see, every feeling of curiosity is far from our thought. In provoking this conversation, our aim is to draw from it instruction profitable to us and, perhaps, also to you. We shall therefore be grateful to you for whatever you may wish to tell us.

A. – You are right to call me, but you are mistaken in supposing that I could refuse to come to you. Be assured that my title of adversary of Spiritism is no reason for me to keep silent; I have good reasons to speak.

My coming is a confession, an affirmation of your teachings. I know it and I acknowledge it. I am convinced of the reality of the manifestations I experience today, but that is no reason for me to recognize their excellence, nor to admit as certain the aim you set yourselves. Yes, the Spirits communicate, and not only the demons, as we teach, and by calculation. It is useless for me to dwell on it, since you know as well as I the reasons that lead us to act so. Certainly, Spirits of every kind communicate; of this I am a proof, for, although I have not the conceit to believe myself a superior being, whether by my knowledge or by my morality, I have enough conscience of my worth to esteem myself above those categories of Spirits subject to the expiation of the vilest imperfections. I am not perfect; like anyone, I have committed faults. But — I acknowledge it with pride — if I was a man of party, I was, at the same time, a man of good, in the true sense of the word. Listen to me, then. The priests may be mistaken in fighting you. I do not know what the future holds and I shall not enter into discussion as to whether or not there is foundation in their truly systematic opposition; but, also, examining carefully all the consequences of an acceptance, you cannot fail to recognize that you would cause their social ruin or, at least, a transformation so absolute that all privilege, all separation from other men would strictly be annihilated. Now, one does not renounce with joy in the heart a royalty so enviable, a prestige that raises one above the common, riches that, for being material, are no less necessary to the satisfaction of the priest than to that of the common man. By Spiritism, no more clerical oligarchy; the priest is no one and is anyone; the priest is the man of good who teaches the truth to his brothers; he is the charitable worker who raises up his fallen companion. Your priesthood is faith; your hierarchy, merit; your wages, God! it is great! it is beautiful! But, it must be said, sooner or later it is ruin, not of man, who can only gain from these teachings, but of the clerical family. One does not willingly renounce, I repeat, the honors, the respect that one is accustomed to reap. You are right, I grant it! and yet, I cannot disapprove of our attitude toward your teaching; I say ours, because it is still mine, in spite of all that I see and all that you may say to me. Let us admit your doctrine established; there it is, heeded, everywhere extending its ramifications, in the bosom of the people as in the wealthy classes, in the artisan as in the man of letters. It is the latter who will lend you the most effective support; but what will result from all this? In my opinion, here it is:

Divisions are already operating among you. There exist two great sects among the Spiritists: the spiritualists of the American school and the Spiritists of the French school. But let us consider only the latter. Is it one? No. There are, on one side, the purists or Kardecists, who admit no truth except after attentive examination and agreement with all the data; it is the principal nucleus, but it is not the only one; various branches, after having infiltrated the great teachings of the center, separate from the common mother to form particular sects; others, not entirely detached from the trunk, emit subversive opinions. Each chief of opposition has his allies; the camps are not yet drawn, but they are forming and soon the schism will break out. I tell you, Spiritism, like the philosophical doctrines that preceded it, could not have a long duration. It existed and grew, but now it is at the top and already begins to descend. It still makes a few followers, but, like Saint-Simonism, like Fourierism, like the theosophists, it will fall, perhaps to be replaced, but it will fall, I firmly believe. Nevertheless, its principle exists: the Spirits; but, also, does it not have its dangers? The inferior Spirits can communicate: that is its undoing. Men are, above all, dominated by their passions, and the Spirits of whom I have just spoken are accustomed to exciting them. As there are more imperfections than qualities in our Humanity, it is evident that the Spirit of evil will triumph, and that if Spiritism can do anything, it will certainly be the invasion of a terrible scourge for all.

This said, I conclude that, good in essence, it is evil by its very results and, therefore, it is prudent to reject it.

The medium – Dear Spirit, if Spiritism were a human conception, I would have the same opinion as yours; but if it is impossible for you to deny the existence of the Spirits, neither can you ignore, in the movement directed by the invisible beings, the powerful hand of the Divinity. Now, unless you deny your own teachings, when you were on Earth, you cannot admit that the action of man could be an obstacle to the will of God, his creator. Of two things, one: either Spiritism is a work of human invention and, like every human work, subject to ruin; or it is a work of God, the manifestation of his will and, in that case, no obstacle could prevent it or even retard its development. If, then, you recognize that Spirits exist, and that these Spirits communicate to instruct us, this cannot be outside the divine will, because, then, there would exist alongside God an independent power, which would destroy his quality of being all-powerful and, consequently, of being God. Spiritism could not be ruined by the fact of a few dissensions that human interests might generate within it. Answer. – Perhaps you are right, my young friend (the medium was a young man), but I maintain what I have said. I cease all discussion on the matter. I am at your disposal for any question you may wish to ask, that aside.

— The medium – Well then! since you permit it, without insisting on a subject that perhaps would be painful for you to pursue at the moment, we would beg you to describe to us your passage from this life to the one in which you are, to say whether you remained disturbed and whether, in your present position, we can be useful to you.

Answer. – In spite of myself, I cannot fail to recognize the excellence of these principles that teach man what death is and that make him have affection for beings entirely unknown to him. But… in short, my dear young man, I shall answer your question. I do not wish to abuse your time and I shall satisfy your desire in a few words.

I shall confess, then, that at the moment of dying I was apprehensive. Was it matter that led me to lament this existence? was it the ignorance of the future? I shall not conceal it from you, I was afraid! You ask whether I was disturbed; how do you understand it? If you mean that the violent action of the separation plunged me into a kind of moral lethargy, from which I emerged as from a painful sleep, yes, I was disturbed; but if you mean a disturbance in the functions of the intelligence: the memory, the consciousness of oneself, no. Nevertheless, the disturbance exists for certain beings; perhaps also for me, although I do not believe it. But what I do believe is that, generally, this phenomenon should not occur immediately after death. It is true that I was surprised to see the existence of the Spirit just as you teach, but this is not disturbance. Here is how I understand disturbance, and in what circumstances I would experience it. If I had not been sure of the truth of my belief; if doubt had entered my soul concerning what I then believed; if an abrupt modification had operated in my way of seeing, there I would have been disturbed. But my opinion is that such a disturbance should not occur right after death. If I believe what reason tells me, on dying the being must remain just as it was before passing… only later, when isolation, the change that operates gradually around it, modify its opinions, when its being experiences a moral shock that makes its primitive security waver, is when the disturbance really begins.

You ask whether I can be useful to you in anything. My religion teaches me that prayer is good; your belief says that it is useful. So pray for me and be sure of my gratitude. In spite of the dissension that exists between us, I shall be no less pleased to come and converse with you a few times.

Abbé D…

— Our correspondent was right in saying that this communication is instructive. It is so, indeed, in many respects, and our readers will easily grasp the grave teachings that stand out from it, without our needing to point them out. There we see a Spirit who, in life, had fought our doctrines and exhausted against them all the arguments that his profound learning could furnish him; a learned theologian, it is probable that he neglected none. As a Spirit recently disincarnated, recognizing the fundamental truths upon which we rely, he nonetheless persists no less in his opposition, and this for the same motives. Now, it is incontestable that, if, more lucid in his spiritual state, he had found more peremptory arguments to fight us, he would have made them prevail. Far from this, he seems afraid to see too clearly and, nevertheless, he senses a modification in his ideas. Still imbued with earthly ideas, he attaches all his thoughts to them; the future frightens him, which is why he does not dare to face it. We shall answer him as if he had written, in life, what he dictated after death. We address ourselves as much to the man as to the Spirit, thus answering those who share his way of seeing and who might oppose to us the same arguments.

Thus we shall say to him:

Reverend abbé, although you were our declared and militant adversary on Earth, none of us holds it against you so, neither today nor when you were living, first because our faith makes tolerance a law and, in our eyes, all opinions are respectable when sincere. Freedom of conscience is one of our principles; we want it for others, as we desire it for ourselves. To God alone belongs the judgment of the validity of beliefs and no man has the right to anathematize in the name of God. Freedom of conscience does not take away the right of discussion and refutation, but charity ordains that no one be cursed. In the second place, we do not love you the less for it, because your opposition brought no harm to the doctrine; you served the cause of Spiritism without knowing it, like all those who attack it, helping to make it known and proving, above all by reason of your personal merit, the insufficiency of the weapons they employ to fight it.

— Allow me, now, to discuss some of your propositions.

One above all seems to me to sin, in high degree, against logic. It is the one in which you say that “Spiritism, good in essence, is evil by its results.” It seems that you have forgotten the maxim of the Christ, made proverbial by the force of truth: “A good tree cannot bear bad fruit.” One could not understand that a thing good in its very essence could be pernicious.

You say elsewhere that the danger of Spiritism lies in the manifestation of the evil Spirits who, to the profit of evil, will exploit the passions of men. It was one of the theses you sustained in life. But, alongside the evil Spirits, there are the good ones, who excite to good, whereas, according to the doctrine of the Church, the power to communicate is given only to the demons. If, then, you find Spiritism dangerous, because it admits the communication of the evil Spirits, alongside the good ones, the doctrine of the Church, were it true, would still be much more dangerous, because it admits only that of the evil ones.

Moreover, it was not Spiritism that invented the manifestation of the Spirits, nor is it the cause of their communication. It merely verifies a fact, which has occurred in all times, because it is in Nature. For Spiritism to cease to exist, the Spirits would have to cease to manifest. If this manifestation offers dangers, one must not accuse Spiritism, but Nature. Will the science of electricity be the cause of the harm occasioned by lightning? No, certainly; it makes known the cause of lightning and teaches the means of diverting it. The same happens with Spiritism: it makes known the cause of a pernicious influence, which acts upon man unbeknownst to him, and indicates to him the means of protecting himself from it, whereas, were he to ignore it, he would suffer it and expose himself to it without suspecting. The influence of the evil Spirits is part of the scourges to which man is exposed on Earth, like diseases and accidents of every sort, because he is in a world of expiation and of trial, where he must work for his moral and intellectual advancement. But God, in his goodness, alongside the evil always places the remedy; he gave man the intelligence to discover it; it is to this that the progress of the sciences leads. Spiritism comes to indicate the remedy for one of these evils; it teaches that to escape from it and neutralize the influence of the evil Spirits, one must become better, master the evil inclinations, practice the virtues taught by the Christ: humility and charity. So is it this that you call evil results? The manifestation of the Spirits is a positive fact, recognized by the Church. Now, today experience comes to demonstrate that the Spirits are the souls of men, which is why there are so many imperfect ones. If the fact comes to contradict certain dogmas, Spiritism is no more responsible than Geology, for having demonstrated that the Earth was not made in six days. The error of these dogmas is that they are not in accord with the laws of Nature. By these manifestations, as by the discoveries of Science, God wishes to lead man back to truer beliefs. To repel progress is, then, to disregard the will of God; to attribute it to the demon is to blaspheme against God. To wish, by fair means or foul, to maintain a belief that opposes the evidence and to make of a principle recognized as false the basis of a doctrine is to prop up a house on a worm-eaten post; little by little the post breaks and the house falls.

— You say that the opposition of the Church to Spiritism has its reason for being and you approve of it, because it would cause the ruin of the clergy, whose separation from the common run of mortals would be annihilated. You say: “With Spiritism, no more clerical oligarchy; the priest is no one and is anyone; he is the man of good who teaches the truth to his brothers; he is the charitable worker who raises up his fallen companion; your priest is faith; your hierarchy, merit; your wages, God! it is great! it is beautiful! But one does not renounce with joy in the heart a royalty, a prestige that raises you above the common, the respect, the honors that one is accustomed to reap, riches that, for being material, are no less necessary to the satisfaction of the priest than to that of the ordinary man.” What then! the clergy would be moved by sentiments so petty? It would disregard to such a degree these words of the Christ: “My kingdom is not of this world,” that it would sacrifice the interest of truth to the satisfaction of pride, of ambition and of worldly passions? Then it would not believe in that kingdom promised by Jesus Christ, since it prefers to it that of the Earth. Thus, it would have its point of support in heaven, only in appearance, and to give itself prestige, but in truth to safeguard its earthly interests! We prefer to believe that if such be the motive of some of its members, it is not the sentiment of the majority; if it were not so, its kingdom would be quite close to ending, and your words would be its sentence, because the celestial kingdom is the only eternal one, whereas those of the Earth are fragile and without stability.

— You go very far, reverend abbé, in your predictions about the consequences of Spiritism; but farther than I do in my writings. Without accompanying you onto this terrain, I shall simply say, because everyone senses it, that the inevitable result will be a transformation of society; it will create a new order of things, new habits, new needs; it will modify beliefs, social relations; it will do for morality what all the great discoveries of industry and the sciences do from the material point of view. This transformation frightens you and that is why, on sensing it, you push it away from your thought; you would wish not to believe in it; in a word, you close your eyes so as not to see, and your ears so as not to hear. The same happens with many men on Earth. Nevertheless, if this transformation is in the designs of Providence, it will be realized, whatever they may do; it will have to be borne, whether they wish it or not and to bow to it, as the men of the old regime had to suffer the consequences of the Revolution, which they too denied and declared impossible, before it had been realized. To whoever might have told them that in less than a quarter of a century all privileges would be abolished; that a boy would no longer be a colonel at birth; that one would no longer buy a regiment as one buys a herd of cattle; that the soldier could become a marshal and the lowest plebeian, a minister; that all rights would be equal for all and that the farmer would have an equal voice in all the affairs of his region, alongside his lord, they would have shrugged their shoulders in incredulity and yet, if one of them had fallen asleep and awakened, like Epimenides, forty years later, he would think he found himself in another world.

— It is the fear of the future that makes you say that Spiritism will have only its day; you seek to delude yourselves, you wish to prove it to yourselves and you end up believing it in good faith, because it reassures you. But what reason do you present? The least conclusive of all, as is easy to demonstrate.

Ah! if you proved categorically that Spiritism is a utopia, that rests upon a material error of fact, upon a false, illusory base, without foundation, then you would be right. But, on the contrary, you affirm the existence of the principle and, moreover, the excellence of that principle; you recognize, and with you the Church, the reality of the material fact upon which it rests:

that of the manifestations. Can such a fact be destroyed? No, just as one cannot annihilate the movement of the Earth. Since it is in Nature, it will produce itself always. This fact, formerly misunderstood, yet better studied and better understood today, carries in itself inevitable consequences.

If you cannot destroy it, you are forced to suffer its consequences.

Follow it step by step in its ramifications and you will inevitably arrive at a revolution in ideas. Now, a change in ideas necessarily leads to a change in the order of things. (See: What is Spiritism.)

On the other hand, Spiritism does not bend the intelligences to its yoke; it does not impose a blind belief; it wants faith to rest on understanding. It is above all in this, reverend abbé, that we differ in our way of seeing. It leaves to each one entire freedom of examination, by virtue of the principle that, truth being one, sooner or later it must prevail over what is false, and that a principle founded on error falls by the force of things. Delivered to discussion, false ideas show their weak side and fade before the power of logic. These divergences are inevitable, because they help the purification and the solidity of the fundamental idea; and it is preferable that they occur from the beginning, for the true doctrine will free itself from them sooner. That is why we have always said to the followers: Do not be troubled by the contradictory ideas that may be emitted or published. See how many have already died at birth! how many writings of which no more is spoken! What do we seek? The triumph, at any cost, of our ideas? No, but that of truth. If, among the contrary ideas, some are truer than ours, they will prevail and we must adopt them; if they are false, they will not be able to bear the decisive test of the control of the universal teaching of the Spirits, the sole criterion of the idea that will survive.

— The comparison you establish between Spiritism and other philosophical doctrines lacks exactness. It was not men who made Spiritism what it is, nor who will make what it will be later; it is the Spirits by their teachings. Men only put it into action and coordinate the materials furnished to them. This teaching is not yet complete and one must consider what they have given until today only as the first markers of the science. One can compare it to the four operations in relation to mathematics, and we are still at the equations of the first degree. That is why many people still do not understand its importance, nor its scope. But the Spirits regulate their teaching at will and it depends on no one to make them go faster or slower than they wish; they do not accompany the impatient, nor go in tow of the laggards. Spiritism is not the work of a single Spirit, nor of a single man; it is the work of the Spirits in general. It follows from this that the opinion of a Spirit on any principle is considered by Spiritists only as an individual opinion, which may be correct or false, and has value only when sanctioned by the teaching of the majority, given in various points of the globe. It was this universal teaching that made what it is and that will make what it will be. Before this powerful criterion fall, necessarily, all the particular theories that may be the product of systematic ideas, whether of a man or of a Spirit in isolation. Doubtless a false idea may group around it a few partisans, but it will never prevail against that which is taught everywhere. Spiritism, which has only just been born, but which already raises questions of the highest gravity, necessarily puts a host of imaginations into effervescence. Each one sees the thing from his point of view. Hence the diversity of the systems arisen at its beginning, the majority of which have already fallen before the force of the general teaching. The same will happen with all those that are not with the truth, for, to the divergent teaching of one Spirit, given by one medium, there will always be opposed the uniform teaching of millions of Spirits, given by millions of mediums. This is the reason why certain eccentric theories lived only a few days and did not leave the circle where they were born. Deprived of sanction, they find in the opinion of the masses neither echoes nor sympathies and if, moreover, they clash with logic and good sense, they provoke a feeling of repulsion, which precipitates their fall. Spiritism possesses, then, an element of stability and of unity, drawn from its nature and its origin, which is proper to none of the philosophical doctrines of purely human conception; it is the shield against which all the attempts made to overthrow or divide it will always come to break. These divisions can never be other than partial, circumscribed and momentary.

— You speak of sects that, in your opinion, divide the Spiritists, whence you conclude the near ruin of their doctrine. But you have forgotten all those that have divided Christianity, since its birth, that bloodied it, that still divide it and whose number, until today, rises to no less than three hundred and sixty.

Nevertheless, in spite of the profound dissensions over the fundamental dogmas, Christianity has remained standing, a proof that it is independent of these questions of controversy. Why would you wish that Spiritism, which is bound by its very base to the principles of Christianity, and which is divided only on secondary questions, which day by day grow clearer, should suffer from the divergence of a few personal opinions, when it has a point of connection so powerful: the universal control?

Thus, were Spiritism today divided into twenty sects, which it is not and will not be, no consequence could be drawn from it, because it is the labor of childbirth. If divisions were raised by personal ambitions, by men dominated by the idea of making themselves chiefs of a sect, or of exploiting the idea to the profit of their self-love or of their interests, undoubtedly they would be the least dangerous. Personal publications die with the individuals, and if those who have wished to raise themselves do not have truth on their side, their ideas will die with them and, perhaps, before them. But the true truth cannot die.

You are right, reverend abbé, in saying that there will be ruins in Spiritism, but not as you understand. These ruins will be those of all the erroneous opinions that come into ebullition and arise. If all are in error, all will fall: this is inevitable; but if there is a single true one, it will infallibly subsist.

Two well-marked divisions, and to which one could really give the name of sects, had formed some years ago around the teaching of two Spirits who, disguising themselves with venerated names, had captured the confidence of some persons. Today this is no longer the case. Before whom did they fall? Before the good sense and the logic of the masses, on one side, and before the general teaching of the Spirits, in agreement with this same logic.

— Will you contest the value of this same universal teaching on the ground that the Spirits, being no more than the souls of men, are equally subject to error? But you would be in contradiction with yourself. Do you not admit that a general council has more authority than a particular council, because it is more numerous? that its opinion prevails over that of each priest, of each bishop, and even over that of the Pope? That the majority makes law in all assemblies of men? And would you not have the Spirits, who govern the world under the orders of God, also have their councils, their assemblies? What you admit in men as a sanction of truth, do you refuse to the Spirits? Then you forget that if, among them, there are inferior ones, it is not to those that God confides the interests of the Earth, but to the superior Spirits, who have crossed the stages of Humanity, and whose number is incalculable? And how do they transmit to us the instructions of the majority? Is it by the voice of a single Spirit, or of a single man? No, but, as I have said, by that of millions of Spirits and millions of men. Is it in a single center, in a city, in a country, in a caste, in a privileged people as formerly the Israelites? No: it is everywhere, in all countries, in all religions, in the house of the rich and in the house of the poor. How would you have the opinion of a few individuals, incarnate or disincarnate, be able to prevail over this formidable assemblage of voices? Believe me, reverend abbé, this universal sanction is well worth that of an ecumenical council. Spiritism is strong precisely because it relies on this sanction, and not on isolated opinions. Does it proclaim itself immutable in what it teaches today, and say that it has nothing more to teach? No, because until today it has followed, and will follow in the future, the progressive teaching that is given to it, and in this there is still for it a cause of strength, for it will never let itself be outdistanced by progress.

Wait yet a little, reverend abbé, and before a quarter of a century you will see Spiritism a hundred times less divided than Christianity is today, after eighteen centuries.

— From the fluctuations that you noticed in the Spiritist societies or gatherings, you wrongly concluded the instability of the doctrine. Spiritism is not a speculative theory, founded upon a preconceived idea; it is a question of fact and, consequently, of personal conviction. Whoever admits the fact and its consequences is a Spiritist, without needing to be part of a society. One can be a perfect Spiritist without this. The future of Spiritism lies in its own principle, an imperishable principle, because it is in Nature and not in the gatherings, often formed in conditions little favorable, composed of heterogeneous elements and, consequently, subordinated to a host of contingencies. The societies are useful, but none is indispensable; and if all were to cease to exist, Spiritism would pursue its march no less, seeing that it is not within them that the greater number of convictions is formed. They are much more for the believers who seek there sympathetic centers, than for the unbelievers. The serious and well-directed societies are useful chiefly to neutralize the bad impression of those where Spiritism is badly presented or is disfigured. The Society of Paris is no exception to the rule, because it arrogates to itself no monopoly. It does not consist in the greater or lesser number of its members, but in the mother idea it represents. Now, that idea is independent of every constituted gathering and, whatever may happen, the propagating element will not cease to subsist. It can, then, be said that the Society of Paris is anywhere where the same principles are professed, from East to West, and that were it to die materially the idea would survive. Spiritism is a child that grows, whose first steps are naturally faltering; but, like precocious children, it soon gives a presentiment of its strength. This is why certain persons are frightened and would like to smother it in the cradle. If it presented itself as a being as feeble as you suppose, it would not have caused so much emotion, nor raised so many animosities, and you yourself would not have sought to fight it. Let the child grow, then, and you will see what the adult will give.

— You predicted its near end; but innumerable incarnate and disincarnate beings have also cast its horoscope, in another sense. Listen, then, to their predictions, which succeed one another uninterruptedly for ten years, and are repeated at all points of the globe.

“Spiritism comes to combat incredulity, which is the dissolving element of society, replacing blind faith, which is being extinguished, with reasoned faith, which vivifies.

“It brings the regenerating element of Humanity and will be the compass of future generations.

“Like all great renovating ideas, it will have to struggle against the opposition of the interests it wounds and of the ideas it overthrows. They will raise against it every obstacle; against it they will employ every weapon, fair and unfair, that they think proper to overthrow it. Its first steps will be sown with heath and thorns. Its followers will be defamed, ridiculed, victims of treachery, of calumny and of persecution; they will have vexations and disappointments. Happy those whose faith has not been shaken in those nefarious days; who have suffered and fought for the triumph of truth, because they will be rewarded for their courage and perseverance. “Notwithstanding, Spiritism will continue its march through the snares and the reefs; it is unshakable like all that is in the will of God, because it relies upon the very laws of Nature, which are the eternal laws of God, whereas all that is contrary to those laws will fall.

“By the light it projects upon the obscure and controverted points of the Scriptures, it will lead men to unity of belief.

“Giving the very laws of Nature as a base to the principles of equality, liberty and fraternity, it will found the kingdom of true Christian charity, which is the kingdom of God on Earth, foretold by Jesus Christ.

“Many still repel it because they do not know it or do not understand it; but when they recognize that it realizes the dearest hopes of the future of Humanity, they will acclaim it and, just as Christianity found a support in Saint Paul, it will find defenders among the adversaries of the eve. From the multitude will arise chosen men, who will take up its cause and, by the authority of their word, will impose silence on the detractors.

“The struggle will still last a long time, because the passions, overexcited by pride and by material interests, cannot calm themselves suddenly. But these passions will be extinguished with the men, and the end of this century will not pass without the new belief having conquered a preponderant place among the civilized peoples, and from the coming century will date the era of regeneration.”