A resurrection.

— Le Concorde, a newspaper of Versailles, of February 22, 1866, relates the following episode, from a story published in serial form, under the title: In Corsica, a pen sketch.

A young woman had an old aunt who served her as a mother and to whom she devoted a filial tenderness. The aunt fell ill and died. They drew the young woman away, but she planted herself at the door of the mortuary chamber, weeping and praying. Suddenly she thought she heard a faint cry and something like a muffled moan. She opened the door hastily and saw her aunt, who had pushed aside the sheet with which she had been covered, and was making a sign to her to approach. Then she said to her in a feeble voice and making a supreme effort: “Savéria, a moment ago I was dead… yes, dead… I saw the Lord… He permitted me to return for an instant to this Earth, to say to you a last farewell, to make a last recommendation.” Then she renewed for her a very important counsel, which she had given her some days before, and upon which her future depended. It was a matter of keeping absolute secrecy about a fact, the divulgence of which would provoke one of those terrible vengeances so common in that region. The niece having promised to conform to the will of her aunt, the latter added: “Now I can die, for God will protect you as He protects me in this hour, since, in going away, I shall not feel the sorrow of leaving behind me a vengeance to glut itself in a river of blood and of curses… Farewell, poor child, I bless you.” After these words, she expired. One of our correspondents, who knows the author personally, asked him whether the account was the fruit of his imagination. “No,” he answered, “it is the pure truth. I gathered the fact from the mouth of Savéria herself, when I was in Corsica. I cited her own words and even omitted certain details, fearing that I might be accused of exaggeration.”

— Facts of this nature are not without example; we cited a most notable one in the Review of August 1863, under the title Mr. Cardon, physician. They are the evident proof of the existence and the independence of the soul, because if the intelligent principle were inherent to matter, it would be extinguished with it. The question is to know whether, by an act of the will, the soul can momentarily enter into possession of the body it has just left.

The fact above, nor that of the physician Cardon, must not be assimilated to the lethargic state. Lethargy is an accidental suspension of nervous sensibility and of movement, which offers the image of death, but which is not death, for there is no decomposition and the lethargic have lived long years after their awakening. Vitality, being latent, is no less present in all its force, and the soul is no more detached from the body than in ordinary sleep. In true death, on the contrary, matter becomes disorganized, vitality is extinguished, the perispirit separates; the work of dissolution begins even before death has been effected. As long as it is not consummated, there can be passing returns to life, such as those we have cited, but always of short duration, considering that the will can delay by a few instants the definitive separation of the perispirit, but is powerless to halt the work of dissolution when the moment has come. Whatever the exterior appearances may be, one can say that every time there is a return to life, it is that there was no death in the pathological acceptation of the term. When death is complete, these returns are impossible, for the physiological laws are opposed to it. In the circumstances of which we speak, one could, then, rationally admit that death had not been consummated. The fact having been related at the Society of Paris, the guide of one of our habitual mediums gave it the following explanation, which we reproduce with all reserve, as a thing possible, but not materially proved, and by way of observation.

(Spiritist Society of Paris, March 2, 1866. – Medium: Mr. Morin.)

In the case that is the object of your discussion, there is a positive fact, that of the dead woman who spoke to her niece. It remains to know whether that fact is of the material domain, that is, whether there was a momentary return to corporeal life, or whether it is of the spiritual order; it is this latter hypothesis that is true, because the old aunt was really dead. Here is what took place:

Kneeling at the door of the mortuary chamber, the young woman underwent an irresistible impulse, which led her to the bedside of her aunt who, as has been said, was really dead. It was the ardent will of the Spirit of that woman that provoked the phenomenon. Feeling herself dying without being able to make the recommendation so keenly desired, she asked God, in a last and supreme prayer, that she might be able to tell her niece what she wished to tell her. The separation being already made, the perispiritual fluid, still impregnated with her desire, enveloped the young woman and drew her toward her remains. There, by a permission of God, she became a seeing and hearing medium; she saw and heard her aunt, speaking and acting, not with the body, but by means of the perispirit still adhering to the body. There was, therefore, spiritual vision and audition, and not material. The recommendation of the aunt, made at such a moment and in circumstances that seemed a resurrection, was bound to impress the young woman more keenly and to make her comprehend better all its importance. Although she had already made it during life, she wished to carry away the certainty that her niece would conform to it, in order to avoid the misfortunes that would have resulted from an indiscretion. Her will could not make her body live again, contrary to the laws of Nature, but it was capable of giving to her fluidic envelope the appearances of her body.

Ebelman. n [1]

[v. Jacques Joseph Ebelman.]