Instructions for Mr. Allan Kardec

— As the health of Mr. Allan Kardec weakens day by day, in consequence of the excessive works for which he cannot suffice, I find myself under the obligation to repeat to him once again what I have already told him many times: You need rest; human forces have limits, which your desire to see the teaching progress often leads you to infringe; you labor in error, since, by acting thus, you will not hasten the march of the doctrine, but you will ruin your health and place yourself in the material impossibility of concluding the task that you came to carry out on the Earth. Your present illness is nothing but the result of an incessant expenditure of vital forces, which does not leave to repair the time to restore itself, and an overheating of the blood produced by the absolute lack of rest. We sustain you, no doubt, but provided that you do not undo what we do. What good is it to run? Have we not told you many times that each thing would come in its time and that the Spirits appointed to the movement of ideas would know how to bring forth favorable circumstances when the moment to act arrived? When each Spiritist keeps his forces for the struggle, do you think it is your duty to exhaust yours? — No. In all things you must give the example and roll up your sleeves at the moment of danger. What would you do if your debilitated body no longer permitted your spirit to make use of the weapons that experience and revelation have placed in your hands? — Believe me, consecrate yourself later to the great works destined to complete the work sketched out in your first publications; your current tasks and a few small urgent brochures have wherewith to absorb your time and must be the only objects of your present preoccupations.

I do not speak to you only in my own name; I am here the delegate of all those Spirits who contributed so powerfully to the propagation of the teaching by their wise instructions. They tell you, through my intermediary, that this delay, which you judge prejudicial to the future of the doctrine, is a necessary measure from more than one point of view, whether because certain questions are not yet completely elucidated, or in order to prepare the Spirits to better assimilate them. It is necessary that others should have prepared the ground, that certain theories should have proved their insufficiency and generated a greater void. In a word, the moment is not opportune; spare yourself, then, because when the time comes, all your vigor of body and of spirit will be necessary to you. Up to now Spiritism has been the object of many diatribes, it has raised many tempests! Do you believe that the whole movement will be appeased, all the hatreds calmed and reduced to impotence? Undeceive yourself; the purifying crucible has not yet removed all the impurities; the future reserves other trials for you, and the last crises will be no less painful to endure. I know that your particular situation gives rise for you to a quantity of secondary works, which absorb the greater part of your time. Questions of every sort overwhelm you, and you consider it a duty to answer them as much as possible. I shall do here what no doubt you would not dare to do yourself: addressing myself to the generality of Spiritists, I shall ask them, in the very interest of Spiritism, to spare you any overload of work capable of absorbing instants that you must consecrate almost exclusively to the conclusion of the work. If your correspondence suffers a little from this, the teaching will profit. Sometimes it is necessary to sacrifice particular satisfactions to the general interest. It is an urgent measure, which all sincere adherents will know how to understand and approve. The immense correspondence that you receive is for you a precious source of documents and of information; it enlightens you as to the true march and the real progress of the doctrine; it is an impartial thermometer; you gather there, moreover, moral satisfactions that, more than once, have sustained your courage, seeing the adhesion that your ideas encounter at all points of the globe. On this point, the superabundance is a good and not an inconvenience, but on the condition of seconding your works, and not of hindering them, by creating for you an increase of occupations.

Doctor Demeure.

— Good Mr. Demeure, I thank you for your wise counsels. Thanks to the resolution I made, save in exceptional cases, to have myself replaced, the ordinary correspondence now suffers little and will suffer no more in the future. But what is to be done with more than five hundred letters in arrears, despite all my good will, which I cannot manage to bring up to date?

Answer. – It is necessary, as one says in commercial language, to pass them in a lump to the account of profits and losses. By announcing this measure in the Review, your correspondents will know how to proceed; they will understand the necessity and will find it justified, above all by the counsels that precede. I repeat: it would be impossible for things to continue thus any longer; everything would suffer from it, both your health and the doctrine. In case of necessity, one must know how to make the indispensable sacrifices. Henceforth, tranquil on this point, you will be able to consecrate yourself more freely to your obligatory works. Behold what is counseled to you by the one who will always be your devoted friend.

Demeure.

Consenting to this wise counsel, we beg our correspondents with whom we are long in arrears to accept our apologies and our regret for not having been able to answer in detail, and as we would have wished, their kind letters. May they kindly receive here collectively the expression of our fraternal sentiments.