Suspension of the assistance of the Spirits

In a model group, which put into practice the Spiritist duties, it was noticed with surprise that certain elite Spirits, habitual frequenters, had for some time abstained from giving instructions, which prompted the following question:

Q. – Why do the elevated Spirits, who habitually assist us, communicate with us more rarely?

Answer. – Dear friends, there are two causes for this abandonment of which you complain. In the first place it is not an abandonment; it is only a momentary and necessary withdrawal. You are like schoolchildren who, well instructed and well endowed with preliminary revisions, are obliged to do their lessons without the help of their teachers; they search their memory; they watch for a sign, they spy out a word of help: nothing comes, nothing should come.

You await our encouragements, our counsels on your conduct, on your decisions: nothing satisfies you, because nothing should satisfy you. You were favored with wise, affectionate teachings, frequent encouragements, full of pleasantness and of true wisdom; you had countless proofs of our presence, of the efficacy of our help; faith was given to you, communicated; you took it, reasoned upon it, adopted it; in a word, like the schoolchild, you were endowed for the lesson. It must be done without errors, with your own resources, and no longer with our help. Where would your merit be? We could only repeat the same thing incessantly. It is now up to you to apply what we taught you. You must fly with your own wings and march alone. At a given moment, God furnishes a weapon and a strength to each man, in order that they may continue to overcome new dangers. The moment when a new strength is revealed to him is always for him an hour of joy, of enthusiasm. Then ardent faith accepts every pain without analyzing it, because love does not count the sorrows; but after these instantaneous moments, which are the festival, work is necessary, and work alone. The soul has calmed itself, the heart has softened, and behold, the struggle and the trial arrive; behold the enemy; the shock must be endured; it is the decisive moment. Then let love carry you away and make you scorn the Earth! Your heart must remain victorious over the vile instincts of egoism and of dejection; it is the test. For a long time we have warned you that you would need to tighten your bonds, to unite, to fortify yourselves for the struggle. The moment has come, and you are already in it. How will you sustain it? We can do nothing more, just as the teacher cannot whisper the composition to the pupil. Will he win the prize? That depends on the profit he has drawn from the lessons he received. So it is with you. You possess a code of instructions sufficient to lead you up to a certain point. Read these instructions again, meditate upon them, and do not ask for others before having applied them seriously, for we alone are the judges; and when you reach the point where they are insufficient, in relation to your moral progress, we shall well know how to give you others. The second reason for this kind of isolation of which you complain is this: many of your sympathetic counselors have, with other men, missions analogous to those which, at first, they wished to fulfill with you; and that quantity of evocations of which they are the object often diverts them from being assiduous in your group. Your friend Magdalene fulfills, far away, a difficult mandate, and her solicitudes, while being with you, also reach those for whom she sacrifices herself to save. But your whole world will return to you; at a given moment you will find your friends gathered as before, in the same thought of sympathetic help to their protégés. Take advantage of this time for your improvement, so that, when they come, they may say: we are pleased with you. Pamphile, n Protecting Spirit.

Observation. – This communication is an answer to those who complain of the uniformity of the teaching of the Spirits. If we reflect on the number of truths they have taught us, we shall see that they offer us a vast field for meditation, until we have assimilated them and deduced all their applications. What would one say of a sick person who daily asked his physician for a new remedy, without following his prescriptions? If the Spirits do not teach us novelties every day, with the help of the key they have placed in our hands, and of the laws they have revealed to us, we ourselves learn novelties every day, explaining what, for us, was inexplicable. [1]

[see Pamphile.]