The times have come.

— The times appointed by God have come, we are told on all sides, in which great events are to take place for the regeneration of Humanity.

In what sense should these prophetic words be understood? For the incredulous they have not the slightest importance. In their eyes they are nothing but the expression of a puerile, baseless belief. For the majority of believers they have something mystical and supernatural about them, which seems to them to be the forerunner of a disruption of the laws of Nature. These two interpretations are equally erroneous: the first, because it implies the denial of Providence and because accomplished facts prove the truth of these words; the second, because they do not announce the disruption of the laws of Nature, but their fulfillment. Let us therefore seek their most rational meaning.

All is harmony in the work of Creation; all reveals a foresight that does not belie itself either in the smallest or in the greatest things. In the first place, we must set aside any idea of caprice, irreconcilable with divine wisdom; in the second place, if our epoch is marked by the accomplishment of certain things, it is because they have their reason for being in the general march of the whole.

This being so, we shall say that our globe, like all that exists, is subject to the law of progress. It progresses physically through the transformation of the elements that compose it, and morally through the purification of the incarnate and disincarnate Spirits that people it. These two kinds of progress follow one another and march in parallel, because the perfection of the dwelling is in relation to the dweller. Physically, the globe has undergone transformations, attested by Science, which have successively made it habitable by beings ever more perfected; morally, Humanity progresses through the development of intelligence, of moral sense, and through the softening of customs. At the same time that the improvement of the globe is being effected under the dominion of material forces, men contribute to it through the efforts of their intelligence: they make unhealthy regions wholesome, they make communications easier and the earth more productive. This twofold progress is accomplished in two ways: one slow, gradual, and imperceptible; the other through more abrupt changes, in each of which a more rapid upward movement is effected, marking, by distinct characters, the progressive periods of Humanity. These movements, subordinated in their details to the free will of men, are in a certain way inevitable in their totality, because they are subject to laws, like those that operate in the germination, growth, and maturation of plants, considering that the goal of Humanity is progress, notwithstanding the lagging march of some individualities. This is why the progressive movement is sometimes partial, that is, limited to a race or a nation, and at other times general. The progress of Humanity is therefore effected by virtue of a law. Now, since all the laws of Nature are the eternal work of divine wisdom and prescience, all that is the effect of these laws is the result of the will of God, not an accidental and capricious will, but an immutable will. So, when Humanity is ripe to climb a rung, one may say that the times appointed by God have come, just as one may also say that in such a season they have come for the ripening of fruits and for the harvest. From the fact that the progressive movement of Humanity is inevitable, because it is in Nature, it does not follow that God is indifferent to it, and that, after establishing laws, He has entered into inaction, leaving things to go by themselves. His laws are eternal and immutable, no doubt, but because His own will is eternal and constant, and His thought animates all things without interruption; His thought, which penetrates all things, is the intelligent and permanent force that maintains everything in harmony; if this thought ceased to act for a single instant, the Universe would be like a clock without the regulating pendulum. God watches incessantly over the execution of His laws, and the Spirits that people space are His ministers charged with the details, according to the attributions relative to their degree of advancement. The Universe is at once an immeasurable mechanism, driven by a no less immeasurable number of intelligences, an immense government in which each intelligent being has its share of the action, under the gaze of the sovereign Lord, whose single will maintains unity everywhere. Under the dominion of this vast regulating power, everything moves, everything functions in perfect order; what seems to us disturbances are partial and isolated movements, which seem irregular to us only because our vision is circumscribed. If we could embrace their totality, we would see that these are only apparent and that they harmonize within the whole.

The foreseeing of the progressive movements of Humanity has nothing surprising for the dematerialized beings, who see the end toward which all things tend, some of whom possess the direct thought of God, and who judge, by the partial movements, the time at which a general movement may take place, just as one judges in advance the time necessary for a tree to bear fruit, as astronomers calculate the epoch of an astronomical phenomenon by the time required for a heavenly body to make its revolution.

But, certainly, not all those who announce such phenomena—the authors of almanacs who predict eclipses and tides, for example—are in a position to make the necessary calculations. They are merely echoes. Thus, there are secondary Spirits whose sight is limited, and who merely repeat what it has pleased the superior Spirits to reveal to them.

Humanity has up to now accomplished incontestable progress. Through their intelligence, men have arrived at results never before attained in regard to the sciences, the arts, and material well-being; there still remains for them an immensity to accomplish: it is to make charity, fraternity, and solidarity reign among themselves, in order to assure their moral well-being. They could not do this with their beliefs, nor with their antiquated institutions, remnants of another age, good in a certain epoch, sufficient for a transitory state, but which, having given what they were capable of, would today be a stopping point. Just like a child stimulated by motives that become powerless when it reaches mature age. It is no longer only the development of intelligence that is necessary to men, it is the elevation of sentiment, and for that it is necessary to destroy all that in them could excite egoism and pride. Such is the period upon which they are now about to enter, and which will mark one of the principal phases of Humanity. The phase that is at this moment being elaborated is the necessary complement of the preceding state, as manly age is the complement of youth; it could therefore be foreseen and predicted in advance, and this is why it is said that the times appointed by God have come.

In this time it is not a question of a partial change, of a renewal limited to a country, a people, a race; it is a universal movement, which is effected in the direction of moral progress. A new order of things tends to establish itself, and the men who are most opposed to it work toward it in spite of themselves; the future generation, freed from the dross of the old world and formed of more purified elements, will find itself animated by ideas and sentiments entirely different from the present generation, which is disappearing with giant strides. The old world will be dead and will live on in History, as today do medieval times, with their barbarous customs and their superstitious beliefs.

Besides, everyone knows that the present order of things leaves much to be desired. After having, in a certain way, exhausted material well-being, which is the product of intelligence, one comes to understand that the complement of this well-being can lie only in moral development. The more one advances, the more one feels what is lacking, without, however, being yet able to define it clearly: it is the effect of the inner work that is operating toward regeneration; one has desires, aspirations that are like the presentiment of a better state.

But a change as radical as the one being elaborated cannot be accomplished without commotion; there is an inevitable struggle between ideas, and whoever says struggle says alternation of success and reverse. Nevertheless, since the new ideas are those of progress and progress is in the laws of Nature, these cannot fail to triumph over retrograde ideas. From this conflict will necessarily arise temporary disturbances, until the ground is clear of the obstacles that oppose the construction of the new social edifice. It is, then, from the struggle of ideas that the grave events announced will arise, and not from cataclysms, or purely material catastrophes. General cataclysms were a consequence of the state of formation of the Earth; today it is no longer the entrails of the globe that are stirring, it is those of Humanity. Humanity is a collective being, in which the same moral revolutions operate as in each individual being, but with this difference: the one are accomplished from year to year, and the others from century to century. Whoever follows them in their evolutions through the ages will see the life of the various races marked by periods that give each epoch a particular physiognomy.

Alongside the partial movements there is a general movement, which gives impulse to the whole of Humanity; but the progress of each part of the whole is relative to its degree of advancement. Such would be a family composed of several children, of whom the youngest is in the cradle and the eldest is ten years old, for example. In ten years, the eldest will be twenty and will be a man; the youngest will be ten and, although more advanced, will still be a child; but, in his turn, he will become a man. The same happens with the various fractions of Humanity; the most backward advance, but they do not reach in a single bound the level of the most advanced.

Upon becoming adult, Humanity has new needs, broader, more elevated aspirations; it understands the emptiness of the ideas with which it was lulled, the insufficiency of the institutions for its happiness; it no longer finds in the state of things the legitimate satisfactions to which it feels itself called. This is why it shakes off its swaddling clothes and casts itself, impelled by an irresistible force, toward unknown shores, in search of new, less limited horizons. And it is at the moment when it finds itself too confined in its material sphere, where intellectual life overflows, where the sentiment of spirituality expands, that men, would-be philosophers, hope to fill the void with the doctrines of nihilism and materialism! Strange aberration! These very men who claim to push it forward strive to confine it within the narrow circle of matter, from which it aspires to emerge; they close off from it the aspect of infinite life, and say to it, pointing to the tomb: Nec plus ultra! n As we have said, the progressive march of Humanity is effected in two ways: one gradual, slow, imperceptible, if one considers the nearer epochs, which translates into successive improvements in customs, in laws, in usages, and which is perceived only with time, like the changes that currents of water bring to the surface of the globe; the other, by a relatively abrupt, rapid movement, similar to that of a torrent breaking its dikes, which makes it traverse in a few years the distance it would have taken centuries to cover. It is then a moral cataclysm that, in a few instants, devours the institutions of the past, and which is followed by a new order of things, which settles little by little, as calm is reestablished and becomes definitive.

For whoever lives long enough to embrace both aspects of the new phase, it seems that a new world has emerged from the ruins of the old; the character, the customs, the usages, all is changed. It is because, in effect, new men, or rather, regenerated men, have arisen. The ideas swept away by the generation that is dying out have given place to new ideas, in the generation that is rising up.

It is to one of these periods of transformation or, if you will, of moral growth, that Humanity has arrived. From adolescence it passes to manly age; the past can no longer suffice for its new aspirations, for its new needs; it can no longer be led by the same means; it no longer allows itself illusions and enchantments: its matured reason demands more substantial nourishment. The present is too ephemeral; it feels that its destiny is more vast and that corporeal life is too restricted to contain it entirely. This is why it plunges its gaze into the past and into the future, in order to discover there the mystery of its existence and to draw from it a consoling security.

— Whoever has meditated upon Spiritism and its consequences, and has not circumscribed it to the production of a few phenomena, understands that it opens to Humanity a new path and unfolds before it the horizons of the infinite. Initiating it into the mysteries of the invisible world, it shows it its true role in creation, a perpetually active role, both in the spiritual state and in the corporeal state. Man no longer marches blindly: he knows whence he comes, whither he goes, and why he is on Earth. The future shows itself to him in its reality, free from the prejudices of ignorance and superstition; it is no longer a vague hope: it is a palpable truth, as certain to him as the succession of days and nights. He knows that his being is not limited to a few instants of an existence whose duration is subject to the caprice of chance; that spiritual life is not interrupted by death; that he has already lived, that he will yet live again, and that of all that he acquires in perfection through work, nothing is lost; he finds in his anterior existences the reason for what he is today, and from what he makes of himself today, he can conclude what he will be one day. With the thought that individual activity and cooperation in the general work of civilization are limited to the present life, that nothing has been and nothing will be, what interest has man in the later progress of Humanity? What does it matter to him that in the future the peoples are better governed, happier, more enlightened, better toward one another? Since he derives no benefit from it, is not this progress lost for him? Of what use is it to him to work for those who will come after, if he is never to know them, if they are new beings who, they too, shortly afterward, will enter into nothingness? Under the dominion of the denial of the individual future, everything is necessarily reduced to the petty proportions of the moment and of the personality.

But, on the contrary, what amplitude the certainty of the perpetuity of his spiritual being gives to the thought of man! What strength, what courage he draws from it against the vicissitudes of material life! What is more rational, more grand, more worthy of the Creator than this law, according to which spiritual life and corporeal life are but two modes of existence, which alternate for the accomplishment of progress! What is more just and more consoling than the idea of the same beings progressing without cease, first through the generations of one same world and then from world to world, up to perfection, without break of continuity! Thus, all actions have an objective, since, by working for all, one works for oneself, and reciprocally, in such a way that individual progress and general progress are never sterile; they profit the future generations and individualities, which are nothing other than the past generations and individualities, arrived at a higher degree of advancement. Spiritual life is the normal and eternal life of the Spirit, and incarnation is merely a temporary form of its existence. Save for the outer garment, there is therefore identity between the incarnate and the disincarnate; they are the same individualities under two different aspects, now belonging to the visible world, now to the invisible world, finding themselves now in one, now in the other, contributing, in one and the other, to the same objective, by means appropriate to their situation.

From this law follows that of the perpetuity of relations between beings; death does not separate them, does not put an end to their sympathetic relations nor to their reciprocal duties. Hence the solidarity of all for each, and of each for all; hence, too, fraternity. Men will live happily on Earth only when these two sentiments have entered into their hearts and into their customs, because then they will subject their laws and their institutions to them. This will be one of the principal results of the transformation that is operating.

But how can the duties of solidarity and of fraternity be reconciled with the belief that death makes men forever strangers to one another? Through the law of the perpetuity of the relations that bind all beings, Spiritism founds this twofold principle upon the very laws of Nature; it makes of it not only a duty, but a necessity. Through the law of the plurality of existences, man is linked to what has been done and to what will be done, to the men of the past and to those of the future; he can no longer say that he has nothing in common with those who die, for the one and the other meet incessantly, in this and in the other world, in order to climb together the ladder of progress and to lend one another mutual support. Fraternity is no longer circumscribed to a few individuals whom chance brings together during an ephemeral life; it is perpetual like the life of the Spirit, universal like Humanity, which constitutes a great family, whose members, in their totality, are in solidarity with one another, whatever the epoch in which they may have lived. Such are the ideas that stand out from Spiritism, and which it will arouse among all men, when it is universally spread, understood, taught, and practiced. With Spiritism, fraternity, synonymous with the charity preached by Christ, is no longer a vain word; it has its reason for being. From the sentiment of fraternity is born that of reciprocity and of social duties, from man to man, from people to people, from race to race. From these two sentiments well understood will necessarily come the most beneficial institutions for the well-being of all.

— Fraternity must be the cornerstone of the new social order. But there will be no real, solid, and effective fraternity if it is not supported on an unshakable foundation; this foundation is faith; not faith in such or such particular dogmas, which change with the times and the peoples and hurl stones at one another, because, in anathematizing one another, they keep up antagonism; but faith in the fundamental principles that all the world can accept: God, the soul, the future, indefinite individual progress, the perpetuity of relations between beings. When all men are convinced that God is the same for all, that this God, supremely just and good, can will nothing unjust, that evil comes from men and not from Him, they will look upon one another as children of one same father and will join hands. It is this faith that Spiritism gives and that, from now on, will be the pivot upon which the human race will move, whatever may be their manner of worship and their particular beliefs, which Spiritism respects, but with which it must not concern itself. Only from this faith can true moral progress come, because it alone gives a logical sanction to legitimate rights and to duties; without it, right is what is given by force; duty, a human code imposed by violence. Without it, what is man? a little matter that dissolves, an ephemeral being that merely passes; even genius is but a spark that shines for an instant, only to be extinguished forever; surely there is not much in this to raise him in his own eyes. With such a thought, where, really, are rights and duties? what is the objective of progress? Only this faith makes man feel his dignity through the perpetuity and the progression of his being, not in a petty future circumscribed to the personality, but in a grand and splendid one; his thought raises him above the Earth; he feels himself grow, thinking that he has his role in the Universe, and that this Universe is his domain, which one day he will be able to traverse, and that death will not make of him a nullity, or a being useless to himself and to others.

— The intellectual progress accomplished up to now in the vastest proportions is a great step, and marks the first phase of Humanity, but, by itself, it is powerless to regenerate it. As long as man is dominated by pride and egoism, he will use his intelligence and his knowledge for the benefit of his passions and his personal interests, which is why he applies them to the perfecting of the means of harming others and of destroying one another. Only moral progress can assure the happiness of men on Earth, by putting a brake on the evil passions; it alone can make concord, peace, and fraternity reign. It is moral progress that will overthrow the barrier of peoples, that will cause the prejudices of caste to fall and silence the antagonisms of sects, by teaching men to look upon one another as brothers, called to help one another, and not to live at one another's expense. It is also moral progress, here seconded by the progress of intelligence, that will merge men into one same belief, established upon eternal truths, not subject to discussion and, for that very reason, accepted by all. Unity of belief will be the most powerful bond, the most solid foundation of universal fraternity, in all times broken by religious antagonisms, which divide peoples and families, which make one see in one's neighbor enemies whom one must flee, combat, exterminate, instead of brothers who ought to be loved.

— Such a state of things supposes a radical change in the sentiment of the masses, a general progress that could not be accomplished except by emerging from the circle of narrow and earthbound ideas, which foster egoism. In various epochs, men of distinction sought to impel Humanity into this path; but, still too young, Humanity remained deaf, and their teachings were like the good seed fallen upon the stone. Today it is ripe to cast its gaze higher than it has done, in order to assimilate broader ideas and to understand what it had not understood. The generation that is disappearing will carry away with it its prejudices and its errors; the generation that is arising, tempered at a more purified source, imbued with juster ideas, will imprint upon the world the upward movement, in the direction of moral progress, that is to mark the new phase of Humanity. This phase already reveals itself by unmistakable signs, by attempts at useful reforms, by the great and generous ideas that come to the surface and that begin to find an echo. It is thus that one sees the founding of a host of protective, civilizing, and emancipating institutions, under the impulse and by the initiative of men evidently predestined to the work of regeneration; that penal laws are daily becoming impregnated with a more humane sentiment. The prejudices of race are weakening, the peoples are beginning to look upon one another as members of a great family; through the uniformity and ease of the means of transaction, they suppress the barriers that divide them in all parts of the world, they gather together in universal assemblies for the peaceful tournaments of intelligence. But these reforms lack a base on which to develop, to complete and consolidate themselves, a more general moral predisposition in order to bear fruit and make themselves accepted by the masses. This is no less a characteristic sign of the time, the prelude to what will be accomplished on a vaster scale, as the ground becomes more propitious. A no less characteristic sign of the period upon which we are entering is the evident reaction that is operating in the direction of spiritualist ideas, an instinctive repulsion against materialist ideas, whose representatives are becoming less numerous or less absolute. The spirit of incredulity that had seized the masses, ignorant or enlightened, and had made them repel, along with the form, the very substance of all belief, seems to have been a sleep, from which, on emerging, one feels the need to breathe a more vivifying air. Involuntarily, where a void has been made, one seeks something, a point of support, a hope.

— In this great regenerating movement, Spiritism has a considerable role, not the ridiculous Spiritism, invented by mocking criticism, but the philosophical Spiritism, such as it is understood by whoever takes the trouble to seek the kernel within the shell. By the proofs it brings of fundamental truths, it fills the void that incredulity makes in ideas and in beliefs; by the certainty it gives of a future conformable to the justice of God and which the most severe reason can admit, it tempers the bitternesses of life and prevents the disastrous effects of despair. By making known new laws of Nature, Spiritism gives the key to misunderstood phenomena and to problems hitherto insoluble, and slays, at the same time, incredulity and superstition. For it there is nothing supernatural or marvelous; all is accomplished in the world by virtue of immutable laws. Far from substituting one exclusivism for another, it sets itself up as the absolute champion of freedom of conscience; it combats fanaticism in all its forms and cuts it off at the root, by proclaiming salvation for all men of good will, and the possibility, for the most imperfect, of arriving, through their efforts, through expiation and reparation, at perfection, for it alone leads to supreme happiness. Instead of discouraging the weak, it encourages him, by showing him the end he can attain. It does not say: Outside Spiritism there is no salvation, but, with Christ: Outside charity there is no salvation, a principle of union, of tolerance, that will bring men together in a common sentiment of fraternity, instead of dividing them into enemy sects. By this other principle: An unshakable faith is only that which can look reason in the face in all the epochs of Humanity, it destroys the dominion of blind faith, which annihilates reason, of passive obedience, which brutifies; it emancipates the intelligence of man and raises his morality.

Consistent with itself, it does not impose itself; it says what it is, what it wants, what it gives, and waits for people to come to it freely, voluntarily; it wishes to be accepted by reason, and not by force. It respects all sincere beliefs and combats only incredulity, egoism, pride, and hypocrisy, which are the sores of society and the most serious obstacles to moral progress; but it casts the anathema upon no one, not even upon its enemies, because it is convinced that the path of good is open to the most imperfect and that, sooner or later, they will enter upon it.

If we imagine the majority of men imbued with these sentiments, we can easily figure the modifications they will bring to social relations: charity, fraternity, benevolence toward all, tolerance for all beliefs, such will be their motto. It is the end toward which Humanity evidently tends, the object of its aspirations, of its desires, without its rendering much account to itself of the means of realizing them; it tries, it hesitates, but it is held back by the active resistances or by the force of inertia of prejudices, of beliefs that are stationary and refractory to progress. It is these resistances that must be overcome, and this will be the work of the new generation. If we follow the present course of things, we shall recognize that everything seems predestined to open the road for it; it will have on its side the twofold power of number and of ideas, besides the experience of the past. Thus, the new generation will march toward the realization of all the humanitarian ideas compatible with the degree of advancement to which it shall have arrived. Spiritism, marching toward the same objective and realizing its plans, they will meet on the same ground, not as competitors, but as auxiliaries, lending one another mutual support. The men of progress will find in the Spiritist ideas a powerful lever, and Spiritism will find in the new men spirits entirely disposed to welcome it. In such a state of things, what could those do who might wish to oppose obstacles?

It is not Spiritism that creates the social renewal, it is the maturity of Humanity that makes of this renewal a necessity. By its moralizing power, by its progressive tendencies, by the amplitude of its views, by the generality of the questions it embraces, Spiritism is, more than any other doctrine, apt to second the regenerating movement, which is why it is its contemporary. It came at the moment when it could be useful, because for it too the times have come; earlier, it would have encountered insurmountable obstacles; it would inevitably have succumbed, because men, satisfied with what they had, did not yet feel the need of what it brings. Today, born with the movement of the ideas that are fermenting, it finds the ground prepared to receive it. Weary of doubt and uncertainty, terrified by the abyss that opens before them, spirits welcome it as a plank of salvation and a supreme consolation.

— In saying that Humanity is ripe for regeneration, this does not mean that all individuals are so in the same degree, but many have, by intuition, the germ of the new ideas, which circumstances will cause to hatch; then they will show themselves more advanced than was thought, and will follow with ardor the impulse of the majority.

There are, however, those who are refractory by nature, even among the most intelligent, and who, certainly, will never adhere—at least in this existence—some in good faith, by conviction, others by interest. Those whose material interests are bound to the present state of things, and who are not advanced enough to make abnegation of it, who are touched less by the general good than by their personal good, cannot see without apprehension the slightest reforming movement; for them truth is a secondary question or, rather, truth lies entirely in what causes them no disturbance; in their eyes, all progressive ideas are subversive, which is why they vow them an implacable hatred and wage upon them a fierce war. Too intelligent not to see in Spiritism an auxiliary of these ideas and the elements of the transformation, which they fear because they do not feel themselves equal to it, they strive to bring it down; if they judged it to be without value and without reach, they would not concern themselves with it. Besides, we have already said it: “The greater an idea is, the more adversaries it encounters, and its importance can be measured by the violence of the attacks of which it is the object.” The number of the laggards is no doubt still great, but what can they do against the rising wave, except hurl a few stones at it? That wave is the generation that is arising, while they disappear with the generation that is going with long strides. Until then they will defend the ground inch by inch. There is, then, an inevitable struggle, but an unequal one, because it is that of the decrepit past, which is falling into tatters, against the youthful future; of stagnation against progress; of the creature against the will of God, because the times appointed by Him have come.

Note. – The reflections that precede are the development of the instructions given by the Spirits on the same subject, in a great number of communications, whether to us or to other persons. The one that we publish below is the summary of several conversations that we had, through two of our habitual mediums, in a state of ecstatic somnambulism, and who, on awakening, retained no remembrance of them. We have methodically coordinated the ideas, in order to give them more sequence, suppressing all the superfluous details and accessories. The thoughts have been reproduced rigorously, and the words too are textual, as far as it was possible to gather them by hearing.