To our correspondents.

— For the majority of our correspondents in France and abroad, the time for renewing subscriptions, on January 1st, is, as every year, an occasion to give us new testimonies of sympathy, which touch us deeply.

Faced with the material impossibility of replying to all, we ask them to receive here the expression of our sincere thanks and the reciprocity of our good wishes. Rest assured that, in our prayers, we forget none of those, incarnate or disincarnate, who commend themselves to us.

The testimonies they have been so kind as to give us are, for us, powerful encouragement and gentle compensations that easily make us forget the pains and weariness of the road. And how could we not forget them, when we see the Doctrine grow incessantly, overcome all obstacles, and bring us each day new proofs of the benefits it spreads! We thank God for the signal favor he grants us of witnessing its first successes and glimpsing its future. We ask him to give us the physical and moral strength necessary to accomplish what remains for us to do before returning to the world of the Spirits.

— To those who have the kindness to make wishes for the prolongation of our stay on Earth, in the interest of Spiritism, we will say that no one is indispensable for carrying out the designs of God; what we have done others could have done, and what we cannot do, others will do; thus, when it pleases him to call us, he will know how to provide for the continuation of his work. He who is called to take up its reins grows in the shadow and will reveal himself when the time comes, not by his pretension to any supremacy whatsoever, but by his acts, which will mark him out for everyone's attention. At this moment, he himself is unaware of it, and it is useful, for now, that he remain on the sidelines. The Christ said: “He who exalts himself shall be humbled.” It is, therefore, among the humble of heart that he will be chosen, and not among those who would seek to rise by their own authority and against the will of God; these will reap only shame and humiliation, because the proud and the presumptuous will be confounded. Let each one bring his stone to the edifice and content himself with the role of a simple workman. God, who reads the depths of hearts, will know how to give each one the just wage of his labor.

— To all our brothers in belief we will say: “Courage and perseverance, for the moment of the great trials draws near. Strengthen yourselves in the principles of the doctrine and penetrate yourselves with them more and more; broaden your views; raise yourselves by thought above the limited circle of the present, so as to embrace the horizon of the infinite; consider the future, and then the present life, with its train of miseries and disappointments, will appear to you as an imperceptible point, as a painful minute that will soon leave no further traces in memory; material concerns seem petty and puerile beside the splendors of immensity.” Blessed are those who gather, from the sincerity of their faith, the strength they will need: these will bless God for having given them light; they will recognize his wisdom in his unfathomable views and in the means, whatever they may be, that he employs for their realization. They will march through the reefs with the serenity, firmness, and confidence given by the certainty of reaching port, without stopping at the stones that hurt the feet.

It is in the great trials that great souls reveal themselves; it is also then that truly Spiritist hearts reveal themselves, by the courage, resignation, devotion, abnegation, and charity under all its forms that they give example of. (See the article of the month of October 1866: “The times are come.”).