Respect due to past beliefs

Blind faith is the worst of all principles! To believe fervently in any dogma, when sound reason refuses to accept it as a truth, is to perform an act of nullity and to deprive oneself voluntarily of the most beautiful of all the gifts that the Creator has granted us; it is to renounce the freedom to judge, the free will that must preside over all things in the measure of justice and reason.

Generally men are negligent and believe in a religion only to discharge their conscience and so as not to reject entirely the good and sweet prayers that lulled their youth and that their mother taught them by the fireside, when night brought with it the hour of sleep. But if this remembrance sometimes presents itself to their spirit, it is, most often, with a feeling of regret that they make a return to that past, where the cares of mature age were still plunged in the night of the future. Yes, every man feels longing for that carefree age, and very few can think of their young years!… But, what remains of them an instant afterward?… – Nothing!…

I began by saying that blind faith was pernicious; but one must not always reject as essentially evil all that seems stained with abuse, composed of errors, and, above all, invented at will, for the glory of the proud and the benefit of the interested.

Spiritists, you ought to know better than anyone that nothing is accomplished without the will of the supreme Lord; it is for you to reflect before formulating your judgment. Men are your incarnated brothers, and it is possible that numerous works of ancient times are works of yours, accomplished in a previous existence. Spiritists must, above all, be logical with their teaching and not cast a stone at the institutions and beliefs of other times, only because they are of another epoch. Present-day society needed, in order to be what it is, that God should grant it, little by little, light and knowledge. It is not for you, then, to judge whether the means employed by Him were good or bad. Accept only what seems to you rational and logical; but do not forget that old things had their youth and that what you teach today will become old in its turn. Respect, then, for old age! The old are your fathers, as old things were the precursors of new things. Nothing grows old, and if you fail in this principle toward all that is venerable, you fail in your duty, you give the lie to the doctrine you profess. The old beliefs elaborated the renewal that is beginning to be realized!… All of them, inasmuch as they were not exclusively material, possessed a spark of truth. Lament the abuses that crept into philosophical teaching, but pardon the errors of another epoch, if, in your turn, you wish to be excused by your own, later on. Do not give your faith to what seems to you bad, but do not believe either that all that is taught to you today is the expression of absolute truth. Believe that in each epoch God widens the horizons of knowledge, in proportion to the intellectual development of Humanity. Lacordaire. n [1]

[see Lacordaire.]