Plan of campaign.

Note. – In this session, no prior question had provoked the subject that was treated. At first the medium had been occupied with health; then, little by little, he found himself led to the reflections whose analysis we give below. He spoke for about an hour, without interruption.

— The progress of Spiritism causes its enemies a dread they cannot dissemble. In the beginning they played with the turning tables, without thinking that they were caressing a child that was bound to grow; the child grew… then they sensed its future and said to themselves that soon they would come to their senses… But, as it is said, the child had seven breaths of life. It resisted all attacks, anathemas, persecutions, even mockeries. Like certain seeds the wind carries, it produced countless shoots; for one they destroyed, a hundred others sprang up.

At first they employed against it the weapons of another era, those which formerly succeeded against new ideas, because those ideas were but scattered gleams, which had difficulty coming to light through ignorance and because they had not yet taken root in the masses… today it is another matter, everything has changed: customs, ideas, character, beliefs; Humanity is no longer troubled by the threats that frightened children; the devil, so feared by our ancestors, no longer causes fear: they laugh at him.

Yes, the ancient weapons have worn out against the cuirass of progress. It is as if, in our days, an army wished to attack a fortress, garrisoned with cannons, with the arrows, the battering rams, and the catapults of our forefathers.

The enemies of Spiritism saw, by experience, the uselessness of the moth-eaten weapons of the past against the regenerating idea; far from harming it, their efforts only served to propagate it.

To struggle advantageously against the ideas of the century, one would have to be at the height of the century; to progressive doctrines one would have to oppose doctrines still more progressive; but the lesser cannot overcome the greater.

Not being able, then, to triumph by violence, they had recourse to cunning, the weapon of those who are conscious of their weakness… of wolves, they made themselves lambs, to introduce themselves into the fold and there sow disorder, division, confusion. Because they succeeded in casting disturbance into a few ranks, all too soon they believed themselves masters of the place. Not for that did the isolated adepts cease to continue their work, and daily the idea opens its way without much clamor… It is they who made the noise… Do you not see it penetrating everywhere? into the newspapers, the books, the theater, and even the pulpit? It works upon all consciences; it draws minds toward new horizons; it is found in a state of intuition in those very people who have not heard it spoken of. Here is a fact that no one can deny and that becomes more evident each day. Is it not the proof that the idea is irresistible and that it is a sign of the times? To annihilate it, therefore, is an impossible thing, because it would be necessary to annihilate it not at one point, but on the whole globe; and, besides, are not ideas borne on the wings of the winds? and how to reach them? One can seize bales of merchandise at the customhouse; but ideas! they are unattainable.

— What to do, then? To try to seize them, in order to adapt them to one's will… Well then! it is the course they have decided upon. They said to themselves: Spiritism is the precursor of an inevitable moral revolution; before it is completely realized, let us try to divert it to our profit; let us bring it about that it happens with this as with certain political revolutions; by denaturing its spirit, one could impress upon it another course.

Thus, the plan of campaign is changed… You will see Spiritist gatherings form, whose avowed object will be the defense of the doctrine, and whose secret object will be its destruction; supposed mediums who will have communications made to order, suited to the end they set themselves; publications that, under the guise of Spiritism, will strive to demolish it; doctrines that will take from it a few ideas, but with the thought of supplanting it. Here is the struggle, the true struggle it will have to sustain, and that will be pursued obstinately, but from which it will come out victorious and stronger.

What can men do against the will of God? Is it possible to fail to recognize it in view of what is taking place? Is His finger not visible in this progress that defies all attacks? in these phenomena that arise everywhere like a protest, like a denial given to all negations?… Is the life of men, the fate of Humanity, not in His hands?… Blind ones!… They do not reckon with the new generation that is rising and that daily supplants the generation that is passing away… A few more years and the latter will have disappeared, leaving behind it only the memory of its senseless attempts to halt the impulse of the human spirit, which marches, marches in spite of everything… They do not reckon with the events that will hasten the hatching of the new humanitarian period… with the supports that will rise up in favor of the new doctrine and whose powerful voice will impose silence upon its detractors by reason of its authority.

— Oh! how changed will be the face of the world for those who shall see the beginning of the coming century!… What ruins they will see in their rear, and what splendid horizons will open before them!… it will be like the dawn driving away the shadows of night… To the noises, the tumults, the roarings of the tempest will succeed songs of joy; after the anguish, men will be reborn to hope… Yes! the twentieth century will be a blessed century, because it will see the new era, announced by the Christ.

Note. – Here the medium stops, overcome by unspeakable emotion and as if exhausted with fatigue. After a few minutes of repose, during which he seems to return to the ordinary degree of somnambulism, he continues:

– What was I telling you, then? – You were speaking of the new plan of campaign of the adversaries of Spiritism; then you considered the new era. – That is it.

— While they wait, they dispute the ground inch by inch. They have more or less renounced the weapons of other times, whose ineffectiveness they recognized; now they try out those which are all-powerful in this century of selfishness, of pride, and of greed: gold, the seduction of self-love. Upon those who are inaccessible to fear, they exploit vanity, earthly needs. He who held firm against the threat sometimes lends complacent ears to flattery, to the lure of material well-being… They promise bread to him who has none, work to the artisan, custom to the merchant, promotion to the employee, honors to the ambitious if they renounce their beliefs; they strike them in their position, in their means of subsistence, in their affections, if they are unyielding; then, the mirage of gold produces upon some its ordinary effect. Among this number are found, necessarily, some weak characters, who succumb to temptation. There are those who fall into the snare in good faith, because the hand that directs them is hidden… There are also, and many, who yield to hard necessity, but who do not think any the less of it; their renunciation is only apparent; they bow, but to rise again at the first occasion… Others, those who possess in the highest degree the true courage of faith, confront the danger resolutely; these always conquer, because they are sustained by the good Spirits… Some, oh!… but these were never Spiritists at heart… they prefer the gold of Earth to the gold of heaven; they remain, in form, attached to the doctrine and, under that cloak, only serve better the cause of its enemies… It is a sad bargain they make and that they will pay very dearly!

— In the times of cruel trials you are going to pass through, blessed are those over whom the protection of the good Spirits shall be extended, for never was it so necessary!… Pray for the wayward brothers, so that they may profit from the brief moments of delay granted to them, before the justice of the Most High becomes heavier upon them… When they see the tempest burst forth, more than one will cry out for mercy! But it will be answered to them: What have you done with our teachings? Did your mediums not write hundreds of times your own condemnation?… You had the light, and you did not profit from it; we had given you a shelter: why did you abandon it? Suffer, then, the fate of those you preferred. If your heart had been touched by our words, you would have remained firm in the path of good, which was traced out for you; if you had had faith, you would have resisted the seductions arrayed against your self-love and your vanity. Did you then believe you could impose them upon us, as upon men, by false appearances? Do you know, if you doubted, that there is not a single movement of the soul that does not have its repercussion in the world of the Spirits?

— Do you believe that it is for nothing that the faculty of clairvoyance is being developed in so great a number of persons? that it is to offer a new nourishment to curiosity that so many mediums today spontaneously fall into a sleep of ecstasy? No; disabuse yourselves. This faculty, which has so long been announced to you, is a characteristic sign of the times that are come; it is a prelude to the transformation, because, as you were told, it must be one of the attributes of the new generation. That generation, more purified morally, will be so also physically; mediumship in all its forms will be more or less general, and communion with the Spirits a state, so to speak, normal.

God sends the faculty of clairvoyance in these moments of crisis and of transition, to give His faithful servants a means of undoing the plot of their enemies, because evil thoughts, which are believed hidden in the shadow of the recesses of conscience, are reflected in these sensitive souls, as in a mirror, and reveal themselves of their own accord. He who emits only good thoughts does not fear that they be known. Happy is he who can say: Read in my soul as in an open book.

[Without name.]

Observation. – Spontaneous somnambulism, of which we have already spoken, is, in effect, nothing but a form of seeing mediumship, whose development was already announced some time ago, as was the appearance of new mediumistic aptitudes. It is remarkable that in all moments of general crisis or of persecution, persons endowed with this faculty are more numerous than in normal times. There were many of them at the time of the Revolution; the Calvinists of the Cévennes, persecuted like wild animals, had numerous seers who warned them of what was happening far off; by this fact, and by irony, they were classed as the illuminated; today, one begins to understand that vision at a distance, independent of the organs of sight, may well be one of the attributes of human nature, and Spiritism explains it by the expansive faculty and by the properties of the soul. Facts of this kind have multiplied in such a manner that they no longer cause so much wonder; what formerly seemed to some a miracle or a sorcery is today considered a natural effect. It is one of the thousand ways by which Spiritism penetrates, so that, if one source is stanched, it arises by other paths. Thus, this faculty is not new, but tends to become general, no doubt for the reason indicated in the communication above, but also as a means of proving to the incredulous the existence of the spiritual principle. According to the Spirits, it would even become epidemic, which would naturally be explained by the moral transformation of Humanity, a transformation that should produce in the organism modifications that would facilitate the expansion of the soul.

Like other mediumistic faculties, this one can be exploited by charlatanism. In this way, it is well to guard against the trickery that, for some motive or other, might attempt to simulate it, and to assure oneself, by all possible means, of the good faith of those who claim to possess it. Besides the material and moral disinterestedness and the notorious honorability of the person, which are the first guarantees, it is fitting to observe with care the conditions and the circumstances in which the phenomenon is produced, and to see whether they offer nothing suspect.