The death of Mr. Bizet, parish priest of Sétif.

— One of our correspondents in Algeria informs us, in the following terms, of the death of Mr. Bizet, parish priest of Sétif:

“Mr. Bizet, parish priest of Sétif, died on April 15, at the age of forty-three, undoubtedly a victim of the fatigues he endured during the famine, when he displayed a truly exemplary activity and devotion. Born in the vicinity of Viviers, in the Department of the Ardèche, he had for seventeen years been the pastor of that city, where he had managed to win the sympathies of all the inhabitants, without distinction of worship, by his prudence, his moderation, and the wisdom of his character.

“In the early days of Spiritism in this locality, and especially when the Écho de Sétif loudly affirmed this doctrine, Mr. Bizet had for a moment intended to combat it; nevertheless, he refrained from entering into a struggle that was determined to be sustained. Afterward, he had read your works with attention. It is probably to that reading that his prudent reserve must be attributed when he was ordered to read during the homily the famous pastoral letter of Monsignor Pavie, bishop of Algiers, which described Spiritism as the new shame of Algeria. Mr. Bizet did not wish to read that pastoral letter in person, from the pulpit; he had it read by his vicar, without adding any commentary to it.”

— Moreover, we extract from the Journal de Sétif of April 23 the following passage from the obituary article it published about Mr. Bizet:

“On the day following his death, on April 15, his obsequies were celebrated. A requiem mass was sung at ten o’clock in the morning for the repose of his soul; one of the senior vicars, sent a few days earlier by the bishop, was the officiant. Not a single inhabitant of Sétif was absent; the different religions were gathered and mingled to bid farewell to Mr. Bizet, the parish priest. The Arabs, represented by caïds and Muslim magistrates; the Israelites by the rabbi and the principal notables among them; the Protestants by their pastor, were there, vying in zeal and devotion to render to Abbé Bizet a last testimony of esteem, of affection, and of grief.

“The gathering of so many diverse communions in a single sentiment of sympathy is one of the finest successes achieved by the Christian charity that, in the course of his apostolate in Sétif, never ceased to animate Abbé Bizet. Living amid a population that is far from homogeneous, and among whom dissidents of every kind are to be found, he knew how to keep intact the Catholic legacy that had been entrusted to him, while at the same time maintaining, with those who did not share his religious convictions, benevolent and affectionate relations, which earned him the sympathies of all.

“But what overflowed from every heart was the memory of the sentiments of Christian charity that animated Abbé Bizet. His charity was gentle, patient, above all during the long winter we have just passed through, in the midst of a horrible misery that had placed in his charge a multitude of the unfortunate [See: The famine in Algeria]. His charity believed all things, hoped all things, endured all things, and never grew discouraged. It was in the midst of this devotion to succor the unfortunate, starving people, threatened every day with dying of cold and hunger, that he contracted the germ of the illness that took him from this world, if indeed he was not already stricken, owing to the exceptional zeal he displayed during the cholera of last summer.”

— Was Mr. Bizet a Spiritist? outwardly, no; inwardly, we are unaware of it. If he was not, he at least had the good sense not to hurl anathema at a belief that leads the unbelieving and the indifferent to God. Besides, what does it matter to us? He was a man of good, a true Christian, a priest according to the Gospel. On this account, had he been hostile to us, the Spiritists would nonetheless have placed him in the class of men whose memory Humanity ought to honor and take as a model.

— The Spiritist Society of Paris wished to give him a testimony of its respectful sympathy by calling him into its midst, where he gave the following communication:

Society of Paris, May 14, 1868.

“I am happy, sir, at the benevolent appeal you were good enough to address to me, and to which I consider it an honor and a pleasure to respond. If I did not come directly into your midst, it is because the disturbance of the separation and the new spectacle by which I was struck did not permit it. And, besides, I did not know to whom to listen; I found many friends, whose sympathetic welcome powerfully helped me to recover myself; but I also had before my eyes the atrocious spectacle of famine among the Spirits. I found up there many of those unfortunate ones, dead in the tortures of hunger, still seeking in vain to satisfy an imaginary need, struggling against one another to snatch a morsel of food that hid itself in their hands, tearing one another apart and, if I may say so, devouring one another; a horrible, frightful scene, surpassing all that the human imagination can conceive of as most desolating!… Many of those unfortunate ones recognized me, and their first cry was: Bread! It was in vain that I tried to make them understand their situation; they were deaf to my consolations. — What a terrible thing death is under such conditions, and how that spectacle is indeed apt to make one reflect on the nothingness of certain human thoughts!… Thus, while on Earth it is thought that those who have departed are at least free from the cruel torture they were suffering, one perceives on the other side that it is nothing of the kind, and that the picture is no less somber, although the actors have changed in appearance. “You ask whether I was a Spiritist. If, by this word, you mean accepting all the beliefs that your doctrine advocates, no; I did not go that far. I admired your principles; I judged them capable of bringing salvation to those who sincerely put them into practice; but I had my reservations on a great number of points. I did not follow, with regard to you, the example of my colleagues and of some of my superiors, whom I inwardly censured, because I always thought that intolerance was the mother of incredulity, and that it was preferable to have a belief that led to charity and the practice of good than not to have one at all. Was I a Spiritist in fact? It is not for me to pronounce on the matter.

“As for the little good I was able to do, I am truly confused by the exaggerated praises of which I have become the object. Who would not have acted as I did?… Are not those still more deserving than I, if there is any merit in this, who devoted themselves to succoring the unfortunate Arabs, and who were led to it by nothing but the love of good?… For me charity was a duty, in consequence of the character with which I was invested. Failing in it, I would have been guilty, I would have lied to God and to men, to whom I had consecrated my existence. Besides, who could have remained unmoved before so many miseries?…

“You see, they did as they always do: they enormously enlarged the facts; they surrounded me with a kind of celebrity, which leaves me confused and pained, and from which I suffer in my self-esteem. For, in the end, I well know that I do not deserve all this, and I am quite certain, sir, that knowing me better, you will reduce to its just value the noise that is made around me. If I have some merit, let it be granted to me, I agree; but let them not raise a pedestal for me with a usurped reputation: I could not consent to this.

“As you see, sir, I am still very new in this world that is new to me, above all very ignorant and more desirous of instructing myself than capable of instructing others. Today your principles seem to me all the more just in that, after having read their theory, I see their broadest practical application. Thus, I would be happy to assimilate them completely, and I would be grateful to you if you would sometimes accept me as one of your listeners.”

Bizet, parish priest.

Observation. – To whoever does not know the true constitution of the invisible world, it will seem strange that Spirits, who according to them are abstract, immaterial, indefinite beings without a body, should be victims of the horrors of hunger; but the astonishment ceases when one knows that these same Spirits are beings like ourselves; that they have a body, fluidic it is true, but which is no less matter; that, on leaving their carnal envelope, certain Spirits continue terrestrial life with the same vicissitudes, for a more or less long time. This seems singular, but it is so, and observation teaches us that such is the situation of the Spirits who lived the material life more than the spiritual life, a situation at times terrible, because the illusion of the needs of the flesh makes itself felt, and one has all the anguish of a need impossible to satisfy. The mythological torment of Tantalus, among the ancients, betrays a more exact knowledge than is supposed of the state of the world beyond the tomb, above all more exact than among the moderns. Completely different is the position of those who, from this very life, have dematerialized themselves by the elevation of their thoughts and their identification with the future life. All the sufferings of corporeal life cease with the last breath, and at once the Spirit soars, radiant, into the ethereal world, happy as the prisoner freed from his chains.

Who told us this? Is it a system, a theory? Has someone said that it ought to be so, and is it believed on his word? No; it is the very inhabitants of the invisible world who repeat it at all points of the globe, for the instruction of the incarnate.

Yes, legions of Spirits continue corporeal life with its tortures and its anguish. But which ones? Those who are still too enslaved to matter to detach themselves from it instantly. Is this a cruelty of the Supreme Being? No; it is a law of Nature, inherent in the state of inferiority of the Spirits and necessary to their advancement; it is a mixed prolongation of terrestrial life for a few days, a few months, a few years, according to the moral state of the individuals. Would those who advocate the dogma of eternal, irremissible punishments, and the flames of hell as an effect of sovereign justice, be fit to charge this legislation with barbarity? Can they draw a parallel between the temporary situation, always subordinate to the individual’s will to progress, and the possibility of advancing through new incarnations? Besides, does it not depend on each one to escape this intermediate life, which, frankly, is neither material life nor spiritual life? Spiritists escape it naturally, because, understanding the state of the spiritual world before entering it, they immediately realize their situation. Evocations show us a multitude of Spirits who still believe themselves to be of this world: suicides, the tortured who do not suspect that they are dead and who suffer their manner of death; others who attend their own burial, as if it were that of a stranger; misers who guard their treasures, sovereigns who think they still command and who are furious at not being obeyed; after great maritime disasters, the shipwrecked who struggle against the fury of the waves; after a battle, soldiers who fight; and, alongside this, radiant Spirits, who have nothing more of the terrestrial about them and are to the incarnate what the butterfly is to the caterpillar. One may ask what evocations serve for, when they make known to us, even in the most minute details, that world which awaits us all on leaving this one? It is incarnate Humanity conversing with disincarnate Humanity; the prisoner speaking with the free man. No, certainly they serve no purpose for the superficial man who sees in them only an amusement; they serve him no more than recreational physics and chemistry serve his instruction. But for the philosopher, the serious observer, who thinks of the morrow of life, it is a great and salutary lesson; it is a whole new world that is discovered; it is light cast upon the future; it is the destruction of secular prejudices about the soul and the future life; it is the sanction of the universal solidarity that binds all beings. They will say that one may be deceived; no doubt, as one may be about all things, even those one sees and touches; everything depends on the manner of observing. The picture presented by Bizet, the parish priest, has therefore nothing strange about it; on the contrary, it comes to confirm, by one more great example, what was already known; and, what dispels all idea of a reflection of thoughts, is that he did it spontaneously, without anyone thinking of calling his attention to that point. Why, then, would he have come to say, without being asked, whether it was so or not? Doubtless he was led to it for our instruction. Besides, the whole communication bears a stamp of gravity, of sincerity, and of modesty, which is indeed his character and which is not proper to mystifying Spirits.