One can read in the Siècle from June 5th, 1864:
“A person from Berlin, Mr. X…, had a great fortune. His father, on the contrary, as a consequence of setbacks, had fallen into absolute poverty and was forced to reach out to the generosity of his son. The latter repealed violently the old man’s request that to avoid hunger had to appeal to the law. Mr. X… was condemned to provide the father with a food allowance. Mr. X… however had taken his precautions. Presenting that if he refused to pay he could have his resources investigated, he then took the decision to pass his fortune to a fatherly uncle. The miserable father then saw his last hope escaping. He protested that the transfer was fictitious and that his son had used that as a gimmick to avoid the execution of the sentence. But he would have to prove that; the old man, however, did not have the resources to cover for the costs of a process since he lacked the most basic things for survival.
An unforeseen event changed everything. The uncle died suddenly and without a will. Since he had no family the fortune was to be transferred to the closest relative that is his brother. The rest is self-explanatory. Today the roles are reversed. The father is rich the son is poor. What increases the son’s desperation is the fact that he cannot invoke fictitious transfer of resources because that is formally prohibited by law.”
-o-
One can say that it that were always the case with evil the justice of punishment would be better understood; since the guilty one knows why he is punished he would know what is it that needs to be corrected. The examples of immediate punishment are less uncommon than people may think. If we went back to the source of every vicissitude of life we would almost always find the natural conscience of a faulty action. Mankind receives terrible lessons all the time but unfortunately takes little advantage of that. Blinded by passion people do not see the hand of God poking them. Far from acknowledging culpability for one’s own misery they are attributed to fatality and bad luck; people are much more frequently irritated than regretful and we would not be surprised if the son that is mentioned above instead of recognizing his errors towards his father, instead of return to have better feelings towards him he wouldn’t have acted even with more animosity. Now, what is it that God expects from the guilty one? Regret and voluntary reparation.
To motivate mankind towards that God multiplies around them warnings of all kinds during their life; disgraces, deceptions, imminent dangers, in a word everything that proper to make them think. If, despite all that, their pride resists, isn’t that fair that later on they are punished? It is a serious mistake to believe that evil actions sometimes go completely unpunished in the present life. If we only knew everything that happens to a bad person, apparently the wealthiest one, we would be convinced of the truth that there isn’t a single fault in this life, a single bad inclination, and we say more, a single bad thought that does not meet its counterpart. If follows from that that if people took advantage of the warnings; if they regretted and repaired their faults still in this life that would have satisfied God’s justice and there wouldn’t be any more need to atone or repair be it in the spiritual world or in a new life. If there are, however, those that in this life suffer the consequences of their previous life it is because the still have to pay for a debt that has not been done yet. It the son in question dies in penitence he will, in principle, suffer in the world of the Spirits the punishment of remorse; he will suffer morally what he made suffer materially; he will be an unhappy soul because he would have breached the law that says: honor your father and your mother. But God that is simultaneously good and just will allow him to reincarnate to make amends; he will perhaps have the same father and in his goodness will spare him the memory of the past. The guilty person however will bring the intuition of the resolutions that were made and the will to do good instead of bad. It will be the voice of conscience that will dictate the behavior. Later on, when returning to the world of the Spirits God will say: come to me, my child, your faults are erased. But if he fails in this new trial he will have to restart until completely undressed from the old man.
Let us stop, therefore, seeing the miseries that we endure by faults of a previous life as an inexplicable mystery, and let us say that it depend on us to avoid them, deserving forgiveness already from this life. Once our debts are payed God will not make us pay for them again. But if we remain deaf to God’s warnings he will then demand the last cent even after centuries or thousands of years. To achieve that God does not request vain simulations but the true reformation of the heart. The dwelling of the elected ones is only open to purified Spirits. Any stain blocks entrance. It may be sought by all but each and every one must do what is necessary to get there, sooner or later, according to their own efforts and will. Yet God says to nobody: You will not purify yourself!
