18. “But, since God has sent Christ to save humankind,” it is asked, “has God not proved God’s love for them, and has God left them without protection?” Undoubtedly, Christ is the Divine Messiah, sent to teach the truth to humankind and to show them their true path; but if we consider only the period of time that has elapsed since his day, counting up the number of those who have died and of those who will die in the future without knowing anything of those teachings; and even considering those who have heard his message, how many are there who have actually put his precepts into practice? Why should not God, out of solicitude for the well-being of God’s children, send them other messengers to come upon the Earth, entering the humblest abodes, going among the rich and the poor, the learned and the ignorant, the skeptical and the believer, to teach the truth to those who know it not, to explain it to those who do not understand it, to make up by their direct and multiple teaching for the insufficiency of the propagation of the Gospel, and thereby to hasten the coming of the kingdom of heaven? And when these messengers are arriving among us in vast numbers, opening the eyes of the blind, converting the irreligious, healing the sick, and consoling the afflicted, after the example of Jesus, you repulse them, you repudiate the good they are doing, and you say they are demons! Such was also the language of the Pharisees in regard to Jesus, for they, too, said that he performed good works through the power of the devil. But what did Jesus reply to their denunciations? “Judge the tree by its fruit; a bad tree cannot bring forth good fruit.”
But, in the estimation of the Pharisees of his day, the fruit produced by Jesus was bad, because he came to destroy abuses and to proclaim the principle of human freedom that was destined to put an end to their authority; had he come to flatter their pride, to sanction their prevarications and to sustain their power, he would have been accepted by them as the Messiah so long awaited by the Jews. He was alone, poor, and defenseless; they killed him and thought they had also killed his message; but his message was divine and has survived him. Nevertheless, that message has been propagated but slowly; after the lapse of eighteen centuries it has become known to scarcely a tenth part of the human family and numerous schisms have broken out among those who call themselves his disciples. It is in this state of things that God mercifully sends spirits to confirm and to complete the message brought by Jesus, to bring it within reach of all, and to spread it abroad over the whole Earth. But the message thus repeated is not incarnated in one single man, whose voice would have reached only to a comparatively short distance; the messengers now being sent to the Earth are innumerable, they go everywhere, and no one can seize them; for which reason their teaching is spreading with the rapidity of lightning; they address themselves to the heart and to the reason, and they are therefore understood by the humblest minds.
