The Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1863

Allan Kardec

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Spiritist dissertations


Mr. Jobard’s Visit

Parisian Society of Spiritist Studies, January 9th, 1863

Medium Mr. D’Ambel



I come to pay you a fraternal visit and at the same time introduce you to an old friend from college that has just enriched our ethereal legions. Please accept him as a new and keen follower of the new truth. Although he had never openly proclaimed himself as a Spiritist we can, nonetheless, ensure that he never said a word against our beliefs. I even say that in his bottom line he saw our doctrine as the lifeline of all religions in the future. More than once in his life he was fortunate enough to feel the venture of inner illumination showing him the path of truth when his soul was about to be taken over by uncertainty. Thus, when we fraternally shook hands just a few hours ago he told me with a kind smile in his lips: - Friend, you were right!

If he did not help us in the development of our ideas, his mediumistic intuition indicated that time was not right and that he would have endangered himself amidst the serious complications of his ministry and with such a difficult flock to guide.

Today, free from the concerns of the earthly life, he is extremely happy for being able to attend one of your sessions, a desire that he had cherished since long ago. Several times he wished to visit your president that he had in high regard particularly, appreciating his books and teachings that if not inviting souls to the Church would at least lead people to believe and to respect God with the certainty of immortality. I must say that when I visited him and was received with the warmth of an old disciple he opposed the famous reasons of state to my perhaps exaggerated eagerness of converting him, before which I had to yield. Yet, he followed me and said these sympathetic words: - Si non è vero è bene trovato![1]

Not that he joined our phalanxes and is no longer constrained by the scruples he wishes for the success of our work and sees the future that it promises humanity with joy. He gladly envisages the Promised Land to the new generations, or even better, to the old generations that fought so much, foreseeing the blessed time that his successors will resolutely sustain the new flag of faith: Spiritism.



Regardless, my dear president and my dear comrades, I was honored to receive this venerable friend at the entrance door of life and I am honored to introduce him to you. He asks me to transmit to you his full sympathy and that he will follow your work and studies with great interest.

To the happiness of being his interpreter before you I add the congratulations from a legion of great Spirits that diligently attend your meetings. I then bring my own and their tribute of friendship wishing you all the success with the great cause.

Let us move on! Soon Earth shall no longer count but on a few rare “humanimals” among its inhabitants.

I shake hands with Allan Kardec in the name of all your friends from beyond the grave in whose number I beg you to count me as one of the most dedicated.

Jobard



[1] It may not be true but it is well said (TN)

Be strict on yourself and helpful to others, 1st homily

Parisian Society of Spiritist Studies, January 9th, 1863

Medium Mr. D’Ambel



This is the first time that I come to visit you my dear children. I wished I could have chosen another medium, more sympathetic to the feelings that I shared in my whole terrestrial life and more apt to help me with the religion but since St. Augustine had long ago taken over the medium whose brains would have been more useful to me and to whom I was attracted I address you through this one that served Mr. Jobard to introduce me to your philosophical society. Today it will then be very difficult to express what I want to say first given the difficulty in manipulating the mediumistic material first considering that I am not much used to that and second because I must have my ideas flowing through a mind that do not admit them. Having said that let us move on to the subject.

A witty hunchback from antiquity used to say that men of his time carried a two-face backpack; the rear part carried one’s defects and imperfections while the front received all the imperfections of others. That is what the Gospels would bring later on with the allegory of the “speck in the brother’s eye”. My God, my children, it is about that that the faces of the backpack change place. It is up to the sincere Spiritists to operate such a change bringing to the front the bag that contains their own imperfections so that by having them continuously before their eyes they can correct them and having those of others on their back they no longer show envy or malevolence.

Ah! How worthy you shall then be of the professed doctrine, the one that will regenerate humanity, when the sincere followers will act with charity and no longer worry about the “speck” that bothers the eye of the neighbor and, on the contrary, take care of the “beam” that blinds their own eyes.

Ah! My dear children, that “beam” is formed by the layers of your own egotistic tendencies, your bad inclinations and your cumulated faults with which you have so far and like everyone else had too much paternal tolerance whereas most of the time you only show intolerance and severity with your brothers’ weaknesses.




I wanted so much to see you all freed from this moral disease that affects everybody, oh my dear Spiritists, inviting you with all my strength to follow the path that I indicate to you. I know well that many of your bad tendencies have already been modified but I still see a lot of softness and indecision in you towards the absolute good, that the distance that keeps you apart from the sinners and materialists is not long enough to keep you away from the torrents that can still drag you back. Ah! You still have a tough phase to achieve the heights of the saint and reassuring doctrine that my brothers the Spirits have revealed to you for several years.

The militant life that I have just left, praise the Lord, I saw so many lies be taken as truth; so many vices be raised as virtues that I feel happy for having left behind an environment where sadness and moral miseries were almost always covered in the mantle of hypocrisy. I must congratulate you for not allowing the followers of that insidious hypocrisy to join your ranks.

My friends, never allow yourselves to be fooled by golden words. See and observe that actions before you open your doors to those who request such an honor because many false brothers will try to mingle with you so that they can bring disturbance and subtly spread division.

My conscience commands me to enlighten you and I do so with the sincerity of my heart not worrying about anyone else. You are warned. From now on you must act coherently.

To being as I started I beg you, my beloved children, to take care of yourselves seriously; to eliminate all impurities that must still be eating your hearts; to gradually reform yourself but without interruption and according to the sound Spiritist moral; finally, to be as strict with yourselves as you must be indulgent with the weaknesses of your brothers.

If this first homily lacks something regarding the form it is only due to my inexperience with mediumship. I will do better the next time I am allowed to communicate with you taking the opportunity to thank my friend Jobard for having sponsored me.

Good bye my children, I bless you.

François-Nicolas-Madeleine

Christmas Party

Spiritist Society of Tours, December 24th, 1862

Medium Mr. N…



It is tonight that the Christian world celebrates the birth of the child Jesus. But you, brothers, you must also rejoice and celebrate the birth of the new Doctrine. You will see it grow like a child. Like him, it will enlighten mankind showing them the path to be traveled. You shall soon see the three kings asking this Doctrine for the help they did not find in the former ideas. They will not bring incense and myrrh but will kneel before the new ideas of Spiritism. Don’t you see the shiny star that must guide them? Hence, courage brothers! Courage! You will soon be able to, together with the whole world, celebrate the great party of regeneration of humanity.

The seed of this Doctrine has been entrenched in your heart for a long time brothers. Today, however, it blossoms up to the light with the help of a sturdily planted tutor that will not allow the feeble branches to bend over. It will grow daily with the help of this providential support and will become the tree of divine creation. You shall harvest the fruits of that tree as your brothers who are hungry and thirsty of the sacred faith. Oh! Show this fruit to them and scream from the bottom of your heart: “Come and share with us the fruit that feeds our spirit and alleviates our physical and moral pains.”

But do not forget, brothers, that God made you ferment the first seed; that the seed grew up and already became a tree capable of bearing fruit. There is still work for you to do: to transplant the branches. Before that make sure that the terrain to receive the seed is right, that it does not hide a layer with a rodent worm that could devour what has been entrusted to you by the Master.

St. Louis



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