Every new idea has necessarily the opposition of all those whose opinions and interests are countered. Some think that the Church’s position is compromised – we don’t think so but our opinion is not the law – that is why they attack us with a fury that is only second to the executions of the Middle Ages. The sermons and pastoral teachings through blows in all directions. Brochures and journal articles are like hail rain mostly without a very Christian cynicism. Several of them show an almost frenetically rage. Why such a demonstration of force and hatred? Because we say that God forgives regret and the penalties are only eternal to those who never repent; and because we proclaim God’s clemency and benevolence we are heretical prone to execration and society is lost. We are pointed out at as agitators; they invite authorities to persecute us in the name of a moral and public order, believing that if we are left alone they are not doing their job!
This brings up an interesting point. Some people ask why such an avalanche against Spiritism and not against so many other much less orthodox philosophical or religious theories. Has the Church attacked materialism that denies everything as it does to Spiritism that is limited to the interpretation of a few dogmas? Haven’t these dogmas as many others been denied, discussed and controverted in a number of texts that the Church allow to go unnoticed? Weren’t the fundamental principles God, the soul and the immortality publicly attacked without any move from the Church?
The so called Sansionism, Fourieism and even the church of Father Chatel have never attracted so much rage, not to mention other less known sects such as the fusionists, whose leader has just passed away and have their own cult, journal and do not admit the divinity of Christ; and there are the Catholics who do not accept the Pope and who have their priests and bishops married, have their churches in Paris and other provinces where they baptize, celebrate marriages and order the dead. Why then Spiritism that has no cult or church and whose priests only exist in people’s imagination, draws so much animosity? That is bizarre!
The religious party and the materialist party that mutually deny each other are hand in hand to
annihilate us, as they say. The human Spirit really does show singular originalities when blindfolded by passion and history of Spiritism will have funny things to report. The answer is entirely in the conclusion of the brochure by Reverend Father Nampon
[1], as below:
“
In general, there is nothing more degraded, nothing lacking more substance and attractiveness in its form than such publications whose fabulous success is one of the most alarming symptoms our times. With the money spent in Lyon on these ineptitudes, they could have been easily used it for the installation of more beds in the hospices of the alienated that have been overcrowded since the invasion of Spiritism. And what are we going to do with these clumsy brochures? We will do to them the same as the great apostle of Ephesus did by remaining in the empire of reason and faith, preserving the victims of those regrettable illusions from a number of deceptions in their present life and from the flames of a miserable eternity.”
It is that
fabulous success that stuns our adversaries. They cannot understand the uselessness of everything that they do to block this idea that sneaks through their traps, stands up before their blows and moves on in its ascending march without concern for the stones that are thrown in its way. This is an undisputable fact many times attested by adversaries from this or that category in their speeches and publications. They all deplore
the incredible progress of this epidemic that reaches even people of science, doctors and magistrates. In reality it is necessary to go back to Texas and say that Spiritism is dead and nobody else speaks of that. (See the article
Sermons against Spiritism, Spiritist Review February 1863).
What is it that we do to succeed? Do we go to public places to preach? Do we invite the public to our sessions? Do we have our own propaganda missions? Do we have the support of the press? Finally, do we count on all of the secretive and ostensive means that you have and widely uses?
No. It takes us a thousand times less work to recruit followers than it takes you to veer them off. We are satisfied in saying: “Read and if you find it proper come back to us.” We do more, by saying: “Read the pros and cons and compare.” We respond to the attacks without hard feelings, without animosity, without acidity because there is on rage in us. Far from being sorry for yours we applaud it because it serves our cause.
Here you have, among thousands, a proof of the persuasive power of the arguments of our adversaries. A gentleman that has just sent a letter to the Parisian Society requesting membership starts the letter as below.
“By reading:
The question of the supernatural;
The dead and the living ones, by Father Matignon;
The question of the Spirits, by Mr. de Mirville;
The rapping Spirit, by Mr. Bronson and finally, by reading several articles against Spiritism I only felt completely attracted to the doctrine of
The Spirits’ Book and that gave me the most earnest desire to join the Parisian Society of Spiritist Studies in order to continue the study of Spiritism in a more consistent and fruitful way.”
Passion sometimes blindfolds people to the point of making them to commit singular contradictions. In the above-mentioned passage by Reverend Nampon he says “
there is nothing that lacks more substance and attractiveness in its form than these publications whose fabulous success…” etc. He fails to realize that these propositions destroy one another mutually. Something without attractiveness could not have any success because the very condition of success is attractiveness and even more so when the success is
fabulous. He adds that with the money spent in Lyon one could have installed more beds in the hospices of the alienated in that city, already overcrowded since the invasion of Spiritism. It is true that we would need between thirty and forty thousand beds in Lyon alone because all the Spiritists are mad. On another since the texts are inept they have no value. Why then giving them so many sermons, commandments and brochures? As for the use of the money, we know that a large number of certainly disappointed people with the money given to the chancellor of St. Peter would instead have given bread to the hungry during the winter, whilst the reading of the Spiritist works gave them courage and resignation to withstand their misery with courage.
Father Nampon was unfortunate in his citations. He leads us to bring back a passage of
The Spirits’ Book: “There is such a distance between the soul of man and the soul of the animal as there is between the soul of man and the soul of God (# 597).” We say: “… the soul of man and God” that is very different. The soul of God implies a kind of assimilation between God and the corporeal creatures. The omission of a word is understandable by carelessness or typo but one does not add one word without intention. Why such an addition that alters the meaning of the idea if not to give a materialistic flavor to those who are satisfied with the citation without verifying the original? A book that was published somewhat earlier than
The Spirits’ Book and that contains a whole theogonic and cosmogonic theory turns God into a very diversely material being because it makes God composed of the all globes and molecules of the universe, having stomach and digestion from which results mankind, the bad product. Nonetheless, not a word was used to combat it. The full rage was geared towards
The Spirits’ Book. Will that be perhaps for the fact that in six years it has reached its tenth edition and is spread all over the world?
Not satisfied with their criticism they truncate and denature the maxims to add
to the horror that one must feel in such a heinous doctrine and putting ourselves in contradiction. That is how Father Nampon cites a statement from the introduction of The Spirits’ Book, page XXXIII saying: “Certain persons, you say it yourself, lost their minds by the study of this material.” That gives the impression that we acknowledge the fact that Spiritism leads to madness while the thorough analysis of paragraph XV clearly shows that the accusation falls precisely onto those who raise it.
That is how one can take the fragment of a statement given by an author and lead him to the gallows. The most sacred authors would not have escaped such a dissection. It is with this kind of system that some critics expect to change the trend of Spiritism and make believe that it promotes abortion, adultery and suicide when in fact it definitively demonstrates its criminality and the dismal consequences for the future. Father Nampon goes to the point as to misappropriate some citations aiming at the denial of certain ideas. He says: “
The author sometimes calls Jesus Christ the man-God; but elsewhere (The Mediums’ Book, item 259) in a dialogue with a medium that used the name Jesus who said: I am not God but His son, he immediately replies: But then you are Jesus?” Yes, Father Nampton adds, Jesus is called the son of God; that is then in an Adamic sense but not less consubstantial to the Father”.
To begin with it was not the medium who said that he was Jesus but a Spirit, and that is very different; and the citation is exactly made in order to show the deception that certain Spirits employ and keep the mediums aware of such gimmicks.
Your intention is to have Spiritism denying the divinity of Christ. Where have you seen such a proposition made by principle? You say that it is the consequence of the whole doctrine. Ah! If go there to the terrain of interpretations we may go further than you would wish. Had we said, for example, that Jesus had not attained perfection; that he had the need of incarnation in order to advance; that his passion was necessary for his ascension in glory you would be right because we would make him not even a pure Spirit sent to Earth with a divine mission but a simple mortal instead who had the need of the suffering in order to progress. Where have you found such interpretation from us? Then! What we have never said, what we will never say is you who say so.
Some time ago we saw at the main hall of a religious place in Paris the following inscription in large letters for the general instruction: “
It was necessary that Christ suffered to enter his glory and it was only after he had drunk large amounts of the torrent of tribulation and suffering that he was taken to the highest heavens (Psalm 110:7)”[2] This is the comment about the text that reads:
“He will drink from the brook by the way;
therefore he will lift up his head.” If he had to suffer in order to enter his glory; if he could not have been taken to the highest heavens but through tribulations and sufferings it means that he was not in such a glory before neither was he in the highest heavens, that is he was not with God. Hence his sufferings were not only to the benefit of humanity because they were needed for his own betterment. Stating that Jesus had the need to suffer in order to rise up is the same as saying that he was not perfect before his arrival. We cannot find a stronger protest to his divinity. If that is the meaning of the Psalm that is sung on the Eves than every Sunday they sing the non-divinity of Christ.
The system of interpretation takes us far. If we wanted to mention some from the councils about this verse: “
The Lord is by your right-hand side; he will break the kings in the days of his rage”, it will be easy to demonstrate that it is the origin of the justification of regicide.
“
The picture of future life, says Father Nampon, changes completely (with Spiritism). The immortality of the soul is reduced to a material permanence, without a moral identity, without a conscience of the past.”
It is a mistake. Spiritism has never said that the soul would lose its conscience of the past. It does momentary lose its memory during the corporeal life but “when the Spirit enters into its primitive life (spiritual life) their whole past unveils before their eyes: they see their faults, cause of their sufferings and what could have been done to avoid them. They understand that the position that was given to them is fair and then seek the life that could repair the one that has just ended (The Spirits’ Book, item 393).” Since there is a memory of the past, awareness of the being, there is then moral identity. Since the spiritual life is the normal life of the Spirit and that the corporeal lives are only points in the spiritual life immortality then is not just a material permanence. As it can be seen, Spiritism says exactly the opposite. By such deviation Father Nampon does not have the excuse of ignorance because his citations demonstrate that he did read but instead he makes the mistake of truncating the citations and making them in opposition to their true meaning.
Spiritism is accused by some of being based on the grossest materialism because it admits the perispirit that has material properties. This is still a false consequence taken from a principle that has been incompletely exposed. Spiritism
has never confused soul with perispirit that is no more than an envelope as the body is another envelope. If the soul has ten envelopes this would not remove its immaterial essence.
That cannot be said about the Council of Vienna at the Dauphiné, France, in its second session on April 3
rd, 1312. According to that doctrine “
the authority of the Church commands that the soul is just the substantial form of the body; that there are no innate ideas, declaring heretic those who deny the materiality of the soul”. Raul Fornier, a law Professor, teaches the same thing in his academic speeches about the origin of the soul, according to the texts printed in Paris in 1619 with the approval and praise of several doctors in Theology. It is possible that the Council, based on the facts of numerous visible and tangible Spiritist manifestations found in the Scriptures, manifestations that are positively material since they affect the senses, it is possible that the Council confused the soul with its fluidic envelope or perispirit whose distinction is demonstrated by Spiritism. Hence its doctrine is less materialistic than that of the Council.
“
But let us examine the people of France, the most advanced in these studies. In order to attest the identity of the speaking Spirit, says Mr. Allan Kardec, it is necessary to study their language. Be it! We know through their authentic writings, the language of St. John, St. Paul, St. Augustine, Fénelon, etc. How dare you then attribute ideas and feelings absolutely contrary to those great geniuses forever consigned in their works?”
You then admit that those figures were not mistaken about anything; that everything that they wrote is the expression of truth; that if they returned today physically they should teach everything that the taught in the past; that coming as Spirits they should not deny any of their words. However, St. Augustine saw the belief in the roundness of Earth and in the antipodes as a heresy. He sustained the existence of the incubus and succubus and believed in procreation through trading between people and the Spirits.
Do you believe that he cannot think, as a Spirit, differently from what he thought as a man and that he would teach those doctrines today? If his ideas have to be modified about certain points they must also be about others. If he was wrong, the undoubtedly superior genius, why wouldn’t you yourself be wrong, and would that be necessary to deny him the right, or even better the merit of acknowledging his errors just out of respect for the orthodoxy?
You attribute to St. Louis this ridiculous phrase, particularly in his mouth, about the eternity of penalties: “The assumption of incurable Spirits is a denial of the law of progress” (The Spirits Book, item 1007). That is not how it is formulated. St. Louis responds to the following question:
Are there Spirits that never repent? Answer: There are Spirits that take a long time to regret but the supposition that they will never improve would be the same as the denial of the law of progress and the same as saying that the child will not become an adult.
The first form would seem ridiculous. When then always truncating and changing the statements? Who do they think they deceive? The ones who will only read the inaccurate comments? But this number is too small compared to the ones who want to know better about these things to which you call their attention. Well, the comparison cannot but favor Spiritism.
NOTE: For the enlightenment of all we recommend the reading of the brochure: Spiritism, by Reverend Father Nampton, from the Company of Jesus, Girard and Josserand, Lyon, at Rue Cassette 5, Bellecour Sq. number 30, Paris. We also recommend the reading of the complete texts from The Spirits’ Book and The Mediums’ Book, texts that were partially mentioned or altered in the referred brochure.
[1] Sermon preached at the primatial Church of Saint John the Baptist, in the presence of his Eminence the Cardinal Archbishop of Lyon, from 14
th to 21
st of December by Reverend Father Nampon of the Company of Jesus of the Advent.
[2] The original in French indicates Psalm 109:8 but that seems to be a typo that the reader may confirm through the text itself (T.N.)
