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Heavens and Hell or the Divine Justice According to Spiritism, by Allan Kardec
Content: compared examination of the doctrines about the passage from the corporeal to the spiritual life, future penalties and rewards, angels and demons, eternal punishments, etc., followed by a large number of examples about the actual condition of the soul during and after death.
Since it is not up to us to praise or criticize this work we limit ourselves to explain its objective and to reproduce a summary of the preface.
The title of the book clearly indicates its objective. We gather there all the elements proper to enlighten people about their destiny. As with the other writings about the Spiritist Doctrine there is nothing there that is the result of a preconceived system or from a personal conception that would have no authority. Everything in the book is deduced from observation and the agreement of facts.
The Spirits’ Book contains the foundations of Spiritism; it is the cornerstone of the edifice; all principles of the doctrine are presented there, up to those that must constitute its coronation; it was necessary, however, to give their developments, deduce all of their consequences and applications, as they were provided by the complementary teaching of the Spirits and by their observations. That is what we did with The Mediums’ Book and the Gospel According to Spiritism, from special points of view; that is what we do with the current book, by another point of view and what we will do successively with those that we still have to publish and that will come when the time is right.
The new ideas will only fructify when the terrain is right to receive them. For prepared terrain one must not understand a few premature minds that would only give isolated fruits, but a certain whole in the general predisposition, leading not only to a more abundant production of fruits but also give those ideas a larger number of supporting points, finding less opposition and being stronger against the attack of the adversaries. The Gospel According to Spiritism was already a step forward; Heavens and Hell According to Spiritism is one step further and its reach will be better understood because it openly discusses certain questions, but it should not have come earlier. If we take into account, the time when Spiritism appeared we shall recognize without much effort that it came at the right time, not too early, not too late. Had it come earlier it would have been aborted, since it would have capitulated before the attack of the enemies for not having gathered enough sympathizers; had it come later, it would have let go the opportunity to spread out; the ideas might have taken a different route, hard to change. It was necessary to allow the old ideas to wear out and demonstrate their insufficiency, before new ones were presented. Premature ideas are aborted because one is not mature to understand them and the need for a change has not been felt yet. Today it is evident to everyone that there is an immense movement of opinion; a formidable reaction takes places, in the progressive direction, against the stagnant or backward spirit of routine; the ones that were satisfied on the eve are the impatient ones on the following day.
It is labor and birth to humanity; there is something in the air, an irresistible force that pushes it forward; it is like a young person just out of adolescence that foresees new horizons but is not able to define them, still shaking the diapers of childhood. We see something better, a more solid food to reason. But that is still in the emptiness; we seek it, everybody works to find it, from the believer to the skeptical, from the worker to the scientist. The universe is a vast seedbed; some build, other destroy; everyone carries a stone to the new edifice, whose definitive plan is only seen by the Great Architect and whose economy will only be understood when it begins to take shape above ground. That was the time when the sovereign wisdom chose for the appearance of Spiritism.
The Spirits that preside upon the great regenerating movement, therefore, act with more wisdom than people would do because they oversee the general march of things, whereas we only see the limited circle of hour horizon. Since the times of renovation have come, according to the divine designs, it was necessary that mankind could foresee the new order of things, amongst the ruins of the old edifice and to avoid losing courage; the sailor had to see the polar star that would guide him to the port. The wisdom of the Spirits since the appearance of Spiritism, revealed almost instantaneously in all corners of Earth, when the time was right, is not less evident in the order and logical succession of the complementary revelations. It is not up to anybody to force their will about it because they do not gauge their teachings by the level of our impatience. We cannot simply say: we would like to know this, to have it given to us; it is even less convenient for us to tell God: “we believe the time is right for you to give is this or that; we believe to be advanced enough to get it”, because that would be the same as saying: “we know better what is the right thing to do”. The impatient ones hear this from the Spirits: “Begin by doing well, understanding well and above all by practicing well what you know, so that God may judge you worth of receiving more; then, when the moment is right, we shall know how to proceed and to choose our instruments.”
The first part of this book, named Doctrine, contains the comparative examination of several beliefs about heavens and hell, angels and demons, future penalties and rewards; the dogma of the eternal penalties is analyzed there in a special way, refuted by arguments taken from the laws of nature themselves, demonstrating not only their logical side, already done hundreds of times, but also its material impossibility. With the eternal penalties fall also the consequences that people believed could have followed them.
The second part contains numerous examples that support the theory, or even better, that served to the establishment of the theory. They found their authority in the diversity of times and places where they were obtained, because had they come from one single source and they could be considered to be produced by the same influence. Besides, they are taken from the agreement that is obtained daily from all over the place where people deal with the Spiritist manifestations, from a serious and philosophical point of view.
These examples could have been multiplied to infinity because there isn’t a Spiritist Center that could not provide a remarkable contingent. We had to choose the most instructive ones to avoid a fastidious repetition. Each one of those examples is a study in which every word has its reach to whoever wants to meditate with attention, because from each point there is a light cast upon a situation of the soul after death, and about the up until now obscure and feared passage from the corporeal to the spiritual life. It is the guide to the traveler, before entering a new country. Life beyond the grave unfolds there in all of its aspects, in a vast portrait; everyone will find reasons for hope and consolation there, and new supports to their faith in the future and in the justice of God.
In those examples, in their majority taken from contemporary facts, we concealed people’s names, whenever considered appropriate, for convenience and obvious reasons. Those touched by those examples will recognize them easily. To the public in general there would be no additional benefit in the instruction by providing names more or less known, sometimes obscure.
These are the titles of the chapters:
FIRST PART: Doctrine. I. The future and the emptiness. II. The apprehension of death. III. Heavens. IV. Hell. V. Comparative chart of the Pagan and Christian hells. VI. The purgatory. VII. The doctrine of the eternal penalties. VIII. Future penalties, according to Spiritism. IX. The angels. X. The demons. XI. Intervention of the demons in modern manifestations. XII. About the prohibition of evoking the dead.
SECOND PART: Examples. I. The passage. II. Happy Spirits. III. Spirits in average condition. IV. Suffering Spirits. V. Suicidal. VI. Regretting criminals. VII. Hardened Spirits. VIII. Earthly atonements.
