VIII

"Do spirits," it is sometimes asked, "teach us anything new in the way of morality, anything superior to what has been taught by Christ? If the moral code of spiritism be no other than that of the gospel, what is the use of it?" This mode of reasoning is singularly like that of the Caliph Omar, in speaking of the Library of Alexandria:– "If," said he, "it contains only what is found in the Koran, it is useless, and in that case must be burned; if it contains anything that is not found in the Koran, it is bad, and in that case, also, it must be burned." No; the morality of spiritism is not different from that of Jesus; but we have to ask, in our turn, whether, before Christ, men had not the law given by God to Moses? Is not the doctrine of Christ to be found in the Decalogue? But will it therefore be contended that the moral teaching of Jesus is useless? We ask, still further, of those who deny the utility of the moral teachings of spiritism, why it is that the moral teachings of Christ are so little practised, and why it is that those who rightly proclaim their sublimity are the first to violate the first of His laws, viz., that of universal charity? Spirits now come not only to confirm it, but also to show us its practical utility; they render intelligible, patent, truths that have hitherto been taught under the form of allegory; and, with this reinculcation of the eternal truths of morality, they also give us the solution of the most abstract problems of psychology.

Jesus came to show men the road to true goodness. Since God sent Him to recall to men's mind the divine law they had forgotten, why should He not send spirits to recall it to their memory once again, and with still greater precision, now that they are forgetting it in their devotion to pride and to material gain? Who shall take upon himself to set bounds to the power of God, or to dictate His ways? Who shall say that the appointed time has not arrived, as it is declared to have done by spirits, when truths hitherto unknown or misunderstood are to be openly proclaimed to the human race, in order to hasten its advancement? Is there not something evidently providential in the fact that spirit-manifestations are being made on all points of the globe? It is not a single man, an isolated prophet, who comes to arouse us; light is breaking forth on all sides, and a new world is being opened out before our eyes. As the invention of the microscope has revealed to us the world of the infinitely little, the existence of which was unsuspected by us, and as the telescope has revealed to us the myriads of worlds the existence of which we suspected just as little, – so the spirit-communications of the present day are revealing to us the existence of an invisible world that surrounds us on all sides, that is incessantly in contact with us, and that takes part, unknown to us, in everything we do. Yet a short time, and the existence of that world, which is awaiting every one of us, will be as incontestible as is that of the microscopic world, and of the infinity of globes in space. Is it nothing to have made known that new world, to have initiated us into the mysteries of the life beyond the grave? It is true that these discoveries, if such they can he called, are contrary to certain received ideas; but have not all great scientific discoveries modified, and even overthrown, ideas as fully received by the world, and has not our pride of opinion had to yield to evidence? It will be the same in regard to spiritism, which ere long will have taken its place among the other branches of human knowledge.

Communication with the beings of the world beyond the grave enables us to see and to comprehend the life to come, initiates us into the joys and sorrows that await us therein according to our deserts, and thus brings back to spiritualism those who had come to see in man only matter, only an organised machine; we are therefore justified in asserting that the facts of spiritism have given the death-blow to materialism. Had spiritism done nothing more than this, it would be entitled to the gratitude of all the friends of social order; but it does much more than this, for it shows the inevitable results of evil, and, consequently, the necessity of goodness. The number of those whom it has brought back to better sentiments, whose evil tendencies it has neutralised, and whom it has turned from wrong-doing, is already larger than is usually supposed, and is becoming still more considerable every day; because the future is no longer for them a vague imagining, a mere hope, but a fact, the reality of which is felt and understood when they see and hear those who have left us lamenting or rejoicing over what they did when they were upon the earth. Whoever witnesses these communications begins to reflect on the reality thus brought home to him, and to feel the need of self-examination, self-judgement, and self-amendment.