One of our correspondents from Setif, informs us about the death of Mr. Bizet, priest of Sétif, in the following terms:
“Mr. Bizet, parish priest of Sétif, died on April 15th, at the age of forty-three, undoubtedly victim of his eagerness during the cholera, and of the fatigue he endured during the famine in which he showed truly exemplary activity and dedication. Born in the vicinity of Viviers, in the Ardèche Department, for seventeen years he had been a pastor of this town, where he earned the sympathies of all its inhabitants, without distinction of cults, by his prudence, his moderation and the wisdom of his character. In the beginning of Spiritism in this locality, and mainly when the Echo of Sétif had proclaimed this doctrine out loud, Mr. Bizet for a moment wanted to fight it; however, he refrained from entering a struggle that they were determined to support. Since then, he had carefully read your books. It is probably to this reading that we must attribute his reserved wisdom when he was ordered to read from the podium the famous commandment from Mgr. Pavie, bishop of Algiers, who qualified Spiritism as the new shame of Algeria. Mr. Bizet did not want to read this letter himself from the pulpit; he had his vicar read it, without adding any comment.” We also extract from the
Journal de Sétif, April 23
rd, the following passage on the obituary it published about Mr. Bizet.
“His funeral took place on the day after his death, on April 15th. A requiem mass was sung at ten o'clock in the morning for the repose of his soul; it was officiated by one of the grand vicars, sent by the bishop a few days earlier. Not one person from Sétif was missing; the different religions had gathered and mingled to bid farewell to Father Bizet. The Arabs, represented by Qaids and cadhis; the Israelites by the Rabbi and the main notables among them; the Protestants, through their pastor, were there, competing in zeal and eagerness to give Father Bizet a final testimony of esteem, affection, and grief. The gathering of so many different religions in the same feeling of sympathy is one of the greatest successes achieved by Christian charity, that during his apostolate in Sétif, never ceased to animate Abbot Bizet. Living amid a population that is far from being homogeneous, and among which there are dissidents of all kinds, he knew how to keep intact the Catholic faith that had been entrusted to him, while having benevolent and affectionate relationships with those who did not share his religious convictions, winning him everybody’s sympathy. But what overflowed from all hearts was the memory of the feelings of Christian charity that drove Father Bizet. His charity was gentle, patient before anything else, in the long winter we have just gone through, amid a dreadful misery that had commended him a multitude of unfortunate people. His charity believed everything, hoped for everything, endured everything, and was never discouraged. It was amid this dedication to help the unfortunate starving people, threatened every day with dying of cold and hunger, that he took the germ of the disease that has ravished him from this world, if he was not already affected, owing to the exceptional dedication he had displayed during the cholera of last summer." Was Mr. Bizet a Spiritist? Not ostensibly, but in his inner self, we ignore it; if he were not, he at least had the good spirit not to anathematize a belief that brings the skeptical and indifferent back to God. Besides, what does it matter to us? He was a good man, a true Christian, a priest according to the Gospel; as such, even if it had been hostile to us, the Spiritists would not place him less among the men whose memory humanity must honor and that it must take for model.
The Spiritist Society of Paris wanted to give him a testimony of its respectful sympathy by calling him to its midst, where he gave the following communication:
Parisian Society, Paris May 14
th, 1868
“I am pleased, sir, for the benevolent appeal you have kindly addressed to me, and to which I consider an honor as well as a pleasure to respond. If I did not immediately come to you, it is because the disturbance of the separation and the new spectacle with which I was struck, did not allow me to do so. And then, I did not know which one to hear; I have found many friends whose warm welcome has greatly helped me to recognize myself; but I also had the atrocious spectacle of famine among the Spirits, before my eyes. I found up there many of those unfortunate people, dead in the tortures of hunger, still seeking in vain to satisfy an imaginary need, fighting against each other to tear off a shred of food that slips through their hands, tearing each other apart, and if I may say so, devouring each other; a horrible, hideous scene, exceeding anything most distressing that human imagination can conceive! … Many of those unfortunate people recognized me, and their first cry was: Bread! It was in vain that I tried to make them understand their situation; they were deaf to my consolations. - What a terrible thing death in such conditions, and how this spectacle is of such a nature to make one reflect on the nothingness of certain human thoughts! … Thus, while on earth one thinks that those that left are at least spared from the cruel torture they were undergoing, we see on the other side that it is not, and that the picture is no less gloomy, although the actors have changed their appearance. You ask me if I was a Spiritist. If you mean by that word accepting all the beliefs that your doctrine advocates, no, I did not get there. I admired your principles; I believed them capable of delivering salvation to those who put them sincerely into practice; but I had my reservations on many points. I did not follow, about you, the example of my colleagues and of some of my superiors whom I internally blamed, because I have always thought that intolerance was the mother of skepticism, and that it was better to have a belief in charity and the practice of good, than not to have any at all. Was I a de facto Spiritist? It is not for me to comment on this. As for the little good that I was able to do, I am truly embarrassed at the exaggerated praise addressed to me. Who would not have acted like me? ... Are they not more deserving than me still, if there is some merit in that, those who devoted themselves to helping the unfortunate Arabs, and who were only brought there by the love of good? ... Charity was a duty to me, owing to the character with which I was invested. By failing, I would have been guilty, I would have lied to God and to the men to whom I had devoted my existence. Who could have remained insensitive to so much misery? ... You see, they did as always: magnified the facts enormously; I have been surrounded by a sort of renown that makes me confused and sorrowful, and from which I suffer in my self-esteem; because after all I know very well that I do not deserve all this, and I am quite sure, sir, that by knowing me better, you will reduce the noise that has been made around me to its fair value. If I have any merit, let it be granted to me, I consent to it, but may a pedestal with a stolen reputation not be raised for me, for I cannot agree to that. As you can see, sir, I am still very new in this new world to me, very ignorant most of all, and more eager to instruct myself than capable of instructing others. Your principles seem to me today more correct because after having read the theory, I see their broadest practical application. So, I would be happy to assimilate them completely, and I would be grateful if you would sometimes accept me as one of your listeners.Father Bizet.” Observation: To anyone who does not know the true constitution of the invisible world, it will seem strange that Spirits who, according to them, are abstract, immaterial, indefinite, bodyless beings, are in the grip of the horrors of famine; but the astonishment ceases when one realizes that these same Spirits are beings like us; that they have a body, a fluidic one it is true, but that is nonetheless matter; that by leaving their fleshly envelope, certain Spirits continue the terrestrial life with the same vicissitudes during a more or less long time. It seems strange, but it is so, and observation teaches us that such is the situation of the Spirits who have lived more of the material life than of the spiritual life, a situation often terrible, because the illusion of the needs of the flesh is felt, and one has all the anguishes of an impossible to satisfy need. The mythological torture of Tantalus
[1] shows, among the ancients, a more accurate knowledge of the state of the world beyond the grave than one supposes, more precise especially than among the moderns.
Quite different is the position of those who, from this life, have dematerialized by the elevation of their thoughts and their identification with the future life; all the pains of bodily life cease with the last breath, and the Spirit immediately hovers, radiant, in the ethereal world, happy like the prisoner freed from his chains.
Who told us that? Is it a system, a theory? Did anyone say it had to be, and do we take their word for it? No; it is the inhabitants themselves of the invisible world who repeat it on all corners of the globe, for the teaching of the incarnates.
Yes, legions of Spirits continue their bodily life with its tortures and anguish; but which ones? Those who are still too subservient to matter to instantly detach themselves from it. Is it a cruelty of the Supreme Being? No, it is a law of a nature, inherent to the state of inferiority of the Spirits and necessary for their advancement; it is a mixed prolongation of terrestrial life for a few days, a few months, a few years, depending on the moral state of the individuals. Would they have come to accuse this legislation of barbarism, those who advocate the dogma of eternal, irremissible penalties, and the flames of hell as an effect of sovereign justice? Can they put it in parallel with a temporary situation, always subordinate to an individual desire to progress, to the possibility of advancing through new incarnations? Besides, doesn’t it depend on everyone to escape this intermediate life that is frankly neither the material nor the spiritual life? The Spiritists escape it naturally, because, understanding the state of the spiritual world before entering it, they immediately realize their situation.
The evocations show us a crowd of Spirits who believe they are still of this world: suicides, tortured people who do not suspect that they are dead, and suffer from their kind of death; others who attend their funeral as if of a stranger; greedy people who guard their treasures, sovereigns who still believe they are in command and who are furious at not being obeyed; after great maritime disasters, castaways who fight against the fury of the waves; after a battle, soldiers who fight, and beside all that, radiant Spirits, who no longer have anything earthly, and are to the incarnate what the butterfly is to the caterpillar. Can one ask what is the use of evocations when they let us know, down to its finest details, this world that awaits us all at the end of it? It is the incarnate humanity that converses with the discarnate humanity; the prisoner that talks to the free man. No, of course, they are of no use to the superficial man who sees them only as an amusement; they serve him no more than recreational physics and chemistry serve his education; but for the philosopher, the serious observer who thinks about the tomorrow of life, it is a great and healthy lesson; a whole new world is being discovered; it is the light cast on the future; it is the destruction of secular prejudices on the soul and on the future life; it is the sanction of universal solidarity that links all beings. We can be deceived, we say; undoubtedly, as we can be on all things, even on those that we see and that we touch: everything depends on the way of observing.
There is nothing strange about the picture presented by Father Bizet; it comes, on the contrary, to confirm, by one more great example, what we already knew; and what rules out any idea of the reflection of thoughts is that he did so spontaneously, without anyone thinking of focusing their attention on this point. Why then would he have come to say it without being asked, if it was not true? He was undoubtedly led there for our instruction. Moreover, the whole communication bears a stamp of seriousness, sincerity and modesty that is well in its character, and which is not characteristic of mystifying Spirits.
[1] In Greek mythology, Tantalus was punished by Zeus to forever go thirsty and hungry (T.N.)
