Nothing is more instructive and at the same time more conclusive in favor of Spiritism than to see the ideas on which it is based professed by people foreign to the doctrine, and even before its appearance. One of our correspondents in Antwerp, who has already sent us valuable documents in this regard, sends us the following extract from an English book, whose translation of its 5
th edition was published in Amsterdam, in 1753. Never perhaps the principles of Spiritism have been formulated with such accuracy. It is entitled: Friendship after death, containing letters from the dead to the living; by Mrs. Rowe.
“Page 7: Blessed Spirits are still interested in the happiness of the mortals and pay frequent visits to their friends. They might even appear to them, if the laws of the material world did not preclude them. The splendor of their vehicles,[1] and the sway they have over the powers that govern material things and the organs of sight, could easily serve them to make themselves visible. We often regard it as a kind of miracle that you do not notice us, because we are not far from you from where we stand, but only with the difference in the state where we are.Page 12, letter III: from an only son, who died at the age of two, to his mother. From the moment when my soul was released from its inconvenient prison, I found myself an active and rational being. I was astonished to see you weeping over a small mass, barely able to breathe, that I had just left, and from which I was delighted to find myself freed; it seemed to me that you were angry at my happy freedom. I found such a right proportion, so much agility, and so much light in the new vehicle that accompanied my Spirit, that I couldn’t be surprised enough with your distress before the fortunate exchange I had made. I knew so little about the difference between the material and immaterial bodies, that I imagined myself to be just as visible to you as you were to me.Page 37, letter VIII: The celestial geniuses who take care of you have neglected nothing during your sleep to yank out this impious plan from your heart. Sometimes they took you to places covered in gloomy shadows; there you heard the bitter complaints of the unfortunate Spirits. At other times, the rewards of steadfastness and resignation unfolded before your eyes the glory that awaits you, if faithful to your duty, you patiently cling to virtue. Page 50, letter X: How, my dear Leonora, could you be afraid of me? When I was mortal, that is, capable of madness and mistake, I never hurt you; much less will I do to you in the state of perfection and happiness in which I am. There isn’t the slightest stain of vice or malice left in virtuous Spirits; when they break their earthly prison, all is kind and good in them; the interest they take in the happiness of mortals is infinitely more tender and purer than before. The fear that is generally felt towards us in the world would appear incredible to us if we did not remember our follies and prejudices; but we are only joking about your ridiculous apprehensions. Wouldn't you have more reason to frighten each other and to flee from each other, than to fear us, we who have neither the power nor the will to bother you? While you neglect your benefactors, we are working to avert a thousand dangers that threaten you, and to advance your interests with the most generous zeal. If your organs were perfected and your perceptions acquired the high degree of subtlety that they will one day have, then you would know that the ethereal Spirits, adorned with the flower of divine beauty and immortal life, are not made to terrify you, but to love and please. I would like to cure you of your unjust prejudices, by reconciling you with the society of the Spirits, to be better able to warn you of the dangers and the risks that threaten your youth.Page 54, Letter XI: Your recovery surprised the angels themselves, who, if they ignore the various limits that the sovereign dispenser has placed on human life, often do not fail to make correct conjectures on the course of secondary causes, and on the duration of human life.Page 68, letter XIV: Since I left the world, I have often had the good fortune of taking the place of your guardian angel. Invisible witness to the tears that you shed for my death, I have finally been allowed to soften your pain, by telling you that I am happy.Page 73, letter XVI: Since the immaterial beings can mingle among us without being noticed, last night I had the curiosity to learn your thoughts on what had happened to you the night before. For that, I found myself in the middle of the assembly where you were. There I heard you chatting with a few of your familiar friends about the power of prevention and the strength of your imagination. However, sir, you are not as visionary or as extravagant as you say. There is nothing more real than what you have seen and heard, and you must believe your senses, otherwise you will degenerate your mistrust and modesty into vice. My dear brother, you have only a few more weeks to live; your days are numbered. I got the permission, that rarely happens, to give you some warning of your approaching fate. Your life, I know, has not been stained by any base or unjust action; however, there appear in your habits certain levities that demand from you a prompt and sincere reform. Faults, that at first seem a trifle, degenerate into enormous crimes.Dedicatory Epistle, page 27: The land you inhabit would be a delightful stay, if all men, full of esteem for virtue, faithfully practiced its holy maxims. You can therefore judge the excess of our happiness, since at the same time we benefit from all the advantages of a generous and perfect virtue, we feel pleasures as much above those that you enjoy, as the sky is above Earth, time is to eternity and the finite to infinity. Worldly people are incapable of enjoying these delights. What taste would a voluptuous one find in our august assemblies? Wine and meat are banished from it; the envious one would dry up in pain while contemplating our happiness; the miser would find no wealth there; the addicted gambler would be fatally bored for not finding a way to kill time. How could an interested soul find pleasure in the tender and sincere friendship that can be regarded as one of the main advantages that we have in the heaven, the true abode of friendship?The translator says, in his preface, page 7: I hope that the reading of his book can bring back to the Christian religion a certain order of people, whose number is very large in this kingdom, that without regard to the principles of natural and revealed religion, deal with the immortality of the soul as a pure chimera. It is to establish the certainty of this immortality that our author focuses mainly.Page 9: It was not properly to skeptical philosophers that she wrote, but as we have said, to a certain class of people, very numerous in high society, for being entirely occupied with the frivolous amusements of the century, finding the fatal art of forgetting the immortality of the soul stunned by the truths of faith, keeping such consoling ideas away from their minds. To fulfill this purpose, she contented herself with a sort of fable and apologue full of lively features, etc." Observation: The translator does not seem to believe in the communication of the Spirits, since he thinks that the accounts of Mrs. Rowe are fables or apologues invented by the author in support of her thesis. However, he has found this book so useful that he deems it capable of leading the skeptical to the faith in the immortality of the soul. But there is a singular contradiction here, for to prove that a thing exists, its reality must be demonstrated and not its fiction; however, it is precisely the abuse of fictions that has destroyed the faith of the nonbelievers. Common sense says that it is not with a novel of immortality, however ingenious it might be, that one will prove the immortality. If the manifestations of the Spirits fight disbelief so successfully these days, it is because they are a reality.
From the perfect agreement, in form and substance, that exists between the ideas developed in Mrs. Rowe's book and the present teaching of the Spirits, there can be no doubt that what she wrote is the product of actual communications.
How is it that such a singular book, capable of stirring up curiosity to the highest degree, widespread enough, since it had reached its fifth edition, and since it has been translated, has produced so little sensation, and that such a consoling idea, so rational and so fruitful in results, has remained a dead letter, while nowadays it only takes a few years for it to go around the world? The same could be said of a host of precious inventions and discoveries which fall into oblivion when they appear and flourish a few centuries later when the need arises. It is the confirmation of the principle that the best ideas abort, when they come prematurely, before the Spirits are ripe to accept them.
We have said many times that if Spiritism had come a century earlier it would not have had any success; here we have the obvious proof, because this book is undoubtedly of the purest and the deepest Spiritism. To be able to understand and appreciate it, we needed the moral crises through which the human spirit has endured in the last century, teaching them to discuss their beliefs; but nihilism, in its various forms, as a transition between blind faith and reasoned faith, also had to prove its inability to satisfy the social needs and the legitimate aspirations of humanity. The rapid spread of Spiritism in our time proves that it has come in due time.
If we still see today people who have all the proofs before their eyes, material and moral, proofs of the reality of the Spiritist facts, and who, despite this, refuse evidence and reason, even more so there would be many more a century ago; it is because their mind is still unfit to assimilate this order of ideas; they see, hear and do not understand, not indicating a lack of intelligence, but a lack of special aptitude; they are like people who, although very intelligent, lack the musical sense to understand and feel the beauties of music; this is what is meant when we say that their time has not come yet.
[1] We will see later that, by vehicle, the author means the fluidic body.
