The Spirits’ Teachings

The New Era

God is one, and Moses is the spirit whom he sent on a mission to make him9 known not only to the Hebrews but to pagan peoples as well. The Hebrew people were the instrument that God used to deliver the divine revelation through Moses and the prophets, and the vicissitudes of these people were meant to impress the eyes and bring down the veil that had hidden the Divinity from humankind. God’s commandments given through Moses contained the seed of the broadest Christian morality. However, biblical commentaries have restricted their meaning, because, put into practice in all their purity, they would not have been understood; nevertheless, the Ten Commandments remained the shining frontispiece, the beacon that should have illumined humankind on the road it was to travel.

The morality taught by Moses was appropriate for the state of advancement of the people it was called to regenerate, and these people, semi-primitive with regard to the perfection of their soul, would not have understood that it was possible to worship God by means other than burnt offerings, or that they should forgive an enemy. Their intelligence, noteworthy from the materialistic point of view and even from that of the arts and sciences, was morally quite backward, and they would never have been converted under the rule of an entirely spiritual religion; they needed a semi- material representation, like the one the Hebrew religion offered them. Hence, burnt offerings spoke to their senses, whereas the idea of God spoke to their spirit.

Christ was the initiator of the purest and most sublime morality: the evangelical Christian morality that is to renew the world, bring men and women together and make them brothers and sisters; that is to enable charity and love for one’s neighbor to blossom forth in all human hearts and create a common solidarity amongst all humans; a morality, in short, that is to transform the earth and make it a dwelling place for spirits more highly evolved than those inhabiting it today. It is the law of progress, to which nature is subject and which is self- fulfilling, and Spiritism is the lever that God is employing to enable humankind to advance.

The time has come in which moral ideas must be developed so that the progress contained in the designs of God may be realized. These ideas must follow the same route that the ideas of liberty – their forerunners – traveled. However, one should not believe that this development will occur without struggle. No. In order to reach maturity, these ideas need to be discussed and argued over so that they may attract the attention of the masses. Once attention is fixed on them, the beauty and sanctity of Christ’s morality will touch people’s minds, and they will become interested in a science that provides them with the key to the future life and opens to them the doors to eternal happiness. It was Moses who opened the way; Jesus continued the work; Spiritism shall finish it.

An Israelite Spirit (Mulhouse, 1861)