Worlds of Trial and Expiation

13. What more can I tell you about worlds of expiation than what you already know, since all you have to do is consider the earth that you inhabit? The superior intelligence of a large number of its inhabitants indicates that it is not a primitive world meant for the incarnation of spirits who have just left the hands of the Creator. The innate qualities they bring with them are proof that they have already lived and achieved a certain amount of progress. However, the numerous vices to which they are inclined are also an indication of great moral imperfection. This is why God has placed them on an ungrateful earth: so that they may expiate on it their wrongs through pain-filled labor and the miseries of life until they have merited going to a happier world.

14. Nevertheless, not all the spirits that incarnate on the earth are sent there in expiation. The so-called primitive16 peoples are spirits who have just left infancy, and who are there for an education, so to speak, and to develop themselves through contact with more-advanced spirits. Next come the semi-civilized peoples,

There are many dwellings in my Father’s house comprised of the same spirits in more advanced stages of progress. Generally speaking, these are the indigenous peoples of earth, who have evolved little by little through long centennial periods. Some of them have been able to reach the intellectual advancement of more enlightened peoples.

Spirits undergoing expiation are foreigners there, if we may so express ourselves. They have already lived on other worlds, from which they were banished because they persisted in evil, and because they were a cause of disturbance to the good inhabitants. They have been relegated to living for a time among less advanced spirits, and since they carry with them their developed intelligence and the seed of acquired knowledge, they have the mission of helping them advance. That is why punished spirits are found in the midst of the most intelligent peoples. Having more sensitivity, the miseries of life are bitterer to them because sufferings bruise them more deeply than they bruise the primitive  peoples, whose moral sense is more obtuse.

15. Consequently, the earth portrays one of the types of expiatory worlds, whose variety is infinite, although they all possess the common characteristic of serving as a place of exile for spirits who rebel against the law of God. There, such spirits must struggle simultaneously against the wickedness  of humankind and the inclemency of nature, a two-fold and arduous endeavor that at the same time develops the qualities of both heart and intelligence. It is thus that God, in his divine goodness, enables punishment  itself to revert to the advantage of the spirit’s progress.

St. Augustine (Paris, 1862)