THE SPIRITIST REVIEW - JOURNAL OF

PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES - 1864

Allan Kardec

In our preceding number we described the remarkable cure obtained by a young lady of Marmande
through the prayer of the Spiritists of that town. A posterior letter confirms the result of that now
complete cure. The lady’s face, altered by eight months of torture, recovered its youth, good health
and serenity.

Whatever the opinion we might have; whatever the opinion one may have about Spiritism any person
driven by a sincere love towards their neighbor must have felt happy on seeing the tranquility that
returned to that family and happiness replacing despair. It is regrettable that the priest of that parish
preferred not to join that feeling and that such event may have served him for the production of a not
much Evangelical text for one of his sermons. His words are of public domain. If he had limited
himself to an honest criticism of the Doctrine from his point of view we would not mentioned that
but we believe to be our duty to respond to the attacks addressed to much respectable persons that
were treated as thugs regarding the fact above.

He said: “Therefore will then the first shoeshinner that shows up, if a medium, be able to evoke the
member of an honorable family when nobody else in that family can do that? Brothers, do not believe
in such absurd. This is mockery, foolishness. What do you really see in those gatherings? Carpenters,
workers, what else? Some people asked me if I had contributed to the cure of the young lady. No, I
answered, I did not join that absolutely; I am not a doctor.”

He told the relatives: “The only thing I see in this is a physical condition that is up to medicine to
handle”, adding that if he had thought that prayers could have given her any relief he would have
done that long before.

If Mr. Priest does not believe in the efficacy of prayer in similar cases he did well in not saying them. It
can be concluded that as a conscious person if the parents had come to him asking for masses for the
cure of their daughter he would have refused the payment for that since if he accepted he would be
receiving payment for something that he considered useless. The Spiritists believe in the efficacy of
prayers for illnesses and obsessions. They prayed, cured and asked for nothing in return; even more, if
the parents were in need they would have helped.
He says: “These are charlatans and clowns”. Since when has he seen charlatans working for free?
Have they made the patient wear talismans? Have they employed cabalistic signs? Have they
pronounced sacramental words? Have they connected a special virtue to those words? No because
Spiritism condemns every superstitious practice. They prayed with fervor and with a communion of
thoughts. Were those prayers foolish? Apparently not since they were successful meaning that they
were heard.

Mr. Priest can treat Spiritism and the evocations like absurd and foolishness in his own right if that is
his opinion and that is nobody else’s business. But when in order to denigrate the Spiritist functions
he says that there only carpenters and workers in general isn’t that a degradation of those
professions and an offense to those that practice them? You then forget, Mr. Priest, that Jesus was a
Carpenter and that his apostles were all poor art craft or fishermen? Would that be Evangelical to
cast from the podium such a disdain upon a class that Jesus wanted to honor by being born among
them? Do you understand the implication of your words when you say: “The first shoeshiner that
shows up could then be a medium and evoke the member of an honorable family”? Do you then
disregard that simple shoeshiner that cleans you shoes? Why? Because his position is low you do not
see him as dignified enough to evoke the soul of a noble character? Are you then afraid that such a
soul could be blemished when working dirty hands reach out to heavens? Do you really believe that
God makes a differentiation between the soul of the rich and the soul of the poor? Hasn’t Jesus said:
[1]
“Love your neighbor as yourself”? Now love the neighbor as oneself means no difference between
the neighbor and oneself; it is the application of the principle that all men are brothers since all are
sons of God. Does God receive with more distinction the soul of the great against that of the little
one? Does God receive better the soul of a person that does a proposed well paid service than that of
an unfortunate person to whom you do not dedicate the shortest prayers? You speak out of an
[2]
exclusively mundane point of view forgetting that Jesus said this: “My kingdom is not of this world.”
[3]
There you do not find the distinctions found on Earth; the last ones will be first and the first the last.
[4]
When Jesus said: “In My Father’s house are many mansions” does it mean that there is one for the
rich and another for the worker? One to the master and another to the servant? No, but that there is
one for the humble and another for the proud because he also said: “If any man desire to be first, the
[5]
same shall be last of all and servant of all.” It is then up to those that you call profane to remind you
of the Gospels?

Mr. Priest such words would be little charitable in any circumstance particularly in the house of God
where only words of peace and union among all members of the great family should be preached.
Your words show inability in the current state of society since they spread the yeast of antagonism.
We would understand your words if said in times when the servants, used to bend the cervix, judged
themselves as an inferior race because they were told so, but in today’s France in which every honest
person has the right to raise their heads, be it a plebeian or a noble, it is an anachronism.

If, as it is likely to be so, there were carpenters, shoeshiners and workers in the auditorium they must
have felt humiliated by such a speech. As for the Spiritists we know that they prayed to God to have
the speaker forgiven for his imprudent words because they themselves forgave the one that said
[6]
Racca to them. It is the advice that we give to all brothers.
[1] Mark 12:31

[2] John 18:36

[3]Mathew 20:16

[4]John 14:2

[5] Mark 9:35

[6]Mathew 5:22

ANTERIOR PROXIMO 