NOTE: Although the spiritists of Lyon are divided into several groups that gather separately, we consider them as forming a single society that we call by the generic name Spiritist Society of Lyon. The two communications below were received in our presence.
“Jealousy is the companion of pride and envy. It leads you to wish everything that others have without realizing it, in envying their position you do not do this to yourself, but you present a viper that you reheat against your chest. You are always jealous and envious of the rich. Your ambition and egotism make you desire someone else’s gold. You say: ‘If I were rich I would make a much different use of my wealth than this or that person.’ Are you sure that if you had that money you would not make an even worse use of it? You respond by saying: ‘Someone that is protected from the daily needs of life has minor sufferings compared to mine.’ What do you know about that? You must learn that the rich are just a commissary of God. If he uses his fortune badly he will be highly accountable. The God given fortune that the rich takes advantage of is his own punishment, his trial, his atonement. How many troubles one has to go through in order to keep all that gold to which one is so much attached! When his time comes, the time of accountability, he almost always realizes at that supreme moment how he should have behaved, and he then fears! A lot of fear! He starts to understand that he failed on his mission; that he was an unfaithful official and that his accounts will be thoroughly investigated. The poor workers, on the contrary, those who suffered all of their lives attached to the anvil or to the plough, they see death coming, the liberation of all sufferings, and they see that with acknowledgement, particularly when misery was withstood with resignation and without complaints.
Believe me, my friends, if you could just see the tough pillory on which the rich is tied by his fortune, you who have a good heart since you went through all sieves of disgrace, you would say with Christ when your ego was hurt by the luxury of the worldly opulence: ‘Forgive them, my God, because they don’t know what they are doing’ and you would rest on your hard pillow adding: ‘My God, bless me and may thy will be done!’
Guardian spirit of the medium”
