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eceiving testimonials of her love. The young girl’s spirit also communicates with her fiancé and with one of
her cousins, a subaltern in the regiment commanded by her father. The letters of the General also declare that
his daughter’s spirit was seen by two domestic animals. (An incident which has been described in detail, with
all its attendant proofs, in another book.)
The second case is that of Mr. Debrus of Valence, whose only child, Rose, born after several years of
marriage, was tenderly loved. All the hopes of the father and mother were bound up in this child: but at the age
of twelve she died of meningitis. The despair of the parents was so extreme that the idea of suicide haunted the
father. But having some friends who were spiritually awakened, he made researches, and to his joy he
developed mediumistic powers, and today he communicates, without an intermediary, freely and surely with
his child. Often she appears in the family circle, producing a luminous light of great intensity. Neither of these
men knew anything of the life Beyond, and both lived in culpable indifference toward the problems of life and
destiny.
But now all is clear to their eyes. After having suffered, they have been consoled, and they console
others in their turn; working to spread the truth about them, inspiring all they approach with the dignity of their
view and the firmness of their convictions. Their children appear to them, transfigured and radiant, and they
have come to understand why God, separated them, and how He will bring about their common life in peaceful
space. This has been the work of sorrow!
For the materialist there is no explanation of the world’s enigma or the problem of sorrow. All this
magnificent evolution and life, all the forms of beauty, slowly developed through the course of centuries, is in
their eyes but the caprice of blind chance and ends in nothing! At the end of time all will be as if humanity had
never existed. All man’s efforts to elevate himself to a higher state – all his sufferings and all his miseries, will
vanish like a shadow; all will have been useless and vain. But in place of this sterile and depressing theory, we
who have the certitude of a future life and a spiritual world, see in the universe an immense laboratory where
the human soul is cleansed and refined, through alternative celestial and earthly lives. This life has but one aim
– the education of the intelligences associated with the bodies. Matter is an instrument of progress; what we
call evil or sorrow, is but a means of elevation.
Permit me to make an avowal. Every time that the Angel of Sorrow has touched me with his wing, I
have felt new and unknown powers awaken in me. I have heard interior voices chanting the eternal canticle of
life and light. And now, after having participated in all the evils of life’s route, I bless suffering! It has
fashioned my soul! It has procured for me a surer judgment and a more certain appreciation of the high eternal
truths. My life has been more than once shaken by misfortune, as an oak tree by the tempest; but there has
never been a test which has not taught me to know myself better, and to gain in self-control. And now comes
age! The end of my work approaches! After fifty years of work, meditation, and experience, it is sweet to me
to affirm to all those who suffer – to all the afflicted ones of earth – that there is in the universe an infallible
justice. Nothing is lost, there is no pain without compensation, no labor without profit: we all march through
vicissitudes and tears toward a glorious goal fixed by God, and we have at our side a sure guide, an invisible
counselor to sustain and console us. Man! Brother! Learn how to suffer! For sorrow is holy. It is the noblest
agent of perfection. Penetrating and fertile, it is indispensable to the life of each one who does not wish to
remain petrified with egotism and indifference.
It is a veritable philosophy that God sends suffering to the souls He loves. Learn how to suffer. I do
not say seek sorrow! But when it comes, and stands inevitable in your path, receive it like a friend. Learn to
appreciate its austere beauty, to seize its secret knowledge: study its hidden works, and in place of revolting
against it, or resting inert and stunned under its action, associate your will with the aim fixed by sorrow, and
seek to draw from it all the profit it can offer to a spirit or a heart. Force yourself to be an example for others,
and by your acceptation of it, your courage, and your confidence in the future, render it more acceptable to
other eyes. In a word, make sorrow beautiful! Harmony and beauty are universal laws, and in this ensemble
sorrow has its aesthetic role. It would be puerile to cry out against this necessary element of beauty in the
world.
Elevate yourself by higher views and hopes: see in it the supreme remedy for all the woes of earth.
You who bend under the burdens of your trials, you who walk in the silence, no matter what comes, do not
despair. Remember that nothing comes in vain, or without cause. Almost all our sorrows come from ourselves
in the past, and they open the paths to heaven for us. Suffering is an initiation. It reveals the serious inspiring
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