The last incarnation

Contents

PAGE

Prologue 9

FIRST .LEGEND

Preface To The Third American Edition

For the third time an edition of The Last Incarnation is presented in the English language. As will be noted by the title of the Second Legend, the work was written in 1840. The first English edition must have been printed in the same decade, for it fell into the hands of the young lad who preserved it for posterity early in the fifties. The second edition was issued by the writer in 1878. It contained in lieu of preface the following “ Explanatory ” note :

A quarter of a century ago, in an old lumber room of an Illinois farm house, covered with waste paper, old books, shoes, and the manifold odds and ends of an untidy homestead presided over by intemperance and unthrift, the following beautiful legends were found and dragged to the light of day, to feed the ravenous mental hunger of an eager, inquisitive boy. The volume is a translation from the French of A. Constant, of Geneva. This only copy — yellow with age and covered with mold, the corners eaten away by mice and the binding gone — gave little promise of merit in its contents to repay perusal; but the finder was so delighted on a first, second and third reading that he sought vainly for another copy in the cities of New Orleans, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco.

Preface

The Last Incarnation is believed to be out of print, and from this unique copy a workingman has set the type and reprinted the work during his leisure moments, solely to benefit his brothers of the working class, and to present the beautiful truths of true Christianity in a form that will attract a large number of good people who could in no other way be induced to learn their nature.

Of the author of The Last Incarnation little is known by the writer. In 1879, shortly after the printing of the second English edition, I received a letter from an elderly German or Swiss residing in New York City, if memory serves me correctly, who had known him personally. He said Monsieur Constant lived a retired life on the shore of Lake Geneva, and was held in great respect and veneration by his neighbors. One of his nephews had held the office of consul at St. Louis, Missouri, and this fact probably accounted for the presence of the volume in the farm house in Champaign County, Illinois. Unfortunately, this letter has been lost or mislaid during the wanderings incident to my intervening life. I am in hopes of finding it when opportunity presents for a thorough research, and of embodying it in the preface to the next edition. In the meantime, I shall be grateful for any additional information. Surely such a profound thinker, lover of humanity, seer, and poet must have won recognition in his native land and have left other evidences of his extraor-

PREFACE dinary literary ability. Some knowledge of the personal life of an author adds interest and pleasure to the perusal of his writings, in addition to that excited by their intrinsic merits. It is to be hoped that the circulation of this edition will lead to the unearthing of other gems produced by this genius. Persons having knowledge of A. Constant of Geneva will confer a favor by corresponding with the writer or the publisher.

The phraseology of the first English edition ’ has been substantially retained. A few paragraphs in the First Legend had been eaten away by mice, and were rewritten from memory. Perhaps the discriminating reader may notice a variation from the general style and elegance of diction; but the thought and intent of the author were fully kept in mind.

When it is considered that The Last Incarnation was written three quarters of a century ago, its remarkable character is brought out in bold relief. At that time our present industrial system must have been in embryo. Child labor and the employment of underpaid women could scarcely have been burning problems, yet his prescience enabled him to depict the horrible industrial purgatory just as it exists to-day. The antagonism of labor and capital had not then reached an acute stage, yet he portrayed present conditions most truthfully. The coalition be-

PREFACE tween politicians and what is known as “ big business ” or “ the interests ” in exploiting the people could not have found lodgment in thought at that time, yet he foresaw it in the zenith of its power. Being a prophet like unto Isaiah of old, his cosmic consciousness enabled him to speak in the present tense of events still lying in the womb of Time.

In this book, I first saw mention made of the two great laws of nature: the unity of substance and the harmony of the movement by which it is modified. It also drew my attention to the nature of evil : that it could not be absolute, and that it existed only for beings which are still imperfect. That God always reigns, and that his kingdom can be realized by humanity coming into it, is herein elucidated. Many volumes have been written and cults have been built upon these lemmas in the past few years, but seventy-five years ago such illuminated perception must have been rare indeed. That society is a solidarity in its crimes, is responsible for them equally with the malefactors, which he emphasizes, is another truism which was beyond the consciousness of Constant’s time. He also foresaw the coming union of Science and Religion — the reconciliation of Reason and Faith, now in progress.

The eager, inquisitive boy who was the cause of the preservation of The Last Incarnation in the English language passed to his reward a few

PREFACE years ago at an advanced age. The workingman who set the type during his leisure moments for the reprint is well advanced into the last decade of the three score years and ten allotted by the Psalmist as the span of earthly life. For many years it had been his dream to present the book in a pleasing and attractive form ; the first editions were cheap affairs. At last he has been permitted to realize his ambition, and the handsome volume is offered in the belief that it will receive a cordial welcome.

To the earnest searcher for Truth, to the lover of his fellow men, to the believer in the teachings of Christ, the perusal of this little book, with its beautiful diction, its poetic imagery, its profound philosophy and spirit of infinite love, cannot prove otherwise than an inspiration and a benediction.

Charles H. Kohlman.

5838 Gunnison St.,

Chicago 111 ., April, 1914.

Prologue

I

1 WILL not leave you fatherless,” said the Christ, when about to quit the earth; “ I will come again to you.”

Ye people, who have believed in the words of the Christ, and who still await a consoler, know that the Christ, your Savior, has never abandoned you. Know that he suffers with you, that he labors with you, that he groans, and that he prays with you.

The Christ is the human form of the divine idea. That form you are all called upon to realize, and to clothe yourselves anew with its royal majesty.

A model has been given to us in the person of Jesus, our brother, the head and the mediator of humanity, in whom God himself lived, willed and acted, so that his person was that of the Man- God.

Now, Jesus, the Man-God, did not accomplish life in all its phases; he went through only the sorrowful periods here below.

Because it was necessary that humanity should first learn how to suffer, in order to know how to be happy afterwards; should know how to obey, in order to learn how to reign. It was to holy and austere poverty that was intrusted the education of the heirs of God, in order that through privations they might learn the true use of their Father’s riches.

In teaching men to love their neighbor more than themselves, and their soul more than their body, and God more than their soul, the Christ emancipated them from the servitude of the flesh, and he elevated the flesh itself by calling it to share the liberty of free souls.

The Christ did not limit his word to an exclusive form; the spirit of which it contains the germ is universal.

He sowed the seed, and time has ripened the grain.

The word of the Christ, like that of the ancient prophets, has had unintelligent and self-interested interpreters, who have wished to seal it like the stone of his sepulcher.

But the word traverses stones, and cannot be kept captive; it escapes in spite of walls; it passes in spite of gates of iron; it goes forth in spite of sentinels.

PROLOGUE

1 1

Brothers, the word of the Christ is the word of liberty, of equality, of fraternity.

Of liberty, because he has told us not to fear those who can kill the body, and to preserve before God the independence of our souls.

Of equality, because he has said to us: You have all only one and the same father, one and the same master: he is God, and you are all brothers.

Of fraternity, because he has told the strong to be the protectors of the weak, the learned to instruct the ignorant, the rich to provide for the necessities of the poor.

This word presided at first over the construction of the hierarchical body of the primitive church; then the priests were fathers chosen by the people; the bishops were superintendents, who took care of the poor, and who protected the orphans and the widows; and all, from a spirit of conciliation and peace, referred their differences to a single judge chosen from among themselves, and who was therefore called the servant of the servants of God.

Oh ! how beautiful was the Church then, in the unity of her head and in the harmony of her members ! How grand was that society of brothers, presided over by its fathers, and administered to by its old men !

The unity of object, and the simplicity of means, found a use in the cooperation of each in the work of all; each group of the system moved harmoniously around its center, like the satellites around their planets, which themselves move peacefully around the sun.

Then the interest of the pastors was that of their flocks, and that avarice which destroyed Judas had not yet brought trouble into the sanctuary; pride had not yet transformed the charges of charity into prerogatives and worldly grandeurs, and the rival passions had not divided the inheritance of the Lord.

But, in order that it might be overcome by good, evil had to be manifested; and the Christian law was as a snare spread for the errors and the irregularities of the flesh.

Human vices, by manifesting themselves in the Church of the Christ, condemned themselves; therefore they were not able to prevail there even for a few moments, but by means of hypocrisy and lying.

When misguided pontiffs surpassed the luxury and the insolence of kings, the spirit of the Church, which has never ceased to be that of the Christ, groaned in the heart of the saints, and condemned the sacrilegious usurpers, by always reminding the sovereign pontiff that he was the servant of the servants of God.

When the inquisition tortured souls and bodies, to constrain that which God himself respects in

PROLOGUE i3 man, — liberty of conscience, the spirit of the Christ wept over the victims, and justly excommunicated the persecutors, by protesting that the Church has a horror of blood.

Thus, by their very crimes, the priests have shown more magnificently and more splendidly how holy is religion!

Now the Church seems to sleep a sleep of death, because the priests have separated themselves from the people, and form a caste apart, imbued with Pharisaical traditions and the prejudices of education; but the Church cannot be separated from humanity. If the priests remain stationary while humanity advances, it is because they wish soon to separate themselves from the religion of the Christ, for the spirit of the Savior of the people advances with the people.

Those men have grown old, without being able to free their feet from the swaddling bands of their earliest infancy! They believe in the Gospel, without interrogating its admirable symbolism, and they admit its marvels literally, as little children give faith to the fantastic stories of the woman who rocks them.

They are the guardians of the doctrine after the manner of the sentinels of kings’ palaces; they defend the entrance and do not go in themselves. The dead letter has remained in their hands, as the mortal body of the Christ remained in the arms of his weeping mother, under the lowering and gloomy sky of Calvary; but the spirit has gone to make war on the powers of darkness, to break the gates of hell, and to deliver the groaning crowd of captive souls.

Everywhere the spirit of the Gospel makes conquests, except in the closed minds and frozen hearts of those who call themselves the depositaries of the Gospel.

The sciences gravitate toward their grand synthesis; unity governs all ideas, and harmony arranges them in a marvelous order; analogy gives to faith, enlightened by science, the key of all problems; synthesis brings together all symbols, and proclaims religious unity by the voice of all ages; the truly Catholic idea merely begins to be born, and those old men are there, stopping their ears, closing their eyes, making themselves motionless upon the ruins of the past, like urns upon graves !

Well, then, since those who should teach the people have no longer any voice, since the Word has no longer any need of them for interpreters, let us borrow a new gospel legend from the genius of the people, and from their aspirations after humanitary progress.

Let us complete the epopceia of the Christ by the allegorical recital of his second coming, and

PROLOGUE i5

let us relate his triumphs to those who have wept so much over his sorrows.