The Gospel According to Spiritism

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The Gospel According to Spiritism (L'Évangile Selon le Spiritisme in French), by Allan Kardec, is a book published in 1864 that relates the teachings of Jesus to Kardecist Spiritism, the moral and religious philosophy that Kardec had been preaching. It is intended to demonstrate that Spiritism clarifies and extends the most important teachings of Jesus. It is one of the five fundamental works of Kardecist Spiritism.

Kardec wrote in The Gospel According to Spiritism that he viewed Spiritism as "the new science that would reveal to men, by means of irrefutable proofs, the existence and nature of the spiritual world and its relationship with the material world".^[1] He incorporated ideas from positivism, evolution, and empiricism, as well as Hindu teachings on karma and reincarnation, and applied them to spiritualism.^[1]

The book attracted a lot of reaction from the Catholic Church and was indexed (added to the List of Prohibited Books). The first edition had been titled Imitation de l'Évangile (An Imitation of the Gospels), but the third, and definitive edition (1865) had the book renamed and profusely corrected (mostly typos or supposed mistakes in channeling), edited and expanded.