Arthur Conan Doyle - The Vital Message

In "The New Revelation" the first dawn of the coming change has beendescribed. In "The Vital Message" the sun has risen higher, and onesees more clearly and broadly what our new relations with the Unseenmay be. As I look into the future of the human race I am reminded ofhow once, from amid the bleak chaos of rock and snow at the head of anAlpine pass, I looked down upon the far stretching view of Lombardy,shimmering in the sunshine and extending in one splendid panorama ofblue lakes and green rolling hills until it melted into the golden hazewhich draped the far horizon. Such a promised land is at our very feetwhich, when we attain it, will make our present civilisation seembarren and uncouth. Already our vanguard is well over the pass.Nothing can now prevent us from reaching that wonderful land whichstretches so clearly before those eyes which are opened to see it.

That stimulating writer, V. C. Desertis, has remarked that the SecondComing, which has always been timed to follow Armageddon, may befulfilled not by a descent of the spiritual to us, but by the ascent ofour material plane to the spiritual, and the blending of the two phasesof existence. It is, at least, a fascinating speculation. But withoutso complete an overthrow of the partition walls as this would imply weknow enough already to assure ourselves of such a close approximationas will surely deeply modify all our views of science, of religion andof life. What form these changes may take and what the evidence isupon which they will be founded are briefly set forth in this volume.

ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE.

CROWBOROUGH,

July, 1919.

It has been our fate, among all the innumerable generations of mankind,to face the most frightful calamity that has ever befallen the world.There is a basic fact which cannot be denied, and should not beoverlooked. For a most important deduction must immediately followfrom it. That deduction is that we, who have borne the pains, shallalso learn the lesson which they were intended to convey. If we do notlearn it and proclaim it, then when can it ever be learned andproclaimed, since there can never again be such a spiritual ploughingand harrowing and preparation for the seed? If our souls, wearied andtortured during these dreadful five years of self-sacrifice andsuspense, can show no radical changes, then what souls will everrespond to a fresh influx of heavenly inspiration? In that case thestate of the human race would indeed be hopeless, and never in all thecoming centuries would there be any prospect of improvement.

Why was this tremendous experience forced upon mankind? Surely it is asuperficial thinker who imagines that the great Designer of all thingshas set the whole planet in a ferment, and strained every nation toexhaustion, in order that this or that frontier be moved, or some freshcombination be formed in the kaleidoscope of nations. No, the causesof the convulsion, and its objects, are more profound than that. Theyare essentially religious, not political. They lie far deeper than thenational squabbles of the day. A thousand years hence those nationalresults may matter little, but the religious result will rule theworld. That religious result is the reform of the decadentChristianity of to-day, its simplification, its purification, and itsreinforcement by the facts of spirit communion and the clear knowledgeof what lies beyond the exit-door of death. The shock of the war wasmeant to rouse us to mental and moral earnestness, to give us thecourage to tear away venerable shams, and to force the human race torealise and use the vast new revelation which has been so clearlystated and so abundantly proved, for all who will examine thestatements and proofs with an open mind.

Consider the awful condition of the world before this thunder-boltstruck it. Could anyone, tracing back down the centuries and examiningthe record of the wickedness of man, find anything which could comparewith the story of the nations during the last twenty years! Think ofthe condition of Russia during that time, with her brutal aristocracyand her drunken democracy, her murders on either side, her Siberianhorrors, her Jew baitings and her corruption. Think of the figure ofLeopold of Belgium, an incarnate devil who from motives of greedcarried murder and torture through a large section of Africa, and yetwas received in every court, and was eventually buried after apanegyric from a Cardinal of the Roman Churcha church which had neveronce raised her voice against his diabolical career. Consider thesimilar crimes in the Putumayo, where British capitalists, if notguilty of outrage, can at least not be acquitted of having condoned itby their lethargy and trust in local agents. Think of Turkey and therecurrent massacres of her subject races. Think of the heartless grindof the factories everywhere, where work assumed a very different andmore unnatural shape than the ancient labour of the fields. Think ofthe sensuality of many rich, the brutality of many poor, theshallowness of many fashionable, the coldness and deadness of religion,the absence anywhere of any deep, true spiritual impulse. Think, aboveall, of the organised materialism of Germany, the arrogance, theheartlessness, the negation of everything which one could possiblyassociate with the living spirit of Christ as evident in the utterancesof Catholic Bishops, like Hartmann of Cologne, as in those of LutheranPastors. Put all this together and say if the human race has everpresented a more unlovely aspect. When we try to find the brighterspots they are chiefly where civilisation, as apart from religion, hasbuilt up necessities for the community, such as hospitals,universities, and organised charities, as conspicuous in Buddhist Japanas in Christian Europe. We cannot deny that there has been muchvirtue, much gentleness, much spirituality in individuals. But thechurches were empty husks, which contained no spiritual food for thehuman race, and had in the main ceased to influence its actions, savein the direction of soulless forms.

This is not an over-coloured picture. Can we not see, then, what wasthe inner reason for the war? Can we not understand that it wasneedful to shake mankind loose from gossip and pink teas, andsword-worship, and Saturday night drunks, and self-seeking politics andtheological quibblesto wake them up and make them realise that theystand upon a narrow knife-edge between two awful eternities, and that,here and now, they have to finish with make-beliefs, and with realearnestness and courage face those truths which have always beenpalpable where indolence, or cowardice, or vested interests have notobscured the vision. Let us try to appreciate what those truths areand the direction which reform must take. It is the new spiritualdevelopments which predominate in my own thoughts, but there are twoother great readjustments which are necessary before they can taketheir full effect. On the spiritual side I can speak with the force ofknowledge from the beyond. On the other two points of reform, I makeno such claim.