Miracles Every Day
Miracles Every Day is an article written by Arthur Conan Doyle published in the Reynolds's Illustrated News on 23 november 1924.
Miracles Every Day
New Testament Wonders Not Uncommon.
Continuing his examination of the present position of Spiritualism, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle asserts that miracles were not confined to Bible days, but are not uncommon now.
Sir Arthur, speaking of life on "the other side," says that it is not a life of purely spiritual joys, but is very like to the delightful human life.
A vast number of Spiritualists have found their knowledge of the continuity of life and communion with the dead to be quite compatible with membership of the various Churches. So that every Church now contains many Spiritualists. The only exception is the Roman Catholic Church.
The phenomena, which figure so largely in the Press because they lend themselves to sensational description, are to the Spiritualist matters of minor importance. But that they exist he knows either by his own personal experience or by the evidence of a cloud of trustworthy witnesses.
MIRACLES AS SIGNALS.
Personally, short of raising the dead, I think there is no miracle in the New Testament which I have not seen either as described or in some analogous form. These things, however, are merely given to us as signals in order to arrest our attention, and to turn our thoughts to the teaching which comes at the same time often as the phenomena from the other side.
The world would not be better or more spiritual for the knowledge that there are unseen intelligent forces which could defy the laws of gravity — raising a table, for example, in the air — but when one has seen such phenomena it leads one to inquire what these intelligences are, and so one's foot is on the lowest rung of the ladder which leads to truth.
Of course, much has been said about the rascality of mediums. We have frauds in every religion. Every creed has its scandals. Even the Christ's circle had its Judas. I think, however that this suspicion of mediums has been very greatly over-done. The same medium varies greatly in different conditions, depending upon his own health and upon the mental condition of his client. Harmony seems to be the first essential for success.
That two policewomen in disguise can go to an unfortunate medium pretending that they need consolation, and then expect that real angels from Heaven are going to descend to them, is on the face of it an absurdity. If these same women should have, in later life, their hearts torn by some great loss, and go in a real spirit of humble inquiry, then results might be very different.
The medium is only a helpless instrument which passes on what it gets, either a confused, foolish message arising from psychic confusion, or a real message from the Beyond. As to fortune telling, it is a practice of which no decent Spiritualist approves. It lends itself to many abuses.
In fact, all worldly use of psychic knowledge has not to be attempted. It is sent to us for our spiritual uplift and consolation, not for purposes of gaining mundane advantage.
I think that this teaching, being, as it is, a message of comfort, is of special value to those whose lives have been spent under hard conditions. If this life ended all, then, looking at it from the point of view of a hard-working man, it would be very difficult to sustain the idea of an all merciful God. If, however, we kwon from the assertions of those who have passed, that this is but an ante-room to something which is an immensely superior life, so happy that they could find no adjective with which to describe it, then we may well regard the tribulations which we have as being well worth while, since, if we endure them in good spirit, cultivate above all kindliness to others, then we assure ourselves of a complete enjoyment of this glorious time to follow.
NOT A MIRAGE.
This is not a mirage., but it is the considered statement of a thousand witnesses. On the other hand, if, in this life, we permit ourselves to become narrow, bitter, material, immersed altogether in earthly forces, then we unfit ourselves for the spiritual position, and have to spend long periods of chastening before we are ready to join those we love in their happy existence.
The joys upon the other side are not those purely spiritual joys that many of us could hardly appreciate; but they are a very delightful and human life, corresponding closely to that which we have here, but with a freedom from care, a width of knowledge, and opportunities for pleasure such as very few of us could experience down below.
