Sir Conan Doyle as Missionary
Sir Conan Doyle as Missionary is an interview of Arthur Conan Doyle published in The Daily Chronicle on 20 february 1919.
Sir Conan Doyle as Missionary
HIS STORY OF HIS SPIRITUALIST CRUSADE IN WALES.
SPECIAL INTERVIEW.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who a few days ago witnessed some extraordinary scenes at a Cardiff séance, arrived in London yesterday.
"I have had rather a lightning tour,"
he told a "Daily Chronicle" representative. "I have been lecturing on spiritualism all over Wales. I did Cheltenham on Thursday, Cardiff on Friday, two great meetings at Merthyr Tydvil on Sunday, Newport on Monday, and Swansea yesterday.
"People were very much interested. So far as I know there was never a vacant seat in the building."
"To what do you attribute this?"
"In the first instance, largely to curiosity. But a very different feeling prevailed afterwards." A great many people went away with entirely new thoughts in their minds. Except for a few specially reserved seats there was no charge for admission at any of the meetings. There was a collection for expenses. Of course, I take no fee. The hire of the hall and the advertising have to be paid for, and if there is a balance it goes to the local spiritualist society or to a local charity.
APPEAL TO REASON.
"I met with no opposition. People listened with deep attention. I never appeal to their emotions, but only to their reason. I profess no eloquence. But I make the message clear, and they understand it. I don't ask them to accept it. But I want them to take it away and go further into it. I cannot expect them to get in an hour what has taken me 30 years to understand. But it wouldn't have taken me 30 years or 30 weeks if I had had someone to make it clear to me."
"What is the message?"
"Ah! you will have come to a meeting. I can't boil down a whole train of argument and proof into a few sentences."
"But the general idea?"
"The general idea is that God has sent a new revelation into the world, which is a huge addition to our knowledge of our destiny. It is time we understood and acted upon it, instead of greeting it with intolerance or levity."
"But these phenomena — such as happened at Cardif — what have they to do with religion?"
TELEPHONE BELLS.
"They are to call attention to the messages and the philosophy. They are nothing in themselves. They are the telephone bells. It is the message over the wire that matters."
"And what does the message amount to?"
"It is an account of death by those who have gone through it, an account of the next world by those who are in it, the story of how far they found the religious teaching here to coincide with the facts as they know them. And in the main there is this coincidence. Yet everything is from a different angle, infinitely more reasonable and comforting."
Sir Arthur was asked what points he had touched upon during his tour.
"The nature of Christ,"
he replied, "the nature of heaven and of punishment and of the soul; of the relation between released souls and those still in the body."
"Then you don't oppose Christianity?"
"Oppose it!"
he exclaimed; "I am endeavouring to restore it. This is Christianity, which has been mangled beyond recognition."
"How do you prove that?"
"Well, I give instances in my 'New Revelation,' but there are many more. I think we have gone in a great circle and come round to the starting-point again. But this reconciles Christianity with proof and reason, from which it is at present divorced."
