Spirit Message
Spirit Message is an article published in the Thanet Advertiser on 1 march 1924 including a letter written by Arthur Conan Doyle.
Spirit Message
READ AT QUEEN'S HALL.
CONAN DOYLE EXPLAINS.
An audience of 2,000 people attended a meeting at the Queen's Hall, London, at which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle read the first part of the spirit message received by "Psychono," as published in the ADVERTISER & ECHO on February 9th.
Published reports of the meeting describe the message as a striking automatic psychic script.
In connection with his attitude towards the matter, we have received a letter of explanation from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who writes:
The idea of a "Second Coming" has always been rather foreign to my scheme of thought. What has obtruded itself upon my notice is a whole series of messages received from various sources to the general effect that unless mankind mends its way and becomes more serious in matters spiritual, there will be some cataclysm which will shake it out of its complacency and inaugurate a new era. This cataclysm will have, as I understand it, a physical destructive side and also a psychic redeeming side.
These messages, however, are either attended with no date or else the date is a varied one. It is notorious that time is not the same in a spiritual sense as it is with us, and it is also notorious that prophecy is an uncertain gift, and that the prophet may "see things as in a glass darkly" and both get and give a false impression.
The early Christians all had definite assurances that the world would end within their own lifetime, and yet we know that this was not so. There have been nanny false alarms of the sort. Therefore, as I told an audience in the Queen's Hall after reading "Psychono's" striking message to them, I will myself certainly lay my plans for 1926 according to ordinary human commonsense, though at the same time I quite feel that a certain feeling of solemnity and of responsibility is engendered by such messages as "Psychono" has given us.
Yours faithfully,
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE.
