Is Spiritualism a New Religion?
Is Spiritualism a New Religion? is an article written by Max Pemberton published in the Weekly Dispatch on 28 october 1917.
Is Spiritualism a New Religion?
Sir A. Conan Doyle's Study of the Life Beyond.
By Max Pemberton.
I was one of an audience of spiritualists and others who assembled in the galleries of the British Artists in Suffolk-street the other evening to hear a lecture by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on "The New Revelation."
To me this was a thing of profound interest. For many years I have watched Sir Arthur's voyagings upon these strange seas and have wondered into what port they would carry him. Of the beginnings of which he speaks so eloquently I may say quorum pars fui. We tilted tables together at Eastbourne twenty years ago, and he then told we he was not sure that all these phenomena could not be attributed to the workings of the "subconscious intelligence."
A few weeks ago he wrote to me saying that he was present recently at a séance where the help of a medium was not sought. He did not sit at the table himself, but it rapped out a message to the effect that "Food comes before entomology." All but Sir Arthur were taken aback by the absurdity of the message. He found it, in his own words, "an absolute test." The day previously he had been telling his kind-hearted children that they must really kill the caterpillars or else there would be no cabbages. His host had never spoken with the children nor had any communication been possible.
This narrative I myself thought unconvincing. It surely could be explained upon the supposition that Sir Arthur himself subconsciously thought of the episode and influenced those at the table. And it was relatively so trivial. The very fact of it sent me to Suffolk-street with some misgiving. Should I hear stories of what John said to Mary about the football which went through the study window? Would spirits prate of whisky and soda and cigars? My previous investigations warranted a pessimism of the kind, and I had my fears. Great, then, was my satisfaction to hear a really noble utterance, a profound confession of faith from a man who believes that a new revelation has been given to mankind.
Think of this and measure the ambitions of these teachers. God the Father has spoken to mankind in the past through many teachers. Buddha strives for Nirvana; Mohamed sows the heavens with nymphs; the Christ spirit soars above all, and is the eternal revelation for millions. But to all these teachers the world had in a measure become indifferent.
THE GREAT AWAKENING.
Science put out her sickle and reaped the tares of superstition. The few clung to the letter in the hope thereby to save the spirit. Higher critics arose and in slaying Daniel sent many a faithful priest to the pulpit with weary steps. We published statistics to show that the membership of all churches was decreasing. In the East they trod on the fakir as she lay in the gutter and a German bagman sold him a praying bowl.
Then came war and all its swift awakening. Not the booming of the artillery but the eyes of the dead called men and women from their sleep. "My son, does he live or has he for ever perished?" How many thousands have asked that question, prostrate before the altars where doubt stalked. Is there a meaning in all this sacrifice, a gospel of blood and tears and death, or is it all but the raucous laughter of the clashing atoms? In darkness we groped and the veil of war hid the stars. In the churches the priests had no new message. The few spoke to us. Those who through the years had believed that we could bridge the void, they came out to comfort and uplift. "We know," they said, "for we have spoken to the dead."
Admittedly, their path had begun upon the borderland of ridicule. "I was,"
says Sir Arthur, "a materialist. My medical studies had made that of me. It seemed to me that the spirit was but the flame of the candle, and how should the flame endure when the candle was burned out? Then I began to trifle with the new science; I turned tables, observed spirit writing, visited haunted houses, until I began to say, If the mind can work at a distance from the body, how shall I continue to believe that its existence depends upon the body?"
THE MESSAGE OF THE SPIRITS.
To this, page by page, was added the evidence of great writers and thinkers, of Crookes and Flammarion, and Lodge and Myers. Men of renowned probity swore that they had seen a spirit pass from one house to another at a height of 70 ft. from the ground. Rappings were heard in a haunted house and subsequently the bones of a murdered child were dug up from the garden. Messages came from the spirit world telling of things which none knew in the country to which they had come.
There was, as Sir Arthur puts it, that accumulation of evidence from many sources and many lands; that mass of testimony which, by all the rules of the scientific treatment of evidence, must establish the truth of these things incontestably. So faith is given and vision. Gradually the convert begins to see meaning alike in apparent triviality and tragic happening. God, the Eternal, he says, is giving a new revelation to mankind. It is in no contradiction to the old, but it lightens the darkness which has come upon the world. And it will lead us step by step to a knowledge of the spirit kingdom more wonderful than anything of which humanity has yet dreamed.
We listened at this point with bent ears. We felt that the speaker has a conviction of faith which burned. The dead boy passed upon the battlefield, and we followed him across the void. He knew that he was dead, and recognised all those about him. At first he may have had an earnest desire to speak with them, to touch them. His psychic body was the exact counterpart of the material body, but it could not suffer pain. Desire and the lust of the flesh had passed. If there were mental anxiety, it was for the sake of those left behind, and so came the many messages from the dead to the living at the instant of dissolution. But directly the spirit had rejoined those beloved ones who had passed over earlier all this anxiety disappeared. The messages which come to us are rarely from those who have been long in the new life. The spirit passes on, and all desire to communicate with this world gradually ceases.
It is an amazing revelation, and we shall do well to hear it with reverence. For it is one to which many great men among us have assented and in which they believe profoundly. For them there is no more a mystery of death. We go into the aether; we are clothed; we have our work to do: we meet and associate only with those we have learned to love in this world — music and the arts are still a delight to us; we shall die in due course and advance another stage upon that long journey toward the Holy of Holies where is the throne of the Lord God Almighty. Above us and far away in the highest sphere is the Christ Spirit — the loftiest the world has ever known — Jesus of Nazareth the Redeemer.
But in that new world we shall be taught to think more of the life of Christ than of His death. Vicarious sacrifice has been made by millions of our fellow creatures, is being made now by the sons who die for us that our country may live. If Christianity has failed, it is because it has made too much of the Cross and too little of the Sermon on the Mount. Yet Sir Arthur can say that if a new Christ came among us to-day he would probably be prosecuted in a police court.
WHERE NO CREEDS ABIDE.
Meanwhile there is neither church nor creed in the sphere to which the dead pass. Men of all faiths meet there together and discover how much they have in common. It shall not help a man because he was Catholic or Jew, a son of Confucius or the lord of a mitre. One thing events chiefly, and that is man's humanity to man. The evil spirits abound and wander, and often it is they who speak to the children of the earth. Sometimes, even from the beyond, you hear of strange doctrines and may seem to discern the faith of a Buddha reawakening. Spirits will tell you of the transmigration of souls and to a mother they will say, "Your son shall be born to you again." One such instance I heard this very week. A devout mother faithfully believes that she will bear a daughter and that she will be the reincarnation of the son whom the sniper shot in Flanders.
Beautiful are the letters, she said, which the boy writes upon this very subject. I read them and believed her; yet reading again of lower and higher spheres and the "ultimate destiny" where the soul of man is absorbed into the infinite, I could ask myself it there be schisms even in the beyond. Of this Sir Arthur did not speak. Rather he depicted the worthless and the loafer and the foul of this world unchanged in the new kingdom into which they hare passed. During aeons they shall strive to undo that which evil has done. And meanwhile they are there to send their ridiculous messages to us, to flaunt and to jeer, and to say to the man who would be wise, "What folly is all this."
Such is the new revelation which spiritualism would now give to mankind. We shall be punished for all earthly grossness, but there is no hell. The purgatory of the Catholic Church is nearer to the teachers' vision. We must begin again in a lower sphere, but willing hands will help us upward. Not with Pope Gregory shall we say that the joys of the blessed are in part to witness the sufferings of the damned. There is joy in this heaven when the hand is outstretched and the sinner uplifted. And always beyond is the ultimate destiny and the great God who made all waiting for His children.
Let as hear the churches upon a gospel so tremendous. Sir Arthur has no rope about his waist — but his voice cries in this wilderness of war, and there are thousands waiting upon such words as he has learned to speak.
