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THE
ELLEN AND RAYMOND SHEPHERD
COLLECTION ON
IMMORTALITY











THE NEW REVELATION
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE


THE
NEW REVELATION
BY
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
AUTHOR of “THE BRITISH campaign IN
FRANCE AND FLANDERs,” ETC.
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY


COPYRIGHT, 1918,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA


PREFACE
MANY more philosophic minds than
mine have thought over the religious
side of this subject and many more scientific
brains have turned their attention to its
phenomenal aspect. So far as I know, how-
ever, there has been no former attempt to
show the exact relation of the one to the
other. I feel that if I should succeed in
making this a little more clear I shall have
helped in what I regard as far the most im-
portant question with which the human race
is concerned.
A celebrated Psychic, Mrs. Piper, uttered
in the year 1899 words which were recorded
by Dr. Hodgson at the time. She was
speaking in trance upon the future of
spiritual religion, and she said: “In the
next century this will be astonishingly per-
ceptible to the minds of men. I will also
make a statement which you will surely see
verified. Before the clear revelation of
Wii


viii PREFACE
spirit communication there will be a terrible
war in different parts of the world. The
entire world must be purified and cleansed
before mortal can see, through his spiritual
vision, his friends on this side and it will
take just this line of action to bring about
a state of perfection. Friend, kindly think
of this.” We have had “the terrible war
in different parts of the world.” The
second half remains to be fulfilled.
A. C. D.
1918.


CONTENTS
CHApºrer
I THE SEARCH . . . . .
II THE REVELATION . . .
J.
III THE COMING LIFE . . . .
TV PROBLEMS AND LIMITATIONS .
TUPPLEMENTARY DOCUMENTS
I THE NEXT PHASE OF LIFE
TI AUTOMATIC WRITING . . .
III THE CHERITON DUgoUT . .
'•)
(e.
ey
(*)
(e.
PAGE
(e. 13
63
ſº
•.
... 107
. 112
. 115





THE NEW REVELATION





THE
NEW REVELATION
CHAPTER I
THE SEARCH
THE subject of psychical research is one
upon which I have thought more and about
which I have been slower to form my opin-
ion, than upon any other subject whatever.
Every now and then as one jogs along
through life some small incident happens
which very forcibly brings home the fact
that time passes and that first youth and
then middle age are slipping away. Such a
one occurred the other day. There is a col-
umn in that excellent little paper, Light,
which is devoted to what was recorded on the
corresponding date a generation—that is
thirty years—ago. As I read over this col-
umn recently I had quite a start as I saw
my own name, and read the reprint of a let-
13


14 THE NEW REVELATION
ter which I had written in 1887, detailing
some interesting spiritual experience which
had occurred in a séance. Thus it is mani-
fest that my interest in the subject is of
Some standing, and also, since it is only
within the last year or two that I have finally
declared myself to be satisfied with the evi-
dence, that I have not been hasty in forming
my opinion. If I set down some of my ex-
periences and difficulties my readers will
not, I hope, think it egotistical upon my
part, but will realise that it is the most
graphic way in which to sketch out the
points which are likely to occur to any other
inquirer. When I have passed over this
ground, it will be possible to get on to some-
thing more general and impersonal in its
nature. t
When I had finished my medical educa-
tion in 1882, I found myself, like many
young medical men, a convinced materialist
as regards our personal destiny. I had
never ceased to be an earnest theist, because
it seemed to me that Napoleon's question to
the atheistic professors on the starry night
as he voyaged to Egypt: “Who was it, gen-


THE SEARCH 15
tlemen, who made these stars?” has never
been answered. To say that the Universe
was made by immutable laws only put the
question one degree further back as to who
made the laws. I did not, of course, believe
in an anthropomorphic God, but I believed
then, as Ibelieve now, in an intelligent Force
behind all the operations of Nature—a force
so infinitely complex and great that my finite
brain could get no further than its existence.
Right and wrong I saw also as great obvious
facts which needed no divine revelation.
But when it came to a question of our little
personalities surviving death, it seemed to
me that the whole analogy of Nature was
against it. When the candle burns out the
light disappears. When the electric cell is
shattered the current stops. When the body
dissolves there is an end of the matter.
Each man in his egotism may feel that he
ought to survive, but let him look, we will
say, at the average loafer—of high or low
degree—would anyone contend that there
was any obvious reason why that personality
should carry on? It seemed to be a delu-
sion, and I was convinced that death did in-


THE SEARCH 17
came across a book called The Reminiscences
of Judge Edmunds. He was a judge of the
U.S. High Courts and a man of high stand-
ing. The book gave an account of how his
wife had died, and how he had been able for
many years to keep in touch with her. All
sorts of details were given. I read the book
with interest, and absolute scepticism. It
seemed to me an example of how a hard
practical man might have a weak side to his
brain, a sort of reaction, as it were, against
those plain facts of life with which he had
to deal. Where was this spirit of which he
talked? Suppose a man had an accident
and cracked his skull; his whole character
would change, and a high nature might be-
come a low one. With alcohol or opium or
many other drugs one could apparently
quite change a man's spirit. The spirit then
depended upon matter. These were the ar-
guments which I used in those days. I did
not realise that it was not the spirit that was
changed in such cases, but the body through
which the spirit worked, just as it would be
no argument against the existence of a mu-
sician if you tampered with his violin so that


20 THE NEW REVELATION
sages. I still have notes of those sittings
and copies of some, at least, of the messages.
They were not always absolutely stupid.
For example, I find that on one occasion, on
my asking Some test question, such as how
many coins I had in my pocket, the table
spelt out: “We are here to educate and to
elevate, not to guess riddles.” And then:
“The religious frame of mind, not the criti-
cal, is what we wish to inculcate.” Now, no
one could say that that was a puerile mes-
sage. On the other hand, I was always
haunted by the fear of involuntary pressure
from the hands of the sitters. Then there
came an incident which puzzled and dis-
gusted me very much. We had very good
conditions one evening, and an amount of
movement which seemed quite independent
of our pressure. Long and detailed mes-
sages came through, which purported to be
from a spirit who gave his name and said
he was a commercial traveller who had lost
his life in a recent fire at a theatre at Exeter.
All the details were exact, and he implored
us to write to his family, who lived, he said,
at a place called Slattenmere, in Cumber-


THE SEARCH 21
land. I did so, but my letter came back, ap-
propriately enough, through the dead letter
office. To this day I do not know whether
we were deceived, or whether there was some
mistake in the name of the place; but there
are the facts, and I was so disgusted that for
some time my interest in the whole subject
waned. It was one thing to study a subject,
but when the subject began to play elab-
orate practical jokes it seemed time to call a
halt. If there is such a place as Slatten-
mere in the world I should even now be glad
to know it.
I was in practice in Southsea at this time,
and dwelling there was General Drayson,
a man of very remarkable character, and
one of the pioneers of Spiritualism in this
country. To him I went with my difficulties,
and he listened to them very patiently. He
made light of my criticism of the foolish na-
ture of many of these messages, and of the
absolute falseness of some. “You have
not got the fundamental truth into your
head,” said he. “That truth is, that every
spirit in the flesh passes over to the next
world exactly as it is, with no change what-


22 THE NEW REVELATION
ever. This world is full of weak or foolish
people. So is the next. You need not mix
with them, any more than you do in this
world. One chooses one's companions.
But suppose a man in this world, who had
lived in his house alone and never mixed
with his fellows, was at last to put his head
out of the window to see what sort of place
it was, what would happen? Some naughty
boy would probably say something rude.
Anyhow, he would see nothing of the wisdom
or greatness of the world. He would draw
his head in thinking it was a very poor place.
That is just what you have done. In a
mixed séance, with no definite aim, you
have thrust your head into the next world
and you have met some naughty boys. Go
forward and try to reach something better.”
That was General Drayson's explanation,
and though it did not satisfy me at the time,
I think now that it was a rough approxima-
tion to the truth. These were my first steps
in Spiritualism. I was still a sceptic, but at
least I was an inquirer, and when I heard
some old-fashioned critic saying that there
was nothing to explain, and that it was all


THE SEARCH 23
fraud, or that a conjuror was needed to show
it up, I knew at least that that was all non-
sense. It is true that my own evidence up
to then was not enough to convince me, but
my reading, which was continuous, showed
me how deeply other men had gone into it,
and I recognised that the testimony was so
strong that no other religious movement in
the world could put forward anything to
compare with it. That did not prove it to be
true, but at least it proved that it must
be treated with respect and could not be
brushed aside. Take a single incident of
what Wallace has truly called a modern mir-
acle. I choose it because it is the most in-
credible. I allude to the assertion that D.
D. Home—who, by the way, was not, as is
usually supposed, a paid adventurer, but was
the nephew of the Earl of Home—the asser-
tion, I say, that he floated out of one window
and into another at the height of seventy feet
above the ground. I could not believe it.
And yet, when I knew that the fact was at-
tested by three eye-witnesses, who were Lord
Dunraven, Lord Lindsay, and Captain
Wynne, all men of honour and repute, who


24 THE NEW REVELATION
were willing afterwards to take their oath
upon it, I could not but admit that the evi-
dence for this was more direct than for any
of those far-off events which the whole world
has agreed to accept as true.
I still continued during these years to hold
table séances, which sometimes gave no re-
sults, sometimes trivial ones, and sometimes
rather surprising ones. I have still the
notes of these sittings, and I extract here the
results of one which were definite, and which
were so unlike any conceptions which I held
of life beyond the grave that they amused
rather than edified me at the time. I find
now, however, that they agree very closely
with the revelations in Raymond and in
other later accounts, so that I view them with
different eyes. I am aware that all these ac-
counts of life beyond the grave differ in de-
tail—I suppose any of our accounts of the
present life would differ in detail—but in the
main there is a very great resemblance,
which in this instance was very far from the
conception either of myself or of either of
the two ladies who made up the circle. Two
communicators sent messages, the first of


THE SEARCH 25
whom spelt out as a name “Dorothy Pos-
tlethwaite,” a name unknown to any of us.
She said she died at Melbourne five years be-
fore, at the age of sixteen, that she was now
happy, that she had work to do, and that
she had been at the same school as one of the
ladies. On my asking that lady to raise her
hands and give a succession of names, the
table tilted at the correct name of the head
mistress of the school. This seemed in the
nature of a test. She went on to say that the
sphere she inhabited was all round the earth;
that she knew about the planets; that Mars
was inhabited by a race more advanced than
us, and that the canals were artificial; there
was no bodily pain in her sphere, but there
could be mental anxiety; they were gov-
erned; they took nourishment; she had been
a Catholic and was still a Catholic, but had
not fared better than the Protestants; there
were Buddhists and Mohammedans in her
sphere, but all fared alike; she had never
seen Christ and knew no more about Him
than on earth, but believed in His influence;
spirits prayed and they died in their new
sphere before entering another; they had


26 THE NEW REVELATION
pleasures—music was among them. It was
a place of light and of laughter. She added
that they had no rich or poor, and that the
general conditions were far happier than on
earth. -
This lady bade us good-night, and immedi-
ately the table was seized by a much more
robust influence, which dashed it about very
violently. In answer to my questions it
claimed to be the spirit of one whom I will
call Dodd, who was a famous cricketer, and
with whom I had some serious conversation
in Cairo before he went up the Nile, where
he met his death in the Dongolese Expedi-
tion. We have now, I may remark, come to
the year 1896 in my experiences. Dodd was
not known to either lady. I began to ask
him questions exactly as if he were seated
before me, and he sent his answers back with
great speed and decision. The answers were
often quite opposed to what I expected, so
that I could not believe that I was influenc-
ing them. He said that he was happy, that
he did not wish to return to earth. He had
been a free-thinker, but had not suffered in
the next life for that reason. Prayer, how-


THE SEARCH 27
ever, was a good thing, as keeping usin touch
with the spiritual world. If he had prayed
more he would have been higher in the spirit
world.
This, I may remark, seemed rather in con-
flict with his assertion that he had not suf-
fered through being a free-thinker, and yet,
of course, many men neglect prayer who are
not free-thinkers.
His death was painless. He remembered
the death of Polwhele, a young officer who
died before him. When he (Dodd) died he
had found people to welcome him, but Pol-
whele had not been among them.
He had work to do. He was aware of the
Fall of Dongola, but had not been present
in spirit at the banquet at Cairo afterwards.
He knew more than he did in life. He re-
membered our conversation in Cairo. Du-
ration of life in the next sphere was shorter
than on earth. He had not seen General
Gordon, nor any other famous spirit.
Spirits lived in families and in communi-
ties. Married people did not necessarily
meet again, but those who loved each other
did meet again.


30 THE NEW REVELATION
much, as here, independently, we had ex-
actly the same results, without any question
of American frauds, or modern vulgarity,
which were so often raised against similar
phenomena in Europe.
My mind was also influenced about this
time by the report of the Dialectical Society,
although this Report had been presented as
far back as 1869. It is a very cogent paper,
and though it was received with a chorus of
ridicule by the ignorant and materialistic
papers of those days, it was a document of
great value. The Society was formed by a
number of people of good standing and open
mind to enquire into the physical phenomena
of Spiritualism. A full account of their ex-
periences and of their elaborate precautions
against fraud are given. After reading the
evidence, one fails to see how they could have
come to any other conclusion than the one
attained, namely, that the phenomena were
undoubtedly genuine, and that they pointed
to laws and forces which had not been ex-
plored by Science. It is a most singular
fact that if the verdict had been against spir-
itualism, it would certainly have been hailed


THE SEARCH 31
as the death blow of the movement, whereas
being an endorsement of the phenomena it
met with nothing by ridicule. This has been
the fate of a number of inquiries since those
conducted locally at Hydesville in 1848, or
that which followed when Professor Hare
of Philadelphia, like Saint Paul, started
forth to oppose but was forced to yield to
the truth.
About 1891, I had joined the Psychical
Research Society and had the advantage of
reading all their reports. The world owes
a great deal to the unwearied diligence of the
Society, and to its sobriety of statement,
though I will admit that the latter makes
one impatient at times, and one feels that in
their desire to avoid sensationalism they dis-
courage the world from knowing and using
the splendid work which they are doing.
Their semi-scientific terminology also chokes
off the ordinary reader, and one might say
sometimes after reading their articles what
an American trapper in the Rocky Moun-
tains said to me about some University man
whom he had been escorting for the season.
“He was that clever,” he said, “that you


THE SEARCH 33
an enormous advance. If mind could act
upon mind at a distance, then there were
some human powers which were quite dif-
ferent to matter as we had always under-
stood it. The ground was cut from under
the feet of the materialist, and my old posi-
tion had been destroyed. I had said that
the flame could not exist when the candle
was gone. But here was the flame a long
way off the candle, acting upon its own. The
analogy was clearly a false analogy. If the
mind, the spirit, the intelligence of man
could operate at a distance from the body,
then it was a thing to that extent separate
from the body. Why then should it not
exist on its own when the body was de-
stroyed? Not only did impressions come
from a distance in the case of those who were
just dead, but the same evidence proved that
actual appearances of the dead person came
with them, showing that the impressions
were carried by something which was ex-
actly like the body, and yet acted independ-
ently and survived the death of the body.
The chain of evidence between the simplest


34 THE NEW REVELATION
cases of thought-reading at one end, and the
actual manifestation of the spirit independ-
ently of the body at the other, was one un-
broken chain, each phase leading to the
other, and this fact seemed to me to bring
the first signs of systematic science and order
into what had been a mere collection of be-
wildering and more or less unrelated facts.
About this time I had an interesting ex-
perience, for I was one of three delegates
sent by the Psychical Society to sit up in a
haunted house. It was one of these polter-
geist cases, where noises and foolish tricks
had gone on for some years, very much like
the classical case of John Wesley's family
at Epworth in 1726, or the case of the Fox
family at Hydesville near Rochester in 1848,
which was the starting-point of modern
spiritualism. Nothing sensational came of
our journey, and yet it was not entirely bar-
ren. On the first night nothing occurred.
On the second, there were tremendous noises,
sounds like someone beating a table with a
stick. We had, of course, taken every pre-
caution, and we could not explain the noises;
but at the same time we could not swear that


THE SEARCH 35
some ingenious practical joke had not been
played upon us. There the matter ended for
the time. Some years afterwards, however,
I met a member of the family who occupied
the house, and he told me that after our visit
the bones of a child, evidently long buried,
had been dug up in the garden. You must
admit that this was very remarkable.
Haunted houses are rare, and houses with
buried human beings in their gardens are
also, we will hope, rare. That they should
have both united in one house is surely some
argument for the truth of the phenomena.
It is interesting to remember that in the case
of the Fox family there was also some word
of human bones and evidence of murder be-
ing found in the cellar, though an actual
crime was never established. I have little
doubt that if the Wesley family could have
got upon speaking terms with their perse-
cutor, they would also have come upon some
motive for the persecution. It almost seems
as if a life cut suddenly and violently short
had some store of unspent vitality which
could still manifest itself in a strange, mis-
chievous fashion. Later I had another sin-


36 THE NEW REVELATION
gular personal experience of this sort which
I may describe at the end of this argument.”
From this period until the time of the
War I continued in the leisure hours of a .
very busy life to devote attention to this sub-
ject. I had experience of one series of
séances with very amazing results, including
several materializations seen in dim light.
As the medium was detected in trickery
shortly afterwards I wiped these off entirely
as evidence. At the same time I think that
the presumption is very clear, that in the
case of some mediums like Eusapia Palla-
dino they may be guilty of trickery when
their powers fail them, and yet at other
times have very genuine gifts. Mediumship
in its lowest forms is a purely physical gift
with no relation to morality and in many
cases it is intermittent and cannot be con-
trolled at will. Eusapia was at least twice
convicted of very clumsy and foolish fraud,
whereas she several times sustained long ex-
aminations under every possible test condi-
tion at the hands of scientific committees
which contained some of the best names of
1 Wide Appendix III.


THE SEARCH 37
France, Italy, and England. However, I
personally prefer to cut my experience with
a discredited medium out of my record, and
I think that all physical phenomena pro-
duced in the dark must necessarily lose much
of their value, unless they are accompanied
by evidential messages as well. It is the cus-
tom of our critics to assume that if you cut
out the mediums who got into trouble you
would have to cut out nearly all your evi-
dence. That is not so at all. Up to the time
of this incident I had never sat with a pro-
fessional medium at all, and yet I had cer-
tainly accumulated some evidence. The
greatest medium of all, Mr. D. D. Home,
showed his phenomena in broad daylight,
and was ready to submit to every test and no
charge of trickery was ever substantiated
against him. So it was with many others.
It is only fair to state in addition that when
a public medium is a fair mark for notoriety
hunters, for amateur detectives and for sen-
sational reporters, and when he is dealing
with obscure elusive phenomena and has to
defend himself before juries and judges who,
as a rule, know nothing about the conditions


38 THE NEW REVELATION
which influence the phenomena, it would be
wonderful if a man could get through with-
out an occasional scandal. At the same time
the whole system of paying by results, which
is practically the present system, since if a
medium never gets results he would soon get
no payments, is a vicious one. It is only
when the professional medium can be guar-
anteed an annuity which will be independent
of results, that we can eliminate the strong
temptation to substitute pretended phenom-
ena when the real ones are wanting.
I have now traced my own evolution of
thought up to the time of the War. I can
claim, I hope, that it was deliberate and
showed no traces of that credulity with
which our opponents charge us. It was too
deliberate, for I was culpably slow in throw-
ing any small influence I may possess into
the scale of truth. I might have drifted on
for my whole life as a psychical Researcher,
showing a sympathetic, but more or less dil-
ettante attitude towards the whole subject,
as if we were arguing about some imper-
Sonal thing such as the existence of Atlantis
or the Baconian controversy. But the War


THE SEARCH 39
came, and when the War came it brought
earnestness into all our souls and made us
look more closely at our own beliefs and re-
assess their values. In the presence of an
agonized world, hearing every day of the
deaths of the flower of our race in the first
promise of their unfulfilled youth, seeing
around one the wives and mothers who had
no clear conception whither their loved ones
had gone to, I seemed suddenly to see that
this subject with which I had so long dallied
was not merely a study of a force outside the
rules of science, but that it was really some-
thing tremendous, a breaking down of the
walls between two worlds, a direct undeni-
able message from beyond, a call of hope and
of guidance to the human race at the time of
its deepest affliction. The objective side of
it ceased to interest for having made up one's
mind that it was true there was an end of
the matter. The religious side of it was
clearly of infinitely greater importance.
The telephone bell is in itself a very childish
affair, but it may be the signal for a very
vital message. It seemed that all these phe-
nomena, large and small, had been the tele-


40 THE NEW REVELATION
phone bells which, senseless in themselves,
had signalled to the human race: “Rouse
yourselves! Stand byl Be at attention!
Here are signs for you. They will lead up
to the message which God wishes to send.”
It was the message not the signs which really
counted. A new revelation seemed to be in
the course of delivery to the human race,
though how far it was still in what may be
called the John-the-Baptist stage, and how
far some greater fulness and clearness might
be expected hereafter, was more than any
man can say. My point is, that the physi-
cal phenomena which have been proved up to
the hilt for all who care to examine the evi-
dence, are really of no account, and that their
real value consists in the fact that they sup-
port and give objective reality to an im-
mense body of knowledge which must deeply
modify our previous religious views, and
must, when properly understood and digest-
ed, make religion a very real thing, no longer
a matter of faith, but a matter of actual ex-
perience and fact. It is to this side of the
question that I will now turn, but I must add
to my previous remarks about personal ex-


THE SEARCH 41
perience that, since the War, I have had
Some very exceptional opportunities of con-
firming all the views which I had already
formed as to the truth of the general facts
upon which my views are founded.
These opportunities came through the fact
that a lady who lived with us, a Miss L. S.,
developed the power of automatic writing.
Of all forms of mediumship, this seems to
me to be the one which should be tested most
rigidly, as it lends itself very easily not so
much to deception as to self-deception, which
is a more subtle and dangerous thing. Is
the lady herself writing, or is there, as she
avers, a power that controls her, even as the
chronicler of the Jews in the Bible averred
that he was controlled? In the case of L.
S. there is no denying that some messages
proved to be not true—especially in the mat-
ter of time they were quite unreliable. But
on the other hand, the numbers which did
come true were far beyond what any guess-
ing or coincidence could account for. Thus,
when the Lusitania was sunk and the morn-
ing papers here announced that so far as
known there was no loss of life, the medium


42 THE NEW REVELATION
at once wrote: “It is terrible, terrible—
and will have a great influence on the war.”
Since it was the first strong impulse which
turned America towards the war, the mes-
Sage was true in both respects. Again, she
foretold the arrival of an important tele-
gram upon a certain day, and even gave the
name of the deliverer of it—a most unlikely
person. Altogether, no one could doubt the
reality of her inspiration, though the lapses
Were notable. It was like getting a good
message through a very imperfect telephone.
One other incident of the early war days
stands out in my memory. A lady in whom
I was interested had died in a provincial
town. She was a chronic invalid and mor-
phia was found by her bedside. There was
an inquest with an open verdict. Eight days
later I went to have a sitting with Mr. Wout
Peters. After giving me a good deal which
was vague and irrelevant, he suddenly said:
“There is a lady here. She is leaning upon
an older woman. She keeps saying ‘Mor-
phia.’ Three times she has said it. Her
mind was clouded. She did not mean it.
Morphia!” Those were almost his exact


THE SEARCH 43
words. Telepathy was out of the question,
for I had entirely other thoughts in my mind
at the time and was expecting no such mes-
Sage.
Apart from personal experiences, this
movement must gain great additional solid-
ity from the wonderful literature which has
sprung up around it during the last few
years. If no other spiritual books were in
existence than five which have appeared in
the last year or so—I allude to Professor
Lodge's Raymond, Arthur Hill's Psychical
Investigations, Professor Crawford's Real-
ity of Psychical Phenomena, Professor Bar-
rett's Threshold of the Unseen, and Gerald
Balfour's Ear of Dionysius—those five alone
would, in my opinion, be sufficient to estab-
lish the facts for any reasonable enquirer.
Before going into this question of a new
religious revelation, how it is reached, and
what it consists of, I would say a word upon
one other subject. There have always been
two lines of attack by our opponents. The
one is that our facts are not true. This I
have dealt with. The other is that we are
upon forbidden ground and should come off


44 THE NEW REVELATION
it and leave it alone. As I started from a
position of comparative materialism, this ob-
jection has never had any meaning for me,
but to others I would submit one or two con-
siderations. The chief is that God has given
us no power at all which is under no circum-
stances to be used. The fact that we possess
it is in itself proof that it is our bounden
duty to study and to develop it. It is true
that this, like every other power, may be
abused if we lose our general sense of pro-
portion and of reason. But Irepeat that its
mere possession is a strong reason why it is
lawful and binding that it be used.
It must also be remembered that this cry of
illicit knowledge, backed by more or less ap-
propriate texts, has been used against every
advance of human knowledge. It was used
against the new astronomy, and Galileo had
actually to recant. It was used against Gal-
vani and electricity. It was used against
Darwin, who would certainly have been
burned had he lived a few centuries before.
It was even used against Simpson's use of
chloroform in child-birth, on the ground that
the Bible declared “in pain shall ye bring


THE SEARCH 45
them forth.” Surely a plea which has been
made so often, and so often abandoned, can-
not be regarded very seriously.
To those, however, to whom the theologi-
cal aspect is still a stumbling block, I would
recommend the reading of two short books,
each of them by clergymen. The one is the
Rev. Fielding Ould's Is Spiritualism of the
Devil, purchasable for twopence; the other is
the Rev. Arthur Chambers’ Our Self After
Death. I can also recommend the Rev.
Charles Tweedale's writings upon the sub-
ject. I may add that when I first began to
make public my own views, one of the first
letters of sympathy which I received was
from the late Archdeacon Wilberforce.
There are some theologians who are not
only opposed to such a cult, but who go the
length of saying that the phenomena and
messages come from fiends who personate
our dead, or pretend to be heavenly teachers.
It is difficult to think that those who hold
this view have ever had any personal experi-
ence of the consoling and uplifting effect of
such communications upon the recipient.
Ruskin has left it on record that his convic-


THE REVELATION 49
would rather have it in my waste-paper-
basket than on my study table. Life is too
short to weigh the merits of such produc-
tions. But if, as in the case of Stainton
Moses, with his Spirit Teachings, the doc-
trines which are said to come from beyond
are accompanied with a great number of ab-
normal gifts—and Stainton Moses was one
of the greatest mediums in all ways that
England has ever produced—then I look
upon the matter in a more serious light.
Again, if Miss Julia Ames can tell Mr. Stead
things in her own earth life of which he
could not have cognisance, and if those
things are shown, when tested, to be true,
then one is more inclined to think that those
things which cannot be tested are true also.
Or once again, if Raymond can tell us of a
photograph no copy of which had reached
England, and which proved to be exactly as
he described it, and if he can give us, through
the lips of strangers, all sorts of details of
his home life, which his own relatives had to
verify before they found them to be true, is
it unreasonable to suppose that he is fairly
accurate in his description of his own ex-


THE REVELATION 51
up the train of thought and experiment
which gave us electricity. So the lowly
manifestations of Hydesville have ripened
into results which have engaged the finest
group of intellects in this country during the
last twenty years, and which are destined, in
my opinion, to bring about far the greatest
development of human experience which the
world has ever seen.
It has been asserted by men for whose
opinion I have a deep regard—notably by
Sir William Barratt—that psychical re-
Search is quite distinct from religion. Cer-
tainly it is so, in the sense that a man
might be a very good psychical researcher
but a very bad man. But the results of
psychical research, the deductions which we
may draw, and the lessons we may learn,
teach us of the continued life of the soul, of
the nature of that life, and of how it is in-
fluenced by our conduct here. If this is dis-
tinct from religion, I must confess that I do
not understand the distinction. To me it is
religion—the very essence of it. But that
does not mean that it will necessarily crystal-
lise into a new religion. Personally I trust


54 THE NEW REVELATION
temporary penal state which corresponds to
purgatory rather than to hell. Thus this
new revelation, on some of the most vital
points, is not destructive of the beliefs, and
it should be hailed by really earnest men of
all Creeds as a most powerful ally rather than
a dangerous devil-begotten enemy.
On the other hand, let us turn to the points
in which Christianity must be modified by
this new revelation.
First of all I would say this, which must
be obvious to many, however much they de-
plore it: Christianity must change or must
perish. That is the law of life—that things
must adapt themselves or perish. Chris-
tianity has deferred the change very long,
she has deferred it until her churches are
half empty, until women are her chief Sup-
porters, and until both the learned part of
the community on one side, and the poorest
class on the other, both in town and country,
are largely alienated from her. Let us try
and trace the reason for this. It is appar-
ent in all sects, and comes, therefore, from
Some deep common cause.


THE REVELATION 57
bigoted and narrow supporters. Especially
one loves His readiness to get at the spirit
of religion, sweeping aside the texts and the
forms. Never had anyone such a robust
common sense, or such a sympathy for weak-
ness. It was this most wonderful and un-
common life, and not his death, which is the
true centre of the Christian religion.
Now, let us look at the light which we get
from the spirit guides upon this question of
Christianity. Opinion is not absolutely uni-
form yonder, any more than it is here; but
reading a number of messages upon this sub-
ject, they amount to this: There are many
higher spirits with our departed. They
vary in degree. Call them “angels,” and
you are in touch with old religious thought.
High above all these is the greatest spirit of
whom they have cognizance—not God, since
God is so infinite that He is not within their
ken—but one who is nearer God and to that
extent represents God. This is the Christ
Spirit. His special care is the earth. He
came down upon it at a time of great earthly
depravity—a time when the world was al-
most as wicked as it is now, in order to give


58 THE NEW REVELATION
the people the lesson of an ideal life. Then
he returned to his own high station, having
left an example which is still occasionally
followed. That is the story of Christ as
spirits have described it. There is nothing
here of Atonement or Redemption. But
there is a perfectly feasible and reasonable
scheme, which I, for one, could readily be-
lieve.
If such a view of Christianity were gen-
erally accepted, and if it were enforced by
assurance and demonstration from the New
Revelation which is coming to us from the
other side, then we should have a creed which
might unite the churches, which might be
reconciled to science, which might defy all
attacks, and which might carry the Christian
Faith on for an indefinite period. Reason
and Faith would at last be reconciled, a
nightmare would be lifted from our minds,
and spiritual peace would prevail. I do not
See such results coming as a sudden conquest
Or a violent revolution. Rather will it come
as a peaceful penetration, as some crude
ideas, such as the Eternal Hell idea, have
already gently faded away within our own


THE REVELATION 59
lifetime. It is, however, when the human
soul is ploughed and harrowed by suffering
that the seeds of truth may be planted, and
so some future spiritual harvest will Surely
rise from the days in which we live.
When I read the New Testament with the
knowledge which I have of Spiritualism, I
am left with a deep conviction that the
teaching of Christ was in many most im-
portant respects lost by the early Church,
and has not come down to us. All these al-
lusions to a conquest over death have, as it
seems to me, little meaning in the present
Christian philosophy, whereas for those who
have seen, however dimly, through the veil,
and touched, however slightly, the out-
stretched hands beyond, death has indeed
been conquered. When we read so many
references to the phenomena with which we
are familiar, the levitations, the tongues of
fire, the rushing wind, the spiritual gifts, the
working of wonders, we feel that the central
fact of all, the continuity of life and the com-
munication with the dead, was most certainly
known. Our attention is arrested by such a
saying as: “Here he worked no wonders


60 THE NEW REVELATION
because the people were wanting in faith.”
Is this not absolutely in accordance with
psychic law as we know it? Or when Christ,
on being touched by the sick woman, said:
“Who has touched me? Much virtue has
passed out of me.” Could He say more
clearly what a healing medium would
Say now, Save that He would use the word
“power” instead of “virtue”; or when we
read: “Try the spirits whether they be of
God,” is it not the very advice which would
now be given to a novice approaching a
séance? It is too large a question for me to
do more than indicate, but I believe that this
subject, which the more rigid Christian
churches now attack so bitterly, is really the
central teaching of Christianity itself. To
those who would read more upon this line of
thought, Istrongly recommend Dr. Abraham
Wallace's Jesus of Nazareth, if this valuable
little work is not out of print. He demon-
strates in it most convincingly that Christ's
miracles were all within the powers of
psychic law as we now understand it, and
were on the exact lines of such law even in
small details. Two examples have already


62 THE NEW REVELATION
early Christian Church was saturated with
spiritualism, and they seem to have paid no
attention to those Old Testament prohibi-
tions which were meant to keep these powers
only for the use and profit of the priesthood.


CHAPTER III
TEIE COMING LIFE
Now, leaving this large and possibly con-
tentious subject of the modifications which
such new revelations must produce in Chris-
tianity, let us try to follow what occurs to
man after death. The evidence on this point
is fairly full and consistent. Messages
from the dead have been received in many
lands at various times, mixed up with a good
deal about this world, which we could verify.
When messages come thus, it is only fair, I
think, to suppose that if what we can test is
true, then what we cannot test is true also.
When in addition we find a very great uni-
formity in the messages and an agreement
as to details which are not at all in accord-
ance with any pre-existing scheme of
thought, then I think the presumption of
truth is very strong. It is difficult to think
that some fifteen or twenty messages from
63


64 THE NEW REVELATION
various sources of which I have personal
notes, all agree, and yet are all wrong, nor is
it easy to suppose that spirits can tell the
truth about our world but untruth about
their own.
I received lately, in the same week, two
accounts of life in the next world, one re-
ceived through the hand of the near relative
of a high dignitary of the Church, while the
other came through the wife of a working
mechanician in Scotland. Neither could
have been aware of the existence of the other,
and yet the two accounts are so alike as to be
practically the same.*
The message upon these points seems to
me to be infinitely reassuring, whether we
regard our own fate or that of our friends.
The departed all agree that passing is usu-
ally both easy and painless, and followed by
an enormous reaction of peace and ease.
The individual finds himself in a spirit body,
which is the exact counterpart of his old one,
save that all disease, weakness, or deformity
has passed from it. This body is standing
or floating beside the old body, and conscious
1 Wide Appendix II.


THE COMING LIFE 65
both of it and of the surrounding people.
At this moment the dead man is nearer to
matter than he will ever be again, and hence
it is that at that moment the greater part of
those cases occur where, his thoughts having
turned to someone in the distance, the spirit
body went with the thoughts and was mani-
fest to the person. Out of some 250 cases
carefully examined by Mr. Gurney, 134 of
Such apparitions were actually at this mo-
ment of dissolution, when one could imagine
that the new spirit body was possibly so far
material as to be more visible to a sympa-
thetic human eye than it would later become.
These cases, however, are very rare in
comparison with the total number of deaths.
In most cases I imagine that the dead man
is too preoccupied with his own amazing ex-
perience to have much thought for others.
He soon finds, to his surprise, that though
he endeavours to communicate with those
whom he sees, his ethereal voice and his
ethereal touch are equally unable to make
any impression upon those human organs
which are only attuned to coarser stimuli.
It is a fair subject for speculation,


66 THE NEW REVELATION
whether a fuller knowledge of those light
rays which we know to exist on either side
of the spectrum, or of those sounds which
we can prove by the vibrations of a dia-
phragm to exist, although they are too high
for mortal ear, may not bring uS Some
further psychical knowledge. Setting that
aside, however, let us follow the fortunes
of the departing spirit. He is presently
aware that there are others in the room
besides those who were there in life, and
among these others, who seem to him as sub-
stantial as the living, there appear familiar
faces, and he finds his hand grasped or his
lips kissed by those whom he had loved and
lost. Then in their company, and with the
help and guidance of some more radiant be-
ing who has stood by and waited for the new-
comer, he drifts to his own surprise through
all solid obstacles and out upon his new life.
This is a definite statement, and this is
the story told by one after the other with a
consistency which impels belief. It is al-
ready very different from any old theology.
The Spirit is not a glorified angel or goblin
damned, but it is simply the person himself,


THE COMING LIFE 67
containing all his strength and weakness, his
wisdom and his folly, exactly as he has re-
tained his personal appearance. We can
well believe that the most frivolous and fool-
ish would be awed into decency by so tre-
mendous an experience, but impressions soon
become blunted, the old nature may soon re-
assert itself in new surroundings, and the
frivolous still survive, as our séance rooms
can testify.
And now, before entering upon his new
life, the new Spirit has a period of sleep
which varies in its length, sometimes hardly
existing at all, at others extending for weeks
or months. Raymond said that his lasted
for six days. That was the period also in a
case of which I had some personal evidence.
Mr. Myers, on the other hand, said that he
had a very prolonged period of unconscious-
ness. I could imagine that the length is reg-
ulated by the amount of trouble or mental
preoccupation of this life, the longer rest giv-
ing the better means of wiping this out.
Probably the little child would need no such
interval at all. This, of course, is pure spec-
ulation, but there is a considerable consensus


68 THE NEW REVELATION
of opinion as to the existence of a period of
oblivion after the first impression of the new
life and before entering upon its duties.
Having wakened from this sleep, the spirit
is weak, as the child is weak after earth
birth. Soon, however, strength returns and
the new life begins. This leads us to the
consideration of heaven and hell. Hell, I
may say, drops out altogether, as it has long
dropped out of the thoughts of every reason-
able man. This odious conception, so blas-
phemous in its view of the Creator, arose
from the exaggerations of Oriental phrases,
and may perhaps have been of service in a
coarse age where men were frightened by
fires, as wild beasts are scared by the travel-
lers. Hell as a permanent place does not
exist. But the idea of punishment, of puri-
fying chastisement, in fact of Purgatory, is
justified by the reports from the other side.
Without such punishment there could be no
justice in the Universe, for how impossible it
would be to imagine that the fate of a Ras-
putinis the same as that of a Father Damien.
The punishment is very certain and very
Serious, though in its less Severe forms it


70 THE NEW REVELATION
that account has a claim to be considered a
true one. If it were an account of glorified
souls purged instantly from all human weak-
ness and of a constant ecstasy of adoration
round the throne of the all powerful, it might
well be suspected as being the mere reflec-
tion of that popular theology which all the
mediums had equally received in their youth.
It is, however, very different to any pre-
existing system. It is also supported, as I
have already pointed out, not merely by the
consistency of the accounts, but by the fact
that the accounts are the ultimate product
of a long series of phenomena, all of which
have been attested as true by those who have
carefully examined them.
In connection with the general subject of
life after death, people may say we have got
this knowledge already through faith. But
faith, however beautiful in the individual,
has always in collective bodies been a very
two-edged quality. All would be well if
every faith were alike and the intuitions of
the human race were constant. We know
that it is not so. Faith means to say that
you entirely believe a thing which you cannot


72 THE NEW REVELATION
back to us are all, more or less, in one state
of development and represent the same
wave of life as it recedes from our shores.
Communications usually come from those
who have not long passed over, and tend to
grow fainter, as one would expect. It is
instructive in this respect to notice that
Christ's reappearances to his disciples or to
Paul, are said to have been within a very
few years of his death, and that there is no
claim among the early Christians to have
seen him later. The cases of spirits who
give good proof of authenticity and yet have
passed some time are not common. There
is, in Mr. Dawson Roger's life, a very good
case of a spirit who called himself Manton,
and claimed to have been born at Lawrence
Lydiard and buried at Stoke Newington in
1677. It was clearly shown afterwards that
there was such a man, and that he was
Oliver Cromwell's chaplain. So far as my
own reading goes, this is the oldest spirit
who is on record as returning, and generally
they are quite recent. Hence, one gets all
one's views from the one generation, as it
were, and we cannot take them as final, but


THE COMING LIFE 73
only as partial. How spirits may see things
in a different light as they progress in the
other world is shown by Miss Julia Ames,
who was deeply impressed at first by the
necessity of forming a bureau of communica-
tion, but admitted, after fifteen years, that
not one spirit in a million among the main
body upon the further side ever wanted to
communicate with us at all since their own
loved ones had come over. She had been
misled by the fact that when she first passed
over everyone she met was newly arrived like
herself.
Thus the account we give may be partial,
but still such as it is it is very consistent and
of extraordinary interest, since it refers to
our own destiny and that of those we love.
All agree that life beyond is for a limited
period, after which they pass on to yet other
phases, but apparently there is more com-
munication between these phases than there
is between us and Spiritland. The lower
cannot ascend, but the higher can descend at
will. The life has a close analogy to that of
this world at its best. It is pre-eminently a
life of the mind, as this is of the body. Pre-


74 THE NEW REVELATION
Occupations of food, money, lust, pain, etc.,
are of the body and are gone. Music, the
Arts, intellectual and spiritual knowledge,
and progress have increased. The people
are clothed, as one would expect, since there
is no reason why modesty should disappear
with our new forms. These new forms are
the absolute reproduction of the old ones at
their best, the young growing up and the old
reverting until all come to the normal.
People live in communities, as one would ex-
pect if like attracts like, and the male spirit
still finds his true mate though there is no
Sexuality in the grosser sense and no child-
birth. Since connections still endure, and
those in the same state of development keep
abreast, one would expect that nations are
still roughly divided from each other, though
language is no longer a bar, since thought
has become a medium of conversation. How
close is the connection between kindred souls
over there is shown by the way in which
Myers, Gurney and Roden Noel, all friends
and co-workers on earth, sent messages to-
gether through Mrs. Holland, who knew
none of them, each message being character-


THE COMING LIFE 77
Finding conditions entirely different from
anything for which either scientific or re-
ligious teaching had prepared them, it is no
wonder that they look upon their new sensa-
tions as some strange dream, and the more
rigidly orthodox have been their views, the
more impossible do they find it to accept
these new surroundings with all that they
imply. For this reason, as well as for many
others, this new revelation is a very needful
thing for mankind. A smaller point of
practical importance is that the aged should
realise that it is still worth while to improve
their minds, for though they have no time
to use their fresh knowledge in this world it
will remain as part of their mental outfit in
the next.
As to the smaller details of this life be-
yond, it is better perhaps not to treat them,
for the very good reason that they are small
details. We will learn them all soon for
ourselves, and it is only vain curiosity which
leads us to ask for them now. One thing
is clear: there are higher intelligences over
yonder to whom synthetic chemistry, which
not only makes the substance but moulds the


THE COMING LIFE 79
we should do in similar case. He believes
that his transcendental chemists can make
anything, and that even such unspiritual
matter as alcohol or tobacco could come
within their powers and could still be craved
for by unregenerate spirits. This has
tickled the critics to such an extent that one
would really think to read the comments that
it was the only statement in a book which
contains 400 closely-printed pages. Ray-
mond may be right or wrong, but the only
thing which the incident proves to me is the
unflinching courage and honesty of the man
who chronicled it, knowing well the handle
that he was giving to his enemies.
There are many who protest that this
world which is described to us is too mate-
rial for their liking. It is not as they would
desire it. Well, there are many things in
this world which seem different from what
we desire, but they exist none the less. But
when we come to examine this charge of ma-
terialism and try to construct some sort
of system which would satisfy the idealists,
it becomes a very difficult task. Are we to
be mere wisps of gaseous happiness floating


80 THE NEW REVELATION
about in the air? That seems to be the idea.
But if there is no body like our own, and
if there is no character like our own, then
Say what you will, we have become extinct.
What is it to a mother if some impersonal
glorified entity is shown to her? She will
Say, “that is not the son I lost—I want his
yellow hair, his quick smile, his little moods
that I know so well.” That is what she
wants; that, I believe, is what she will have;
but she will not have them by any system
which cuts us away from all that reminds us
of matter and takes us to a vague region of
floating emotions.
There is an opposite school of critics
which rather finds the difficulty in pictur-
ing a life which has keen perceptions, robust
emotions, and a solid surrounding all con-
structed in so diaphanous a material. Let
us remember that everything depends upon
its comparison with the things around it.
If we could conceive of a world a thousand
times denser, heavier and duller than this
world, we can clearly see that to its inmates
it would seem much the same as this, since
their strength and texture would be in pro-


CHAPTER IV
PROBLEMS AND LIMITATIONS
LEAVING for a moment the larger argu-
ment as to the lines of this revelation and
the broad proofs of its validity, there are
some smaller points which have forced them-
selves upon my attention during the con-
sideration of the subject. This home of our
dead seems to be very near to us—so near
that we continually, as they tell us, visit
them in our sleep. Much of that quiet resig-
nation which we have all observed in people
who have lost those whom they loved—peo-
ple who would in our previous opinion have
been driven mad by such loss—is due to the
fact that they have seen their dead, and that
although the switch-off is complete and they
can recall nothing whatever of the spirit ex-
perience in sleep, the soothing result of it is
still carried on by the subconscious self.
The switch-off is, as I say, complete, but
sometimes for some reason it is hung up for
82


PROBLEMS AND LIMITATIONS 83
a fraction of a second, and it is at such mo-
ments that the dreamer comes back from his
dream “trailing clouds of glory.” From
this also come all those prophetic dreams
many of which are well attested. I have
had a recent personal experience of one
which has not yet perhaps entirely justified
itself but is even now remarkable. Upon
April 4th of last year, 1917, I awoke with a
feeling that some communication had been
made to me of which I had only carried back
one word which was ringing in my head.
That word was “Piave.” To the best of
my belief I had never heard the word be-
fore. As it sounded like the name of a place
I went into my study the moment I had
dressed and I looked up the index of my
Atlas. There was “Piave” sure enough,
and I noted that it was a river in Italy some
forty miles behind the front line, which at
that time was victoriously advancing. I
could imagine few more unlikely things
than that the war should roll back to the
Piave, and I could not think how any mili-
tary event of consequence could arise there,
but none the less I was so impressed that I


PROBLEMS AND LIMITATIONS 85
that there are two forms of dreams, and only
two, the experiences of the released spirit,
and the confused action of the lower facul-
ties which remain in the body when the
spirit is absent. The former is rare and
beautiful, for the memory of it fails us. The
latter are common and varied, but usually
fantastic or ignoble. By noting what is ab-
sent in the lower dreams one can tell what
the missing qualities are, and so judge what
part of us goes to make up the spirit. Thus
in these dreams humour is wanting, since we
See things which strike us afterwards as
ludicrous, and are not amused. The sense
of proportion and of judgment and of aspir-
ation is all gone. In short, the higher is
palpably gone, and the lower, the sense of
fear, of sensual impression, of self-preser-
vation, is functioning all the more vividly
because it is relieved from the higher
control.
The limitations of the powers of spirits is
a subject which is brought home to one in
these studies. People say, “If they exist
why don’t they do this or that?” The an-
swer usually is that they can’t. They ap-


PROBLEMS AND LIMITATIONS 87
could they do so, and they may not have had
the power of self-materialization. This con-
sideration throws some light upon the fa-
mous case, so often used by our opponents,
where Myers failed to give some word or
phrase which had been left behind in a
Sealed box. Apparently he could not see
this document from his present position, and
if his memory failed him he would be very
likely to go wrong about it.
Many mistakes may, I think, be explained
in this fashion. It has been asserted from
the other side, and the assertion seems to me
reasonable, that when they speak of their
own conditions they are speaking of what
they know and can readily and surely dis-
cuss; but that when we insist (as we must
sometimes insist) upon earthly tests, it drags
them back to another plane of things, and
puts them in a position which is far more
difficult, and liable to error.
Another point which is capable of being
used against us is this: The spirits have
the greatest difficulty in getting names
through to us, and it is this which makes
many of their communications so vague and


88 THE NEW REVELATION
unsatisfactory. They will talk all round a
thing, and yet never get the name which
Would clinch the matter. There is an ex-
ample of the point in a recent communi-
cation in Light, which describes how a
young officer, recently dead, endeavoured to
get a message through the direct voice
method of Mrs. Susannah Harris to his fa-
ther. He could not get his name through.
He was able, however, to make it clear that
his father was a member of the Kildare
Street Club in Dublin. Inquiry found the
father, and it was then learned that the fa-
ther had already received an independent
message in Dublin to say that an inquiry was
coming through from London. I do not
know if the earth name is a merely ephem-
eral thing, quite disconnected from the per-
sonality, and perhaps the very first thing to
be thrown aside. That is, of course, possi-
ble. Or it may be that some law regulates
our intercourse from the other side by which
it shall not be too direct, and shall leave
Something to our own intelligence.
This idea, that there is some law which
makes an indirect speech more easy than a


PROBLEMS AND LIMITATIONS 89
direct one, is greatly borne out by the cross-
correspondences, where circumlocution con-
tinually takes the place of assertion. Thus,
in the St. Paul correspondence, which is
treated in the July pamphlet of the S.P.R.,
the idea of St. Paul was to be conveyed from
one automatic writer to two others, both of
whom were at a distance, one of them in
India. Dr. Hodgson was the spirit who
professed to preside over this experiment.
You would think that the simple words “St.
Paul” occurring in the other scripts would
be all-sufficient. But no; he proceeds to
make all sorts of indirect allusions, to talk
all round St. Paul in each of the scripts, and
to make five quotations from St. Paul's writ-
ings. This is beyond coincidence, and quite
convincing, but none the less it illustrates
the curious way in which they go round in-
stead of going straight. If one could imag-
ine some wise angel on the other side saying,
“Now, don’t make it too easy for these peo-
ple. Make them use their own brains a lit-
tle. They will become mere automatons if
we do everything for them.”—if we could
imagine that, it would just cover the case.
2


94. THE NEW REVELATION
velopment with which I am acquainted. As
I have shown, it would appear to be a re-
discovery rather than an absolutely new
thing, but the result in this material age is
the same. The days are surely passing
when the mature and considered opinions of
Such men as Crookes, Wallace, Flammarion,
Chas. Richet, Lodge, Barrett, Lombroso,
Generals Drayson and Turner, Sergeant
Ballantyne, W. T. Stead, Judge Edmunds,
Admiral Usborne Moore, the late Archdea-
con Wilberforce, and such a cloud of other
witnesses, can be dismissed with the empty
“All rot” or “Nauseating drivel” formulae.
As Mr. Arthur Hill has well said, we have
reached a point where further proof is su-
perfluous, and where the weight of disproof
lies upon those who deny. The very people
who clamour for proofs have as a rule never
taken the trouble to examine the copious
proofs which already exist. Each seems to
think that the whole subject should begin
de novo because he has asked for informa-
tion. The method of our opponents is to
fasten upon the latest man who has stated
the case—at the present instant it happens


PROBLEMS AND LIMITATIONS 95
to be Sir Oliver Lodge—and then to deal
with him as if he had come forward with
some new opinions which rested entirely
upon his own assertion, with no reference to
the corroboration of so many independent
workers before him. This is not an honest
method of criticism, for in every case the
agreement of witnesses is the very root of
conviction. But as a matter of fact, there
are many single witnesses upon whom this
case could rest. If, for example, our only
knowledge of unknown forces depended
upon the researches of Dr. Crawford of Bel-
fast, who places his amateur medium in a
weighing chair with her feet from the
ground, and has been able to register a dif-
ference of weight of many pounds, corre-
sponding with the physical phenomena pro-
duced, a result which he has tested and re-
corded in a true scientific spirit of caution,
I do not see how it could be shaken. The
phenomena are and have long been firmly
established for every open mind. One feels
that the stage of investigation is passed, and
that of religious construction is overdue.
For are we to satisfy ourselves by observ-


96 THE NEW REVELATION
ing phenomena with no attention to what
the phenomena mean, as a group of Savages
might stare at a wireless installation with
no appreciation of the messages coming
through it, or are we resolutely to set our-
selves to define these subtle and elusive ut-
terances from beyond, and to construct from
them a religious scheme, which will be
founded upon human reason on this side and
upon spirit inspiration upon the other?
These phenomena have passed through the
stage of being a parlour game; they are now
emerging from that of a debatable scientific
novelty; and they are, or should be, taking
shape as the foundations of a definite system
of religious thought, in some ways confirma-
tory of ancient systems, in some ways en-
tirely new. The evidence upon which this
system rests is so enormous that it would
take a very considerable library to contain
it, and the witnesses are not shadowy people
living in the dim past and inaccessible to our
cross-examination, but are our own contem-
poraries, men of character and intellect
whom all must respect. The situation may,
as it seems to me, be summed up in a simple


PROBLEMS AND LIMITATIONS 97
alternative. The one supposition is that
there has been an outbreak of lunacy extend-
ing over two generations of mankind, and
two great continents—a lunacy which assails
men or women who are otherwise eminently
sane. The alternative supposition is that
in recent years there has come to us from
divine sources a new revelation which con-
stitutes by far the greatest religious event
since the death of Christ (for the Reforma-
tion was a re-arrangement of the old, not a
revelation of the new), a revelation which
alters the whole aspect of death and the fate
of man. Between these two suppositions
there is no solid position. Theories of fraud
or of delusion will not meet the evidence.
It is absolute lunacy or it is a revolution in
religious thought, a revolution which gives
us as by-products an utter fearlessness of
death, and an immense consolation when
those who are dear to us pass behind the veil.
I should like to add a few practical words
to those who know the truth of what I say.
We have here an enormous new develop-
ment, the greatest in the history of mankind.
How are we to use it? We are bound in


PROBLEMS AND LIMITATIONS 99
ers who are in correspondence with their
dead sons. In each case, the husband, where
he is alive, is agreed as to the evidence. In
only one case so far as I know was the parent
acquainted with psychic matters before the
War.
Several of these cases have peculiarities
of their own. In two of them the figures
of the dead lads have appeared beside the
mothers in a photograph. In one case the
first message to the mother came through a
stranger to whom the correct address of
the mother was given. The communication
afterwards became direct. In another case
the method of sending messages was to give
references to particular pages and lines of
books in distant libraries, the whole con-
veying a message. The procedure was to
weed out all fear of telepathy. Verily there
is no possible way by which a truth can be
proved by which this truth has not been
proved.
How are you to act? There is the diffi-
culty. There are true men and there are
frauds. You have to work warily. So far
as professional mediums go, you will not


PROBLEMS AND LIMITATIONS 101
norance and prejudice are a perpetual bar.
“It is hard to think your sons are dead, but
such a lot of people do think so. It is re-
volting to hear the boys tell you how no one
speaks of them ever. It hurts me through
and through.”
Above all read the literature of this sub-
ject. It has been far too much neglected,
not only by the material world but by be-
lievers. Soak yourself with this grand
truth. Make yourself familiar with the
overpowering evidence. Get away from the
phenomenal side and learn the lofty teach-
ing from such beautiful books as After
Death or from Stainton Moses’ Spirit
Teachings. There is a whole library of such
literature, of unequal value but of a high
average. Broaden and spiritualize your
thoughts. Show the results in your lives.
Unselfishness, that is the keynote to prog-
ress. Realise not as a belief or a faith, but
as a fact which is as tangible as the streets of
London, that we are moving on soon to an-
other life, that all will be very happy there,
and that the only possible way in which that
happiness can be marred or deferred is by


102 THE NEW REVELATION
folly and Selfishness in these few fleeting
years.
It must be repeated that while the new
revelation may seem destructive to those
who hold Christian dogmas with extreme
rigidity, it has quite the opposite effect upon
the mind which, like so many modern minds,
had come to look upon the whole Christian
scheme as a huge delusion. It is shown
clearly that the old revelation has so many
resemblances, defaced by time and mangled
by man's mishandling and materialism, but
still denoting the same general scheme, that
undoubtedly both have come from the same
source. The accepted ideas of life after
death, of higher and lower spirits, of com-
parative happiness depending upon our own
conduct, of chastening by pain, of guardian
spirits, of high teachers, of an infinite cen-
tral power, of circles above circles approach-
ing nearer to His presence—all of these con-
ceptions appear once more and are confirmed
by many witnesses. It is only the claims of
infallibility and of monopoly, the bigotry
and pedantry of theologians, and the man-
made rituals which take the life out of the








II
AUTOMATIC WRITING
THIS form of mediumship gives the very
highest results, and yet in its very nature is
liable to self-deception. Are we using our
own hand or is an outside power directing
it? It is only by the information received
that we can tell, and even then we have to
make broad allowance for the action of our
own subconscious knowledge. It is worth
while perhaps to quote what appears to me
to be a thoroughly critic-proof case, so that
the inquirer may see how strong the evidence
is that these messages are not self-evolved.
This case is quoted in Mr. Arthur Hill's re-
cent book Man Is a Spirit (Cassell & Co.)
and is contributed by a gentleman who takes
the name of Captain James Burton. He is,
I understand, the same medium (amateur)
through whose communications the position
of the buried ruins at Glastonbury have re-
112


II.4. THE NEW REVELATION
was afterwards told me in the script, with
the comment: “Tell your mother this, and
she will know that it is I, your father, who
am writing.’ My mother had been unable
to accept the possibility up to now, but when
I told her this she collapsed and fainted.
From that moment the letters became her
greatest comfort, for they were lovers dur-
ing the forty years of their married life, and
his death almost broke her heart.
“As for myself, I am as convinced that my
father, in his original personality, still ex-
ists, as if he were still in his study with the
door shut. He is no more dead than he
would be were he living in America.
“I have compared the diction and vocabu-
ulary of these letters with those employed in
my own writing—I am not unknown as a
magazine contributor—and I find no points
of similarity between the two.” There is
much further evidence in this case for which
I refer the reader to the book itself.


116 THE NEW REVELATION
mer of Tedworth, the Bells of Bealing, etc.,
startling the country for a time—each of
them being an impingement of unknown
forces upon human life. Then almost
simultaneously came the Hydesville case in
America and the Cideville disturbances in
France, which were so marked that they
could not be overlooked. From them sprang
the whole modern movement which, reason-
ing upwards from small things to great, from
raw things to developed ones, from phenom-
ena to messages, is destined to give religion
the firmest basis upon which it has ever
stood. Therefore, humble and foolish as
these manifestations may seem, they have
been the seed of large developments, and are
worthy of our respectful, though critical, at-
tention.
Many such manifestations have appeared
of recent years in various quarters of the
world, each of which is treated by the press
in a more or less comic vein, with a convic-
tion apparently that the use of the word
“spook” discredits the incident and brings
discussion to an end. It is remarkable that
each is treated as an entirely isolated phe-


118 THE NEW REVELATION
tinued, however, and increased in intensity,
taking the form now of actual blows from
moving material, considerable objects, such
as stones and bits of brick, flying past him
and hitting the walls with a violent impact.
Mr. Rolfe, still searching for a physical ex-
planation, went to Mr. Hesketh, the Munici-
pal Electrician of Folkestone, a man of high
education and intelligence, who went out to
the scene of the affair and saw enough to con-
vince himself that the phenomena were per-
fectly genuine and inexplicable by ordinary
laws. A Canadian soldier who was billeted
upon Mr. Rolfe, heard an account of the hap-
penings from his host, and after announcing
his conviction that the latter had “bats in his
belfry” proceeded to the dugout, where his
experiences were so instant and so violent
that he rushed out of the place in horror.
The housekeeper at the Hall also was a wit-
ness of the movement of bricks when no
human hands touched them. Mr. Jaques,
whose incredulity had gradually thawed be-
fore all this evidence, went down to the dug-
out in the absence of everyone, and was de-
parting from it when five stones rapped up


122 THE NEW REVELATION
fliction, to know that in the many cases which
have been carefully recorded there is none in
which any physical harm has been inflicted
upon man or beast.