MESSAGES FROM THE DEAD.

Press, Volume LV, Issue 16424, 18 January 1919, Page 5

MESSAGES FROM THE DEAD.

SIR COXAX DOYLE AND THE "NEW REVELATION."

The following remarkable interviewappeared in a recent issuo of tho London "Evening News": —

On the day that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's young and brilliant son died in »St. Thomas's Hospital, Sir Arthur himself was speaking in the country on Spiritualism and the theme that there is no death, but only a. paesing beyond a veil. it was 021 this theme that I saw Sir Arthur. He was reluctant 'to talk about it because, he said, sad ex--perience had taught him that it was not easy to get the subject discussed with reverence; and it is, ho added, ono that must be discussed with reverence when men are dying in battle and the hearts of their survivors are pining for some revelation that tho link is not broken. "We have that revelation," said Sir Arthur. "I have been on this quest for thirty years, and I say that we have the revelation and wo must carry it throughout the country as the new religion. l, lt is the greatest revelation for two thousand years. Religion has hopelessly broken down —I mean by that, formal religion. Lutherauism has given -us these Prussian devils on the one hand, and on the other Roman Catholicism has given us the Bavarian. ' 'It may fairly be asked by the formal religionists: 'Yes, but if a man throws aside his religion and becomes a devil, what then?' T cay that is tho religion which must take up the man, not the man the religion. It must so seize him that he.is unable to throw_ it aside and act devilishly. The Prussian who puts on a military belt with tho motto 'Gott mit uns' imagines he has something there, and there is nothing. "We must add to religion—we must add something now that tho war has shown Us the breakdown of formal religion, when millions of rtien and women are looking as they never have done before for a sign and a consolation. ' 'Some time ago I said 1 knew of thirteen mothers—thirteen—who wcro receiving direct messages from sons who i had passed away. Doubt was expressed i —gentle doubt—by a newspaper, which asked: 'Who arc'the mothers? What aro their names?' Well, I know thirty mothers now who are receiving these messages. ' "I have had a letter from a British Corps Commander who lost his son, assuring me that they are in communication. Here vou havo a warrior, a responsible, hard-fighting, level-headed British soldier—not the long-haired visionary, tho caricature, who stands in the mind of flippant, uninformed pcoplo as the type of Spiritualist. "I have addressed many meetings in tho country, and I am addressing more, and we shall have the Albert Hall_ ior London audiences later 011. It might be as well for me .to say, in passing, that I take 110 fees and make no money profit/out of these meetings. "I find the most intense earnestness everywhere amonjj the audiences, and at Nottingham, for instance, more people were outside the hall, unable to find room, than were inside. "To me tho 'New Revelation' is beyond question. My book under that title has been published only a few months, yet this'new religion has made great bounds forward. And we shall bring the proof to millions of people." There was a personal matter, of his own son, who had died. Sir Arthur said he was informed of it as ho was going to his Nottingham meeting. It was a severe trial and test. The relation between belief and tho particular personal loss could not be discussed. "But Sir Arthur, speaking at this hour, did say, for the comfort of others: "A mother, a father, firm in the now revelation, knows that the one who departed is no farther away than vou who sit in a chair a yard away."