THE LIFE BEYOND.

Taranaki Daily News, 3 January 1920, Page 6

THE LIFE BEYOND.

HEAVEN A LA DOYLE. ARCADIA OF STRENGTH AND ' BEAUTY. (From Our Special Correspondent). ' London, Nov. 8In "The New Revelation" Sir Arthur Conan Doyle submitted his confession of j belief in spiritualism. Now he goes a step further and carries the war into the sceptic's country. He is the spiritualist militant in "The Vital Message," just published by the firm of Hodder and Stoughton. In pursuance of this campaign he attacks representatives of the Press, who insist on test seances. How can spirits, he asks, be expected to make any reponse to these methods? The bereaved mother they will comfort. The unbereaved pressman they will turn their backs upon. Unfortunately for Sir Arthur's argument the spirits don't do anything of the kind. They usually turned up a£ these seances and indulge in puerile "manifestations" which only Serje to solidify the pressman's scepI ticism.

Sir Arthur proceeds to bludgeon the! aspersions on the race of mediums. They are no graspers after filthy lucre, it appears, but pure and unbiased seekers after truth. Some of them may be, but unfortunately many of those who have figureii in seances at which sceptical pressmen and others have been present have been proved to be "quite commercial" in their methods of seeking, whilst not a'few have been guilty of feathering their nests at the expense of credulous patrons.

Having drubbed his adversaries—past, present, and to conie—Sir Arthur proceeds to give samples of spirit messages which he and friends of his have received, and also quotes some interesting examples of spirit photography. But it isjto be feared that his discourses on these things will not remove the doubters' doubts, any more than his pen picture of heaven will carry conviction.

THE ARCADIA BEYOND. Yet it is an alluring picture he draws of life beyond the grave for those who behave themselves properly in this life. What the other place is like Sir Arthur does not venture to depict, but his heaven is a heap more pleasing to coiitemI plate than the one to which most of us had our thoughts directed in early youth, ,and in which the principal attractions were pearly gates, golden streets, white wings, harps and halog. "What we have both in mind and character," he writes, "we carry over with us, No man is too old to learn, for what he learns he keeps. There is no physical side to love, and no childbirth, though there is close union between people who really love each other, and generally there is deep sympathetic friendship and comradeship between the sexes. Every man or woman finds a soul-mate sooner or later." LONG REST CURE. According to Sir Arthur, arrangements are made in the next world to meet the cases of couples who are ill-matched on earth: —■ "It is a. world of sympathy," he declarbs. "Only those who have this tic foregather. The sullen husband, the flighty wife, is no longer there to plague the innocent spouse. All is sweet and peaceful. It is the long rest cure after the nerve strain of life. "The circumstances are homely and familiar. Happy circles live in pleasant homesteads with every amenity of beauty and of music. Beautiful gardens, lovely flowers, green woods, pleasant lakes, domestic pets—all of these things are fully described in the messages of the pioneer travellers who have at last: got news back to those who loiter in the old dingy home. There are no poor and no rich. The craftsman may still pursue his task, but he does it for the joy- of the work" , There will be no dull moments in the coming world. "It is a place of joy and laughter. There are games and sports of all sorts, though none which cause pain to lower life. Food and drink in the grosser sense do not exißt, but there Beem to be pleasures of taste." Children will grow older, and elderly people will become youthful. A balance of youth, beauty, and health will be struck: —• "The child grows up to the normal, so that the mother who lost a child of-two years old, and dies herself twenty years later, finds a grown-up daughter of twenty-two awaiting her coming. Age, which is produced chiefly by the median--1 ical presence of lime in our arteries, dis--1 appears, and the individual revert 9 to • the full normal growth and appearance ' of completed manhood or womanhood."

UGLINESS ABOLISHED. It is a land of hope and glory for the faded and enfeebled, physically and mentally :- - "Let no woman mourn her lost beauty and no man his lost strength and weakening brain," says Sir Arthur. "It all awaits them once more on the other side. Nor is any deformity ov bodily weakness there, for all is normal and at its best. . . . The same applies to all birthmarks, deformities, blindness, and other imperfections. None of them is permanent, and all will vanish ic that happier life that awaits us." In the new paradise men will be in congenial and famiVar surroundings:— "Every ewthly thing has its equivalent. Scoffers have guffawed over alcohol and tobacco, but if all things were reproduced it would be a flaw if these were not reproduced also. That they should be abused as they are here would, indeed, be evil tidings." Sir Arthur points out that the revelation "abolishes the idea of a grotesque hell and of a fantastic heaven."

Certainly it is a more acceptable idea nf paradise than has been put forward heretofore.