The Vital Message | Page 3

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THE VITAL MESSAGE BY ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE PREFACE
In "The New Revelation" the first dawn of the coming change has been described. In
"The Vital Message" the sun has risen higher, and one sees more clearly and broadly
what our new relations with the Unseen may be. As I look into the future of the human
race I am reminded of how once, from amid the bleak chaos of rock and snow at the head
of an Alpine pass, I looked down upon the far stretching view of Lombardy, shimmering
in the sunshine and extending in one splendid panorama of blue lakes and green rolling
hills until it melted into the golden haze which draped the far horizon. Such a promised
land is at our very feet which, when we attain it, will make our present civilisation seem
barren and uncouth. Already our vanguard is well over the pass. Nothing can now prevent
us from reaching that wonderful land which stretches so clearly before those eyes which
are opened to see it. That stimulating writer, V. C. Desertis, has remarked that the Second
Coming, which has always been timed to follow Armageddon, may be fulfilled not by a
descent of the spiritual to us, but by the ascent of our material plane to the spiritual, and
the blending of the two phases of existence. It is, at least, a fascinating speculation. But
without so complete an overthrow of the partition walls as this would imply we know
enough already to assure ourselves of such a close approximation as will surely deeply
modify all our views of science, of religion and of life. What form these changes may

take and what the evidence is upon which they will be founded are briefly set forth in this
volume.
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE.
CROWBOROUGH,
July, 1919.

CONTENTS


CHAPTER
I THE TWO NEEDFUL READJUSTMENTS II THE DAWNING OF THE LIGHT III
THE GREAT ARGUMENT IV THE COMING WORLD V IS IT THE SECOND
DAWN?
APPENDICES A. DR. GELEY'S EXPERIMENTS B. A PARTICULAR INSTANCE C.
SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHY D. THE CLAIRVOYANCE OF MRS. B.

THE VITAL MESSAGE


CHAPTER I
THE TWO NEEDFUL READJUSTMENTS
It has been our fate, among all the innumerable generations of mankind, to face the most
frightful calamity that has ever befallen the world. There is a basic fact which cannot be
denied, and should not be overlooked. For a most important deduction must immediately
follow from it. That deduction is that we, who have borne the pains, shall also learn the
lesson which they were intended to convey. If we do not learn it and proclaim it, then
when can it ever be learned and proclaimed, since there can never again be such a
spiritual ploughing and harrowing and preparation for the seed? If our souls, wearied and
tortured during these dreadful five years of self- sacrifice and suspense, can show no
radical changes, then what souls will ever respond to a fresh influx of heavenly
inspiration? In that case the state of the human race would indeed be hopeless, and never
in all the coming centuries would there be any prospect of improvement.
Why was this tremendous experience forced upon mankind? Surely it is a superficial
thinker who imagines that the great Designer of all things has set the whole planet in a
ferment, and strained every nation to exhaustion, in order that this or that frontier be
moved, or some fresh combination be formed in the kaleidoscope of nations. No, the
causes of the convulsion, and its objects, are more profound than that. They are
essentially religious, not political. They lie far deeper than the national squabbles of the
day. A thousand years hence those national results may matter little, but the religious

result will rule the world. That religious result is the reform of the decadent Christianity
of to-day, its simplification,