The Vital Message | Page 4

its purification, and its reinforcement by the facts of spirit
communion and the clear knowledge of what lies beyond the exit-door of death. The
shock of the war was meant to rouse us to mental and moral earnestness, to give us the
courage to tear away venerable shams, and to force the human race to realise and use the
vast new revelation which has been so clearly stated and so abundantly proved, for all
who will examine the statements and proofs with an open mind. Consider the awful
condition of the world before this thunder-bolt struck it. Could anyone, tracing back
down the centuries and examining the record of the wickedness of man, find anything
which could compare with the story of the nations during the last twenty years! Think of
the condition of Russia during that time, with her brutal aristocracy and her drunken
democracy, her murders on either side, her Siberian horrors, her Jew baitings and her
corruption. Think of the figure of Leopold of Belgium, an incarnate devil who from
motives of greed carried murder and torture through a large section of Africa, and yet was
received in every court, and was eventually buried after a panegyric from a Cardinal of
the Roman Church--a church which had never once raised her voice against his diabolical
career. Consider the similar crimes in the Putumayo, where British capitalists, if not
guilty of outrage, can at least not be acquitted of having condoned it by their lethargy and
trust in local agents. Think of Turkey and the recurrent massacres of her subject races.
Think of the heartless grind of the factories everywhere, where work assumed a very
different and more unnatural shape than the ancient labour of the fields. Think of the
sensuality of many rich, the brutality of many poor, the shallowness of many fashionable,
the coldness and deadness of religion, the absence anywhere of any deep, true spiritual
impulse. Think, above all, of the organised materialism of Germany, the arrogance, the
heartlessness, the negation of everything which one could possibly associate with the
living spirit of Christ as evident in the utterances of Catholic Bishops, like Hartmann of
Cologne, as in those of Lutheran Pastors. Put all this together and say if the human race
has ever presented a more unlovely aspect. When we try to find the brighter spots they
are chiefly where civilisation, as apart from religion, has built up necessities for the
community, such as hospitals, universities, and organised charities, as conspicuous in
Buddhist Japan as in Christian Europe. We cannot deny that there has been much virtue,
much gentleness, much spirituality in individuals. But the churches were empty husks,
which contained no spiritual food for the human race, and had in the main ceased to
influence its actions, save in the direction of soulless forms. This is not an over-coloured
picture. Can we not see, then, what was the inner reason for the war? Can we not
understand that it was needful to shake mankind loose from gossip and pink teas, and
sword-worship, and Saturday night drunks, and self- seeking politics and theological
quibbles--to wake them up and make them realise that they stand upon a narrow
knife-edge between two awful eternities, and that, here and now, they have to finish with
make-beliefs, and with real earnestness and courage face those truths which have always
been palpable where indolence, or cowardice, or vested interests have not obscured the
vision. Let us try to appreciate what those truths are and the direction which reform must
take. It is the new spiritual developments which predominate in my own thoughts, but
there are two other great readjustments which are necessary before they can take their full
effect. On the spiritual side I can speak with the force of knowledge from the beyond. On
the other two points of reform, I make no such claim. The first is that in the Bible, which

is the foundation of our present religious thought, we have bound together the living and
the dead, and the dead has tainted the living. A mummy and an angel are in most
unnatural partnership. There can be no clear thinking, and no logical teaching until the
old dispensation has been placed on the shelf of the scholar, and removed from the desk
of the teacher. It is indeed a wonderful book, in parts the oldest which has come down to
us, a book filled with rare knowledge, with history, with poetry, with occultism, with
folklore. But it has no connection with modern conceptions of religion. In the main it is
actually antagonistic to them. Two contradictory codes have been circulated under one
cover, and the result is dire confusion. The one is a scheme depending upon a special
tribal God, intensely anthropomorphic and filled with rage,