THE FUTURE LIFE

Southland Times, Issue 18622, 21 August 1919, Page 6

THE FUTURE LIFE

Sir A. Conan Doyle, lecturing at the Queen’s Hall, London, in June, on Death ißnd the Hereafter,” said that the messages he had received gave a complete description of death, and to some extent meant the abolition of death, certainly the abolition of the fear of death. There was au etheric body, he continued, which St. Paul called the spiritual body, meaning not the spirit but the body in which the spirit was, and this was called by i the spiritualists the etheric body. Scientific discoveries had shown that the physical body was permeated with elher. At the moment of death the etheric body—this spiritual facsimile of the other—passed over. It disengaged itself until it found itself looking at its own body. So it was that the dead body would endeavour to communicate with the sorrowing relatives, but failed because its voice was differently tuned. The conditions of the other world, the lecturer said, were remarkably like our own, raised to a higher sphere, more beautiful, ethereal, and infinitely more happy. It was a ‘‘rest cure” after the troubles and trials of this life. Here man knew his worst, there man knew his best. There he realised God was not a taskmaster, but a God or love, giving pleasure with both hands. That tvas the normal life beyond. Spiritualists knew that this was not a dream, because they had details of the finest degree and extent. As to Hell, what had the messages to say ? As would be expected, they were couched in the terms of mercy and kindness which went with the higher religious thought. Punishment to his mind was that the spirit would be more heavily weighted with earthly matter and the spirit’s progress would be retarded thereby. The Chifrch for 50 years had talked of “diabolism” instead of being alive to the truth of spiritualism and bringing it into its own fold.