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