The New Revelation by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I can now turn with some relief to a more impersonal view of this great / subject. Allusion has been made to a body of fresh doctrine. Whence / does this come? It comes in the main through automatic writing where / the hand of the human medium is controlled, either by an alleged dead / human being, as in the case of Miss Julia Ames, or by an alleged higher / teacher, as in that of Mr. Stainton Moses. These written / communications are supplemented by a vast number of trance utterances, / and by the verbal messages of spirits, given through the lips of / mediums. Sometimes it has even come by direct voices, as in the / numerous cases detailed by Admiral Usborne Moore in his book The / Voices. Occasionally it has come through the family circle and / table-tilting, as, for example, in the two cases I have previously / detailed within my own experience. Sometimes, as in a case recorded by / Mrs. de Morgan, it has come through the hand of a child.

Now, of course, we are at once confronted with the obvious / objection -- how do we know that these messages are really from beyond? / How do we know that the medium is not consciously writing, or if that / be improbable, that he or she is unconsciously writing them by his or / her own higher self? This is a perfectly just criticism, and it is one / which we must rigorously apply in every case, since if the whole world / is to become full of minor prophets, each of them stating their own / views of the religious state with no proof save their own assertion, we / should, indeed, be back in the dark ages of implicit faith. The answer / must be that we require signs which we can test before we accept / assertions which we cannot test. In old days they demanded a sign from / a prophet, and it was a perfectly reasonable request, and still holds / good. If a person comes to me with an account of life in some further / world, and has no credentials save his own assertion, I would rather / have it in my waste-paperbasket than on my study table. Life is too / short to weigh the merits of such productions. But if, as in the case / of Stainton Moses, with his Spirit Teachings, the doctrines which are / said to come from beyond are accompanied with a great number of / abnormal gifts -- and Stainton Moses was one of the greatest mediums in / all ways that England has ever produced -- then I look upon the matter in / a more serious light. Again, if Miss Julia Ames can tell Mr. Stead / things in her own earth life of which he could not have cognisance, and / if those things are shown, when tested, to be true, then one is more / inclined to think that those things which cannot be tested are true / also.