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DEMONSTRATION OF THE SUMMER LAND¹

The subject of research is embodied in the following affirmation: There is an inhabitable zone, or a circular belt of refined and stratified matter in the heavens, here denominated the Summer Land.²

As to the possibility, it is not going beyond the sphere of facts, verified by telescopic observation, to suppose

¹ See A Stellar Key to the Summer Land, pp. 18 et seq., extracted and collated.
² It is to be noted that in his first work, as summarised in the previous section, Davis gives account of the external beauties appertaining to the Second Sphere in so far as he had investigated or reflected concerning them at that time. He had not then conceived the characteristic denomination of Summer Land, and it is to be noted that he has nothing to say on the return of departed spirits to this earth—for manifestation or otherwise. The explanation is that his long series of discourses in the magnetic state anteceded the Rochester knockings which sounded the advent of modern spiritualism. He describes the Spiritual Sphere as containing all beauties of the natural combined and perfected. Thus every earth is an index of grandeurs in the unseen world, because the spiritual is unfolded from the natural. The surface of the Second Sphere is said—as we have seen—to present gentle undulations and very extensive plains, clothed with great fertility. The figurative nature of his vision is indicated when he describes these plains as gardens of purity, unity and celestial love. Their diversified paths lead from prospect to prospect, all of which display Divine Love and Wisdom. Flowers and leaves are like voices proclaiming interior perfection and the Infinite Source from which they spring. Rivers of clear and placid waters flow through the gardens and are representations of creation and life. There are also enchanting groves which naturally suggest new and beautiful thoughts.—The Principles of Nature, pp. 653-655. The object of repeating these indications is to suggest the parabolic nature of all the visions.

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the organisation of such a zone in the heavens. Its probability as a material reality will dawn first upon that mind which understands the causative principles within the belt-building manifestations of cosmical matter. Astronomers testify to the existence of immense zones of matter and that these zones not only continue unbroken for countless ages but revolve like the planets, each on its own centre or mathematical axis. This scientific testimony lays a foundation for confidence in the existence of an inner universe of exceeding beauty and glory. Although at present neither intellectually nor telescopically seen, it seems to me that the honest mind cannot but give due weight to facts and principles of a more interior nature, of which planetary formations and revolutions are merely the physical manifestations. It becomes the true philosopher to turn from the phenomenal realm and from visible facts to an examination of causes and principles behind them, and thereafter to ponder well the far-reaching and fruitful lessons which they impart. All that we know depends on the connection of things one with another, and it is only by contemplating creation as a whole that we can attain true conceptions of its parts.

There are two most important discoveries in science: (1) The persistence and indestructibility of force, and (2) the interpolarity and universal convertibility of force. The first is termed the conservation and the second the correlation of force, teaching the divine lesson that all forces as well as all forms in the universe are immortal brothers and sisters. From these splendid discoveries we obtain a Stellar Key to the Summer Land. Force is as substantial and real as matter itself: nay, more, the materialism of matter melts away in the spiritualism of intelligent principles. Our next step is into the realm whence forces emanate—into the sacred presence of Intelligence, Will, Spirit. These are convertible into electrical, chemical, magnetic, and finally into mechani-

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cal force, for spirit is substance and everything is rooted therein. According to modern science, heat, light, electricity, magnetism are different modes of motion—that is to say expressions of force. It should be led in this manner to discover that the universe is essentially dual and that manifestations of energy are modes of an eternal substance which is negatively Matter and positively Mind—themselves forms or conditions of one central Reality. Our philosophy is therefore that the universe is a twofold unity, or two eternal manifestations of two substances which at heart are one, but twain in the realms of cause and effect. In the absence of better words we term these Matter and Mind—inter- changeable, convertible, essentially identical, eternally harmonious, wedded by the polarities of positive and negative forces.

The link or bond which unites the positive side or Mind to the negative side or Matter is found in essence¹; but in finer analysis it is more correct to term Mind and Matter Spirit, having two forms of manifestation. Matter is thus relieved from the idea of grossness, while mind is reclaimed from its long exile in the solitudes of unapproachable immateriality. There will be established in this manner a harmony of relationship between exterior and interior universes; the polarity of all forms and forces in Nature; the descent of Spirit to earth and the ascent of earth to Spirit; the eternity and unity of both hemispheres of the Univerccelum. To ascertain the certainty of that zone called the Summer Land we must follow Nature's pathway from causes to effects. Here is

¹ This link is mentioned in The Principles of Nature, p. 599, as a mediatorial form connecting the soul and the body, and it is said also that a trinity of such kind exists in every substance, whether mineral, vegetable or animal. This mediatorial form in man does not, however, seem to be the psychic body which Davis at a much later period began suddenly to call the soul and made it intermediate between the individualised spirit and the body of flesh,

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her unalterable code—that visible forms are effects which flow from corresponding invisible causes. A man's body is the effect of an interior vivifying, organising, sustaining, spiritual individuality.¹ It elaborated his brain, heart, senses, all parts of his physical temple, though each is modified more or less by parental and circumstantial influences, both before and after birth. Applying this principle to the organisation of the stellar universe, what endowed matter with the universal tendency to form globes, roll out into immense zones, stratify as revolving belts, and move in circular paths through immensity? There is but one answer. The spiritual universe is composed of globes, zones and belts which move harmoniously in circles of causation through vaster and more interior heavens. Men look through telescopes and discern the outermost garments of hidden spheres of light. There is just as much certainty that the Summer Land exists as that our mind exists.² The eternal law of cause and effect is that on which both depend. Man's body is the demonstration of an interior, antecedent, corresponding, formative individuality; and the solar system is the demonstration of an interior, antecedent, corresponding, formative spiritual universe.

The earth's distance from the Spiritual Sphere alters according to its position in the annual journey round the sun.³ Sometimes the space is only about fifty millions

¹ Compare many previous counter-statements, according to which individuality is the end rather than the beginning. See also p. 127.
² The question as to what is the Summer Land is asked and answered in Beyond the Valley, p. 255, as follows: It is the heaven where springtime and harvest-abundance are perpetual. It encircles and outshines an immensity of inhabited worlds, each of which is a spiritual vestibule to the Temple "not made with hands." Compare The Magic Staff, p. 339, which terms the Second Sphere a compendium of pre-existent universes.
³ The plane of the orbit of the Summer Land is said to be apparently at an angle of 20 with that of the sun. The reference is presumably to the First Summer Land, which is affirmed to revolve near the grand orbit of the Milky Way.—A Stellar Key to the Summer Land, p. 159. As

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of miles across. At others—when earth is near the opposite end of the ellipse—it is nearly four times more distant. The tide of the celestial river sometimes flows fast as light and in certain localities faster, yet the shortest time occupied is one hour and twenty-five minutes in a bodily journey from earth to the nearest shore. To more remote localities the distance is sometimes nearly two hundred millions of miles. Now, it is a fact that we rarely obtain direct intelligence from persons who lived in the most ancient ages of human history, while even many modern philosophers, since their death, have given no evidence of continued existence. The inconceivable intervening distance is one of the favourite journeys taken by some of the brightest minds which have lived on earth. It is accomplished both by land and stream, and also by atmospheric excursions. Remember, however, the estimated distance between the Pleiades and our solar system, the five hundred years occupied in the travelling of light between that cluster and our human eyes. What then is the length of time required by missionaries and teachers to make a single journey through some distant mansions of the Father's infinite temple?

If it be asked whether a spirit requires space in which to exist and time to make its transit from place to place, the answer is yes, and absolutely. The inconceivable rapidity of thought itself involves time, and this has been measured correctly; but a spirit is not a thought: it is a personal, bodily, substantial existence.¹ Like every

regards the location of the higher spheres, they lie within one another, but Davis speaks always of spirits ascending in their progress through spiritual worlds, which suggests that the First Summer Land is centre-most, though it does not probably represent his meaning.
¹ It is said with equal plainness that the spiritual world is as substantial to the spirit-body as the earth upon which we walk is to the natural body.—The Great Harmonia, Vol. V, p. 410. This is reiterated elsewhere, though the repetitions of Davis by no means make for unity in conception. See The Present Age and the Inner Life, p. 413, where—in opposition to

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other body, space is indispensable to its presence and time is required for its movement. This being so, and as eternity is an impossible conception unless it is divided into times, while infinity can be approached only through separation into spaces, the eternal progression of man means and can mean only an endless succession of periods through which his mind makes pilgrimages.¹ It retains identity by remembering the essences of past experiences, apart from their details. In this manner it keeps the universe new for ever, its own spiritual appetites healthy and its aspirations eternally youthful. The human mind has aphelions and perihelions like the sun. It travels to the extreme of its orbit in one great sphere, retraces its steps to the centre, and then starts—planet-like—on another journey through the boundless fields of an unfathomable Univercoelum.

It follows that no human mind can comprehend what there is to see, meet, feel, hear and know even in the next or Second Sphere, beyond which—so far as is yet known—no person born on earth has ever advanced. But the love, will and wisdom of the Summer Land are in sympathetic correspondence with the Great Positive Centre of the infinite whole. There is the focus of essential principles at which all may seek information, when prepared inwardly. It is a focus of mental progression and spiritual truth which must be sought by love and absorbed by wisdom. To this Spiritual Sun I go for information, and by contact with it—while in the superior condition—I receive impressions.

The discovery of relationship between the material

other statements and to one of those very bad diagrams which occasionally illustrate his text—it is affirmed that the substantial world of the Summer Land is a sphere, having latitudes, longitudes, poles, revolutions, atmospheres, with all the phenomena which appertain to the present world, but one degree superior—in point of beauty, refinement and every other respect—to the best planet in our solar system.
¹ As explained in a former note, the infinite and eternal are not subject to division or separation.

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and spiritual universe, founded on immutable laws, cannot but astonish the boldest poetic imagination and excite the opposition of those who rely for "positive knowledge" upon the testimony of their five senses.¹ The discovery of gravitation was not a thousandth part as important as the disclosure of an inhabited belt of solid spiritualised matter in the heavens, adapted to the new bodies of those who withdraw from this planet through the process called death. The revelation of the shining belt has arrived by degrees, coming through hazy glimmerings of intuition from remotest ages, contemplated by analogical reasoners, demonstrated to spiritualists by messages distinct and positive, telling of a home in the solemn abysses of space, and seen by clairvoyants, who have described the thronging hosts which people that substantial sphere in the bosom of the heavens. The relationship and sympathy between the orbs of immensity, between this world and that of risen humanity, are recognised by intuition and reason. Looking far into the ages past, I find conceptions of realities pertaining to a higher sphere of human existence. The intuition of past generations, like the reason of those now living, offers no conflicting testimony on the possibility of an inhabitable sphere in space, now called the Summer Land. Scientific astronomy has expanded men's minds with respect to the magnitudes and splendours of the universe. But it is my impression that the resolution of nebulae into millions of suns is but a glance within the vestibule of the Eternal Temple. The measureless systems which roll in their harmonial circles shine upon landscapes more beautiful and into eyes more divine than ours.

1 See A Stellar Key to the Summer Land, pp. 5 et seq.