The unerring history of each person is written in the Summer Land. A man who lives for himself loses himself. If he wishes to gain the world he as certainly loses it. The immoralities of his purposes defeat him at every step, from cradle to coffin. But consolation is at hand. Death is a chemical screen through which individuals are passed to their true stations in the Summer Land. The spirit, the encasing soul, the life-centres, characteristics and motives pass through the death-strainer; but there are left with the physical body many of those hereditary predispositions and abnormal conditions which gave rise to discordant passions and false appetites. Their effects, however, pass through and remain with the individual long after he has attained his centre in the Summer Land. Individualities are not therefore destroyed by death. Nothing is changed save the dense physical form.
In the temperament and characteristics of the individual are laid the foundations of the different centres in the mansions of the Father's House. If the person starts from earth interiorly cleansed he will arrive at the next sphere in a purified condition; but if he leaves here with earthly and fleshly influences on the soul he will arrive at a corresponding centre with the accumulated effects of these still permeating the inner life and its affections. Thus radical differences in men and women cause different societies beyond, some of them embody-
ing the consequences of immoral motives and degraded purposes by which people have been actuated and made miserable in this world. This is a momentous truth. The Summer Land is a natural state, growing out of causes and effects as logically as today grew out of yesterday.1 It is made up of persons not only from all parts of this inhabitable globe but of far distant planets constituted like our own earth. All carry upon their faces, as well as in the secret chambers of their affections, the results of life on that globe which produced them. He who has been governed by high and beautiful motives instinctively seeks association with those who have been similarly actuated. He who has been led by low and demoralising motives seeks his like beyond. A man can elect his friends and gravitate to his own congenial Spirit Centre, until the redemptive evangel of regeneration—through repentance and progression—reaches his affections, and pure purposes are born within him. Progression from imperfection is a spiritual transaction, and societies in the unseen spheres are natural exponents of the interior realities of societies on different planets.
One of them is called Altolissa. Persons have returned from it and testified that while dwellers on earth they were influenced mainly by the idea of gaining money, position and power. These characteristics remain, and
personality in the Summer Land will take on that for which it has affinity. It will absorb from each society such influences as are in accordance with its magnetic powers and will exclude all others, from whatever source. But going through death has cleansed personalities largely of causes, leaving results treasured up in the affections, and there is benefit to this extent, rather than injury or degradation, by contact with unseen populations of like mind and character. The societies are necessarily on a higher plane than those to which they correspond on earth. But the plane is so slightly removed that it requires little inward change to feel at home.
It has been ascertained by conversations with those who have returned from the Summer Land that persons of demoralising motives in this life have the greatest density on their arrival. In Altolissa—where many go who have lived wholly under the influence of selfishness—the population seems about as comfortable as general society on earth. Jews believe still in the doctrine of their fathers—Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; Roman Catholics hold the views which they cherished before death; and similarly with other persuasions. Progressively and imperceptibly, this sphere will become better and more harmonious. Men will differ less and less upon fundamental principles, but endless varieties of convictions and affinities will prevail over details, and thus are the foundations laid for countless societies in the Summer Land. Death is largely a cleansing process and is the hope of the world, while the law of progress is such that even the active effects which accompany the individual cannot be perpetuated—as evils and discords—throughout eternity. A positive power reigns in the centre of the universe, and by the slow operation of its laws all personalities are purified from their imperfections. Only Eternal Good can exist eternally.
But here and now is the place to get under full sail
for a happier harbour.1 Each person can start on the right track before death. Today is better than tomorrow. All should begin at once to insure their entrance into superior societies. It is important to get a passport to harmonious centres in the Summer Land. Now is therefore the time for each to take his stand upon the solid rock of Truth and of those principles which will abide because they are eternal.