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the witnesses who were present when these things were delivered
at 252 Spring street, New York, in the winter and spring of 1847.
(See "Introduction to Nature's Divine Relations.")
Now, if I stood before you as an intellectual speculator, a
theorist as a person who had pre-determined to wrest historical
facts, to twist them, to mold them, to fashion them by the
legerdemain of an anti-conscientious intellect, and by the force of
imagination shape my facts to suit a foregone conclusion then
indeed I should not be for one moment worthy your respectful
attention. Because, in such case, I should be an imaginationist and
a perjured witness, self-condemned, and I could not longer speak;
the words of my native tongue would cleave to the roof of my
mouth, and I should be internally forced to breathe in the midst of
self-consternations, and I know no power that could extricate me
from the terrible embarrassment that would overwhelm my whole
soul.
But I do not stand before you in any such capacity. I am not a
theorist; not an imaginationist; not a lawyer. My position is that of
a person, who, without forethought or intellectual preparation,
became slowly acquainted with realities and scenes that were
transmitted, or "impressed," day by day, from a higher sphere,
until two whole years had transpired; and then, at the end of those
two years, by a blessed mental
54 SOCIETY IN THE SUMMER-LAND.
unfolding, which only the spiritual metaphysicians can truly
explain to your understanding, the beautiful memories which had
been thus gradually deposited within me came out and stood in the
foreground, and said, "Rememberest thou these things?"
instantly my external life, with its memories, was blended and
married sweetly at the altar of the "superior condition!" So well do
I remember it! In the city of beautiful Poughkeepsie, vividly,
indeed, like a conscious flower, pulsated the clear facts of that
new birth. And I stand before you as one who has continued these
sublime investigations every forenoon, whenever my physical and
external conditions were favorable for an entire cerebral
abstraction by which the physical world is shut out, and the
spiritual senses opened and then pictures and scenes of immortal
beauty have been painted on the spirit's retina, such limpid
realities as no pencil can possibly imitate on canvas, nor poetry
transfer in language, to the mind of man.
I appear before you, not as testifying in support of a theory, but
to relate what I have seen as literal celestial verities. No theory
can long exist which does not walk in the track of these
indubitable facts. Nor can any philosophy long stand unless it
comes to you just as these celestial facts came to me, in a logical
sequence, following like flowing water along the unchangeable
channels of Cause and Effect. Pardoning so much self-history, you
will, I think, allow me now to ask your attention briefly to a
philosophical basis for what I shall relate.
In the year 1850 I began a chapter by asking the question "Is
human nature immortal?" The same
 SOCIETY IN THE SUMMER-LAND. 55
question is before me now. Who is the infidel among you?
Christians I you who profess to believe so much better and finer
and truer things than I do, you who pan current in the outward
world for being "orthodox" in your persuasion, I ask you: "Is
immortality a part of your conviction?" If it is not, then some
other method, and some stouter proof, will be necessary to implant
it in your judgment. But if it is, then I ask you: "Is immortality
possible except on the supposition that you are to continue forever
to be yourself?" Is human nature, the individuality, to be changed
in the twinkling of an eye? Can your personal nature be
supernaturally-changed and converted into something different ten
minutes after death, or at the moment of the Resurrection? can
such a metempsychosis take place and you still continue to be
yourself? What kind of an immortality is that? For you, James and
Mary, to be immortal, it is immutably necessary that you should
continue to be James and Mary, and not others. When your
neighbors, relatives, and intimate acquaintances arrive beyond the
grave, they must be to you, and to themselves, the continuation of
the individual life-chapters here commenced to be written,
otherwise they are utter strangers to each other in all logical
effects they would be new persons and thus the doctrine of
immortality would be nothing, although individuals might forever
dwell in the higher realms.
If immortality be a truth, then Christians cannot with reason
say to me that I am uttering one word contrary to the divine
system of the celestial, spiritual, and physical universe. If they
repudiate immortality, then I am the Christian that is, the
believer. I do not wish
56 SOCIETY IN THE SUMMER-LAND.
to arrogate the former term; for, as the so-styled Christian world
now goes, I do not think the name is either much of a compliment
or recommendation. The doctrine of immortality is in the world's
religious faith. If it be accepted by the intellect, it must be on the
principle that mankind continue the life begun in this world. How
can a man be after death what he was on earth, unless he be
distinguished by the same structure, unless the same general
mental conformation continues, unless be remains possessed of
the same general physique, and the same general arrangement of
faculties and dispositions of temperament, which give him
individuality and a marked personal position with reference to
others in this world?
This reasoning I take as the first layer of basis, which may
render the idea of immortality somewhat philosophical.
Again I ask you who are openly avowed "Deists," I mean those
Unitarian Christians who believe in God whether, if there be a
God, who, as they sky, is "without variableness or shadow of
turning" is He to be, or appear to be, an entirely different Person
or Power in another state of being? Can an omnipotent
unchangeable, deathless Deity, be something entirely different
when mankind ascend beyond the present, "Dearer to God"? You
know that Deity, in the world's theologic conception, is a perfect,
single man large, vast, beyond all measurement, yet a man! and
that the emanation from his holy spirit goes out to fill, and thrill,
and vivify the illimitable spaces of the universe. This last
diffusion of the holy spirit is what some Christians call "the
Divine proceeding," the omnipresence
 SOCIETY IN THE SUMMER-LAND. 57
of the spirit of God, taking the name of the Holy Ghost."
Now I ask you whether, in your honest opinion, it be possible
for an unchangeable God to change his nature and his balance? If
he does not, it being intrinsically impossible, then would it not be
natural and reasonable to suppose that another existence adapted
to mankind would be simply another section, or a higher degree,
of the existence begun here? Is it not logical to believe that what is [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]