July 1892 - The Emma Hardinge Britten Archive

Extracts fr.om the Second Volume of "Ghostland. 173
together in inextricable and seemingly meaningless confusion.
"There, Mr. Gray," said the poor artist, in a
perplexed tone and hopeless manner, " that is my precious
mediumship, and that is the stuff I have for years past
been obliged to scribble out under some spell-Heaven
alone knows what! for on earth no being has yet been
found who could explain why I do it, and what it aU
means."
" Here is one that can do so, I think," put in my friend
Dudley, pointing to me, at the same time giving such an
imploring glance towards the poor artist that I had not
the heart to decline the invitation now pressed upon me
from all quarters, firmly as I had determined not to speak
of my occult perceptions during my American investigations
of Spiritism.
Unable to retreat, however, I spoke as follows ;-
" Dear sir, I must remind you that we mortals live in
an external world, composed of the same kind of material
as that which in other combinations we call our bodies.
Our souls grow within these bodies, as in a mould, and
death, which releases, does not kill our souls, though it
returns our bodies back to the earth, to be taken up in
new forms.
H Just as our souls use matter as a mould to grow and
form in, so does the earth contain a soul world, invisible
to material e yes, but just as real and deathless as are the
souls which escape from our bodies. This soul world is
composed of realms of atmosphere, graded from the
thick gross air breathed by mortals, to realms of ether,
finer and more sublimated than mortals have ever dreamed
of. These graded atmospheres permeate one another,
the finer interpenetrating the more dense, but the most
rarified stretch away into spaces only limited by the sublimated
soul spheres of other planets. Thus is the
universe, as far as finite mind can explore it, filled with