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This UECF.NET Web Book presents Visions of the Spiritual World by Sadhu Sundar Singh, first published in 1926 by Macmillan and Co., Limited (London, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras, Melbourne) together with The Macmillan Company (New York, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco) and The Macmillan Co. of Canada, Ltd. (Toronto). The full title on the 1926 title page is Visions of the Spiritual World: A Brief Description of the Spiritual Life, Its Different States of Existence, and the Destiny of Good and Evil Men as Seen in Visions.
Author. Sadhu Sundar Singh (1889 – disappeared 1929), the Indian Christian evangelist and ascetic. See About Sadhu Sundar Singh below.
Origin of the text. Sundar Singh explains in his Preface that the visions recorded here began at Kotgarh some fourteen years before writing, and that the book was written (in Urdu) at Subathu in July 1926. It was translated into English by the Rev. T. E. Riddle of the New Zealand Presbyterian Mission, Kharar, Punjab, and the proofs were corrected by Miss E. Sanders of Coventry. The Foreword is signed “H. B. Lahore” — that is, the Bishop of Lahore — and dated Simla, 6th August 1926.
This reading text. The Foreword, Preface and all seven chapters presented here have been transcribed from the OCR text of two independent Internet Archive scans of the 1926 Macmillan first edition, cross-checked against each other word for word:
- Internet Archive — uploaded by Peter-John Parisis (the primary source referenced for this Web Book)
- Internet Archive — a second, independently OCR’d scan of the same 1926 edition, used to cross-check the text
Where the two scans agreed, the wording is presented as printed. A small number of unambiguous OCR letter-scramble errors (for example a dropped or transposed letter that produces a non-word, such as “earnesily” for “earnestly”) have been corrected only where both scans, read in context, make the intended word certain. Sundar Singh’s own wording, Scripture citation style (as printed, e.g. “Matt. 18:3”), spelling and paragraphing are otherwise left exactly as in the 1926 edition. Sub-headings such as “Sons of Light” and “The Withered Fig Tree” are printed in the book itself as running heads within each chapter; they are preserved here as on-page sub-headings for readability, not invented by UECF.NET.
What is not reproduced. UECF.NET has not attempted to re-key the book’s original page numbers, running headers, or the exact line breaks of the 1926 typesetting; the text is presented as continuous reading paragraphs with the chapter and sub-heading structure of the original preserved.
Rights and public-domain status. Sadhu Sundar Singh died in 1929, and the book was first published in 1926; the work is in the public domain in the United States as a pre-1930 publication, and its copyright term has also lapsed in life-plus-70-year jurisdictions. The uploader of the primary Internet Archive source has additionally marked that scan CC0 1.0 Universal (public domain dedication). UECF.NET presents this reading text on that basis. If any reader has evidence of a surviving rights claim to a specific later edition or translation not covered by the above, please contact info@uecf.net.
Scripture. Sundar Singh cites Scripture in the wording and abbreviation style of his day. Where a citation is unambiguous it is linked to the UECF.NET NKJV Bible for convenient lookup; the on-page wording and citation numbers remain exactly as printed in 1926.
Related on UECF.NET. With and Without Christ (Sadhu Sundar Singh, 1929), the Christian Authors page, and the English Christian Books library.
Cover. The cover and Open Graph image are original UECF.NET graphics in the site’s Web Book style; the 1926 Macmillan edition was issued in a plain cloth binding and this is not a reproduction of a publisher’s jacket.