IMMORTALITY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 124, 29 May 1933, Page 16

IMMORTALITY.

CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. ADDRESS BY DR. RANSTON. Lecturing under the auspices of the Auckland Council of Christian Congregations at the Concert Chamber yesterday afternoon, the Rev. Dr. Ranston, principal of Trinity Methodist College, took for his subject "Personal Immortality." Sir' George Fowlds presided. Dr. Ranston said that to himself personally the resurrection of Jesus Christ made faith in personal immortality a triumphant certainty; yet his business there was to argue the matter on other grounds. The term "immortality" was often misapplied. It should not be used for belief in the survival only of influence after death, nor for the idea that merely the personal values achieved were preserved in the final perfection of the race or nation, nor for the belief that one lived on in on'e's posterity, nor for the idea of final absorption in a sea of deity or the infinite. All those views denied that survival of individual personality which was the essence of true immortality. Neither was the doctrine of rebirth or reincarnation satisfactory, for there it was less a person with a personal memory that survived than a something which had little vital connection with the present life. The lecturer confessed himself puzzled on the subject of spiritism. The scientific authorities themselves were divided, some claiming that experimental investigation -had proved human survival after death, others accepting the various explanations of deception, the workings of subconscious or unconscious mind, telepathy, clairvoyance. The evidence certainly grew stronger for such survival, but the sort of life portrayed was a poor substitute for that of the Christian hope.

Sir James Frazer's researches had proved the universality of belief among primitive peoplesJn some form of future life. Now, that consensus was rather of experience than due to rational deduction. Men held the,view before they •reasoned 'about It. The invariable and universal agreement was of no small importance. "Inevitable." * With the Christian doctrine of God and its estimate of man, immortality was inevitable. "If God be love," he said, "He cannot deny Himself by allowing His children to perish, and if man be not mere clay, but a creature of immense moral and spiritual potentialities, his nature demands fuller opportunities than are afforded here- of expression." Since there was no perfect justice in this life, another was demanded for the reversal of human judgments and the vindication of goodness. . Our finest ideals and noblest de-

sires were unsatisfied now. Immortality was demanded if goodness, beauty and truth were to be conserved.- If this world were ultimately to be a frozen, lifeless world, then without personal survival all human values of intellectual achievement, moral and spiritual discipline, and love were wasted, and man was a shadow pursuing shadows in a universe which was but. a slaughterhouse. That was to make nonsense, out of life. As we grew older we were just becoming fit to live. Mind and Brain. The one vital objection to peraonal immortality, he said, was a common belief that science held that all consciousness' depended on the brain, 'and that it completely ceased when the body perished. But that was the unproved dogma of some men only, and was vehemently opposed by many of the greatest scientists. Since telepathy had shown that mind could communicate to mind apart from the usual bodily channels, it was not unscientific to think that personal consciousness survived the cessation of the body. The destruction of the brain could have no more effect on the existence of the mind than the breaking of a violin on the genius of the musician. The arguments were ' cumulative, and found their confirmation and added assurance in the revelation of Christ Himeelf in the New Testament.