“SCIENCE CONFIRMS FAITH ”

Hawera Star, Volume L, 10 January 1931, Page 16

“SCIENCE CONFIRMS FAITH ”

OJR. Oliver 'Lodge, the eminent seieulist, in simple phrases and illustration born of conviction, has just given his reply to the criticisms by clergymen of his striking address at Bristol on the life after death.

“My attitude,'’ he said, “is this: There are two camps, the spiritualists and the scientists. I take my stand midway between mem, and all I seek to do is to show that there is a point at which their interests converge and meet. “I say science hitherto has been working in the material universe. Now it should begin :.o extend its boundaries, for, to my mind, there have been discoveries in the spirit tint universe. I don’t say these d ; .se >.'cries have been mad?: foi the first time. “I say science has discovered a scientific truth in chat religions people have always held by faith to be true; “This seems to me to be an advance in that it brings the spiritual and the physical together.’’ Sir Oliver, referring to the comment of the Rev. J. A. Sharp, president of the National Free ' Church Council, that he had, never yet. been satisfied that communications with the dead were real, said: “Well, that means he knows, nothing about them; that is all. There was a time when I was in the same predicament. Now I know there arc communications. Indeed, that is how J know there are people there. “I have had talks with my son [Raymond, who was Killed in Ute war] and with others. “I realise that the communications are trivial sometimes. That is often the best sort of communication for a start.

“‘This is best illustrated by an example. Suppose you are on the far

Talks With the Dead

end of a telephone and the people at the other end do not believe it is you —tliey think, perhaps, that you are dead. I Low do you make it clear that it is vou?

“You do not begin by talking politics or religion. You say, ‘This is So-and-so, all right. Don’t you remember me and how I fell down in the garden that day and cut my shin?’ That is the first step in establishing identity. “After that, when you know they are willing to talk arid know who they are, you begin to hear about their lives on the other side, and the communications are no longer trivial. “Another example can meet the question of Dr Townsend, principal oL ! the Baptist College, Manchester, who says that if his mother had anything to say to him she would say it to him and not through some half-dazed medium.

“If she were alive, would she attempt to send him a telegram direct? Of course she could not. She would have to send it through the ordinary telegraphic channels, and to the men handling her message it -woiild menu nothing. It would only have a meaning to the person to whom it was sent. “It is just the same with a medium, and it is obvious t.hat in a matter such as this we have to use the channel available to us.”

Sir Oliver tersely replied to those who criticised him on the score of having discovered something known to Christmas for nearly 2000 years. “1 do not criticise Christian truths as such,” he said. “I simply say that, scientifically, they are not authoritative.

“f don’t wish to interfere with people who are satisfied by the religious point of view. ”