FOR THE SABBATH.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 556, 5 April 1913, Page 2

FOR THE SABBATH.

RELIGIOUS BELIEFS OF SCIENTISTS.

Professor Balfour Stewart, Profes- j sor of Physics at Owens College, Manchester, as a physicist had a high and wrote many text books—"Treatise on Heat," "Elements of Physics," etc. Ho also contributed largely to the ''Encyclopaedia Britannica." He is regarded as on "one of the fuunders of the method of spectrum-analysis." Concerning the late professor, Mrs Stewart says:— "I may assure you of his firm faith in the religion of Christ." In 1887 the professor addressed the annual meeting of the Christian Evidence Society. He then said:— The controversy between religion and science is misnamed. It is not, and cannot possibly be, a controversy between religion and science, but it is rather between certiain theologians and certain men of science, and into such a controversy what is known in scientific phraseology as the 'personal equation' enters, unconsciously, no doubt, but yet largely." Discussing the credibility of miracles —of Christ's resurrection and ascension, he observed:—"Did the action of the known forces of nature hold good invariably on this occasion, or was it sometimes over-ridden by a higher force? Undoubtedly it was—unmistakably so in the resurrection and ascension of Christ. Of course we are bound to examine the evidence of these great events, and this had been done in a very complete manner; the history that records them has stood the test so well that any hypothesis other than that of their reality will undoubtedly lead us into great moral and spiritual confusion. Even our opponents will assent to this, but, then, they will tell us that they would rather put up with this moral and spiritual confusion than with the intellectual confusion that would necessarily follow a belief in the occurrence of these great events. Now, I deny that there is any such mental confusion. I pee no reason why the ordinary forces should not be modified occassionally by higher forces under such circumstances as those which accompanied the advent of Christ."

CAN WE BE SURE WE SHALL KNOW AND LOVE OUR DEAR ONES IN PARADISE?

There is a similar question on the same subject about the doctrine of purgatory, and, again, another: "Is it right to pray for the departed?" Let me anßwer those three questions together. Five minutes after death I believe we shall be the same as five minutes before, with one more change, une more incident in our existence. Death is only an incident in life; it is not the end of life; therefore, those whom we have loved are the same. "Behold and see that it is I Myself," said Jesus Christ. They must, then, still love us, they must be praying for us so we can go on remembering them in our prayers, too. "Grant them, O Lord., eternal rest, and let everlasting light shine upon them." This is what the Church has prayed from the earliest days. Now, if that is so, these three questions are answered. Surely we shall know our loved ones in Paradise, because they will be the same as one earth; a growth in grace in the sunny land of Paradise is what we may 1 >ok forward to for those we love. So, again, it would be simply tha most unnatural thing in the world for the mother who had prayed for her son all his life to cease to remember him before God because he had passed into the other world. It is quite true that the saints can do without our prayers, and the Church has only prayed -in a most general way for rest and light for them, leaving it to God to answer the prayer in His own way; but there need be no sense of anything wrong in remembering our dear ones before God, for the simple reason that they are not dead. They are more alive than they ever were before. —The Bishop of London,