The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-04-16
EWING PREACHED
 ON RESURRECTION Easter Sermon at Church of the Advent Yesterday MUST CONSIDER EVIDENCE Many Deny the Resurrecton-Faith Because of Somebody's Picture
 of Heaven or Descrip-
 tion of Hell.
 
MUST CONSIDER EVIDENCE

The Rev. Quincy Ewing preached at the Church of the Advent yesterday on the subject, Have We Any Proof of The Resurrection of the Dead" His text was Acts 2s, 9th verse, and he said
 Has it been proved, or may it ever be. that death does not involve the loss of personal consciousness and character? We are accustomed to use ordinary words in so many different senses, that our an- swer 10 this question must vary in ac- eordanee with what we mean when VIC speak of thing as proved. If we mean that an alleged fact is proved only when to doubt it is impossible, as when we show that straight ilne measures the short est distance between two points, or that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles--if that is what We mean, then certainly it has not been proved, and never will be to earths in habitants, that personal life survives phy- sical death. For the finite mind is so constituted that we may possibly doubt anything except the Fundamental axoms of our own thinking. We may possibly doubt anything except that, the oppo- site of which would put us to intellectual confusion.
 But, if when we speak of a thing as proved, we mean that the balance of probability is largely in it's favor so that to deny 1t would necessitate the shaping Of our beliefs in accordance rather with the less than the more probable or if oil lo proved, when it is necessary to explain, to account for, other undoubted facts, ineXplicable without it-then it may be perfectly possible to prove that physical death is not the cessation of personal life and consciousness. In other words, there Is no impossibility whatever attending the suppostion, that those we call the dead may manifest themselves to the living in ways so evidential that for Us to question their continued personal existence would be to question at the same time our own ability to distinguish between fact and fancy, the real and the unreal
 AS you are doubtless aware, an in- ternational society known as the Society
 
 many of the most eminent scientists. statesmen, philosophie thinkers in Eng land and America, has been at work for years investigating the alleged phe- nomena of so-caled spiritualsm So far, upon the question whether or not com munication has been established between ] the living and the dead, the society as such has not seen fit to pronounce dog matically. It is still working on, waiting for the results of further research. But, surely, this is most significant fact, that after years of palnstaking research, these eminent men have not been able to declare dogmatically against the fun damental claim of spiritualism. If that claim rests entirely on fraud 1t is surely remarkable, that these cautious open eyed, vigorously scientific, unbiased men, have not seen their way clear to say so. Not that they have not discovered frauds i; for they have. dozens of them but they have discovered so much that certainly was not fraud. that the main contention Of the spiritualists has not been disturbed by their investigations. This it seems to me, is negative witness of decided value to the possible soundness of that con tention
 i4So much for that attitude of the society itself as a body Individual members of it are not today so reserved-are more outspolSen. Speaking for themselves, men like Alfred Russell Wallace, Dr. Minot Savage. Prof. William James of Har- yard; Professor Hyslop, and others no less eminent. have not hesltated to say that in the light of their investigations. the hypothesis of thought interchange between the living and the dead has in it's favor the balance of probability. Ger tain indubitable facts, they claim. are explained by it. which are not explained at all which are not accounted for at all by any other hypothesis so far sug- ceSind.