Talk:Benjamin Fish Austin

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[edit] Quotations

From an 1890 book entitled ‘On Women’ xv

“No young woman should be placed in circumstances such as to make marriage an only refuge from poverty or dependence upon her friends or a life of ennui”

“Christ has recognised and declared woman’s equality with man”

Excerpts from the 1899 Sermon that led to his expulsion from the Methodist Church

“Truth is the daughter of God, and in all her attributes God-like and eternal. Truth never depreciates in value”

“We know as well as history can teach us that all religions are one and the same- all the outgrowth of man’s moral nature, differing only according to the intelligence and advancement of the people among whom they originated”

“To know the Truth, to love the Truth, and to live the Truth is the whole duty of man.

“Every word of Truth proceeds from God, whether that Truth be written in the rocks and read by the geologist or written in the heavens and read by the astronomer or written in the heart of man or written in this old book”

“There is no divine Truth, and no impure Truth. There is no secular Truth, the Truth taught in the college or the school house is as sacred as Truth taught from the pulpit”

“A difficulty in seeking Truth is the notion that certain men are ordained of heaven to seek Truth for all mankind and that we are to accept their acquisitions in the place of seeking for ourselves. We can never attain Truth by proxy. By divine ordination every man is an original investigator of Truth. He denies his own reason who hands over his religious views and opinions to any priest or religious teacher… We are to accept nothing on the opinions of others. What another man has thought and believed, what a Church Council or synod has formulated is nothing to me, only that it may be a reason for personal investigation ending in acceptance or rejection as I may find it in harmony with reason and well established truth.”

“It is a mistaken notion that all spiritual truth was given to the world in one complete system nearly 2000 years ago.”

“Jesus’ teachings were never set before his followers as a finality. God has dealt with Humanity as we deal with children. He has given to every…age Truths adapted to their development”

“The Church has become hostile to new ideas. If any doctrine came from the priesthood the church would hear it and heed it, but if it came from an out of the way place, like Nazareth, they would scorn and persecute it. It was churchmen who put Jesus to the cross. In Luther’s time when he hurled his advanced ideas like bombshells into the Roman Church, it was the churchmen of his day that sought his death. In Wesley’s time, though he preached the purest form of spiritual Truth that was proclaimed to his age, yet the churchmen of his time drove him out and he had to preach in graveyards and coal mines and on the markets.

“New truths in science are often condemned and 25 years ago it was very common and very popular for preachers to sneer at the evolution theory, but to-day it is no longer sneered at, for there is arising in all intelligent minds who have candidly examined the evidence the conviction that this was the method of creation, and no scientist of note to-day denies it.”

“The scientific fact of clairvoyance, telepathy, soul-flight, psychometry, and prophecy are well established by incontrovertible evidence yet to mention them in certain circles is to ostracize yourself.”

“Why should old interpretations of scripture, all of which reflect the ignorance and prejudice and limitations of the age in which they were formulated, bar the way to progress in our modern day?”

“Have we not the right top our own views, and own interpretations, and own creeds, and own Truths equal to those that proceeded us? Must we forever wear the cast-off garments of past ages?”

“Why should inspiration be limited to one past age? If Truth came to Paul 1900 years ago it can come to you today. After all, Heaven is as near to-day, God is as loving and as kind to-day, and truth as abundant to-day, as in the ages when men are said to have possessed inspiration.”

“Is God asleep that he should cease to be all that he was to the prophets of the past?”

Excerpts from Dr. Austin’s Speech in his own Defence at his Heresy Trial ii

“I have found a truth that humanity needs, that brings unspeakable joy to human hearts and homes, that brightens all the life, that assuages sorrow, that dispels care, that kills the materialistic spirit of our age, and lifts mankind into noble thought and life”

“The use of the divine gift of common sense would teach the opponents of the philosophy that what was shown to be fraud was not spiritualism and that a doctrine that thrives in the midst of the bitterest oppression and grows in the fire of persecution has some measure of truth in its keeping to give it vitality”

“We live in a period of transitions. Old interpretations of the scripture are giving way to new ones. Old conceptions of the method of creation are no longer popular”

“The creeds are not changing as rapidly as the beliefs of the people, nor as rapidly as most men of progressive mind desire”

“The heterodoxy of one age will become the orthodoxy of the next”

“It is easy to see what is heresy today, but who can tell what will be heresy tomorrow”

“I do not believe in infallible men, nor in an infallible church, nor in an infallible book”

On Religion and Spiritualism:

“By disclosing the true nature of death as a transition to a higher-state, a change as natural and as blessed as birth, by showing that it is not a penalty, a judgement, an arbitrary sentence, but a resurrection and an ascension, in every sense a gain, Spiritualism has removed forever the sorrow and gloom and torment that humanity suffered through the false church teachings concerning death” -1902

“The first great act that Spiritualism will do for Society will be a practical recognition of the claims of human brotherhood…it will recognise the equal rights and claims of all men on nature’s bounty. They (the bounties) are not for the few but for the many and society must be reconstituted, reorganised, and regenerated” xvi

“Man is a child of God and there are no limits to man’s power any more than there are to God’s. Man’s life is an ascending scale of eternal progression”

“Religion is the soul’s cry for the divine, the ever-longing, ever-seeking, ever-aspiring and perpetual quest after its eternal source divine. The best expression of religion is love- not some vague emotion toward a personal god- but love felt, cultivated and exemplified towards one’s fellowman”

“Look after yourself and your brother men, the gods will look after themselves”

“We are all of us, as well as all things animate and inanimate, enveloped surrounded by a very complex yet subtle emanation which, to the clairvoyant eye indicate(s) our constitution, our passions, our ideas”

“Out of the bondage of man-made creeds Into the practice of loving deeds”

On Education:

“French in the schools is a barrier to the advance of Anglo-Saxon civilization” -1890 iv

“The school is the hope of the future…those schools which encourage free enquiry, emphasise the teachings of science, and blaze out new pathways of progress for the enquiring mind are among the world’s greatest treasures”

The most valuable lesson a public school teacher can give a scholar is to teach him intellectual independence, to think for himself and not to rely on another’s opinions. v

I'm not convinced a long list of quotations is helpful in an encyclopedia article. Maybe try Wikiquote. NickelShoe (Talk) 16:49, 4 January 2007 (UTC)