"I have great pleasure in presiding tonight on this very important for the Stansted Congregational Church. This is the 233^rd Anniversary of the church's formation and the 100^th anniversary of the Union of Congregational Churches of England and Wales.

These dates carry us a considerable time back, but really nothing very startling was taking place in this country in 1698. The only outstanding event being the general election, so the people of Stansted of that year had ample time to give to the formation of their church which had undoubtedly a source of help and inspiration to many.

One hundred years ago when the union of Congregational Church of England and Wales took place was the year 1831. What took place in that year has had its tragic consequences in 1914.

It was in 1831 that we with other European countries guaranteed the neutrality of Belgium, which you will remember, was the reason for our becoming participants in the Great War.

We paid a heavy price in thus honouring our promise, and if our ancestors, who were responsible for this promise, could have looked forward to this tragic result, I am doubtful whether the promise would ever have been given.

We have here with us tonight Dr.Berry, who is well known to you all that it is unnecessary for me to say much in the way of introduction He is one of the outstanding personalities in the Congregational Church, and is known over the whole country.

After saying this and asking Dr. Berry to speak, a chairman has really done his duty, but in this case I am somewhat differently placed, as your minister has asked me to say something on current religious and scientific thought. Those of you who follow the interchange of views between religion and science must have been greatly interested in the series of wireless talks, which took place during the present winter.

The remarkable feature of these lectures was the unanimity of new speakers both clergy and scientists on two important facts. On the one hand the acceptance of both sides that tradition was a thing of the past. This was especially welcome from the clerics and on the other hand the scientists much more than made up for this overthrow of tradition by themselves throwing over the materialism of the 18^th and 19^th century.

We are now left in a position somewhat as follows -

Though we have to give up much of the dogmatism of the past yet on the other hand we can look to scientific man with much more expectation of something which will help us in our religious life than ever before.

That something is the fact that science is more and more realising the spiritual nature of the universe and that the religious impulse in mankind must be accounted for in a scientific and logical way and not dismissed as of no account whatever.

Before going further, however, let us look back.

The history of the Christian Church is typical of all movements either religious or political.

Those in authority pronounced their dictum and those not in authority had to obey them. It was not in the interests of those in authority to improve the learning or relieve the ignorance of the people, and the people were so ignorant that they could do nothing more than obey those in power.

That time is now looked back upon as the dark ages, but with the invention of printing, light began to shine into darkness.

Then men's minds began to grow and to think

In 1543 Copernicus the astronomer published his book on the rotation of the planets and from that date a new outlook began to spread over Europe. We began to comprehend our relationship to the rest of the universe. Then came Kelper to be followed by Galileo, Leonardo Da Vinci, Bruno, Newton, Darwin and many others who carried forward the torch of learning and helped to dispel the ignorance of their times.

They were denounced, excommunicated and traduced but still they held to the path of truth and now we find today every intelligent person accepting their views.

That deals briefly with the progress of the scientific side, but on the other hand it is admitted that some of our greatest scientists went further than they were entitled to go, and in consequence though the 18^th and 19^th. Centuries were centuries of great intellectual development, yet on the other hand this development was purely material and what I might call the spiritual side of man's nature was ignored as non-existent.

It was about the beginning of the present century that a change began to come over scientific thought in this direction, and this was caused by the discovery of the nature of matter and by the gradual acceptance of psychic phenomena. Matter in the 19^th century was looked upon as composed of atoms, little minute lumps of matter which congregated to make big or little lumps as the case might be, just as a rice pudding is made up of various particles of rice.

The discovery of the X Ray brought about further examination as to the constitution of things we see and it has resulted in the extraordinary discovery that matter is made up of what are called electrons and protons, but they are not substances as we understand the word substances. They are so minute that it is impossible to get down to them and in consequence the nature and constitution of matter is only a question of inference.

 What then is the material universe composed of? We really do not know, but there is one thing that scientific thought has begun to comprehend and that is that the real universe is not the material universe. In the days before Copernicus, it was thought that the sun and the moon circled round the earth, that the stars were points of light hanging from a huge dome and their size was quite unrealised.

The author of Genesis described their creation in six words as a kind of afterthought " And He made the stars also"

This earth was thought to be the centre of the universe, it was considered to be flat and that there was nothing beyond. That is how a child would describe the earth and the universe today, and that is how our ancestors described them 400 years ago.

We are today in a somewhat similar transitory period, the average individual would say that what he saw, namely the earth and all that composes the earth was real and solid. That the sun was a real and solid mass and that space was empty, except for the stars and planets; that, most of you would say in a common-sense way of dealing with such a question. What we see and handle is real, what we cannot see and handle is unreal.

But just as the earth revolves around the sun and not the sun around the earth, so again we are being lead by science to look at the universe as something completely different to what it appears.

By my own experiments I have come also to the conclusion that what is unseen is real and what is seen is only real to us inhabiting physical bodies.

Let me give you two examples of what I mean - If you stand before a fire you feel the heat from the fire, yet between you and the fire there appears to be nothing. But there must be something, as otherwise the heat from the fire could not be transferred to your body.

The medium through which the heat is conveyed is the ether, the same ether which conveys the light from the sun at 186,000 miles a second, and the same ether conveys the wireless waves between London and Stansted.

In this church which seems empty space there are innumerable waves passing through, but we do not notice them as we do not have the necessary instruments to tap them. The wireless instrument has been made for the purpose of tapping certain of these waves but there are doubtless many others of a different degree, so space is not empty as one would be inclined to imagine it is.

Then again supposing we in this church were sitting in the dark, and we had never seen the church in daylight or gaslight, and so could only see various glow of lights moving slowly in innumerable different directions. Every one of you would say that the only things real in the church were the lights, which you saw moving about. That is our position in the universe today.

These lights represent the stars, the material universe, but when the church is lighted up the lights we saw moving about are not seen because of the daylight being stronger than the points of light seen in the darkness, and the daylight reveals to us an entirely different aspect.

When we are sitting in the dark and look at the points of light moving about, it is the same as looking at the universe with material eyes. The points of light represent the stars and the planets, and when we sit in the dark we think that is all there is in the church, and there cannot possibly be anything more. But when the daylight comes we see the pulpit, pews, windows and walls, in fact it is an entirely different view, which we behold.

If two people were writing on what they saw, one during the time of darkness and the other during the time of day, they would give absolutely different descriptions of what they saw and yet it would be the same church and everything would be in the same place.

We, in our physical bodies, are looking at the universe from the point of view of the people in the church during the time of darkness.

It is when we die and discard our human body we look on the universe from the point of view of the people in the church during the daytime, and this leads me to the conclusion of what we really are.

The human being is composed of body, soul and spirit. The body is what we see, the soul is our mind, and the spirit is our etheric body, which is an exact duplicate of our physical body; it holds our physical body together.

Death is only the parting of our etheric body from the material body and this etheric body carries the mind or soul with it and then we do not look on the universe from the material standpoint but from the etheric standpoint.

The material world becomes of no account and the etheric world, what we call space, is the only one that count.

The real universe science is coming round to believe is the etheric universe, the material universe is only an intrusion in this etheric universe, and from what we know of its constitution it is permanent, while the material universe is constantly changing and decaying.

No trace of decay can be found in this etheric universe, everything is constant and regular.

The mind of man is something super etheric which no one in the physical body is able to explain, but it must be super etheric because it still functions and controls the etheric body after death.

Now this etheric body is the body that holds together the material body on earth, in fact there is probably an etheric body for every living thing, but whether everything living survives in the etheric world no one can yet say.

We however now know that the human being survives death but only functions in different surroundings.

The result is that it is only character and memory which count and the reason for continuance to develop our character must receive an impetus when it is known that as we develop here so we shall hereafter.

You may ask what proofs I have for making this statement.

Religion has taught them but it has been an intuitive act of faith.

You however may be surprised when I tell you that some of our leading scientific men have arrived at these conclusions on a scientific line of argument, and this is how religion and science have come together.

Religion has had to give over much of what it considered essential.

But the real solid fact remains, namely that man is a spiritual being and his life continues after death in a spiritual or etheric world.

On this belief, which has been inborn in man, has been hung all the tradition, all the various creeds of all the various religions, and this idea has been responsible for all the churches, temples and altars of the world.

Up until the beginning of this century it was matter of faith but today it is a matter of scientific knowledge.

No one of you parting with a friend at the death bed need ever fear that the friend has gone from your ken for ever, because that is not so.He or she will retain the same features and form by means of the etheric body, and his or her mind will be the same as it was here.

When you have made this great change, then you will look back on your material existence because you will remember everything that has gone before.

You will look back on your material existence because you look back on your experiences in the nursery.

There you spent the early days of your physical life. Her in this world you spend the early days of your real life, but the real life only begins in my opinion after so-called death.

Life is something quite apart from matter, it appertains to the etheric world.

Why or when it entered into conjunction with physical matter we do not know, but there was a time far back in history when a living organism appeared. Then it was that life and thought in the most minute form took birth, and from that we have the complicated system of the human body and brain and of all living things.

We also do not know when the time was when this life was able to live apart from the physical organism it had entered, all we know is the fact that so far as human beings are concerned it can function apart from the material body.

To give you proof of this statement would make this talk much too long and I shall not enter into this question on the present occasion.

I have however said all I can in the time at my disposal and in conclusion would repeat that present day religion is helped (if you discard dogmatism) by the discoveries of physicists; those scientists who are investigating the constitution of the universe.

They are coming to believe, some have already, that there is another world co-existent with this world, though we cannot see or feel it.

The etheric world is the real world.

The material world, the material universe is a transitory and passing world and matter is the least important thing in the universe, though to us today it seems to be the most important.

The things, which are unseen, are eternal, those things, which are seen, are temporal.

What I have said briefly is the change of outlook, which has occurred, in religious and scientific thought since the days of the foundation of the Stansted Congregational Church.

And in this space of 233 years more knowledge has been acquired by man as to his true relationship to the universe than ever before.

After the anthem and the offertory I shall have the pleasure in asking Dr. Berry to address you."