Benjamin Fish Austin (September 10, 1850 – January 22, 1933) was a Canadian educator, author, Methodist minister, and spiritualist.University of Toronto website, Canadian Biography section, Austen, Benjamin Fish He served as the principal of Alma College girls' school from 1881 to 1897United Church/Victoria Archives, Benjamin Fish Austin Fonds, 3007 Amanda Austin, Family Memories Scrapbook during which time that institution was regarded as one of the most prestigious centres of female education in Canada. Austin served the Methodist Church for many years as an educator and minister but was expelled from that organisation in 1899 for being a proponent of the Spiritualist movement. He went on to become a renowned spiritualist in Canada and the United States, publishing many books and editing the Rochester and later Los Angeles-based spiritualist magazine Reason.
Early life and education Austin was born in Brighton, Ontario, the son of another Benjamin Fish Austin and Mary Anne F. McGuire. He was described as a Canadian of mixed English and Irish ethnicity. Benjamin was raised a Methodist, the fourth generation of his family to belong to that church. He attended the local grammar school and worked as a teacher from the age of 16 to 20. At the age of 20, Austin began preaching locally and became more involved with the church, eventually attending Albert College in nearby Belleville, Ontario where he obtained B.A. in theology and received a first class honours in Oriental literature and languages in 1877. He continued on at the college and was awarded a B.D degree in 1881. During his time at Albert College, Austin was the president of the school's temperance union.
Albert College was joined with Victoria College in 1884, forming Victoria University, from which Austin received a D.D. degree in 1896. He was also as of that year a senator of Victoria University. That same year Victoria University became federated within the University of Toronto, so all of Austin's Alma Maters are now existent as federated parts of the modern-day University of Toronto.
Family Austin married Francis 'Amanda' Connell-Austin (August 12 18-- – August 15, 1928) of Prescott, Ontario, on June 16, 1881. She kept a scrap-book of family events and memories from 1881 to 1917 which is now part of the collection of the archives of the United Church of Canada/Victoria University. While a scrapbook kept by Amanda is an important existent source of information about Austin's life, very little information remains about Amanda herself.
The couple had four children, all born while Austin was principal at Alma College.
Albert Edward Austin (September 20, 1882 – November 19, 1918) died of influenza-pneumonia in San Bernardino, California, where he had been involved in the newspaper trade since moving from Rochester.
Alma H. Austin received a B.A in philosophy from the University of Rochester in 1911. She taught at the Western New York Institute for Deaf Mutes. Alma Austin outlived her father and her mother, and came into possession of their papers and files. During this period she erased her own date of birth from all currently existent archival sources. Only the order of entries into a family scrapbook indicates that she was born between her brother Albert and her sister Beatrice.
Beatrice Evelyn Austin (February 27, 1888 – October 10, 1927) was associate editor of Reason. She was a strong proponent of the League of Nations and was greatly displeased when the United States declined to take part in that organisation. She was an 'earnest student' of metaphysical healing and during President Wilson's illness she organised a group of over 100 healers to work on a united effort to save the man she referred to as 'the emancipator'. She led a Spartan life and was uninterested in physical things. Her father wrote in her obituary that 'None knew her but to love her'.
Austin's youngest daughter, Kathleen Dell Austin, died before her third birthday (September 9, 1893 – April 19, 1896). This sort of tragedy was not uncommon at the time, even among the wealthier middle classes.
Methodist preacher In 1881 Austin was made the minister at Ottawa's Metropolitan Methodist Church, which was at that time one of the largest congregations in the country. Later in the 1880s he is known to have been a preacher in his wife Amanda's hometown of Prescott, Ontario. While continuing literary work in Toronto he gave at least one sermon at Parkdale Methodist Church.
Principal of Alma College The first stone of Alma College was laid in St. Thomas, Ontario by the Honourable Adam Crooks, Ontario Minister for Education on 2 May 1878 The college was meant to be a highly academic Methodist school for young ladies. Austin was made the principal of the school upon its opening in 1881. He encouraged his students to think of themselves as ‘’man’s peers’’.ASIJ website, Tokyo School For Foreign Children He had been heavily involved in the planning and organisational work which had been done during construction The school started out with only six teachers, but it grew under Austin's guidance and would eventually have 20 professors and over 200 students.
In the late 1890s the college was prestigious enough to be visited by John Campbell Hamilton-Gordon, 1st Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair, KT, GCMG, GCVO, PC who was at that time the Governor-General of Canada. The Governor-General arrived at St. Thomas' train station and was followed to Alma College by a crowd of cheering towns-people. He complemented the college's reputation and said to the faculty that, "We all appreciate the important and arduous duties you are called upon to perform". While the inhabitants of the town and the students of the college were greatly pleased by His Excellency's visit, the event was not without problems. The Honourable George E. Casey, M.P. who was to accompany Lord Aberdeen from Ottawa accidentally got off the train at the wrong stop. The train itself was 2 hours late. In addition His Excellency brought neither the medal he was to present to Flora Ferguson for 'general proficiency', nor his wife who was to have been honoured by the students as an example of a fine and educated lady.
Austin was principal of the school for almost 20 years. He was by all accounts much loved by the students and the greater community. His wife Amanda became a great role-model to the girls and was active in the town's social life. The Reverend resigned, however, from his position as principal in May 1897 so as to continue his literary activities in Toronto.
Expulsion from the Methodist Church From 1897 to 1899 Austin lived in Toronto and devoted himself to his literary works. He also became more and more interested in the growing Spiritualist movement. Spiritualists believe in the scientific validity of many 'supernatural' phenomena (such as communication with the deceased) and occasionally call for Christianity to be reformed and re-examined to remove what they see as many archaic and illiberal principles. As he continued this period of philosophical re-examination, Austin began giving sermons that deviated more and more from accepted teachings.
In June 1899 Austin was tried and expelled from the Methodist Church that he had served all his life. Only three years earlier he had been given a doctorate of divinity from Victoria University in recognition of his services to the Church.
On May 27, 1899, one of Austin's more heterodox sermons was reprinted in the Manitoba Morning Free Press. The speech had originally been given at the Parkdale Methodist Church of Toronto on January 8 of that year. The speech was a fiery and impassioned call for people to seek Truth for themselves. It was critical of church policy and praised independent thought and inquiry. It equated Truth with God and said it was all good Christians' duty to seek out truth, even if the Truth conflicts with official dogma. Austin also criticized the churchmen of his time for being too closed-minded in their view of new theories, such as Spiritualism. (Many excerpts from this sermon are available on wikiquoteBenjamin Fish Austin - Wikiquote at en.wikiquote.org)
The Methodist hierarchy was not pleased, and asked Austin to withdraw his comments. He refused.
The Rev. A. H. Goring of Port Stanley argued that the sermon constituted heresy on four counts;
It denied the doctrine of eternal punishment It questioned the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth It denied that Jesus was God's last revelation to man It upheld a fraudulent system of spiritualism
Austin said that he was unable to attend a trial, and he submitted a written defence. In his defence he denied the first 3 charges categorically and defended his comments on spiritualism to be relating only to "a true spiritualism". He took particular affront to the third charge, writing that;
It was also alleged that Austin had attended a séance with a clairvoyant in Detroit. Austin made no attempt to deny this.
He was found guilty of the later three charges, but appealed the decision to the Methodist annual convention, held that year in June in Windsor, Ontario. At the conference it was widely believed that Austin's reputation alone would acquit him if he distanced himself from his earlier comments and did not make a speech or any sort of commotion. Ignoring this, Austin decided to speak in support of his earlier comments.
He gave a rousing defence of the sermon for three and a half hours. He implored the churchmen he had earlier denounced as closed to new thoughts to recognise the validity of many new beliefs. The age was, "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" Rather than surrendering to a "rush" towards atheism and agnosticism Austin wanted the church to slightly modify its interpretation of the scriptures so as to be more modern. He reminded his audience that this would not be the first time that the scriptures had been re-examined and asked that if past generations had been able to interpret the scriptures to fit their times then, "Have we not the right to 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?"
Austin claimed that "Every man has an inherent right to know all that can be known about Humanity", and said that since the faculty of reason is a gift from God, to silence a man's thoughts is to question the wisdom of the Creator who endowed him with that reason. We are, he argued, made to question and challenge what we hear. This time of questioning, furthermore, would not weaken the Church but strengthen it. "It is time for everything that can be shaken to be removed", he said, "that the things that cannot be shaken remain". This process would leave a wiser and truer Methodist Church which held to its firm beliefs will rejecting it's the weaker parts of the faith. This fits with Austin's long-term belief that all religions had beneficial aspects that should be encouraged and negative traits that should be removed. In a later Spiritualist work he would say that in a Spiritualist world each religion should lend and borrow the choice parts of the others.
The most controversial portion of his speech was when he called on the church to accept the 'scientific proof of Spiritualism'. The recognition of a scientific basis for such 'supernatural' events, Austin argued, would make the events of the Bible seem more plausible; drawing many sceptics back into the flock. Austin related how he had himself experienced a variety of Spiritualist phenomena including: sounds produced in metals and woods, the independent movement of chairs, the production of an independent voice, and the de-materialisation of matter (so as to allow the passage of matter through matter).