[1] He served as the principal of Alma College girls' school from 1881 to 1897[2] during which time that institution was regarded as one of the most prestigious centres of female education in Canada.

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.

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.

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'.

[7] He had been heavily involved in the planning and organisational work which had been done during construction [2] 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.

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.

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.

A. H. Goring of Port Stanley argued that the sermon constituted heresy on four counts; Austin said that he was unable to attend a trial, and he submitted a written defence.

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.

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.

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.

Sir William was described as the inventor of the radiometer and the vacuum tube, the discoverer of thallium, a member of the Royal Society, president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and (according to Austin) Britain's 3rd most important scientific mind (Lord Kelvin and Wallace taking the first two spots by narrow margins).

Sir William had conducted a series of experiments with noted Spiritualists and Spiritual Mediums and had also experienced many of the phenomena that Austin described, admitting them to be beyond any known natural law.

In defending against the claims by many Christians that Spiritualism (and especially the communication with the spirits of the dead) was an act of devil worship, Austin related a short anecdote.

It was a large movement and in 1878 the Roman Catholic Diocese of Boston estimated the total number of Spiritualists in the United States to be over 10 million.

Austin also thought that this new view might draw some skeptics who had become atheists for lack of proof of the Divine's interaction with man back to religion.

This view of all people (one can assume that Austin meant 'Men' to be read as 'Humans') as being divine by their existence echoes many modern Humanist teachings.

The work is made up of 100 rhetorical questions asked to "The orthodox Clergy" (by which Austin meant traditionally non-Spiritualist Churches, not Eastern Christians).

While some of the questions lead to obvious Spiritualist answers others merely attack the Christian notion that one specific book could be a definitive source of truth so perfect as to be unquestionable.

A man who murdered his father-in-law, cut the throat of his 12-year-old nephew and in the same year he convened the council beheaded his eldest son, and put Fausta his wife to death?

In a 1928 edition of The Austin Pulpit (a sister publication to Reason) he referred to the Bible as being the "First among equals" among religious texts, provided that it is "interpreted rationally".

He does finish, it must be admitted, by saying that "a frank acknowledgment of the good done by churches makes the way open for a clear statement on their fallacies and falsities" ix.

Austin also commented at the school's founding that he hoped that, "opportunities for psychological research shall be afforded along the lines of the Psychical Research Society of England, namely experiments for the illustration of psychic phenomena and the collection of facts and experience in regard to the powers and possibilities of man's spiritual nature, with a view to finding a rational explanation thereof and of demonstrating, if possible the continuity of life after death and of communion with the spirit realm.

This publication, whose subtitle was Jesus' quotation "The Truth Shall Make You Free", carried other Spiritualist works that did not fit into Reason.

In the June 1928 edition the paper that survives there is story of how the widow of the contortionist Houdini had received through a Spiritualist medium a code-word that she had agreed upon with her husband moments before his death, and a notice from the 'American Committee for the Outlawry of War' calling for all Spiritualists to unite and help the League of Nations end war as a method for solving international disputes.

He argued that the church should be a place for all people to gather, and reminded the Methodist authorities that Jesus of Nazareth had himself opposed the mal-treatment of the poor.

While Austin denied that he was an anarchist or a socialist "in the sense that most men understand the term" he did admit that a "new social system' was required xiv.

He wrote a book in 1890 called On Woman in which he argued that women should be equal members of society and should never be forced into marriage for economic or social reasons.