DUDLEIAN LECTURE LAST NIGHT

Rev. Professor William Newton Clarke, D.D., of Colgate University, gave the Dudleian lecture last night in Phillips Brooks House on the subject, "Revealed Religion." In Judge Dudley's time, he said, theism was accepted absolutely, and men reasoned from it to show that Christianity was the true form of religion. Bishop Butler, whose works on religion were held authoritative at that time, regarded man primarily as a thinking being and truth as an idea, which could be proven by abstract argument or manifestation. Thus "proved by miracles" is a common reason for Bishop Butler's conclusions about God.

At the present time, however, the tendency is to regard theism as a conclusion rather than as an axiom. Throughtful men nowadays do not consider revelations as miraculous disclosures direct from God, but rather as the gradual awakening of an inward impelling force for good. This conception is in line with a changed idea of man. Of late years it has come to be believed that the will, the ambition and the emotions should be considered co-ordinate with the reason as guides to man's actions. This idea brings with it the feeling that a conviction due to perfectly worked out thought is not the only thing that makes men act, and the conception that truth is not merely the guide of the reason, but the totality of the force which makes men act along-right lines.

The result of these changed convictions about man and truth is the alteration of the conception of revelation. Instead of regarding as revelations only direct and actual communications with God, thoughtful men of the present time consider that a revelation is any awakening of spiritual energy for good.

Dr. Clarke closed his address with a few words in praise of the modern idea that all men are one race, as opposed to the extreme individualism of religion in Judge Dudley's time.