Third Noble Lecture.

The Right Reverend William Boyd Carpenter, D.D., Bishop of Ripon, gave the third of the William Belden Noble lectures on "The Witness to the Influence of Christ," in the Fogg Lecture Room last night.

Christ, said Bishop Carpenter, is a great personality in the world. In his life we find expressed the harmony between man and the unseen powers. He was more than an influential person; he was a great teacher of mankind. Some have said that we know nothing about Christ's principles, as we have no authoritative record of what he said. But eminent critics maintain that we have plenty of ground for believing that the gospels contain the essential principles of Christ's teaching.

To revivify Christian doctrines and dogmas, we should lay them beside the principles of Christ. Then can we find the truth which the dogma was formed to preserve. Among his principles we find that of inwardness. To the Jews, the "kingdom of God" was a material kingdom which was to come. Christ, however, taught that the Kingdom of God was here, open to all who sought for it. Anyone who aids those in need finds the Kingdom of God an inward kingdom within men's hearts.

Another principle is that of the goodness of the universe. Christ felt that the universe is governed for good. He did not seek to escape the temptation and the cross, for he felt he lived in an order which was good. Again, one of Christ's principles is that the real test of a man is found in the direction of his moral sympathy. The man who sympathises with the efforts of a moral reformer and who tries to help him on however poorly, receives as great a spiritual reward as the man who may have a larger capacity for doing good. True moral sympathy with charitable aims is necessary; it does a man no good to place his name perfunctorily on a subscription list if he has no sympathy with the work to be undertaken.

But behind all these principles is that of love. To be in moral sympathy with God, the love of God must be within man. Christ showed the true relation between God and man; it is that of a father to his son. He taught the perfect relation between God and man.

Bishop Carpenter's remaining lectures will be given on October 17, 19 and 21.