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Rev. Charles Cuthbert Hall, D.D., h.'97, last night in the Fogg Lecture Room delivered the second of the William Belden Noble lectures on "The Attitude of Christ toward Foreign Races and Religions."
Continuing on the same general subject which he had dealt with the evening before, Dr. Hall, in treating "The Larger Meaning of the Incarnation," endeavored to interpret the mental attitude of Christ, which, in the previous lecture, he had merely defined. By showing first the Saviour's impartial relations to the whole human race, and then his relation to God, the lecturer attempted to throw some light on the profound meaning of the incarnation.
If we take His mental attitude toward humanity, said Dr. Hall, it is found to contain more than the disposition of liberality, shared by many of the greater minds; it is the embodiment of principles involving the attitude of God toward the world, the intrinsic value of man considered apart from accidents of environment, the fundamental unity of the human race. These considerations should furnish some suggestions of the meanings of the incarnation which as the course of religious thinking in the West has frequently shown, may either be full of the warmth of reality; or narrow and exclusive with repellant technicalities. To wrangle with hair-splitting technicalities over the correctness and orthodoxy of such and such a creed, or to endeavor to interpret great and sacred mysteries in such a manner as to favor individual sects or religious is merely to pervert the fundamental truth and make it so much the harder to grasp.
For a great truth is simple. The all guiding Hand which we must feel when we look upon the vast power and beauty of nature-the "Invisible Through Nature" which all scientists and philosophers must come to regard-was the secret of the incarnation. Man has glimpses of this Being: Christ so thoroughly understood and appreciated it that it finally carried Him away.
The next lecture of the series, to be given in the same place on March 5, will be on the subject of "The Essential Unity of the Human Race."
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