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"Holy, Holy, Holy," Dykes
"Lift Up Your Heads," Hopkins
"O God, Who Hast Prepared," Gaul
A crowded chapel awaited the service in Appleton Chapel last evening, at which Prof. Harris, - whose name has been brought prominently forward in the recent Andover trial, - was to preach. The service opened with a short prayer, which was followed by the reading of the Seventy-second Psalm. The long prayer was a petition for unity and peace among all people. After a hymn sung by the congregation, Prof. Harris gave out the text from St. Matthew, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." This was humanitarianism. A comparison of unreligious and Christian humanitarianism would be the subject of the sermon. Humanitarianism not based on religion claimed for itself a higher usefulness than that which was based on religion. For it tolerated no waste in worship, a priesthood and other religious forms; but all its energies were directly bent to the aid and improvement of man. Furthermore it gave liberty to man, requiring him to be bound by no creed and inculcating into him no such debasing ideas as the natural depravity of man and eternal damnation. It sanctioned all high and noble aspirations and qualities and believed in immortality, at least in so far as this consists in the memory in the hearts of men of a good character after death.
But Christianity brought and humanitarianism what without it must be lacking, object, motive and power. The love and aid of our fellow-men was moreover a Christian idea; and however much men outside of the faith may have equalled or surpassed Christians in the development of this principle, still the church had always repented such remissness to what had always been a fundamental part of its doctrine. Religion-less humanitarianism could offer as a motive nothing more than a sense of the wrongs of humanity. Christianity had as its motive the stirring belief - the divinity of each human soul. The power of Christian humanitarianism lay in its threefold presentation - by the Gospel, Preaching and the Church. Christianity had proved in the past to be, and always would prove to be the sole permanent strength of humanitarianism.
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