Dudleian Lecture Last Night

Professor F. G. Peabody '69 delivered the Dudleian lecture for the year in Phillips Brooks House last night on "The Social Consciousness and the Religious Life."

Each age, as it approaches its special problem, finds in its solution a revelation of religion. The has always been true. The commercialism of today has brought with it the evolution of the social consciousness, and the demand for mutual help. Does this social consciousness open a path to religious life? To many it seems to offer a substitute for religion-- to satisfy itself with human concerns rather than with God.

But the religious life finds it natural to express itself in social service, and thus social service is really a part of that life, and a part which vitally concerns the present age. The greatest shame for a period would, be not that its faith was incomplete or unorthodox, but that it failed to recognize the basis for faith which it possessed; and social service is that basis for today. This tendency toward practical affairs opens for the ministry a wider range for self-sacrifice and duty. Our age has its problem plainly before it, and in its solution lies the way to faith and a nearer consciousness of God.