THE DUDLEIAN LECTURE.

The annual Dudleian lecture was delivered by Professor Josiah Royce last evening in the Fogg Lecture Room. The prescribed subject was "The proving, explaining and proper use and improvement of the principle of natural religion as it is commonly called and understood by divines and learned men."

There are believers and disbelievers in revelation, but "natural religion," though a term of varied usage, is a meeting ground for the factions.

The task of defining the present state of natural religion leads to the question,--"how has modern knowledge affected the treatment of the subject?" All religious problems depend upon ideals and facts. Facts take the form of determined objects, ideals of undetermined. Facts may or may not permit ideals to be realized; and there are many ideals which may or may not be embodied in facts. Ideals are seeking a place in the world of facts, and thus we naturally look for a supreme Being there. Is there such a Being? Is the knowledge which we have enough to warrant such an ideal?

Now all ideals are contrasted with and opposed by rigid facts. This contrast has been emphasized by modern students and this emphasis has lead to investigation, which has proved the old forms of natural theology unsound. No impression has been made upon the assumption of the supremacy of ideals; for history has proved the power of ideals to hold their own with facts.

Human civilization depends first, upon making the physical world a store-house of instruments--facts; second, upon an increasing love of our ideals. We have, then, so far, a drawn battle between the advocates of the supremacy of facts and of ideals. But the greatest of our ideals is that there are ultimate facts, objects, that is, which, were we wise enough, we ought to observe. No man has seen God,--yet neither has he seen a fact. Ultimate facts are beyond our own experience, but not beyond any experience; and to say a fact does not exist, is to admit it inconsistent with what does exist. But though we have never experienced the completion of ultimate facts, because their completeness is an ideal, have we not still a right to say "God takes account of me as I take account of Him?"