"persons" in the Divine Unity. The voice of the Father is heard in the storm, indeed, but also in the salient setting of the sun, and in all the scenes of beauty which deck the earth and makes us feel that the mysterious power which often seems cruel is in reality love. The voice of Jesus, which few, indeed, heard, but an echo of which can still be heard in the words which those who listened to him have recorded, interprets to us that other voice which reproves and exhorts and comforts and inspires, bidding us "come up higher." Each is the voice of the One God.

To say that God must be identified with but one "person" or voice, which we call Father, leads inevitably to Agnosticism. To identify God with Jesus, as if he had never been revealed to the men of old, as the early Gnostics would have done, as some modern Protestants are doing, is to lose all sense of the majesty of the Eternal, and tends to the degradation of God to a cheap good nature, forgetful of what it has cost to redeem our souls. To identify God with that voice which indeed speaks to us as truly as it spoke to Abraham, is to separate the church into its component parts and lose all feeling of the "blessed company of all faithful people."

The English Church passed by the Nicene Creed and chose the "Apostles' Creed," as stating its terms of membership. This was significant. The English people are far more like the Romans than like the Greeks, and the practical value of the Roman creed appealed to them more than the more speculative Greek confessions of faith. So in the catechism the child is asked what it "chiefly learns from the articles of its belief," i. e., the Apostles' Creed. And the answer is that it learns three things which are the essentials of the creed. First, to "believe in God the Father, who hath made me and all the world. Secondly, in God the Son, who hath redeemed me and all mankind; and, thirdly, in God the Holy Ghost, who sanctifieth me * See "Christ's Thought of God," J. M. Wilson.

and all the people of God." On this faith the religious life of the child is built. So when it says,

it is prayer to God thought of as Father. When it says,

"Jesus, tender Shepherd, hear me,

Bless thy little lamb to-night,"

it is in communion with God as revealed in the Shepherd of our souls. When it says,

"And when, dear Saviour, I kneel down morning and night in prayer,

Something there is within my heart that tells me thou art there,"

it is communing with God as Holy Spirit.

This is not speculative, it is ethical. The child grows to maturity in the consciousness that protecting, redeeming, sanctifying love is with it from the beginning to the end of life. This is the glory of the "Eternal Trinity." To know that God is as near us when we pray as he was near to the earth when the "morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy," to know that in Jesus we see the Father as truly as did Philip, to be filled with the spirit and bring forth the fruits thereof, is to know God, not as a theory but as a sublime spiritual experience. God is spirit; seen in the glory of the universe, witnessed to in the life of Jesus, experienced in sanctifying prayer.

This faith has come to us through apostles, saints, and martyrs. It requires courage to hold it and confess it today as truly, though in a different way, as when the Mohammedan invasion threatened to overwhelm the world. We shall not be persecuted, only scorned by the half

educated. We must bear the strain which comes when the ancient words seem in conflict with our incomplete knowledge. We can learn what the words mean if we will give the time to their study. But it requires no study to believe that the Eternal is revealing himself unto us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that each of these manifestations is equally divine. I say it does not require great knowledge, but it does require great faith, that is, the intense activity of our spiritual nature. But I venture to say that it requires no more to believe in the divinity of the Son and of the Holy Spirit than to believe in the divinity of the Father. If there be in this universe anything that answers to our thought of the divine power and goodness and love, it is not easy to find it in nature nor in the experiences of life. Our wisest plans are frustrated, our dearest hopes are disappointed, our tenderest feelings are lacerated, until it seems vain to hope that there can be both power and goodness behind and before, laying its hand upon us. It is the life of Jesus which keeps alive this faith. It is the witness of the spirit which leads us to feel that this faith is not vain. This, as I understand it, is the meaning of that sublime prayer which Cranmer wrote as the collect for Trinity Sunday:

"Almighty and Everlasting God, who has given unto us, thy servants, grace by the confession of a true faith to acknowledge the glory of the Eternal Trinity, and in the power of the Divine Majesty to worship the Unity; we beseech thee that thou wouldest keep us steadfast in that faith, and evermore defend us from all adversities, who livest and reignest, one God, world without end."

CHAPTER XIV

DOCTRINE

B. THE CATHOLIC CREEDS

In the preceding chapter it was asserted that faith in the triune personality of God is the fundamental doctrine of the Christian church. Yet it may be objected: "If the doctrine be so liable to misapprehension, as seems to be the case, would it not be better to abandon the ancient creeds and substitute for them some simpler form of belief, which, by stating the faith in modern language, would avoid such misunderstandings?" No doubt there would be manifest advantages in so doing, to which attention will be called a little later. I believe not a few of the clergy of the Episcopal Church would agree that it would be better if the Apostles' Creed were made the end rather than the beginning of Christian education. But whatever form a simpler expression of the church's faith might take, there would be a loss if there should be any weakening of the authoritative message of the church. That authority, however, can never be preserved by a traditional repetition of the words which once moved the hearts of men; it must be tested by the response of the deepest longings of the human soul to-day.

The dogmatic weakness of the churches arises not so much from the retention of the ancient formularies as from the uncertainty of their meaning. The pulpit is turning more and more to economics and politics rather than to the truth of the Being of God. These are matters which because they need to be sanctified by the message of the church may properly be referred to by the pulpit, but can

never be its supreme message. There are other voices which can preach industrial reform; but if the churches do not preach the doctrine of the truth of God, it will be left to those who are least fitted by character and learning to attempt to answer the question which is the most important in the world, and to which an answer is being demanded to-day with as great eagerness as at any time in the history of the world. One has only to glance at a Sunday newspaper to see how many are pretending to give an answer. How gladly the world would respond if the church had as definite a message as many of the Theosophists are advertising their readiness to give! Let a man of God lift up his voice in the pulpit and make it evident that he has something to reveal which he has learned by personal experience to be true, and people will flock to hear him, so anxious are they to learn about God.

Such a simplified creed as is sometimes asked for cannot be the means of unity; it must be the result of unity. Such a creed cannot be formulated till all the churches are given an opportunity to bear witness to the truth as each knows it. For one church to attempt to revise the Catholic creeds would be an offense to all the others, and be a fresh cause of disunion. But while no individual church would undertake to revise the ancient creeds, might it not be possible for some church—the Episcopal, for example— to substitute some simpler form than one of the historic creeds for use in its public worship. This would not be so radical an act as might at first be supposed. The first draft of the American Prayer-Book omitted the Nicene Creed. The English bishops made its retention a sine qua non for the consecration of Bishop White, and wished to have the American Church retain the Athanasian Creed as well. To the last, however, the Americans would not agree, and there was a compromise. Would there have been serious loss if the Nicene Creed had been omitted from our services? I doubt it. Nor do I think we should lose