that one and the same person cannot possess precisely the same intelligence at two different periods, for this, if for no other reason, that some addition must have been made to his experience during the interval between the two periods. Cairnes and I agree that although actual market prices are almost always what he would call improper prices, their tendency is always towards proper price. This tendency of theirs is by Cairnes affirmed, and by me denied, to be the law of market price, and I feel that I am risking little in asking the impartial reader to decide which of us is in the right.

Cairnes ends his investigation of value with a chapter on some of its derivative laws; but without dwelling upon this further than to observe that it will be found to be exceedingly profitable reading, I will now bring the present paper to a close by briefly recapitulating its principal conclusions.

Value, in economic language is of two distinct kinds, and cannot therefore be brought within the limits of a single definition. Sometimes it signifies exchange value, or the ratio in which, in open market, any commodities, or all commodities whatsoever, are exchanged against each other; sometimes it signifies pecuniary value, or the ratio in which any commodities, other than some one selected commodity, are exchanged against the one selected. Sum of pecuniary values-increase or decrease of the aggregate amount of pecuniary values—are perfectly intelligible and highly useful, indeed indispensable, expressions, signifying the total quantity of, and any augmentation or diminution of the total quantity of, some selected commodity which may be had in exchange for the total of all other commodities. But sum of exchange values, and increase and decrease of the aggregate amount of exchange values, are unmeaning phrases and impossible conceptions; for every rise in the ratio of any one commodity to any other, or to all other commodities, is necessarily counterbalanced by a precisely proportionate fall in the ratio of that other or those others to it.

Supply is the total quantity of commodities offered for sale at a given time and place, at specified prices. Demand is the total quantity of the same commodities which customers are prepared to purchase at the prices specified.

Value of either species, exchange or pecuniary, is subdivisible into market value and natural, necessary, or normal value. Market values are the prices at which commodities are anywhere actually offered for sale. Normal values are values towards which market values, whatever be their intermediate fluctuations, always tend eventually to return; and these normal values, within one and the same country, are determined invariably and exclusively by cost of production.

Cost of production consists solely of the sacrifices which production exacts; and these, in the earliest of industrial stages, consist exclusively of the labour engaged in production. In all subsequent stages, however, they generally consist less of labour itself than of payments made by employers of labour; they often consist wholly of payments by employers, and always consist in part of payments on account of labour other than that engaged in the final act of production. In short, except in the very earliest industrial stage, the sacrifices that constitute the cost of production which determines natural or normal value are made in far larger measure by employers of labour than by actual labourers, and are generally made entirely by employers. The sacrifices of labourers may be as great or greater than ever, but they have ceased to enter into cost of production in the economic sense of that expression.

Market price is determined by the competition of dealers, the keenness of which competition depends upon the estimates made by different dealers of the actual and prospective condition of supply and demand. But as these estimates and the lines of action suggested by them are made by dealers of very various characters and tempers and also very differently circumstanced, they cannot be depended upon as being the same on any two separate occasions. There cannot, therefore, be any law of competition, nor, consequently, any law of market price.

The foregoing conclusions differ essentially from those of Professor Cairnes; neither are they strictly coincident with those of Mr. Mill. They are, however, in complete accordance with these latter, from which they differ chiefly in being somewhat amplified and expanded.

W. T. THORNTON.

THE

THE BIBLE AND THE CREED.

HE Bible is the Word of God to man; the Creed is the answer of man to God. The Bible is the book to be explained and applied; the Creed is the Church's understanding and summary of the Bible. The Bible contains the truth itself, fresh, unerring, and unalterable, from the mouth of its author; the Creed is a human statement of the truth, more or less imperfect, fallible, and subject to improvement with the progressive knowledge of the Church. The Bible is the truth in the form of life and fact; the Creed is the truth in the form of logic and dogma. The Bible is the only and sufficient rule of faith (norma credendi); the Creed is the rule of public doctrine (norma docendi) derived from the Bible, and guarding it against heretical perversion and corruption. The Bible contains all that is necessary to salvation; the Creed ought not to contain any article that is not clearly revealed. The authority of the Bible is divine and absolute; the authority of the Creed is ecclesiastical and relative. The Bible is the rule and corrective of the Creed, and must for ever remain the final tribunal for the settlement of differences of creeds.

In the present divided state of Christendom there are as many creeds as there are Churches and sects. They all profess to be derived from the Bible, or at all events to be consistent with it ; while yet they differ, and in part are antagonistic and apparently irreconcilable. Let us first briefly review them in their historical

order, and then see how far they agree and disagree, and how they may be harmonized.

THE CONFESSION OF PETER.

The first and fundamental creed, which must ever constitute the beating heart of every other, is Peter's answer to his Master's question, "Whom say ye that I am?" It is the confession of his personal faith that the man Jesus of Nazareth is the promised Messiah, the Son of the living God.

This confession came not from flesh and blood, but was revealed to the mind and heart of Peter by our heavenly Father, through his Holy Spirit. This confession is the immovable rock on which Christ, the divine architect, built his Church. This confession is the standard and rule of every creed, which is true or false in proportion as it agrees with or departs from its spirit. Christ, the God-Man, the promised Saviour, is the beginning, the middle, and the end of our Christian faith and spiritual life. Every other article must cluster around this Christological centre. The creed of the reunited Church of the future will be but an expansion of the confession with which it started. Gold and silver, and many precious stones of divine truth, have been built upon this foundation, and they will remain with it; but the hay and stubble of error will be burned (1 Cor. iii. 12-15).

THE BAPTISMAL CREEDS OF THE EARLY CHURCH.

From the confession of Peter, in connection with the baptismal formula, have legitimately grown the rules of faith or baptismal creeds of the ante-Nicene Church. We find them incidentally mentioned in the writings of Irenæus, Tertullian, Origen, Novatian, Cyprian, Rufinus, Augustine, Jerome, and others, as expressing the general faith of Catholic Christendom in distinction from Judaism and Heathenism, and the pseudo-Christianity of heretics. They were at first not committed to writing, but orally transmitted, and taught the catechumens shortly before baptism, as a part of "the secret discipline," which concealed the sacraments of baptism and the eucharist from the profanation of the heathen. They vary considerably in form and extent, but they all substantially agree, and resolve themselves into three articles in conformity to the Trinitarian basis of the baptismal formula, viz., belief in

God the Father Almighty,

And in Jesus Christ His Son, our Lord,

And in the Holy Ghost.

The other articles are arranged under these three heads; to

the Father being ascribed the creation, to the Son the redemption, and to the Holy Ghost the sanctification, which will be completed in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. In all these forms the second article is made the most prominent, and includes the principal facts in the life of Christ from His supernatural conception to His ascension and return from heaven to judge all men.

THE ECUMENICAL CREEDS.

These are only an expansion of the ante-Nicene rules of faith, and superseded them for all practical purposes. The Western or Latin forms, matured in what is called the APOSTLES' CREED, the Eastern or Greek forms in the NICENE CREED of 325, with the additional clauses of the second Ecumenical Council held in Constantinople, 381. They are likewise Trinitarian and predominantly Christological; they profess the same faith-in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ his Son, our Lord, who became man for our salvation, suffered and died on the cross, rose again from the dead, and ascended to heaven, from whence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead; and in the Holy Ghost, who applies the benefits of Christ to the believer in the Holy Catholic Church through the means of grace.

The Nicene Creed differs from that of the Apostles only in this: it is more theological, and emphasizes more clearly and forcibly the divinity of Christ and His essential coëquality (homoousia) with the Father, in opposition to the Arian heresy which agitated the Eastern Church for half a century, and was the occasion of the first two Ecumenical Councils held in the East.

These two venerable Creeds are to this day the common doctrinal bond of union between the three great branches of Christendom-the Greek, the Latin, and the Evangelical-and between the different ages of the Church. They can never be abolished or superseded. They carry with them an authority and force as no other confession.

"... The faith of the Trinity lies, Shrined for ever and ever, in those grand old words and wise; A gem in a beautiful setting; still, at matin-time,

The service of Holy Communion rings the ancient chime;

Wherever in marvellous minster, or village churches small,

Men to the Man that is God out of their misery call,

Swelled by the rapture of choirs, or borne on the poor man's word,

Still the glorious Nicene confession unaltered is heard;

Most like the song that the angels are singing around the throne,
With their Holy! holy! holy!' to the great Three in One."

6

It is true the famous clause filioque, inserted in the Latin text of the Nicene Creed since the year 589, is still a bone of contention between the Eastern and Western Churches; the former, looking