the Lamb in the midst thereof.' Do not, I beseech you, banish the sphere of that glorious prophecy to the world beyond the stars, as mournful, mediæval hymnists have done. The City of God is already among us, though invisibly, in the accord of all faithful souls. Ages may roll on, for aught I know, before its true proportions shall be seen, and the nations walk in the light of it. That light will be revealed, and the world will know that God hath sent His Son, when His Church shall be able to show itself as it isstanding foursquare, in symmetry and strength; while its ever-open gates, fronting all directions, offer an equal welcome to travellers from every field of thought. The inhabitants of the City, grown wiser then, will have ceased to bar any of those open gates by human Creeds; and the consummated unity of the Church will be the salvation of the world. 'I awoke What shall we say to these things? and, lo, it was a dream'? No, for the vision is divine; showing us, as we gaze on it with straining eyes and strive to understand all the glory that it means, what we in this our generation may attempt. Let us but stand fast by the conviction that Christ's Church is One; let us individually repudiate all systems and schemes that would conceal or impair that unity, assured that they cannot be according to the mind of Christ; and we shall have contributed something towards the manifestation of the One Catholic Church. Every true disciple carries the secret of Catholicity within himself. To believe strongly, to hope exultingly, are the gifts of heaven; but there is a gift beyond in which the promise of perfection lies: 'For now abideth Faith, Hope, Charity; but the greatest of these is Charity.' APPENDIX NOTE I. (Lecture I. p. 3) The Influence of Words on our Conceptions of Faith ARCHDEACON JULIUS HARE, in his Victory of Faith, has some valuable remarks on the influence of words over our conceptions of Faith. 'The poverty,' he says, 'and want of formative power in our language, in which there is no verb manifestly belonging to the same family with Faith, by leading us to have recourse to the verb believe, which, in its ordinary acceptation, expresses an act almost purely intellectual, has helped to foster the erroneous notion that in Faith also the intellectual act is all in all. The verb believe, being far more widely spread and connected in our language, has drawn away its corresponding substantive Faith from its more appropriate meaning. So likewise in the Latin verb credo, which tended much to determine the signification of fides, the notion of the intellectual act is more prominent than in the Greek πιστεύω. Hence it was with the fullest right that Luther and Melanchthon, when the true idea of Faith and of its power was reasserted at the Reformation, were anxious to urge again and again that faith is trust, that faith signifies trust: “fides est fiducia"; "fides significat fiduciam."-Sermon i. pp. 20, 21. T NOTE II. (Lecture II. p. 44) Latin Text of the Apostles' Creed The authentic text of the Creed is as follows:- et terræ. Et in Jesum Christum, Filium ejus unicum, Dominum nostrum ; qui conceptus est de Spiritu Sancto, natus ex Maria virgine; passus sub Pontio Pilato, crucifixus, mortuus, et sepultus; descendit ad inferna; tertia die resurrexit a mortuis; ascendit ad cœlos; sedit ad dexteram Dei Patris omnipotentis; inde venturus (est) judicare vivos et mortuos. Credo in Spiritum Sanctum; sanctam ecclesiam catholicam; sanctorum communionem; remissionem peccatorum ; carnis resurrectionem; vitam æternam. Amen. NOTE III. (Lecture II. p. 46) Tradition of the Joint Authorship of the Creed The tradition was thrown into a form to aid the memory in some rude hexameter verses, dating probably from the twelfth century : Articula fidei sunt bis sex corde tenendi, Quos Christi socii docuerunt pneumate pleni : Credo Deum Patrem, Petrus inquit, cuncta creantem ; 1 From a Latin poem, Floretus, printed in the Works of St. Bernard. See Migne, Dictionnaire des Apocryphes, ii. 113, 114. NOTE IV. (Lecture II. p. 55) Discussion of the Creed in the Reformed Church of Geneva A significant correspondence between certain congregations in the Reformed Church of Geneva and the Consistory, 1869, expresses in a succinct form the objections which have in modern times been entertained by many to the liturgical use of that document, with the reply to those objections by those who nevertheless do not require subscription to it as a condition of entering the ministry :— I. LETTER FROM THE CONGREGATIONS GENEVA, May 1869. To the President and Members of the ConsistoryWe approach you with the request to remove from our Liturgy the so-called Apostles' Creed. This formulary, as historical investigation has abundantly demonstrated, does not go back to the primitive age; it is simply the Confession of Faith of ancient Catholicism. It is therefore not Protestant, and consequently many Reformed Churches have rejected it from their Liturgy. In a Church like ours, therefore, which is not only Protestant, but liberated in addition from every Confession of Faith, the reading of the Creed is a two-fold inconsistency. The Creed does not represent either the faith of our own pastors, or that of the Protestant people of Geneva. No one of us could sign it, accepting it in its literal and historical meaning. The descent of Jesus into hell, the resurrection of the flesh, and the communion of saints, are dogmas absolutely foreign to our sentiments and beliefs. Every one of us is compelled more or less to translate these articles into a different sense; and plainly so, when we intend to |