the Church's mission. Ecclesia docens is still a reality. The Church, as part of its high calling, is set to teach. It is a pillar and support of the Truth; although it is not, as both the Authorised and Revised Versions make it in 1 Tim. iii. 15, 'the pillar and foundation.'

There are few passages of the New Testament (writes the late Dr. Anthony Hort) in which the reckless disregard of the presence or absence of the Article has made wilder havoc of the sense than this. To speak of either an Ecclesia or the Ecclesia as being the pillar of the truth, is to represent the truth as a building, standing in the air supported on a single column. Again, there is no clear evidence that the rare word espaiwμa ever means 'ground'='foundation.' It is rather, in accordance with the almost universal Latin rendering, firmamentum, a 'stay' or 'bulwark.' St. Paul's idea, then, is that each living society of Christian men is a pillar or stay of the Truth,' as an object of belief and a guide of life for mankind; each such Christian society bearing its part in sustaining and supporting the one truth common to all.1

While, then, we reverently listen to the voice of the Christian Congregation, whether in the smaller societies of the faithful or in their aggregated numbers, so far as their collective utterance can be heard, we still claim the right to hear and to interpret for ourselves, as far as in us lies, the 1 The Christian Ecclesia, p. 174.

Oracles of God. For we are personally responsible. In fact, we are compelled to take this individual position; for the voices that we hear are discordant, as, in the course of these Lectures, we shall often have occasion to remark. Meantime, the principle may be reiterated, that not the most widely accepted Dogma, not the most venerable Creed, must be suffered to prevail against the voice of Conscience, informed by independent study of the Divine Scriptures, with the resources of enlightened Reason, and in humble dependence upon the promised guidance of the Spirit of God.

I remember well how, nearly twenty years ago, in a discussion on the question of Creeds, at a great gathering of Nonconformists in London, the Articles of a Creed were likened approvingly by one of the speakers to guide-posts, fixed at intervals along an Alpine pass, rising high above the snows, and marking out the road for travellers, who else might have been bewildered and lost. The simile was felt by many to be appropriate and felicitous. But another speaker afterwards

rejoined:

I am afraid that I have but an imperfect appreciation of guide-posts in matters which concern spiritual faith and

hope in a human soul. They seem to me chiefly helpful to those who have lost sight of or faith in the living Leader. 'When foemen watch our tents by night,' I would get me nearer to the living Captain; 'when mists hang wide o'er moor and fell,' I would feel for the hand of the living Guide.1

In the spirit of these words, let us enter upon our investigation of the Church's Creeds and Confessions. These great utterances of Christian thought we would not undervalue; only we would estimate them rightly. We shall find in them both help and warning; and the result of our inquiry will have been achieved if only we be led back, with a larger appreciation and a deeper confidence, to the living and mighty Word of the Living and Eternal God.

1 See Proceedings of the Congregational Union, 1878.

LECTURE II

THE EARLIEST CREEDS: SCRIPTURE AND THE

ANCIENT CHURCH

The

My present purpose is to trace what may be called, in current phrase, the Evolution of Creed. contrast between the method of Scripture and the methods of the Churches in the presentation of Truth is so striking that we may well inquire into the process by which the transition was effected, from the historical and unsystematic way in which doctrine is set forth by Evangelists and Apostles, to the order, symmetry, and attempted completeness of ecclesiastical formulas. We shall have hereafter to dwell upon this contrast, and to educe from it some lessons for ourselves; meantime, we simply note that the tendency to selection, arrangement, classification, theory, is but according to the laws of the human mind. Theology, like

Such

every other science, has formed its systems by collocation and comparison of facts or phenomena, with the generalisations thence resulting. phenomena, in the present case, are the records and declarations of Scripture, with the facts of man's own spiritual being. These form a sufficient groundwork for theological system: the recourse to tradition, and the influence of current philosophies, have given a direction to Christian thought which, as we shall see, has been in more than one respect opposed to the simplicity that is in Christ.

First of all, then, we turn to Scripture, with the inquiry whether we have there in any form the rudiments of Creed. The Old Testament Church had its formula, simple and sublime:

Hear, O Israel, Jehovah our God is one Jehovah.' This was the confession of every devout Jewhis watchword in life, his viaticum in death. What have we in the New Testament answering to this?

1. We may note the spontaneous confessions of disciples on whom the truth has dawned with sudden glory, or who have been led to it by their own thought and reflection. Thus, Nicodemus