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divine severity, and has collected a long list of passages in which are set forth God's threatenings and punishments. These seem to me to relate to something very different from an imperfect conception of the difficult and mysterious subjects, concerning which the wisest men can only "lisp like children ;” but supposing the most terrible penalties await those who shall be found wrong, and the most glorious rewards those who shall be found right in religious doctrine, I still know no better rule we can take for our guidance than to seek with a single, honest and devout spirit the truth of Christ, keeping steadily to the one question, "What do Christ and his apostles teach ?"

And now, let me ask once more, what is our sin of opinion? Is it that we do not recognize Christianity as from God-that we hesitate to acknowledge the necessity of a living union with Christ, as the only means of realizing the Christian faith and character? Is it that we do not pray God to come to us Himself by His Holy Spirit? Is it that we deny any one of the great central truths of the Gospel-a Fatherly providence, redemption through Jesus, or spiritual regeneration? No, it is that when we are required to come to definite and right conclusions respecting the Person, Substance, Essence, Nature of Christ, about which the later Fathers and the Scholastics contended with so much strife and bitterness, we turn to our Saviour himself with the confession which was well-pleasing to him once, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." We must, therefore, continue to take our stand on

the Catholic ground occupied by our fathers; and I know not how we can help feeling that God has indeed given us a message to the churches, viz., that the one thing needful is something far different from theological metaphysics, something that has far more power to create the soul anew. Nor let it be said that those abstruse notions of the Trinity, which were of slow growth, and required centuries to assume their Athanasian form, are essential to devout faith, love or obedience. The Christian should be like a little child, and the child trusts, loves and obeys before it can understand anything about its father's nature. Christ as our Mediator and living Way-the Father as revealed to us by Christ-the Holy Spirit as the Father in communication with our souls, here is our Christianity, which we can less put into a creed that satisfies us than we can express, in a creed, our relation to our dearest earthly kindred and friends. Assuredly it is not the Christ of the creeds, but the Christ of the Gospels, call him what we may, who has the allegiance of our hearts.*

*In his Preface Mr. Bickersteth rejoices that we are bound down by no definite creed of error. Should not this thought remind him of the possibility that he may be himself bound down by a creed of error, and therefore that human creeds are dangerous ? Elsewhere (p. 127) he quotes a passage, the substance of which is that the probable reason why there is no creed in the Scriptures is that it would tend to prevent individual effort to find the truth. But does not this apply also to man-made creeds? In this con

nection there is a sentence which contains a reflection which I believe is quite unjust. "It is by no means certain that such an article (one clearly expressing the doctrine of the Trinity) would have settled every doubt. It would have been handed down from age to age: many Mss. must needs be collated: possibly some

Painful must it ever be to be denied the Christian name and Christian fellowship; but among the consolations we have, is this, that when we go back in Ecclesiastical History and draw near to the Apostolic age, we find ourselves less and less out of harmony with the great body of believers, till at length there is nothing whatever to occasion separation. For a considerable time after the last of the apostles died there was no creed, no Doxology to which we could in the least object as unscriptural.* O happy age, in which Christians suffered terrible things from without, but were comparatively at one among themselves! Speaking of the first and second centuries, Mosheim says, "The Christian system, as it was hitherto taught, preserved its native and beautiful simplicity, and was comprehended in a small number of articles. The public teachers inculcated no other doctrines than those that are contained in what is commonly

obscure variation might be discovered. But even if the text were as impregnable as the opening of St. John's Gospel, I doubt whether it would have convinced such minds as remain unconvinced of the Godhead of Christ, after weighing those transparent declarations." The faith of an honest and devout man is not changed, but his spirit may be wounded by such language as this. And as to the stress laid on the ancient Mss., etc., be it remembered it is stress laid on having the very words of the sacred writers. The men who have watched over the text of the Bible are I believe instruments of God in handing down to us His revealed truth, and they deserve our respect for the honor they pay to the exact utterances of His chosen teachers, and the conscientiousness with which they make use of Divine authority in support of theological doctrine.

* I have heard the clause in the Apostles' Creed, "He descended into Hell," objected to as unscriptural, but that is not found in its earliest forms. In the Greek forms we read, "I believe in One God the Father."-King's Church of Primitive Christians.

called the Apostles' Creed; and in the method of illustrating them, all vain subtleties, all mysterious researches, everything that was beyond the reach of common capacities was carefully avoided. This will by no means appear surprising to those who consider that, at this time, there was not the least controversy about those capital doctrines of Christianity which were afterwards so keenly debated in the Church; and who reflect that the bishops of those primitive times were, for the most part, plain and illiterate men, remarkable rather for their piety and zeal than for their learning and eloquence."*

And why should not the various branches of Christ's church on earth work together? Have they not different gifts? Look at the religious history of our own country. Roman Catholicism may have its errors and its sins, but among its professors have been a Pascal, a Fenelon, an à Kempis, and Sisters of Charity without number, ready to die for the sick or sorrowing. Who can doubt that Wesley and Whitfield introduced new life into all denominations? So the Quakers made an important contribution in directing attention to the inward nature of true religion, and to the operation of the Spirit. In the Church of England, what is called the Low, or Evangelical Church, was at its origin accompanied by a great accession of earnestness; but in some respects the candid and impartial observer may feel that it yields in power to the High Church, and the Broad Church, both of which probably have thrown more light on important questions of theology, and

*Eccles. Hist. Cent. ii., chap. iii., p. 11.

added more to our treasures of practical religious literature. Why should not one class of teachers be more fitted to call men to repentance, and another to perfect those who have already turned their faces towards God? Why should not some be needed to lift up the voice in the wilderness, to rouse the sleeping and the dead, while the gifts and graces of others render them more apt to help in the path of Christian endeavour, leading on "from the weakness of a commencing and growing affection to the consummation of eternal charity ?" In like manner, surely such men as Channing have a work, viz., to enlarge and liberalize the tone of thought and feeling among men, and inspire a profounder sense of something underlying mere diversities of opinion, and uniting all pure, earnest and devout souls as one great spiritual family. God has entrusted the religious welfare of mankind to the whole church of the faithful, and not to a part-not to teachers of one type alone, but to a vast and varied company of chosen servants, who shall be able to meet all the diversified spiritual wants of their brethren. Joseph John Gurney most truly says, "It can scarcely be denied, that in that variety of administration, through which the saving principles of religion are for the present permitted to pass, there is much of a real adaptation to a corresponding variety of mental condition. Well, therefore, may we bow with thankfulness before that infinite and unsearchable Being, who in all our weakness follows us with His love, and through the diversified mediums of religion, to which the several classes of true Chris

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