the Church of Christ free to examine and inquire and to make use of such studies as help to the knowledge of the Scriptures; or are these things determined in advance by the authority of tradition as given in the creeds? This Church inherits the spirit of freedom from the Anglican Church, and the Prayer Book is a powerful incentive to its exercise, and was intended so to be. Not until the Prayer Book is abandoned as a mistake and failure can the spirit of freedom be exorcised. The rehabilitation of Constitution and Canons, the insistence that the Church is organized as a business corporation, and makes a contract with the clergy, by which they renounce the liberty wherewith Christ hath made them free in return for their daily bread, —all this line of procedure will be of no avail. We have got into the existing difficulty by abandoning the teaching of the Prayer Book, by seeking to make the Church infallible, by substituting tradition for God's Word, and putting a burden on the creeds which they are not able to carry. The relief from the evils of the situation may be sought in two ways. (1) We may return to the original interpretation of the clause, "born of the Virgin Mary," impressing upon our minds, as we recite it, how it means that the Son of God was actually born into this world of a human mother. St. Paul has given the equivalent expression, "Born of a woman, born under the law." We must keep constantly before us the interpretation of the Creed, as given in the Church Catechism, for it is one of the most valuable guarantees of spiritual liberty we possess. Whatever the Creed may contain in the way of subordinate statement, what we chiefly learn from it is the doctrine of the Divine Fatherhood as based on the creation, the doctrine of the Divine Sonship as including the redemption of all mankind in Christ, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit as sanctifying the people of God, in order to bring them into the fellowship of the Father and the Son. This is what we are also chiefly to teach; and this is what the Creed means, not only in the daily office, but also at baptism, and in the visitation of the sick, or at the burial of the dead. And (2) there is a provision made in the rubric of the English book before all the creeds, Apostles', Nicene, or Athanasian, — that they be "sung or said." In the American book the word "sung" has been omitted, but we may think no special significance attaches to the omission. It was the opinion of Dr. Arnold of Rugby that the creeds should always be a sung. There has never been any authoritative decision as to the significance of their liturgical use, nor is there to-day any common understanding. If they are sung they pass into the rank of the great hymns, the Te Deum and the Gloria in Excelsis, where misunderstandings disappear. Recited in their original sense, in every clause, they can no longer be. They have been put to the test of Scripture, as Article viii requires, and the clauses, "He descended into hell" and the "resurrection of the flesh," have not stood the test. But as hymns expressing the faith of the Church of the early centuries, they will retain their dignity and importance, revelation of the human soul responding to the Divine call; which if they become the subject of controversy and business contract they must lose. So long as we have the Word of God containing all things necessary to salvation, the creeds are not indispensable. They might be omitted from the offices of the Church and the Christian faith not be impaired. But as summaries of the convictions of the Christian heart in past ages, as ties binding us to the one common Christian life and experience in every age, they are invaluable, the most precious heritage of our historical faith, although not its complete expression. INDEX Absolution, 25. Acquileja, Creed of, 55. Athenagoras, "Apology" of, 207. Ambrose, baptismal creed in the Augustine, 50, 117 ff.; view of time of, 47, 136. American Episcopal Church, 51, Anglican Church, 3 ff., 17 ff., 21, Apocryphal Gospels, 136. ity of Christ, 131, 141. the Incarnation, 120, 137 ff.; Baptism, 27; formula of, 39; formula of, as expanded in the Arians, their acceptance of Vir- Bushnell, Horace, 181. gin-birth, 129. Aristides, on Virgin-birth, 205. Arnobius, "Apology" of, 207. Butler, Archer, quotation from, Butler, Bishop, citation from Cæsarea, Creed of the Church in, Asia Minor, 106, 113, 123, 125, Calvin, citation from Institutes of, 133, 155. Athanasius, on the Incarnation, 174. "Catholic," interpretations of the |