He, too, had a miraculous entrance into the world, being born out of a rock. He ranged the universe as the champion and protector of souls, he was victorious over evil, he was related to the Sun, with whom he sat down at a banquet. His religion was popular in the army, and it is now known that his worship was practised in every, even remotest, part of the Western Empire. One advantage he had over the Christian faith, that he posed as the special friend of the empire and of Roman emperors and of the army, the patron of the established order, who gave victory to the Roman legions. Here was his strength and here was also his weakness. When the Roman army met with successive defeats, his hold began to weaken, and after the time of Julian the Apostate (361-363) it began to disappear before the conquering Church. But what hurt the worship of Mithra most was the deep conviction of the reality of the birth and passion of Christ as enshrined in the Apostles' Creed. For Mithra never existed, and Christ had really been born and had really suffered and really died. It is of scenes like this that we are reminded as we recall the struggles of our brethren in the ancient church, resisting unreality and building on the solid foundation of historic fact.

In regard to the "resurrection of the flesh," that also takes us into the heart of that distant age, which found comfort and support in the Apostles' Creed. The belief was invading the West, coming from Oriental religion, that a sharp distinction existed and separated between soul and body, that the connection with the flesh stained the spirit and weakened its power, and that any redemption must be from the power of the flesh, in order to gain immortality. Such a conviction conditions the conception of the under-world, as in Homer and Virgil, where spirits wander aimlessly and sad, suffering from the disembodiment of death. The doctrine of the resurrection of the flesh was therefore a profound protest against the dreary view of Orientalism, it meant life and hope in this world and in the other. In it we may see the prophecy of modern science, attaching importance to the human body, whose sults are more and more apparent in the physician's art; the basis, too, of modern painting, as it revived in the age of the Renaissance, and attached itself to what was positive in the early art of the Greeks. When

1 1 How much the resurrection of the flesh implied to the old Roman world, may be seen in Tertullian's treatise, De Resurrectione Carnis.

we recall that, in the places where Oriental religion or Mohammedanism has prevailed, there has been no scientific study of the human body and that the healing art is still in its rudiments; or that the plastic art of painting has received no development, nor added to the pleasure and the enlightenment, to the beauty and dignity, of human life, as in Western Europe, we may be grateful for the clause in the Apostles' Creed, the resurrection of the flesh. But this conviction has not been without solace to the religious heart. The insistence on the body of Christ with which He ascended into heaven, the insistence on the resurrection of the human body, tended to disarm death of its terrors. It was a response to an universal human instinct.

There are other features of the Apostles' Creed which, while they still retain their appeal to the Christian mind and conscience, made that appeal with intenser force, in a more realistic way, in the ancient church. Such was the conviction of the indispensable importance of the new society, which was taking the place of the old the organization of the Church elaborated and perfected with surpassing skill and diligence. Into this new society each man was to be born by baptism, and baptism stood for an inward

purification. The kingdom of this world was passing over into the Kingdom of God, so it began to be interpreted from an early time. Nor did the great structure of the mediæval Church in the West or the various Christian nations of the East ever lose this consciousness of a divine origin within the Church, however stagnant or debased they may appear in later ages. From the second century, the "Catholic Church" as the new society founded by Christ and intended to embrace the world was the most inspiring of convictions.

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The forgiveness of sins" has a deep significance when we recall the limitation placed upon its scope by movements such as Montanism, in the second century; but also a deeper significance when we place it over against the teaching of Gnostic sects, where forgiveness was unknown, where souls were what they were and must ever so remain in consequence of a fixed evolution or emanation in the physical order. Such was the central principle of Gnosticism, working in disguised and subtle ways, which, if it had not been excluded from the Western world, would have made progress and hope for mankind impossible. The doctrine of forgiveness strikes its roots into the civil order, reconciles man to life, gives courage and hope,

and constitutes the foundation of Christian civilization.

All these things were but the expansion of the Divine Name, or of the baptismal formula, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; they were implications wrapped up in the new name of God. They might all be dropped or omitted, but the Name would abide, and continue to generate the forces of the spiritual life. Nor was this origin of the Creed forgotten. Ever and anon, in the Middle Ages, it is set forth as the essence of the Creed a protest, it is possible, against the dogmatic tendency, which in advocating too exclusively this or that feature of the Creed failed to do justice to its larger character and purpose. The Fatherhood of God, the redemption of the world by Christ, the higher life of the soul begotten by the Spirit, these threefold agencies, eternal distinctions in the Divine being and operating in time, were the essence of the Christian revelation. God the Holy Ghost drawing all men into the fellowship of the Eternal Father and the Eternal Son such was the Christian motive, which was to remake this lower world, and to bring it into harmony with the upper world, so that throughout the universe there should be unity of motive and unity of result; and the earth should aspire