supposes a group of persons banded together for the actualisation of a definite end, and is a social act; it might even more aptly be designated the Church's Prayer than the Lord's. In speaking thus of the Church, I hope I do not obscure my meaning, which is that the Lord's Prayer is a Congregation's prayer; it is suitable for any assembly for the advancement of human welfare. Those who hold, moreover, as I do, that every nation, in so far as it is the standard-bearer of the ideal of human life, is a church, will readily pass to the position that the Church's Prayer is the Nation's Prayer. The true patriot will identify the Father with the higher will of his own country, and the kingdom of heaven with the future of his own land.

Thus our study of the Lord's Prayer from the point of view of social utility has justified its retention as part of a national scheme of moral instruction and edification. In the future it may be used less generally because more discriminatingly, but it will thereby become

efficacious.

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CHAPTER V

THE CREEDS AND ARTICLES

I SHALL try to show that the Apostles', the Nicene and the Athanasian Creeds, like the Decalogue and the Lord's Prayer, are capable of being interpreted, without distortion, as expressions of humanistic idealism. When thus viewed, and when compared with analogous documents, they stand forth as three of the profoundest and most expedient utterances ever promulgated; and of the three, the greatest is the Athanasian.

Wholly unwarranted is it on the part of persons who have not devoted special study to religious experience and expression, to cast this document aside, because its distinctions seem to possess no vital import. That to such persons it sounds super-subtle, self-contradictory and pedantic, is no proof that it really is so. The fundamental presuppositions of chemistry or physics, formulated in as brief a compass, would appear to the uninitiated equally empty and vain. And if it be maintained that even to the philosophically initiated the Athanasian Creed not only seems but is full of self-contradictions, it can be answered that this objection applies equally against the fundamental presuppositions of chemistry and physics. It is as easy to expose to view unverified assumptions and inherent inconsistencies of thought in a creed of modern

science as in the creed of the Church; but if the defects of a formula are not arbitrary, and if the formula be accepted tentatively only, it must not be cast aside until superseded by a better.

If it be argued that creeds—short and precise formulæ of faiths are altogether a mistake, we must turn to practical and theoretical teachers to decide for us. These, as I have said, sanction a judicious use of compendiums of knowledge. If the Creeds as compendiums must go, so must the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer.

If it be maintained that in other departments of human thought and experience the world has fared very well without doctrinal confessions, it must be answered that religion, if judged by its hold on masses of men, has fared better with a creed than chemistry, physics, political economy and psychology without one. The sciences still wait to become popular; their method and spirit have not yet permeated the masses of any nation, despite State educational systems in use for a century. Perhaps the sciences must teach their creeds as indefatigably as the Church has taught hers.

Sometimes the rejection of the Athanasian Creed is based not on any dislike of creeds in general but on the fact that it, like the Apostles' and the Nicene, was formulated many centuries ago. The argument is that it must by this time have become obsolete and useless; we must have outgrown it, as we have outgrown so many other teachings of a pre-scientific age. If it had always been held only tentatively and had been continually subjected to revision, probably no vestige of it-the argument runs -would have survived. Now, to decide whether it in part or as a whole is to be cast to the rubbish-heap, we must compare it carefully with our living experience today and with the best formulation of that experience

which we can make. We cannot argue a priori that because fixed in the fifth century after Christ, it is outworn. Much beauty, many truths, blossomed to perfection long before the Athanasian Creed was fixed, and yet are as fresh and invigorating to-day as they were in the hour when they first took shape.

Personally, when I read this creed on the supposition that it is treating of natural factors in moral experience, I detect only two errors in the whole of it-its assertion of the Virgin Birth and its assertion of the literal resurrection of Christ's spirit and body after his death. Setting these two points aside, all its distinctions seem to me not only true but of vital import to national welfare.

As to the two errors. First, the creed, in the clause "And man, of the substance of his mother born in the world," denies by implication that Jesus was begotten of a human father. His humanity is traced wholly to his mother. Now of course there is no biological impossibility against the idea that Mary was with child, although not according to the ordinary way. But the notion is monstrous both morally and biologically that such an incident could explain the moral purity and genius of Christ. Evil and finiteness of personality are transmitted from a human mother as much as from a human father. So the moral and biological motive of the doctrine of the Virgin Birth is gone for ever. This clause of the creed should be amended so as to read: to read: "And man, of the substance of his human father and mother born in the world."

This change would entail the necessity of an amendment of the preceding clause, which now reads: "God, of the substance of the Father, begotten before the world." It is perfectly clear that the metaphorical use by Jesus of the word "Father" as an epithet for the Being he

worshipped, led the next age, as metaphors are prone to mislead the uncritical, into a confusion of thought. They forgot that Christ's God was his father only in a metaphorical sense. Christ's God was Wisdom and Goodness as active energies in life; and his voluntary acceptance of Wisdom and Goodness as the guide of action constituted him also God. The creed is right, then, in saying that Jesus Christ is both God and man. And the clause we are considering might avoid all confusion if it were so amended as to read: "God, of the substance of Wisdom and Goodness."

The creed likewise seems to me to err in asserting that Christ rose with his body after death, and that all men will some day so rise. The clauses read:

Who suffered for our salvation: descended into hell, rose again the third day from the dead.

He ascended into heaven, he sitteth on the right hand of the Father, God Almighty: from whence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

At whose coming all men shall rise again with their bodies and shall give account for their own works.

Now, there is nothing biologically or metaphysically impossible in the notion that all men will rise with their bodies after death. But it has become morally impossible to retain the notion as a necessary support and inspiration to our faith in righteousness. We no longer need to believe that we shall rise again, either with or without our bodies. We never should have needed it, had our insight into the meaning and bearings of the good life been clear and penetrating. The modern recognition. that moral faith does not need the belief in a life after death is one of the greatest achievements which the human spirit has ever made. It is a discovery in the very spirit of the New Testament, that enthusiasm for