The facts and the faith; a study in the rationalism of the Apostles' creed

Preface

The vital problem of the Church of Christ in these days is the problem of her very existence, how to ac¬ credit herself to the manhood and womanhood of this generation.

Will Christianity stand the test of rational and scien- Ptific investigation ?

We who hold the Christian Faith believe that the " Apostles' Creed forms a reasonable statement of histori¬ cal and spiritual truth concerning God and man.

A large minority of nominal Christendom, however, is restive under the orthodox teachings, and refuses to hold as vital truth many of the doctrinal inferences of traditional Christianity.

A great many who believe and call themselves Chris¬ tians are confused and puzzled over the apparent dis¬ crepancies between the facts of Science and the literal text of the Old and New Testament.

We may think as our education or instinct directs about the merits of the subjects in dispute, but the fact from which we cannot shrink nowadays, is, that there is the same restlessness and dissatisfaction abroad concern¬ ing the traditional statements of religious truth, whether iv

PREFACE.

Roman, Anglican, or Puritan, as there was concerning the Papacy in the days preceding and culminating in the Reformation in the sixteenth century.

Fundamental doctrines are denied or belittled ; the inspiration of the Scriptures is hotly debated ; the reve¬ lations of science are declared to be contradictory to the revelations of the sacred Scriptures. Everywhere is denial, agitation, upheaval, unrest.

And this is true not only without but within the Church. There are many priests and prophets who are disturbed in their minds and with whom are agonizing searchings of heart. Laymen in great numbers, who seek honestly to do their duty in that state of life where they believe it has pleased God to place them, are puz¬ zled and perplexed. The faith of a great mass of Chris¬ tian people lies in solution. If asked what they mean by the Inspiration of the Bible or the doctrine of the Atonement, they can only remain dumb, or respond with dry and lifeless formulas having no vital connection with the affairs of life.

They no longer hold the mechanical theory of inspira¬ tion which has been the traditional belief taught and held. They do not believe that the first chapters of Genesis contain a literal history. The serpent and the fruit of the tree, together with the age of Methuselah and the incident of Jonah in the belly of a great fish, they treat as allegorial and not historical, as parables of life and not as occurrences in time.

And yet these are God-loving and God-honoring men and women, who do believe in an inspiration of the Scriptures and that Jesus is the Son of God, although they are staggered by the wonder of the Virgin Birth,

PREFACE.

V and the conception by the Holy Ghost is a stumbling-block to their reason.

What message has Christianity for such as these ? Is it sufficient for the Church to simply declare the Faith over and over again ; to reiterate proof texts, and to preach the perpetual damnation of all who will not re¬ ceive spiritual truth on her ipse dixit ? Or shall the Church endeavor to justify her faith to the unbeliever and show forth the rationalism of the Creed in rela¬ tion to life ?

Traditional Christianity, called Orthodoxy, begs the whole question if, in the present advanced state of human progress, it declares that Reason has no right to reinvestigate, and possibly restate the propositions of Christianity. The rational thinking man has a right to demand evidence where evidence is procurable, and the same right to weigh evidence concerning the authorship and authenticity of the Scriptures as concerning any other facts of history. The rational Christian has a right to seek for harmony in all parts of God’s world, seeing that he believes in One God, not many.

It is the denial of these rights that has driven many a man and woman into permanent and bitter unbelief, into open and acrid hostility not only to the Church, but to Christianity.

Reason is a gift of God and twin sister to Faith. The denial of one’s right to use his larger knowledge in spir¬ itual things is not only unfair and illogical, but it pro¬ ceeds upon the fallacy that when the faith was delivered to the saints, it was also interpreted so that no man could fail to perceive its truth, its beauty, and its use.

This is not true, Jesus Himself being witness. He

VI

PREFACE.

declared that there were things to be added. Many things were left unsaid, many more unexplained, because men could not bear them. It lies in the very constitu¬ tion of the Church that only by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit can men be guided into all truth.*

Who shall say when this process ends ? Who shall set an historical limit in time to the working of that Holy Spirit, by whom God breathed Life into His cre¬ ation, and through whom Jesus Christ promised to be with His Church unto the end of the world ?

It is the duty of the Christian Church to lead men, not by and by, but now, into the knowledge of God.

Once this was done, as it were, by proclamation, and an Empire followed an Emperor through the waters of baptism.

Once it was done, as it were, by magic and spells, and Faith was a blind credulity in the power of an infallible Church to work charms by means of a priesthood and sacraments.

Once, again, an infallible Book took the place of an infallible Church, and men gave themselves over to bibliolatry, satisfying their consciences by proof texts, and smothering their reason through fear of a rhetorical fire that was never quenched, and an allegorical worm that died not.

In all these stages there were religious faith and re¬ ligious progress after their kind. God has ever accom¬ modated Himself to the lower levels of human knowl¬ edge, and the sluggish working of the human intellect, and the times of all this ignorance He winked at.

PREFACE.

vii

In these days the infallible Emperor is a name ; the Infallible Church (after the Middle Age fashion) an anachronism, and the Infallible Book (after the tradi¬ tional sort) is coming to the bar of rational judgment.

The following pages are addressed to that large body of men and women who believe in a God Father, but do not as yet see their way to the human apprehension of that Fatherhood which we call Christianity.

Ido not profess to have ‘ 4 harmonized’’ science and religion. I should as soon attempt to harmonize morals and religion. I have tried to show that the Facts of God in one part of His universe cannot finally conflict with the Facts of God in any other part of His universe.

The Facts of God and the Faith in God must be in accord, or else we have misapprehended one or the other.

It is my belief that the Faith expressed by the Facts (historical and inferential) of the Apostles’ Creed is a rational faith, and that it corresponds with God’s reve¬ lations wherever we find them.

My contention as toward traditional Christianity is, that some portions of the Church have laid too great stress upon opinions about the Facts rather than upon the Facts themselves. A large part of our popular traditional Faith is made up of these opinions, which have come to overlay the Facts, as the Pharisaic tradition overlaid the Facts of the Law.

The inspiration of the Scriptures is a spiritual fact; the literal inspiration is an opinion about the fact. The Life Everlasting is a spiritual fact; the endless torment of a large part of God’s creation is an opinion.

So there are opinions concerning the Trinity which create three Gods and construct arithmetical puzzles ;

viii

PREFACE.

concerning the Atonement, which make it a mechanical and absolutely immoral device; about the Church, which make it a spiritually fashionable club ; about the Sacraments, which make them fetiches and charms ; about the Clergy, which make them conjurors in divine things.

It is these opinions that have thrown up the dust of human speculation between God and Man. It is with these opinions that rational Christianity has its quarrel.

In considering anew the Faith as set forth in the Apostles’ Creed, we must do so in the light of the facts of history and the results of scientific investigation. If a man is really a truth-seeker he will not resent this. If he is merely seeking to buttress opinions already formed he will naturally dispute it. It is certain that a literal reading of the first chapters of Genesis conflicts with the revealed facts of Science in several important particulars. Here there are two conflicting proposi¬ tions ; but it is certain as a spiritual fact that God does not stultify Himself, and it is equally certain as a scien¬ tific fact that this world was not made in six days of twenty-four hours each.

What are we to do ?

We must square our Faith by the Facts.

What ! place science over the Bible ? What is this bugaboo we call Science ? It is in its essence a part of what we believe to be Eternal Life—that is, the revela¬ tion of science is the knowledge of God in His World. Yes, we will place this knowledge of God in His World as to His creation, above the writings of men, although they were inspired of God, who did not know as much about the process of creation as modern science has re-

PREFACE.

IX vealed. For these men were evidently not inspired to tell us how God made this world and man, but something else of far more importance—the relations of God to man after he came to the consciousness of himself as lord of the earth and all that therein is.

The only rational Faith for Christianity in this age is to hold to the fact of God in this world reconciling it to Himself, and to take up into this larger Faith all things else concerning man and the purpose of man in the earth that may have been or yet may be revealed.

The Apostles’ Creed is a statement of this Faith, so far as it is possible to express divine things in human language. It is the attempt of these pages, not to har¬ monize all things in heaven and earth according to Chris¬ tian philosophy, but to show that there is a rational approach to the consideration of every fundamental doc¬ trine of Christianity.

There is no attempt to demonstrate the truths of the Creed upon scientific or philosophical grounds, nor to prove anything in the strict construction of the word.

The earnest desire of the writer is to suggest to the agnostic that Christianity is not a bundle of metaphysi¬ cal propositions, involving scientific absurdities ; to the truth-seeking but puzzled man of the world, that the Faith of Christ has its roots in the Facts of his life, and responds to certain natural demands of his being. And to the perplexed Christian disciple, of whom there are very many, especially among the young men and women of our day, I desire to point out that Christianity is not mere acquiescence in a set of propositions more or less confusing, in the holding of which they will finally save their souls, but is the charter of progressive manhood

X

PREFACE.

and womanhood ; that there is no slavery, intellectual or otherwise, in our profession of the Apostles’ Creed, but that it is rather a laying hold upon the profoundest truths of God, Duty and Immortality.

In quoting the conclusions of science, I have carefully endeavored to give the context of the various writers, together with the words which to me and to others seem to support some fundamental beliefs of Christianity. It is a cowardly sort of argument that garbles the state¬ ment of an adversary, and I am so firmly convinced that no scientific fact of acknowledged truth can be at vari¬ ance with any spiritual truth of revelation, that I should be both foolish and ashamed not to quote them side by side.

If I were to express my indebtedness to every source from which I have received help, suggestions, and in¬ spiration, this preface would be unduly prolonged. I am consciously (and beyond a doubt unconsciously in many cases) under obligations to many authors, to whom I have given credit in the proper places, wherever I have been aware of my debt.

In conclusion, I may say that this little book has been written at the request of many, both believers and non¬ believers, who first heard the substance of it in a series of Lent lectures delivered in Trinity Church, New Or¬ leans. That the suggestions of these pages have been helpful to some is my ground for hope that they may be of use to others. It is evident to every serious student of modern life that Thomas the doubter prefers to be Thomas the believer. It is quite as evident that he must see a connection between the Facts and the Faith —the facts of life, of science, of history, of experience, and the Faith in Christ.

PREFACE.

XI

Christ dealt with Thomas by saying, 16 Reach hither thy hand/’* The Master acknowledged the right of the man to doubt, and Thomas found the Lord through that outburst of rationalism.

While profoundly realizing what seems to be the neces¬ sity of establishing anew such a connection as this, the writer is sadly and humbly conscious of the awful nature of the task he has endeavored to perform. What preacher of Christ, indeed, can fail to feel himself un¬ worthy to handle sacred things ? Dealing with the m) r steries of God, how far short we must inevitably fall of the reality ! When we have entered the Life Eternal, how much of what we have spoken and written will we not wish to have left unsaid and unexpressed !

And yet as we press onward, peering (not curiously, but for light) into the veiled knowledge of the many mansions, we are assured that there, at least, is our Father’s House. And because He is our Father, we somehow believe that He would rather have us arise and go toward Him, even though we stumble on the way, than to have us settle down content in the far country of credulity, indifference, or wilful ignorance.

Trinity Rectory, New Orleans, La.

Chapter I. I

The prime facts of Religion and Science—The common ground as set forth by Herbert Spencer—Abiogenesis an unscientific assumption—Testimony of scientists—Three subjects under the first article of the Creed : (a) A Crea¬ tor ; ( b ) a process of creation; ( c ) a lelationship between Creator and man—Where agnosticism parts company with Theism—The agnostic right on material grounds—God is known after another fashion—The moral consciousness de¬ mands a resting place—Science as well as religion teaches purpose in creation—What we know of the unknowable— The position of man—The process of creation a disputed question—Mechanical theory of inspiration the cause— Comparison of the parables of St. Luke with those of Genesis—Rational Christianity views Inspiration as a con¬ tinuous outflow of the divine—Creation itself the great miracle—Process of creation a secondary matter—Evolution a good working hypothesis—How Christianity may hold it —Relations of God and nature manifest in nature—Rela¬ tions of God and man only partially manifest—Man the climax of creation—His existence justified only by view¬ ing God as a Father—His ultimate, expressed in terms not found in nature—Man by himself a failure—As the child of God he finds interpretation—Fatherhood apprehended by faith, a scientific as well as spiritual fact.

Chapter II

Science brings us to the verge of a chasm—Theism infers personality beyond—Christianity proclaims Father-God—

XIV

CONTENTS.

Man must know the Father to know himself—Man’s his¬ torical attitude of interrogation—Christianity proposes Jesus Christ as the answer of the Father-God—( a ) The historical Person ; (fi) the Divine Being; ( c ) His relation¬ ship to man—Our immediate question is with the proba¬ bility of God revealing Himself—No dispute as to the his¬ torical Person—This human life is the only basis for our knowledge of the divine life—The idea of Incarnation not original with Christianity—The idea does not therefore traverse human expectation—Key of the mystery lies in Fatherhood—To quote scripture not sufficient—Rational ground must be sought—Scientific possibility of God dwell¬ ing in the flesh—Illustrations from the creation—Breaks in continuity of development—Man not perfect owing to moral nature—He interferes with development—Will not God bring man to perfection ?—The Incarnation an affirma¬ tive answer—Man seen to be not an isolate atom but the member of a family—The Only Son is the head of the Fam¬ ily—To Him all others must conform to fulfil their pur¬ pose and realize their destiny—Objections considered— God has always worked slowly—God is manifest in lower forms of life, shall He not be manifest in the higher ?—A Creator and a creation involves a relationship of under¬ standing—Man questions of God for more than food and clothes —The Only Son a type of other Sonship—In Him the chasm is bridged—Traditional Christianity confuses the question by treating Christ as an afterthought—His human progress a sacrifice to the crude spiritual ideas of man—His Incarnation inevitable had there been no cross —Our Lord a necessary sequence—The moral argument from the character of Christ—How the sceptic must be treated—To doubt is not to be damned—The testimony of Christ to Himself.

Chapter III

The historical crux of the Christian position—The process of the Incarnation a stumbling-block to many—It may be

CONTENTS.

XV

PAGE

rationally apprehended—Purpose of this chapter not to prove the Virgin birth, but to set forth a rational view of considering it—The image of God refracted in all but the Only Son—Either God so manifested Himself, or men have constructed a perfect manifestation—In Him we know the Father—Statement of the facts of the birth—The laws of procreation have back of them the Source of life—Hux¬ ley on Parthenogenesis—Weissman—The scientific fact not pressed in this argument—Direct action of God in produc¬ ing life in His Creation—Variation of His working—The miracle of Creation greater than the miracle of Incarnation —God’s life accretes form from its environment—The new life spiritually transmitted as the old life is physically im¬ parted—Original creation by one parent—Purpose of this new creation— Perfection of the whole man, hitherto devel¬ oped only in mind and body—Spiritual life necessary to give purpose to other life—The achievements of Christ in human history—The new type of manhood—Our perma¬ nent relationship through Him with the Father—Relation of Incarnation to Parthenogenesis—Attitude of traditional theology—Suspicion of alternates to its own formularies— Shall a Unitarian “ without doubt perish everlastingly ?”

—The mystery of the Incarnation not expressed in human language—The God-Father’s wish—His love must finally reach to the knowledge of men—The Christian answer is “ through Jesus Christ Our Lord”—Perhaps we may here¬ after see an expansion of this answer—God is in His world for those who do not recognize Him as well as for those who do—The bottom truth of Christianity is not a series of opinions but God’s Fatherhood—The Only Son is the head of a Family including Thomas with John. 32

CHAPTER IV. Historical environment of Christianity—The Atonement

The fall of man and its results—The traditional view irra¬ tional—Christ’s coming a forethought—The added task of reconciliation—Atonement not substitution—The Godhead

XVI

CONTENTS.

PAGE

not divided by man’s sin—Atonement is man’s need— Modus vivendi necessary—Complication of sin—Heredity —Breakage of law taken into account—Man ignorant of his destiny—Knows God’s laws but not His love—Idea of propitiation—Man’s crude idea to which God accommo¬ dates Himself—Sacrifice is of the human will—Jesus the complete expression of this—The world’s Redeemer—Pro¬ cess of redemption—Christ’s sacrifice not physical but spir¬ itual—The cross stands for more than martyrdom—Vica¬ rious suffering a law of human progress—Christ dies not a part from, but as a part of, man—Materialism of popular conceptions of the blood of Christ—The cross an object lesson of God’s love—The world’s judgment of the Best—

The reaction from the cross is man’s realization of the Atonement—Atonement not yet completed—Salvation to the uttermost—From Calvary dates the outward spiritual ascent of man—Further than this is still God’s secret—Re¬ demption a process of the ages—But not because Christ went forth to execution—Christ took all human experience to His bosom on the cross—The hard things of life are divine—The supreme lesson is the subjection of will in harmony with the divine—Christ’s redemption of the race possible because He is an epitome of the race—Not a magi¬ cal process, but the evolution of the man—no achievement without cost—The sons of God and heirs of eternal life_ 46

Chapter V

Four propositions to be considered : (a) The place ; (&) the reason ; (c) what Christ did ; ( d ) the result—A place of departed spirits not peculiar to Christian doctrine—Greek’s and Jew’s teaching—Intermediate state of Christianity— Hades and Paradise—This existence as rational as any other state of being—Purgatory a perversion of the Cath¬ olic truth—Germ truth of purgatory—A revolt against doctrine of endless torment—Why Christ made the descent —To complete human experience—He must touch life at all points—What did He while there ?—Speculation as to

CONTENTS.

XVII the other world—It is certain from Scripture that Christ preached the Gospel there—St. Peter’s testimony—Tra¬ ditional theology disputes this because of its theory of no probation after death—Life not a probation but an educa¬ tion—Popular theory breaks into the purpose of God in creating man in His image—Brings His life in man to an end at the grave—Teaches despair beyond that point— Three kinds of a “ gospel' ’ might have been preached:

( a) Information ; ( b) to hardened spirits incapable of re¬ pentance ; (c) denunciation of evil — Jesus never taught that death ends moral progress, but the contrary in the parable of Dives and Lazarus—The appeal taken from texts of Scripture to character of Christ and purpose of God in creation—God’s love—Christ will preach wherever He preaches, this good news—The results—Men who reject¬ ed God on earth may find Him beyond the grave—Truth is never dangerous—Anathemas do not “ run” in the spir¬ itual world—Three theories of future punishment, any one of which a Christian may hold : (a) Endless torment based on inaccurate translations of the authorized version, changed by the revisers—Christ’s explanation of eternal life—Life is knowledge—Death is ignorance—Position of English Church leaves it an open question—Rhetoric not logic—Endless torment is unscientific and unmoral—No man holds it true as concerning his own dead—( b) Condi¬ tional immortality, or the annihilation of the obdurately wicked— (c) Final victory of God through man in His uni¬ verse, when every enemy including disobedience is de¬ stroyed—The true theory of punishment—George Fox’s vision. 62

Chapter VI

The Resurrection the prime historical fact of Christianity— Again the supernatural—A moral and rational necessity involved—Two sorts of evidence—The logical necessity for the Resurrection of Christ—Death not an ultimate in the natural world—The antecedent difficulty of a variation of

CONTENTS.

law—Already considered in Creation and Incarnation—The Resurrection a lesser miracle than either—The persistence of life—Not an ordinary life—Man’s natural development carries him continually above earthly conditions—Life superior to death and therefore to the body which alone death attacks—Life the conceded master of its environment —The great miracles may be the obscured workings of a law not yet discovered—This redeems us from mechanical theories of God’s interference with His world—The spir¬ itual application of evolution a new revelation of God— The Resurrection a term in the evolutionary series—The cross standing alone a failure—Christ’s own teaching must be taken into account—Resurrection not irrational, but the expectation of all men—John Fiske’s testimony as to im¬ mortality—If Christ remained in the grave the Incarnation was incomplete—There would have been no light on im¬ mortality—The historical evidence—Man does not desire to doubt, but rightly demands evidence—The credibility of the miraculous—Huxley and Hume—Witnesses should be accorded fair treatment—Testimony of Greenleaf—Histori¬ cal appearances of Jesus after His death—Leslie’s test rules of evidence—How the facts stand their application— Belief in the Resurrection rational, philosophical, and his¬ torical-influence of Christ in the world rests upon a be¬ lief that He rose from the dead—Moral effect of this wit¬ nessed in history—His resurrection a prophecy of the resurrection of humanity—“ A supreme act of faith in the reasonableness of God’s works”..

Chapter VII

Return to earth not a completion of Christ’s destiny—The Only Son looks onward—The Ascension necessary to the Resurrection—Christ leads man to his ultimate place—His¬ torical details of Ascension not as perfect as of the Resur¬ rection—The fact is an inference of all New Testament writings—We are dealing with a unique being dwelling in a world beyond the realization of material man—Is the

CONTENTS.

XIX

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spiritual world a rational conception ?—Religious debt to science—Indications of the interpenetration of two worlds —The deaf and blind in the physical world—The illiterate and cultured in the intellectual world—The natural and spiritual worlds rational—Jesus saw and heard what His disciples could not—Illustrations of people approaching death—Telepathy—Vulgar use of spiritual facts—Testi¬ mony of science—Physical and spiritual worlds are coter¬ minous—Ascension not a departure from earth, but a “ withdrawal into” the spiritual world—Right hand of God a figurative expression—Christ must be somewhere correspondent to His environment—No such thing as “spent life”—No loss in the friction of the universe—

The Faith here buttressed by the facts of science—Relig¬ ious teaching of the Ascension—Christ’s resumption of His proper place—He takes humanity with Him—The destiny of man to walk erect in the presence of God— This in the initial velocity of His creation—The soul moves in an ellipse from God to God —The unrest of humanity significant of this destiny—Christ enters the Holy Place, the Presence of God, bringing all men with Him—The As¬ cension an answer to the question “ Why ?”—God’s view of His children—The family idea of creation—Each one has his own place in the family circle. 102

Chapter VIII

Christ’s deathless association with humanity — Once more He cometh to judge the quick and the dead—Man’s part in his redemption a real one—The ideal of the Asceusion is shat-

' tered in us all—God is either wearied, or will come again in some way to man—The permanent relationship between God and man demands the latter—A final manifestation of this—A final contrast between good and evil, not to sepa¬ rate man from God, but to bring them together—Judgment of man a fearful thing—In the hands of Christ—The doc¬ trine a fundamental belief of early disciples—Expectation of Advent in their generation—They were not far wrong

XX

CONTENTS.

PAGE

—Second Advent does not stand alone—God has always been coming in judgment—Bishop Westcott on this— Christ’s judgments not one but many—An enlargement of traditional theory—Christ has not withdrawn Himself into space—His perpetual presence—From the spiritual world He breaks forth in judgment—Judgment lifts up as well as weighs—Destruction of Jerusalem an illustration—Other examples—Finality of judgment applies to dispensation —

The earthly court-room fallacy—No “ last day” in sense of finality—Analogy of the old dispensation—This dispensa¬ tion will be judged also—Humanity will be purged and lifted up—Nature and scope of individual judgment— Judgment a rational expectation of mankind, both bad and good—The “ end of the world”—Destruction of conditions of human life, and persistence of life—Sin brings man to God for judgment—It cannot finally be in the universe—

Its confinement to a certain space inconceivable—Sin an alien thing to be sloughed off—The judgment emphasizes this—Judgment necessary for God’s justification—Read¬ justment must be inherent in creation—Individual judg¬ ment to purify—Separation of good from evil the first, but not the final stage of the process—Destruction of evil, survival of good—Man goes to his own place —That place not necessarily perpetual—Yet sin will always be punished — man must receive for the deeds done in his body—Judg¬ ment will be upon character the aggregate of life’s ex¬ perience. 115

Chapter IX

The third division of the Creed -The divine side of the prob¬ lem—Man has his part—He is not left to achieve his share alone—Not alone at any point—The promise of the Spirit —His office to interpret Christ—To guide men into all truth—A broad statement—Truth is one—God will explain His whole creation—The Spirit lifts us to God—Truth not always its own interpreter—The Spirit of life not a new thought—Our vague apprehension—We have met the

CONTENTS.

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Spirit (a) in creation ; (jb) in the Incarnation—Operation of the Spirit not narrowed to any special channel—Human misapprehension of human powers—The Holy Ghost the inspiration of humanity—Man is not alone—Chaos a pro¬ cess, not a finality—Through the Spirit man becomes con¬ scious of his divine endowment—Vain speculation as to the Trinity—Creed deals with facts as distinguished from opinions—The three fundamental phenomena of the Creed, Father, Son, and Spirit—Historical gift of the Spirit—Ex¬ ample of epochal moments—Strange sights and sounds of Pentecost—The marvel not in the details but the fact— Miraculous underlies historical development—Pentecost marks a new world within the observation of historians— Miracle of the first Christian century—The Spirit created nothing, but acted upon what was—How ?—'The Life abides in man as in nature, bringing both to perfection—

In man the Spirit is conscious of interference—Life a strug¬ gle between two forces—The power “not ourselves” is God by His Spirit working in man—Man may or may not use this endowment—It demands receptivity—The practice of good—God comes through our contact with others—In¬ spiration the same to-day as in the first century—The de¬ nial of this is a partial view of God—Its realization brings God and man closer together—Inspiration is the constant object of prayer—The mark of the Spirit on all true effort... 133

CHAPTER X. The letters forming a word have no divine significance

The Apostolic Church marks its continuity—The tests of doctrine, fellowship, and documents—Men crave authority for religious as for all other truths—This article of the Creed not a thing apart from the rest—The Church is the earthly body of the Spirit in the religious realm—The Spirit manifests itself in form—Otherwise we know it not —This does not narrow the Spirit’s working—It is not con¬ fined to this channel—The Church a working instrument of the Incarnation—An organism like the state—Comparixxii