stances under which the Creeds and Articles were first promulgated-that the habits and minds of the people—their language, and the general influences of the various epochs out of which our theology, represented by Creeds and Articles, at first grew-were all widely different from anything which we are accustomed to or familiar with now. Remember always, if truth is to be living it must be expressed in the forms of the period it is designed to influence. In other words, truth must be re-stated again and again. This, I think, is the great distinction between the old Broad Church of Maurice and the new Broad Church under his followers. Maurice could not bear a re-statement; he thought the old forms. too sacred for paraphrase. We are beginning to see now that a re-statement is the only thing likely to save the old forms themselves from final neglect. Truth is always passing out of living doctrine into dead dogma; but then, again, it is, with a certain conservation of moral force, always passing back through restatement out of dead dogma into living doctrine. It won't do for you to go and read old books of theology if you want living truth. A lady came to me the other day, very angry at something which I had said about David, and after a little conversation, she exclaimed, 'Well, I can't answer your arguments, but I have got a book at home which proves that you are quite wrong; it is Bishop Horne "On the Psalms." I replied, 'Dear madam, Bishop Horne's premises are not mine, nor will his arguments solve difficulties which never occurred to him.' If our new theology is worth anything, it must oppose a new

front to circumstances that are new, it must be capable of being expressed in modern terms; and, therefore, the Church of the Future will take our Forms, our Creeds, our Articles, our Ceremonies, and sound them to their very depths; and when it has found something that will not hold water, it will cast it aside in the cause of truth, and when it has found something expressed in the theology of a past age that will hold water, it will take it and change its form, expressing it in a way that will meet present wants and capacities.

71. I will briefly illustrate what I mean, by taking the first Article of our Church-I allude to the Article on the Trinity. Perhaps I may ask some of you to open your Prayer-books, and look at that Article on the Trinity, and try to find out how it is that although dealing with the most sublime subjects, it fails to kindle very much conviction or enthusiasm in your heart? I will show that this Article is really expressed in words which convey very little meaning to us Westerns in the nineteenth century. I will call to your minds a fact which you too often forget, that our popular theology is not a theology directly coming in living authority from Jesus Christ, or from the Old and New Testaments; but that we have seen our theological truth first through Greek eyes in the advanced schools of Alexandria, which flourished at the time of Christ; and secondly, through Latin eyes, the Roman being the main branch of the Western Church; and thirdly, through modern European eyes, including the eyes of the Reformed Churches,

and so many of our formularies and creeds, and theological terms, have in turn been translated out of the Greek, then into the Roman; and lastly, into the modern languages, including our own. It follows not unnaturally, that many of the terms we read, thinking we have got hold of the real thing expressed by the original words of the Greek, fail to express the original thought. The Latin, a more coarse tongue, lent itself imperfectly to the subtle Greek, and the English frequently lends itself not at all to either Greek or Latin. Add to this, that often

when we actually do grasp the meaning of the words; when we succeed in mastering the subtlety of the Oriental and Greek metaphysics, we are scarcely repaid; the intended distinction seems to us unimportant, unproven, perhaps untrue.

Let us try and read part of this Article carefully, and that will, no doubt, illustrate my meaning better than any further introduction.

This is the first Article:-'Of Faith in the Holy Trinity. There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions; of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the Maker and Preserver of all things, both visible and invisible,' &c. Now observe these words. The living and true God is without 'body.' Substitute for 'body,' 'tangible existence,' i.e. an existence or being which can be recognised by the sense of touch. Substitute for 'parts,' 'portions.' Substitute for 'passion,' 'emotional forces.' Then read the Article thus :

'The living and true God is without tangible existence,

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without portions, without emotional forces; and yet He is of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness.' Although He is without body or parts, yet with power and wisdom; although without any emotional forces and passions, He is nevertheless the soul of goodness-He is goodnessHe is love.

Now, my brethren, it is not too much to say that all our idea of goodness, of love, is inseparably connected with the emotional force, or what is meant here by 'passion.' Or, perhaps you will say I am giving a wrong meaning to this word 'passion.' Well, I merely take the word as it stands in the translation. 'Passion' signifies to our mind not only bad passion, but the power of being roused into emotional activity. There are noble passions, and we mentally in all our thoughts of Him attribute to God the noble passions, of which in human nature we see the faint reflections. Yet you see how little meaning the words I have read convey to our Western minds. I am not saying that they did not convey a meaning to the Greek mind. The Greeks were in the habit, of using words without always connecting what we should recognise as a thought with them. They would draw distinctions sometimes without anything which we can feel to be a real distinction. They had a gift for phrases, and they would often pay themselves and others with phrases. The same is to some extent true of the Romans, but to nothing like the same extent; yet it has often been a matter of surprise to modern jurists how anyone could have been really convinced by the speeches of Demosthenes or Cicerò; to

many they seem little more than masses of glittering verbiage and rhetorical exercise; and if it be here urged that the Greek and Latin of the creeds and ancient formularies are not the Greek of Demosthenes and the Latin of Cicero; it may be replied, No, they are later, much more artificial, and in every way much worse.

But all this playing with words and scholastic hairsplitting is utterly unreal to our modern Western minds. We insist upon having a meaning for every word, and having a real difference when there is a distinction. But I go on with the Article, and read: 'The Maker and Preserver of all things both visible and invisible.' We say then of God, that being without body, parts or passions, i.e. without any material points of contact with matter, He is nevertheless the Framer and Maker of all things visible and invisible. Then we say further in the Article:

'And in unity of this Godhead there be three Persons, of one substance, power, and eternity.' Thus, although there are no parts or passions in God, the mind is called upon to realise that there are three Persons and one Substance, or underlying Something, which is without body or tangible existence.

Now, brethren, for my present purpose; it is unnecessary further to dwell on this Article as a form of words. I suppose you will agree that our minds fail to attach much definite meaning to it as it stands. There was, no doubt, some powerful meaning intended by the framers of this Article, which to them did not seem opposed to common sense. But they have not, as far as