have anything undecided or inaccurately defined; hence the famous creation of many Christian dogmas. These we have embalmed in our creeds and articles, the substance of which was mainly translated by the Roman doctors out of Greek. In these we have no longer-we do not even profess to have—the simplicity which was in Jesus. What we have got is very remarkable; it is, in fact, Christianity as it gathered form and substance in the later Alexandrian schools. A little further we shall have to seek the explanation of numerous subtle distinctions in the controversies of the third and fourth centuries -each of which has left its fatal war-mark upon some ancient creed, collect, or formulary. What could they know about the exact sense in which Christ was the Son of God, or the way in which the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father and the Son? Why, of course they knew no more about it than we know. They only had the Old and New Testaments and their own brains, and we have no more and no less. Yet their speculations.have been set down as next door to infallible truth; and hence our theological heart-burnings, our bitter controversies, our wild and futile attempts to get a rational theology out of the creeds and formularies of the Christian Church.

Do you suppose that I am ungrateful for the creeds and formularies of the Christian Church? Do you suppose that I deny the truth which, in another age and country, to other nations and other civilisations, they nobly strove to utter? I trust I am not so thankless or so foolish. When we look at the great round-bore

cannon of our old navy, or walk the deck of Nelson's ship, what do we say? We say, if it had not been for these we should not be where we are now; these were the defences of our national honour; these are the witnesses of a valour and endurance never more needed than at the present moment. These old relics have taught us great things. Out of them have arisen all our modern improvements. The war, whenever it comes, will be essentially the same as the war they waged, though the method be different and the implements be changed. But put to sea with the old ships! fire the old guns! the notion is too absurd. Brethren, you may not think the parallel a good one. But the constant revival in this age of worn-out theological controversies looks to me very much like putting to sea with the old ships, so that the very words Predestination and Verbal Inspiration are in my ears as the explosion and burstingup of old smooth-bore cannon. No one would contend more eagerly than I for the essential truth underlying the creeds, and even the articles; but to use them literally has become finally and for ever impossible to any but professional theologians, who are about as much concerned with truth as the Greek sophists in the days of Socrates were with philosophy.

31. We read in one place, that when the people wished to seize Christ and hurl him down a precipice, he passed through the midst of them all and went on his way in safety. Observe, in like manner, how Christianity, with the same quiet and sublime confidence, has passed

through the hands of all those who have sought to imprison its free spirit in forms, and strangle it with dogmas. It weathered with ease the storms of early persecution; it was found impossible to exterminate it. Crushed in one place, it rose up in another. Christ's blood poured forth seems to have fertilised the whole earth, and the arms stretched out victoriously upon the cross have, century after century, gathered in the flower of the human race. But the wounds which Christianity has received in the house of its friends are more deadly. Its free growth has been checked by a rigid theology. It has been dismembered and cut up into Greek idioms and Roman formulas; yet it has risen superior to these ; and simple men, who could not believe the dogmas or understand the metaphysics, believed Christ and the Gospel of His mercy and the life of Love.

The medieval Christianity was full of the grossest materialism; transubstantiation was the favourite doctrine; relics of all kinds, full of saving power, abounded. We have the handkerchief of Veronica, the crucifix of Nicodemus, the image traced by angel hands, and still revered at the Lateran. Of course the exposure came, but the religion of Christ survived that shock also.

Then followed a searching investigation into the history of Christ, and people asked what are the facts? Christianity thus came for the first time under the influence of historical criticism, which has enabled us, and no doubt will enable us more and more, to detach the true from the false in all existing historical records. We have got in this way at last something like true pictures of Greek

and Roman life, something like true facts of Greek and Roman history; and with patience we shall, no doubt, arrive at clearer and more accurate views of Jewish and Christian history. The process is going on, but I do not see that the three positions which I have pointed out are in any danger of being destroyed by historical criticism.

It must be a clear gain to learn more accurately what Jesus Christ really was, what he really did, what he really said. An accurate study of history must greatly help us here.

It must be a clear gain to realise more fully the type of life which Jesus created. History can show us what that was, and how it has been grasped in different ages and by different churches.

It must be a clear gain to watch more closely the victorious struggle of Christianity with the evil tendencies of human nature. History unfolds before our eyes the great and exciting drama of that struggle, its failures, its vicissitudes, and its triumphs.

32. When, then, people ask us, What has Christianity done? we point to the actual facts around us. What are the influences in this populous city which make for righteousness? What is the leaven that is working at this moment in the lump? Almost every active, moral, and spiritual influence in the world at this instant is directly or indirectly connected with Christianity. If it does not directly date back to the work of Christ Himself, it yet flows from the Spirit of Christ. We can

place our finger upon definite points in past and present history, and show how the religion of Christ has jewelled the Ages with divine benefactions. You need not recall religious persecutions and deeds of human violence; such have been done in Christ's name, but they are none of his. The leaven may not work suddenly, and violence and bloodshed and hatred and malice will not disappear in a day; but whether you acknowledge it or not, the leaven is working, the power is going forth conquering and to conquer, blessing and to bless.

It

Amidst the corruptions of the Roman empire Christianity stepped in to restore purity of manners. abolished the gladiatorial exhibitions, taught a new law to warriors, and superintended the civilisation of those barbarian, hordes which came down upon Italy, and which we may fairly say Rome did not know how to manage, or what to do with. Beneath the tender philanthropy of the new religion, hospitals and refuges sprang up all over the Roman empire. Every man was taught to be his brother's keeper; and a spectacle of organised self-sacrifice and voluntary poverty drew gross and selfish men close to the servants of one whose kingdom was not of this world.

Then, again, turn to the jurisprudence of modern Europe. Who can say that the Roman law, which is the foundation of our European codes, has not been profoundly influenced by Christianity? In England, at all events, its administration is excessively tempered with Christian lenience and humanity. The effort to abolish the distinction between law and equity is distinctly