true doctrine of immanence, which consists in recognizing as a manifestation of God every gleam of good that appears in the world.

4. It was this same mistaken emphasis of the doctrine of divine transcendence which led to the interpretation of the sacraments in a magical instead of a social sense, with the result that they became converted into instruments of superstition as well as of salvation. Men have excommunicated and murdered one another for the sake of rival and unintelligible theories of the Eucharist, instead of realizing, through the interchange of mutual charity and helpfulness, the true significance of communion. Nobody can prove or disprove transubstantiation or consubstantiation. Nobody knows or can know whether the analysis of phenomena into substance and accidents is accurate, or whether, if it be so, the unknowable, non-spatial and ultra-sensible substratum of one phenomenon is capable of being transmuted into the substance of another, without assuming the accidents of that other. Inquiry into such problems may be an exhilarating mental gymnastic, but both one's moral sense and one's sense of humour recoil from the thought of excommunicating people because they refuse to accept a particular dogmatic affirmation as to their solution. Even the use of bread and wine for the purpose of the sacrament, though it perpetuates a long historic tradition, is, in itself, supremely unimportant. Any other articles of food and drink would serve the same purpose equally well, since the essence of the sacrament is the public commitment of those participating to love and charity toward their neighbours, to the restitution of ill-gotten gains, and to righteousness of life. The communicant has the sense that in thus pledg

ing himself, he enters into the larger presence of the over-arching good, and is enabled to supplement from its inexhaustible resources his own feeble aspirations towards righteous life.

A similar simple and natural explanation can be given of the sacrament of baptism. The advantage of emphasizing this side of the matter is that the reality of the natural and social elements will not be denied, even by those who affirm also the magical elements. Whatever else baptism may be, it is first and foremost the assumption of responsibility by the community for the nurture of a new creature in the principles of justice and righteousness. The most extreme dogmatic theologians will admit that the production of this effect is the reason for the existence both of the sacraments and of the Church which ministers them. Yet how completely has this verifiable and most important side of the work of the Church been forgotten or neglected during the last fifteen hundred years!

5. The next most urgent respect in which the Church must reform itself is by abolishing the false finality ascribed to the creeds. It is the theory of their absolute value, rather than their actual content, which has made them a barrier to the growth of knowledge, and consequently, in the modern world, a danger to intellectual honesty. If the creeds are studied from the point of view of their historic function, it becomes evident that they were formulated not to provoke divisions, but to put an end to them. Those who take the most rigorous and literal view as to their truth and importance, cannot deny that they are at best inadequate expressions of realities which in their fullness transcend the limitations of human speech. Those, on the other hand, who take a

latitudinarian position with regard to doctrine, maintain that many of the positive statements in the creeds are baseless, and ineffectual as safeguards of the religious truths to which they were supposed to witness. For example, few men now suppose that in order to believe in the Incarnation it is necessary to believe in the Virgin Birth, or that the doctrine of Christ's victory over death cannot be held apart from belief in the resurrection of his body.

Nor is it certain that those who contend most vehemently for the old formulas, have fully fathomed the depths of their metaphysical subtlety. For example, most of the High Churchmen who to-day in England are contending for the retention of the Athanasian Creed, are wont to declare their belief in the personality of God, that God is a person. They have failed to notice that the Athanasian Creed does not countenance this belief. God, according to that document, is the unity, the identity-in-difference, of three persons, but it is not stated that these three are one person. The Creed specifies with careful detail that, while each of the persons is incomprehensible, yet there are not three incomprehensibles, but one; that while each is God, yet there are not three Gods, but one God. It does not state, however, that there are not three persons, but one person. According to the Athanasian Creed, to ascribe personality to God is as unphilosophical as it would be, let us say, to ascribe it to humanity. Humanity is the one essence of hundreds of millions of persons, but it is not itself a person, nor has it any of the attributes of individuals. It may be a little mortifying to the ultra-orthodox, who have so zealously contended for the doctrine of the Trinity, and for the one Creed which unequivocally affirms it, to find

that that Creed when closely construed gives no support to the view of God which is commonly assumed to be orthodox.

My contention is not that the efforts of hard thinking by which theologians, like other philosophers, have endeavoured to define the nature of ultimate reality, should be given up. One of the greatest sins and dangers of the present age is its mental indolence. I protest only against the ascription of finality to the metaphysics of the fourth and fifth centuries. The early Church, by summoning representative councils and concentrating co-operative intellectual effort upon the attempt to formulate the deepest truths cognizable by the mind of man, set an excellent example, which ought to be followed to-day. We have had to wait for Bergson and the Pragmatists to remind us that a valid philosophy cannot be the work of any single thinker. Co-operative efforts, renewed from age to age, will be necessary to deepen our insight into the nature of ultimate reality; yet, even so, it would almost seem that this must for ever remain in its inmost essence incognizable. For this very reason, however, we should repudiate the suggestion that the thinking of the fifth century attained the utmost depth of the knowledge of truth "that the mortal glass wherein we contemplate can show us."

I plead, then, not so much for the rejection of the traditional creeds as for the right of every age to formulate its own creed. The so-called Athanasian formula may well stand on record as a monument of the insight and of the intense mental labour of those by whom it was drawn up. But the policy of the Church should be to offer such documents only as a challenge to the minds of its members in successive ages. By so doing, it would

not only make possible a virile development of thought and speculation, but it would also remove the handicap under which many of its most conscientious members and ministers are now labouring.

To this catalogue of the shortcomings of the Church, I may be permitted to add two more points, which arise from the peculiar circumstances of our immediate situation:

1. The activity of the clergy in every good work.

2. The lowering of the mental and moral calibre of the ministry.

and

1. In Mr. Arnold Bennett's amusing play entitled "What the Public Wants," a millionaire newspaper proprietor, who quite frankly is out to make money cares nothing about the effect of his publications on the minds and morals of the public, gets into a high state of virtuous indignation at the suggestion that his journals ought to elevate the mind and taste of the public instead of depraving them. He is angry with his critics for suggesting that he ought to be (as he puts it) "a sort of cross between General Booth, H. G. Wells, and the Hague Conference."

Now, the chief difficulty under which the minister of religion labours to-day, is that the American public does seriously expect him to be a compound of Miss Jane Addams, Dr. Graham Taylor, Professor Zueblin, and Billy Sunday; and the worst of it is that the minister usually acquiesces in this conception of his job. By honestly attempting to be all these various things to all men, he succeeds in being none of them, and incidentally sacrifices his equipment for his special and distinctive