SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Daily News, 4 March 1922, Page 9

SUNDAY READING.

I THE APOSTLES’ CREED. <£ l do believe: strengthen my weald Faith.” (Dr. Moffatt’s Translation.) —Saint Mark, IX., 24. (By Rev. A. H. Collins, New Plymouth.) Sunday by Sunday millions of our w {■'Kristians unite in the recital of lhe Apostles’ Greed”: “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth: a-nd in Jesus Christ, His only JSon our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of , the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried, He descended into hell:*the third day He rose again from the dead, He ascended into Heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty ; from thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints, the forgiveness of Sins, the Resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.”

These are noble 'and stately words, rich with the rhyme of antiquity, only we need to breathe life and reality into them, lor it is true, as Studdert Kennedy has said: “You dont really believe your creed until you want to say it standing at spiritual attention, with the roll of drums in your ears, the light of love dazzling your eyes, and all the music of a splendid world crashing out a prelude to its truth.” If our creed is dull, either it or we are dead. We must change our creed or our creed must change us.”

For the next few weeks I am going to attempt to deal with some of the articles of this venerable statement, which Bishop Westcott described as “the Historic Faith.” You may wonder that I, a Baptist minister, should do this. For we bn ve a “Faith,” but we have no “Creed.” siave no creedal test to which our members are required to subscribe. All we ask is some credible evidence of anew life in Christ. Our fathers were stoutly opposed to religious tests, and suffered the spoiling of their goods, and the loss of personal liberty, rather than conform to a church that required the confession of the “Apostles” or any other “creed.” This did not mean laxity of belief in our fathers; it meant the very reverse. It was due to their love of liberty jn matters of religion; it was the homage they paid to the sanctity of the human conscience. Nor am I departing from that position. If any attempt were made to impose on me the articles of this or any other creed, I should resist it firmly. It contains statements to which I could not give assent and consent. What I seek is not to impose, but to expound the creed. TRUTH AS CORRECTIVE.

I have no fondness for religious controversy. I dislike criticising the negations and errors of other people’s religion. The true corrective of the false is a sweetly reasonable presentation of the true. Was it not John Milton who said: “Let truth and error come to grips, whoever knew truth worsted in the strife”? But there is a good deal of unsettlement. People catch opinions as they catch a cold. Much that passes/ as religious belief isn’t religion or belief. It is opinion. not conviction. It is nebulous, casual, inoperative sentiment. They have no sure foothold. Congregations are not seldom impatient, they want the light, the entertaining, and specially the brief, with the inevitable result that faddists flourish, and a good deal of modern religion has no red blood in its veins. Any creed, however imperfect, is better than no creed at all. Better “a pagan suckled on a creed outworn” than a man whose power of belief has perished through disuse. There is more hope for a fetish worshipper than a cheerful infidel. No man was ever yet nourished into mental and spiritual strength on a diet of doubts. To be able to say “credo” and stake your

life on it, means that you recognise something or someone higher than yourself. Make you sure of this: they are not the wise t and purest who have no creed, no church, no religion, but live under the dome of their own hat and walk on the marble of their own boots. We have to deny some things to the glory of God. We have to disbelieve some things in order to be Christian. But it may be more superstitious to deny the supernatural than to affirm it. The question is this: How much do we believe to the marrow of our bones? What single article of your formal creed have you ever thought out and taken the trouble to bottom? Do you take the Apostles’ creed at its face value? Is there anything behind and beyond the face value? Are pearls of greater value for which you have been willing to search, as for hidden treasure? Do you believe your beliefs? “Credo” is derived from the sanserif. It is one of the oldest words in existence, and it stands for one of the oldest facte. VALUE OF FAITH.

“Belief” and “life” come from the same root. Belief is “by-life,” the thing we live by, and the words “belief” and “life” are related to a third word, “love.” What we trust in, what we live by, what we nourish our souls on, what we would suffer for, and even die to keep, must be something living and something loved. That is why the church has been the school of martyrs. Faith is the foundation of our socjal, commercial and national existence.' There can be no unity, no progress, no life without it. Every time you trust the word of a friend, you. perform an act of faith. Every time you accept a pound note instead of a pound, you do it as an act of faith. You can offer no man a greater insult than tQ say: “I don’t believe you.” “Without faith it is impossible to please God,” or live with man. I say that “credo” is one of the oldest words in the language. It did not begin with the Apostolic age or with the Christian faith. Ancient hymns, ancient prayers, ancient precepts, ancient traditions, possessed, in our own sacred books and the ancient books of the East, ancient monuments, ancient religious rites, these enable us to travel back towards the dawn of faith. But before these books were written, before these ancient monuments were set up, before these rites were instituted, man had come to believe in the Divine. The actual origin of faifh lies in a remoter past. “I believe” is the native accent of the human soul. A religious ; faith of some kind is what marks man off from the lower animals. When you say “I have,” “I feel,” “I know.” you make interesting statements, but when you say “I believe” you name the moral rights of a man. Man wants to believe as birds want to fly. He is made to be'lieve, and he can find no rest in nega- , ■frions. Rest comes by faith. “We are so made,” says Dale, “that we must believe.” That is the truth stressed by Tennyson in the stanzas so frequently quoted:

“If e’er, when faith had fall’n asleep, I heard a voice: ‘Believe no more/ And heard an ever-breaking shore, That tumbled in the Godless deep: “A warmth within the breast would meet The freezing reason’s colder past, And like a man in wrath, the heart Stood up and answered: ‘I have felt.’” ALL HAVE CREEDS. Do let us cease to be afraid to say “I believe.” Do let us stop thinking it a mark of intellectual distinction not to believe. There are social and political creeds. The crass materialist and the jblatant atheist have their creed. Why mot the church? Why not the individual Christian? “It is faith in something which makes life worth living,” says Oliver Wendell Holmes. A inan who tries to live without faith will- die of inertia. A society that makes the attempt will collapse. The question is not whether or no we shall live by faith. The question is rather this: By what faith shall we live? What range and depth and quality shall it have ? How reasonable and assured shall it be. Note this, however. “I believe” is the first person singular. The beliefs of other men are sacred secrets between themselves and their Maker, and that is a province we must not invade. But for my personal belief I am personally responsible, to hold and to honor it, to live for it and to die for it. It is an integral part of myself. No matter what anyone else may say or do, this is my concern, the seal of my identity, the expression of my free personal spirit. Credo! “I believe”! No one can say that for me, and I can say that for no one save myself. It is not enough to say that “Hie Apostles’ creed” is ancient or that it is held by' millions of devout people. Many false and evil things are ancient and followed by the multitude. >

The one thing that matters is this: Is it true? Is it true for me?” Years ago, when I was an over-confident youth, and expressed opinions on social questions which shocked a relative, he said: “I don’t know where you got such ideas; your granafather never believed such things.” The rebukv seemed to me pointless then, and it seems so still. We are not bound by the traditions of the elders. The evil of written statements of belief lies there. They arrest the spirit of freedom. They induce mental and religious sloth. There is not a form of words however august, as there is not a melody however entrancing, that is proof against <the deadening effect of constant repetition. They enslave the conscience. They blind men to the presence of the Living Spirit, who still guides into all |ruth. God did not cease to speak to men when the canon of Holy Scripture was closed, or when the ancient creeds were formulated. God is still speaking. There is no finality in truth. Orthodoxy is not static. Religion is a growth. “There is yet more light and truth to break forth from His Holy Word,” and the more will come to us if we humbly and earnestly seek it.

“God sent His singers into every age, To every clime and race of men, With revelation fitted to their growth And shape of mind: nor gives the realm of truth Into the selfish rule of one sole race.” THE VALUE OF CREEDS.

' But our creed must be our own, the fruit of serious thinking and sincere ; prayer to the Father of light. “The Apostles’ creed” may be our guide, but • it must not be our chain. It is not “the ' Apostles’ creed” in the sense that the Apostles prepared it, still lees that they imposed it on the mind of the church. It is a human document, of uncertain date and unknown authorship, Professor Harnack says it came into its present form as late as the fifth century. Later still came the creed of Nicaea; a few centuries later “the Athanaeian creed”; ; after that the “Augsburg Confession,’ “the Thirty-nine Articles,” and “the Westminster confession.” Creeds are still in the making, for truth is vast, and the soul is a diligent pathfinder. Creeds change, but faith abides. It is not a sign of infidelity to do your own thinking. The value of “the Apostles’ creed” does not lie in its age or its authority. It is a human document, written by fallible men, and no one has the right to make it binding on our conscience. Its value lies in the evidence it supplies of the diligence and seriousness with which men thought on Christian doctrine. They would never con; nt to the modern dictum, “believe what you like and do ps you please.” For them religion was not a set of opinions more or less loosely strung together; it was a life in Christ the Redeemer. They were highminded men, who made conscience of sifting the chaff from the wheat. They thought long and deeply on the things of God. They worshipped a great God, and they had a great Faith, and I know nothing that would «o quicken and enrich the life of the modern church as a return to this deep and serious study of Christian doctrine.

“0 Father, Son and Spirit send Us increase from above: Enlarge, expand all Christian souls To comprehend Thy love; Anti make us to go on to know, With nobler powers conferred, The Lord hath yet more light and truth To break forth from His Word.”