keep entire and inviolate, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly." If this be so, is it not strange, is it not astonishing that Jesus and the early promulgators of his Gospel knew nothing about it, or knowing, did not declare it with all definiteness and plainness of speech so that no one could possibly mistake concerning it? How solemnly authoritative would it have seemed in the Sermon on the Mount, among the sayings of the last interview of Jesus with his disciples before his betrayal, in Peter's discourse on the day of Pentecost, or Paul's address on Mars' Hill, or anywhere, indeed, in the early proclamations of the Gospel Message! Nay, how incongruous, I might say, with the spirit and burden of that message whensoever or by whomsoever delivered! The apology for this reticence- this omission or neglect offered by Athanasius himself, to the effect that the Jews were so fixed in the idea that the Messiah of their prophets was to be a man like themselves that great care had to be used in divulging the doctrine of the divinity (deity) of Christ this apology is hardly admissable in view of the fact that Christianity itself was a protest against the traditional Judaism of that age and that any preaching of it was an offence to the feelings, prejudices, and long-cherished opinions of the followers of Moses; which, however, did not put to silence Peter, Paul, and the rest, much less Jesus, as champions and defenders of the truths and doctrines of the new religion that had come into the world for the world's redemption. The truth is, the postulates of the Athanasian Creed are no part

of the Gospel of Christ; are not in harmony with but opposed to its teachings; they are foreign accretions devised by Greek metaphysicians, who, being nominally converted to Christianity and raised to high ecclesiastical positions, engrafted them upon the prevailing standards of faith, thus corrupting the church and turning it away from "the simplicity that is in Christ."

One of the most mischievous and deplorable consequences of this corruption of the church of exalting to a place of supreme importance the assumption that all who would be saved must hold some given form of faith, while all who doubt, question, or deny that faith "without doubt shall perish everlastingly," has been to foster and promote religious pride, bigotry, injustice, persecution, a malignant and damnatory exclusiveness on the part of those thus believing towards all dissentients and unbelievers. Such assumption contains the seeds of these and kindred anti-Christian vices, conceals the virus that poisons the very fountains of the divine life in the soul of man. Nay, more; it not infrequently vitiates men's conception of God, causing them to deny His supreme universal Fatherhood, and not only to limit His saving grace and power, but ascribe to Him qualities and acts derogatory to His all-perfect character; making Him the enemy and not the friend of the way. ward and sinful, and investing Him with the attributes of a malign despot toward the great majority of those whom He created in His own image and made heirs of immortality. It has caused its

devotees and expositors to confine all divine grace, discipline, probation, and opportunity of salvation for the unregenerate to the fleeting periods of the earth-life, and to remand all who die "out of Christ" to the unappeasable vengeance of God and to the flames of never-ending fire. But the most fatal defect of this creed is to be found in the fact that it contains no prescript to a virtuous and holy life, and lays upon its adherents no sacred obligation to "do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God" to be Christlike in thought, in conduct, and in character. The things which the Master made paramount and supreme, it makes little or no account of, while the things which He never requires or even mentions, it exalts to a place of superlative and indispensable importance. To a rational understanding, to a judgment governed by moral considerations, to a soul animated by the spirit of Christ, this is its sufficient, all-prevailing condemnation. If my proposed standard of faith and practice be not incomparably superior to this one in the respects indicated, then are error, folly, and hate better and nobler than truth, wisdom, and love in the moral estimate, and in the divine order of the world.

DISCOURSE XIX.

THE ROMAN AND GREEK CHURCHES EXAMINED: THEIR CREEDS ANALYZED AND COMPARED.

"Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit; after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ." "Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind."- Col. ii. 8, 18.

The two oldest religious bodies in Christendom, as well as the two largest in point of numbers, are those commonly designated by the names "The Roman Church" and "The Greek Church." Each styles itself "The One, True, Holy, Apostolic, Catholic Church," and in various forms of expression claims supreme precedence over all others. Both hold sacred and fundamental the Nicene and Apostle's Creeds, except that the Greek church protests against that interpretation of the former which makes the Holy Ghost proceed from the Son no less than from the Father, and not from the Father only, as it maintains. That church separated from the Roman in the eleventh century, chiefly on the ground that the alleged supremacy of the Pope was an unwarranted usurpation, though there were other but minor

points of doctrine or of ceremony involved; all in the direction of greater simplicity and closer conformity to the example of the primitive church. Its ministry differs from that of the Roman communion as oligarchy differs from monarchy, the ultimate authority being vested in several Patriarchs instead of one Papal sovereign; both alike, however, in exercising arrogated power and in making the laity at large fawning suppliants or abject slaves; a form of ecclesiasticism as unlike that of Apostolic times as was that of the Levitical priesthood under the Mosaic dispensation. Both, too, were the natural fruits of that assumption of episcopal prerogative which, beginning in the second century, grew in strength and in audacity for more than a thousand years; giving birth to innumerable evils, mischiefs, and abominations throughout Christendom, and bringing incalculable reproach upon the name and religion of the meek and lowly Nazarene.

It is not convenient for me, nor is it necessary to my leading purpose, to examine in detail and critically the respective declarative confessions of these two great sects (for sects I must in strict justice call them) of the nominal church of Christ. Suffice it if I consider somewhat minutely that of the Roman (or Western, as it is often termed,) branch and note in proper time and place the more important points upon which the Greek (or Eastern) branch is at variance or in controversy therewith. I have already stated that both, with specified exceptions, hold to the Apostles' and Nicene creeds. The Western church accepts the Athana