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ACTING DEAN OF THE FACULTY OF THEOLOGY THIS VOLUME OF LECTURES DELIVERED WHILE THEY WERE IN OFFICE IS GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED PREFACE The Lectures here published were delivered on the Lyman Beecher Foundation in Yale University in 1909. They are printed exactly as they were delivered. Three sermons have been added, all treating of the Christian min istry in one or other of its aspects. These will, perhaps, serve to develop some points too briefly touched on in the Lectures. The sermon en titled " Christian Teaching " was originally preached before the University of Cambridge on November 8, 1908, and repeated in sub stance before Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., on May 2, 1909. There are two objections which appear to me so probable that I must needs think it well to anticipate them. These Lectures, it will be said, are unduly controversial and excessively local, and on both counts they are ill suited to serve the purposes of the Lyman Beecher Founda tion. To the first of these objections I can but answer that, in the present circumstances of English-speaking Christendom, the Christian ministry is inevitably the subject of acute con- vi PREFACE troversy, and that, since preaching is the prin cipal function of the Christian ministry, any effective discussion of it cannot avoid a contro versial character. To the next, I must answer that, in allowing myself to give so large a place to those aspects of my subject which were mainly insular and Anglican, I was not only keeping within the sphere of my personal knowledge and experience, but also bringing before my hearers a point of view which was in their case relatively unfamiliar. It seemed to me that in adopting this course, I could best serve the pur pose which must have originally suggested the invitation to lecture. It must, of course, be frankly owned that I chose a subject which was apparently and acutely controversial. I did so with a very definite design of directing attention to the grave situa tion into which the Christian preacher has been brought by the circumstances of the time, and of emphasizing certain manifest but most diffi cult obligations which that situation imposes. Nor was I wholly without hope that my handling of a theme so perplexing, however inadequate and even unworthy in itself, might have the effect of inducing abler and better men on both sides of the Atlantic to address themselves to its frank and practical consideration. In addressing the clergy I have never lost sight of the laity. The Liberty of Prophesying, PREFACE vii which I have claimed for the first, can only be refused to the injury of the last. I could wish that what I have written might fall under the eyes of the religious laymen of the churches. If I might succeed in arresting their attention, I should indeed have not written without effect. For the indifference of the Christian laity is the most favourable of all conditions for the develop ment of "clericalism": and, as surely, the best of all securities against "obscurantism" is the active and intelligent interest in ecclesiastical politics of thoughtful, religious, and educated laymen. The degree to which the laity concern themselves in the affairs of the Church might well be accepted as a sound test of its intellectual and spiritual health. In America I suppose that the worst dangers to the clergyman's liberty are those which arise from the ignorance of congregations, the vagaries of religious individualism, and the "intolerable strain" of the denominational "struggle for existence." In England these dangers are cer tainly not absent, but, at least within the National Church, they are for the present dwarfed by a domestic peril, which has no exact counter part within the other Protestant churches. The Tractarian revival of mediaevalism has proceeded to great lengths, and its effects are not limited to the puerile craze for "pageants" in and out of the churches. In the now fashion- viii PREFACE able repudiation of the name and character of a Protestant church; in the arbitrary and pro foundly irrational emphasis laid on the letter of the ancient creeds; in the growing isolation of the Anglican Church under the withering influ ence of the sacertodalist dogma; in the substitu tion of the personal authority of bishops for the impersonal authority of law; in the exaltation even by the bishops themselves of episcopal authority above the Law, are enshrined the gravest menace to the intellectual liberty of the Anglican preacher. It is indeed certain that a large proportion of the English clergy, and the immense majority of English laymen, have no sympathy with the tendencies now prevailing in the hierarchy; but an episcopal church perforce utters itself through its bishops, and the episcopal bench in England is at the present time strongly Tractarian. In these circumstances the discontent, which un doubtedly exists, can hardly take definite shape or find effective expression. The situation is assuredly very perplexing. New interests are crowding on to the arena of public life, and the older interests are being thrust into the back ground. The sudden emergence of Socialism is diverting men's minds from spiritual issues; and the most materialistic version of Christianity naturally finds it easiest to effect a concordat with the new secularism. Explain it how you PREFACE ix will, the public takes but a languid interest in the fortunes of the clergy. From every point of view the outlook for an honest English preacher is not very encouraging. If this were the place, I should like to say much of the extraordinary kindness with which I was received in Yale, and, indeed, everywhere in America. How can I ever forget the unweary ing solicitude, and considerate hospitality, which filled the time spent in that wonderful country with the pleasantest memories. It must suffice by this single reference to indicate to my Ameri can friends the deep sense which I have of their goodness, and to assure them that the recollec tions of my first visit to the New World (which they induced me to undertake) are in the fullest sense delightful. H. H. H. Westminster Abbey, August 10, 1909. CONTENTS LYMAN BEECHER LECTURES PAGE I Functions and Claims of the Preacher . i II Of Denominational Subscriptions ... 31 III Of Evidences of Personal Belief . . 62 IV Of the Interpretation of Scripture in Ser mons ..... 92 V Of Reserve, and the Casuistic Problem In volved in the Preacher's Use of Scrip ture ... 122 VI Of Social and Political Preaching 152 VII Of Proportion in Religious Teaching . 184 VIII Objections and Conclusions .... 214 SERMONS IX Divine Vocation . 244 X Authority in Religion 260 XI Christian Teaching 273 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING functions and claims of the preacher Preaching may perhaps be described as the principal function of the Christian minister. Even on the sacerdotalist hypothesis of the min istry, it is only in his capacity as preacher that the Christian minister can bring any important contribution of his own to the work of the min istry. To the validity of sacraments, of course, he can add nothing by his virtues and efforts, and from such validity his vices and negligences can withdraw nothing. That "the unworthi- ness of the ministers hinders not the effect of the sacrament" is the indispensable postulate of sacerdotalism, and has been vehemently insisted upon by the Church against countless heretics. As soon, however, as the "priest" leaves the "altar" or the confessional, and enters the pulpit, the situation changes. Much turns there on the preacher's personal fitness for his work, and on the conception he has formed 2 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING of it. His personal sincerity, his known con victions, his acquired knowledge, his natural ability, even his reputation, appearance, man ner, and voice, will all have a bearing on his preaching, and affect its fortunes. The truth of his message, of course, is independent of the particular form in which he may present it, but its power to attract men, secure their audience, and affect their minds will be to a very con siderable degree contingent on the individual through whom it was delivered. It is, indeed, never to be forgotten that the saving power of the Gospel of Christ is at all times beyond the control of the preacher. There is a mysterious- ness in Divine action which eludes observation and defies analysis. You may not teach the art of winning souls from Chairs of Rhetoric, or cast into a formula the secret of waking con sciences. "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the voice thereof, but knowest not whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit." The fortunes of the Divine seed are strangely deter mined by the state of the human soil into which it is cast; and that vitally important condition is never completely known to the sower, and often is almost altogether outside his knowledge. In all cases, we may never forget, the spiritual result of preaching lies beyond the preacher's vision and control. As if for ever to disallow THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 3 the too facile suggestions of vanity, and once for all to cut the springs of that excessive hom age which is so readily offered to the preacher's eloquence and personal charm, the Almighty has willed to effect His most dramatic spiritual conquests through the unlikeliest instruments. The preacher counts for little in the record of the greater conversions of Christian history. The preaching of Stephen left Saul of Tarsus apparently untouched: the sermons of S. Am brose impressed, but did not convince, Augus tine : no preacher brought S. Francis to Christ, or Martin Luther, or Ignatius Loyola, or our own later prophets, Bunyan, Fox, and Wesley. None of these could be claimed by any human teacher or preacher as the trophy of his ministerial warfare, and yet the whole course of Christianity has been affected by their conver sion. Their experience has been reproduced in countless instances of less conspicuous Chris tians. We cannot, then, emphasize too strongly the independence of His own appointed agencies which has marked the action of the Holy Ghost from the first, and it is important that we should do this in order that with a deeper humility we may do full justice to the fact that such ap pointed agencies exist, and have ever formed the ordinary means of Divine activity. Of these agencies preaching must certainly be regarded as the most authoritative and the most effica- 4 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING cious; and with respect to preaching we have to recognize the perplexing and dismaying truth that its effectiveness depends in a degree which it is difficult to exaggerate upon the personal competence and labour of the preacher. The recognition of this truth ought to deter mine the preacher's estimate of his office, and his treatment of it. S. Paul was using no mere figure of speech when he described the Chris tian minister as " God's fellow-worker." Rather it is the most suggestive because also the most accurate definition of the ministerial office. Called to a sublime partnership with his Creator, the preacher must concentrate all his powers on the ministry which he has received. His natural abilities must be carefully cultivated; no effort must be considered too great for the attainment of the knowledge required for religious teaching: sympathy and wisdom must direct the trained faculties and the accumulated learning: vigilant practice must perfect what enthusiasm began. Only so will the human agent in any measure answer to the Divine purpose in his ministry. So long as the obligation of this sublime response to the vocation and claim of God be paramount in the preacher's mind, he will be in little danger of falling into either of the different yet allied errors which mostly threaten him. On the one hand, he will not be able to think meanly of his office; on the other hand, he will not exaggerate THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 5 the value of his personal contribution to the min istry of preaching. Straining to reach the high est conceivable standard, he dare not acquiesce in any version of duty less than the best of which he is capable. He will not sink to the sham humility which excuses the preacher's ignorance or indolence by the plea that in conversion God must be all in all. The question for the honest preacher's conscience is not how little use he may be, but how much he ought to be, when God is working through and with him. This will be the spur of unceasing effort — not pride, or ambition, or professional zeal, but the convic tion that "it is required in stewards that a man be found faithful." Here it may fairly be objected that a fallacy is latent in the very word "preaching," which surely could not bear one and the same sense throughout the whole period since Christianity began. What is there really in common between the preaching of which S. Paul wrote, and that which we must have in mind throughout these lectures? Is it possible without extravagance to identify the subject-matter of ordinary modern sermons with that Divine "gospel" which the Apostle declared himself under "necessity" to preach? Clearly there is need for some prelim inary definition of terms, and explanation of methods. It certainly must be admitted that between 6 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING the preaching of the first days of Christianity and that of the twentieth century there is a very great difference. S. Paul, the greatest of all the apostolic preachers, was preeminently a missionary, and his normal preaching must find such parallel as the modern Church can offer in the mission field. Even so the parallel is by no means close, for the Christian Apostle fulfilling his task within the Roman Empire had no experi ence of the characteristic difficulties of the mis sionary of our own time, who must bring his message to the members of the ancient religious systems of Asia, or to the fanatical followers of the Arabian prophet, or to the variously degraded bar barians of Africa. In spite, however, of great differences, there is a recognizable identity of function and fortune between Christian mission aries in all ages and in all circumstances. The preaching with which we are concerned in these lectures is not that of missionaries, and has but little of the evangelistic character. In an ancient Christian society the ministry is not mainly con cerned with "proclaiming" the "good tidings" of redemption, but rather with teaching pro fessed believers the true content and practical significance of their belief. In the New Testa ment the functions of "preaching" and "teach ing" appear to be distinguished, and, though both might be united in the same individual, as certainly was the case with the Apostles them- THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 7 selves, yet commonly they were assigned to dif ferent persons. In the work of the modern preacher "preaching" and "teaching" must always be combined, and the two functions will in practice be difficult to keep distinct. All this bears very importantly on the conception we must form of the modern preacher's duty. If for the "preacher" as such it may be thought that no more knowledge is requisite than that of the "gospel" which he is to proclaim, and which he himself has accepted, — and this is precisely the apology which is offered for the illiterate evangelists of our time, — for the "teacher" manifestly a different rule must be necessary. He has to make that "gospel" the basis of moral and intellectual discipline: to show its bearing on thought and action: to make clear its obligation with respect to the many perplexing demands of social and political duty: to vindicate its truth against rival systems of belief and knowledge, which disallow and seem to disprove it. The modern preacher, there fore, must become the theologian, the moral philosopher, the casuist, the controversial di vine, the apologist of the faith; and in every one of these characters he will stand in need of specific knowledge, experience, wisdom, and skill. The mere statement of the situation indicates sufficiently the discrepancy which cannot but 8 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING exist between the preacher's theory of office, and his personal competence to reduce that theory to practice. Who could possibly be equal to the demands of an office so many-sided and touching so many interests? Necessarily the ministry has fallen far short of its theoretical functions. As the Church extended, and made acquaintance with new and perplexing situations, there was effected an allocation of duties within the ranks of the official ministry. There were professional theologians, moral philosophers, casuists, con troversial divines, apologists, and these prepared the work for the preachers. So long as the tradi tion of Christian teaching was within the Church uniform, authoritative, and unquestioned, it sufficed that the individual preacher should draw upon the general resources of orthodox religion; but, with the emergence of the characteristic conditions of modern Christianity, another and still more perplexing situation was created for the preacher. He had to make his count with a confused doctrinal tradition, and a disunited Chursh; perforce he had to choose between con flicting authorities, and sit in judgment on the creed he would elect to defend. Accordingly, albeit necessarily dependent on the learning and thought of others, he had to sustain before his congregation the character of teacher, and accept full personal responsibility for whatsoever teach ings he adopted. The very multitude and THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 9 variety of experts would compel him to exercise discrimination in his choice of guides, so that in the last result what he offered to his congregation would have behind it no better guarantee than that of his own personal competence. We may observe that this inalienable, plenary, and mani fold responsibility of the preacher is generally recognized in his preparation for the ministry, which, however inadequate in quality, is not as a rule insufficient in range. Theology, moral philosophy, ecclesiastical history, casuistry, con troversy, apologetics, are all included in the course of professional training, though none can be taught in more than the barest outline. Experience, indeed, shows that the actual situ ation of the modern preacher may be, and com monly is, far less difficult than its theoretical statement suggests. The perplexities of Chris tendom are not necessarily perceived within a parish or congregation; and religious use and wont will go far to provide a working substitute for authority. The multitude of Christian folk are too simple and uneducated to raise any doc trinal questions which would seriously perplex the preacher, whose difficulties, if he has any, will for the most part be self-proposed. The standing themes of Christian preaching are still invested with so profound reverence that, what ever may be the case privately and in the minds of men, open questioning will hardly be toler- 10 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING ated within religious circles. An uncriticised convention prescribes for the preacher what he must say, and what he ought to think, with re spect to all the greater concerns of faith and life; let him but respect that convention, and his difficulties need not be great, while his professional success may be considerable. Such respect, however, is plainly becoming more diffi cult, and the best modern preachers feel the difficulty most acutely. A quiet life and a popular ministry do not ap pear the worthiest objects of a Christian preacher's effort. His own conscience and his own reason insist upon having satisfaction also, and the whole sincerity of his preaching turns on the circumstance whether or not that satisfaction can be found. The preacher's personal claim cannot be considered apart from other claims with which it is inseparably connected, which are not less legitimate, or less important, and which lend themselves more easily to satisfac tion. There are the claims of the congregation, of the denomination, of the Christian Church, even of the State, all of which are intertwined with the preacher's demand for "Liberty of Prophesying." The adjustment of these com peting claims is the standing problem of religious statesmanship, and many circumstances of our times have rendered the solution of it a specially urgent and a specially difficult matter. Two THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING n of these circumstances deserve our particular attention. In the first place, Christianity no longer holds the supreme position which for centuries it has held in the thought of civilized men. The realm of knowledge has been so greatly extended within the last few generations, and the diffusion of knowledge has of late years been so rapid, that a situation has been created which has no real precedent in Christian experience. In the an cient world, indeed, before the downfall of the Roman Empire, the Church was confronted by a society which had the prestige of an immemorial civilization, and was richly endowed with art, science, and literature. Paganism contested the ground with Christianity with many sources of strength, but the extreme disadvantage of its grotesque and immoral creed more than coun terbalanced its advantages in other respects. Christianity conquered the ancient world by clear title of moral and intellectual superiority. The downfall of the ancient empire, however, altered the situation greatly to the advantage of the Church. Among the Teutonic barbarians, who, on the morrow of overthrowing the im perial system, accepted the yoke of the imperial Church, Christianity had no rival. Their pagan ism was a poor and powerless thing, which had no characteristic art, literature, or architectural monuments to preserve its spirit and perpetuate 12 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING its influence; civilization not less than religion was the gift of the Christian missionaries. Ac cordingly, mediaeval Christendom had the aspect of a social order rooted in religion and every where coloured by it. Thought and life were controlled by Faith. Theology was the queen and sum of the sciences. Philosophy and his tory were the handmaids of orthodox dogma; literature and the arts aspired to illustrate and exalt the reigning creed. No doubt there were many recalcitrant movements of the intellect and the conscience throughout the Middle Ages, but in the prevailing state of knowledge these could not find any effective or enduring expres sion. The Renaissance was perhaps as much the revelation of existing forces, as the introduc tion of new ones. It brought the great discov ery that humanity could no longer be confined within the strait limits of mediaevalism, that the regime of mere authority had reached its term in Church and State, that the individual spirit had come to maturity, and would claim its herit age of freedom. That crucial phase of the Re naissance, which we are accustomed to call the Reformation, witnessed the vehement assertion of the independence of the individual conscience and reason. The affirmation and enthronement of the principle of private judgment in religion were its transcendent achievements. In the course of the centuries which have passed since THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 13 that epoch of enfranchisement, Christendom has been revolutionized. Not only has the volume of human knowledge been vastly in creased, but the very conception of knowledge has been altered, and the relative importance attached to the different kinds of knowledge has wonderfully changed. The sciences called phys ical, or natural, have acquired a sound method, and by its aid attained to results which have not only effected a revolution in the conditions of human fife, but have deeply influenced the whole course of human thought. Every fresh discov ery, every advance in the practical application of scientific discoveries, every phase of philo sophical speculation, has had its effect within the sphere of theology. Moreover, we may almost say that within the last century a whole series of new sciences have come into existence which directly bear upon Christianity. The more exact study of language, the criticism of texts and documents, the science of comparative religion, the application of psychology to the phenomena of faith — these are practically new studies, and they impinge directly on the terri tories of Christian belief. One result of this vast and various intellectual movement has been the dethronement of theology from its ancient supremacy, and the substitution of its younger rivals. An immense and various secular litera ture has come into existence, and human life in 14 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING civilized communities has become filled beyond all precedent with secular interests. Everywhere the Christian Church has been outgrown by the popular life, and has declined into one fac tor, albeit still the greatest, of the social order of Christendom. Christianity is plainly in pres ence of a non-Christian public, which regards it with curiosity, or impatience, or dislike, or open hostility, never with deference or affection. Two cultures are in existence, an old and a new, and these are shaping two types of character, and projecting on the horizon of human thought two ideals of life. Even within the nominal member ship of the Christian churches the conflict of ideas has made its appearance, and expresses itself in that difference between the lay mind and the clerical, which has become one of the salient features of modern ecclesiastical politics. Within the Roman Catholic sphere the situa tion has developed into a dangerous crisis, for there the principle of authority has been pushed to its logical conclusion, and the new demands of the modern world have been met by steady and relentless negation. The divergence between the official doctrine of the Church and the ac cumulated knowledge of mankind has become extreme, and arrests the attention of the multi tudes to whom the modern state has brought the elements of education. Education and the Church have the aspect of natural antagonists: THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 15 the citizen has to make his choice between loyalty to the modern State, to which perforce he is ever more closely bound, and obedience to a Church which claims to be international and supernational, infallible, and unchanging. In every sphere of thought, in every department of social life, over the whole field of politics, the battle is joined. The extraordinary interest everywhere manifested in the so-called Modernist movement within the Roman Catholic Church attests the general apprehension, that unless some reconciliation can be effected between Christian ity and the modern world, the gravest conceiv able disasters to human society cannot be averted. For manifest reasons the crisis within the sphere of the Reformation is less acute. The neces sity of harmonizing theology and the accumu lated knowledge of mankind might seem to be the necessary assumption of every reformed Church, for on no other assumption could the immense breach with the doctrinal tradition of Christendom implied in the fact of reformation be justified. Human nature, however, is bewil- deringly illogical, and never so much so as in the conduct of its religious concerns. Yet no extreme of illogical obscurantism has been able to carry any reformed Church to such uniform ity of hostile prejudice as that which has marked the attitude of the Roman Church towards new knowledge. The religious heirs of the greatest 16 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING theological innovation of history have not been able, in spite of themselves, to escape from the law of their position. Theological obscurantism within the Protestant sphere is illogical, half hearted, and ineffective. Persecution on the basis of a formal recognition of private judgment is too manifestly paradoxical to be either im pressive or permanent. Accordingly, the conflict of old and new has within the Protestant sphere been less embittered, less universal, less extreme. Nevertheless there also it proceeds, and creates for the churches a situation of grave embarrass ment. An educated laity, still attached to the churches, has come into existence, and is bring ing a new and powerful influence to bear on eccle siastical affairs. The intellectual conditions of preaching are seen to be of more than clerical concern. A preacher in bondage to doctrinal forms, which cannot fairly be reconciled with the well-established knowledge of the time, is seen to be ill-placed for maintaining that standard of personal sincerity which is indispensable to effect ive teaching, and condemned to a loss of public respect, which must in the long run be fatal to spiritual influence. The modern preacher can not be indifferent to the intellectual demand of the educated laity, nor can he lightly draw upon his ministry the suspicion of disingenuousness. Already there are not lacking signs of a decline in the influence of the pulpit, and the Protestant THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 17 churches are said to be losing their hold on the public life of the time. In the next place, the difficulty of recruiting the ranks of the ministry is forcing itself into notice within all the Christian churches. No doubt there are many reasons for this disquiet ing fact, and some of the most important lie outside the control of the ecclesiastical author ities altogether. The enhanced interest of human life, to which we have adverted, and its increas ing secularity have their influence on men's minds, and indispose them to regard with favour the career of a Christian preacher. The atmos phere of modern life is mundane and selfish; the fair and tender growths of spiritual aspira tion faint and fade in it. Moreover, practical considerations count for much. The ministry of a settled church must needs take the character of a profession, by which men earn their living, and which they embrace with that legitimate but unheroic purpose. Parents and guardians have much to say in the choice of profession by those for whom they are primarily responsible. Divine vocation, the indispensable basis of valid min istry, reaches many, perhaps most, of the clergy of Christendom indirectly, through the counsel of relatives and the leading of circumstances. It is manifest that the view of parents and guar dians will be determined not inconsiderably by circumstances, which might well be ignored by 18 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING their children. What, they will naturally ask, are the worldly prospects of a Christian minis ter? What probability of professional success lies before the preacher, and what are the rewards of such success as he may hope to attain? Cer tainly it must be admitted that the mundane conditions of the ministry do not improve. The loss of social and political consequence has gone hand in hand with a relative diminution of in come, and the worsening process does not appear to have reached a term. A clergyman's income will hardly stand comparison with that of any other professional man equally full of work, and it has a petty aspect beside the earnings of the successful tradesman or merchant. There are few prizes which ambition can aspire after, and these are ever more heavily weighted with public responsibility. These facts tell directly and potently on the supply of candidates for ordina tion. Parents shrink from encouraging their sons to enter so poorly paid a profession, and young men with the world in front of them shirk froni committing themselves to a career so penuri ous and so uninteresting. In so far as the diffi culty of recruiting the Christian ministry arises from such causes, however, it need not concern us here; but there are other causes which have a manifest bearing on our present argument. Will anyone acquainted with the circumstances of the modern Church deny that many, and they THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 19 the ablest and best equipped, are arrested on the threshold of the ministry by the aspect of intel lectual bondage which that ministry seems to present? Is it not the case that this aspect is most repulsive to those whose intellectual qual ities are finest, and whose consciences are most sensitive ? Must it not be an anxious and urgent question for the churches whether they are not actually themselves the responsible causes of their own gravest embarrassment? Thus from the salient facts of the present situ ation the necessity for action clearly emerges. If the educated laity are not to be wholly alien ated within the Protestant sphere (as already appears to be the case within the Roman Cath olic Church) a larger "Liberty of Prophesying" must be conceded to the preachers whom they are required to accept as religious teachers. If the Christian ministry is to attract thoughtful and self-respecting men, it must promise a career which shall not humiliate them in their own eyes, or prohibit to them the most important exercises of their teaching office. It may, perhaps, be here objected that a neces sary practical distinction is being ignored when so much freedom is demanded for preachers. Why may not some limits be set to the public exercise of a liberty which yet is not refused? Liberty of thought and (within certain necessary and reasonable bounds) liberty of speech may 20 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING surely be conceded, without throwing down once and for all the barriers, which have been carefully erected by former generations against the risks and scandals of unchecked individualism in the pulpit. The function of the preacher must be more narrowly conceived, and more strictly de fined. The paramount consideration for the Church is not the satisfaction of his conscience, but the spiritual edification of the people to whom he is sent with a specific work to perform. At all hazards they must not be made to stumble by his conscientious self-assertion. Now it can not of course be denied that there is a core of reasonableness in such an argument as this, and, albeit variously expressed, it is certain that it commends itself very widely to religious folk. If, however, it be seriously considered, we shall find that the practical bearing of the truth it contains is misconceived, and that the whole argument presupposes an impossible situ ation. Consideration for the needs, and even, within limits, for the preferences of the congregation belongs to the pastoral duty of the preacher, not primarily to the formal regulation of his office. The suggestion that there may be degrees in the liberty permitted to the Christian preacher, greater here, less there, offends against the plain est verities of human nature. You must deal with every man as an indivisible unit; if you con- THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 21 cede, as indeed you must concede, liberty of thought, you cannot reasonably attempt to pro hibit liberty of speech. The indispensable as sumption of the last prohibition is the Tightness in principle of the first. A Christian minister may fairly be prohibited from preaching agnos ticism or free love because it cannot be supposed that, even in the recesses of his own thought, he could be either an agnostic or an antinomian. The postulate of all subscription must be the correspondence of thought and speech. Accord ingly, if you tolerate liberty of speech anywhere, you must tolerate it everywhere. There must not be one measure of liberty for the lecture hall and the theological treatise, and another for the pulpit and the parish magazine, however widely the specific exercise of liberty may, and indeed must, vary. In guarding against public scandal you must take care that you do no injury to pri vate honour, for if once you wound private hon our you will have opened the door to the worst of all public scandals. Moreover, if you con ceive yourself bound to make the attempt in the interest of the congregations, you will be greatly deceived, for the congregations also have moved far from the old moorings of traditional ortho doxy, and they will not long acquiesce in any treatment which ignores the fact. Of all the fatuous performances of Charles I's govern ment, none was at the time more exasperating, 22 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING and none seems to us more futile, than the attempt to pacify the distracted Church of England by prohibiting the preachers from handling subjects of controversy in the pulpit. The mere attempt to make peace by the edict of authority indicated the absence of any adequate recognition, either of the importance of truth in the eyes of serious men, or of the imperative nature of religious conviction. " Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh," says the Gospel, and there fore it is equally unjust and unavailing to re strain the utterance of beliefs which you must perforce allow to be tolerable. We shall have occasion to point out in the course of these lec tures, that the nature of modern objections to traditional statements of doctrine does not really allow of their concealment by the preacher who admits them. Not to acknowledge them in the process of preaching is implicitly to disallow them: there is no middle way of calculated and conscientious silence open to an honest man. "Suppressio veri" implies also and inevitably "suggestio falsi." Here also the law holds: "Ye cannot serve God and Mammon." In these lectures, therefore, the term "Preach ing" will receive the widest possible extension. It includes every method of official utterance, and covers the whole area of the preacher's min istry. In the pulpit, manifestly, his deepest convictions ought to find expression, for there THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 23 he speaks with the full authority of his sacred office, and presumably with careful previous consideration of his words. As it is unjust to impose unwarrantable limits on his "Liberty of Prophesying" in sermons, so it is unreasonable to release him from the fullest burden of personal responsibility for what he thus delivers. No apology for doctrinal error seems to be more truly irrelevant than that which pleads the cir cumstance of preaching as an excuse for careless or ignorant utterance. The accused preacher may fairly demand that the tenor of his doctrine shall not be deduced from a single sermon: that due allowance shall be made for the emotional or rhetorical element which may be permissible in any sermon: that his characteristic modes of argument and forms of expression shall be con sidered and appreciated: that the correlation and balance of truths in his scheme of preaching shall be recognized and allowed for, but he may not ask that a lower standard of knowledge and accuracy should be applied to the public exer cise of his sacred ministry than would properly be applied to any private and unofficial utter ance to his thought. On this point it is impos sible to be too insistent. Every step towards the complete enfranchisement of the Christian preacher ought to be conditioned by the accept ance on the part of the preacher himself of a more rigorous standard of responsibility in preach- 24 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING ing, and a severer rule of self-criticism. Assuredly, if careless, or uninformed, or exaggerated, or mis leading language be ever reprehensible on the lips of the ordained teacher, most of all must this be the case when the words which are passing on those lips are public and official, spoken with solemn invocation of the Holy Spirit, and accom panied by acts of common worship. In these cir cumstances of Christian preaching, perhaps, will be found the most effectual securities against the abuse of the preacher's "Liberty of Prophesying." In adopting the title of Jeremy Taylor's famous treatise, you may perhaps fairly ask from me some words of explanation. You will, in deed, have already observed that the title is adapted as well as adopted. I propose to con sider "The Liberty of Prophesying with its just limits and temper" with a twofold restriction of reference, viz., that which is implicit in the pre scribed subject of the Lyman Beecher lecture, and that which is stated in my adapted title. I am concerned with the case of the Christian preacher, and with the circumstances of the modern Church. Jeremy Taylor's discourse was designed to show "the unreasonableness of prescribing to other men's faith, and the iniquity of persecuting differing opinions." He wrote as one of a per secuted minority, and it is not difficult to trace in his argument the influence of his fortunes. THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 25 His treatise is rather an eloquent plea for a right sense of proportion in religion than for tolera tion, though his actual proposition to tolerate all Christians who would subscribe the Apostles' Creed went so far beyond the charity of his con temporaries, that they regarded his work with disapprobation and alarm as dangerously latitu- dinarian. Nor was he himself consistent, for when the wheel of changing fortune had set him in the seat of authority, and thus placed in his hands the opportunity of putting his generous precepts into practice, he does not appear to have exhibited any greater tolerance than that of the other Restoration bishops, and rather less than some. His theory has reached us without the recommendation of his example. In spite of all, however, the "Liberty of Prophesying" will always merit the study of thoughtful men, and hold an important place in the literary treas ure of the English-speaking churches. It is full of luminous wisdom, and varied learning, and exalted eloquence, and it is a repertory of keen analysis and felicitous argument, and re morseless criticism. Moreover, though Jeremy Taylor himself restricted unduly the applica tion of his arguments, the arguments themselves remain, and justify larger consequences than he imagined. The Epistle Dedicatory addressed to Lord Hatton requires but little modification to make it relevant to the situation with which we 26 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING are familiar. It would, for instance, be difficult to improve on the following statement of the intolerant temper with which we also have to contend: "The fault I find, and seek to remedy, is, that men are so dogmatical and resolute in their opinions, and impatient of others disagree ing, in those things wherein is no sufficient means of union and determination; but that men should let opinions and problems keep their own forms, and not be obtruded as axioms, nor questions in the vast collection of the system of divinity be adopted into the family of faith." Would it be possible to state the case against clerical subscription more effectively than in these words ? — "This discourse is so far from giving leave to men to profess anything, though they believe the contrary, that it takes order that no man shall be put to it: for I earnestly contend that another man's opinion shall be no rule to mine, and that my opinion shall be no snare and prejudice to myself; that men use one another so charitably and so gently, that no error or violence tempt men to hypocrisy: this very thing being one of the arguments I use to persuade permissions, lest compulsion introduce hypocrisy, and make sin cerity troublesome and unsafe." Two hundred and fifty years have greatly strengthened his appeal to human experience in the interest of religious toleration: and the pro- THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 27 gress of historical studies has added force to his argument that, since the churches have contin ually changed their doctrines, it is probable that complete and unadulterated truth belongs to none of them: " And then, if we look abroad, and consider how there is scarce any church but is highly charged by many adversaries in many things, possibly we may see a reason to charge every one of them, in some things; and what shall we do then ? The Church of Rome hath spots enough, and all the world is in quisitive enough to find out more, and to represent these to her greatest disadvantage. The Greek churches deny the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son. If that be false doctrine, she is highly to blame; if it be not, then all the western churches are to blame for saying the contrary. And there is no church that is in prosperity, but alters her doctrine every age, either by bringing in new doctrines, or by contradicting her old; which shews that none are satisfied with them selves, or with their own confessions. And since all churches believe themselves fallible, that only excepted which all other churches say is most of all deceived, — it were strange if, in so many articles, which make up their several bodies of confessions, they had not mistaken, every one of them, in some thing or other. The Lutheran churches maintain consubstantiation, the Zuin- glians are sacramentaries, the Calvinists are fierce 28 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING in the matters of absolute predetermination, and all these reject episcopacy; which the prim itive church made no doubt to have called heresy. The Socinians profess a portentous num ber of strange opinions; they deny the Holy Trinity, and the satisfaction of our Blessed Saviour. The Anabaptists laugh at Paedo- baptism: the Ethiopian churches are Nestorian. Where, then, shall we fix our confidence, or join communion? To pitch upon any one of these is to throw the dice, if salvation be to be had only in one of them, and that every error that by chance hath made a sect, and is distinguished by a name, be damnable." The most recent experience does but illustrate his contention that the favourite ecclesiastical policy of official suppression and disingenuous handling of books defeats itself, and implies a humiliating confession of self-distrust. Might not the Modernists imagine that their own situ- tion had inspired the following passage? "Of the same consideration is mending of authprs, not to their own mind, but to ours, that is, to mend them so as to spoil them; forbidding the publication of books in which there is nothing impious or against the public interest, leaving out clauses in translations, disgracing men's persons, charging disavowed doctrines upon men, and the persons of the men with the con sequents of their doctrine, which they deny THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 29 either to be true or to be consequent; false report ing of disputations and conferences, burning books by the hand of the hangman, and all such arts, which show that we either distrust God for the maintenance of His truth, or distrust our selves and our abilities. . . . " It is but an illiterate policy to think that such indirect and uningenuous proceedings can, among wise and free men, disgrace the authors, and disrepute their discourses. And I have seen that the price hath been trebled upon a forbidden or condemned book; and some men in policy have got a prohibition that their impression might be the more certainly vendible, and the author himself thought considerable." Finally, might not all Christians still ponder with advantage his insistence on the supreme importance of moral rightness, and the relative pettiness of intellectual error? Can any con troversialist afford to forget his warning against the blinding tendency of unbalanced zeal? "To my understanding, it is a plain art and design of the devil, to make us so in love with our own opinions as to call them faith and relig ion, that we may be proud in our understand ing: and besides that, by our zeal in our opinions, we grow cool in our piety and practical duties; he also by this earnest contention does directly destroy good life, by engagement of zealots to do anything rather than be overcome, and lose 30 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING their beloved propositions. But I would fain know, why is not any vicious habit as bad or worse than a false opinion? Why are we so zealous against those we call heretics, and yet great friends with drunkards, fornicators, and swearers, and intemperate and idle persons? I am certain that a drunkard is as contrary to God, and lives as contrary to the laws of Chris tianity, as a heretic; and I am also sure that I know what drunkenness is: but I am not sure that such an opinion is heresy: neither would other men be so sure as they think for, if they did consider it aright, and observe the infinite decep tions and causes of deceptions in wise men, and in most things, and in all doubtful questions, and that they did not mistake confidence for certainty." II OF DENOMINATIONAL SUBSCRIPTIONS The preacher is the officer of a church, not only of the Church or Society of Believers, but also of a separately organized section of it. His membership may be matter of course, as it com monly is with the preachers of the National Churches, or it may have been determined by his own deliberate choice, but it is a fact with which he must reckon. He has to make his count with the claim which his church or de nomination prefers, to stake out for him the limits of doctrinal liberty, and to prescribe, in advance of his thinking, and we must add in advance also of his knowledge, the lines of his religious thought. The case of the churchless or undenominational preacher need not detain us, for in so far as it is legitimate at all, it must be supposed to belong to the category of extraordinary ministries, which find their conditions of exercise where they found their original commission, in the direct inspira tion of the Holy Spirit, and offer the sufficient credentials of authority in their results. Most commonly the "free lance" of modern experi- 31 32 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING ence is either a mere adventurer, who takes his directions from his observations of the popular taste in doctrine, or a half-educated enthusiast, who seeks no guidance other than his own per ception of truth, and tolerates no authority be side that of his own zeal. From the start of Christianity, the preacher has commonly been an ordained minister, and as such has been held to utter the general belief of the Church. At no time has it been tolerated that he should claim the right to make innovations in the doctrinal tradition of the Church whose officer he is. Even the "charismatic" ministries of the first ages were subject to testing by the Church, and "sound doctrine" was ever an indispensable evidence of genuine inspiration. So long as the external unity of the Church was maintained, it was comparatively easy to identify "heresy" by formal marks, and to deal summarily with convicted heretics. There could be no question of any claim on the part of preachers to con struct their own creeds, or to criticise the official credenda; but when, as a result of the Refor mation, external unity was destroyed, a wholly new condition, at once favourable and unfavour able to the preacher's doctrinal liberty, came into existence. The weakening of ecclesiastical au thority by the disruption of the mediaeval Church was itself eminently favourable to intellectual, and therein also to theological liberty, but the THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 33 conditions of the new situation were not in some important respects favourable to the preacher's doctrinal independence. The separated churches had perforce to settle their constitutions, and to frame their apologies. The first was a necessity for themselves; the last was an obligation to the rest of the Christian world, but, however legiti mate, and, indeed, indispensable, denominational "confessions" may have been, they had the re grettable result of adding to the properly religious requirements of the preacher's office a series of lower demands, dictated as much by the political circumstances as by the distinctive beliefs of the newly organized churches. As denominations multiplied, confessions lengthened, because they aspired to more precise and detailed distinctive ness of religious attitude. First the National Churches; then the international unions of National Churches; finally, the non-National Churches formed by separation on some specific doctrinal or disciplinary principle — all in suc cession set forth statements of doctrine, and pro ceeded to exact from their ministers subscriptions to those statements. It is to be remembered that, throughout the whole area of the Reformation, preaching was exalted as the principal function of the Christian ministry. The doctrinal sound ness of the preacher became an object of the first importance. Everywhere, perhaps inevitably, the object was pursued by the same method, viz., the 34 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING exacting of subscriptions of assent to the estab lished confessions of denominational belief. It is certainly true that, at first, no distinction in principle was drawn, or intended to be drawn, between the case of the minister and that of the lay member of the church. The doctrines set forth in the denominational confession were held to be necessary for both, and were insisted upon with a grotesque assumption of religious certi tude, but in practice a distinction quickly grew up between them, for, while subscription was invariably and publicly exacted from ministers, it was rarely demanded from laymen. Inevitably the former appeared to be more strictly controlled in their religious thinking than the latter, and the profoundly irrational, and not less profoundly mischievous, notion of two lists of Christian credenda, the one long for the ministry, the other short for the laity, took root in the popular mind, and finally established itself as an assumption of popular religious discussions. When we inquire what may be the degree of obligation which an honest conscience must recog nize in the formal subscriptions of the modern preacher, two general considerations may be advanced as fairly relevant to the case of all the Protestant confessions. First, these confessions must always be regarded in the light of that explicit repudiation of ecclesiastical infallibility, which is vital to Protestantism in all its forms, THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 35 Next, they must be looked upon as the doctrinal deliverances of the modern churches, not as mere echoes from some previous age. When the Thirty-nine Articles declare that General Councils are not infallible, it cannot be thought that the English Convocation possesses any superior quality which should clothe its decisions with perpetual validity. Similarly, when the Westminster Confession affirms that "all synods and councils since the Apostles' times, whether general or particular, may err and many have erred," it clearly disallows in advance the claim that the decisions of the Assembly of Divines are unalterable, or that the General Assembly of 1647, which approved them, was an exception to the rule of fallibility. Indeed the Confession draws the obvious inference when it declares that such synods and councils, i.e., presumably their doctrinal decisions, "are not to be made the rule of faith or practice, but to be used as an help in both." It follows that those Anglican and Presbyterian preachers who find the official formularies of their respective churches unsatis fying and even unhelpful are entitled to claim that, on the recognized principles of Protestantism confessed in the formularies themselves, no ter restrial authority exists, or ever has existed, com petent to provide doctrinal decisions which shall be securely guaranteed against inadequacy, and that when they in their turn seek for an official 36 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING recognition of the defects which they perceive in existing formularies, they are but following the example of the Reformers themselves, those courageous innovators to whom under God they owe the very existence of Protestant Christianity. Moreover, there is both piety and good sense in Newman's contention in the famous Tract XC, and, if we substitute the Scriptural term " Chris tian" for the unhappily ambiguous term "catho lic," we may conveniently adopt his own words as our own: "It is a duty which we owe both to the Catholic Church and to our own, to take our reformed Confessions in the most catholic sense they will admit; we have no duties towards their framers." The preacher's duty is to the church which commissions him, and to the people to whom he is commissioned, and neither duty can be separated from the primary and indefeasible obligation which he owes to his own conscience. Only in so far as the official denominational formulary utters the intention and sets forth the faith of the present Church does it answer to the, primary purpose of such a formulary. No church has any interest in exacting irrelevant subscriptions, and subscriptions to propositions which have ceased to be living beliefs are as irrelevant to any spiritual interest as the ob solete dogmata of alchemists and astrologers. Nor is it wholly impracticable to attempt the provision of certain tests by which the rele- THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 37 vancy of an ancient doctrinal confession can be appraised. Thus, in the first place, due allowance must be made for the fact that the denominational formularies of Protestantism have in no slight measure the character of emergency-documents, that is, documents composed with reference to the necessities of specific historic situations. These determining necessities, however, have largely disappeared, or fallen into comparative insignificance, and, in so far as this is the case, it may fairly be maintained that the Confessions themselves have become obsolete, and cannot be supposed to have more than an historical inter est. The preacher of to-day can hardly be held to an ex animo acceptance of doctrinal pronounce ments which were dictated by, and must find their justifications in connection with, the political exigencies of his church in the sixteenth or seven teenth centuries. He may, indeed, by an effort of the historical imagination transport himself into the past, and there give an unqualified approval to the action of his religious ancestors, but this is something quite distinct from con tinuing to give such approval when the circum stances which made it possible have faded from mind and cannot be renewed. In the next place, the doctrinal decisions of the past must be read in connection with the knowl edge of the time. That may be a just decision 38 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING in view of one state of knowledge which becomes wholly the contrary in view of another. All judg ments must be related to the evidence on which they were based; it argues no imputation on the soundness of any judgment to say that it would have been different if other evidence had been available, nor does a final court refuse to revise verdicts if it can be shown that new light is acces sible which compels revision in the primary interest of justice. The principles of judgment remain unaltered by the change in the manner of their application. In the case of denominational formularies framed in a distant age, this distinc tion between principles and their specific appli cations is equally reasonable and important. We may adhere to the first while we reject the last; nay, a sincere and intelligent acceptance of the one may compel in the circumstances a rejection of the other. The validity of any application of a principle lies in the assurance that all the relevant circumstances have been considered. In so far as the formularies consist of applications of prin ciple, they lie open to the objection that the relevant circumstances are continually changing, and that consequently they are increasingly inadequate. Truth is indeed unchanging, but it is never seen in the same perspectives, so that its aspect is never precisely the same. Doctrinal definitions are attempts to give permanence to the specific aspects of religious truth which present them- THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 39 selves at a given juncture; they begin to grow inadequate from the moment of their drafting. In effect, denominational Confessions must be subjected to a careful process of historical trans lation before their precise doctrinal authority at any given time can be ascertained. To stereo type, and clothe with sacred obligation, the de cisions which uttered the opinions of the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, would be a proceeding very irrational and unfortunate. It cannot be seriously maintained, that the patent unreason and impolicy of such an understanding of subscrip tion is irrelevant to the practical question before us. Thirdly, these Confessions must not be sup posed to have any direct reference to subjects which have emerged since the time of their com position. It may, indeed, fairly be argued that new questions ought to be answered on the prin ciples already accepted by the Church, and this may be admitted if due allowance be made for the new conditions of circumstance and knowledge. Thus the subscription of the preacher to his denominational formulary must take account of its obsoleteness, of its irrelevance, and of its silence. These considerations, if frankly ad mitted, will be found to remove most, if not all, the difficulties commonly expressed with respect to denominational subscriptions. It must not, 40 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING however, be forgotten that the embarrassments to which the formularies reduce those who sign them, are but a small part of the total mischief which may be ascribed to them. Even more important are the indirect effects which flow from the parade of lengthy doctrinal confessions, which nobody fully believes, and everybody explains more or less non-naturally, as the pre liminary condition of ministerial office. Ingenu ous and devout young men are made to stumble on the threshold of the sanctuary. The door which may not admit such opens easily to the flippant, the shallow, and the insincere. "If I subscribe, I subscribe my own damnation," wrote Chilllngworth to Sheldon, when the neces sity of subscribing the Thirty-nine Articles was pressed on him, and though his scruples were overcome and he finally accepted the necessity of subscription, his words continue to command a larger approval than his example. If the par ticular points on which his conscience revolted most decisively against the statements of the offiaial formularies, the obligation of the fourth Commandment on Christians, and the acceptance of the Athanasian Creed as truly Scriptural, do not appear to many modern Anglicans to be very formidable, the reason may well lie in the long course of minimizing sophistry which they have experienced. On young men still, as then on Chilllngworth, the burden of indefensible dog- THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 41 matic statements falls heavily, and none can know anything of modern life without being aware of the fact. Men who are eminently qualified by character, training, and ability for the Christian ministry are excluded from its ranks by the lengthy and largely irrelevant formularies which the Episcopalian and Presbyterian churches require them to subscribe with whatever laxity of mean ing. Nor is even this the whole extent of the mischief. The credit of the Christian ministry is lowered by the apparent and admitted dis crepancy between the convictions and doctrine of preachers, and the professions which they have solemnly and publicly made. Even when the preacher can justify subscription to his own con science, as indeed I think he can on a suppo sition which I will state immediately, he cannot make his situation clear to the public, but must fall under the unexpressed but emphatic censure of the very persons to whom he is religiously commissioned. The supposition on which self-respect can be reconciled with subscription is a continuous and genuine effort to revise or remove formularies which are seriously open to objection. Subscrip tion under protest is the actual situation, and the protest becomes morally respectable only if fol lowed up by honest effort to effect the requisite reformation. That the doctrinal Confessions of the sixteenth 42 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING and seventeenth centuries are from every point of view ill-suited to the needs of the churches which have inherited, and still enforce them, is almost universally admitted within the churches themselves, and from time to time efforts have been made to provide some relief to the con sciences of those who have subscribed, or are called upon to subscribe them. The relief ac tually provided, however, appears to be inade quate, and expresses rather the consciousness of difficulty than any clear view of its nature or extent. An obstacle to any effectual action is certainly involved in the fact that the authors of whatsoever relief can be obtained have themselves subscribed the objectionable formularies, and are in a sense pledged to their defence and mainte nance. Experience has proved the extraordinary strength of a sentiment, which invests official sub scription with solemn moral significance, even in the teeth of the plainest indications that it is, and is regarded as being, merely conventional. A sense of personal obligation lingers in the mind long after all serious belief in the specific doctrines has perished; and good men are entangled in casuistic perplexities, which too often conceal from them the true character of their own conduct, and even dissipate the natural sense of words. The notion of revising the existing formularies, or of providing new ones to replace them, appears to command little support in any THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 43 quarter. Thoughtful men cannot but perceive that, even if such a course were practicable, the provision of a new or revised formulary could not but induce a repetition of the old difficulty after a longer or shorter interval of time, and would in any case fail to secure universal approval. It is, moreover, widely felt that the present time is peculiarly unfavourable for any theological reconstruction of an authoritative kind. In many important respects the age is transitional, calling rather for large tolerance of anomalies than for precise and binding regulation. While, therefore, the historic Confessions have been preserved intact, attention has been devoted to the provision of a form of subscription which shall be compatible with considerable divergence of personal belief, and allow the largest latitude of interpretation. Thus in the year 1865, the Clerical Subscription Act brought considerable relief to the clergy of the Church of England, by substituting for the rigorous grammatical assent and consent exacted by the Caroline Act of Uni formity, a form expressed in quite general words. It may be observed that the Church of England has never held any very exalted doctrine of sub scription. The English Reformation was in the main the work of the State, and this circumstance imparted to the system of the Established Church something of the practical expediency which is native to political arrangements. The work of 44 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING Henry VIII and Elizabeth, of Charles II and William III, was inspired rather by political statecraft than by personal conviction or ecclesi astical theory. The latter motives may be the more respectable, but the former is apt to be the most accommodating. It is also to be remem bered that the Church of England, in spite of its theoretically national character, failed from the very start of its history as a reformed and inde pendent church to secure the undivided accept ance of the nation, and was always confronted by powerful recalcitrant minorities. This cir cumstance has tended to infuse an accommodating temper into the ecclesiastical administration, so that a latitudinarian tradition has generally miti gated the legal system, and gone far to minimize the religious significance of doctrinal subscrip tion. Accordingly the yoke has been heavier in appearance than in reality. Nevertheless the legal subscriptions have been and are still widely resented, and the more sensitive conscientious ness of modern times renders the old anodynes less.and less effective. The sixteenth century was in many respects a greater age than the seventeenth, and its superi ority is exhibited not least in its religious for mularies. These deal rather with large prin ciples than with dogmatic schemes. They belong to an epoch of original thinking, not to one of controversial definition. They are designed as THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 45 the platform of national Christianity rather than as the basis of ecclesiastical constitutions. In the seventeenth century controversy prevailed: the war of ideas was in progress, and was being waged with all imaginable ferocity. Elaborate theologi cal systems had been drafted, and claimed from their adherents complete and exclusive acceptance. Accordingly, the doctrinal confessions of the age were detailed, logical, precise, and intolerant. The contrast between the sixteenth and the seven teenth centuries is well indicated by that be tween the Thirty-nine Articles of 1562 and the Westminster Confession of 1647. It is not with out interest that the Assembly of Divines had originally designed a revision of the English Confession, and actually revised the first fifteen Articles. As they went on with their work it became apparent that the doctrinal system of Calvin, and the presbyterian polity with which it was associated, were not easily to be harmonized with a Confession which had no proper connec tion with either; and in the sequel a wholly new doctrinal Confession was provided. The Thirty-nine Articles have never taken high rank as a theological formulary. The apologists of the English Confession have mostly dwelt on the skill with which it has avoided exact definitions, and its competence to include in a single church representatives of the most diverse beliefs. The Westminster Confession, on the 46 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING other hand, has been most praised for the logical precision and all-embracing character of its theo logical teaching. It may be described as the most admired and the most resented of all the doctrinal confessions. Its comprehensive and systematic character explains both the admira tion and the resentment. Dr. Hetherington, in his well-known "History," may be taken as an excellent representative of thorough-going admirers, but his eulogistic language will also serve to indicate the reasons why the modern Presbyterian finds the admired document so intolerable. After naming the leading members of the Assembly, he proceeds to speak of their work in these flattering terms: "These learned and able divines began their labours by arranging, in the most systematic order, the various great and sacred truths which God has revealed to man; and then reduced these to thirty-two distinct heads or chapters. These were again subdivided into sections; and the committee formed themselves into several sub committees, each of which took a specific topic, for the sake of exact and concentrated delibera tion. When these sub-committees had com pleted their respective tasks, the whole results were laid before the entire committee and any alterations suggested, and debated till all were of one mind, and fully agreed as to both doctrine and expression. And when any title or chapter THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 47 had been thus thoroughly prepared by the com mittee, it was reported to the assembly, and again subjected to the most minute and careful investi gation, in every paragraph, sentence, and even word. All that learning the most profound and extensive, intellect the most acute and searching, and piety the most sincere and earnest, could accomplish, was thus concentrated in the West minster Assembly's Confession of Faith, which may be safely termed the most perfect statement of Systematic Theology ever framed by the Chris tian Church." 1 The evident sincerity of the author may excuse but cannot justify this extravagant laudation of a doctrinal formulary, which expresses the hardest and least acceptable of theological systems in the most crudely uncompromising terms, and was indeed the work of indifferent scholars in a bitterly controversial mood. In attempting to mitigate the burden of subscription to the West minster Confession the unestablished Scottish churches have adopted the expedient of passing "Declaratory Acts," explaining the sense in which the churches intend the formula of sub scription to be understood. The expedient is more ingenious than satisfying, for the authorized sense too plainly contradicts both the precise language and the known intention of the Confes- 's. History of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, by W. M. Hetherington, D.D., 4th Edition. Edinburgh, 1878. 48 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING sion itself. The United Free Church has com bined the "Declaratory Acts" of the two churches of which it has been formed. The Established Church is still engaged in the perplexing task of drafting a new formula of subscription. The action of the churches has a wider influ ence on the legal subscriptions than may be sup posed or intended. It sanctions a method of handling the doctrinal formularies, as well as interprets them in certain particulars. Take the case of a preacher in the United Free Church of Scotland. At his Ordination or Induction he is required to declare that he "sincerely owns and believes the doctrine of this Church, set forth in the Confession of Faith approven by Acts of General Synods and Assemblies"; that he "ac knowledges the said doctrine as expressing the sense in which he understands the Holy Scrip tures, and will constantly maintain and defend the same." He is further required to "disown all Popish, Arian, Socinian, Arminian, Erastian, and other doctrines, tenets, and opinions whatso ever, contrary to and inconsistent with the said dodtrine of this Church." It is scarcely possible to imagine an ampler or more precise adherence to the distinctive doctrine of the Westminster Confession, for the pledge is twofold, first, accept ance of the doctrine itself, and, next, to make doubly secure, the "disowning" of its historic rivals. The modern Church, however, in authoriz- THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 49 ing the preacher to condition his adherence to the Confession by the glosses of the "Declaratory Acts," really evacuates subscription of all defi nite or serviceable meaning. For these glosses are really categorical contradictions, and can only be fairly appreciated as cancelling the propositions which ostensibly they interpret. The point is sufficiently important to merit illustration. The Confession asserts the characteristic Calvinistic doctrine of the total depravity of fallen man in terms of crude and severe decisiveness. Men are said to be "wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body," " utterly indisposed, dis abled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil," "bound over to the wrath of God, and curse of the law, and so made subject to death, with all miseries spiritual, temporal, and eternal." The Declaratory Act takes all sense out of these appalling statements by declaring "that, in holding and teaching acording to the Confession of Faith, the corruption of man's whole nature as fallen, this Church also maintains that there remain tokens of his greatness as created in the image of God; that he possesses a knowledge of God and of duty; that he is responsible for com pliance with the moral law and with the Gospel; and that, although unable without the aid of the Holy Spirit to return to God, he is yet capable of affections and actions which in themselves are virtuous and praiseworthy." Would it be excess- So THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING ive to say that the Declaratory Act offers as a gloss on the Confession a careful statement of the very teaching which the Confession was designed to prohibit? Again, the Confession asserts with the utmost lucidity the characteristic teaching of Calvin with respect to the non-elect members of the human race. "The rest of man kind," runs the terrible formula, "God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he extendeth or with- holdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by, and to ordain them to dishonour and wrath for their sin, to the praise of his glorious justice." The Declaratory Act takes the whole sense out of this dreadful teaching by declaring "that while the Gospel is the ordinary means of salva tion for those to whom it is made known, yet it does not follow, nor is the Confession to be held as teaching, that any who die in infancy are lost, or that God may not extend His mercy for Christ's sake, and by His Holy Spirit, to those who are beyond the reach of those means, as it may seem good to Him, according to the riches of His grace." Can it be denied that this is the very teaching which the Confession was intended to disallow? Similarly, when the Declaratory Act asserts that "this Church disclaims intolerant or persecuting principles, and does not consider her office-bearers, in subscribing the Confession, committed to any THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 51 principles inconsistent with liberty of conscience, and the right of private judgment," it cannot be doubted that it directly traverses the doctrine of the twentieth and twenty-third chapters of the Westminster Confession. From all this it seems fairly to follow that the preacher, when he finds himself compelled to place his own glosses on other statements of the Westminster Confession, which the Declaratory Acts have omitted to handle, but which are neces sarily affected by the anti-Calvinistic doctrine admitted in the glosses they have authorized, cannot be equitably refused the right to adopt the same frank liberty of setting aside the distinctive teaching of the formulary by which he is legally bound. In other words, the didactic freedom of a preacher, bound by a subscription which is patient of such interpretation as is officially recognized in the United Free Church, appears to be complete: and it remains a question for that church whether anything is really gained by exacting a subscription, which manifestly does not mean what it pretends to mean, and which may mean the precise contrary. Such subscrip tion cannot be serviceable, and must be mislead ing. What conceivable advantage to the church can be set in the scales against the inevitable dis credit and perplexing confusion? In illustrating my argument from the case of the United Free Church of Scotland, I must not 52 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING be supposed to suggest that the situation in that church differs in any serious degree from that in the other Protestant churches, save perhaps for the special difficulties inherent in so Calvinistic a formulary as the Westminster Confession. The English clergyman's "assent" to the Thirty-nine Articles and the Prayer-book is admittedly com patible with a definite repudiation of a good many propositions therein contained, and there is sufficient truth in the old description of the Church of England as possessing "a Popish Liturgy, Arminian Clergy, and Calvinistic Ar ticles" to make the attempt to deduce from the Prayer-book a perfectly symmetrical and cohe rent system of doctrine rather desperate. It is a question for the authorities of the Anglican Church, whether anything is really gained by maintaining the demand for a subscription which pretends so much and need mean so little. It embarrasses the English preacher, and it does not even provide the church with any security worth having against his doctrinal vagaries. It places a fprmidable weapon in the hands of scorners of religion in general and opponents of Anglicanism in particular, for they can ridicule the incon sistency and plausibly question the sincerity of preachers at once so tightly bound and so clearly free, but it paralyzes the hand of ecclesiastical authority when it seeks to restrain the heretic by compelling it to employ as its legal weapon THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 53 a formulary which not even the strictly orthodox can wholly defend. Even those churches, Con- gregationalist, Baptist, and Methodist, which do not require their preachers to subscribe doctrinal confessions, but have recourse to carefully drawn trust-deeds in order to guarantee in the pulpits the continuance of sound teaching, are found to be in no better case. A striking example of the impotence of trust-deeds as a barrier against theological innovation has recently attracted wide notice in England and America. It is said that the "City Temple," which has become suddenly notorious as the centre of the "New Theology," put forward by its popular and gifted though precipitate and eccentric minister, is held on a trust-deed, which prescribes the Westminster Confession as the standard of doctrine, which shall govern the preaching in that important pulpit. Everybody feels, however, that it would be in tolerable to eject Mr. Campbell from his church by appealing to a document to which indeed he must be supposed to be legally bound, but which not even his most severe critic is prepared to accept for himself. On the evangelical prin ciple implicit in the words, "Let him that is without sin among you first cast a stone at her," it is perceived that the enforcement of the trust- deed would be an infringement of equity. I shall be challenged at this stage to explain what right, if any, I am prepared to concede to 54 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING the denomination. Are no doctrinal pledges to be required from preachers? and must the con gregations be left without protection to the theo logical vagaries of the clergy ? Postponing for the present the most important part of the answer which these questions may receive, I mean, the manifest right of every Christian Church to satisfy itself, so far as is possible, that the men whom it is desired to accept, and commission as preachers of Christ's religion, are themselves Christ's disciples, it must suffice to indicate two legitimate purposes of denominational subscrip tion. First, the candidate for the Christian ministry may fairly be required to endorse ex animo the distinctive attitude of the church whose minister he aspires to become, with respect to other churches and to burning questions of religious politics. It is manifest that in the present state of Christendom any man who feels himself di vinely called to the Christian ministry must decide to what section of the Christian society he will attach himself. Having made his choice, it follows that he must accept frankly and loyally the consequences. Let me illustrate from the case of my own church. The Thirty-nine Ar ticles define the position of the Church of Eng land with respect both to the Church of Rome and to certain sectaries, and also give authorita tive answer to some questions of great practical THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 55 importance at the time. It is admitted that the Thirty-nine Articles are now very largely obsolete. The issues with which they are concerned are, to a very great extent, dead issues. Most part of the properly theological Articles, apart, of course, from those which state the fundamental verities of Christianity, may come under this description. If anyone will be at the pains to read through such Articles as the ninth, "Of original or birth-sin"; the tenth, "Of free will"; the eleventh, "Of the justification of man"; the twelfth, "Of good works"; the thirteenth, "Of works before justi fication"; the fourteenth, "Of works of superero gation"; the seventeenth, "Of predestination and election," not to mention many others, he will feel at once that there is no reality in exacting subscription on such issues from a modern Chris tian. There are, however, other issues dealt with in the Articles, which are still living. The old controversy with Rome remains an active controversy still, and the Church of England would seem as fully justified as ever in requiring that her ministers should accept honestly her view of the issues in debate between the churches. That no branch of the visible Church is exempt from error (Art. XIX) ; that the doctrinal author ity of the Church is subject to the written Word (XX); that General Councils are not properly infallible (XXI) ; that the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper was not ordained of Christ to be gazed 56 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING upon, carried about, reserved, lifted up, or wor shipped (XXV and XXVIII) ; that the Cup of the Lord is not to be denied to the lay people (XXX) ; that it is lawful for the clergy as for all other Christian men to marry at their own discretion (XXXII); that every particular or national Church hath authority to ordain, change, and abolish, ceremonies or rites of the Church or dained only by man's authority, so that all things be done to edifying (XXXIV) ; that the Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in England (XXXVII), are definitions of denominational attitude with respect to practical matters of great consequence, and it cannot be questioned that the Church of England is entitled and indeed necessitated to require from her official representatives a formal, public, and precise endorsement of that attitude. Similarly, that the Moral Law is binding on Chris tian men (VII) ; that Infant Baptism is agreeable to Christ's institution (XXVII); that capital punishment is legitimate, and that Christian men may at the commandment of the Magistrate wear weapons and serve in the wars (XXXVII); that the riches and goods of Christians are not com mon, as touching the right, title, and possession of the same (XXXVIII) ; and that judicial oaths are not prohibited by Christianity, are definitions of denominational attitude on practical matters of manifest importance, which are not less in debate in the twentieth century than they were THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 57 in the sixteenth. It is plainly reasonable that the Church should require from its commissioned representatives an acceptance of its platform on all such matters. Next, the candidate for the Christian ministry must be reasonably required to accept the work ing system of the church whose commission he aspires to receive. This point has far more importance than perhaps at first sight may appear. The working system of a Christian church pro vides a continuous check on official dishonesty. It is probably the most effective protection against religious insincerity which the congregation can possess. For no man who was not a very cynical and callous hypocrite could contemplate a life time given up to the career of a Christian minister implying, therefore, throughout its course the conduct of a public service of the congregation which is everywhere inspired by the conviction that Christ is Divine, the rightful Object of Christian worship, unless within his own personal life that conviction were paramount. The aphor ism of the orthodox theologians has its justifica tion in conscience and in reason, — " lex orandi, lex credendi." It seems to me the most effective and the least oppressive method of enforcing the indispensable standard of personal belief to em phasize this aspect of the preacher's life. He is a man legally required, legally bound, to conduct Christian worship. Apart from personal dis- 58 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING cipleship, and the implied conviction that such worship is reasonable and morally obligatory, his professional activity would torture him as a very Nessus robe. I may observe, in passing, that this indirect consequence of the preacher's official duty is for manifest reasons best secured in churches which make use of liturgical forms in the conduct of public worship, and may perhaps be offered as not the least important consideration which recommends the time-honoured liturgical system. A manifest incongruity between the preaching and the liturgical forms prescribed by authority could not fail to arrest attention, and would be universally recognized to be intol erable. When all is said, it surely must be allowed that the claims of the churches have been built up mainly at the cost of the Church: that in re ducing them we shall restore the greater and older rights of the Body of Christ to their due promi nence: that whatever respect we yield to them must be provisional and contingent; that the inex orable condition of that respect ought to be the sovereign interest of Christianity itself. Distinc tive doctrinal subscriptions are plainly becoming unreal throughout the Protestant world; for the theological bases of historic denominations are vanishing before the solvents of history and criti cism, and the churches are becoming conscious of substantial agreement in all necessary truth. THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 59 The conviction has formed in the minds of sincere men in all the churches, that the official parade of obsolete confessions is indefensible, that it brings no strength to the cause of truth, and dan gerously compromises the sincerity of spiritual witness. There are prophets among us who proclaim the approach of a great reconciliation. We are becoming suspicious of denominational zeal, critical of denominational success. The categories of competitive commerce no longer seem in our eyes decent or even tolerable for the expression of the Religion of Fraternity. Dean Ramsay relates the story of an English traveller in Scotland who, as he passed through a district unusually full of variously designated churches, remarked to the coachman that there must be a great deal of religious feeling in a town which produced so many houses of God. "Na," said the man quietly, "it's no religion, it's curstness" i.e., crabbedness, insinuating that acerbity of temper as well as zeal was occasionally the cause of congregations being multiplied. It is high time that practical recognition should be given to the religious agreement which is acknowledged to exist behind the spiked ramparts of discor dant formularies. "I believe the doctrine of the Episcopal and Presbyterian churches to be prac tically identical," said the present Moderator of the Church of Scotland to the General As sembly. Interchange of pulpits is becoming com- 60 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING mon between the preachers of different churches, and manifestly it implies a consciousness of doc trinal unity. If such unity really exists — and no man who has any competent acquaintance with the theological literature of the English- speaking world will doubt that it does — how superfluous and futile these denominational dis tinctions of doctrine must be! Unhappily in these matters reason and charity have not the field to themselves. Every denomination takes the character of a powerful vested interest, in which the personal vanity, social consequence, and even financial advantage of many individuals are deeply engaged. This fact adds sinister weight to the arguments of natural conservatism, and perpetuates distinctions which have long lost religious meaning. How long will it be before we perceive that the denominations have out lived their historic justifications, and now hinder that supreme interest of religious sincerity which once they served ? The bustling mundane zeal of the "business men of the churches," who "p*ush" the fortunes of their sect with the un scrupulous ardour of successful, self-advertising tradesmen is the strength of the denominations and the bane of the Church. If only the lower and perverted enthusiasms of denominationalism could be conquered and exorcised by a higher and more spiritual loyalty to the family of Christ, the essential unreality of distinctive denomina- THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 61 tional subscriptions would be unreservedly ac knowledged, and the final enfranchisement of Christian preachers in all the churches finally secured. Ill OF the evidence of personal discipleship and the obligation of the creeds The preacher stands before his congregation as the "ambassador on behalf of Christ." His words, therefore, must have behind them the motive of personal conviction, and the authority of personal experience. Only on that supposi tion will the consciences of honest men tolerate his claim to speak with authority in the Name of Christ. The conception of a merely forensic advocacy of the Gospel, such as the barrister brings to the service of his client, is wholly intol erable. No contradiction can be imagined more repulsive and degrading than that which is pre sented by the spectacle of an unbelieving preacher. The mere suspicion of personal insincerity is enough to destroy the preacher's influence, and to sterilize his ministry. "A traitorous com mander, that shooteth nothing against the enemy but powder, may cause his guns to make as great a sound or report as some that are laden with bullets: but he doth no hurt to the enemy by it. So one of these men may speak loud, and mouth 62 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 63 it with an affected fervency; but he seldom doth any great execution against sin and Satan.'"1 Thus quaintly does Richard Baxter describe the spiritual futility of a ministry which is vitiated at the root by the lack of conviction. It is in deed the case that not the sincerest of preachers is personally adequate to the illustration of the Divine message he proclaims, but such inad equacy need not be fatal to his work. " We have this treasure in earthen vessels," wrote the great est of all Christian preachers, " that the exceed ing greatness of the power may be of God, and not from ourselves." No doubt it is possible for the unfaithful preacher to twist the thought of humility into the excuse for indolence, like the false priest in Spenser's satire: To feede men's soules (quoth he) is not in man; For they must feed themselves, doo what we can. We are but charg'd to lay the meate before: Eate they that list, we need to doo no more. But God it is that feedes them with his grace, The bread of life powr'd downe from heavenly place.2 Lack of personal conviction is an absolute disqualification for the preacher's office, and involves the stultification of his ministry. Other 1v. Gildas Salvianus, p. 72. Orme's Edition of Baxter's Practical Works, vol. xiv. 3 Mother Hubberd's Tale, 433-438. 64 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING factors are important, this is essential. Knowl edge, for instance, would seem all but indispen sable in the preacher, yet experience has shown that even an extreme ignorance, which yet coexists with genuine discipleship, need not be destructive of spiritual effect; but no degree of knpwledge can make amends for absence of faith. Natural abilities and acquired attain ments may be at their best, but if the flame of personal devotion be unkindled within the preacher's spirit, they will be altogether inade quate. Even a high standard of morality and immense exertions in the performance of official duty cannot compensate for the absence of that "one thing needful," nor may large popularity and all the tokens of professional success out weigh the fatal influence of personal treason, or obscure forever the completeness of spiritual failure. Perhaps there are no words of Scrip ture which the Christian preacher should more constantly have in his mind than those in which the Lord described the final catastrophe of insincere Christian zealots: "Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy by thy name, and by thy name cast out devils, and by thy name do many mighty works? And then will I profess unto them, I THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 65 never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity." From all this it follows that the Christian Church is not so much entitled, as imperatively required, to take every possible precaution against the intrusion of insincere men into spiritual office. It follows not less evidently that the discovery of effectual securities against religious insincerity will be extraordinarily difficult. Professions of orthodox belief are of course easily obtained, but guarantees of personal discipleship stand on another platform altogether; yet the latter is the really essential matter. In the past the Church in all its branches has mainly relied on exacting detailed evidence of sound belief. Solemn assurances of doctrinal orthodoxy have been given, and followed up by subscription of long lists of theological propositions. Omitting here any further reference to the special difficul ties which attach to these lengthy denominational formularies, we must point out that the whole policy of subscription appears to imply a twofold error. On the one hand, the essential character of the Christian religion is misconceived when so much importance is attached to technical orthodoxy. On the other hand, the subtle and complex nature of man is dangerously ignored. There is no necessary connection between accu rate thinking about religion, and a sincere belief in it: and no connection at all between formal 66 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING declarations of orthodox belief and genuine orthodoxy. Ecclesiastics have been slower than politicians to perceive the practical worthless- ness of formal professions exacted as conditions of office. Insincerity is little likely to hesitate before any demand for dogmatic subscription, while the sensitive conscience shrinks from the public acknowledgment of beliefs which seem to have connection with secular profit. Like Cordelia in the great tragedy the scrupulously conscientious man "cannot heave his heart into his mouth" though great consequences depend on his doing so, but remains silent while coarser spirits eagerly and volubly declare all that is required. None the less the interest of true religion demands the service of the former, not of the latter; and the Church in obstructing for the scrupulously conscientious an entrance into the official ministry sins against the very interest it exists to guard. The Christian religion is one thing; the theologies of Christendom are quite another. In confusing acceptance of theological statements with proof of discipleship the Church has gone far to defeat the very purpose of its action. Moreover, a grave question is raised by this procedure. What right has the visible Church to add to the requirements of disciple ship in the case of the Christian minister? It is universally admitted that the primary and con stituting element in a true vocation to the min- THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 67 istry is the inward call of the Holy Spirit; and that the function of the visible Church is limited to the testing of that vocation, not to the substi tution of a new kind of vocation altogether. In determining the manner of that testing it cannot be thought that the Church is authorized to pro pose conditions which are properly irrelevant, or which go beyond the claim of Christ in the Gospel. A distinction must, of course, be drawn between the demand for personal belief, and the require ment of adequate knowledge. It is certainly within the rights of the Church to determine the conditions of the exercise of the ministry; and of such conditions none is more practically im portant than insistence upon a sufficient stand ard of knowledge. Securities for sound morals cannot be separated from any attempt to ascer tain discipleship. It may go without saying that every precaution against professional ineffi ciency ought to be taken. These, however, are not the points before us. We postulate the case of a sincere man persuaded that he is divinely called to the preacher's work, and on the ground of that conviction seeking from the Church the preacher's commission. What evidence of dis cipleship may he fairly be asked to give? What limits to his "Liberty of Prophesying" must be held to be implicit in his discipleship? What, if any, are the fixed points of Christian faith 68 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING which must be formulated in advance of the preacher's work as the conditions which are to govern his thought and colour his witness? These are the questions which are exercising the minds of serious Christians at the present time, and cannot be left outside our present discussion. It is manifest that the problem here stated is twofold, presented on the one hand to the preacher's conscience, and, on the other hand, to the Church's discipline. His " Liberty of Prophe sying" must necessarily be restrained by his loyalty to the religion; it may also be restrained, rightly or wrongly, by the authority of the Church. For the due handling of the whole question it is important to establish in general acceptance the principle that the demand of Christian disciple ship is one and the same for all Christians, as well ordained preachers as laymen. This might indeed pass for a self-evident proposition, for no preacher can be more, and no layman may be less, than a disciple. The "honourable name," Christian, belongs equally to both, and must carry for both the same burden of obligation. Unhappily this manifest truth has been gen erally ignored by ecclesiastical authorities in the past, and is too little realized by congregations at the present time. It is not an unknown or even an infrequent occurrence, that a "heresy hunt" is raised against a preacher for teaching which the loudest of his critics know to be true; THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 69 and too often the demand is made to withdraw from the preacher a liberty which to all others is readily yielded. The folly of such action is only equalled by its injustice. How can the preacher be supposed to accept for himself as necessary truth doctrines which he may not press upon his congregation as equally necessary for them? If he be a sincere man, he must so press them: if he fail to press them, he may continue to be reckoned orthodox, but must forfeit all right to be accounted sincere. Different standards of religious knowledge of course there must be; for the preacher is in some sense an expert in sacred things, and the appointed teacher of his brethren. In exacting effective securities against disqualifying ignorance the Church is plainly within its rights. As much may be said for the severe inquisition into character and reputation, which may properly precede ordination; for the official competence of the preacher is deeply affected by his behaviour and public repute. When, however, personal belief is in question, — the quality and quantity of doctrine involved in the sincere profession of discipleship, — there can be no difference between preacher and lay man. Many current controversies would, per haps, wear a different aspect if this simple, and indeed self-evident, proposition were applied to them. It is interesting to notice that for the most 70 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING part the Protestant churches, in taking security for the personal discipleship of those whom they admit to the preacher's office, are content with the confession of faith implicit in church member ship, though, as we have already shown, they still exact in addition security for orthodox be lief by means of subscription to the denomina tional formularies, if such exist. As might be expected, the established churches are most precise in their conditions of sacred office. In the Church of England the pledges exacted at ordination are mainly concerned with the official duties of the ministry, but the deacon, besides being required to declare his conviction that he has been "inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost to take upon him this office and ministry," has to profess his " unfeigned belief" of " all the canon ical Scriptures of the Old and New Testament"; and the priest has to pledge himself to " be ready, with all faithful diligence, to banish and drive away all erroneous and strange doctrines con trary to God's word." It is a curiously vague definition of religious error, and in the divided state of Christendom somewhat absurd. The phrase, "contrary to God's word," requires much elucidation before it can be of any prac tical use, and perhaps nothing short of an unquestioned and infallible authority will really suffice for the purpose. In all these questions, however, there is no explicit profession of per- THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 71 sonal discipleship, nor is any needed since the ceremony of ordination includes reception of the Holy Communion by the newly ordained min ister. It is then as a communicant that the clergyman makes his declaration of discipleship, and owns himself bound in common with the rest of the faithful to hold the faith which is formally expressed in the sacramental Creeds. In the Church of Scotland the custom at ordi nation is to question the minister in similar terms, though more searchingly in respect of doctrine, but here also his personal discipleship is rather implied than formally stated, though the ques tion as to his motives in seeking the ministerial office comes near to a formal profession of per sonal Christianity. No man who is not a dis ciple could sincerely plead that "zeal for the honour of God, love to Jesus Christ, and desire of saving souls" were his "great motives and chief inducements to enter into the func tions of the holy ministry." The practice of the Baptist churches is thus described by an eminent Baptist minister in reply to a private inquiry of mine: "I have never signed a creed. I made a statement of my belief when I entered the theo logical college; and another on the occasion of my ordination. And my experience is that of all Baptist ministers. As you know, we have 'Confessions of Faith' and historical documents: 72 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING but there is no 'subscription.' Each church forms its own Trust Deed for the holding of property; but 'Model' Trust Deeds have been formed by assemblies or associations of Bap tists like the Baptist Union of Great Britain and Ireland, and the churches take them, and adopt or adapt them, as they judge right. "The principle of our union is a common experience described as 'conversion,' dedication to God in Christ; avowal of discipleship to Christ, and the like; and the interesting historical fact is that the seven millions of Baptists in the world are characterized by a singular substantial unity of faith and practice. "Thus there are two occasions when the theo logical and ecclesiastical beliefs of the ministers are subjected to something approaching to a test. The first when he enters one of the col leges; but then he has not a creed set before him to sign; he states his own belief, and the Council that controls the college determines whether or no he shall be trained for the Baptist ministry. "The second is when he is ' ordained ' or ' recog nized.' On that day he makes a public avowal of the substance of the teaching he proposes to give as pastor of the church; but that statement is made after he is the accepted pastor of the church, and is made for the purpose of his ' recog nition' by other churches as holding that posi tion." THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 73 The Congregational churches, as might be expected from their history, allow the largest Hberty to the individual minister, but recent experience has raised some anxiety among thoughtful Congregationalists whether the inter est of vital Christian truth is sufficiently safe guarded in the novel and difficult circumstances of the time. There is no formal profession of discipleship other than that demanded at ad mission into the Church. In the Methodist churches the ministers do not "subscribe" any doctrinal confession, but before being admitted, and, formally, every year afterwards, the ques tion is asked with respect to every minister, "Does he believe our doctrines?" "Our doc trines" are contained in the four volumes of Wesley's Sermons, and in his " Notes on the New Testament." It is evident that a doctrinal stand ard so loosely defined is little capable of precise enforcement, and in point of fact heresy cases in the Methodist churches are almost unknown. From a cursory view of the prevailing systems we seem to be brought back to JeREMY Taylor's conclusion that the Baptismal Confession, that is, the Apostles' Creed, is the sufficient statement of the doctrinal obligation of discipleship. The argument merits a short statement. Jeremy Taylor postulates that "the act of believing propositions is not for itself, but in order to certain ends," and that consequently 74 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING "those are fundamental points, upon which we build our obedience." Taking for granted the traditional, and now discarded, notion that the Apostles' Creed was the very work of the Apostles or their contemporaries, composed "to be a rule of faith to all Christians," he infers that it must contain all necessary articles of belief." The old creed, take it in any of the old forms, is but an analysis of that which S. Paul calls ' the word of salvation whereby we shall be saved,' viz., that 'we confess Jesus to be Lord, and that God raised Him from the dead.'" Then he deduces from the apostolical origin and evident character of the Creed its perpetual sufficiency": "But, if this was sufficient to bring men to heaven then, why not now? If the apostles admitted all to their communion that believed this creed, why shall we exclude any that preserve the same entire? Why is not our faith of these articles of as much efficacy for bringing us to heaven, as it was in the churches apostolical, who had guides more infallible, that might, without error, have taught them superstructures enough, if they had been necessary?" He will not allow the propriety of making even the apparently most obvious deductions from the Apostles' Creed, and imposing them as additional articles of faith. "For although whatsoever is certainly deduced from any of these articles, made already so explicit, is as certainly true, and as much to THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 75 be believed, as the article itself, because 'ex veris possunt nil nisi vera sequi': yet because it is not certain that our deductions from them are cer tain, and what one calls evident is so obscure to another that he believes it is false, it is the best and only safe course to rest in that explica tion the apostles have made." . . . "And since it is necessary to rest somewhere, lest we should run to an infinity, it is best to rest there, where the apostles and churches apostolical rested; when, not only they who are able to judge, but others who are not, are equally ascertained of the certainty and of the sufficiency of that expli cation." "The Church," he says, "hath power to intend our faith, but not to extend it; to make our belief more evident, but not more large and comprehensive." Even if this were not the case, charity would prohibit the Church from taking any such course, "for, by doing so, she makes the narrow way to heaven narrower, and chalks out one path more to the devil than he had before, and yet the way was broad enough, when it was at the narrowest." Accordingly he refuses to place the other and more metaphysical creeds of antiquity on the same plane of authority. They might be true, probably were true, but certainly were not necessarily so. "Therefore, they could not be in the same order of faith, nor in the same degrees of necessity to be believed with the articles apostolical." 76 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING Interesting and effective as this argument certainly is, we must admit that it has an archaic aspect, and cannot as it stands serve our turn. Jeremy Taylor's reiterated insistence on the apostolical origin and authority of the Creed is rather disconcerting to all who must perforce reject the theory of its history implied in such insistence. The excellent bishop's conception of Divine Revelation was of course necessarily conditioned by the circumstances of his age, and the seventeenth century was in many important particulars different from the twentieth. The very notion of a body of doctrine, more or less extensive, committed by Christ to His Apostles, to be by them in turn handed on to the Church for jealous guardianship and faithful transmis sion, requires much explanation before it can be admitted by the thoughtful and instructed Chris tian of the present time. S. Jude's famous phrase, "The Faith which was once for all delivered to the Saints," has often passed on orthodox lips as, for all practical purposes, a synonym for the developed Creed of the Catholic Church, itself the authoritative formulation of the primitive deposit of unalterable and vital truth; yet we can now perceive that so under stood the phrase is dangerously misleading. That original faith of discipleship was certainly not formal adhesion to any creed, but rather the acknowledgment of a saving knowledge of God THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 77 in Christ gained by personal experience. Let me illustrate this point by quoting some words from a sound and luminous work by Dr. Forrest of Edinburgh: "The fundamental fact in Christianity is not the truths taught by Christ about God and man, but the embodiment which they found in Him, the supreme and solitary character of His per sonal life. Without the acknowledgment of this as a reality in history the Gospel records are inexplicable: and the belief of it lies at the basis of all that Christianity has been to men."1 In these words we are, so to say, placed on the right track. In another passage the writer expresses himself thus: "The teaching was not the ultimate thing in Christ. It formed but one part of His three fold self-revelation. Even the disciples during His ministry felt that behind His words lay a personal life of which these were no full expres sion, and which revealed itself in act as well as speech. And it was from the increasing per ception of what this life was that they gradually reconstrued His sayings. The resurrection was the final demonstration to them that His person ality constituted the center and secret of His message. And it had this power for them, just because it gathered up into a unity their varied 1 ». "The Christ of History and of Experience," p. 466. 78 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING experiences of Him, and completed and con firmed the dim convictions of their hearts."1 We are reminded that behind the belief of the Apostles lay their spiritual experience, and that this experience was both a selecting and an interpreting power. Applied to their reminiscences of the Master's earthly life, it sifted out from the mingled mass such elements as explained or illustrated the convictions about Him to which they had been led. The process of sifting implied also an inter pretation of the facts themselves, so that the his tory became the vehicle of spiritual truth. What the author of the Fourth Gospel says of his own method might with equal truth have been said by the other evangelists: "Many other signs did Jesus in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book: but these are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God : and that believing ye may have life in His name." Apart from the spiritual experiences which determined apostolic convictions, the evangel ical history might have had another aspect, but in face of those experiences none other was pos sible. Those experiences, moreover, were truly representative, at least in all that went to the fashioning of religious conviction. Hence the apostolic preaching was effectual in multiplying 1v. Ibid., p. 322. THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 79 disciples. The phenomenon of conversion has been renewed from the first age until the present time, and has resulted in the creation of the Christian society to which we belong. What is the bearing of all this on our present discussion? We can see that to endorse the apostolic ver sion of the historical facts reveals discipleship, because it implies the existence of those very convictions which originally determined that version. It follows that the Creed is properly to be regarded as the register of beliefs based on Christian experience, verifiable afresh to every generation because the experience is continuing, and providing thus, in so far as those beliefs are verifiable, a sufficient test of personal disciple ship. The Apostles' Creed, then, in so far as it is verifiable in Christian experience, may serve the modern Church as a test of the preacher's personal discipleship, because the honest pro fession of the Apostles' Creed must imply a personal experience which authenticates its relig- ous affirmations, so far of course as they are properly capable of authentication. Where the statements of the Creed are not capable of authentication in personal experience, they must be held to have no abiding spiritual importance, and accordingly their acceptance ought not to be insisted upon as indispensable in the Christian, whether preacher or layman. A striking passage in Richard Holt Hutton's 80 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING suggestive Essay on "The Incarnation and Prin ciples of Evidence" indicates both the futility of such insistence, and the reason of it: "Every step in the history of dogmatic ortho doxy has been an effort to fortify some reliable human base for a divine infallibility — to slide in a false bottom into the abyss of Eternal Truth — to justify the exchange of the arduous duty of discriminating what God has told us of Him self, for some such (apparently) easier duty as discriminating what a given Church or a given book states that He has told us, which may be important enough on a secondary point, as shew ing the drift of the earliest historical traditions, but can never be relied upon for the ultimate foundations of faith."1 It will be sufficiently manifest that I dissent from the mechanical conception of creeds which has recently been expressed by the ablest and most widely influential of the English bishops, and that I regard as deplorably mistaken the practical policy which has been based on it. The attempt which is being made in England to limit the "Liberty of Prophesying" by invoking the authority of the letter of the creeds is of more than local interest and importance, and I shall make no apology for directing attention to it in these lectures. In his primary charge, delivered in October, 1904, and since widely circulated 1v. "Theological Essays," p. 243. THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 81 under the title "Spiritual Efficiency," Bishop Gore, of Birmingham, has set forward, with conspicuous ability and characteristic courage, the views which I desire to combat. The charge bears directly on the subject of our present dis cussion, and I may with advantage make a few observations upon it. The bishop postulates bluntly that "there must be no compromise as regards the fundamental creeds." More logical and less charitable than Jeremy Taylor, he will exact adhesion to the literal sense of the three creeds recognized in the Prayer-book, and declared by the Articles to be "proved by most certain warrants of holy Scripture." To this large demand, indeed, he admits, with curious inconsistency, a single exception. The "damna tory clauses" of the so-called Athanasian Creed are "by almost all of us" treated with laxity, which is to be severely repressed in every other application. Apart from this concession, there must be no relenting. "When the clergy, as representatives and mouthpieces of the Church, stand saying, 'I believe,' there must be no doubt that they mean what they say." Other subscrip tions implying belief, such, for instance, as those by which the clergy are legally bound to the Prayer-book, the Articles, and the Scriptures, need not be interpreted with precision, but about the Creeds no ambiguity is to be tolerated. A severe literalism is to be insisted upon. He does 82 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING not hesitate to affirm, what indeed his theory logically requires, that the phrases of the Creeds do not fairly admit of more than one meaning. "I repeat, then, that by far the most definite doctrinal requirement made upon the clergy is that involved in the continual public recitation of the creeds to which their office binds them. ' I believe that Jesus Christ is very God, of one substance with the Father, who for us men, and for our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate'; that He was 'born of the Virgin Mary,' and that 'the third day He rose again from the dead'; are phrases which admit of no ambiguity. The last clauses are intended, and have always been understood, to lay all possible stress upon the events recorded having really happened. They mean that the historical rec ords which contain the narratives of the birth and resurrection of Christ are true in fact. Now we are in our days challenged by a not un important group of men to admit the legitimacy of the recitation of these words by clergymen who, at the least, regard (for example) our Lord's birth of a virgin, or His bodily resurrection, as highly doubtful. Now I say, quite deliberately, let us be very gentle with scrupulous and anxious consciences. Let us be very patient with men under the searching and, it may be, purifying trial of doubt. But when a man has once arrived at the conviction that he cannot honestly affirm THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 83 a particular article of the fundamental creed, the meaning of which is unambiguous, to be true, let the public conscience of the church tell him that he is not qualified to be an officer of the church which makes the public recitation of the clergymen's personal belief in these, among other, articles essential elements in its great acts of worship. What has been challenged in this matter is the public conscience. It is the public conscience which is asked to weaken the obliga tion of belief by consciously allowing an unreal sense of explicit words. Let the public con science therefore reply to the challenge as ex plicitly as possible." It is apparent that in all this the bishop assumes the very points in debate between him self and his opponents. He draws no distinction between those statements of the Creed which certify discipleship because they are capable of verification in an experience which creates con viction of their truth, and those which must be accepted solely on external evidence whether of Church or Scripture: he ignores the fact, which every serious student of the New Testament perforce admits, that the general trustworthiness of the sacred narratives is compatible with many minor discrepancies and some important contra dictions: he assumes that the modern Church understands the phrases of the Creeds precisely in the sense intended by those who framed them, 84 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING which is notoriously not the case : finally, he takes for granted that the judge of ambiguity must be other than the clergyman himself whose per sonal rectitude is made to turn on the point whether or not he finds the phrases of the Creed ambiguous. The bishop proceeds to deal more direcdy with the clause which affirms that our Lord was born of a Virgin, assuming (what none of his opponents would admit) that the evidence for the truth of that clause is precisely identical in nature and extent with that on which the other clauses of the Creed are based. He states with dogmatic precision his personal conviction that the evidence is sufficient, and suggests that only those can differ from this view who are disqual ified by prejudice from fairly judging the issue. There is of course in this the unconscious arro gance of sacerdotal infallibilism, none the less injurious for being unconscious. "It seems to me," wrote Hutton with a touch of personal resentment, "that no theologians have done more to undermine the power of Revelation than those who have tried to force theology on men's minds by mere external authority, which has, I believe, no more capacity to influence men, without evoking in him some answering response from his own deepest nature, than a ray of light has to affect the ear or a sound to impress the retina." ' The main object is lost sight of when another 1 1 C. 248. THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 85 and properly irrelevant object is admitted. What is wanted from the preacher is a pledge of per sonal discipleship, not a guarantee of accurate thinking. That indispensable pledge must in volve the confession of such sentiments towards Christ as justify, nay, compel, that worship which from the first has been offered to Him by His disciples: and these sentiments can only arise as they have ever arisen from spiritual experiences which themselves affirm the apos tolic tradition as to His person. This confes sion may fitly be made by a Christian boy; it cannot rightly be exceeded by the ripest Chris tian saint. Its character and range are not determined merely by the individual for himself; they are set forth in the apostolic writings, in which the Church has ever recognized, and must ever recognize, both the authoritative rule of faith, and the sufficient criterion of Christian discipleship. The Creeds have their value as summaries of the apostolic faith about Christ. Whatever change has happened in our estimate of the authority of specific articles in the Creeds does but reflect changes in our estimate of the witness which the New Testament bears to apostolic faith. We know, what former genera tions never suspected, that the dogma of the Virgin Birth formed no part of the original preach ing of the Apostles, and we can see for ourselves that it is absent from their writings. The vital 86 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING truth of the Incarnation, on which Christianity stands or falls, is set before us by the great theo logians of the apostolic age, S. Paul and the author of the Fourth Gospel, differently indeed, but with agreement in the central postulate, that Jesus is necessarily the object of Christian worship; neither of these inspired teachers con nects his doctrine with the Miraculous Birth of the Incarnate: both never refer to it; both use language which seems difficult to reconcile with their knowledge of it. Even Bishop Gore admits that "the Virgin Birth was, and still is, not among the evidences by which faith is, in the first instance, to be generated." With the apos tolic epistles before us we must add that the com- pletest inspired expression of Christian faith omits all mention of it. Those who now main tain the dogma of the Miraculous Birth do so either on a theory of Scriptural authority which no modern student allows, and which is indeed indefensible; or on purely theological grounds, identical in character, though far superior in quality, with those which in the Roman Church have justified the allied dogmas of S. Mary's perpetual virginity, and miraculous conception. Such theological grounds belong to the region of religious opinion, not to that of fundamental truth. Probably most orthodox Christians, if they allow themselves to consider the question at all, regard the Virgin Birth as so congruous THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 87 with a Divine Incarnation as to be hardly sep arable in thought. Justly persuaded that the one belief is essential, they naturally shrink from examining the other, with which it has been so closely connected. Yet justice demands that they should allow for a situation which actually exists. The difficulties now so widely felt and so frankly confessed by devout Christians have their origin not in failure of faith but in the con ditions of modern thought and study. The application to the sacred writings of those his torical and critical principles which now prevail over the whole area of human literature has compelled the devoutest believer, who is also a biblical student, to distinguish more carefully than his religious predecessors degrees of cred ibility in the primitive tradition enshrined in the New Testament, and to recognize the early intrusion of influences unfriendly to historical truth. The essential character of the primitive tradition has been unaffected, but the details and perspectives of the Gospel have been altered. Jeremy Taylor's principle, viz., that the apostolic teaching about Christ must be the sufficient measure of necessary truth for all time, is reaffirmed, but his identification of that teach ing with the so-called Apostles' Creed is dis allowed. S. Paul's summary of essentials is perceived to be more authoritative and less ambiguous than any creed: "If thou shalt con- 88 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING fess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thine heart that God raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." It is perhaps worth while to refer to the careful language of the bishops assembled last summer at Lambeth. In their encyclical letter there is this admirable passage on "the Faith and modern Thought." I quote the whole passage in order to do justice to the teaching, and for its intrinsic merits. "We turn first to the subject of our faith in relation to the thought of the present day. In humble reverence and unalterable devotion we bow before the mystery of the Trinity in Unity, revealed indeed once for all, but revealing to each generation, and not least to our own, ' new depths of the Divine.' We bow before the mystery of God Incarnate in the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ, this, too, revealed once for all, but re vealing to our times with novel clearness both God and man, and interpreting and confirming to us all that we have hoped or dreamed concern ing union between them. We reaffirm the essen- tial«place of the historic facts stated by the creeds in the structure of our faith. Many in our days have rashly denied the importance of these facts, but the ideas which these facts have in part generated and have always expressed, cannot be dissociated from them. Without the historic Creeds the ideas would evaporate into unsub stantial vagueness, and Christianity would be in THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING 89 danger of degenerating into a nerveless altru ism." "Historic facts" are facts certified by histor ical evidence, not alleged facts for which his torical evidence is lacking or inadequate. That the Miraculous Birth is not properly described as an "historical fact" is of course the conten tion of all those devout Christians who find them selves unable to affirm it: and that the phrase in the encyclical is designedly used may be inferred from the statement that "these facts have always expressed" the ideas which they have in part generated. Inasmuch as the vital "ideas" of Christianity are admittedly expressed in the apostolic writings, which yet contain no clear affirmation of the Miraculous Birth, it follows that the latter cannot be regarded as the true source or necessary expression of any essential Christian idea. I am confirmed in this persua sion by the circumstance, of which I have per sonal knowledge, that, at least in some dioceses of the English Church, men are ordained whose conviction of the Incarnation is confessedly con sistent with doubt of the Miraculous Birth. I have dwelt at such length on the particular case of the dogma of the Virgin Birth because it is practically urgent at the present time in all the English-speaking churches, not because it ex hausts the application to the Creed of the prin ciple I have formulated. 90 THE LIBERTY OF PROPHESYING While, then, the Church must insist on taking from the preachers whom it commissions this pledge of personal discipleship, and while the preachers themselves are solemnly bound to make that pledge the test of their own sincerity in preaching, it cannot be too much insisted upon that guarantees of accurate thinking cannot rightly or reasonably be taken. A single cir cumstance may suffice to demonstrate the im propriety of the attempt, and its futility. Most preachers receive their commission in early man hood, when their enthusiasm is great, but their knowledge is small, when therefore discipleship may be sincerely professed, but when opinions cannot be safely stereotyped. Subsequent read ing and thought may change greatly the preacher's beliefs without in the least diminishing the gen uineness of his Christian faith. What then is to be the position of a preacher whose mind with respect to the dogma of the Virgin Birth has altered, while his conviction of the truth of the Incarnation of God in Christ remains secure? Is