II.
CREEDS
Ye became obedient from the heart to that form, of teach-
ing whereunto ye were delivered.
ROM. vi. 17.
Hold
the pattern of sound words which thou hast heard
from me.
2 TIM i. 13.
Let us
hold fast the confession of our hope that it waver
not.
HEBR.
x. 23.
WE have seen that every life is guided
by Faith of some kind so far as it is of
necessity directed by and to the future and
the unseen. And Faith implies a Creed. The
Greed may be earthly, mean, debasing; but no
man can be without a Creed by which he shapes
his conduct. This one, for example, has
Faith in the power of money or authority or
honour to bring happiness ; and he strains every
nerve to secure that which he has not tested by
experience. That one has Faith in the calm of
personal concentration, in self-culture, in with-
drawal from the rude turmoils of society; and
he closes his eyes and his heart against the sins
and sorrows of the multitude. A third has Faith
in knowledge or material improvement; and he
throws all his energy into the bettering of the
present conditions of life. Such men do not say
in words 'I believe in riches' or 'in influence,'
or 'in self-indulgence,' or 'in secularism,' but they
|
II.
|
W. H.
F.
2
18
The efficacy of a Creed.
| II.
|
say so in action ; and they do not hold their
faith in vain. For in these and in count-
less other forms we can see how a real Greed is
able to mould and to arm a whole nature. Faith
in wealth or in strong battalions or in refined
ease or in social progress produces great results
before our eyes every day. Even this kind of
faith does in some sense preoccupy the unseen
and realise the future.
Thus the man of business and the man of
pleasure has a Creed which is the strength of his
life. The Christian also has his proper Creed.
His Faith has an object wider, deeper, vaster,
more enduring than the objects of form and
sense, of which all that is is but a shadow and a
sign. He believes not in a principle or a thought
but in a Person; not in himself or in mankind,
but in the Lord Jesus Christ. How this
Faith must be progressively effective we shall, I
hope, see as we come to consider the different
facts which it embraces, but at present I wish
to suggest some reflections of a more general
kind, and to shew why it is both necessary and
helpful that the object of our Christian Faith
should find expression in a form of words ; and
how the Apostles' Creed, our sacred heritage only
less old than the New Testament, is in its outline
as broad as life.
|
A Creed the occasion of Confession.
19
A form of words embodies, so to speak, the
unseen object of our Faith. The citizen of the
world is not called upon to put his creed into set
language. In many cases he would shrink from
doing so; and under any circumstances that
which he prizes—wealth, rule, glory—is open to
all eyes. There is no need to recall such things
to the thoughts of those who have their faith in
them. But with spiritual objects it is other-
wise. Here we require to remind ourselves and
to remind one another of the Invisible in which
we trust: to bring this which we cannot handle
or measure within the range of constant experi-
ence : to claim for it a place among the recognised
powers of life.
So we find, handed down to us as a
priceless
inheritance, words to define our Faith; and then
we openly proclaim it. Such confession
gives a positive distinctness to aspiration. Such
confession offers a watchword for effort and a
guide to devotion. And again this confession
of our Faith in a form of words answers to a
natural impulse of the soul. The first work of
the man who has grasped the unseen will be
to make known the blessing which he has
found. He who believes in God, in the
Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, will
be constrained to express his belief. The truth
2-2
|
II.
|
20
Our Creed witnesses to
| II.
|
on which he has laid hold concerns others and
not himself only. It is a treasure which grows
greater by impartment. For while our Christian
Faith is personal it is social also. While we each
say 'I believe' with the fulness of individual
conviction and not simply 'we believe,' we say
it in conscious fellowship with those about us.
And this separate confession, if we reflect upon
it, makes our union more real and more close.
In this way a formal Creed witnesses to the
universality of our Faith. I join with others in
repeating it that I may declare openly that the
facts which meet my wants, which satisfy my
instincts, are for all men. My apprehension of
them is not the measure of their efficacy or of
their meaning. Nay rather, as I find in them
what I require, my heart is enlarged to sympa-
thise with those who find in them the answer
to other needs. In this way a common Creed
enables me to learn more of myself as well as
more of the Gospel.
Constant habit deadens our sense of the
gran-
deur of this communion of faith. Yet the great-
truth remains ready for our use. If only a single
congregation could enter into full possession of
all that lies in this acknowledgment of the divine
allegiance which we agree to profess: if we could
each feel, and then all act together as feeling,
|
the Universality of the Faith;
21
that faith in God as He has revealed Himself
is the foundation, the rule, the life of our lives :
there would be a force present to move the
world. And then let us extend our thoughts,
and remember that the confession which we make
is made practically in the same form from day
to day by countless congregations in Western
Christendom, and we shall know that that
which we have in common with all who bear
Christ's name, is greater, immeasurably greater,
than the special beliefs, however precious to our-
selves, however perverse and wilful and unfounded
in the eyes of others, which keep, and which must
keep us apart.
Nor may we stop here. The Creed which thus
binds us all together now, even in spite of our-
selves, binds us to all the past. The history of
the Church is indeed sadly chequered, but there
is no other history which can be compared with
it; and from the first the Apostles' Creed was
substantially the symbol of its heroes. Inter-
pretations, glosses, enlargements were added, but
the outline at least was fixed in the second
century, fixed unchangeably. And I cannot sup-
pose that any one is insensible to the influence
of this testimony of ages. As often as we
repeat the Creed of our Baptism we repeat the
words by which martyrs have lived and died, the
|
II.
|
22
guards its fulness, and
| II.
|
words under which new nations have been enrolled
as soldiers in Christ's army, the words which
have remained through every vicissitude the
standard of the Christian belief. And he must be
something less than man who is not moved by the
power of this unbroken fellowship with the past,
which makes us heirs of every victory of Faith.
Another thought flows directly from this.
The
I Creed which unites us with all the past, preserves
for us the complete and harmonious outline of the
foundations of Faith. As time goes on, now this
part of it, now that comes into prominence. It
is only by a serious effort that we can recognise
the due proportion which the parts bear to one
another as we regard them from our own point of
view. But the Creed is of no one age. As
often as we repeat it we are guarded from for-
getting the articles which our circumstances do
not force upon our notice. All the facts remain,
and when a crisis comes that will be ready to our
hand which our fathers have delivered to us. We
want nothing new, but the old rekindled by a
fuller light.
To these manifold services of a Creed one
more
may be added. Such a summary as the Apostles'
Creed serves as a clue in reading the Bible. It
presents to us the salient features in the revela-
tion which earlier experience has proved to be
|
guides to the study of Scripture. 23
turning-points of spiritual knowledge. It offers
centres, so to speak, round which we may group
our thoughts, and to which we may refer the
lessons laid open to us. It keeps us from wan-
dering in by-paths aimlessly or at our will, not
by fixing arbitrary limits to inquiry but by mark-
ing the great lines along which believers have
moved from the first.
To a certain extent any Creed sanctioned by
the use of many centuries would have these
advantages; but if we look a little more closely
at the Apostles' Greed, which has been in our
minds all along, we shall see that it is fitted to
bring them all to us in richest abundance. It
is the spontaneous expression of the life, of the
feeling, of the experience, of the Christian Society.
Though it is not an Apostles' Creed in that literal
sense with which mediaeval art has familiarised
us; though we may not suppose that each apostle
contributed one clause to make up the harmoni-
ous sum; it is the Apostles' Creed in a deeper
sense as embodying the first Gospel in its original
form, the Gospel of St Peter and St Paul, of
St Andrew, St Bartholomew and St Thomas,
which we see shadowed forth in their own
confessions. Thus the Apostles' Creed is truly
apostolic, and, which more directly perhaps con-
cerns us, it is personal and it is historical.
|
II.
|
24
The object of the Apostles'
| II.
|
It is personal. We have seen that it is personal
on our part: that it is the distinct voice of the
belief of each one of us (I believe ); but far more
than this: it is personal in its object. It expresses
not the conviction that something is true, but
that some One is the stay of life. We
do not say 'I believe that there is a God,' that
'Jesus Christ came to earth,' that 'the Holy
Ghost was sent to men.' In this sense, as St
James says, 'the devils believe and tremble.' But
we say 'I believe in God the Father,' 'I believe in
Jesus Christ,' 'I believe in the Holy Ghost.' That
is, I do not simply acknowledge the existence of
these Divine Persons of the one Godhead but I
throw myself wholly upon their power and love.
I have found and I trust without reserve Him
Who made, redeemed, sanctifies me. I have gained
not a certain conclusion but an unfailing, an all-
powerful, Friend. 'I believe in Him.' He can
help me ; and He will help me.
We feel at once when the thought is set
before
us how this characteristic of our Creed brings it
into our life. It is the expression of personal trust
and not simply of intellectual conviction. The
most unquestioned and unquestionable propo-
sitions lie outside us. We take account of them :
we regulate our conduct by them: they may move
us with hope or even with enthusiasm; but they
|
Creed personal and 25
leave us alone. Faith in God, on the other hand,
witnesses to a fellowship able to penetrate and
hallow our whole being, active in us at every
moment, bringing to us the powers of another
world.
In this most momentous sense our Creed is
personal. It is also, as I said, historical. We
believe in God, and we declare His nature by
recounting what He has done in the limits of
time and space. We do not attempt to describe
His essence or His attributes in abstract language.
We speak of His works and through these we
form in our human ways some conception of what
He is.
Thus we confess that we believe
In God the Father Almighty, Maker of
heaven
and earth:
In Jesus Christ His only Son Who was born,
Who died, rose again, ascended, and shall come
again :
In the Holy Ghost; and, as the
manifestation
of His unseen action, we believe , not in the Holy
Catholic Church, but, that there is a Holy Catholic
Church, a Communion of Saints, Forgiveness of
Sins, Resurrection of the Body and Life ever-
lasting.
No interpretation of these great facts is
added.
They belong to life. They are in themselves
|
II.
|
26
its form historical.
| II.
|
unchangeable. They stand before us for ever in
their sublime majesty, part of the history of the
world. They are unchangeable ; but as the years
teach us more of the conditions of our own present
existence, we see more of the divine revelation
which they convey. So we interpret them for our-
selves. But we shall be slow to place our
conclusions, even the simplest, by the side of the
primary facts. Where the wilfulness of false
teaching has made such addition necessary, as in
the Nicene Creed, the addition is, under some
aspects, a loss. It is at the best a safeguard
against error, and not, as we are tempted to think,
an increase of spiritual knowledge. Our knowledge
of God must be man's knowledge, and therefore
not a knowledge of Him as He is, dwelling in
light unapproachable, but a knowledge of His
relations to ourselves so far as He has made them
known. It is this knowledge, the knowledge
of God's work on earth, the spring and the
assurance of access, of fellowship, of devotion, and
not the knowledge of the schools, the technical
arrangement of formal conclusions, which the
Apostles' Creed brings before us. It is this
knowledge coming through life which touches
life. It is this knowledge which enables us
to listen to the voice of the divine Command-
ments and offer our prayer to our Father in
|
Our Creed rules us.
27
heaven. It is this knowledge to which 'we
have been delivered' that it may mould and keep
us, body, soul, and spirit, until the day of the
Lord.
'To which we have been delivered.' It is a
most startling phrase; yet this is literally what St
Paul says when he speaks of the Christian Creed.
He does not write : 'ye obeyed from the heart that
form of doctrine which was delivered you' ,—that is
but a small part of the truth,—but ' that form of
doctrine whereunto ye were delivered .' The
phrase is as startling as it is openly true. Our
Creed, whatever it really is, is our sovereign
master, or rather our inspiring power. It calls
out our energies. It directs their application.
It exacts our service. We can have no escape
from its dominion : no rest from its influence.
' We are delivered to it:' perhaps as the uncon-
scious victims of a degrading thraldom, perhaps as
the eager servants of that which we have gladly
recognised to be a divine will.
Feeling then what a Creed is, what our
Creed
is, we approach the study of its contents with
surer confidence, in order that we may learn
better that it is able to guard, to support, to
animate us: that it has strength to fashion our
lives in health and sickness, in joy and sorrow, in
|
II.
|
28
Our Creed.
| II.
|
thought and action, after a godlike type: strength
to correct us with the authority of an inviolable
law: strength to fill us with the enthusiasm of a
living faith.
|
|
