CLAUSE XV

Notes on the Creed

The three paragraphs correspond to the three aspects or Personifications of Deity which have most impressed mankind,— The Creating and Sustaining. The Sympathising and Suffering. The Regenerating and Sanctifying. The first of the three clauses tries to indicate briefly the cosmic, as well as the more humanly intelligible, attributes of Deity; and to suggest an idea of creation appropriate to the doctrine of Divine Immanence, as opposed to the anthropomorphic notion of manufacture. The idea of evolution by guiding and controlling Purpose is suggested, as well as the vital conception of Fatherly Love.

In the second paragraph, Time and Place are explicitly mentioned in order to emphasise the historical and human aspect of the Christian manifestation of Godhead. This aspect is essential and easy to appreciate, though its idealisation and full interpretation are difficult. The step, from the bare historic facts to the idealisation of the Fourth Gospel, has been the work of the Church, in the best sense of that word, aided by the doctrines of the Logos and of Immanence, elaborated by Philosophy. It all hangs together, when properly grasped, and constitutes a luminousconception; but the light thus shed upon the nature of Deity must not blind our eyes to the simple human facts from which it originally emanated. The clear and undoubted fact is that the founder of the Christian religion lived on this earth a blameless life, taught and helped the poor who heard him gladly, gathered to himself a body of disciples with whom he left a message to mankind, and was put to death as a criminal blasphemer, at the instigation of mistaken priests in the defence of their own Order and privileges.

This monstrous wrong is regarded by some as having unconsciously completed the salvation of the race; because of the consummation of sacrifice, and because of the suffering of the innocent, which it involved. The Jewish sacrificial system, and the priestly ceremony of the scapegoat, seem to lead up to that idea; which was elaborated by St. Paul with immense genius, and taught by S. Augustine.

Others attach more saving efficacy to the life, the example, and the teachings, as recorded in the Gospels; and all agree that they are important.

But in fact the whole is important: and at the foot of the Cross there has been a perennial experience of relief and renovation. Sin being the sense of imperfection, disunion, lack of harmony, the struggle among the members that St. Paul for all time expressed;—there is usually associated with it a sense of impotence, a recognition of the impossibility ofachieving peace and unity in one’s own person, a feeling that aid must be forthcoming from a higher source. It is this feeling which enables the spectacle of any noble self-sacrificing human action to have an elevating effect, it is this which gropes after the possibilities of the highest in human nature, it is a feeling which for large tracts of this planet has found its highest stimulus and completest satisfaction in the life and death of Christ.

The willingness of such a Being to share our nature, to live the life of a peasant, and to face the horrible certainty of execution by torture, in order personally to help those whom he was pleased to call his brethren, is a race-asset which, however masked and overlaid with foreign growths, yet gleams through every covering and suffuses the details of common life with fragrance.

This conspicuously has been a redeeming, or rather a regenerating, agency;—for by filling the soul with love and adoration and fellow-feeling for the Highest, the old cravings have often been almost hypnotically rendered distasteful and repellent, the bondage of sin has been loosened from many a spirit, the lower entangled self has been helped from the slough of despond and raised to the shores of a larger hope, whence it can gradually attain to harmony and peace.

The invitation to the troubled soul—“Come, and find rest”—has reference, not to relief from sin alone, but to all restlessness and lack of trust. The Atonementremoves the feeling of dislocation; it induces a tranquil sense of security and harmony,—an assurance of union with the Divine will.

Every form of Christianity aims at salvation for the race and for each individual, both soul and body; but different versions differ as to the means most efficient to this end. Varieties of Christianity can be grouped under the symbolic names, Paul, James, Peter, and John; with the dominating ideas of vicarious sacrifice, human effort, Church ordinance, and loving-kindness, respectively.

In the coldest system of nomenclature these four chief varieties may be styled,legal,ethical,ecclesiastical, andemotional, respectively. More favourably regarded, the dominating ideas may be classified thus:—

With the treatment of these great themes, sectarian differences begin: differences which seem beyond our power to reconcile. We need not dwell on the differences, we would rather emphasise the mass of agreement. Probably there is an element of truth in every view that has long been held and found helpful by human beings, however overlaid with superstition it may in some cases have become; and probably alsothe truth is far from exhausted by any one estimate of the essential feature of a Life which most of us can agree to recognise as a revelation of the high-water-mark of manhood, and a manifestation of the human attributes of God.

None of the above partially overlapping subdivisions of Christianity equals in importance the overshadowing and dominating theory emphasised in the above creed: namely, the idea of a veritable incarnation of Divine Spirit—a visible manifestation of Deity immanent in humanity. The facts of the life, testified to by witnesses and idealised by philosophers and saints, have been transmitted down the centuries by a continuous Church; though with a mingling of superstition and error.

At present the process of interpretation has been accompanied by a sad amount of discord and hostility, to the scandal of the Church; but the future of religion shall not always be endangered by suspicion and intolerance and narrowness among professed disciples of truth. There must come a time when first a nation, and afterwards the civilised world, shall awake and glory in the light of the risen sun:—

“—A sun but dimly seenHere, till the mortal morning mists of earthFade in the noon of heaven, when creed and raceShall bear false witness, each of each, no more,But find their limits by that larger light,And overstep them, moving easilyThro’ after-ages in the love of Truth,The truth of Love.”

“—A sun but dimly seen

Here, till the mortal morning mists of earth

Fade in the noon of heaven, when creed and race

Shall bear false witness, each of each, no more,

But find their limits by that larger light,

And overstep them, moving easily

Thro’ after-ages in the love of Truth,

The truth of Love.”

The emphasis laid by the above explanation on the conception of the human nature incorporated into Godhead, is appropriate to this country and to the Western World generally; but we thereby imply no abuse of the religions of the East, in their proper place, any more than of the religions of other planets. Silence concerning them is not disrespectful. It is not to be supposed that any one world has a monopoly of the Grace of God; nor does it exhaust every plan of salvation. In estimating the value of another dispensation, or of any ill-understood religion (and no one can perfectly understand and appreciate more than one religion, if that, to the full), the old test is the only valid one: Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?

The third paragraph speaks of our progress along the Way of Truth to goodness and beauty of Life, and of the assistance constantly vouchsafed to our own efforts in that direction. It is not by our own efforts alone that we can succeed, for we cannot tell what lies before us, and we lack wisdom to foresee the consequences of alternative courses of action,—one of which nevertheless we instinctively feel to be right. Acts of self-will, and fanatical determination, and impatience, may operate in the wrong direction altogether; and effort so expended may be worse than wasted. But if we submit ourselves wholly to a beneficent Power, and seek not our own ends butthe ends of the Guiding Spirit of all things, we shall obtain peace in ourselves, and may hope to be used for purposes beyond what we can ask or think. This kind of service is what, in its several degrees, will be recognised by the Master as “faithful”; and it is by being faithful in a few things that hereafter we shall be found worthy of many things, and shall enter into the joy of our Lord.

By the Holy Spirit is meant the living and immanent Deity at work in the consciousness and experience of mankind,—the guider of human history, the comforter of human sorrow, the revealer of truth, the inspirer of faith and hope and love, the producer of life and joy and beauty, the sustainer and enricher of existence, the Impersonation of the Grace of God.

This mighty theme has been treated, in an initial manner, in connexion with Clause XIII.

Supplementary questions will be asked concerning other terms in the third paragraph; but as to the phrase with which the Creed concludes—the Peace of God,—its meaning, we are well assured, surpasses understanding, and can be felt only by experience; hence no supplementary question is asked concerning that phrase.

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