But this Athanasian Creed is obliged to be
sung thirteen times every year in the Church of England; and you can
imagine with what grace and joy they must sing the statement that,
unless a man believes every single word and sentence of it, he shall no
doubt perish everlastingly.
The Athanasian Creed, then, takes us only to the eighth or ninth
century. You see, do you not, that, instead of there having been any
clear, explicit, definite statement of church beliefs on the part of
Jesus and his apostles, they are long and slow growths, and not built
up on the basis of proof or evidence, simply opinions which people came
to hold and fight for and preach, until at last they got a majority to
believe in them, and they were accepted by some council.
I wish now to ask your attention for a few moments to one or two of the
modern statements of beliefs. We are face to face here in this modern
world with a very strange condition of affairs. I wish I could see the
outcome of it. Here are churches printing, publishing, scattering all
over America and Europe, statements of belief which perhaps hardly one
man in ten among their pew-holders or vestrymen believes. They will
tell you they do not believe them; they are almost angry with you if
you make the statement that these are church beliefs; and at the same
time we are in the curious position of finding that the man who
proposes himself as a candidate for the ministry in any of these
churches dares not question or doubt these horrible statements.
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