In

from which they could not exist, are certainties too. Apply this test in the reverse way (if the supposition be not too violent) to the special doctrines of the faith. Conceive it possible for some devout and earnest soul to say, 'It is when most consciously in communion with God that I think least of what Christians call the Triune mystery; and when I most ardently aspire after the Divine life, that my thoughts of Christ are lowest. the hours when the burden of sin presses most heavily on my spirit, and I most keenly feel the need of an Omnipotent Deliverer, I am most tempted to deny the necessity of a Divine Sacrifice; and in proportion to the earnestness with which I strive after a pure and unselfish life, is my impulse to call in question the doctrines of regeneration and sanctifying grace. In a word, my better moments, my moments of purest emotion and loftiest aspiration, lead me to rationalism; and the approach of narrowing sympathies and hardening secularity is the signal of my return to an Evangelical belief.' Supposing, I say, a confession like this to be made by a good and honest man, we might be tempted to reconsider the grounds of our faith. But the very supposition

is wildly impossible; and the doctrines which, on the contrary, show themselves connected with the profoundest realities of the spiritual life, have upon them the authentic and ineffaceable stamp of the Divine.

For the conscience

The second point is, that in the Truth, wherever it may lie, there must be a Gospel to mankind. That men need a Gospel of some kind may be taken for granted, not merely as a religious commonplace, but as the inevitable conviction of every student of humanity. stricken, the depraved, the miserable, the labouring and heavy-laden all the world over, is there deliverance, enlightenment, and rest? If so, where is the teaching, what the message, that shall convey the priceless blessing? You know how such questions have again and again been asked; and how the answer is but one ;-that answer everywhere; or else silence and despair! The revelation of God in Christ, which is the centre of the Christian Creed, is also the world's only hope: and this also enstamps upon that Creed the character of Truth.

The certainties, then, are in those truths that prove themselves inseparable from the culture of

the personal religious life, and from the uplifting and regeneration of mankind at large. The acceptance of these truths, and a life in accord with them, is the mark of the Universal Church.

Those further convictions and beliefs to which I referred in the second place, include all those varieties of religious opinion which are held in connection with these central truths, as their development, interpretation, application. Here Christian thinkers often gravely differ. Such beliefs are sometimes termed the 'nonessentials' of the Faith- a term, however, which it seems on many accounts undesirable to employ. There is a certain faithlessness to Truth in the very thought of such a distinction. The great questions of faith cannot bear to be put in duplicate form: What must I believe? and What may I believe? A man who desires to learn the whole counsel of God must be prepared to stand faithfully by all his convictions, on matters great and small, although indeed he may hold them with different

degrees of assurance. To

discriminate these

several convictions, to ask which of them are fundamental, not to be denied without renouncing

the Christian faith altogether and so rendering Christian fellowship impossible, is no doubt a delicate and difficult task-the more so, as we remember that the essentials of that fellowship are laid down in the New Testament as rather of the heart than of the head. Where there is true repentance, self-renunciation, trust in Christ as Saviour, love to God and man, there is essential Christianity.

Let it be remembered, too, that these may be expressed in different ways and forms of speech. A man's professions do not always convey his real faith. Bacon, in his Essay of Unity in Religion, has put this thought very strikingly. 'A man,' he says, 'that is of judgment and understanding, shall sometimes hear ignorant men differ, and know well within himself that those which so differ mean one thing, and yet they themselves could never agree: and if it so come to pass in that distance of judgment that is between man and man, shall we not think that God above, that knows the heart, doth not discern that frail men, in some of their contradictions, intend the same thing, and accepteth of both?'1

1 Essay III.

Very pleasant is it to think of this true harmony of souls underlying all such contradictions of speech, and to recognise the essentials of faith and love where the apprehension of vital truth seems most imperfect. Sometimes, at least, you find the Christian life, in the apparent absence or even denial of the Christian doctrine. The traveller in tropical deserts will here and there come upon a palm-tree, in its verdure and beauty, rooted as it seems upon the arid sand. Strange phenomenon! But he knows the secret. Beneath the sands the roots are fed by a living stream of water that never rises into light, but spends itself upon the life and beauty of that solitary tree. Just so will the Spirit of God, always wonderful in working, silently communicate His own life and power to souls that to us seem rooted in a barren theology, quite outside the fair enclosed gardens of our most orthodox creeds.

Certain truths there are, whether explicitly professed or implicitly received, both certain and fundamental. Perhaps the time has not yet come, in the history of the Church, for defining these truths, or for apprehending to its full extent the distinction between the Divine facts and the forms