Why, then, may not this dissatisfaction with the older formulæ and the movement toward their revision be ascribed to an honest desire to make the formal conditions of membership in Christ's church correspond more closely with the real; and why should we not attempt to do this, that both our theory and our practice may be conformed to the simple principle of the gospel and be welded together by its spirit? If this were done, it is evident that each one of the practical difficulties which we meet in attempting to make a doctrinal test the condition of Christian fellowship would disappear at once. The weak and the doubting disciple will encounter no longer a stumbling-block at the door of Christ's church, which, as it takes its stand on the firm ground of apostolic teaching, can, in Christ's name, invite all Christians to come to his table, and expect of those who come only what the Master himself expects of all his disciples. And the creed, finding its true uses as a standard of teaching, may, instead of being crippled and dwarfed, grow into the full expression of the best thought of the church. There are several proper and important uses of a creed, but I believe its use as a test of church-membership is not one of them, it is not good for a chisel to be used as a screw-driver, — and it is just because such a use of the creed has a definite tendency to defeat the very end for which it would be strenuously maintained by many, that it ought to be abandoned. If this seems to any like abandoning the faith once delivered to the saints, and like levelling a bulwark of orthodoxy, let me add that a creed in itself is no safeguard; it has no inherent power to diffuse itself as if by magic, even though it be occasionally displayed publicly. We must

freely enter in at their pleasure, but such as are admitted thereto as members ought to be examined and tried first, whether they be fit and meet to be received into church society or not.

"(2) The things which are requisite to be found in all church members are repentance from sin and faith in Jesus Christ, and, therefore, these are the things whereof men are to be examined at their admission into the church, and which then they must profess and hold forth in such sort as may satisfy rational charity that the things are there indeed.

"(3). The weakest measure of faith is to be accepted in those that desire to be admitted into the church, because weak Christians, if sincere, have the substance of that faith, repentance, and holiness which is required in church members, and such have most need of the ordinances for their confirmation and growth in grace. The Lord Jesus would not quench the smoking flax nor break the bruised reed, but gather the tender lambs in his arms and carry them gently in his bosom. Such charity and tenderness is to be used as the weakest Christian, if sincere, may not be excluded nor discouraged. Severity of examination is to be avoided."

rely upon some more active and efficient agencies to foster the orthodoxy of new disciples. If catechetical instruction based upon the creed, a kind of instruction which has been displaced but by no means replaced by the Sunday-school, if this is needed to supply the disuse of a doctrinal test of membership, let us not forget that it is also the only thing which in common honesty can justify the use of it. But whatever our formal terms of admission, let us learn to put the same paramount and implicit reliance reposed by the apostles in that faith which alone constitutes any one a member of the body of Christ.

BANGOR, ME.

Charles H. Cutler.

NOTE. The use of a doctrinal statement as a condition of church-membership has been discussed from the point of view of a pastor; it may therefore be fitting to add the following form of admission, recently adopted, with only two dissenting votes, by an old Congregational Church. It is offered, not as the ideal form, but as a practical contribution to the discussion, and in the hope that it will be of service to other churches in the difficult process of creed-revision.

The church retains its former creed intact, to be published in the manual with the following Note:

The foregoing Creed remains as an expression of the doctrinal belief of the Church, with which the teachings of the Church are expected to be in substantial accord.

But there are sincere followers of Christ, we think, fit candidates for our church fellowship, who cannot, for whatever cause, assent to this or any like form with full intelligence and heartiness. We ask of those who join us, not assent to a form of doctrine but confession of a personal faith and loyalty toward Jesus Christ. Such a confession we have sought to embody in the Form of Admission which follows, and to this alone members joining the Church hereafter will be asked to assent.

FORM OF ADMISSION.

The candidates, without being called, will come forward while the minister is reading the following words :

:

What shall I render unto the Lord for all His benefits toward me? I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows unto the Lord now in the presence of all His people.

OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST saith:

Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls.

Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven.

Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.

DEARLY BELOVED: You humbly trust that by the grace of God you have been led to accept Christ as your Savior, and with the help of the Divine Spirit you are trying to follow Him as your Master. Believing that He has called you into His Kingdom and given you a place with His people and a work to do with them, you desire in grateful obedience to confess the Lord Jesus Christ, and consecrating yourself (yourselves) to His service, to enter into the fellowship of this His church.

In token that this is your sincere belief and desire, do you now make confession of your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as He is presented in the Scriptures, and do you, heartily repenting of your sins, accept Him as your Master and your Divine Savior?

Desiring to be numbered with His disciples, you will now be baptized in this faith.

Baptism of those who have never been baptized.

Do you who were baptized in childhood freely accept that consecration, confirming for yourself (yourselves) the vows made for you?

COVENANT.

You do now then, in humble dependence on God, consecrate yourself (yourselves) to His worship and service, and joyfully give yourself (yourselves) to Him, to be His forever. Abiding henceforth in Jesus Christ, you will strive with the help of the Holy Spirit to cultivate within you the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance; and naming yourself (yourselves) with the name of Christ, you avow your purpose to glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are His. Do you thus covenant? Here those, if any, who unite by letter will rise. BELOVED: You have been recommended to our communion by the church (churches) of your former membership. Trusting that you will both receive comfort and strength and impart the same to us, we welcome you in the love of a common Master to our joys and labors, as you enter (with those who confess Christ for the first time) into

COVENANT WITH THIS CHURCH.

You do now (all) enter into covenant with this church, to join in its work, ordinances, and worship; to submit to its discipline; to work and pray for its growth, purity, and peace; to walk with its members in love and faithfulness.

This you heartily promise?

The members of the Church will rise.

We then, the members of this Church, do joyfully welcome you to our communion. By the help of the same Spirit on whom you rely, we promise you our sympathies, our watchfulness, our prayers. We welcome you in the name of Christ to a share in the hopes, the labors, the joys of His Church. Receive then our Christian welcome. We greet you as fellow-citizens of the saints and of the household of God, heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ to an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away; and we pray that He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.

The people being seated, the minister may here, if he so pleases, give the right hand of fellowship to each new member, with an appropriate passage of Scripture for each.

For this cause we bow our knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God.

Beloved, the Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God, our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen.

It is proper to acknowledge indebtedness for suggestions embodied in the above form to the Trinitarian Congregational Church of Taunton, Mass., also to St. Lawrence Street Congregational Church, Lawrence, Mass., Congregational Church, Montclair, N. J., and others.

C. H. C.

CHRIST IN CHRISTIANITY.

IN the contest over the belief in miracles as in most other contests each side misunderstands the other. The unbeliever usually assails the belief as superstitious, but it is not superstition to suppose that higher necessities may at times apparently affect the regularity of nature's laws. On the other hand, the doubter is condemned at once as a heretic, a materialist, or even as an

atheist, while as a matter of fact many serious men have no control over such doubts, and their honest incredulity is not incompatible with all that is best in religion.

The weightiest objection in the minds of such skeptics is not materialistic. They do not dwell on the physical but on the mental improbability of the occurrence of miracles. The belief seems to them like the suggestion of the existence of caprice in the mind of God. Miracles cannot be discredited on the ground that they are wonderful, for the whole universe, visible and invisible, is a continual wonder.

We use the word "materialist" much too loosely. What is matter after all? We know spirit much better. Matter is merely the name which we give to the unknown centre to which phenomena point. On the other hand, we are spiritual centres ourselves. We know our own spirits at first hand. Everything but our own spiritual existence we must take upon faith. All our knowledge of matter is an exterior knowledge. How we skim over the surface of things; how we rebound from them in our attempt to get into them! Nature, like a mischievous boy, dazzles our eyes with her mirror, so that we cannot see what there is behind it and who moves it. We have each of us pierced the surface of nature at one point only, and that is in our own selves. I know my own soul, and this is no surface knowledge. Here, at least, I am behind the scenes. I can, at this point, see what there is under nature's face; and what do I find? Thought and will and conscience. All my fellow-men report the same discovery. Wherever we strike through the crust of the earth, then, we disclose not matter but mind. Is not mind, then, the stratum which lies beneath phenomena as the Silurian rocks support the Devonian? The word "matter" is really a mere algebraic X an unknown quantity standing for something, we know not what, unless it be spirit. Your materialist is, in fact, the most extravagant of idealists. He constructs his whole universe of matter, and matter is the most abstract of ideas. Let him succeed in proving that matter and spirit are one, and he will only have shown that matter is spiritual, not that spirit is material. As we are accustomed to distinguish spirit from matter, so we draw the line between life and force, and disparage any attempt to prove a relationship between them, on the ground that such a course tends to degrade life and place it on a materialistic plane. But are the forces of nature mechanical and dead? In our present condition of knowledge is not this a violent assumption? All motion seems to pro