asserted identity. In the first place, many of the modes recommended for disposing of jail labour are new, or nearly so, and hence would lead to no displacement; secondly, competition is put an end to; and, lastly, no particular trade is ruined by too great an influx of new workmen. These are assuredly differences sufficient to warrant the distinction made, and as they contain all that we have asked for, there is no good reason why we should not publish them as valid recommendations to our plan for the employment of criminal labour.

GEORGE ODGER.

A FEW MORE WORDS ON THE ATHANASIAN

CREED.

I

AM as much convinced as the excellent writer of the article on the Athanasian Creed in the August number of this Review, that it is impossible much longer to retain that Creed as part of our services. This conclusion has been forced upon me by the arguments of its recent apologists-men of high worth and ability-even more than by those of its impugners, sincere as is my respect for them. If a composition so weighty and awful, treating of the most transcendent topics in the most distinct language, requires explanations and compromises which destroy reverence and introduce confusion, its worth for our common worship must be gone; just because one honours it and has learnt deep lessons from it, one must desire that it should not be heard in public, that it should be kept only for secret meditation. Believing that that question is practically decided, that the resistance, from whatever quarters it proceeds, is too fitful, faint, and irregular to last, I deem it the duty of every clergyman who up to this time has repeated the Creed in his Church services, to ask himself in what sense he has repeated it. I do not in the least blame those who have adopted it reluctantly, submitting to an authority which they considered it wrong to resist. They have acted on a principle. I can appreciate perhaps still better the principle of those, some of whom I know, who braved any ecclesiastical censure rather than utter words which they considered profane and cruel.

But I cannot claim a place in either of these classes. Having from tolerably early youth known the objections to this Creed, which are now considered overwhelming-having been educated to detest itI have read it in congregations, a majority of which would probably have wished that it should be omitted, with little dread of interference from the ordinary in case I chose to follow their inclinations. If I have paltered with words, which right or wrong are tremendous, in a double sense, or have pronounced judgment on my neighbours while proclaiming constantly that our Lord has forbidden us to judge, I have committed a sin of which I ought to repent in dust and ashes. To be clear in one's own conscience is the point of chief importance. But as some great principles of theology and morality concerning the whole Church are involved in the question which I have debated with myself, I will endeavour to state the reasons which have induced me to read the Creed in what seems to me its direct and natural sense, although I have a cordial and ever-increasing dislike of anathemas, although I accept literally and unreservedly the assertion of the Apostle that it is God's will that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the Truth, although I believe that His Will, however resisted, must at last prevail.

I am aware that there is another temptation besides that of yielding to early prepossessions. There is the temptation of violently resisting them—of flying to the extreme which is the furthest from them. This tendency, as it affects most painfully domestic impressions and associations, so may also be directed towards the age in which we live. To be out of communion with that, to cultivate the habits of a bygone time, is, we all know, a frequent rage among young men; a sign, sometimes, of an independent character-when it becomes confirmed, of an artificial one, or of one given up to self-will. But I think it is a vice which old age, often contracting others, leaves behind it. Most men, I think, learn as they approach their second childhood the interest and value of the first. Most acquire a conservative dislike of mediaval affectations, of every needless departure from the habits of their contemporaries. I can say for myself that those youthful lessons which were directed against the Athanasian Creed have never lost their power over me, and are now more precious to me than ever. I can trace the effect of them upon my thoughts, whatever direction they have taken. I am specially grateful for them, because they cultivated in me a great impatience of all sectarian denunciations, of all formulas which were intended to sever one class of Christians or of men from each other; a vehement passion for unity in its largest possible sense. And this passion for unity, I rejoice to feel, is the passion of this age, more than of any one that has preceded it. I feel myself, while I cherish it, in a strange

sympathy with all the ecclesiastical movements of the time, with those that most clash with each other, even with those which, looked at in themselves, would cause me the sharpest pain. Schemes of Comprehension, declarations of Infallibility, attempts to establish a dry Theism, even the despair of any common education which shall not be Atheistic, alike indicate a deep craving which must somehow be satisfied. One who has pursued the vision "many a weary hour," and who is well convinced that in none of these ways it can be realized, may be pardoned for dwelling on a commonplace which has been to him of unspeakable wonder and comfort—which, since it first came home to him, he has never been able to forget in any discourse with himself, or in trying to preach a Gospel to his fellow-men.

Germans and Frenchmen, who are slaughtering each other; Englishmen, with their lofty isolation and contempt of foreigners; Italians, who boast that they possess the Dogmatist of the universe, are alike baptized into the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. The richest and the poorest are sealed with this name; it is linked with the names by which their kinsfolk and their playmates speak to them. It has been so for more than a thousand years. Sceptics do not like to deprive their children of the common sign. "It may mean nothing," they say; "then why not yield to the custom? If not nothing, it must mean something rather profound. Why affect to deny that of which we are ignorant ?" A few most earnest people refuse the ceremony, only because they are afraid to connect with something visible and external, a truth which they say must be at the very root of our lives.

Heartily do I agree with these last objectors, that no ceremony can be a bond between nations or men. Even more incredible is the notion that some opinion about the ceremony, or the amount of meaning which attaches to the ceremony, can be a bond between them. We know that a single people, speaking the same tongue, living under the same circumstances, are not united by this opinion, but are torn in pieces with controversies about it. But is it incredible that the name itself should contain the secret of their unity? "What!" I hear some one exclaiming, "the doctrine of the Trinity? Surely Christians have disputed about that from the earliest ages downwards as much as about the efficacy or inefficacy of baptism." No doubt they have. But was there any reality for them to dispute about? Is there such a NAME? If there is, it cannot represent a doctrine, it must represent Him in "whom we live, and move, and have our being." Have we not believed that it is so? Have we not believed in Him; only in an opinion about Him? Let us fairly confess that fact; and if God be the God of truth and of peace, and if we are made in his image, we shall need no other

explanation of our wars and fightings with swords and guns, or with an interchange of curses.

When we reach this point in the inquiry it becomes serious enough; trifling must be very dreadful to any one who has ventured even a few steps in such a course of thought. He must begin to ask himself, "How can I repent, how can we all repent, of conduct towards each other which involves such a denial of the God in whom we have professed to believe ?" I do not find repentance easy for myself. I do not find it easy to call other men to repentance. I turn to the New Testament that I may learn the way. I find it written,

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." So John the Baptist spoke; so our Lord spoke; so his disciples spoke. That was the ground and power of repentance. The kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God, is not afar off; it is nigh to every one of you. But what kingdom is this? If the Son of God came into the world to reveal the Father, with whom He had dwelt before the worlds were-if, when He left the world, He sent his Spirit to teach men of the Father and the Son, to bind them together as his brethren and as his Father's children-if this was the message which He bade his apostles proclaim to all nations, the New Testament would seem to be an intelligible book, the spread of the Church an intelligible fact. The kingdom of heaven would then be the eternal kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. The kingdom of hell would then be the kingdom of evil, hatred, despair. Both would be about every man; both would be kingdoms into which he could only enter by his spirit. Communion with either would be most real and actual, would determine the course of a man's thoughts and acts. To believe in the God of righteousness, peace, truth, to acknowledge Him as the Lord of all, who has redeemed mankind by his Son from the powers of death and evil, who speaks to their spirits by his Spirit, would be to assert a place in the heavenly kingdom: to believe in evil, death, selfishness, as the lords of all, would be to claim a place in the other kingdom. To repent would be to turn from the power of darkness to the Source of Light. Repentance and conversion would always be possible, because He who is never far from any is the giver of repentance, the converter from destruction.

"But this is not what we mean ordinarily by heaven and hell." Alas! it is not. In one of the hymns which are taught to the children of Churchmen and of all classes of Dissenters-one of those which would be called specially "unsectarian "—which, if Lord Russell's suggestion had been followed, would have been sung in all our schools, wherein passages from the Gospels were read-heaven is described as a land where pleasures banish pain,