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240 38 [Morality and Church Creed] July 1891 Houghton Library To the Editor of the Nation Sir: Permit me to say something by way of reply to your editorial entitled : “A plain moral question.” This title attached to a discussion of a point of conduct wherein serious men differ is, I need not say, highly offensive. You are right in so insulting those who have reached a conclusion contrary to your own, provided you can sustain your position that all sound moral sense is against those persons; otherwise you are making a wicked appeal to the odium theologicum. Your proposition is that “a minister cannot honorably remain in the service of a church while repudiating leading articles of its creed.” But I think he generally must. I personally am a layman who have severed my visible connection with the Church, and so put my soul in jeopardy, because I cannot believe a certain article of faith in the sense in which it is commonly understood. Considering my special circumstances, I came to the conclusion that was my duty. But under most circumstances and especially for one ordained into the ministry, I am clear that the opposite course would be that of allegiance to God and His Church. You confess: “all our sympathies are with the men in the various denominations who are open-minded enough to see how the new wine of modern research is hopelessly bursting the old ecclesiastical wineskins .” And yet you seek to hinder those who are trying to impart to those skins the elasticity they want. That wine is the blood of Christ, upon which the redemption of the world depends. You say that modern research is destined to burst the creed, and with the creed the Church. But when the Church seeks to correct its errors in the only possible way, namely by those of its clergy to whom they become known saying that they are errors while remaining at their posts, then you tell them such a course would be dishonorable. That is plainly the counsel of an enemy of the Church. Being thus inimical, you naturally derive your notions of right and wrong from a different source from hers. 38. Morality and Church Creed, 1891 241 Whether it be true even of a political party that when a man has once entered it he has no right to seek to modify the platform, I leave you to inform me. But certainly the Church is not constituted like a party or political club by the creed as its platform. That may, I admit, be true of some “denominations”; but it is not, for example, of the Protestant Episcopal Church, which accepts the position of being merely a province or national branch of the Holy Catholic Church, the whole body of baptised persons. It is supposed to have an organic life of its own, as the mystical bride of Christ. The primary object of the creed is to keep the people in mind of the articles of faith; and far too much has been made of its segregative function. After all, there is but one essential article, that Christ is the living God, and to this must be attached the most lofty meaning to which we can attain. When the eyes are open to that light, the believer cannot be severed from the Church, by his own will or by another’s. Such being understood to be the vital bond between a man and the Church, I cannot see how anybody can doubt that if a clergyman discovers the general belief upon any point of faith has been wrong, he is bound to set it right; and he is a traitor if he does not. Few Episcopalians, I fancy, would think a clergyman entertaining doubts of the filioque was in every case bound to keep silent. Now, no line is drawn between essential and nonessential articles of the creed. Enlightened men cannot but expect considerable, perhaps great, changes in religious beliefs during the course of the coming century. To wish these changes may break up the churches would be frivolous. Yet that must be the effect upon every denomination which pins its existence upon an unyielding creed in the manner you say morality requires it to do. ...

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