It is a noble and serious office to hand down from generation to generation the faith and traditions of the Church of God.  But this handing-down must be upright.  “You must bind nothing upon your charges,” says Jeremy Taylor, “but what God hath bound upon you.”  Conviction is at the root of the lasting traditions of the Church.  Only this—­his conviction—­can one man really teach another.  If he try to speak otherwise, he shall have a lolling and unsteady tongue.

No soul is finally held by the indefinite, or the namby-pamby.  It begins to question, Upon what foundation does this phrase, this fine sentiment, rest?  It must stand upon a proposition.  This proposition rests either upon a scientific fact, or upon that which, for want of a more definite term, we call the religious instinct of man.  But a proposition cannot standalone.  It is connected with other propositions, arguments, conclusions.  Hence a system of logic, of philosophy, of expressed belief, of doctrine, inevitably grows up in a thinking community, a thinking Church.

The statement of an ecclesiastical system of doctrine may not be the absolutely true one, nor the final one.  Doctrine changes, even as scientific theories change with fuller information.  Doctrine also expands, with the growth of the human spirit and understanding.  To-day, in one’s library, one has a thousand books.  They are shelved and catalogued, for reference, in a special order.  But years hence, one’s grandson, who inherits these books, may have ten thousand books.  The aspect of the library is changed.  It is filled with new volumes, and new thought.  Shall we give a liberty to a man’s library which we refuse to his belief?  Must he—­and his church—­have only his grandfather’s ideas, standards, and decrees?

The tenets of a sect are the theological arrangement of belief which for the present seems best; it is the systematic arrangement of facts so far examined, determined, and classified.  But no system of theology can be final.  Thought is moving on.  Experience is progressive.  Providence is continually revealing.  The race is a creed-builder, as well as a builder of pyramids, cathedrals, and triumphal arches.

The building-up of doctrine is superb.  Into doctrine are woven the intellectual beliefs, the emotional experiences, and the spiritual struggles of mankind.  Doctrine is an attempt to classify the spiritual problems of the race and to present a theory of redemption which shall be adequate, spiritually progressive, and the exact expression, so far as yet revealed, of the will of God for man.  All Christian doctrine is centred about one point:  the redemption of the race from sin.  Dealing with such great and fundamental themes, each system of doctrine is an intellectual triumph.