under new names, and probably will have so long as the received doctrines of Christianity are subjected to the test of reason.  Outward unity was, however, restored to the Church, both by prelatic and imperial authority, although learned and intellectual men continued to speculate and to doubt.  The human mind cannot be chained.  But it was a great thing to establish a creed which the Christian world could accept in the rude and ignorant ages which succeeded the destruction of the old civilization.  That creed was the anchor of religious faith in the Middle Ages.  It is still retained in the liturgies of Christendom.

It is not my province to criticise the Nicene Creed, which is virtually the old Apostles’ Creed, with the addition of the Trinity, as defined by Athanasius.  The subject is too complicated and metaphysical.  It is allied with questions concerning which men have always differed and ever will differ.  Although the Alexandrian divines invoked the aid of reason, it is a matter which reason cannot settle.  It is a matter to be received, if received at all, as a mystery which is insoluble.  It belongs to the realm of faith and authority.  And the realms of faith and reason are eternally distinct.  As metaphysics cannot solve material phenomena, so reason cannot explain subjects which do not appeal to consciousness.  Bacon was a great benefactor when he separated the world of physical Nature from the world of Mind; and Pascal was equally a profound philosopher when he showed that faith could not take cognizance of science, nor science of faith.  The blending of distinct realms has ever been attended with scepticism.  “Canst thou by searching find out God?” What He has revealed for our acceptance should not be confounded with truths to be settled by inquiry.  It is a legitimate yet underrated department of Christian inquiry to establish the authenticity and meaning of texts of Scripture from which deductions are made.  If the premises are wrong, confusion and error are the result.  We must be sure of the premises on which theological dogmas are based.  If as much time and genius and learning had been expended in unravelling the meaning of Scripture declarations as have been spent in theological deductions and metaphysical distinctions, we should have had a more universally accepted faith.  Happily, in our day, the aspirations and ambitions of exact scholarship are more and more directed to the elucidation of the sacred Scriptures of Christianity.  Exegesis and philosophy alike appeal to the intellect; but the one can be so aided by learning that the truth can be reached, while the other pushes the inquirer into an unfathomable sea of difficulties.  All moral truths are so bounded and involved with other moral truths that they seem to qualify the meaning of each other.  Almost any assumed truth in religion, when pushed to its utmost logical sequence, appears to involve absurdities.  The “divine justice” of theologians ends, by severe logical sequences, in apparent injustice, and “divine mercy” in the sweeping away of all retribution.