“You wish to know?” he asked.

“Yes—­I wish to know.”

“The test of any doctrine is whether it can be translated into life, whether it will make any difference to the individual who accepts it.  The doctrines expressed in the Creeds must stand or fall by the test.  Consider, for instance, the fundamental doctrine in the Creeds, that of the Trinity, which has been much scoffed at.  A belief in God, you will admit, has an influence on conduct, and the Trinity defines the three chief aspects of the God in whom Christians believe.  Of what use to quarrel with the word Person if God be conscious?  And the character of God has an influence on conduct.  The ancients deemed him wrathful, jealous, arbitrary, and hence flung themselves before him and propitiated him.  If the conscious God of the universe be good, he is spoken of as a Father.  He is as once, in this belief, Father and Creator.  And inasmuch as it is known that the divine qualities enter into man, and that one Man, Jesus, whose composite portrait—­it is agreed—­could not have been factitiously invented, was filled with them, we speak of God in man as the Son.  And the Spirit of God that enters into the soul of man, transforming, inspiring, and driving him, is the Third Person, so-called.  There is no difficulty so far, granted the initial belief in a beneficent God.

“If we agree that life has a meaning, and, in order to conform to the purpose of the Spirit of the Universe, must be lived in one way, we certainly cannot object to calling that right way of living, that decree of the Spirit, the Word.

“The Incarnate Word, therefore, is the concrete example of a human being completely filled with the Spirit, who lives a perfect life according to its decree.  Ancient Greek philosophy called this decree, this meaning of life, the Logos, and the Nicene Creed is a confession of faith in that philosophy.  Although this creed is said to have been, scandalously forced through the council of Nicaea by an emperor who had murdered his wife and children, and who himself was unbaptized, against a majority of bishops who would, if they had dared Constantine’s displeasure, have given the conscience freer play, to-day the difficulty has, practically disappeared.  The creed is there in the prayer book, and so long as it remains we are at liberty to interpret the ancient philosophy in which it is written—­and which in any event could not have been greatly improved upon at that time—­in our own modern way, as I am trying to explain it to you.

“Christ was identified with the Logos, or Word, which must have had a meaning for all time, before and after its, complete revelation.  And this is what the Nicene Creed is trying to express when it says, ‘Begotten of his Father before all worlds.’  In other words, the purpose which Christ revealed always existed.  The awkward expression of the ancients, declaring that he ‘came down’ for our salvation (enlightenment) contains a fact