leian symbol given by Rufinus, who distinctly says that it was not in the Roman symbol of his day, that is, 400 A. D. It appears occasionally in western texts of the next two or three centuries, including the text of our present Apostles' Creed. The purpose of its insertion in the creed we do not know. It was perhaps intended to emphasize the completeness of Christ's death over against the subtle docetism of the third and fourth centuries, which had resulted from the spread of the Logos christology, and which tended to confine the human nature of Christ to his material body, and so take away from his death all spiritual significance. But if this was the reason for the insertion of the article the reason had been forgotten in Aquileia when Rufinus wrote, for he finds in the words only a repetition of the statement that Christ was buried.

The article does not mean that Christ descended into hell, or the place of punishment for lost souls, but into the underworld, or abode of the dead. The belief that Christ thus descended into Hades between his death and resurrection is as old as the first century and all sorts of ideas had attached themselves to it, the commonest being that Christ had descended in order to preach to the dead, or in order to destroy the power of Satan. But the article as it stands in the creed has nothing to say about the purpose of the

Descent, and there is no reason to think that its author reflected particularly upon that purpose. He was interested apparently only in the fact.

The adjective "catholic" in the article on the church appears in the creed as early as the fourth century and was very common from the fifth century on. The addition of the word was very natural, as the phrase "Holy catholic church" was a current phrase. At the time when it was inserted in the creed it had already acquired an exclusive meaning and it was that meaning therefore which attached to it in the creed; belief being expressed not in the holy church universal, but in the particular institution which was known as the Catholic Church and was distinguished from all schismatic and heretical bodies, the orthodox catholic church which was in communion with the church of Rome. The common Protestant interpretation of the article in the creed, which makes it refer to the holy church universal, is therefore historically incorrect.

The article on the communion of saints is very obscure. It appears in various western texts of the fifth and following centuries, but why it was inserted and what it was intended to express we cannot be sure. The phrase was a common one in the west from the fifth century on. It was used sometimes to denote participation in sacred things, that is the sacraments, sometimes to denote com

munion with departed saints. And one or the other of these meanings probably attaches to the article in the creed. There is no sign that the article was intended to express the communion or fellowship of believers with each other, or that it was meant as a closer definition of the word "church," as we so commonly interpret it to-day.

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The article "Eternal life appears frequently! in texts of the fourth and following centuries. The phrase needs no special interpretation. It was a most natural addition after the article on the resurrection and it is not necessary to seek for any particular occasion for its insertion. It supplies a lack in the Old Roman Symbol which must have been widely felt when the original polemic purpose of that symbol was forgotten. The earlier symbol closed abruptly with the resurrection of the flesh. The conclusion of the present creed is far more satisfactory and expresses far more adequately the Christian hope.

Before closing this lecture permit me to call attention briefly to three or four points suggested by the account I have given of the origin and early history of the creed. In the first place the Apostles' Creed is not a monument of the apostolic or early post-apostolic age. It belongs even in its earliest form to the age when the catholic spirit was beginning to displace the

primitive spirit and when the interest in sound doctrine was beginning to crowd out the interest in the evangelization and salvation of the world. It is primarily a doctrinal and polemical creed, not an evangelistic or missionary symbol.

In the second place, belonging as it does to another age, it is very far from reproducing the original Christian gospel. There is nothing in it of the personal fatherhood of God; nothing of the Messiahship of Jesus; nothing of the kingdom of God; nothing of repentance and faith; nothing of love for God and one's neighbors; nothing of following Christ; nothing of the forgiveness of sin (at least in the original text). Moreover in its account of Christ's life it omits his baptism, which is emphasized by all the gospels; his works of mercy and power; his fulfilment of prophecy; his preaching and founding of the kingdom. While on the other hand it contains the virgin birth, which was believed at a comparatively early day, to be sure, but certainly did not constitute a part of the original preaching of the disciples.

In the third place not simply does the creed fail to reproduce the original Christian gospel in its true proportions and in some of its essential elements; it represents only a small part of the thinking even of the age which gave it birth and it omits much that was most essential in that

thinking. Nothing is said in it about the preexistence of Christ or about salvation through him; nothing about the nature of Christianity and the Christian life; nothing about the authority of the Old Testament; nothing about the coming kingdom; nothing about the life eternal, at least in the original text. Evidently it is not a summary of the faith of the church either of the second or of any other century.

In the fourth place, while we of to-day can repeat parts of it, probably not one of us can repeat the whole of it in the sense which was originally intended. The interpretation of creeds inevitably changes with time and the changed interpretation must be recognized as legitimate, or the historic creeds must be repudiated altogether.

Finally the great value of the creed above all other creeds which the church possesses is its emphasis upon the historic figure, Jesus Christ. We may well congratulate ourselves that the great heresy of the second century was the denial of the reality of Christ's humanity, for we owe to it a distinct and unequivocal statement of Christ's real manhood in a creed which for simplicity and compactness has never been surpassed, and which has been handed down through the centuries and has been reverenced by half of Christendom as the creed of the apostles themselves. Perhaps to it more than to anything else - more even than