t
other men's goods. I say, I see it, and I must believe my own eyes
and ears; and when I do see it, I begin to understand the text which
says, 'This is eternal life, to know thee, the only God, and Jesus
Christ, whom thou hast sent;' and I begin to understand the
Athanasian Creed, which says, that if a 'man does not believe
rightly the name of God, and the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus
Christ, he will perish everlastingly; his soul will decay more and
more, become more and more weak, unhealthy and corrupt, till he
perishes everlastingly. And whatsoever that may mean, it must mean
something most awful and terrible, worse than all the evil which
ever happened to us since we were born.

There is a very serious example of this, to my mind, in what is
called the Greek Church; the Greeks and Russians. They split off
from the rest of Christ's Catholic Church, many hundred years ago,
because they would not hold with the rest of the Church that the
Holy Spirit proceeded from the Son as well as from the Father. They
said that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father alone. Now that
may seem a slight matter of words: but I cannot help thinking that
it has been a very solemn matter of practice with them. It seems to
me--God forgive me if I am judging them hardly!--that because they
denied that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Son, they forgot that
he was the Spirit of the Son, the Spirit of Jesus Christ, by whom he
says for ever, 'Father, not my will but thine be done!' and so they
forgot that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Sonship, the Spirit of
adoption, which must proceed and come from Christ to us, that we may
call God our Father, and say with Christ, 'Father, I come to do thy
will;' and so, in course of time, they seem to have forgotten that
Christian men were in any real practical sense, God's children; and
when people forget that they are God's children, they forget soon
enough to behave like God's children, and to live righteous and
Godlike lives.

I give you this as an example of what I mean; how not believing
rightly the Athanasian Creed may make a man lead a bad life.

Now let me give an example nearer home; one which has to do with you
and me. God grant that we may all lay it to heart. You read, in
the Athanasian Creed, that we are not to confound the persons of the
Trinity, nor divide the substance; but to believe that such as the
Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost, the Glory
equ