or expressing definite convictions
about certain topics, the bonds of human society will dissolve and
mankind lapse into savagery. There are several answers to this
assertion. One is that the bonds of human society were formed without
the aid of their theology; and, in the opinion of not a few competent
judges, have been weakened rather than strengthened by a good deal of
it. Greek science, Greek art, the ethics of old Israel, the social
organisation of old Rome, contrived to come into being, without the help
of any on who believed in a single distinctive article of the simplest
of the Christian creeds. The science, the art, the jurisprudence, the
chief political and social theories, of the modern world have grown out
of those of Greece and Rome--not by favour of, but in the teeth of the
fundamental teachings of early Christianity, to which science, art, and
any serious occupation with the things of this world, were alike
despicable.

Again, all that is best in the ethics of the modern world, in so far as
it has not grown out of Greek thought, or Barbarian manhood, is the
direct development of the ethics of old Israel. There is no code of
legislation, ancient or modern, at once so just and so merciful, so
tender to the weak and poor, as the Jewish law; and, if the Gospels are
to be trusted, Jesus of Nazareth himself declared that he taught nothing
but that which lay implicitly, or explicitly, in the religious and
ethical system of his people.

And the scribe said unto him, Of a truth, Teacher, thou hast well
said that he is one; and there is none other but he, and to love
him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with
all the strength, and to love his neighbour as himself, is much
more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. (Mark xii. 32,
33.)

Here is the briefest of summaries of the teaching of the prophets of
Israel of the eighth century; does the Teacher, whose doctrine is thus
set forth in his presence, repudiate the exposition? Nay; we are told,
on the contrary, that Jesus saw that he "answered discreetly," and
replied, "Thou art not far from the kingdom of God."

So that I think that even if the creeds, from the so-called "Apostles"
to the so-called "Athanasian," were swept into oblivion; and even if the
human race should arrive at the conclusion that, whether a bishop washes
a cup or leaves it unwashed, is not a matter of the least consequence,
it will