cow by incantations, and
he answered, "Yes, if you use a little strychnine with it." And that
would seem to be the attitude of the present-day Anglican
church-member; he calls in the best physician he knows, he makes sure
that his plumbing is sound, and after that he thinks it can do no harm
to let the Lord have a chance. It makes the women happy, and after
all, there are a lot of things we don't yet know about the world. So
he repairs to the family pew, and recites over the venerable prayers,
and contributes his mite to the maintenance of an institution which,
fourteen Sundays every year, proclaims the terrifying menaces of the
Athanasian Creed:

Whoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary
that he hold the Catholick faith. Which faith, except one do
keep whole and undefiled; without doubt he shall perish
everlastingly.

For the benefit of the uninitiated reader, it may be explained that
the "Catholick faith" here referred to is not the Roman Catholic, but
that of the Church of England and the Protestant Episcopal Church of
America. This creed of the ancient Alexandrian lays down the truth
with grim and menacing precision--forty-four paragraphs of
metaphysical minutiae, closing with the final doom: "This is the
Catholick faith: which except a man believe faithfully, he cannot be
saved."

You see, the founders of this august institution were not content with
cultured complacency; what they believed they believed really, with
their whole hearts, and they were ready to act upon it, even if it
meant burning their own at the stake. Also, they knew the ceaseless
impulse of the mind to grow; the terrible temptation which confronts
each new generation to believe that which is reasonable. They met the
situation by setting out the true faith in words which no one could
mistake. They have provided, not merely the Creed of Athanasius, but
also the "Thirty-nine Articles"--which are thirty-nine separate and
binding guarantees that one who holds orders in the Episcopal Church
shall be either a man of inferior mentality, or else a sophist and
hypocrite. How desperate some of them have become in the face of this
cruel dilemma is illustrated by the tale which is told of Dr. Jowett,
of Balliol College, Oxford: that when he was required to recite the
"Apostle's Creed" in public, he would save himself by inserting the
words "used to" between the words "I believe", saying the inserted
words under his bre