one; and at last it was a sort
of compromise decided by a majority. And how was the majority reached?
Friends, there were bribes, there were threats, there were all kinds of
intimidation, there were blows, there was wrangling of every kind,
there was banishment, there was murder. There has not been a political
platform in the modern world evolved out of such brutal, conflicting,
anti-religious conditions as those which prevailed before and in
connection with the Council of Nicaea.

Anything like evidence? Not heard of or thought of. Anything like quiet
brooding of those who supposed they were, under the influence of the
Holy Ghost, receiving divine and sacred truth? The farthest possible
from any conditions that could be suggested by such a thought.

And at the last, though undoubtedly the majority of the Church at that
time was Unitarian, as I told you the other day it was the decisive
influence of the Emperor Constantine which settled the controversy.
Thus came into existence in the fourth century the oldest of the church
Creeds which is recognized as authoritative in the Catholic, the
Anglican, and the Episcopal churches of the present time.

And this Nicene Creed, if I had time to go into it and analyze it, I
could show you contains elements which no intelligent man in any of
these churches thinks of believing at the present time; and yet nobody
dares suggest a change, or the bringing it into accord with what the
intelligence of the modern world knows to be true.

Let us pass on, and consider for a moment the Apostles' Creed, so
called. There was a time in the Church when people really supposed that
the apostles were its author. There are persons to-day who have not
discovered the contrary. I crossed the ocean a few years ago when on
board were a bishop of one of the Western States and a young candidate
for orders who was travelling with him as his pupil. I fell into
conversation with this young man, and found that he really believed
that the twelve clauses of the Apostles' Creed were manufactured by the
apostles themselves. He had never discovered anything to the contrary.

A still more astonishing fact came to my knowledge last year. During
that discussion over Ian McLaren's creed, in which so many people were
interested last winter, Chancellor McCracken, of the University of New
York, published a letter, in which he referred to the Apostles' Creed
as written eighteen hundred years ago. It took my breath away