Creel

“ Then immediately the priest entered the large room where all the scholars and the kings' sons were seated, and called out to them—
"Now, tell me the truth, and let none fear to contradict me; tell me what is your belief—have men souls?"
"Master," they answered, "once we believed that men had souls; but thanks to your teaching, we believe so no longer. There is no Hell, and no Heaven, and no God. This is our belief, for it is thus you taught us."
Then the priest grew pale with fear, and cried out—"Listen! I taught you a lie. There is a God, and man has an immortal soul. ”

“ Do not these wise men know that the thinkers and doers of the earth, in overwhelming majority, have been creed men? Creeds may exist without religion, but neither religion, nor philosophy, nor politics, nor society, can exist without creeds. There must be a creed in the head, or there cannot be religion in the heart. You must believe that Deity exists, before you can reverence Deity. You must believe in the fact of humanity, or you cannot love your fellows. A creed is but the concentration, the crystallization, of belief. ”

“ Who," he added, and as he spoke he stood erect on the steps of the altar, his arms outstretched in the eagerness of argument, his grand face all aglow with enthusiasm—"who can decide? It is faith that convinces—faith that vivifies—faith that transforms—faith that links us to the hierarchy of angels! To believe—to act on our belief, even if that belief be false—that is true religion. A merciful Deity will accept our imperfect sacrifice. Are we not all believers in Christ? ”

“ Yet we call each formulated, transitory expression a creed, as if it were to be permanent, and often contend for that creed as if it were the absolute truth; but it passes into something else in the next ages. Yet the religious feeling is the permanent force in the nature of man. ”

“ The old creed, elaborated by many generations, and consecrated to our imaginations by a vast wealth of associations, is adapted in a thousand ways to the wants of its believers. The new creed—whatever may be its ultimate form—has not been thus formulated and hallowed to our minds. We, whose fetters are just broken, cannot tell what the world will look like to men brought up in the full blaze of day, and accustomed from infancy to the free use of their limbs. ”

“ Such I believe to have been the central idea of the beautiful creed which, for 1,500 years, tuned the heart and formed the mind of the noblest of mankind. From this centre it radiated out and spread, as time went on, into the full circle of human activity, flinging its own philosophy and its own peculiar grace over the common details of the common life of all of us. Like the seven lamps before the Throne of God, the seven mighty angels, and the seven stars, the seven sacraments shed over mankind a never-ceasing stream of blessed influences. ”

“ O my God, I firmly believe all that thou hast revealed, and which the holy Catholic Church proposes to me to be believed, because thou art truth itself, which can neither deceive nor be deceived. In this faith I desire to live and die. ”

“ The creed of the Phantasiasts,
For whom no Man of Sorrows died,
For whom the Tragedy Divine
Was but a symbol and a sign,
And Christ a phantom crucified!"
"For others a diviner creed
Is living in the life they lead. ”

“ O HOLY Spirit of truth, we beseech Thee to enlighten the minds of unbelievers in the midst of us; to incline their hearts to love Thy word, and to believe the teachings of Thy Church; give them courage to accept the faith and openly profess it ”

“ Let us examine the gospel of Christ, and see on what principles its appeals are constructed. Of what nature are those motives which have melted our hearts and renewed our wills? Are they not appeals to the most generous and noble instincts of our nature? Are we not told of One fairer than the sons of men,—One reigning in immortal glory, who loved us so that he could bear pain, and want, and shame, and death itself, for our sake? ”

“ But the new study of comparative religion has something to teach us even here. The saying lex orandi lex credendi is true of all times and of all peoples. And since we must reckon praise as the highest form of prayer, such an early Christian hymn as is found in 1 Tim. iii. 16 must be acknowledged to be of the nature of a creed: “He who was manifested in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, preached among the nations, believed on in the world, received up in glory.” ”

“ The advocate of a human creed says, he wants his creed to “show at a glance what we hold!” Look over your creed, then, right carefully, and see what you hold, and look over the New Testament with the same care, and see what an amount it contains that you do not hold, or that is not in your creed, and you will see that your creed is not a respectable skeleton—that it not only lacks the flesh, blood, muscles, arteries, veins, etc., of the body, but it lacks many of the bones and, what is vastly more, it lacks the life, the soul, the spirit. ”

“ For what is the use of any particular creed, or where is the advantage of any one creed above another, if it cannot give the great characteristic marks of a Christian, a subjugated mind and a moral character? ”

“ We are somewhat bewildered when we discover, by reference to the Gospel, that the Church commands us frequently to do precisely what the founder of our Faith commanded us not to do. And what, we may ask, is the Will of this great Father which is in Heaven? Is it to swear to what our own conscience and reason declare to be false? ”

“ Will we refuse to accept on faith a truth which the voice of God asserts in Scripture and Tradition, which God's infallible Church teaches, and in the presence of which the sublime intelligence of an Augustine, an Aquinas, and even the angels themselves bend in lowly homage? ”

“ A common creed, whether it be that of Christianity or any other system, rests, and must rest, on the belief of men in their fellow-men, on the sympathy of man with man, on the extension of man's pains and pleasures beyond the narrow circle of his personal being, within which he may be a god or a "glorious devil," but never the possessor of a creed. ”

“ For, when we try to grasp and to defend one of them, we have no means left of measuring it but by terms of comparison which are drawn from ourselves, which must therefore be finite, and by the inadequacy of the scale which they present, appear to render the article of faith thus detached incredible. Moreover, each article of our creed is a revelation of the Divine attributes, which meet together in unity. ”

“ Something passed from my life that day which nothing can replace; for perfect faith, like love, comes to a man but once.
1 was empty of comfort and without resting-place for my spirit. Then said I: Look you, belief in this religion as dogma is gone; why not hold fast to its imaginative beauty! If revelation is a fraud, at least the intricacies of this catholic faith have grown up from the long yearning of the human heart, and possess this inner reality of corresponding with our spiritual needs. ”

“ We are forced to doubt the sanity or sincerity of people who profess to believe in the doctrine of the trinity, in a “begotten Son of God,” in miraculous conception, in the resurrection of the body, in the Bible as the word of God, in miracles, and in heaven and hell. We ask ourselves:—Are men intelligent who believe these things, or do they merely profess to believe them, and are dishonest? We cannot reconcile faith in the Christian superstitions with mental soundness and good sense. ”

“ While cordially accepting the divine nature of Christ, I may see such clear indications and evidences of the manner in which accounts of miracles sprang up in the Church without foundation of fact, that I may be compelled not merely to omit miracles from my Gospel and to confess myself unconvinced of their truth, but even to avow my conviction of their untruth. ”

“ Or, the apostle may speak of their being called to be Christians, by the preaching of the word, which they gladly received, and professed cordially to believe, and so were received into the society and fellowship of the church—Christ the head, and believers the members; real believers really, professed believers visibly. Note, Christians are the called, called out of the world, the evil spirit and temper of it,—above the world, to higher and better things, heaven, things unseen and eternal,—called from sin to Christ, from vanity to seriousness, from uncleanness to holiness ”

“ Let yourself be borne upon it until your whole soul cries, with the unutterable groanings, too deep and too intense for human speech, ‘Holy Father! make me holy in the truth.’ As you trust in Christ as the truth, the reality of what you long for, and in His all-prevailing intercession; as you wait for the Spirit within as the Spirit of truth; look up to the Father, and expect His own direct and almighty working to make you holy. The mystery [p148] of holiness is the mystery of the Triune One. The deeper entrance into the holy life rests in the fellowship of the Three in One. ”

“ Many such are to be found in the church of God, whose proud hearts have never been humbled to submit to God’s truth; and being men of talent, have perverted, carnalized, and scoffed at the great leading doctrines of the gospel; yet mighty sticklers for holiness, love, charity and good works (falsely so called;) their conceptions of God are all carnal, dictated by the flesh, and are opposite to the revealed character of God. ”

“ It is for me a dark veil obscuring the word of Christ—a false interpretation of the sublime Gospels, and an insurmountable obstacle to the sacred equality that God promises, which God will grant to men, on earth as in Heaven. ”

“ And, on the other hand, the men of tenderness of conscience and pure heart toward God and men, have leaned not only to the Confession of the permanently central truths, but to the eager and solemn Confession of whatever truth the time and its trial called for—to its Confession not only individually, but by the unanimous and accordant voice of the witnessing Church of Christ. ”

“ Thus does a perfect faith in Christ perfect the conscience of believers, by guiding, quickening, and by producing a perfect sense of obligation.
3. The influence of faith, in Christ upon the imagination.—There are few exercises of the mind fraught with so much evil, and yet so little regarded, as that of an evil imagination. Many individuals spend much of their time in a labour of spirit which is vain and useless, and often very hurtful to the moral character of the soul. ”

“ Supposing creeds to be the essentials of Christianity, then how can any Christian be sure that he has got the true creed? I can easily conceive with what fear, with what apprehensions of mind, with what a paralyzed intellect, and unconfiding heart, sinking the love of truth in selfish terrors, a man trembling under the conviction that his everlasting safety depended upon his reception of a doctrine, would come to the examination of the Scriptures ”

“ Saving faith is thus more than a bare assent of the mind, more than some cold belief, or vain repetition of a creed. A creed may be complete and beautiful, but it is not the Christ; it is only the vesture the Christ wears; and alas, there are many still who will [156] chaffer about, and cast lots for, a creed, who will go directly and crucify the Christ Himself! ”

“ Let us pretend in order to make the pretence into a reality.’ God looks at you as if you were a little Christ: Christ stands beside you to turn you into one. I daresay this idea of a divine make-believe sounds rather strange at first. ”

“ A Fundamental Belief.—A belief in prophets and in spiritual gifts, whereby come visions, revelations, and miraculous "signs," following and confirming full and true belief, [1] is fundamental with the Latter-day Saints. We regard the founding of our Church as a fulfillment of prophecy, [2] and recognize in the decadence of long established systems of religion, a result of failure to be guided and governed by the teachings and warnings of men divinely inspired. "Where there is no vision, the people perish." [3] Where there is no revelation, spiritual darkness reigns. ”

“ The question is the sin which so easily besets humanity, you and me quite as intensely as the Hebrews; and the cure for the sin, the answer to the question, is the faith which draws from the writer this splendid eulogy, a faith which scans the bounds of the invisible universe, and measures the range of the Divine thought from the height of the Divine throne. ”

“ If we look at the singular diversity of views entertained, not only with regard to the doctrines, but also to the evidences, of Christianity, we cannot but be struck by the helpless position in which Divine Revelation is now placed. ”

“ Note, Scripture—truth, plainly and duly taught, has a marvellous aptness to awaken the conscience, and touch the heart. And is not this much more for the honour of our religion than that infidels should conclude the ministers of it a set of madmen, and their religious exercises only fits of frenzy? ”

“ Knowing the meaning of Christ to be Truth, blood to be life or word, and sin to be error, we catch the spiritual meaning of the phrase 'sins washed away by the blood of Christ,' which is, sins or errors washed away by the word of Truth. ”

“ Divine faith rests not on fallible reasonings and probable opinions, but on the infallible word, the truth itself, which is after godliness, of a godly nature and tendency, pure, and purifying the heart of the believer. ”