cept and to practise.

Because this principle is here involved, I have taken these words as my
Scripture point of departure.

Now to come to the question as to why Unitarians have no creed. Of
course, the answer, though it sounds like an Hibernicism, is to say
that they do have a creed. Not a creed in the sense in which some of
the older churches use the word. If by creed you mean a written or
published statement of belief, one that is supposed to be fixed and
final, one that is a test of religious fellowship, which is placed at
the door of the church so that no one not accepting it is able to
enter, why, then, we have no creed. But, in the broader sense of the
word, it means belief; and Unitarians believe quite as much, and, in my
judgment, things far nobler and grander, than those which have been
believed in the past.

We are ready, if any one wishes it, to write out our creed. We are
perfectly willing that it should be printed. We can put it into twelve
clauses, like the Apostles' Creed; we can make thirty-nine clauses or
articles, like the Creed of the Anglican Church; we can arrange it any
way that is satisfactory to the questioner. Only we will not promise to
believe all of it to-morrow; we will not say that we will never learn
anything new; we will not make it a test of fellowship; we will admit
not only to our meeting-house, but to our church organization, if they
wish to come, people who do not believe all the articles of the creed
that we shall write. Perhaps we will admit people who do not believe
any of it; for our conception of a church is not the old conception.

What was that? That it was a sort of ark in which the saved were taken,
to be carried over the stormy sea of this life and into the haven of
eternal felicity beyond. As opposed to that, our conception of the
church is that it is a school, it is a place where souls are to be
trained, to be educated; and so we would as soon refuse to admit an
ignorant pupil to a school as to refuse to admit a person on account of
his belief to our church. We welcome all who wish to come and learn;
and if, after they have studied with us for a year, they do not then
accept all the points which some of us believe, and hold to be very
important, we do not turn them out even on that account.

Unitarians, then, do have a creed, only it is not fixed, it is not
final, and it is not the condition of religious fellowship.

Now I wish to give you some of the reasons, as