ou regard the Briggs trial as any evidence of the
growth of Liberalism in the church itself?

_Answer_. When men get together, and make what they call a creed,
the supposition is that they then say as nearly as possible what
they mean and what they believe. A written creed, of necessity,
remains substantially the same. In a few years this creed ceases
to give exactly the new shade of thought. Then begin two processes,
one of destruction and the other of preservation. In every church,
as in every party, and as you may say in every corporation, there
are two wings--one progressive, the other conservative. In the
church there will be a few, and they will represent the real
intelligence of the church, who become dissatisfied with the creed,
and who at first satisfy themselves by giving new meanings to old
words. On the other hand, the conservative party appeals to
emotions, to memories, and to the experiences of their fellow-
members, for the purpose of upholding the old dogmas and the old
ideas; so that each creed is like a crumbling castle. The
conservatives plant ivy and other vines, hoping that their leaves
will hide the cracks and erosions of time; but the thoughtful see
beyond these leaves and are satisfied that the structure itself is
in the process of decay, and that no amount of ivy can restore the
crumbling stones.

The old Presbyterian creed, when it was first formulated, satisfied
a certain religious intellect. At that time people were not very
merciful. They had no clear conceptions of justice. Their lives
were for the most part hard; most of them suffered the pains and
pangs of poverty; nearly all lived in tyrannical governments and
were the sport of nobles and kings. Their idea of God was born of
their surroundings. God, to them, was an infinite king who delighted
in exhibitions of power. At any rate, their minds were so constructed
that they conceived of an infinite being who, billions of years
before the world was, made up his mind as to whom he would save
and whom he would damn. He not only made up his mind as to the
number he would save, and the number that should be lost, but he
saved and damned without the slightest reference to the character
of the individual. They believed then, and some pretend to believe
still, that God damns a man not because he is bad, and that he
saves a man not because he is good, but simply for the purpose of
self-glorification as an exhibition of his eternal