EXPOSITION OF NICENE CREED

Press, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 26870, 24 October 1952, Page 3

EXPOSITION OF NICENE CREED

PRESENTATION IN CATHEDRAL FIVE SECTIONS IN PROSE, VERSE, AND MUSIC An exposition of the Nicene Creed in prose, poetry, and music, arranged by the Rev. Eric Stephen Loveday, Chaplain to the King from 1945 to 1947, will be presented in five parts at the Christchurch Cathedral by the Dean (the Very Rev. Martin Sullivan), beginning next Sunday evening. The exposition will be presented at other services in the succeeding five weeks. “The creed, which is ’so often a centre of controversy, and is sometimes recited without much thought, suddenly becomes a great poem and a great hymn in this work,” said Dean Sullivan yesterday. “I think it is a privilege for the Cathedral td be allowed to use this devotional exposition.” Each section of the creed is complete in itself. It is divided into four main parts—“ The Creation,” “The Incarnation,” “The Redemption,” “The Holy Ghost and Life Eternal” —and a summary in conclusion. The Cathedral organist (Mr C. Foster Browne) and the choir will provide the music, and four readers will speak the prose and verse. Mr Loveday, who was vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields from 1941 to 1947, was a friend of Dean Sullivan. After Mr Loveday’s death, his widow gave the Dean permission to use the exposition. It is a striking and imaginative treatment of the creed, and as far as Dean Sullivan is aware, the presentation in Christchurch will be the first outside the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. “A Very Rich Experience.” Dean Sullivan said that, incorporated in the beautiful literature of the exposition, were extracts from the orose and poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. T. S. Eliot. Evelyn Underhill, Ruth Fitter. Vera Sackville-West and Edith Sitwell among modern writers; and from St. Augustine. John Bunyan, George Herbert. Jeremy Taylor, John Donne, Isaak Walton and Thomas Traherne among others. Music has been taken from the compositions of Bach, Gustav Holst, Cesar Franck, Edgar Bainton Martin Shaw, Charles Villiers, Stanford, William Byrd and Granville Bantock. “If people are prepared to listen and enter into the spirit of it, they will enjoy a very rich experience,” said Dean Sullivan. The Nicene Creed was promulgated by the Council of Nicea in 325. It gives the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity as against the Arian heresy.