"THE NEW CONSCIENCE."

Northern Advocate, 14 August 1919, Page 3

"THE NEW CONSCIENCE."

IMPOSED BELIEF NO VALUE.

CANON SANDAY SPEAKS OUT.

"The New Conscience" is the significant title of a timely article by Canon Sanday on the Creed question in The Modern Churchman. He deals at length with the Bishop of Ely's assault upon modern critical views, and makes many forcible points. Fo r instance:

Imposed belief is really no belief; it has none of the moral qualities or values that belong of right to belief. But the use which the Bishop makes of the Apostles' Creed brings it under this category of imposed belief.

Whil e for the sake of good order Dr. Sanday would in points of practice generally submit to episcopal authority, yet "in regard to opinion or belief my obedience would be far more conditional." Beyond and above all temporising expedients with regard to "miracles" and the like, he _ays v "there remains the appeal to Truth—the candid statements of the results € of study and science," which is unaffected by any form of authority. "Conclusions which satisfy the conditions of right-thinking claim our acceptance as such." Admitting the value of the great historic Creeds, Dr. Sanday adds:

But in their application to the questions of the present day their verdict can neither be pressed in close detail nor taken as immediate and final. The Creeds are outstanding of an historic process; but they are always a product of a particular environment. . . The past cannot'either wholly speak for or bind th e present. . . In all historic statements of belief there has always been a double element, one constant and the other variable. "FACT" IN THE CREEDS. Discussing the so-called statements of "fact" in the Creeds, Dr. Sanday is admirable. "We must first be sure that our fact was originally a fact. It does not follow that it was because we have some early statement which presents it as such." Much to the point follows in th c article concerning the "facts" in the Creed about which controversy is busy.