Page:On the Revision of the Confession of Faith.djvu/17

Rh and the fruit of misunderstanding, and may be remedied by a more careful and better statement of the same doctrine. It is only revision of "forms of statement," then, that is contemplated in the overture. And it avoids going so far as to propose even this. The preamble continues:

""And whereas, Before any definite steps should be taken for revision of our Standards, it is desirable to know whether there is any general desire for such revision.""

The "revision of our Standards" here is, of course, the kind of revision defined in the preceding clause, and this sense is necessarily carried over to the concluding resolution:

""Therefore, resolved, That this General Assembly overture to the Presbyteries the following questions: 1. Do you desire a revision of the Confession of Faith? 2. If so, in what respects and to what extent?""

If anything were needed to vindicate the foregoing exposition of the meaning of the overture, it would be supplied by the brief debate that was held in the Assembly upon its adoption. It was adopted just in this form on the distinct ground that it was a colorless inquiry into the will of the presbyteries, and did not propose either revision or no revision to them; and so little was it thought to concern the substance of any doctrine that the moderator ruled that the introduction of doctrinal discussion into the debate concerning it was out of order.

That even this colorless overture was not the outgrowth of any general and spontaneous movement in the Church, the history of its origination in the Assembly sufficiently shows. Its origin is traced to an overture sent up by the