Page:On the Revision of the Confession of Faith.djvu/24

16 time enough to think of change, when a school of theologians of riper scholarship and more patient study, of higher culture and deeper piety, shall arise among us";—which time is not yet. We will certainly do well to cling to the Westminster Confession until we can better it.

(4). In circumstances such as these, the historical integrity of so venerable and noble a document will appeal to the Church as worth preserving. Presbyterians are no relic-worshippers; they claim the right, and have exercised it, of adapting their Creed to their living faith. But when nothing is to be gained and perhaps much lost they will not fail to consider it a certain vandalism to throw away, merely in the license of change, a flag under which so many battles have been fought and so many glorious victories won, and perhaps even more glorious defeats suffered. They will not keep the old, merely because it is old; but they will not exchange the tried and loved old banner for a doubtful new one, merely because it is new.

(5). Lastly, in learning to appreciate anew, as renewed study of it will enable it to do, the true breadth and catholicity of the Westminster Confession, the Church is apt to remember, too, its value as a rallying-point for Christian unity. It was framed distinctly as an irenicon. The purpose of those engaged on it was to vindicate the faith of the English Church as not out of harmony with the Consensus of the Reformed churches, and to bring together under one Confession the various bodies then in Great Britain. Its history is that of an irenicon. By its means the Churches of England and Scotland were brought for the first and only time under the bonds of a single Confession. It was adopted by three distinct denominations. It remains to-day the creed of all the great Presbyterian Churches of the English-speaking world. Only yesterday two great denominations of American Presbyterians were