Page:On the Revision of the Confession of Faith.djvu/33

Rh as little as we would ask the same, say for instance, of Dr. A. A. Hodge's "Outlines of Theology." That it should be filled from end to end with the breath of devotion—that the whole and every part should be redolent of the everywhere present Spirit—is true; but in this sense the Confession is the most "religious" of books, and no one who has really fed upon it has failed to draw from it draughts of spiritual strength. The objection is thus founded on a misapprehension of what a Confession is, if not also on an insufficient appreciation of the character of this particular Confession. There seems to be, in a word, some confusion of mind abroad which confounds a doctrinal standard with an exhortation on the one hand, or with a liturgical credo on the other—a confusion of thought, which, if carried to its logical conclusions, would ban all dogmatic treatises in favor of the sermons and liturgies of the world. Thus the Confession is condemned for not being what it does not profess to be, and what it could not be and continue to serve the ends for which it was framed and for which it continues to exist. The real question is, whether Churches need doctrinal standards as well as sermons and prayers—a theology as well as a life.

2. It is frequently objected again that the Confession makes too little relatively of the love of God and too much relatively of His sovereignty, and thus reverses the emphasis of the Bible. The framers of the Confession are not responsible, however, for this separation of God's love and sovereignty; to them His sovereignty seemed a loving sovereignty, and His love a sovereign love, and in founding the whole fabric of their Confession on the idea of God's