Page:On the Revision of the Confession of Faith.djvu/91

Rh appears, however, not so much to put the Confession of Faith, as the churches, on trial; and its issue is apt to determine less whether the Westminster doctrines be true than whether the churches which profess them remain faithful. After all, the Church exists for the truth: it is "the pillar and ground of the truth." And although it is the duty of every church, as of every individual, to see to it that she does not profess a faith she does not believe, yet her convictions are not the measure of the truth. Its norm and standard are elsewhere; and a church's convictions are rather the measure of herself than of the truth. It is the duty of every church to believe and profess faith in all that the Bible teaches. And when we speak of revising a creed, the real question is not (as has been often supposed) whether the church still believes the creed, but whether the Bible still teaches it; and the true remedy may therefore be found not in revising the creed, but in recalling the church to the perception and embracing of the whole truth of God as revealed in His word. Woe to every church which formally and deliberately exscinds from her public profession, any truth of God that He has revealed for the instruction of His people.

These obvious principles, important enough in themselves, have an especial importance to the American Presbyterian Churches, in which acceptance of the doctrinal standards is not made a condition of church membership. Perhaps, at bottom, we are face to face here, in more or less developed form, with one application of the modern doctrine of the "Christian consciousness." But at all events it has little fitness among us. Presbyterians do not look upon their creed as the expression of what their people believe: but rather as the expression of what they ought to believe. Like the perfect moral standard of life—the divine perfection; this creed strives to represent