The questions which were discussed, and the "unanimous replies" as adopted by the conference, are as follows:

Query 1. Is it not an adherence to the creature when we make fellowship, and is this not at least to be apprehended? Unanimous Reply: We adhere to creatures from the inclination of the flesh, or by reason of selfish interests or fear, and this adherence belongs to the works of the flesh. But the adherence of the children of God should be as intimate as that between our God and his Son (John 17. 2). This mutual love must be extended as far as possible; all reconciled and pardoned sinners are entitled to it, one as much as the other. We desire, then, by God's grace to tenderly love all his children in all religions in this country, and to so cling to each other as will be granted to us by Him whose last will was: John 17. 14-23.

Query 2. How manifold is the community of the saints? Unanimous Reply: The community of God in the Spirit is numberless and is found throughout the world, sometimes in places where it is least expected.

Query 3. What can be expected with regard to such a unification in Pennsylvania? Unanimously they replied that, as far as they knew each other, there were in every organization some workers who were striving after their own salvation and after the salvation of others. If it were possible to agree on the main points it were well to venture upon such a union where each body should preserve its peculiar rights.

Query 4. Are honor and respect due to every orderly organization? Unanimous Reply: All orderly organizations are established or supported or at least tolerated by God. Therefore the children of God are not only not called upon to storm wellarranged organizations, or (what is worse) to destroy them in a stealthy and sneaky fashion; but they have a veneration in their feelings for all that have adjusted themselves in an orderly

manner.

Query 5. How can it be brought about that, without subduing the Spirit, it should be possible to give good advice to one another, and, if it is wanted, to help one another honestly? Unanimous Reply: In a lengthy answer it is declared that all differences of

opinion shall be submitted in writing to the Synod, "but whoever cannot abide his time is directed to the house of Heinrich Antes."

Query 6. How is it to be ascertained whether those who are delegated to this council of brethren are of God? Unanimous Reply: The written testimony of each community within itself (having been publicly laid before each community and validated) is sufficient.

Query 7. What are the main points to which all must agree to enable us to be present at this council of brethren? In the Unanimous Reply is printed in large letters the passage John 3. 16-18, followed by a lengthy confession of belief in the divinity and the atoning death of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of mankind. In conclusion the conference adopted the following resolution:

Finally, we have unanimously agreed, in order to further thorough discussions in our future meetings, not to allow any disputation about Scripture passages that are neither prophetic, nor mystic, nor metaphorical, but are plain and clear, and which according to the original texts as given in all editions bear only one sense.

Six more conferences took place during the next few months. At some of them very practical questions were discussed, as, for instance, what could be done to improve the training of the children. But soon disagreements became manifest. Accusations were raised against Count Zinzendorf which caused him to make public replies, which he had printed. Some disparaging remarks which he made concerning certain members of the conference were reported to them, and the outcome of it was that the Count was compelled to resign the presidency. At the third synod three converted Indians were introduced and were baptized, by sprinkling, by the Moravian Brother Christoph Heinrich Rauch. At this the friends of immersion took offense and withdrew. The attendance upon the succeeding conferences became less numerous, and at the seventh, held in Philadelphia in June, 1742, no arrangements were made for another.

John L. Huelsen.

ART. V.-DO WE NEED A METHODIST CREED?

FOR many of our sister churches the problem of creed subscription and creed revision has been a pressing one. Not only in this country but in England and Germany and France it has been a center of war controversy. From all this the Methodist Church has been free, and it came as a surprise when the Church, South, at its last General Conference, proposed the formation of a new Methodist creed. It is not the purpose of this paper to champion the specific proposal for an ecumenical creed, but to consider some questions suggested by it. What is the creed of the Methodist Episcopal Church? What is the place and value of the creed? Do we need a Methodist creed?

Among the great branches of Protestantism Methodism stands alone in one respect. Each of these stood at the beginning of some particular doctrine or principle in church constitution or practice. Methodism began with no such innovation. Wesley had no quarrel with his time or his church as to doctrine or polity. He had definite opinions, and they were not commonly shared by men about him; but he felt no need to go out of the church to preach them. Nor did these things stand first in his conception of Christianity. The Christian Life was to him primarily a spirit: Love. "I will not quarrel with you about any opinion. Only see that your heart be right toward God, that you know and love the Lord Jesus Christ; that you love your neighbor and walk as your Master walked." What the Christian religion offered was not a teaching, but life. was life. As to Paul and Luther, so Christianity came to Wesley as the gospel of a Life, God's gracious gift in Christ, pardoning men, receiving them into the life of sonship, renewing them by his Spirit. Like Paul he preached that life as the gospel of God's gift and as the measure of man's duty. And England, idle, drunken, vicious, stupid, indifferent, needed just this: not philanthropy, nor ethics, nor a new doctrine, but the gospel of life. And, as with Luther and Paul, so Wesley's own experience of this gospel was the preparation for service. And he himself gives us

What it demanded of men

his aim: "To describe the true, the scriptural, the experimental religion," avoiding all show of learning, all phrases of the schools, speaking that common men might hear and know. The impress of the founder has remained on the church. The first interest of the Methodist Church has been practical, not theological. We have been so busy reproducing Christianity in men as a life that we have not taken time to express it as doctrine. We have retained Wesley's emphasis in our thought of religion. Three conceptions of Christianity may be discriminated, each marked by a different emphasis. In the Lutheran and Reformed churches the supreme concern has been pure doctrine. The articles of faith have been the exclusive foundation of the church. For Roman Catholicism, and high churchism elsewhere, Christianity has been primarily an ecclesiasticism. Papacy, priesthood, apostolic succession, these have been chief. As Fairbairn puts it, Romanism is at heart a doctrine of the church, Calvinism a doctrine of God. Methodism illustrates a third conception. From the beginning it has laid its stress upon the vital and experiential. Christianity has been to it a life. It has viewed the whole circle of Christian truth under this form. Now it is the life from God, gift of his grace in Christ; now the life with God, through his Spirit; now the life for God, lived out among men; now the life of fellowship with his children. All these truths, the doctrine of God, of the Holy Spirit, of Christ, of the new birth, of the church, were emphasized in their relation to experience and conceived in terms of life. Here is the heart of Wesley's tolerance. If faith and life were present, he could be indifferent to lesser matters. And Methodism, changed from "society" to church, has been true to this spirit. It, too, has said to me: Have you a real desire to save your soul? "Is thy heart herein as my heart? If it be, give me thy hand." And this power has done what no fence of creed might do to preserve a church, not only rich in spiritual life, but unswervingly faithful to the spirit and truth of the gospel; a church untroubled by doctrinal strife or heresy trial.

It would be farthest from the truth, however, to say that Methodism has ever been indifferent to doctrine. John Wesley stands for three great achievements: a religious awakening, a

moral reformation, and the founding of a great church. But he was more than a voice crying, Reform, or Repent. He was far more than a churchman forming societies and making rules. Something greater preceded these great results. Wesley was a preacher. He had a message. He saw a great need. He met that need, not with an exhortation or a society, but with a truth, a doctrine. He had tested that truth himself. It had been the satisfying answer to years of search. It was the good news of Christ offering forgiveness and saying, Ye must be born again. It was his life business to bring that news, to preach that doctrine, as the power of God unto salvation. If Wesley had not believed that doctrine, he would never have gone forth. Without that preaching he would never have kindled England. It was not his zeal nor his earnestness nor his industry that lifted England into a new life. He had all these in Oxford and in Georgia. Had he gotten no further, who now would care to read the story of John. Wesley, sometime Fellow of Lincoln and somewhere rector in the Church of England? But that which found Paul and made Luther found Wesley also: the doctrine of a life not simply of zeal and effort, of high ideal and hard service, but a life of forgiveness and fellowship given by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ. It is true he was not a great theologian. He was not interested in working out a system. He had no liking for theological dispute. But he performed for the church what is the greatest service that the theologian can render, he interpreted the heart of the gospel to the mind of men. He saw the heart of the Christian religion; it was God in Christ reconciling the world unto himself. And so he preached justification by grace through faith, repentance, and the new birth. It was a simple creed, but neither narrow nor poor. What Methodist preaching emphasized was all connected with this. It was a new life, not a resolution or a reformation, and so they emphasized the new birth. It was a gift from God, and so they magnified the free and full grace of God and talked not of unknown decrees. It was offered to free man, and so they insisted upon responsibility here and judgment yonder. It was a life of sonship through the Spirit, and so they spoke of an inner witness and assurance. That Spirit was the Holy Spirit,