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they break to pieces. They are impotent yearning more than they are living experience.
Again there are those to whom Christianity means primarily a clear knowledge and a loyal acceptance of Bible history as history and as truth;—an acceptance of the Old Testament as preliminary, but more vitally still, an acceptance of the events of the earthly life and death of Jesus of Nazareth. To know these thoroughly, and to accept these loyally, as accomplished and significant facts, this is the Christian's great reality. Now here is a view of Christianity which puts the main stress upon knowledge of certain events. So far it may seem to be a matter of simple teaching. But the knowledge must be believing knowledge; and belief requires something more than study of a text. This conception, then, does not so easily dispense with creeds. For if the facts are more than an appeal to ordinary human motives of conduct, their significance must be expounded theologically. Theology becomes indispensable: and if theology then orthodoxy also. There must be right understanding; and there must be right belief.
Once more it may be admitted that this is an absolutely true aspect of Christianity, and that as such, it may be abundantly vindicated alike in scripture and in Christian experience. Moreover to speak of these things as aspects is more than to allow them a place as parts of Christianity. It means that it is quite reasonably possible, for certain purposes, and in certain relations, so to view the whole range of Christianity in the light of either of them, that either may seem, for the moment, to be a form or rendering of the whole, and either may in certain contexts be so described. But still, is the heart of what the Christian Gospel means quite adequately expressed either as ideal moral standard, or as belief in the events of the Gospel story,—or even as both combined?
