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Gospel story, and which constitutes the possibility of any real relation, in personal experience, with the moral ideal of Christianity. It is into this that a child is baptized at the first. In the fulness of this he is sealed in confirmation. The devout communicant life is this. This is the faith, which is also the experience, in which and to which he is nurtured in the Church. It is this which is administered, in and by the Body, through the divinely authorized ministers of the Body. It is this which is guarded, explained, familarized, in creeds, catechisms, theologies. And this is the only access into anything else. Cut off this, this living faith, this living experience of the Holy Ghost in the Church, and the Gospel story becomes, at most, only a very touching and beautiful, but quite unattainable, episode in history: and the moral and spiritual standard of Christianity becomes, as such, an overwhelming despair.
Of course it is here implied that this third view represents, and has always been, the unexaggerated and unhesitating faith of the Church of Christ. But it is not necessary for the present purpose to attempt to argue that it is true. On the other hand, it is not the least relevant as an answer to all this, if anyone chooses to think that it is false. It is quite enough that, whether rightly or wrongly, it is firmly believed to be the truth by scores of thousands of good Churchmen and citizens. And I think it may fairly be pleaded also for the purpose that, so far from showing any sign of being a merely vulgar prejudice of the more ignorant, it is held most characteristically and clearly, in this as in almost every earlier generation, by those who, as saints and as theologians, have entered most deeply into the inner knowledge of Christian faith and experience. Cuique in sua arte credendum. This is what, speaking broadly, saints have meant by saintliness, and theologians have understood as theology. It is super-
