52 QUAKER ASPECTS OF TRUTH 



Moreover its adherents were held together^ not by any 

 exact uniformity of belief or practice, but by their 

 enthusiastic loyalty to their risen Lord and Master* 

 If there were any religious test at all in the new com- 

 munity, it was a test, not of belief, but of character* 

 Soundness of life, not soundness of view, formed their 

 test of faith* 



But, alas ! this primitive simplicity could not last* 

 It was doomed ere long to perish* 



When a child is born, it comes into the world naked 

 and unashamed, but it is at once clothed according to 

 the fashion of time and place* Thus, an English baby 

 is not clothed exactly like a German baby* Still less 

 is it clothed Hke a Hindu baby* And a child that is born 

 to-day is not clothed ds it would have been a hundred 

 years ago* Even so, Christianity was born into the world 

 in all its exquisite simplicity, but it was at once clothed 

 in accordance with Greek thought and Roman polity* 

 Thus it received a theology which was not Christian, 

 but Greek ; and it received a system of church govern- 

 ment which was not Christian, but Roman* And as 

 time went on the clothes were multiplied and their 

 importance exaggerated, until very soon the child itself 

 was lost sight of* The child was lost in the multiplicity 

 of its garments* 



It would be difficult to imagine two things more 

 widely separated or more absolutely irrelevant than the 

 Sermon on the Mount and the Nicene Creed ; yet the 

 one was translated into the other in less than three 

 hundred years* In the Sermon on the Mount we see 

 the Christianity of Christ and the consummation of 

 Hebrew Religion* In the Nicene Creed we see a 

 degenerate product of Greek philosophy* 



Again, it would be difficult to imagine two things 

 more widely separated or more absolutely irrelevant 

 than the brotherhood of believers who formed the Church 



