is;;] THEOLOGY AND THE CHURCH 325 



thus to me ; that He gives me such a hope in my present 

 trouble, such a command as to present duty. But this 

 personal knowledge is not, for the most part, reached by 

 making a special application of a general truth : it is got 

 at by sympathetic appropriation of the concrete and 

 personal utterances of God s Word. It is a mistake to 

 call such knowledge theology. For however the notion 

 of theology is stretched, it always must, to a certain 

 extent, imply a knowledge which can be put into words, 

 and so imparted to a man who has not shared the ex 

 perience of him who imparts it. And of such knowledge 

 a most experienced Christian may have very little, and 

 that little very loose and inaccurate. And if it is sup 

 posed that this theology is really what his faith feeds 

 on and his life is guided by, we must draw the inaccurate 

 and dangerous inference, that a most rudimentary 

 theology is practically quite as serviceable as the com 

 pletes t system of truth. 



But, says one, if theology is not that by which in 

 dividual Christians live ; if, on the contrary, the great 

 majority of Christians have theological notions so de 

 fective that any attempt to live by them exclusively 

 would do more harm than good, what is the use of 

 theology at all ? And the answer to this question is, 

 that the use of theology is to direct the administration of 

 the Church. 



So long as Christianity is looked upon as a purely 

 individual thing, a converse of me by myself, and of you 

 by yourself, with God in Christ, it is really not possible 

 to make out for theology a sphere of genuine practical 

 importance. For strictly individual religion, that growth 

 in knowledge and spiritual wisdom which is got by pure 

 practice without generalisation or system, seems adequate 

 enough. But the moment we begin to contemplate 

 Christianity as a social thing, as organised into a Church, 

 we reach a point where inarticulate knowledge of divine 

 truth breaks down. 



