There may be fifty doctrines of the Spirit; as there may be fifty theories of the light, and of how it is generated from the sun, and of how its beam is stranded, and of how fast it travels to the earth, and of how it gains entrance to the human eye. There is only one science of the Spirit; as there is only one science, or accurate conception, of the origin, structure, speed, and office of the sunshine. But the fact of the presence of the light, of its institution in this world, through the sun, by providential goodness, and of the equal dependence of everybody upon it for sight and enjoyment, are not altered by the theories which human beings hold. We all live in the vast natural church of light, whether we have Newton's conception, or Young's conception, or Goethe's conception of its cause and composition; nay, whether or not we have cared to work out any conception of these. And the man with the inadequate theory, or the false theory, or no theory, sees just as well as the man with the true one, if he conforms to the practical laws of vision.
It is the spiritual truth which looks through the creed that is the all-important element so far as the person is concerned. Ah, we cannot tell by the written confession what the vital characteristics of the man's faith or of his belief are. St. Paul determined to know no other formula than the Cross of Christ. But what did it mean to him? We have seen that it meant the breaking out of divine love towards all mankind; it meant the equal spiritual rights of all races; it meant a perfect moral providence; it meant the condemnation of Pharisaism as high treason against humanity; it meant the abolition of all covenant-grace; it meant that humility, charity, self-sacrifice, is the law of the moral universe; it meant that men need no more pine here as prisoners, but could burst through faith "into the air of that life which God lives eternally." In a word, it meant just the opposite of the system into which the old school Calvinism has petrified the Epistle to the Romans.—Starr King.
