cannot part with Mr. Walker without expressing our sincere desire for his happiness and prosperity.

The chapel has been thoroughly renovated under the direction of the friends, assisted by our brother, Mr. R. Pedley, of Crewe. It was re-opened on Sunday, the 22nd ult., by the secretary of the Home Mission Society. Arrangements for the preaching of the word will, for some time to come, be made with the Cheshire ministers and the local preachers of the district. Permit me to bespeak the most considerate attention to all applications for aid of this kind.

WALSALL.

This is our main work just now; and I am expecting to hear that our friends just returned from their holidays have found time to consider the appeal for instant and large help in the Report and in the last Magazine. Do have mercy upon us, friends! Send a cheque to Mr. Harrision, our Treasurer, forthwith, and write large figures in a large hand. Hasten your collections if you can, so as to bring them this side of Christmas. Why should not 150 young ladies write to Mr. Fletcher, of 322, Commercial Road, London, or to me, for a collecting book? A letter just to hand says "The chapel is going up famously, and looks a fine noble building." The structure, I can witness, is nearly ready to be covered in. It wears a solid and substantial aspect; and so far the work is undeniably good, and the building promises to be convenient and useful in a high degree. I have already received some gifts, and I am sure there must be "more to follow." But do make haste, and cheer the heart of yours, in the blessed, though not painless service of the Master, JOHN CLIFFORD.

THE REV. DR. RITCHIE, of Edinburgh, though a very clever man, met with his match. When examining a student as to the classes he had attended, he said: "And you attended the class for mathematics ?" "Yes." "How many sides has a circle?" "Two," said the student. 'What are they?" What a laugh in the class the student's answer produced when he said: "An inside and an outside." But this was nothing compared with what followed. The doctor having said to this student: "And you attended the moral philosophy class also ?"" Yes." 'Well, you would hear lectures on various subjects. Did you ever hear one on cause and effect ?" Yes." "Does any effect ever go before a cause ?" "Yes." 66 Give me an instance." "A man wheeling a barrow."

66

66

The doctor then sat down and proposed no more questions.

Most of our readers will be familiar with the Apostles' Creed. It is one of the most precious heirlooms of the Christian church; and for the simplicity and directness of its affirmations of the fundamental facts and conquering hopes of Christianity, not surpassed by any literary fragment in existence. No prying and unsatisfactory speculation mars it. The smoke of theological conflicts does not hang over it. Minatory clauses do not convert it into an unchristian imprecation. It is less like a high and battlemented castle than the plain but ever attractive grounds and walls of the old homestead, where we spent our happy and careless youth, and formed all our bright-winged fancies of the future. It is so thoroughly apostolic in its ring that it is the only portion of religious literature outside the Bible that one would scarcely object to have printed with it.

But for some time past grave doubts have been in the air concerning the venerable antiquity of this document. The sifting spirit of our time, which seems to issue in making all that is material, all that belongs to the great globe itself, immeasurably older than we thought it, strips many of our Christian documents of the crown of their antiquity. Canon Swanison went so far, a short time ago, as to hold that the Nicene Creed is the older of the two witnesses to the faith of the post-apostolic church; and others have brought the so-called Creed of the Apostles nearer by several centuries to our times than it used to be put.

That the reaction against this tendency, and the return to the truth, has already set in, is evident from an article in the August Contemporary Review by the Rev. Dr. Salmon upon "The Baptismal Creed of the Early Roman Church."

This article is based upon the elaborate work of Dr. Caspari, Professor of Theology in the Norwegian University, and it establishes upon data of unquestionable accuracy and weight the following important positions :

(1.) That the Apostles' Creed must have been that of the church at Rome.

(2.) That it cannot be of later date than the year 140.

-even at

(3.) That there is nothing to prevent us from thinking that in some of its parts it had been in use in Rome long before thatthe time when Paul met the first Christians in the house of Aquila and Priscilla.

Of course, like other products of that sort, it has grown. The earliest form in which it is found exactly as it stands now is the eighth century. At the end of the fourth or beginning of the fifth century it is much shorter than it is now-several clauses being absent.* Dr. Salmon gives the fourth century form thus, the dash indicating an omission as compared with the eighth century or present form.

"I believe in God the Father Almighty: And in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord: who was born of the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary: under Pontius Pilate was crucified- : and buried

:

* Rufinus wrote an Exposition of the Creed, which belongs to the first ten years of the fifth century. St. Ambrose, at a date a little earlier, maintained the apostolic origin of this Roman form of the creed.

BAPTISM AND THE APOSTLES' CREED.

-the Father

389

: whence he

"And the third day rose again from the dead: ascended into Heaven sitteth at the right hand ofcometh to judge the quick and the dead:

:

The steps by which Caspari passes from Rufinus and Ambrose up to the Apostles are too long to be taken here. One point is that the church at Rome had such strong regard for the Apostles' Creed that the decree of the Council of Nice could not supplant it. Tertullian,* at the end of the second century, in his tract on the Soldier's Crown, says that the baptismal Confession was something more than of faith in the three Persons of the Trinity; and that the addition was "sanctioned by inveterata observatio ;" and from his writings it appears that the something more" "included belief in our Lord's birth, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, present sitting at the right hand of God and future coming, in the holy church, and in the resurrection of the flesh." So we are sure that baptized believers at the end of the second century confessed a faith similar to that, the express words of which we have as used at the beginning of the fifth.

But the creed itself warrants the inference of an earlier date. The church is not Catholic in it. No emphasis is laid on the oneness of God, or the oneness of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is not described as maker of heaven and earth. The life everlasting is omitted. Had these been in at the first it is fair to say they never would have been dropped out; for those very points were in hot controversy at Rome after 140 A.D.

And surely at that date we can hear the vibrations of the voices of John and of Peter and Paul. We are on the track of that "form of sound words" which Paul bade his son Timothy hold fast, and the earliest germ of which may perhaps be traced in the confession of the eunuch of his belief that Jesus Christ was the Son of God.†

Hence Christian baptism in the early days required the profession of Christian doctrine. It was not a mechanical act performed upon an unwilling and unwitting babe, but the expression of the soul's intelligent homage to Christ, and was preceded by an acceptance of the cardinal facts and truths of Christianity. Justin Martyr, whose account of the ceremonies of baptism is the earliest we have, witnesses that the candidates confessed their belief that the doctrines taught by the Christians were true, and made a promise to regulate their lives by the precepts of the gospel.

The place held by baptism in the second century of the Christian era was this:-the sign of an intelligent acceptance of the truths of the gospel of Christ, and of a purpose to live to and for Him.

Baptists are right according to Scripture. They are also right according to the earliest baptismal creed of the church; according to the witness of the most venerable document the church has outside of the records which ought to govern her faith and practice in all things. JOHN CLIFFORD.

* Cf. De Bapt. 6, and Adv. Marc. v. 4.

For though this verse is not in the oldest MSS. it is recognized by Irenæus, and "was inserted by the transcribers because they were astonished at the story of a baptism in which no mention was made of a profession of faith."

FROM THE STUDIO OF THE ARTIST.

I. GETTING AT THE CONCRETE.

Ir has been said that one of the reasons why Sir Joshua Reynolds was so true to nature was his method of placing his canvas close to the sitter, and retiring to the end of the room and comparing the production with the image in the mirror. Sir Francis Grant says.

"I remember entering the room of Sir William Allan-afterwards president of the Royal Scottish Academy-when the latter said, 'Stop; don't move for the world,' and he then pointed to the pieces of a broken fiddle. Allan was painting the subject of 'The Broken Fiddle,' from the incident that some idle boys had tormented a street fiddler, and he, in his indignation, made a rush at them and broke his fiddle over their heads, and the moment seized by the painter was that of the fiddler's despair. I found that Sir William Allan had bought a fiddle and broke it over the head of a lay figure, in order to obtain truth in the representation. On another occasion I called on Sir Watson Gordon, who also became president of the Royal Scottish Academy, and found him painting a shipwrecked mariner. His model was his own brother, a very good-looking young man, and he was arranging a number of trunks and boxes to represent rocks. I was struck with the manner in which the painter represented the wet shirt and under garments of the mariner while the big waves of the sea were rolling over him. I could not help congratulating Sir Watson Gordon on the way in which he had represented the wet clothes, when the latter said, 'I will tell you the way I managed it,' and he pointed to a large watering pot, I just watered him with that, and when he got dry I watered him again.' The younger brother who stood for the model had two or three hours of that douche, but it did him no harm, for he believed he was a hale man still living in Edinburgh. I state these facts to show how able artists strove to get at nature."

When I was at college my beloved and revered tutor, Mr. Wallis, used to say to me, "Do get into the concrete," "Do get into the concrete." The advice was as wise as it was necessary. It is the secret of holding an audience. Abstractions never bite. And the simplest and homeliest truth stated in abstract words is wasted breath. The artist who paints the leg of a table, has the leg of a table before him; and the preacher who means to do any good must never lose sight of the living, breathing, suffering, and sinning MAN. Man's life is no abstraction. It is intensely concrete. And so is the teaching and preaching that benefits him.

II. AN ARTISTS RECEIPT FOR A GOOD SERMON.

Sir Francis Grant speaking to art students about a year ago gave advice that no man with the preacher's soul will find any difficulty in appropriating. He said :

"It was almost a truism in art that every picture should have a principal light-one special object of attraction, on which the eye of the spectator could mainly dwell. But for relief by smaller and inferior lights the chief light would become a spot in the surrounding gloom. I remember this first principle of art being illustrated by Lord Eldon, the celebrated judge. Lord Eldon possessed a fine collection of the ancient masters. He was a high authority on all matters of art, and was himself no mean artist. The noble lord was addressing a young artist, to whom he said, in broad Scotch, Sir, do you know that every picture must have a sun?' And the learned judge paused for a reply. The young student said, 'I presume your lordship means the principal light.' Quite right,' quoth the judge. But sir,' he added, 'you must also have a moon.' The student replied, I presume your lordship means a secondary light, less important than the first light.' Right again,' said the judge; and then, turning his keen grey eye on the student, he said, 'I must also have satellites.' Now it has always struck me that there could not be a more perfect and simple description of how a picture ought to be composed, the principal light being the sun, the second the light of the moon, and the satellites to enliven the gloom

SIGNALS FOR PREACHERS AND TEACHERS.

391

of the picture. A picture might have a good deal of truth, and possibly some taste and refinement, but if it was not carried out on sound principles of art it would fail to be attractive. It would be well, therefore, for art students to remember the receipt of the celebrated Scotch judge with regard to the sun, moon, and satellites."

Sermons made on that principle will have their memorial. They will not be forgotten in a breath. The light will abide and become the mother of life. The central luminary, be it a character, or a great law, or a cheering promise, will hold its sway over the the soul, and around it will gather all the lesser illustrations, reflecting the light cast upon them by the brilliant sun. Sermons built on the solar principle will be cheerful and radiant, pleasant and life-giving. III. ABANDON IN THE PREACHER'S WORK.

A newspaper art-critic passing through the Royal Academy of last year but one, said :

"It is indeed marvellous to find such a multitude of pictures showing extreme technical skill, conscientious labour, and an earnest endeavour, and yet to find how few of them just manage to reach that point when art becomes a revelation, and we are arrested by something that awakens a sudden delight and remains for ever fixed in the memory. Again and again the spectator feels inclined to say to the artist: Why did not you let yourself go? You have here all the proper materials-your subject is well chosen; you show a dexterous command of the brush; you have worked patiently and sincerely; but all on account of the lack of that one spark of courage to give fire and speciality, you have failed, and remain in the inexhaustible ruck of the common-place.' Whereupon, no doubt, the artist would turn round and say: 'Ah, it is very well for you to talk; perhaps, if you knew the thin line that divides good colour from the oil-shop shutter-the thin line that divides true sentiment from the Adelphi melodrama-the thin line that divides novelty from mere caprice and pretence-perhaps you would have been as nervous at the easel as I was.' There can be no doubt that a patient examination of pictures does produce the impression that a vast deal of admirable technical skill has been thrown away for lack of some higher courage of conception on the part of the artists; and that when the first pleasurable feeling of finding one's self amid so many beautiful things has subsided, it becomes by no means difficult to signal out the particular pictures which are likely to remain in one's memory."

Is it necessary to say that this abandon should be experienced in the study, in the preparatory acts before it appears in the pulpit? But not only in the study, for the essence of this abandon, which is the very climax of the preacher's power, the topmost height of his strength, is that he speak from his soul and not from his memory merely; with all the force of his inward individual life, i.e., with the force of a divine inspiration. JOHN CLIFFORD.

Ir is not unknown to many of our friends that a little surprise has been expressed at the facility with which some of our churches in the neighbourhood of our College pass by our own-home-nurtured sons, and elect men grown in other regions to the position of pastors and teachers amongst us. The phenomenon is worthy of study. It is no indication of the calibre of the men we train. It is not a just cause for censuring the action of our churches. For they do not forget their denominational work: they support our Missions, Home and Foreign, and they are loyal to our flag. Some of our friends may find consolation in what I found at Bristol the other day. Of the many churches in or around Bristol not one is in possession of a Bristolian student. Rawdon is represented, and Regent's Park, Glasgow, and the Pastors' College; but not a solitary Baptist minister in Bristol is from the College at Stoke's Croft. Men and women prefer a wholly new man to one who has graduated under their very eyes. It is natural they should. Nothing but unusual gifts can compete with a new voice, a new aspect, a new manner. Moreover, the measure of the new man has not been taken: you can hope more from him. He may have less in him, probably has; but he is new, and the highest gifts of genius may be slumbering in him. Who can tell? Let us have him. Human nature loves the new, and there is an uncommon amount of human nature in all of us. He is a great prophet indeed who is thought to be a giant by those who knew him at home.