Let us take the separate articles of the Apostles' Creed and see how they stand affected:
The Fatherhood of God.
"I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth."
A Christian God.
Surely this remains untouched and in full force. Huxley, to requote what has before been quoted, says: "I can not see one tittle of evidence that the great unknown stands to us in the light of a Father." What a contradiction is here! He knows that the great unknown can not be proved to be our Father. Then he must know of the great unknown the negative aspects so minutely as to be sure that no Fatherhood is in the great unknown. Then he knows the great unknown much better than he is willing to admit, better than an agnostic ought.
An All Pervasive Spirit.
His Commandments.
The Divine Ideal.
Yet that the idea of God may remain in power and not as a "passionless impersonality," it must be less interpreted by the teachings of Moses and more by the teachings of Christ. Human tempers and passions must be eliminated from our Divine Ideal. He must not be made an angry and jealous God as men count these. He must not be thought of as a vindictive personality, never so well pleased as when scaring His children into panic. In the thought of the Church He will be an all-pervasive Spirit whose nature is unfolded by the universe He has made. In that universe He will be felt to be immanent as the power of development, order, and destiny. All ages show Him to be "the power which makes for righteousness." The commandments are not only His because they are found in the Bible, but because they are perceived to be necessary laws of conduct proceeding from such a Being as we know God to be for such beings as we know men to be. Thus we perceive them to be the Divinely authorized bond of society and the guarantee and obligation of the Divine Ideal of humanity. All nature and all history are scrutinized for traces of the Supreme. These being found to coincide with the Christian Revelation of Him, men will read with new reverence those wonderful books which make up the Book, and which beyond all others anticipate the latest results of scientific inquiry and natural ethical canon.
Advantage of Newer View.