board were a bishop of one of the Western States and a young candidate
for orders who was travelling with him as his pupil. I fell into
conversation with this young man, and found that he really believed
that the twelve clauses of the Apostles' Creed were manufactured by the
apostles themselves. He had never discovered anything to the contrary.

A still more astonishing fact came to my knowledge last year. During
that discussion over Ian McLaren's creed, in which so many people were
interested last winter, Chancellor McCracken, of the University of New
York, published a letter, in which he referred to the Apostles' Creed
as written eighteen hundred years ago. It took my breath away when I
read it. I wondered, Could the chancellor of a great University
possibly be ignorant of the facts? Would he state that which he knew
was not true? I could not explain it either way. I was compelled to
think, if he was thoughtless and careless about it, that he had no
business to be about a matter of such importance. But he said the
Apostles' Creed was written eighteen hundred years ago.

Now what are the facts? The apostles had nothing whatever to do with
the creed, as everybody knows to-day who chooses to look into the
matter. It grew, and was four or five hundred years in growth, one
phrase in one shape held in a certain part of the Church, another
phrase in another shape held in another part of the Church, people
holding nothing so sacred about it but that they were at perfect
liberty to change it and add to it and take away from it, until, as we
get it to- day, it appeared for the first time in history at about the
year 500. And yet it stands in the Church to-day claiming to be the
Apostles' Creed.

And this Apostles' Creed, if it were a part of the purpose I have in