mind this morning, I could analyze, and find that it contains elements
which nobody accepts to-day; and yet nobody dares to propose touching
it, such is the reverence for that which is old. So much more reverence
does the world have for that which is old than for that which is true.

If you approach a Churchman in regard to his belief in the resurrection
of the body, he will say, Of course, we do not believe in the
resurrection of the body: we believe in the resurrection of the soul.
But he does not believe in the resurrection of the soul, either.

Let me make two statements in regard to this. In the first place, if he
does not believe in the resurrection of the body, he has no right to
say it, because the House of Bishops, representing the whole Church of
the United states, in an authoritative pastoral letter issued within
three years, declares that fixity of interpretation is of the essence
of the creeds. No man, then, is at liberty to change the interpretation
to suit himself.

And then, again, nobody, as I say, believes in the resurrection of the
soul. Why? Because that statement, with the authority of the House of
Bishops that nobody has any business to change or reinterpret, carries
with it a world underneath the surface of the earth to which the dead
go down; and resurrection means coming up again from that underground
world. Nobody believes in any underground world to-day. You cannot be
resurrected. That is, you cannot rise again unless you have first gone
down. It is the ascent of the soul we believe in to-day, and not its
resurrection, much less the resurrection of the body.

Now a word in regard to another of the great historic creeds.