The advocate of a human creed says, he wants his creed to “show at a glance what we hold!” Look over your creed, then, right carefully, and see _what you hold_, and look over the New Testament with the same care, and see what an amount it contains that _you do not hold_, or that is not in your creed, and you will see that your creed is not a respectable skeleton—that it not only lacks the flesh, blood, muscles, arteries, veins, etc., of the body, but it lacks many of the bones and, what is vastly more, it lacks the life, the soul, the spirit. If it contains _what you hold_, much as precious as any part of the Christian faith, and as binding as any thing God has revealed, clearly and as explicitly laid down in the New Testament, is not contained in what you hold at all. Much of as precious truth as is contained in the Bible, a vast amount as clear to the children of God as anything contained in the Christian faith, an immense deal as consoling to the dying saint as any thing in the word of God, as any man who has ever looked must admit, is not found in any human creed. We say again, and can prove at almost any length, that there is not a human creed in the world that is a respectable skeleton, that is even a perceptible shadow of the Christian faith. Indeed, no creed appears to have been intended simply to set forth the _Christian faith_. It does not appear to be the object of any human creed to set forth the simple faith of Christ or Christianity. None of the creeds claim to be the _Christian faith_, _the Christian confession_, _Christian discipline or Christian system_, but one is “The Philadelphia Confession,” another “The Westminster Confession,” and a third “The Methodist Discipline.” The object of these books, and all of the same kind, appears to be more to set forth the views their authors had of certain points of doctrine, or their notions of these points, than to set forth the whole Christian faith itself. Their object is much more to show how the parties adopting them held certain points of doctrine, and to distinguish their views from some others, than to set forth the Christian faith. The creeds, then, are but little more than epitomes of men’s views of certain points of Christian doctrine, their abridged understanding of these points. Now, the belief and reception of _men’s views_ of the Christian faith will not save any man, much less the belief and reception of _their views of a few points_ of doctrine; but to be saved, a man must believe and receive the Christian faith—_the whole Christian faith itself_. HEAR YE HIM.