straining was that wheresoever the Brethren went they should endeavour not to extend their own borders, but rather to serve as a bond of union evangelical Christians of all denominations. Next year, at a Synod at Marienborn, the Count explained how this wonderful work was to be done {1740.}. What was the bond of union to be? It was certainly not a doctrine. Instead of making the bond of union a doctrine, as so many Churches have done, the Brethren made it personal experience. Where creeds had failed experience would succeed. If men, they said, were to be united in one grand evangelical Church, it would be, not by a common creed, but by a common threefold experience--a common experience of their own misery and sin; a common experience of the redeeming grace of Christ; and a common experience of the religious value of the Bible. To them this personal experience was the one essential. They had no rigid doctrine to impose. They did not regard any of the standard creeds as final. They did not demand subscription to a creed as a test. They had no rigid doctrine of the Atonement or of the Divinity of Christ; they had no special process of conversion; and, most striking of all, they had no rigid doctrine of the inspiration of the Bible. They did not believe either in verbal inspiration or in Biblical infallibility. They declared that the famous words, "all Scripture is given by inspiration of God," must be taken in a free and broad way. They held that, though the Bible was inspired, it contained mistakes in detail; that the teaching of St. James was in flat contradiction to the teaching of St. Paul; and that even the Apostles sometimes made a wrong application of the prophecies. To them the value of the Bible consisted, not in its supposed infallibility, but in its appeal to their hearts. "The Bible," they declared, "is a never-failing spring for the heart; and the one thing that authenticates the truth of its message is the fact that what is said in the book is confirmed by the experience of the heart." How modern this sounds.