The Romanist and high-church view is that authority lies in the Church, in its continuity of tradition and in its possession of sacramental power. If men are to be left to their own devices there will be anarchy in religion. But if they will but look back to the very foundations of Christianity, they will find a body of truth steadily handed down, and an efficacy communicated by the laying on of episcopal hands, transmitted from one generation to another. They will find a divinely guided history of councils and creeds through which the deposit of truth has been safeguarded; and the doubter may commit himself with certainty to this system, which is the embodiment not only of divine truth but of human wisdom and practical knowledge. A Scottish Presbyterian is not predisposed to favor such a conception, but one has to admit its power. The majority of mankind are neither able nor willing to examine a long course of church history for themselves, and a strong, dogmatic assertion and a definite historical position have a vast power with a certain conservative and clinging and devotional type of mind. There are many people who have not sufficient intellectual daring to wrestle constantly with things for themselves. They want certainty. And so Newman and Adelaide Procter and many other equally pure souls have found rest in this obedience to authority. There is, however, particularly in this new land, a different temper springing up. The community spirit seeks inclusion rather than exclusion. It tries to use different gifts without judging between them. It will not nullify categories; it will simplify them. The question of apostolic succession, except where men are still held to belief in it by ecclesiastical authority, is ceasing to be an issue, just because this practically minded world does not see any such monopoly of spiritual power in one particular church. And, with regard to the permanence of any creed, we are in an atmosphere which tends more and more to utter its faith in the language of the day. A man may be very near to his Lord and yet unable to discern his Lord in the Athanasian Creed. The process is too long which requires that the believer search back through all those centuries of tangled historical stuff before he finds his Master. He does not need to be either a prophet or the son of a prophet who declares confidently that the sacramentarian, historically exclusive, miraculous, sanction of religion is likely to become less and less powerful.