A religious society cannot dispense either with doctrines or doctrinal teaching. The more moral it is in its character, the more it needs a dogmatic symbol which defines it and explains its _raison d'etre_. It will have its teachers as well as its pastors and missionaries. The apostle Paul compares the Church to an organism in which each member has its necessary function, according to the special gift it has received. "God," says he, "gave some, apostles; some, prophets; some, teachers" (1 Cor. xii. 28; Rom. xii. 6-8. "Teaching of the Apostles," 13 and 15). In passing through different lips the Gospel takes different forms. It creates divers types of doctrine, divers schools or parties (1 Cor. i. 10-14). It is necessary to instruct the ignorant, to refute heretics, to heal schisms, to administer reproofs, to correct the interpretation of texts. This could only be done by means of discussion, reasoning, exegesis, speculation. It was not an effort of pure science, but of practical science, in the interest of the Church itself, with a view to its inner edification and to the continuous reform of its worship and its faith. The labour of dogmatics thus sprang up spontaneously in the bosom of the Church itself, and it has continued its work, not from without, but from within, through an office which is an essential ministry, an organ of the Church. It could not be done well in any other way.... A religious society, by the very fact that it endures, creates a doctrinal tradition, and this tradition soon assumes a divine character and tends to become an absolute authority. This is the effect of a psychological illusion characteristic of the religious consciousness so long as reflection does not put it on its guard against itself. The object of our faith being divine, we ingenuously transport this quality into the formula by which it has been transmitted to us, and we hold this formula to be divine before we have learnt to distinguish between the essence of faith and its historical manifestations, between the religious substance of the doctrine and its traditional expression. Add to the prestige of the past the necessity of educating the new generations. Every Christian begins as a catechumen, and, in certain respects, he is and ought to be a learner all his life, for he cannot fail to see that the collective consciousness is always richer and more stable than his own. But, if the aim of Christian education is to produce adult Christians--that is, Christians who, having received the Holy Spirit, have entered into a direct and permanent relation to the common Father, and into personal and living piety, they possess an inward rule of conduct, and along with this a principle of free judgment. As St. Paul says, our tutelage ends when we have attained to our majority. The spiritual man judges all, but is judged of none. He becomes independent of the authority under which he has grown up, as