Modes of worship rest on the same practical basis. Spontaneous prayer or elaborate ritual, much or little participation by the people, long or short sermons, prayer-meetings or no prayer-meetings,--all are to be determined by the test of practical experience. It is absurd to profess to draw hard and fast rules about these matters from the precept or practice of Jesus and His Apostles, or the early church fathers, working as they did under conditions so widely different from our own. Probably centralised authority and elaborate ritual are most effective when bishops and priests can be found who will not abuse their power for their own aggrandisement. Until then, more democratic forms of worship and of government are doubtless more expedient. The friendly competition of the two systems side by side helps to keep sacerdotalism modest and make independency effective. Creeds likewise have their practical usefulness, especially in times of theological ferment and transition, serving the purposes of party platforms in a political campaign. But it is the grossest perversion of their function to make assent to them obligatory on all who wish to enjoy the most intimate Christian fellowship, or to test Christian character by their formulas. One might as well refuse citizenship to every person who could not assent to every word in some party platform or other. The creed is an intellectual formulation of the results of Christian experience, interpreting the Christian revelation; and it will vary from age to age with ripening experience, and maturer views of the content of the revelation. No creed was altogether false at the time of its formulation. No creed in Christendom is such as every intelligent Christian can honestly assent to. The attempt to make creed subscription a test of church membership, or even a condition of ministerial standing, is sure to confuse intellectual and spiritual things to the serious disadvantage of both. The most sensitively honest men will more and more decline to enter the service of the church, until subscription to antiquated formulas, long since become incredible to the majority of well-trained scholars, ceases to be required either literally or "for substance of doctrine." It is sufficient that each candidate for the ministry be asked to make his own statement, either in his own words or in the words of any creed he finds acceptable, leaving it for his brethren to decide whether or not such intellectual statement is consistent with that spiritual service which is to be his chief concern. Unless Christianity, in the persons of its leaders as well as of its laity, can breathe as free an intellectual atmosphere as that of Stoic or Epicurean, Plato or Aristotle, it will at this point prove itself their inferior. Infinitely superior as it is in every other respect, it is a burning shame that its timid and conservative modern adherents should endeavour, at this point of absolute intellectual openness and