(3) The third conception is, that the definitions and interpretations of primary beliefs which were made by the majority, or even by the unanimous voice of a church assembly, in a particular age, and which were both relative to the dominant mental tendencies of that age and adequately expressed them, are not only true but final. It is a conceivable view that once, and once only, did God speak to men, and that the revelation of Himself in the Gospels is a unique fact in the history of the universe. It is also a conceivable view that God is continually speaking to men, and that now, no less than in the early ages of Christianity, there is a divine Voice that whispers in men’s souls, and a divine interpretation of the meaning of the Gospel history. The difficulty is in the assumption which is sometimes made, that the interpretation of the divine Voice was developed gradually through three centuries, and that it was then suddenly arrested. The difficulty has sometimes been evaded by the further assumption that there was no development of the truth, and that the Nicene theology was part of the original revelation—a theology divinely communicated to the apostles by Jesus Christ himself. The point of most importance in the line of study which we have been following together, is the demonstration which it affords that this latter assumption is wholly untenable. We have been able to see, not only that the several elements of what is distinctive in the Nicene theology were gradually formed, but also that the whole temper and frame of mind which led to the formation of those elements were extraneous to the first form of Christianity, and were added to it by the operation of causes which can be traced. If this be so, the assumption of the finality of the Nicene theology is the hypothesis of a development which went on for three centuries, and was then suddenly and for ever arrested. Such a hypothesis, even if it be _à priori_ conceivable, would require an overwhelming amount of positive testimony. Of such testimony there is absolutely none. But it may be that the time has come in which, instead of travelling once more along the beaten tracks of these ancient controversies as to particular speculations, we should rather consider the prior question of the place which speculation as such should occupy in the economy of religion and of the criterion by which speculations are to be judged. We have to learn also that although for the needs of this life, for the solace of its sorrow, for the development of its possibilities, we must combine into societies and frame our rules of conduct, and possibly our articles of belief, by striking an average, yet for the highest knowledge we must go alone upon the mountain-top; and that though the moral law is thundered forth so that even the deaf may hear, the deepest secrets of God’s nature and of our own are whispered still in the silence of the night to the individual soul.