But the Bible's task is not only to sustain individual piety; it has a second duty to perform. Christianity is not a mere aggregation of Christian individuals but a community--a church, if you will. It is necessary for any community to have a standard, for any church to have a creed. It is the Bible which has to supply this. Herein lies the danger of aberration, as we have seen in the second and the following chapters. The history of the church and of its doctrine gives ample proof of the fact that, taking the Bible as a rule for the church's dogma, Christianity not only missed the right path for the development of doctrine, but even lost the right use of the Bible. It is only by aiming at an historical orientation that the church can gain from the Bible the right direction for the setting forth of its doctrine. The doctrine of the church never can be, and never has been, identical with the doctrine of the Bible, because it is impossible to stop the development of history; besides, there are as many doctrines in the Bible itself as men who wrote the several books of the Bible, or even more. Saint Paul has not one doctrine of the atonement but half a dozen theories about it. The church has to formulate its own doctrine consistently with the Bible; that means a doctrine which keeps to the main line of religious development as testified to by the Bible; or, rather, to do justice to the variety of Biblical doctrines, permits a modern adaptation of the several modes in which religious experience is expressed. This seems vague, but it is the path which Christianity is bound to follow; and it promises success. The modern view is that it is the religious experience of men, as testified to in the Bible, from which both the individual and the church take their start. But Christians believe that through this human experience God himself is revealing his grace. Therefore it is still, as our fathers said, God's Word. And God will teach the church to formulate the common experience by the help of his Word. That is the present position. * * * * * But now what of the influence of the Bible on civilisation? Has it gone? It seems under present conditions reduced to very small proportions, if not made impossible altogether. I am prepared, however, to declare that just the opposite is true. The influence of the Bible on civilisation still continues, and it will grow greater the more the Bible is used in the proper way, as an influence not on outward form but in inward inspiration.