F.D. Maurice on the Creed

Hat tip to Christopher:

The Creed

from a sermon preached on Septuagesima Sunday, 1849, by Frederick Denison Maurice. In The Prayer Book. London, James Clarke & Co., 1966.

And they that know thy name will put their trust in Thee: for thou, Lord, hast not forsaken them that seek thee. -- Psalm 9:10

Every one must, I think, at some moment of his life, have been startled by the wonderful force of the words in Scripture with which he had been most familiar, and which had seemed to him most common-place. For instance, the word 'trust' which meets us at every turn in the Book of Psalms -- how soon we came to think of it as a kind of catch-phrase, as one which was characteristic of a peculiar people who lived some thousands of years ago in the East! In overwhelming troubles, in a time of utter weariness, when every calculation has been disappointed, when there seems no fair ground for expecting help from any quarter, when all is dark without and within, how has this little word dawned upon a man, what a witness it has seemed to give of a world of light somewhere, perhaps not far off! To be told that he may trust, or put his trust, in God; that this is not a sin, but a duty; that it has nothing to do with prospects of success, or even with the conditions of his own feelings; that the command is addressed to those who are in the midst of failure, upon whom the world has been frowning, who have found no resources in their own present consciousness, or in recollections of the past; to learn that such persons have best understood the command, and have obeyed it best; this is strange; what was a common-place becomes a paradox, and yet in that form the man receives it, entertains it, ascertains it to be true. To fear God he knew was right, whether he did it or no; to love God he had always held to be right, were it possible. But to trust in God, without being certain that he does either fear or love; to trust because all is in God which he has not and feels he has not, in himself, this is precisely what he needs, and precisely to this the book which had seemed a dull repetition of unmeaning sounds is inviting him.

There is another word in my text which has an inseparable connection with this. The great privilege of the Jew throughout Scripture is said to be this, that he knows the Name of God. He is not called to trust in some power which has sent him into the world, and which is exercising dominion over him, and with the nature and purposes of which he is unacquainted. It is assumed on the plainest ground of reason that such trust would be impossible. It might be prescribed, but the rule could not be obeyed; it might be desirable, but no one could practice it merely because he wished it. You cannot trust a thing, or a mere power, or a mere law. Trust must be in a Person; you cannot trust a Person whom you suspect of possible malevolence to you. Therefore this was the feeling which grew with the growth and strengthened with the strength of every Jew who understood his own position; 'If I am to trust in God He must declare Himself to me. I trust Him because He has made me feel and know that He is Righteous, and that He cares for me. I cannot see Him, but I know His Name.'

Let us understand this well, brethren, for it is very important in reference to notions that are current in the present day. If there is to be a religion of trust, and not of slavish cowardly fear, that religion must have a Revelation, the revelation of a Name for its basis. A religion which creates its own object cannot be one of trust. I cannot rest upon that which I feel and know that I have made for myself. I cannot trust in that which I look upon as a form of my own mind or a projection from it. . . Neither can I trust in any shadowy, impalpable essence, or in any Soul of the world. If this be the God I worship, my worship will be one of doubt and distrust, whenever it is at all sincere. If I do not seek all strange, monstrous means of propitiating the unknown Being, it is only because I am altogether uncertain whether he is real enough for such services. . . All superstition, all priestcraft, in its worst and most evil sense -- we cannot repeat this proposition too often, or put it in too may shapes -- has its root in vague, indefinite religious apprehensions; not resting upon the knowledge and confession of a Being who is not our image, but who has declared Himself to us that we might receive His image . . .

The Christian Catechists taught their disciple the Name into which at baptism he would be received. We are not left to conjecture the nature of the instruction. The short treatise of St. Augustine, 'De Catechizandis rudibus' is at least a voucher for the African Church in the fifth century. From the severe opinions which we have heard imputed to that great man, and which unquestionably may be drawn out of his controversial writings, you would imagine that he especially might be inclined to lay the foundation of his doctrine in some dark view of the Divine character, however he might afterwards introduce the consolations of the Gospel. A man who had felt sin so deeply might, one would have thought, have laboured first to awaken the sense of it in his Heathen converts before he proceeded to any other side of divinity. The great duty he conceives of the Catechist is to set forth the absolute eternal love and goodness of God. He is to declare God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth. Here was the first step in the divine revelation; that which laid the axe to the root of devil-worship, divided worship, material worship; that which offered to the victims of each a high tower in which they might take refuge. No doubt they would often have a hard struggle in flying to it; the enemies would dog them continually; they would be asked how they knew that there was such a Being whom their senses told them nothing of. They would be called Atheists and self-deceivers. Polytheists, and Philosophical seekers after Unity, would mock them equally. Their own hearts would repeat the scoffs which came from without. But are the words true or not? If not men must of course go on in their delusions; there is no helping them; material worship, divided worship, devil-worship, must be left to degrade and rend in pieces the Universe. If the words are true, they will prove themselves true. The Father Almighty will prove himself to be a Father. They that know that Name will trust in it. They must. Their misery, their Atheism will drive them to it. And He will not fail those who seek Him.

But the question -- How is He a Father, how do I know He is? cannot be evaded. The Church had no wish to evade it. She acknowledged that something more was implied in the Revelation of a Father than His Name; that there must be some one to reveal Him. She proclaimed the Name of His only-begotten Son, our Lord. She says that He revealed Himself as he Son of God by being conceived of the Holy Ghost our Lord, by being born of the Virgin Mary, by suffering our death, our burial, by going down into the Hell we tremble to think of; by facing all our enemies visible and invisible, all that we actually know we must meet, all that our imagination dreams of; that He rose again from the dead, and ascended into heaven, and sat down on the right of the Father, and will come again to judge the quick and the dead, If God be absolute, eternal love, as St, Augustine makes the Catechist affirm, how has he shewn it? Has it come forth, or is it all hidden in his own nature? Has it come forth to some other creature, or to man? Has it met him where he needs to be met or somewhere else? Has it encountered the actual woes of mankind, or only those which affect a particular set of men? Has it been found mightier than these, or has it sunk under them? Has this love been cheerfully entertained, or did it encounter ingratitude? Was the ingratitude too strong for the love, or the love for the ingratitude? Is the victory for all times, or only for that time? Is He who you say is our Lord really our Lord? Does He reign over us? Will he leave all things just as they are, or set them right at last? These questions have a claim to be answered; that is no Gospel to humanity which does not answer them; the Christian Church said, 'This is the answer' . . . And again, supposing the words be true, all we have to do is to proclaim them and live upon them. He who has sent us into the world for that end can prove them. Those that know His Name will trust in Him, and so they find that He has not deceived them. . .

I believe in the Holy Ghost. I believe that there has come from the Father and the Son One who can reveal them to me and to all men; who does promise to dwell with us for ever, and to remove the corruptions that hinder us from receiving the Light which would enter in and fill us. I believe that he has brought men into a Unity which is not based upon different notions and opinions, but upon the Divine Name, a Church for all kindreds of nations. . . I believe that He who quickens our Spirits will quicken also our mortal bodies, will deliver them out of he bondage of corruption, and make them like Christ's glorious body. I believe that we shall not always see truth in dim mirrors with winking and feeble eyes, but shall mount up on wings as eagles, and gaze upon the sun in its brightness, and enjoy that life everlasting, which is the knowledge and love of God. . .

Yes! 'I believe:' in this form the Church taught its baptized member, if not its Catechumen, to speak. For she felt that the baptized man is not to lose hold of that which at such a cost has been won for him, but that he has need to be trusting every moment the Name that has been made known to him. And so this creed, this baptismal formulary, has become a Christendom possession, which all beggars and nobles, old men and children, have a share and a right in. There is no charm in its words: they may have been varied at different times; new clauses may have been introduced into it to protect the rest from invasion. The worth of it is this especially, that it has so little to do with sounds, that it is so much a Creed of acts, that all the Divine Mystery comes forth in real manifestations meeting real necessities that are common to all.

It is a creed for the people which the schoolman cannot and dares not meddle with; and yet which he is obliged to confess says much more than he can say in hundreds of folios. It is a tradition -- often it has been called the tradition of the Church. As such we receive it, and rejoice in it. But on this ground especially, that it is a continual protection against traditions, that when they try to force themselves upon us, we can always put this forward as a declaration that what we believe and trust in is not this or that notion, or theory, or scheme, or document; but that it is the Eternal Name into which we are baptized and in which the whole Church and each member of the Church stands. As it has come down to us it must be a tradition. But it is a tradition which we cannot value for its own sake. Not the utterance, but that which is uttered; not the form, but the substance which it sets forth is the object and ground of our belief. . .

No protests against those substitutes for living faith in a living God, which have been introduced into any part of Christendom, can have anything like the force which there is in a distinct, personal, united assertion of that faith. And this especially because the Creed occurs in the midst of confessions, prayers, thanksgivings, which interpret its use. We do not put it forth to shew what a different religion from other men. We say in whom we believe, because we are about to cast ourselves upon Him in utter helplessness, to ask help from Him for ourselves and all mankind, to beseech the Father through the Son to renew in us that Spirit of Holiness, and Fear, and Love, who can enable us to know His name, but to trust in it evermore.