The General Assembly [pp. 529-543]

1875.] THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY. 54L
infinitesimal standard, still it remains true, that questions of
construction, of application, of the essential and non-essential
in them to be enforced or not enforced, will always arise to be
disposed of by the wisdom, charity, and faithfulness of the living church. And no creed, as all history proves, can have
any higher vitality than the church imposing it. It will be
binding in the sense intended by the church so administering
it-i.?., according to the a~imzts i?fl~OflCflt?~. A motion made
in our late Assembly, in answer to a request from our Board
of Publication for instruction on the subject, to omit the words
"he descended into hell," from this creed, on the ground that
it conveys a wrong impression, was tabled by a nearly unanimous vote. This shows, not that this phrase, in its present
most obvious signification, conveys the exactest truth, or that
the Assembly thought so; but that this creed, as well as the
longest and most minute, requires interpretation and application by the living church to avoid error; and that after the reduction of our Confession, even to this minimum, there would
be as much scope as now for heated polemics and vain disputation.
3.The present time is peculiarly inopportune for such a
movement, for various reasons. The Re-union was effected on
the basis of our common standards as they are, free of every
qualifying condition. Every attempt to insert such conditions
as that they should be interpreted in any particular way, according to traditions and usages, or the teachings of any divine
of either branch, only made it evident that the Re-union could
not be effected subject to any such trammels. The animus
of the transaction was simply and purely this, that keeping the
standards intact, each body was willing to trust the united
church to interpret and administer them unaltered. Any serious attempt to reconstruct them thus early, must go far to undo the welding process which has thus far gone so happily forward.
It would be, moreover, while divisive as among ourselves,
a fatal hindrance to such union with other Presbyterian bodies
as has been fervently desired and hoped. It puts an insuperable barrier between us and the United, the Reformed, and
the Southern Presbyterians, which would surely outlive the
present generation,, But all steps towards our broader union