acknowledge graciously and be thankful for the sacrifices Thomas Atkins (or Jock as he would be called in Scotland) made on our behalf, at great cost. A cost that must be paid for in our lives, for the sake of those yet unborn.
Bishop Gore, who founded the Community of the Resurrection at Mirfield, sought to overcome the problems Luther had with Zwingli by postulating that it was in the Creeds that Truth lay. He might as well have been chasing his own shadow. If the propositions in the Creeds can be put into practice daily, then their truth will depend on the experience of the persons concerned; if they cannot, then they form part of the kaleidoscope that goes to make up the Christian view of creation and man's place in it. A very varied kaleidoscope it is; Shelley expressed it thus:
“Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
“Stains the white radiance of eternity”.
However important a view of life may be, it is hardly relevant to the question whether you can trust a man? It does not tell you the important things about a man, to know whether he subscribes to any of the creeds.
Jesus, himself, was familiar with the problem, and knew what to do about it. He poured scorn on those who busied themselves studying the scriptures, hoping to find eternal life in them, but who did not go to him. Boldly he proclaimed that he was “the Way, the Truth, and the Life”. Whether this claim was true or false, he saw with perfect clarity that “The Truth” about a man is the spirit within him; and if he himself was God as well as man, then it was because he had the spirit of God within him, in a way that the rest of us do not. Compared with this, the written or spoken word, works of art, sacred places and the rest, are merely shadows. All truth is but shadow, except the ultimate truth, and yet it is real truth and real shadow. But the ultimate truth about any man…