The Best Creed

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 21, 1908

THERE is an agitation in the Methodist Episcopal Church to secure a new statement of Faith and Doctrine. At the close of a long editorial, in which this matter is quite fully discussed, the New York Christian Advocate expresses itself thus:—

After a hundred years of practical freedom from serious doctrinal controversy, our original theological opponents

drawing constantly nearer to our views or remaining silent about their own formerly distinctive doctrines, with the public well acquainted with our views, and a vast force of ministers and teachers ready (or should be) at any time to state wherein we differ from the original doctrine of other evangelical denominations, there is more of danger than of need, more of uncertainty than of positiveness, more liability to produce disharmony than likelihood of promoting unity, in attempting a new Statement of Methodist Faith and Doctrine.

There is always both difficulty and danger in attempting to formulate a new creed or to revise an old one. One of the briefest and best forms of statement is the one made by the apostle Paul, “Believing all things which are written in the law and in the prophets.” The Bible and the Bible alone constitutes the only creed which does not need to be revised.