GROWTH is the law of being. We grow physically until we come to our full stature. That which interferes with growth during this period represses, and may even destroy, the life. So it is in spiritual things. We are to grow in grace until we attain “unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” Whatever interferes with this experience will result in spiritual death. But there is a great difference between growing into a deeper and broader experience in the revealed truths of the Bible, and growing out of these same truths. There are infinite depths to divine truth which we can never fathom, and there are heights in Christian experience which will ever rise before us, and to all eternity we may increase in the knowledge of God, but all this is comprehended in the revelation which has been made to us in the Word of God. When men, however, attempt to formulate these infinite truths into their own language, and to define and limit the thoughts of God in a creed, they are putting bands upon men, and are substituting their finite conceptions of revelation for the revelation itself. It is quite possible therefore for men to outgrow a creed, and still remain in harmony with divine truth. This is the usual experience in a genuine reform movement. But it has come to be quite the fashion in these days to place the Bible and the creed on the same level, and to think that we may outgrow the Bible as well as the creed. This is one of the results of that kind of criticism which classes the Bible with human productions, and which declares that God “is in the prophets of the twentieth century after Christ as truly as in the prophets of the sixth and seventh centuries before Christ.” On this basis it is just as safe to follow the teachers of the “New Theology” of to-day as to accept the prophecies of Isaiah and Daniel. This seems to be the modern conception of growth in spiritual things, and from this standpoint there are many who have outgrown the fundamental truths of Christianity as revealed in the Scriptures. A very plausible excuse for this sort of experience is found in the following paragraph taken from a recent discussion of this subject:— Man is subject to the law of growth. He increases in wisdom as well as in stature; the church has just the same right to require a man to have the same intellectual conceptions and spiritual aspirations at eighteen and eighty that it would to require him to have the same weight and measure. . . . Which is greater, the creed or the man? And will you, to save the creed, lose the man? The principle here stated is sound. There should be constant growth. He who has walked in the path of truth until he is fourscore years of age, ought certainly to have a deeper and a broader experience in the things of the kingdom than when he first set his feet in the heavenly way. There is, however, a fallacy in this reasoning which will plainly appear when we put the argument in this form: A creed is a statement of religious belief acceptable to the men of a certain time in the past; further study and the natural application of the law of growth have led the men of the present day to take views different from those expressed in the creed; therefore the men of the present day are only following the divine law of growth when they reject4the teaching of the Bible as not being adapted to this age of light and progress. It will be seen at once that the correct conclusion is that men ought to be at liberty to reject the creed framed by men in the past, but, putting the Bible on the level with the creed, under this plea for the right of growth in spiritual things, men assume to accept the conclusions of their own study and research as of more authority than divine revelation. Here is the heart of the difficulty. It is one of the ways in which man is putting himself above God. There is another principle which should not be overlooked. It should be remembered that the latest and fullest development of truth will always agree with the earliest and simplest statement of truth. There is a constant development in the revelation of truth given to us in the Scriptures. Many things which are shadowy and dim in the Old Testament are fully set forth in the New Testament. In a few words Isaiah declared the purpose of God to create new heavens and a new earth, but John saw and described them. Yet in all such instances the prophets of the first century after Christ did not contradict the prophets of the olden time. The later prophets had a fuller knowledge of divine truth than some of the earlier prophets, but the two were in perfect accord. The later prophets had not outgrown the revelation made through the earlier prophets. But the case is different now. The alleged prophets of the “New Theology” discard as unreliable the teaching of the prophets of the Bible, and advocate an entirely new philosophy. Instead of growing in a knowledge of the truth, they have grown out of it. This is one of the greatest deceptions of these last days. The creed is not the Bible. We may deny the truthfulness and the authority of any creed which is not in harmony with the Scriptures, but further growth in the truth will not disparage nor set aside the truth already revealed. ‘The sum of thy word is truth.’ ‘Sanctify them in the truth: thy word is truth.’