Dr. Irons, of Brompton, has suddenly gone in warmly in
defence of the so-called Athanasian Creed, in the columns of the Morning Post. He might employ his time better,—if he really wishes to defend scientific theology of any kind from the general discredit into which it is falling in these latter days, when, as the Pall Mall Gazette very justly remarks, the distinction about which men fought, and on which empires often de- pended, sixteen centuries ago, are becoming every day more and more unsubstantial and inapprehensible. The Athanasian Creed, which is bad manners, bad morals, and bad theology all in one, is hardly worth attacking now,—but even the Nicene Creed, which seems to us as profound as it is subtle, is losing its hold on the intellects of men ; indeed, ethics and all purely psychological science seem drifting to the same fate. For the time, science is passing into a region of distinctions so complete, BO e.qily tested, and so full of immediate and impressive results, that all the sciences which deal with deeper and leas apprehensible conceptions are losing way relatively. But after all, the tendency of a generation or two in Western Europe is no standard of Truth.. The nineteenth century is doing much to raise the 'circumstances of man, but can it compare for a moment with the fourth century in its influence on man himself?
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