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for instance begin in an exactly similar way. Yet this note is struck with special emphasis in the Scottish Confession, and we shall meet it time and again in our text.

      It will repay us to halt here for a moment and to consider this phrase “ane onelie God” carefully. It is not an innovation or a discovery of the sixteenth century which is put forward here, but it is certainly a renewal, a rediscovery and a restoration of knowledge long forgotten and denied. The voice of the Old Testament becomes articulate here once more, “Hear, O Israel, Jahweh our God is Jahweh the one and only God” (Deut. 6:4). The voice of the New Testament becomes audible too, “We know that there is none other God but one” (1 Cor. 8:4). So, too, the voice of the early church: “Deus si non unus est, non est” (Tert. adv. Marc. 1, 3). Therefore to speak of God is to speak of the one and only God. To know God means to know the one and only God. To serve God means to serve the one and only God. This is what Reformed teaching brings to light again. In and along with everything else which it says, it says this also.

      In saying this what does Reformed teaching mean? It does not mean that God alone exists. It does not deny the world. It denies neither its variety nor its unity in itself, neither its splendour nor its fearful secrets, neither the profundity of nature nor the profundity of spirit. The world exists, but the world does not exist alone. And if the world does not exist alone, because it exists through God and therefore as having God behind, above and before it, as Him without whom it would not exist, so God does not exist alone, because the world exists through Him. It exists through Him, Who, without the world, would yet be in Himself no less what He is. The difference in the relation between them is this—God exists along with the world as its free creator, whereas the world exists along with God as the creation founded on His freedom. By recognising this difference we recognise God as the one and only God. At the conclusion of our confession we find the invocation, “Arise, O Lord, and let thy enimies be confounded …” Knowledge of the one and only God becomes possible and real, because this does happen, because God does “arise” and makes Himself visible in the world and distinguishes Himself from the world as its creator, thereby making the world visible and distinguishing it as His creation. Whatever the world may be as a whole and whatever separate entity may exist within the world—be it its final grounds and principles—this is not creative in the way in which God is creative, nor free as God is free, nor Lord as He is Lord. For it exists through God and, unlike God, does not possess its specific existence in itself. “We acknawledge ane onelie God”—that is the description of how we know the One Who becomes knowable in this distinction, consummated by Him Himself. Our knowledge will only be able to follow the drawing of this distinction. “Arise, O Lord.” Our thought in so far as it follows this “arising” attains to this knowledge of God, and can attain to this knowledge alone. “We acknawledge ane onelie God”—this is no mere part of the knowledge of God, but rightly understood is itself the sum of all true knowledge of God and for that reason this sentence may legitimately stand at the head of the confession.

      II

      Let us, in the first place, make clear to ourselves the far-reaching importance of this sentence. I repeat, it does not mean the negation, the denial or the depreciation of that which is not God. But it does mean that this latter factor is criticised, limited and made relative. It says precisely that this factor is not God. Whatever else it may be, only illegitimately can it conduct itself as God, and only illegitimately can it be regarded and treated as God. Whatever else it may be, we are free to abandon it; we are not compelled to serve it or worship it and we cannot in any sense or on any account put our hope of salvation in it. The greatness, beauty and importance which it may have in itself and also for us within the world is indisputable. That is expressly acknowledged in the New Testament passage previously cited, “There are (in heaven and on earth) gods many and lords many” (1 Cor. 8:5). But these are gods so-called (λεγόμενοι θεοἰ) and the knowledge of the one and only God means that they are unmasked as such.

      The god “so-called,” which the proposition about the “ane onelie God” was designed to combat, is above all man himself. We cannot help seeing this to-day even more clearly than was possible in the sixteenth century before the Cartesian revolution had taken place. It is man’s self-assertion which is the source of the possible or actual denial of the one and only God—not perhaps in the form that man denies the existence of the one and only God but very simply in the form that he identifies himself with the one and only God. Man can regard himself and treat himself as the measure of all things, just as if he were Creator or free or Lord like Him to whom he owes his being. He can therefore think that he dare not abandon himself but must serve and worship himself, and that he can therefore put his hope of salvation in himself. Without denying God, man can consider himself as having power over God. And not only can man do that, but he actually does it. Eritis sicut Deus. This voice was heard and obeyed by man long before the time of Descartes. Now the knowledge of the one and only God means the limiting of this human self-assertion. “We acknawledge ane onelie God” means simply, we men are not gods or are merely gods so-called or make-believe gods. We are forced to retire within the bounds of our own creatureliness and our own human nature. The modern world has failed to hear the warning of the Reformed confession precisely at this point and has thought fit to exchange the mediæval conception of the world as geocentric for the much more naïve conception of the world as anthropocentric.

      The gods so-called, which the proposition about the “ane onelie God” was designed to combat, are, however, also the gods and godheads of all the human ideologies and mythologies, philosophies and religions. With the well-known ambition of a devoted father, man decks the children of his self-assertion with the same authority with which he has previously decked himself. These are the systems by means of which he proposes—at least in phantasy and fancy—to exercise his divine freedom and lordship. They might also be described as costumes, each one more beautiful than the other, which man dons in turn in his rôle as the one and only reality. And just as fathers must sometimes accommodate themselves to their children, and just as each costume constrains the actor to adopt a definite attitude, so the systems woven in man’s phantasy and fancy come to possess and keep a definite power over him. His conception of the world and thus his world become full of ideas and principles, points of view scientific, ethical and æsthetic, axioms, self-evident truths social and political, certainties conservative and revolutionary. They exercise so real a dominion and they bear so definitely the character of gods and godheads, that not infrequently devotion to them actually crystallises into mythologies and religions. (Universities are the temples of these religions.) But each one of these claims at the moment to be the one and only reality with monopoly over all systems. It is now considered impossible to abandon them either. Service and honour are offered them also and it is believed that the hope of salvation should be put in them. To recognise the one and only God means to make all these systems relative. “We acknawledge ane onelie God” means that the principles and objects of these systems, whatever they may be, are in reality no gods or at best gods so-called. Are they to be annihilated? Perhaps not at all, perhaps not yet. But the end of their authority is within sight. When the knowledge of God becomes manifest, they can no longer possess ultimate credibility, and real, serious and solemn reverence cannot be shown them any longer. “What askest thou Me concerning the good? One is good” (Matt. 19:17). “The destruction of the gods” comes down upon them then. In any case they can henceforward prolong their existence only as symbols and hypotheses, perhaps as angels or as demons, perhaps only as ghosts and comical figures. This makes clear to us how it was possible for the early Christians to have been accused of atheism, and the Christian church would be in a better position if she had remained suspect of atheism in this sense of the word in modern times as well. All that we can say is that this is not the case. The church has much rather played a most lively part in the game of dressing up in different costumes a mere counterfeit of the one and only reality.

      III

      Knowledge of the truly one and only God gains this meaning when it is brought about by this truly one and only God Himself. God is the one and only One and proves Himself to be such by His being both the Author of His own Being and the source of all knowledge of Himself. In both these respects He differs from everything in the world. A God who could be known otherwise

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