The first and central truth, which Baptists have always firmly held, is this: THAT IN JESUS CHRIST GOD WAS MANIFEST IN THE FLESH. Belief in the essential Deity of Jesus Christ is cardinal to our whole position as Baptist.

We believe that no true conception of God can, by natural processes, be evolved out of a man's own consciousness; that we cannot ourselves, imagine a true picture of God; that unaided human reason cannot discover God. And, therefore, we hold that a man's attitude toward God and his relation to his fellows cannot rightly be determined by his own conception of what God is, and of what He requires of us; but, on the contrary, that any true knowledge of God must be derived from what god reveals of Himself.

Therefore, fundamentally, Baptists are not rationalists, but revolutionists. All that we know of God and all that we teach of Him is derived, not from what human reason has discovered, but from what divine revelation has disclosed. And we believe that all earlier and lesser revelation of God is comprehended in the full and final revelation of God in Christ: "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down of the right hand of the Majesty on high; being made so much better than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they."

I have sometimes thought that we need a Rescue Mission for fallen words; for words, like persons, do not always honour either their birthplace or their parentage, but go astray, to walk in the counsel of the ungodly, and stand in the way of sinners, and sit in the seat of the scornful; with the inevitable result, that, like persons, they lose their proper influence and power. It then becomes necessary, either to turn them aside to some Jericho, where, like David's men, they may recover from the debasement resulting from contact with the enemy; or, otherwise, such words need to be reclothed with ampler definitions.

The word "divinity" has lost much of its original strength of meaning. It is no longer sufficient for us to say we believe in the divinity of Christ; for there are those who say that, who also say they believe in the divinity of all men. We hold that God was in Christ as He never was in any other man; that He was begotten of the Holy Ghost and born of a virgin as no other man was ever born. We believe in the essential Deity of Christ, as the Eternal Son, Who was with the Father before the world was; as the second Person in the Holy Trinity Who, with the Father, and the Holy Spirit, is one God. And we worship Him, as "the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature; for by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers; all things were created by him, and for him; and he is before all things, and by him all things consist."

Therefore, we set the Lord Jesus Christ in the centre as the Incarnate God in Whom "dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily."

As Baptists, we readily accord to others that liberty of thought that we demand ourselves. But though we deny the right of the magistrate or anyone else to fetter another's conscience, we do not, therefore, bind ourselves to have fellowship with principles against which our own consciences revolt. While refusing to compel, we may with equal justice refuse to concur. There are some things that are vital to true Christian faith; and one of them is this: a settled conviction of the essential Deity of Jesus Christ. We can have no fellowship with anyone who denies the Godhead of Jesus. I believe I speak for the Baptists of this Convention when I say that there is absolutely no room among us for anything that saviours of Unitarianism. Jesus Christ is to us "the only wise God our Saviour, to whom be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen.

But what are the implication of this position? Our attitude toward Christ will determine our attitude toward many other things indeed; it will determine our attitude toward everything, toward God above us, and man about us; toward "the life that now is" and "that, which is to come."