mind, the better to reflect or image surrounding objective realities. Deficiency of perceptive power causes the phenomena of theological obstacles in the Bible; and because safe and proper conditions of mental attributes have been lost by accepting and assimilating inherited prepossessions of theological tradition, comprehension is clear only so long as the surface of the mental mirror is clear; wrong impressions and distorted images must be obliterated, before a clear light can be thrown off from the reflecting mirror of the mind. A dull reflector is not in a condition to exhibit a clear, bright, sharply-defined outline. Thus comprehension necessitates an unbiassed or undefiled mental sensorium, and theological prejudices have the unfortunate effect of clouding the perceptive and reflective powers of the mind. As witness the following candid confession of Dr. Cumming at page 98. He says:

"The Holy Spirit is a person, a divine person. We "believe that the Father is God, that the Son is God, and "the Holy Spirit is God. If we are asked to explain this, "I answer I cannot. If it be asked do we comprehend it?

"I answer no."

Again, at page 112:

"The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy "Ghost is God, and yet there is but one God. Do you ask "me to explain how there can be three, and yet only one? "I cannot, and the more I look at it the less I comprehend "it; but does that prove that the Bible is wrong."

The difficulty with this lecturer is simply the fact that he uses the word "God" without comprehending the precise meaning of the term, that is, in its relation to his own individuality or materialized personality. It is true that the Bible states that the Holy Spirit is God, and that there is a relationship of Father to Son, in which relationship alone has there been given any revelation of the personality of God; but the Bible says nothing about three departments, or existences, or persons in God. A person necessarily implies the existence of a material organization, and the absolute Father is nowhere revealed as being such a person.

THE PERSONALITY OF DEITY.

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The Bible asserts that there can be no revelation of the Father, or of the absolute, except by, and in, and through the NEGATIVE, or material personality of the Son. Father and Son then are not two persons, but the mutual relationship of two modes of eternal and absolute self-existence in one homogeneous personality. Theologians make Father and Son two persons or beings, in defiance of the biblical statement that Father and Son are one in personality; that is to say, as above explained, this one personality combines the duality of two eternal self-existent modes of being.

The sacerdotal hypothesis of the Trinity asserts in words, but denies both in reality and active duty, the essential unity of Deity. Anything that is urged against the theological misconcept of a triangularly-existing Deity is styled infidelity, pantheism, materialism, or atheism, in fact exhaustion of clerical vocabularies alone limits the forms for pronouncing sacerdotal damnation. As for the charge of pantheism, let anyone carefully ponder this statement. " I "(the Son) in them" (brothers,) and then, "that they in me (the sons, my brothers) may be ONE (in us) as we, (we "two, Father and Son) are one" (not two in personality.) So that instead of there being three persons, or three existences in one God, there are countless millions of personal sons in one God.

The declaration of Jesus to John in the Apocalypse, as the angel of the Lord, was plain enough, he says:—

I am of thy brethren the prophets, the testimony that I have is the spirit of prophecy, uniting the children in one universal Father; and whenever he spoke of his Father, it was as Our Father, not as my particular Father, ex. gr. I go to my Father, and to prevent any error he adds, and to your Father; I go to my God, and to your God; so that he ignores the profitless theological distinction between degrees and shades of metaphysical meanings, in reference to the children's mutual relationship to the great paternal generator of life that has impregnated the material universe.

If the priestly trigonometrical survey of Deity, as stereotyped in geometrical definitions in creeds had been positively

true, something more than implied, supposed, or suggested teaching would have been discovered in the Hebrew Scriptures. If there were no other contradictions evident in sacerdotalism besides this of the trinity in unity, it might be fair to allow the priests some virile power in logical argument to beget children by conviction, but it is far otherwise; and here in this great tribulatory effusion of a mighty trinitarian champion, there are to be found contradictory statements of the grossest kind, both expressed and implied, upon every third or fourth page, and not only is this the case, but the lecturer is obliged to confess the miserable fact, that the more he reads his Bible the less he comprehends its statements. And yet he is bold enough to challenge any and every antagonist to mortal combat, but by way of friendly caution he thinks it advisable to proclaim the fact, that he and his admirers or followers, have on their side the majority of all the saints. The minority may go to the devil, at least he asserts at page 273, that Satan has this lot already; we are told, "The minority is on Satan's side." But in addition to this, Dr. Cumming has the comfortable assurance, derived from some peculiar medium only known to himself, that he is supported by, whom does the reader think? At page 273 his friends are thus enumerated, "All the angels in heaven agree with us, all the saints in glory, all the goodly fellowship of the prophets, the noble army of martyrs, the glorious company of the apostles agree with us."

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Now an ordinary man might not, perhaps, fear to tilt a lance against a theologian, who preaches from a book that he candidly confesses he comprehends less and less the more he peruses it; but he would certainly shrink from running a muck against the angels in beaven. To attack Dr. Cumming solus might not be a very perilous feat, but to march against him when flanked by all the saints in glory on one side, the goodly fellowship of the prophets on the other, backed by the noble army of martyrs, with the glorious company of the apostles in reserve, would be a Quixotic and perilous adventure.

Dr. Cumming echoes the cuckoo cry of popular misappre

FRUITLESS SEARCH FOR THE ORIGIN OF SIN. 205

hension respecting the teaching of Carlyle and Emerson, whom he calls pantheists. But he does not define what he means by the term pantheism, for like most expressions this term has a very different meaning in theology to what it bears in secular language. For instance the lecturer sees no pantheism in the lies and jugglery of the spiritualists, in their table-rapping impostures, because he says he cannot see any evil spirit prompting the men; but he succeeds (page 67) in discovering a real, living, theologically evil spirit in the rival Roman church, and states that if Pio Nono were able to raise the dead he would say to him, "get thou behind me "Satan." Well, well, but raising the dead would be doing God's work. The power of Satan is that of decay and death, and a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. Dr. Cumming has raised his own devil, so he must get the "bogy" laid again as best he can.

When Dr. Cumming goes steeple chasing upon that wonderful hobby horse of sacerdotalism, the origin of theological evil, he shies at his fences worse than usual. At page 226 the question is asked,—

"May not there be something in sin that we have never "fathomed, do not yet know?"

"We have never fathomed!" He should have said "theolo"gians have never fathomed," for how can they expect to make proper soundings when they have never yet solved the riddle of the bottomless pit? As for the origin of theological sin and its fathomless abyss; fortune be good to the poor mudlarks who have made it their business to engage in the hopeless and thankless task of rummaging that profundity of nastinesss; as profitless an undertaking as Mrs. White's dragging operations in the Thames, in search of the body of her poor, dear, departed, and lost husband. The wretched

female hails with joy the faintest hope:

Ven she, vith expectation big,

Thought Vite vos found; but 'tvas his vig.

At page 113 the lecturer "pops" another soft question,"How is it, I ask, that we find sin rampant here, sickness

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"there, pestilence everywhere? You answer, and you answer very properly. It is SIN (theological evil?) that explains "all."

"So it does; but this solution only sends us further back. Why is sin? If God be omnipotent why did he not prevent "the intrusion of it? If God be omnipotent now, why does "he not crush it?"

It is very odd that it never occurred to the lecturer to weigh the statement in the Bible that Deity is of purer eyes than to behold sacerdotal evil. The Hebrew scriptures ignore all theological sin; they speak indeed of evil, but it is limited to the phenomena of troubles, disasters, and ills of mortal or human life. Thus Job speaks of it, and asks, "shall I not "take evil from God, as I have taken good?" His comforters wished to persuade him to acknowledge the theology of divine vengeance for evil, as well as reward for good; but Job refused to swallow their quack medicine, and told them bluntly that there was no more flavour in their theistic twaddle than in the white of an egg, and that their preaching needed the salt of logical sense to make it palatable.

Dr. Cumming asks if God be omnipotent why does he not crush evil?

The messenger or angel of the Lord has promised that the head of sacerdotal theism shall be crushed, vide Gen. ii. The way to crush theological evil is to bruise and damage the power of priestcraft that generates the concept of the existence of theological evil in the human mind.

Dr. Cumming answers his own queries respecting Deity's omnipotence by practically denying its existence; for at page 255 he asks what divine omnipotence is, and the answer given is actually the reverse of Mr. Aminadab Sleek's idea of muscular Christianity. Mr. Sleek, true to the theological separation of omnipotence into two forces, when he is called upon to support his fainting patroness, replies, "Morally I "would, but physically I am unable." Dr. Cumming's definition of Deity's omnipotence is this, viz., that it is power to do anything physical that does not contradict moral force (he means theological force). Again he asserts that