to definite persons, it must be remembered that the vengeance of God on obstinate sinners is an act as necessary to His justice as wholesome for the consummation of the divine kingdom. Hence, even in the New Testament there are passages in which a curse is pronounced on irreclaimable enemies of God, and divine punishment is invoked upon them (Matt. xi. 20 ff., xxiii. 13 ff.; Acts viii. 20, xxiii. 3).

But at the same time we must acknowledge the imperfection of the Old Testament standpoint occupied by the sacred poets. The lively impatience of their longing for divine judgments on their enemies probably arose, in part, from a feeling of human weakness unable to cope with tribulation, and which is therefore in Rev. vi. 10, 11 exhorted to wait patiently. At that time, moreover, a dark veil permitted but dim glimpses of eternity, with heaven and hell; so that denunciations such as those in Ps. lxix. 28 could not have been understood by the poet in all their infinite depth. And finally, there had not yet been accomplished that world-embracing scheme of redemption ordained by divine love, from which alone could flow the love that would fain help all men, even her enemies. Hence the spirit of the New Covenant is in this respect a relatively different and a higher spirit. Not only were such. utterances as sprang from the language and spirit of Sinai unsuited for the lips of Jesus, the meek Lamb of God, but even His disciples are not to emulate the spirit of wrath which inspired Elias (Luke ix. 54 et ss.), and which sometimes actuates the utterances of David (Ps. cix.). They are not permitted to wish that even their deadliest enemies should be everlastingly lost. Therefore when, in exceptional cases, the holy zeal of the New Testament seems to touch upon that of the Old, there is this barrier between them, that the anathemas of the apostles apply only to the correction and temporal expulsion of enemies from the community, and not to their everlasting perdition (Acts viii. 22, cf. with ver. 20; 1 Cor. xvi. 22; Gal. i. 9, v. 12; 2 Tim. iv. 14). No one who believes in the necessity of a gradually progressive revelation can take offence at the form in which Old Testament piety occasionally presents itself to us, a form which is incomplete enough when viewed from a Christian standpoint, although justifiable at its own peculiar stage. Indeed, it has

been asserted, not without justice, that these psalms contain a very wholesome antidote against the mawkish religious sentimentality of our own days, which, in the case of many, is the chief source of all these difficulties, since they are alike incapable either of fervent love to that which is good, and of holy ardent hatred against that which is evil.

Having thus endeavoured to vindicate before the forum of modern consciousness the eternal truth of the general conception of God-that is, of His personality and special providence

-as laid down in the Bible, we still feel that we have only accomplished the easier portion of our task. For the number of those who reject the general system of biblical Theism is, on the whole-and probably among my readers also-far less than that of those who entertain doubts as to the specific Christian, that is, the Trinitarian, conception of God. Now, therefore, we must give a closer consideration to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. The subject, however, is so wide a one, that in respect of many questions which converge in this central point, we shall not be able to give more than mere hints, which may tend to remove the manifold offences that attach to this doctrine in particular.

II.

-THE TRINITARIAN CONCEPTION OF THE DIVINE NATURE.

The doctrine of the Trinity set forth in its simplest form in the Apostles' (and Nicene) Creed, may be assumed as universally known. The so-called Apostles' Creed is, of course, not strictly speaking of apostolic authorship. Founded on our Lord's own baptismal formula (Matt. xxviii. 19), it grew by degrees into its present shape in the midst of the controversies of the first centuries of primitive Christianity. In accordance with this its origin, this Creed presents the doctrine of the Trinity in the simple form of a confession of personal faith in God the Father, in Jesus Christ His onlybegotten Son, and in the Holy Spirit. But in the so-called Creed of St. Athanasius, which, in addition to the Apostles' and Nicene, is generally received in all divisions, Protestant as well as Roman Catholic, of the Western Church, we have the doctrine of the Trinity as formulated in the school of St.

"The Catholic

Augustine in a much more developed shape. faith," according to this formula, “is, that we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the Persons nor dividing the substance." The Persons, it proceeds to teach, are different, the substance one. Each of these divine Persons is uncreate, each is eternal, each almighty, etc. And yet there are not three Almighties or three Eternals, but one Almighty and one Eternal, etc.; and not three Gods or three Lords, but one Lord and one God. The Father is uncreate and unbegotten; the Son uncreate, but begotten of the Father; the Holy Ghost uncreate, but proceeding from the Father and the Son. And in this Trinity of divine Persons there is none before and none after, none higher and none less, but all three co-equal, etc.

This the faith of the Church universal, in respect to the divine nature, is regarded by many in the present day as an "Aberglaube," i.e. an "ultra-faith" or superstition; while others, without directly impugning the doctrine of the Trinity per se, regard this particular form in which it is enshrined as of doubtful validity, and some of its definitions as objectionable; whereas the Athanasian Creed itself declares with the utmost stringency, that "he who would be saved must thus think of the Trinity," and, indeed, rightly insists upon the doctrine as the necessary foundation of all Christian teaching. We will now, taking the definitions of this symbol as our starting-point, inquire as to the scriptural character of the doctrine thus formulated, and, faithful to our general principle, will endeavour frankly to acknowledge and concede where concession and acknowledgment may seem right and

necessary.

And our first confession is this: That the scientific theology of the present day, and, indeed, that branch of it which most closely adheres to the teaching of Holy Scripture, professes to find (and not, I think, without some reason) sundry defects in the Athanasian definitions. The more closely one examines into what the Bible itself teaches concerning the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the more readily will he acknowledge that true and precious as the nucleus of its doctrine remains, there are nevertheless some points in the teaching of this Creed, concerning the relations of the divine

Persons, which are not in full accord with that of Scripture. And still less do they satisfy the questions and requirements of speculative theology. We confess with Nitzsch, that while the received doctrine of the Church enshrines the inestimable treasure of the truth itself, it does not always put it in a form acceptable or satisfactory to the philosophical inquirer. There is in the Athanasian formula, for instance, much that is hard and unnecessarily offensive, and even provocative of doubt and objection; nor can we be surprised if such objections are continually cropping up and appearing on the surface throughout the chequered course of Church History.

The Athanasian Creed is evidently too stiffly arithmetical in some of its definitions and antitheses, without attempt to reconcile their obvious contradictions. Thus each divine Person is said to be eternal, each uncreate, etc., and yet there are not three Eternals nor three uncreate, but one uncreate and one Eternal, etc. To these statements the objection is obvious, that they either destroy the Unity for the sake of the Trinity, or the Trinity in the interest of the Unity; nor is it quite easy with the doctrine so stated to rebut the charge alleged, not by Jews and Mahometans only, but also by many Christians, that Trinitarianism contradicts the fundamental article of all true religion, that there is only One living and true God. Hence the numerous attempts in ancient and modern times to remove this stumbling-block of the understanding, now in one way, now in another, attempts in which the Trinity' was naturally more frequently sacrificed than the Unity; as, for instance, by Socinians and Unitarians since the Reformation, who argue that inasmuch as Monotheism is evidently the fundamental doctrine of the Bible, it cannot teach the divinity of our Lord, and that Christ must be therefore a mere man, and the Holy Spirit merely a divine influence. Hence also the similar objections of modern Rationalism, that it contradicts the laws of thought, that a part should be equal to the whole, or a whole to its several parts,-that, for instance, 1=3,-an objection the superficial character of which is obvious, and the answer to it easy. Mathematical axioms are out of place in metaphysical and ethical inquiries Our minds must be carried into a higher sphere. Mathematically speaking, no doubt two persons are distinct entities. But of the persons of the Trinity,

the Church has always taught their unity of substance and their absolute inseparability, and so lifted up the whole question into a region of transcendent thought and feeling, of which mathematical science is wholly ignorant. We must not confound the respective spheres.

The Church herself, however, is not quite free from blame in this respect, on account of the arithmetical character of some parts of her chief formulary. The objections stirred by these might have been avoided by anticipation, had a firm hold been taken from the first of the truth indicated by the Hebrew form of the divine name ELOHIM (as will be more fully shown presently), that in God unity and plurality consist as correlatives which mutually require one another; that, as we have already indicated, it is the essential characteristic of the true doctrine of the divine nature, in contradistinction to Polytheism on the one hand, and an abstract Monotheism on the other, that both elements of true Being, unicity and multiplicity, do in God meet and interpenetrate one another in a perfectly unique and transcendental way.

But now to come to the doctrine itself, and its basis in Holy Scripture. You are all aware that no such sentence as God is a triune God is to be found in the Bible. The wellknown text, 1 John v. 7, There are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one, is now universally recognised as an interpolation. The terms trinity, triunity, threefold personality, and even the word person itself, are not derived immediately from Scripture. It fares with these as with all attempts to express human conceptions concerning the Divine and Infinite-they are but imperfect, inadequate expressions which we accept and use for the want of better. The very term persons has something objectionable in it, suggesting at first the notion of distinct and separate individualities, which is perfectly inapplicable to the consubstantial, and therefore inseparable, hypostases of which the Bible speaks as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Our Church formularies are undoubtedly right in laying stress on the unity of substance in these divine Persons; but it may be questioned whether they are also right in seeming to speak of the divine substance as if it were, in the first