idea of God as contained in our reason. The triune God is1. Absolute Life, the impulse of whose development is an act of will; in Him existence and will, necessity and freedom, interpenetrate each other. This Life is unfolded within the Divine Being without counteraction from the world; it is selffilled and self-consummated. But being such, it cannot be otherwise conceived than as a life of love. Hence the triune God is 2. Absolute Love. The object of this love cannot be the world, since, then, God would not be love in Himself,— but only His alter ego, the Son; whereas the Holy Ghost consummates the mutual relationship between the Father and the Son, as it were, in a perfect circle of divine love. But both these conceptions of life and love point only to the personality of the Father and the Son, not to that of the Holy Ghost. Hence, finally, the triune God must be conceived of-3. As Absolute Organism, which unites in itself the essential characteristics of nature (substantial objectivity without self-consciousness) and spirit (self-consciousness without substantial objectivity). As the highest identity, it must combine these two factors, which in the world are separated; the latter raises it above created nature, the former above created spirit, 30 that it embraces both.-Delitzsch, Apologetik, p. 277 et ss.

Whatever objections may be raised against the force of such arguments, especially as regards the personality of the Spirit, yet thus much, at least, is clear and certain: Because God is love, therefore there must be distinctions in Him, which, however, by love are again brought into unity. The object of this (intra-divine) love can be nothing less important than God Himself, else this love would not be fully justified; nor can it be anything outside of God, else God's intrinsic nature would not be love. For both reasons this object cannot be the transitory world, but only the eternal Son, who is of the same essence with the Father. How this love preserves its equilibrium, or its unselfishness and purity through the Holy Ghost as the third Person, this must remain to us a mystery so long as the spirit of selfishness and sin is not overcome, and hinders even our self-knowledge, to say nothing of our knowledge of God, which is brought about by the surrender of ourselves to Him. The practical gist of this doctrine is simply this, to proclaim that God is eternal and perfect love, and that the

historical revelation of His love in Christ corresponds to His eternal essence, in whose everlasting self-distinction and self-comprehension into unity the divine life is changelessly

evolved.

(d) Another and more obvious series of collateral supports for the doctrine of the Trinity, may be found in a consideration of His image as reflected in our own human nature, and in creation generally. For if God be indeed Trinity in Unity, then there is every reason to suppose that the works of His hands should, in some degree at least, reflect His nature, and especially that man, who is created in the image of God should evince in His nature certain analogies which indicate a triune Creator.

And what an abundance of such indications meets our eye, so long as we do not forget that we cannot expect to find within the limits of created life analogies perfectly corresponding with that which is incomparable and unique! Christian thinkers, even in olden times, discovered traces of the Trinity in the life of the human spirit; and hence Augustine and others speak of a human trinity, consisting in the threefold function of feeling, thought, and will. And, indeed, these principal faculties of the spirit present us, as it were, with a threefold cord, the threads of which are distinct and yet one, and they give us some idea of the united and harmonious co-operation of the three Divine Persons. No single one of these three functions of feeling, thought, and will can be exercised without the simultaneous activity of the others. "Thus the spiritual life of man is, in fact, always a multiplicity of intermingling actions. In this intermingled action I see a picture of the threefold divine life, showing how every vital act of one Person calls forth and is necessarily accompanied by a corresponding act of both the others; so that the vital movements of any one Person posit those of the others" (Gess), just as we have seen in the work of creation, redemption, and sanctification. But just as with the soul, its three functions may be distinguished, but not separated, so, too, in the case of the three Persons who form the one Divine Being.

In like manner, the process of our thought will explain to us in some degree the pre-existence of the Son as the Logos or Word of the Father. In our human consciousness a certain

thought always simultaneously produces the corresponding word; we can only think in conceptions and words, for our thought is inward speech. So, too, God's thought of Himself necessitates the utterance of the Word which represents this primal Thought; but the divine utterance is at the same time a real act, and hence this inner Word in God is a Being equal to Him. True, in our human self-consciousness we do not, by conceiving ourselves, produce a second self; we all the time have only one ego. But we are only creatures, not the

creative source of life; and even our human consciousness is still imperfect. But the case is different with God, who is the eternal and almighty source of life and power. His selfconsciousness is absolutely perfect, and hence the intellectual image of Himself, which He has conceived, may become a real substantial antitype of the Father. In any case, we have an analogy to the Trinity in the thought, its product the word, and the unity of both, the spirit. In addition to this argument for the personality of the Divine Word as drawn from our intellectual consciousness, we find that a similar argument for the personality of the Spirit may be drawn from our religious consciousness. Faith tells us that the Spirit is giving us true personality in the sight of God, and that without Him we cannot in any way attain to full, firm, Godlike personality. But, as we have already remarked, that which tends to promote true personality cannot in itself be impersonal.

Moreover, let us remember that the fundamental form of all syntax, which governs our thought and our speech, is a triplicity which contains a unity, or a unity which developes into triplicity. For every sentence consists of subject, predicate, and copula three parts, which together express one thought. Indeed, every conception "has something of the trinity," since in it is the union of subject and predicate, which does away with their distinction. The fundamental schema of all spiritual development is always position, contraposition, higher unity of both (thesis, antithesis, synthesis). Everywhere three is the fundamental number of the self-reverting process.

As in the human spirit, so, too, in the outward world of nature, there are certain indications and reflections of the Trinity. This truth is not only revealed in Scripture, and confirmed by history and intellectual speculation, but it is, so to speak,

omnipresent throughout the world. We constantly see one life in various members; in each one it acts in a special manner, yet in all it is one and the same. In the one sun we see light and warmth as different, and yet intermingling and co-operating forces. We have the one space divided into three dimensions of length, breadth, and height; time, similarly, into past, present, and future; all bodies into solid, liquid, and gaseous. In analogy with the three parts required to form a sentence, we find that the kingdom of sound is governed by the triad, as the basis of all chords; nor does this destroy the original unity of the key-note, but, on the contrary, makes it an organized unity embracing multiplicity.

What remark

able analogies are shown by the laws of colour and of light! The three fundamental colours, red, yellow, and blue, dissolve into the unity of white light, so that an English naturalist (C. Woodward) might well call this white light a trinity in unity. But they coalesce in such a manner, "that each of the three rays preserves its distinctive attribute. Red is the caloric, yellow the luminous, blue the chemical (actinic) ray." God

1 Cf. C. Woodward, Familiar Introduction to the Study of Light. If it is permissible to follow this analogy out further, we should say that the caloric ray evidently corresponds to the Father, the warm Source of life; the luminous ray to the Son, the Light of the world; and the chemical ray to the Spirit, which pierces into the innermost recesses of the heart, and imbues it with peculiar qualities and forces. One of the instances given by Woodward is very suggestive. Some plants (cucumbers and melons) were put under a glass which was so coloured as to absorb the blue (chemical) rays of light. The consequence was, that the plants grew with the greatest rapidity, and put forth luxuriant blossoms, but just as quickly they faded away again, without bringing fruit. Does not this look like a physical reflection of the Christian precept, "Quench not the Spirit," because without Him no real fruit can ripen? (1 Thess. v. 19; Gal. v. 22.) How mightily did men multiply before the flood! but because they utterly withdrew themselves from the influence of the Spirit, they only ripened, without fruit, for a sudden death. True, from a strictly scientific point of view, we cannot attach much weight to such theosophical indications. Yet thus much we may affirm respecting certain fundamental principles (such as light, life, etc.) which occur in the region of intellect, physics, and morals,that in them the whole enigma of the world and its history lies hid, and that by means of them we must endeavour to ascend from our discursive rational knowledge to a central intuition of the ultimate and universal Cause of all being. The man who has no presentiment of this is incapable of entering into any profound speculative philosophy. In this there lies a clue to the temple of knowledge, lost to man since his banishment from paradise, but of which scattered fragments at least may be found. To collect these, is the ultimate task of all

science.

is Light; and, verily, natural light, the first of His creatures, bears the immediate impress of His triune Being!

No less does the number three govern the arrangement of Nature's forces; whether we adopt the classification of Ohm,1 who divides the fundamental forces into those of "attraction, tension, and polarity," or the more general enumeration, attraction, repulsion, equilibrium. The whole of nature is ruled by the law of polarity, with its two magnetic poles and their equipoise. Positive and negative electricity are balanced by the electric spark. The entire development of the vegetable world takes place in a process of three degrees. First, the self-enclosed potential unity (seed, germinal cell, root), then the self-development into multiplicity (inward dilation and ramification of the germ, stem), and, finally, conclusion of the multiplicity in organized unity (leaf, fruit, return to the seed and germinal cell).

Is not the eternal Origin of life visible in all these things in a thousand pictures? Were we not right in saying that the idea of the Trinity was omnipresent? Not only do we bear it in our own spirit as the ruling law of all its vital functions; not only do we see it shine forth in the religions of all nations as a dark presentiment common to all: Nature herself reflects this truth "as in a thousand mirrors; everywhere we hear its harmony, we see its brightness, and feel it looking at us through a thousand eyes" (Delitzsch, ubi sup. pp. 282-286).

(e) No wonder that philosophy too-and that not only the old mystic theosophical speculation, but also modern idealism, with all the acuteness of its dialectics-has taken up the idea of a triune God, and endeavoured to comprehend and to prove it. True, they have often ended in proving the truth of an utterance once made by a profound divine in respect of the doctrine of the Trinity, and which I would beg my readers to lay to heart." If we go too deeply, and yet not deeply enough. into this matter, we shall be blinded by this sun." They have also confirmed our remarks as to the achievements of independent reason, which, with haughty self-sufficiency, despises the light of revelation, and therefore can attain to no sure and positive results. But still their efforts show us that modern philosophy (from Jacob Böhme onwards) feels that this doctrine is the true Die Dreieinigkeit der Kraft, Nurnberg, 1856.