(b.) The second answer to the question is, "We mean, by Persons, three Persons, like Peter, James, and John." According to this answer, the Trinity remains, but the Unity disappears. This answer leaves the Persons distinct, but the Unity indistinct. The Persons are not confounded; but the essence is divided. The Tri-personality is maintained, but at the expense of the Unity. In fact, this answer gives us Tritheism, or three Gods, whose unity is only an entire agreement of feeling and action. But this answer we may set aside as unorthodox, no less than unscriptural.

(c.) Having thus disposed of each other possible answer, there remains only that which makes of the three Persons three revelations or manifestations of God, or representations of God. This answer avoids all the difficulties. It avoids that of contradiction; as we do not say that God is one in the same sense in which he is three, but in a different sense. It avoids the objection of obscurity; for it is a distinct statement. It avoids the objection of Tritheism; for it leaves the Unity untouched. Moreover, it is a real Trinity, and not merely nominal. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are not merely three different names for the same thing, but they indicate three different revelations, three different views which God has given of his character, which, taken together, constitute the total divine representation. It remains, therefore, simply to ask, Is this view a true one? Is there any foundation for it in Scripture, in reason, and in Christian consciousness, the three sources of our knowledge of the truth?

§ 4. The Trinity of Manifestations founded in the Truth of Things. We repeat, that this view is an Orthodox view of the Trinity, according to the teaching of the greatest fathers of the Church. If we suppose that the Deity has made, and is evermore making, three distinct and independent revelations of himself, - each revelation giving a different view of the divine Being, each revelation showing God to man under

a different aspect, then each of these is a personal manifestation. Each reveals God as a Person. If we see God, for example, in nature, we see him not merely as a power, a supreme cause, but also a living Person, who creates evermore out of a fulness of divine wisdom and love. God in nature is, then, a Person. Again: if God reveals himself in Christ, it is not as abstract truth or as doctrinal statement. But we see God himself, the personal God, the Father and Friend, the redeeming grace, the God who loved us before the foundation of the world, approaching us in Christ to reconcile us and save us. It is a God who "so loved the world" that we see in Christ, therefore, a Person. And so the Spirit, which speaks in the human conscience and human heart, is not a mere influence, or rapture, or movement, but is one who communes with us; one who talks with us; one who comforts us; one who hears and answers us; therefore a Person.

If, then, there is no antecedent objection to this form of the Trinity as a threefold manifestation of the divine Being, we have only to ask, Is it true as a matter of fact? Has such a threefold manifestation of God actually taken place? We reply, that it is so. According to Scripture, observation, and experience, we find such to be the fact. Scripture shows us God, the Father, as the source of all being, the fountain and end of all things; from whom all things have come, and to whom all things tend. As the Creator, he reveals himself in nature and providence (as the apostle Paul declares), "being understood by the things that are made," and "not leaving himself without a witness."

Supreme power, wisdom, and goodness are manifested in nature as unchanging law, as perfect order. But God is seen in Christ again as Redeemer, as meeting the exigencies arising from the freedom of the creature by what we call miracle; not contrary to nature, but different from nature, showing himself as the Friend and Helper of the soul. As

the essence of the first revelation of God is the sight of his goodness, and wisdom, and power, displayed in law, so the essence of the second revelation is of the same essential Being displaying himself as love. In the first revelation, he is the universal Parent; in the second, he is the personal Friend. But there is a third revelation which God makes of himself, within the soul as life. The same power, wisdom, and goodness which we see displayed externally in outward nature, we find manifested internally in the soul itself, as its natural and its spiritual life. That which is displayed outwardly as power is manifested within the soul as cause; that which is manifested outwardly as wisdom is revealed inwardly as reason; and that which is manifested outwardly as goodness is manifested inwardly as conscience, or the law of right.

§ 5. It is in Harmony with Scripture. - The Scriptures also speak of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. When they speak of the Father, they usually mean God as the Supreme Being. Matt. 11: 25: "Jesus said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth." As omniscient: "Of that day knoweth no man, nor the angels, nor the Son, but the Father only." As omnipotent: "Abba, Father, all things are possible to thee." As having life in himself, and as spirit: "They shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth." As the source of all power, life, and authority of the Son: "I came forth of the Father;" "the Father, which hath sent me;""the works which the Father hath given me to do." The apostle Paul says, "To us there is but one God, the Father;" and calls him "the God of our Lord Jesus s;" also "the one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in us all." The great order of the universe depends on him: "He has put the times, and the seasons in his own power." Christ will at last "deliver up the kingdom to God, the Father." By Christ, "we have access in one spirit to the Father." "All things were

delivered" to Christ "of his Father," whose will Christ always sought. Thus is the Father spoken of in the New Testament as the Source from which all things have proceeded, and the End to whom all things tend.

The Son (or Son of God) is spoken of in the New Testament as distinct from the Father, but intimately united with him. The Father gives power; then receives it. The Father gives light; the Son receives it. The Son does nothing but what he seeth the Father do. "The Father hath sent me," he says, "and I live by the Father." "I am not alone; but I, and the Father who sent me." "The Son is in the Father, and the Father in him." "No man cometh to the Father but by" him. He shows the Father to the world.. The Father is glorified in the Son. He is in the bosom of the Father. The Father sent him to be the Saviour of the world. "He that hath the Son " "And in him is everlasting life."

hath life;

The Holy Spirit, which came after Jesus left the world (also called the Holy Ghost and the Spirit of God), is an inward revelation of God and of Christ. It teaches all things, comforts, convinces. It is a spirit of life, lifts ore above the flesh, makes one feel that he is a Son of God, communicates a variety of gifts, produces unity in the Church, sanctifies, sheds the love of God into the heart, and renews the soul. The New Testament speaks of joy in the Holy Ghost, power of the Holy Ghost, and communion of the Holy Ghost.

According to the New Testament, the Father would seem to be the Source of all things, the Creator, the Fountain of being and of life. The Son is spoken of as the manifestation of that Being in Jesus Christ; and the Holy Ghost is spoken of as a spiritual influence, proceeding from the Father and the Son, dwelling in the hearts of believers, as the source of their life, the idea of God seen in causation, in reason, and in conscience, as making the very life of the soul itself.

There are these three revelations of God, and we know of no others. They are distinct from each other in form, but the same in essence. They are not merely three names for the same thing; but they are real personal manifestations of God, real subsistences, since he is personally present in all of them. This view avoids all heresies, since it neither "divides the substance" nor "confounds the persons." And these are really the two heresies, which are the most common and the most to be avoided. We think it can be easily shown that these are the great practical dangers to be avoided. To "divide the substance" is so to separate the revelations of God as to make them contradict or oppose each other: to "confound the persons" is not to recognize each as an independent source of truth to the soul.

§ 6. Practical value of the Trinity, when rightly understood. There is, therefore, an essential truth hidden in the idea of the Trinity. While the Church doctrine, in every form which it has hitherto taken, has failed to satisfy the human intellect, the Christian heart has clung to the substance contained in them all. Let us endeavor to see what is the practical value of this doctrine, for the sake of which its errors of statement have been pardoned. What does it say to the Christian consciousness?

The Trinity, truly apprehended, teaches, by its doctrine of Tri-personality, that God is immanent in nature, in Christ, and in the soul. It teaches that God is not outside of the world, making it as an artisan makes a machine; nor outside of Christ, sending him, and giving to him miraculous powers; nor outside of the soul, touching it ab extra from time to time with unnatural influences, revolutionizing and overturning it; but that he is personally present in each and all. So that, when we study the mysteries and laws of nature, we are drawing near to God himself, and looking into his face. When we see Christ, we see God, who is in Christ; and when we look into the solemn intuitions of our soul, the