have an immeasurable whereabouts (immensum ubi, as the Schoolmen express it), so that wherever one Person is, there the other two exist; in other words, they are all everywhere." He adds a few words which we transcribe as applying to all this subject: "This circumincessio (indwelling in each other) of the Divine Persons is a very great mystery, which we ought rather religiously to adore than curiously to pry into. No similitude can be devised which shall be in every respect apt to illustrate it; no language avails worthily to set it forth, seeing that it is an union which far transcends all other unions."

We must note that the phrase "only begotten," applied to the Divine Son, and "proceeding," applied to the Holy Spirit, are not so applied in view of their relations to mankind to the incarnation of the Son and the outpouring of the Spirit on the Church—but are proper to their eternal relations with the Father. What, does it mean to say the Son was "begotten" of the Father, and the Holy Spirit “proceeding” from the Father and the Son? We answer, God in speaking of heavenly things in our human language, which does not supply terms properly representing them, is pleased to use human ideas in order to help us to some apprehension of heavenly things so far as our limited mind can grasp them. As He speaks of His all-seeing eye to represent His omniscience, and His right hand to represent the operation of His power; and of His anger and His love to express the antipathy and sympathy of His nature with what is sinful or what is good; so in speaking of the “ only begotten" Son He is using similar language of accommodation. We know what is the relation of a father to his child and of a child to his father; the child deriving his existence from his father, inherits the nature of his father, is the image of his father. So in the blessed Trinity the Father is the head and fountain of Deity, from whom the Son is derived;

the Son receives His being from the Father, possesses the nature of the Father, "very God of very God," and is "the brightness of the Glory and the express image" of the Father.

Since the Son is begotten of the Father, and the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son, does it not follow that the Son and the Holy Ghost are inferior to the Father? No; the subordination of the Son does not imply inequality of nature. But must not the "begotten Son" have had a beginning? No; the eternity of the Son and of the Holy Ghost is established independently by many passages of Holy Scripture. Generation applied to the Son, and procession applied to the Holy Ghost are totally different from creation. The generation and procession spoken of are not transactions which have taken place in time. God the Father was always God the Father from all eternity, and the eternity of the Father implies an eternal Son. There can be no change in the Being of God. If now there is a trinity in the unity of the Divine Being, there must have been so always. "He is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." Both words are contained in Holy Scripture. "Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee" (Ps. ii. 7). "We beheld His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth" (John i. 14). "The Spirit of truth which proceedeth from the Father" (John xv. 26); and we adhere to these words as the Divinely-taught expression of these ineffable mysteries.

Various illustrations have been suggested to help us to grasp this difficult doctrine of the three Persons who make but one God, of this one God in three Persons, this undivided Trinity: e.g., the three primitive colours, red, blue, and yellow, which make up the pure white light; each ray with its different operation-the yellow giving light, the red heat, the blue chemical action. Or, again, the union of reason,

affections, and will in man. Our human constitution affords another illustration which is, perhaps, still more striking. As there is a trinity in the Divine Being, so there is a trinity in our own. In every man is first, as it were, two persons joined together in one; he has two eyes, two hands, two feet. The common optical instrument, the stereoscope, has familiarised us all with the fact that the two eyes do not seé quite alike, and yet that the two different images projected on the retinæ produce no confusion of vision, but on the contrary give a brightness and solidity of vision which one eye however perfect fails to attain. The two arms and hands, the two legs and feet, in the same way do not exactly match; and probably their differences, as in the case of the eyes, produce more perfect action. But what is especially notable is that this duality of man extends to the brain. It has two lobes; for the most part they act in concert, and produce no mental confusion; there may, perhaps, as in the case of the eye, be some difference between them by which the mental acts are strengthened by their concurrence. We are told that as there are cases in which, as the two eyes are affected by strabismus, so the two lobes of the brain act abnormally, and there follow curious phenomena of mental confusion. We all know that when paralysis enfeebles one lobe of the brain the mental processes are painfully affected. But though there are thus as it were two men joined side by side, with independent faculties of motion and action and vision and thought, they are brought into unity by the action of a third, viz. the will; and the result of this trinity is no discordance, but only increased vigour of thought and sight, and far greater powers of motion and achievement. So we are helped to conceive the three Persons in the Godhead acting without any discordance because of their plurality, but with increased vigour and power by reason of that plurality, under the co-ordinating influence of the one Divine Will.

CHAPTER VII.

CREATION-THE WORLDS MADE OUT OF NOTHING BY THE THREE PERSONS OF THE HOLY TRINITY.

GOD thus self-existing is the cause of all other existences. Why, being all sufficient to Himself in the supreme bliss of His own perfect being, He was pleased to create, we know not. To us the universe would be an awful solitude, and life an aimless blank, if we lived thus alone. Our being was not made to be independent; we cannot suffice for ourselves; we are constituted to form part of a world, and not to exist alone. We need a Being above us to look up to for governance, support, and protection; we need beings around us whom we may associate with and love, and who will love us; we need beings below us to minister to our necessities. God was sufficient to Himself; nothing could add to His infinite perfectness and infinite bliss. The only explanation which religion or philosophy has suggested of creation is, that God created out of His love, that there might be creatures capable of sharing His happiness. "The things

God created, i.e., made out of nothing. which are seen were not made of things which do appear (Heb. xi. 3). Who can conceive the nature of the act of creation, the calling of the worlds out of nothing, and peopling them with living inhabitants, made by the mere act of His will!

The alternative which suggests itself is the eternity of matter, a doctrine which is included in some of the great

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ancient philosophies. But an eternal Spirit, conditioned by eternal matter, would be a very different being from what we know God is. The eternal Spirit would be in such necessary relations to the eternal matter as would lead us straight to Pantheism. Difficult as it may be to conceive of the making matter out of nothing, it does not really involve any greater impossibilities than the making of conscious, reasoning, acting spirits, out of nothing. A philosophy which believes in the eternity of matter must also, to be consistent, believe that all reasonable beings are not created intelligences, but emanations from the great Spirit, i.e., must hold the Pantheistic theory.

Philosophy might hesitate amidst alternative difficulties, but revelation steps in to solve the question. God tells us, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." "In the beginning" when was that? when did the created universe begin? We do not know. In what order did creation proceed? Were the spiritual intelligences first in order of time, as in dignity of being, and then the universe of material worlds? or, according to the analogy of our world, was a material frame-work of worlds first formed, and then the orders of rational beings to people them?

Had the myriad worlds we see in space been rolling on their courses for ages, peopled by inhabitants bearing some analogy to the tenants of this world, before the world was peopled a few thousand years ago? Is this the last formed world, and are we the completion of God's creation? Or is this world the first which has been finished and furnished and peopled with beings like ourselves, and man the prototype of a new order of creation? Or, again, is this world simply one out of many, preceded by similar worlds, and being succeeded by others still in progress of formation ?

These questions naturally come into the mind, and the mind is enlarged and strengthened by their consideration.