hollowness; the truth which it impugned stood alone against the world and triumphed by its own solidity. Forced to a clear expression of its own meaning, it declared that the nature of Him who was thus Universal and the Eternal, must be of one substance with the Father,' 'very God of very God.' The doctrine Ghost But side by side with this doctrine, we observe that another also gradually emerges in Scripture into full distinctness. In the form of baptism traced up to the of the Holy apostolic times, in the blessing which St. Paul,' in an Epistle universally accepted as genuine, has taught the Church, in the natural evolution of Christian thought which manifests itself again and again, now in practical exhortation, now in teaching of the relation of the soul to God, now in the doxologies of adoration2-we discern clearly the doctrine of the Holy Ghost. Whence could that doctrine in its fulness come? It is perfectly true, as has been already suggested, that the conception of the action of a Divine Spirit upon human (a) in natural theology; spirits belongs to the advanced stages of all religions. For it bridges over the gulf between the Non ego and the Ego, the great world without and the little world within. Thus it affords the only adequate conception of the universal sovereignty of God; for it extends His sway over the inner as over the outer life of His creatures. Yet it is the only suggestion of a possible reconcilement between the freedom of human will and this supreme will of God; for we are familiar with the power of will over will, exercised by spiritual influence in substantial reality, and yet absolutely different from an iron law of compulsion. It gives a complete explanation of those laws of human life and history, which show that, amidst all the infinite variations of human natures and wills, there is a great unity in the action of humanity as a whole. Yet, again, it is certainly the only explanation of that individual consciousness which the 139th Psalm so grandly describes, of a Divine presence acting with personal power upon the soul, searching, guiding, teaching, rebuking it, as it were face to face. Necessarily, 9 Matt. xxviii. 19. 1 2 Cor. xiii. 14. 2 Rom. viii. 26, 27; 1 Cor. xii. 3, 4; Eph. ii. 18; iv. 3, 4, 30. therefore, the belief in the influence of a Divine Spirit on the soul establishes itself as a part of all vital religion. (b) in the ment. It is clear, again, to every one who reads the Old Testament, that here, as in other cases, the ancient revelation to Israel brings out clearly and with certainty, as a well-known religious truth, all, and more than all, Old Testawhich thus gradually suggested itself to the deeper thoughts and aspirations of man. No one can read the declarations of Prophecy, or the responsive outpouring of devotion in the Psalms, or the meditative recognition of a Spirit of God in man, which runs through the Sapiential books, without seeing this so plainly written there that he who runs may read it. (c) in the Christ; In all this there is, as before, a preparation for the conception of the full truth. But it is still very far from expressing it in the Christian sense. For in the Christian exposition of that truth is implied, as we word of know, not only a far clearer and more universal notion of this Divine action, but the conception of a Divine Personality-the belief in the Holy Ghost as a Divine Person proceeding from the Father, co-equal and co-eternal with the Father and the Son. In that doctrine we ascend (to use the distinction already referred to) from the earthly things'-the manifestations of the action of a Divine Spirit in the soul-to the heavenly things' of the actual nature of the Godhead. Certainly not less than this is involved in the time-honoured form of Christian baptism, which is obviously an absurdity on a mere Sabellian hypothesis. As the other great sacrament stamped on Christianity the doctrine of the Atonement, which involves the true conception of the nature of the Lord Jesus Christ, so this proclaims on the very threshold of the Christian covenant the belief in the Holy Ghost. On what could such a belief be based? The only possible answer, as in the other case, is that it rests on the word of the Lord Himself. The very idea that so profound a doctrine could have been made by any lower The conception of the Divine Wisdom, as a personal manifestation of Godhead, leads up to the doctrine of the Word; the conception of the Divine Wisdom, as inspiring the soul with the notion of true wisdom in man, prepares for the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. authority the key of entrance into His kingdom is incompatible with the most rudimentary ideas of the nature of Christianity. The Gospel narrative of St. Matthew gives us, therefore, the only account of the origin of that baptismal formula which it is possible to accept, when it makes it a part of His last charge to His disciples on the eve of His departure from them-the charter in all main points of the kingdom of the future. But even so the account is still imperfect. For so profound a formula, so startling to Jewish minds trained from childhood in the all-absorbing sense of the unity of the Godhead, must have needed some explanation from the same voice which ordained it as a perpetual heirloom for the Church even to the end of time. Yet in the Synoptic narratives we find none. Here, accordingly, as so often in other cases, the supplemental Gospel' of St. John comes in to supply the missing link in the chain of teaching. To the farewell discourses of his Master on the eve of the Passion he went back in memory under the light of a fuller inspiration; in them he found, and in them he preserved for the Church, the only adequate foundation of the truth thus impressed on Christianity. For in these discourses it is not only the grace of the Holy Ghost which is described. In every word a distinct personality is disclosed, as real and living as the personality of Him who spoke. The revelation is of the Paraclete, who proceedeth from the Father,' whom I will send you from the Father, who shall testify of me,' and by whose coming ‘I will come to you' again, and leave you not orphaned' in the world.* The doctrine so revealed is again a doctrine of faith. We see how marvellously it completes and establishes all the earlier teachings, whether of human consciousness or ancient revelation; we cannot but feel how it supplies that which is needed for the full harmony of Christian truth; accepting it as true, we can by spiritual experience assure ourselves of the fulfilment of our Lord's promise of the Paraclete. But still it is by faith that we accept it. For it comes out of the mystery of that heavenly region to which no power of human reason or aspiration can ascend; and therefore it See John xiv.-xvi. can be known only through One to whom that region is a familiar home. of the Tri In these two great declarations of divine personality in the Son and in the Holy Spirit, taken in conjunction with the constant manifestation of the Father-accepted The doctrine always under the fundamental truth of the unity of nity thus the Godhead which is the soul of all true religion, implied. and which pervades the Old Testament in every line-is implied the whole doctrine of the Holy Trinity. It is most instructive to notice that in Scripture the doctrine is conveyed only in this implicit form-emphasising the truth of the reality of the three divine Persons, and taking for granted the truth of unity of Godhead, rather than placing the two truths in formal systematic antithesis and explicitly declaring the mystery of their coexistence. We see without surprise that in this all the earliest creeds follow the line of the first Scriptural teaching, and in no case adopt the systematic explicitness which rules in the later document called the Athanasian Creed.' For, indeed, it is only in this form that it could subdue the world to itself; only thus can it come home to every man, through his own actual spiritual experience of the divine Fatherhood, the divine Salvation, and the divine Inspiration, in all of which he lives day by day. In this department of truth, as in all others, formal scientific exposition is for the few; the informal substance of truth and its practical results are for the many. Still the truth in its elements is there, and the doctrine itself is simply the comprehensive exhibition of all that has been implied in those lesser doctrines of faith which have been already described. The truth of the Atonement, the eternal existence of the Christ before and after His brief manifestation on earth, the divine personality of the Comforter-all lead up to this ultimate mystery of faith. It is, indeed, interesting and not difficult to show how the three great ideas of religion are: God over man as the 5 The well-known passage (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,' independently of all MS. authority, is condemned as spurious by the systematic explicitness of its form. The witness of Natural Creator and the Father of all; God in man by a divine image stamped upon man's nature, giving him the spirit of sonship and the power of communion with God; God in man, again, as working by His Spirit on Religion. the individual spirits so made in His likeness, to develope in them the seed of the divine nature, and to. harmonise them freely with the divine will. It is profoundly interesting to trace out accordingly shadows of some divine Trinity in Platonic philosophy or in Eastern religion, which are, so to speak, the gatherings into more definite shape of these great ideas latent in the souls of men. this can be done, and not unprofitably done. It brings out -to modify a well-known saying-the testimonium mentis naturaliter Christianæ. It shows us how it is that the great Christian mystery, just because it is complex, as contrasted with the naked simplicity of bare Monotheism, lays hold of human nature and human life in all the richness of their manifold energy. Perhaps still more interesting, and cer The witness of the Old Testament. All tainly less vague and difficult, it is to trace out in the Old Testament, under the shadow of the divine unity which pervades the whole in every line, some indications (perhaps only visible after the event) of the doctrine of the Son and the Spirit. For this, again, shows how in all lines of development, Christianity is really from the beginning, and how all lesser revelations work up towards the final and absolute revelation in Jesus Christ. Christ But when all this has been done, still it is more and more obviously true that, if we would know on what we have to The word of rest at last, we must come back to the word of Jesus Christ, and trace the inevitable development from it of this ultimate mystery. From the first teaching of the Atonement all follows in necessary order. I do not, of course, mean that in every soul which believes the word of Christ and trusts in His Cross, the whole process of religious thought must be gone through. It is a characteristic of faith, and indeed it is the characteristic which gives it power to overcome the world, that wherever it is real, even if it be theoretically imperfect, it can supply the strength of action and kindle the fire of love. But in the Church as a whole, the thoughtfulness of faith ought not to stop half-way. It |