in himself, but as he is revealed, are opened to us in this doctrine." Similarly P. S. Moxom: "I do not know how it is possible to predicate any moral quality of a person who is absolutely out of relation to other persons. If God were conceived of as solitary in the universe, he could not be characterized as righteous." But Dr. Moxom erroneously thinks that these other moral personalities must be outside of God. We maintain that righteousness, like love, requires only plurality of persons within the God-head. See Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 1: 105, 156. For the pantheistic view, see Strauss, Glaubenslehre, 1 : 462-524.

W. L. Walker, Christian Theism, 317, quotes Dr. Paul Carus, Primer of Philosophy, 101-"We cannot even conceive of God without attributing trinity to him. An absolute unity would be non-existence. God, if thought of as real and active, involves an antithesis, which may be formulated as God and World, or natura naturans and natura naturata, or in some other way. This antithesis implies already the trinity-conception. When we think of God, not only as that which is eternal and immutable in existence, but also as that which changes, grows, and evolves, we cannot escape the result and we must progress to a triune God-idea. The conception of a God-man, of a Savior, of God revealed in evolution, brings out the antithesis of God Father and God Son, and the very conception of this relation implies God the Spirit that proceeds from both." This confession of an economic Trinity is a rational one only as it implies a Trinity immanent and eternal.

B. It is essential to any proper revelation.

If there be no Trinity, Christ is not God, and cannot perfectly know or reveal God. Christianity is no longer the one, all-inclusive, and final revelation, but only one of many conflicting and competing systems, each of which has its portion of truth, but also its portion of error. So too with the Holy Spirit. "As God can be revealed only through God, so also can he be appropriated only through God. If the Holy Spirit be not God, then the love and self-communication of God to the human soul are not a reality." In other words, without the doctrine of the Trinity we go back to mere natural religion and the far-off God of deism, and this is ultimately exchanged for pantheism in the way already mentioned.

Martensen, Dogmatics, 104; Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 158. If Christ be not God, he cannot perfectly know himself, and his testimony to himself has no independent authority. In prayer the Christian has practical evidence of the Trinity, and can see the value of the doctrine; for he comes to God the Father, pleading the name of Christ, and taught how to pray aright by the Holy Spirit. It is impossible to identify the Father with either the Son or the Spirit. See Rom. 8:27 — "he that searcheth the hearts [i. c., God] knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God." See also Godet on John 1: 18 — "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him "; notice here the relation between ò v and enynoαTо. Napoleon I: "Christianity says with simplicity, ' No man hath seen God, except God.'” John 16: 15—“All things whatsoever the Father hath are mine: therefore said I, that he taketh of mine, and shall declare it unto you"; here Christ claims for himself all that belongs to God, and then declares that the Holy Spirit shall reveal him. Only a divine Spirit can do this, even as only a divine Christ can put out an unpresumptuous hand to take all that belongs to the Father. See also Westcott, on John 14:9-"he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; how sayest thou, Show us the Father?"

The agnostic is perfectly correct in his conclusions, if there be no Christ, no medium of communication, no principle of revelation in the Godhead. Only the Son has revealed the Father. Even Royce, în his Spirit of Modern Philosophy, speaks of the existence of an infinite Self, or Logos, or World-mind, of which all individual minds are parts or bits, and of whose timeless choice we partake. Some such principle in the divine nature must be assumed, if Christianity is the complete and sufficient revelation of God's will to men. The Unitarian view regards the religion of Christ as only "one of the day's works of humanity”—an evanescent moment in the ceaseless advance of the race. The Christian on the other hand regards Christ as the only Revealer of God, the only God with whom we have to do, the final authority in religion, the source of all truth and the judge of all mankind. "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass

away" (Mat. 24:35). The resurrection of just and unjust shall be his work (John 5:28), and future retribution shall be "the wrath of the Lamb" (Rev. 6:16). Since God never thinks, says, or does any thing, except through Christ, and since Christ does his work in human hearts only through the Holy Spirit, we may conclude that the doctrine of the Trinity is essential to any proper revelation.

C. It is essential to any proper redemption.

If God be absolutely and simply one, there can be no mediation or atonement, since between God and the most exalted creature the gulf is infinite. Christ cannot bring us nearer to God than he is himself. Only one who is God can reconcile us to God. So, too, only one who is God can purify our souls. A God who is only unity, but in whom is no plurality, may be our Judge, but, so far as we can see, cannot be our Savior or our Sanctifier.

"God is the way to himself." "Nothing human holds good before God, and nothing but God himself can satisfy God." The best method of arguing with Unitarians, therefore, is to rouse the sense of sin; for the soul that has any proper conviction of its sins feels that only an infinite Redeemer can ever save it. On the other hand, a slight estimate of sin is logically connected with a low view of the dignity of Christ. Twesten, translated in Bib. Sac., 3:510-"It would seem to be not a mere accident that Pelagianism, when logically carried out, as for example among the Socinians, has also always led to Unitarianism." In the reverse order, too, it is manifest that rejection of the deity of Christ must tend to render more superficial men's views of the sin and guilt and punishment from which Christ came to save them, and with this to deaden religious feeling and to cut the sinews of all evangelistic and missionary effort (John 12:44; Heb. 10:26). See Arthur, on the Divinity of our Lord in relation to his work of Atonement, in Present Day Tracts, 6: no. 35; Ellis, quoted by Watson, Theol. Inst., 23; Gunsaulus, Transfig. of Christ, 13-" We have tried to see God in the light of nature, while he said: 'In thy light shall we see light' (Ps. 36:9)." We should see nature in the light of Christ. Eternal life is attained only through the knowledge of God in Christ (John 16:9). Hence to accept Christ is to accept God; to reject Christ is to turn one's back on God: John 12:44 -"He that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on him that sent me ": Heb. 10:26, 29-"there remaineth no more a sacrifice for sin . . . . [ for him ] who hath trodden under foot the Son of God."

In The Heart of Midlothian, Jeanie Deans goes to London to secure pardon for her sister. She cannot in her persant attire go direct to the King, for he will not receive her. She goes to a Scotch housekeeper in London; through him to the Duke of Argyle; through him to the Queen; through the Queen she gets pardon from the King, whom she never sees. This was mediæval mediatorship. But now we come directly to Christ, and this suffices us, because he is himself God (The Outlook). A man once went into the cell of a convicted murderer, at the request of the murderer's wife and pleaded with him to confess his crime and accept Christ, but the murderer refused. The seeming clergyman was the Governor, with a pardon which he had designed to bestow in case he found the murderer penitent. A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 86-"I have heard that, during our Civil War, a swaggering, drunken, blaspheming officer insulted and almost drove from the dock at Alexandria, a plain unoffending man in citizen's dress; but I have also heard that that same officer turned pale, fell on his knees, and begged for mercy, when the plain man demanded his sword, put him under arrest and made himself known as General Grant. So we may abuse and reject the Lord Jesus Christ, and fancy that we can ignore his claims and disobey his commands with impunity; but it will seem a more serious thing when we find at the last that he whom we have abused and rejected is none other than the living God before whose judgment bar we are to stand."

Henry B. Smith began life under Unitarian influences, and had strong prejudices against evangelical doctrine, especially the doctrines of human depravity and of the divinity of Christ. In his Senior year in College he was converted. Cyrus Hamlin says: "I regard Smith's conversion as the most remarkable event in College in my day." Doubts of depravity vanished with one glimpse into his own heart; and doubts about Christ's divinity could not hold their own against the confession: "Of one thing I feel assured: I need an infinite Savior." Here is the ultimate strength of Trinitarian doctrine. When the Holy Spirit convinces a man of his sin, and brings him face to face with the outraged holiness and love of God, he is moved to cry from the depths of his soul: "None but an infinite Savior can ever save me!" Only in a divine Christ—

Christ for us upon the Cross, and Christ in us by his Spirit-can the convicted soul find peace and rest. And so every revival of true religion gives a new impulse to the Trinitarian doctrine. Henry B. Smith wrote in his later life: "When the doctrine of the Trinity was abandoned, other articles of the faith, such as the atonement and regeneration, have almost always followed, by logical necessity, as, when one draws the wire from a necklace of gems, the gems all fall asunder."

D. It is essential to any proper model for human life.

If there be no Trinity immanent in the divine nature, then Fatherhood in God has had a beginning and it may have an end; Sonship, moreover, is no longer a perfection, but an imperfection, ordained for a temporary purpose. But if fatherly giving and filial receiving are eternal in God, then the law of love requires of us conformity to God in both these respects as the highest dignity of our being.

See Hutton, Essays, 1:232-"The Trinity tells us something of God's absolute and essential nature; not simply what he is to us, but what he is in himself. If Christ is the eternal Son of the Father, God is indeed and in essence a Father; the social nature, the spring of love is of the very essence of the eternal Being; the communication of life, the reciprocation of affection dates from beyond time, belongs to the very being of God. The Unitarian idea of a solitary God profoundly affects our conception of God, reduces it to mere power, identifies God with abstract cause and thought. Love is grounded in power, not power in love. The Father is merged in the omniscient and omnipotent genius of the universe." Hence 1 John 2: 23 - "Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father.'' D'Arcy, Idealism and Theology, 204-"If God be simply one great person, then we have to think of him as waiting until the whole process of creation has been accomplished before his love can find an object upon which to bestow itself. His love belongs, in that case, not to his inmost essence, but to his relation to some of his creatures. The words 'God is love' (1 John 4:8) become a rhetorical exaggeration, rather than the expression of a truth about the divine nature."

Hutton, Essays, 1: 239-"We need also the inspiration and help of a perfect filial will. We cannot conceive of the Father as sharing in that dependent attitude of spirit which is our chief spiritual want. It is a Father's perfection to originate-a Son's to receive. We need sympathy and aid in this receptive life; hence, the help of the true Son. Humility, self-sacrifice, submission, are heavenly, eternal, divine. Christ's filial life is the root of all filial life in us. See Gal. 2: 19, 20—“it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me; and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me." Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, The Spiritual Order, 233-"There is nothing degrading in this dependence, for we share it with the eternal Son." Gore, Incarnation, 162 —“God can limit himself by the conditions of manhood, because the Godhead contains in itself eternally the prototype of human self-sacrifice and selflimitation, for God is love." On the practical lessons and uses of the doctrine of the Trinity, see Presb. and Ref. Rev., Oct. 1902: 524-550-art. by R. M. Edgar; also sermon by Ganse, in South Church Lectures, 300-310. On the doctrine in general, see Robie, in Bib. Sac., 27:262-289; Pease, Philosophy of Trinitarian Doctrine; N. W. Taylor, Revealed Theology, 1: 133; Schultz, Lehre von der Gottheit Christi.

On heathen trinities, see Bib. Repos., 6:116; Christlieb, Mod. Doubt and Christian Belief, 266, 267-"Lao-tse says, 600 B. C., ‘Tao, the intelligent principle of all being, is by nature one; the first begat the second; both together begat the third; these three made all things.'" The Egyptian triad of Abydos was Osiris, Isis his wife, and Horus their Son. But these were no true persons; for not only did the Son proceed from the Father, but the Father proceeded from the Son; the Egyptian trinity was pantheistic in its meaning. See Renouf, Hibbert Lectures, 29; Rawlinson, Religions of the Ancient World, 46, 47. The Trinity of the Vedas was Dyaus, Indra, Agni. Derived from the three dimensions of space? Or from the family-father, mother, son? Man creates God in his own image, and sees family life in the Godhead?

The Brahman Trimurti or Trinity, to the members of which are given the names Brahma, Vishnu, Siva-source, supporter, end-is a personification of the pantheistic All, which dwells equally in good and evil, in god and man. The three are represented in the three mystic letters of the syllable Om, or Aum, and by the image at Elephanta of three heads and one body; see Hardwick, Christ and Other Masters, 1:276. The

places of the three are interchangeable. Williams: "In the three persons the one God is shown; Each first in place, each last, not one alone; Of Siva, Vishnu, Brahma, each may be, First, second, third, among the blessed three." There are ten incarnations of Vishnu for men's salvation in various times of need; and the one Spirit which temporarily invests itself with the qualities of matter is reduced to its original essence at the end of the æon (Kalpa). This is only a grosser form of Sabellianism, or of a modal Trinity. According to Renouf it is not older than A. D. 1400. Buddhism in later times had its triad. Buddha, or Intelligence, the first principle, associated with Dharma, or Law, the principle of matter, through the combining influence of Sangha, or Order, the mediating principle. See Kellogg, The Light of Asia and the Light of the World, 184, 355. It is probably from a Christian source.

The Greek trinity was composed of Zeus, Athena, and Apollo. Apollo or Loxias (Aóyos) utters the decisions of Zeus. "These three surpass all the other gods in moral character and in providential care over the universe. They sustain such intimate and endearing relations to each other, that they may be said to agree in one ""; see Tyler, Theol. of Greek Poets, 170, 171; Gladstone, Studies of Homer, vol. 2, sec. 2. Yet the Greek trinity, while it gives us three persons, does not give us oneness of essence. It is a system of tritheism. Plotinus, 300 A. D., gives us a philosophical Trinity in his rò ἕν, ὁ νοῦς, ἡ ψυχή.

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Watts, New Apologetic, 195 — The heathen trinities are "residuary fragments of the lost knowledge of God, not different stages in a process of theological evolution, but evidence of a moral and spiritual degradation." John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 92-"In the Vedas the various individual divinities are separated by no hard and fast distinction from each other. They are only names for one indivisible whole, of which the particular divinity invoked at any one time is the type or representative. There is a latent recognition of a unity beneath all the multiplicity of the objects of adoration. The personal or anthropomorphic element is never employed as it is in the Greek and Roman mythology. The personality ascribed to Mitra or Varuna or Indra or Agni is scarcely more real than our modern smiling heaven or whispering breeze or sullen moaning restless sea. There is but one,' they say, though the poets call him by different names.' The all-embracing heaven, mighty nature, is the reality behind each of these partial manifestations. The pantheistic element which was implicit in the Vedic phase of Indian religion becomes explicit in Brahmanism, and in particular in the socalled Indian systems of philosophy and in the great Indian epic poems. They seek to find in the flux and variety of things the permanent underlying essence. That is Brahina. So Spinoza sought rest in the one eternal substance, and he wished to look at all things 'under the form of eternity.' All things and beings are forms of one whole, of the infinite substance which we call God." See also L. L. Paine, Ethnic Trinities. The gropings of the heathen religions after a trinity in God, together with their inability to construct a consistent scheme of it, are evidence of a rational want in human nature which only the Christian doctrine is able to supply. This power to satisfy the inmost needs of the believer is proof of its truth. We close our treatment with the words of Jeremy Taylor: "He who goes about to speak of the mystery of the Trinity, and does it by words and names of man's invention, talking of essence and existences, hypostases and personalities, priority in coëquality, and unity in pluralities, may amuse himself and build a tabernacle in his head, and talk something - he knows not what; but the renewed man, that feels the power of the Father, to whom the Son is become wisdom, sanctification, and redemption, in whose heart the love of the Spirit of God is shed abroad-this man, though he understand nothing of what is unintelligible, yet he alone truly understands the Christian doctrine of the Trinity."

CHAPTER III.

THE DECREES OF GOD.

I. DEFINITION OF DECREES.

By the decrees of God we mean that eternal plan by which God has rendered certain all the events of the universe, past, present, and future. Notice in explanation that:

(a) The decrees are many only to our finite comprehension; in their own nature they are but one plan, which embraces not only effects but also causes, not only the ends to be secured but also the means needful to secure them.

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In Rom. 8:28-"called according to his purpose"- the many decrees for the salvation of many individuals are represented as forming but one purpose of God. Eph. 1:11-"foreordained according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his will" -notice again the word purpose," in the singular. Eph. 3:11-"according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord." This one purpose or plan of God includes both means and ends, prayer and its answer, labor and its fruit. Tyrolese proverb: "God has his plan for every man.” Every man, as well as Jean Paul, is "der Einzige"- the unique. There is a single plan which embraces all things; we use the word 'decree' when we think of it partitively" (Pepper). See Hodge, Outlines of Theology, 1st ed., 165; 2d ed., 200— “In fact, no event is isolated - to determine one involves determination of the whole concatenation of causes and effects which constitutes the universe." The word "plan" is preferable to the word "decrees," because "plan" excludes the ideas of (1) plurality, (2) short-sightedness, (3) arbitrariness, (4) compulsion.

(b) The decrees, as the eternal act of an infinitely perfect will, though they have logical relations to each other, have no chronological relation. They are not therefore the result of deliberation, in any sense that implies short-sightedness or hesitancy.

Logically, in God's decree the sun precedes the sunlight, and the decree to bring into being a father precedes the decree that there shall be a son. God decrees man before he decrees man's act; he decrees the creation of man before he decrees man's existence. But there is no chronological succession. "Counsel" in Eph. 1:11-"the counsel of his will "— means, not deliberation, but wisdom.

(c) Since the will in which the decrees have their origin is a free will, the decrees are not a merely instinctive or necessary exercise of the divine intelligence or volition, such as pantheism supposes.

It belongs to the perfection of God that he have a plan, and the best possible plan. Here is no necessity, but only the certainty that infinite wisdom will act wisely. God's decrees are not God; they are not identical with his essence; they do not flow from his being in the same necessary way in which the eternal Son proceeds from the eternal Father. There is free will in God, which acts with infinite certainty, yet without necessity. To call even the decree of salvation necessary is to deny grace, and to make an unfree God. See Dick, Lectures on Theology, 1:355; lect. 34.

(d) The decrees have reference to things outside of God. God does not decree to be holy, nor to exist as three persons in one essence.

Decrees are the preparation for external events- the embracing of certain things and acts in a plan. They do not include those processes and operations within the Godhead which have no reference to the universe.