the Father and the Son, save in, and as, personally indwelling Spirit. "If a man love Me, he will keep My word: and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make our abode with him."1 How? And so, further; "He that abideth in the teaching, the same hath both the Father and the Son." Again how? This is the answer; "Hereby know we that we abide in Him, and He in us, because He hath given us of His Spirit." "Hereby we know that He abideth in us, by the Spirit which He gave us." It is thus that the statement that His withdrawal from them was for their advantage is fully explained and justified. "Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I go, I will send Him unto you."5 It is thus that the promise of His own return to them is abundantly verified. "A little while and ye behold Me no more: and again a little while and ye shall see Me.® ye therefore now have sorrow: but I will see you again and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you." "I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may be with you for ever, even the Spirit of Truth: whom the world cannot receive; for it beholdeth Him not, neither knoweth Him: ye know Him; for He abideth with you, and shall be in you. I will not leave you desolate: I come unto you. Yet a little while, and the world beholdeth Me no more; but ye behold Me: because I live, ye shall live also. In that day ye shall know that I am in My Father, and ye in Me, and I in you."8

Observe, it is not for an instant that the disciples are to have the presence of the Spirit instead of having the

presence of the Son. But to have the Spirit is to have the Son. Again it is not for an instant that this is a sort of indirect or secondary mode of having the presence of the Son; as we, in our bodily existence in space and time, are forced into current phrases which make "presence in the spirit" a sort of apology or substitute (and sometimes a very lame one) for "reality" of presence: quite the contrary: this is the only mode of presence which could be quite absolutely direct, and primary, and real. Any presence of the Son other than this; any presence of the Son other than as Spirit, within, and as, ourselves, characterizing and constituting the very reality of what we ourselves are; would be, by comparison, remote, ineffective, unreal: nay, it would be, after all, a form of absence, a substitute for the presence which alone can be called true or real.

There are not, then, three separate spheres of spiritual operation upon us, which the good theologian is to be careful to demarcate exactly, and not confound: the sphere of the operation of the Father, and the sphere of the operation of the Son, and the sphere of the operation of the Holy Ghost.1 The operation is the operation of One God, Father at once and Son: and both, in and through Spirit.

All these are truths which our minds very quickly outrun and obscure, finding that they have already understood far too much, whenever they make the apparently

1 "Whatsoever God doth work, the hands of all three Persons are jointly and equally in it according to the order of that connexion, whereby they each depend upon other. And therefore albeit in that respect the Father be first, the Son next, the Spirit last, and consequently nearest unto every effect which groweth from all three, nevertheless, they all being of one essence, are likewise all of one efficacy. Dare any man unless he be ignorant altogether how inseparable the Persons of the Trinity are, persuade himself that every one of them may have their sole and several possessions, or that we being not partakers of all, can have fellowship with any one? Hooker, V. lvi. 5, P. 248.

obvious assertion (which in some sense, that is hard for us to limit adequately, no doubt represents Divine truth) that the Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Holy Ghost. Indeed, even while we admit that there is a place, and a cogent necessity, for the negative assertion, we may perhaps legitimately doubt whether even the contradictory affirmative, (not as a substitute for, but as supplementing, the negative,) might not also, in its own way, express to thoughtful minds as much, or almost as much, of the incomprehensible completeness of the Being of God.

But to go back a little. There is another line of thought along which we are greatly helped by a firm grasp of the intellectual position that Personality which is supreme, all-inclusive, and eternal, must contain mutuality of relation within itself. For in the light of this thought we can see, in a way which is practically useful, the limit of the suggestiveness of even the most suggestive analogies in human consciousness, which have been used to illustrate the Divine Threefoldness in unity. Such analogies are, up to a certain point, of very real value. They have often served to make minds really see that there is more complexity in existence than their prima facie logic had been prepared to tolerate, or admit to be possible. They have often given real glimpses of profound meaning to statements which had once been thought really meaningless. When St Augustine, expounding the Apostles' Creed, explains that the spring, and the river, and the glass of water drawn from the river, are alike one and the same, "water,"1-though the glassful is not the river, and the river is not the spring: or that the root, and the trunk, and the branches, are all one "wood,"though the branches are not the trunk, nor the trunk the root: he is really, so far, helping minds to mental insight beyond and behind a difficulty, originated in the mind, 1 De fide et symbolo, 17, pp. 73, 74.

which, if the mind were not helped, would have made belief impossible. But though they help the mind beyond its first confidently dogmatic incredulity, such analogies really carry the mind but a little way towards understanding the Trinity; and clearly break to pieces if pressed too far.

And so with the more serious analogies of his formal treatise De Trinitate. There is the "Trinity" in man of (1) his own rational capacity, (2) his reflexive contemplation of his reason and himself reasoning, (3) the love which he feels for himself and the reason that is in him. There is the "Trinity" of memory, and reason, and will. Or, in outward acts of sight, there is (1) the visible object, (2) the impression thereof upon the eye, and (3) the conscious attention, which is the unifying of the other two. Or there is, in imaginative memory (1) the recalled impression of things seen or heard, (2) the consideration of them, (3) the recalling and considering will.1

Again, from other sides we are familiar with the old analogy of the family-man made at last complete as father, and mother, and child. Again, man at once is body, soul, and spirit. Again man is emotion, and reason, and will. Again man is rational and moral and spiritual, and in these three, is one. The very multiplicity of these analogies, while it does not show that they have had no use, is at least a caution against assigning any very high value to any of them. Each in its way is a suggestion, and possibly for the moment a really illuminating one.

"As the sense of human personality grew deeper, particularly, as we have seen, under Christian influence, its triune character was generally recognized. Augustine marks an epoch in the subject, and is its best exponent. 'I exist,' he says, and I am conscious that I exist, and I love the existence and the consciousness; and all this independently of any external influence.' And again, 'I exist, I am conscious, I will. I exist as conscious and willing, I am conscious of existing and willing, I will to exist and to be conscious; and these three functions, though distinct, are inseparable and form one lite, one mind, one essence.' Illingworth, B. L. III., p. 71.

But neither any one of them, nor (still less) all together, go far towards enabling uni-personal man to enter into the consciousness of Tri-Personality.

Moreover there is always a considerable danger about a line of thought which depends upon emphasizing distinction of qualities. If I distinguish a Trinity of Righteousness, Wisdom, and Love, I am not only substituting abstract for personal terms; but I make it exceedingly difficult to predicate Righteousness of Wisdom, or Wisdom of Righteousness, or either of these of Love, or Love of either of these. I may find indeed a new dialectical reason for the inseparableness of the Persons of the Trinity, and say, as many have said with Athanasius, that the Son must be coæval with the Father, because the Eternal Father can never have been sundered from His own Eternal Wisdom; but to say this involves the perilous consequence that the Eternal Father, if, or in so far as, He can in thought be distinguished from the Eternal Son, or the Eternal Spirit, must vi terminorum be distinguished also from Wisdom, and from Love. I have then not only substituted a term which does not suggest personality; but I have destroyed the possibility of a personal interpretation of my term. The three terms cannot rightly be distinguished as being severally Righteousness, Wisdom, and Love; when Righteousness, Wisdom, and Love must of necessity be predicated of every one of the three terms severally. Perhaps no one can read the orations against the Arians without feeling the difficulty under which Athanasius laboured, in having to deal with thoughts of this character without the illuminating assistance of the word Personality.1

The suggestions then which have been quoted do not carry us more than a little way. In comparison with the vagueness of suggestions like these, we are touching firm 1 See Note A, at the end of the chapter.