ground intellectually, when we assert the necessity of mutuality of relation in the Being of God; and certainly there is not one of these illustrations which adequately realizes what we mean by mutuality.

Then there is another illustration, which is put forward on somewhat different ground, as necessary to thought. "We shall see," writes Mr Illingworth, "that human personality is essentially triune, not because its chief functions are three-thought, desire, and will-for they might perhaps conceivably be more, but because it consists of a subject, an object, and their relation. A person is, as we have seen, a subject who can become an object to himself, and the relation of these two terms is necessarily a third term.”1 But even of this statement, however true it may be as far as it goes, I think we shall feel that it has carried us but a very little way towards realizing the conception of a threefoldness of personality, in which subject is also object, and object is also subject, and the logical relation between them is itself both. And yet, even at the very moment that our imagination necessarily stops short of it, we can see intellectually that (whether it be in Twofoldness or Threefoldness, or more) it is precisely this relation of personal mutuality, and nothing less than this, which our own intellectual necessity requires.

The difficulty no doubt, with all analogies is their limitedness; and all these fail alike in that they all give us aspects or relations which, however intelligible as aspects or relations, are not personal; and are not mutually subject and object to one another.

There is however one other analogy or illustration, on which I should like to dwell a little further. It does not transcend this inevitable limitation. It is not therefore adequate. It will not perform the impossible requirement of making Tri-Personality intelligible, as from within, to 1Bampton Lectures, III. p. 69.

uni-personal consciousness. And yet there are directions in which it appears to me to throw somewhat more light upon this mystery of thought, than the analogies which have been more familiarly used. This is the threefoldness which is involved whenever I describe or distinguish what a man is in the following relations. First, then, there is the man as he really is in himself, invisible, indeed, and inaccessible,—and yet, directly, the fountain, origin, and cause of everything that can be called in any sense himself. Secondly, there is himself as projected into conditions of visibleness, the overt expression or utterance of himself. This, under the conditions of our actual experience, will mean for the most part his expression or image as body,-the touch of his hand, the tone of his voice, the shining of his eye, the utterance of his words: all, in a word, that makes up, to us, that outward expression of himself, which we call himself, and which he himself ordinarily recognizes as the very mirror and image and reality of himself. And thirdly, there is the reply of what we call external nature to him-his operation or effect. There is the painting, or the Cathedral, which expresses the very spirit of artist or architect,— the palpable realization of his secret vision within. There is the deathless poem of the poet: the regenerated people -which is the work of the noble politician's life of sacrifice there is the sublime insight of the inspired theologian which has become the daily light of the life of tens of thousands: there is the devoted love in the hearts of others which has sprung up in them as inevitable response, kindled by the devotion of his love to them. In a word, there is the echo or image of himself, responsive to himself, which comes back to him, as from without: the response of outside objects to himself: or rather his own response which he has wrought out to himself, in, and out of, that which had been, or had seemed to be, beyond, and

apart from, himself. There is that effect, or extension, of himself, by which what had been distinguishable from himself, comes to be wholly informed by, and alive with, and therefore a real expression or method of, himself. It is he himself, by virtue of what he is within himself, but by virtue of it as exerted, expressed, or uttered,-who has really had the power of so informing and wielding that which seemed outside himself, that it too has become a response to his utterance,-the response which he himself has wrought, and, so far as its capacity extends, an image therefore also of what he himself is.

The music of the musician: the poetry of the poet: the work which the devoted pastor has wrought: there are times at least in which we feel that in these we come nearer to the man's very self than is, in any other way, even conceivable. At the least, no conception of himself, could be anything approaching to adequate or complete, of which such things did not form-not a part only but a very overshadowing and vital element. And meanwhile in the larger thought of himself which includes these things, and dwells with special emphasis on the thought of his operation, not as external effect which as such has ceased to be himself, but as his self-wrought work of response to himself, in which himself is the more perfected and magnified; there do seem to be at least suggestive glimpses such as give real help to the mind, if not towards grasping Tri-Personal consciousness, at least towards an intelligent conception of the Divine reality of the Holy Ghost.

It will be felt, however, with some justice, that apart from other criticisms to which this analogy (like others) may be liable: it is impossible that any analogy can be really adequate which would find a perfect mirror of the Trinity in any form of strictly uni-personal consciousness or work.

No analysis of what is contained within a

solitary consciousness, however suggestive, can possibly be adequate. This is why the "family" analogy, rough and external as it is in itself, has yet a valuable place among analogies. For in fact no man's personality is complete in himself, or in anything that is solely regarded as an operation of himself. It is in the reflexive correspondence of other personalities that any man approaches his own completeness. The more truly he is echoed and reproduced in others, the more nearly does he approach to the complete possibility of himself. Perhaps for this very reason an analogy which introduces his operation and effect, especially when conceived in the form of the regeneration of others, is more hopeful than any analogy which avowedly consists in analysis of his solitary consciousness. But no analogy drawn from an imperfect personality can truly mirror the Trinity of God. And every personality is imperfect, which is not yet consummated (in a way we can but dimly foreshadow) in mutual relation; that is, as perfectly echoed and complemented in the personality of others.

I do not know, meanwhile, whether the attempt to make use of such suggestiveness as the word response may contain, will have been felt just now by any one to be open to objection, on the ground that it does not obviously lead us to the doctrine of the Personality of the Holy Ghost. It does in fact lead us further in this direction, a good deal, than many words which are in familiar and helpful use. But it seems worth while to enter some protest against allowing such a consideration as this to come in for the present, at all. The doctrine of the Personality of the Holy Ghost, however dutifully accepted, is in no case a doctrine that is easy to be intellectually understood. It is almost certainly a mistake to let a doctrine of this kind, which is certainly true, but which we can, at the best, but imperfectly apprehend,

come in to deter us from dwelling upon those aspects of the nature and work of the Spirit, which are also true, and which our intelligence can more definitely follow. Thus the Holy Spirit is not less "a gift," because a gift is not itself a personal term. We undoubtedly do well to make the most of the lower aspects of the truth, if only that we may go on from them to the higher. The truth that He is Personal, is certainly not to warn us off from such conceptions about Him as are are to us us most naturally intelligible. If we are ever to reach a higher understanding, we shall do well to give full scope and play to the lower first. Whatever would for us be true of the Spirit, as gift, as inspiration, as empowerment,— if the Spirit were rightly spoken of always and only in the neuter gender as avrò, is certainly no less true, even if at many points it may be felt to be inadequate, when we advance further on towards realizing, as well as avowing, that He is indeed Αὐτός.

It may be worth while to emphasize this insistence by dwelling for a few moments upon a parallel instance of its importance. When minds are at work, not upon the mystery of Tri-Personality, but upon the primary Theistic truth of the Personal Being of God: there are stages at which an antithesis will present itself to the imagination between the comparative limitedness of the personal conception, and the grand immensity of the impersonal. Such a sense of contrast is perfectly natural to minds which approach the question of Theism from the region. of abstract philosophical thought; and still more to those which approach it from the region of physical science. Either Existence, First cause, ultimate Unity, etc., on the one hand, or on the other Law, Energy, Harmony, perhaps even such pervading principles as ether, or electricity, seem indefinitely vaster than anything which experience of the word personality suggests. The fact is that we

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