Morels4-  L-ibar~y








PHILOSOPHY
OF
TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE:
A CONTRIBUTION
TO
THEOLOGICAL PROGRESS AND REFORM
BY
REV. A" G. PEASE,
RUTLAND, VT.
NEW YORK:
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS,
FOURTH AVE. AND 23D ST.
i875.




COPYRIGHT,
A. G. PEASE.
1875.




DEDICATION.
TO MY OLD ASSOCIATES IN THEOLOGICAL STUDY,
AND IN THE LABORS OF THE CHRISTIAN
MINISTRY, THIS LITTLE WORK, TItE FIRSTFRUITS OF THE TOIL OF YEARS OF
PHYSICAL PROSTRATION AND ENFORCED RETIREMENT AND SECLUSION, IS RESPECTFULLY
AND AFFECTIONATELY
DEDICATED.




If acquiescence without insight; if warmth without light; if an
immunity from doubt given and guaranteed by a resolute ignorance;
if the habit of taking for granted the words of a catechism, remembered or forgotten; if a mere sensation of positiveness substitutedI will not say for the sense of certainty, but for that calm- assurance
the very means and conditions of which it supersedes; if a belief
that seeks the darkness and yet strikes no root, immovable as the
limpet from the rock, and like the limpet fixed there by the mere
force of adhesion; —if these suffice to make men Christians, in what
sense could the Apostle affirm that believers receive: not indeed
worldly wisdom, that comes to nought, but the wisdcm of God, that
we might know and comprehenrd the things that are freely given us of
God. On what grounds could he denounce the sincerest fervor of
spirit as defective where it does not likewise bring forth fruits in the
understanding.-COLERIDGE.
The capital precept for the whole undertaking is this, that the eye
of the mind be never taken off from things themselves, but receive
their images truly as they are. And God forbid that ever we should
offer the dreams of fancy for a model of the world; but rather in his
kindness vouchsafe to us the means of writing a revelation and true
vision of the traces and moulds of the Creator in his creatures. —
BACON.




PRE FACE.
THE term Trinitarian, in the title of this
work, is intended, not to imply adiscussion of
the doctrine of the Trinity exclusively, but
rather to indicate the point of view from which
the topics here presented, and indeed the whole
circle of Christian doctrine, have been contemplated by the writer. He was originally led into
the train of meditation, some fruits of which are
now submitted, by a desire and effort to learn
by inquiry of the Scriptures themselves what
is the purely Scriptural doctrine of the Trinity. The view which there unfolded itself to
him  of the person of Christ and His relation to the Father and to Humanity, not
only appeared intelligible and consistent with
itself, in marked contrast to those which
the current theological standards afforded,
but also became, with increasing study,
more and more evident as the central parent




vi               PREFA CE.
luminary of the whole system of theological
truth, the life-principle out of which it all grows,
as the branches out of the Vine; as " all the building, fitly framed together, groweth into an holy
temple in the Lord" out of " Jesus Christ Himself the chief corner stone." Divine philosophy,
as thus revealed, is indeed something manifestly
different from the formularies commonly accepted as orthodox; but the writer trusts that it
will appear to some other minds, as it does to
his own, thoroughly in harmony with the one.Catholic faith which the constructors of those
formularies aimed to crystallize in shapes of logic, with how imperfect success, the holiest and
wisest of them have been readiest to acknowledge.  Of course the contents of this little
work constitutes no more than a mere beginning, and comes very far short of covering the whole of the ground indicated by the
title. In fact my own studies and labors have
taken a much wider range and include a much
larger outline and a much fuller and more systematic treatment than appears or is even indicated in this volume. They include such




PREEFA CE.             vii
leading topics as the following, which, to atone
in some measure for the extremely incomplete
and fragmentary character of-this publication,
may be briefly indicated:
General conception of the creation as an
organic Unity, and of the organic relation existing between God and the universe according
to Aristotle, and in fact the clearly taught philosophy of the Scriptures themselves;  the
Godhead itself an organic Unity within itself;
distinction of rank and power of greater and
less-of the universal and the particular among
its elements essential to the existence of any
such thing as an organic Unity or a Trinity
comprehended within it; the idea of the Trinity unfolded and the doctrine stated; the nature and person of Christ.
The relation which Christ sustains to men in
the manhood analogous to and explained by
the relation which the Father sustains to the
Son in the Godhead; the principle of the
power and perpetuity of Christianity found in
the example of Christ as God manifest in the
flesh; Christ as our atonement; the office




Xviii             PREFA CE.
work of the Holy Spirit, as illustrated by Scripture and by natural and Platonic symbols and
analogies; the doctrine of original sin —sin an
altogether inorganic and individual affair in opposition to the Augustinian theory of the organic unity of the race in sin; the organic unity
of mind in the universe, including the Eternal
mind as the principle of unity; the source and
foundation of law and of ethics; ante-Nicene
history of the doctrine of the Trinity, showing
the prevalence of the subordination theory
among the early Greek fathers; intellectual
life, freedom, and progress, as affected by the
Nicene Council; the doctrine of the Trinity, as
illustrated and taught by analogies from Plato
and from nature; miracles; faith, and reason;
the trinity of principles in the constitution and
life of the soul, and in the life of the churcha lively image of the Trinity of persons in the
Godhead. And now abidedl Faith, Hope, Charity, these three, but the greatest of these is Charity. I and my Father are one, but my Father is
greater than I  The ideal state of Plato and the
Christian church of Paul compared. A. G. P.
RUTLAND, Dec. 8, I874.




CONTENTS.
I. THE PHILOSOPHICAL AND RELIGIOUS NECESSITY OF THE ORGANIC
CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD AND OF THE DEITY.
The failure to recognize the organic unity of the Godhead a fruitful
source of mischief in Theology, — No such thing as a science of the
Unique, 2-The tree lknown by its fruits, the cause by its effects, 6
-All life dualistic, 7-The Trinity, 8-The attributes of the Father
known only through those of the Son, I4-The attributes of the Son
through those of the Church, which is his body, I6-Spinoza, consubstantiality, or common nature of cause and effect throughout the organic Universe, IS-The similitude of the Vine and its branches, 19
-Relation of cause and effect in the realm of the Mechanical, 22
-Paul's Address to the Athenians, 23-Organic relation between
Nature and God (John xvii. 2I), 24-The Philosophy that is
needed, 27 —The organic Unity of the Godhead within itself, 27Difference of Nature between God and Man, 28-The mediatorial
nature of Christ the foundation of his. mediatorial work, 3 —Athanasian view of the subject, 33.
II. CHRIST THE PRINCIPLE OF OUR IMMORTALITY.
The prevailing doctrine respecting the immortality of the soul, 37Effect of the light of the Gospel in changing Pagan ideas-Justin
Martyr, 38-New Testament view of the subject, 4o —All life organic, 4I —The similitude of the Vine and its branches, 42-The
life of the members dependent on that of the body-the life of the
body on that of its Head, 47-Universal application of the principle, 48-Scope and limitations of Free Will within the realm of
freedom-Death the inevitable consequence of separation from the




x                      CONTENVTS.
source of life, 5o —This follows not from the principles of retributive justice, except as those principles are identical with the organic
Structure of the Universe and the eternal and unchangeable nature of things, not so much because God so wills, as because the
universe is so constructed that so it must needs be, 53 —Coleridge,
56.
III. ACTUAL PERSONAL RELATIONS BETWEEN THE FATHER AND THE
SON, AND SUBORDINATION IN RANK OF THE SON TO THE FATHER,
(THE SON EQUALLY WITH THE FATHER WITHIN THE UNITY OF
THE GODHEAD BUT NOT EQUAL WITH HIM IN IT) AS SET FORTH
IN EXPRESS TERMS BY CHRIST HIMSELF.
An exposition of John v. 8-20, 58-Christ's treatment of the personal
relations between him and his Father as not only real but practicable
and intelligible, 58-The healing of the impotent man and bidding
him' to take up his bed and walk on the Sabbath-day, 6o-The Jewish Sabbath to be distinguished from the Lord's day, 63-He explains to the Jews in what sense he does, and in what he does
not, claim equality with his Father, 67-Comparison of the view
of the Doctrine as thus set forth, with the prevailing orthodox standards, 73-Consistency of John x. 30 and xiv. 28 made apparent,
76 —Cudworth's Platonic Christian's Apology, a rich deposit of
Ante-Nicene thought and opinion on the subject of the relation of
the Father and the Son in the Godhead-The eternal generation
of the Son-Just where the Arian error lay-Whence the modern
doctrine of the co-equality of the persons- -Not contained in the term
Homo onsion, nor held by Athanasius, 77.
IV. TITLES, PERSONAL AND SUBSTANTIVE, IN WHICH NAME AND NATURE ARE IDENTICAL:!
THE SON OF MAN AND THE GOOD SHEPHERD.
Experimental and practical ideas of God alone valid or valuable, 79
-These titles of special importance, because intended to instruct
us in regard to his own nature and that of his work, 8o-Surprising that they should have received so little attention, 81-The first




CONTENTS.                         xi
of frequent and indiscriminate use throughout the four gospels, 82In the most general sense of the term based upon the organic conception of the universe and of its relations to God, 83-This conception not unfamiliar to Plato and Aristotle, 83-Sum total of
the light which Theology has thus far cast upon the subject, 85False philosophy respecting race and species-a baseless and lifeless Nominalism-The principal source of the darkness and the difficulty, 86-Disastrous influence of the Nicene Council on intellectual freedom and progress, 87-Strange inconsistency of Athanasius
in holding to the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son in the
Godhead, and denying that of the Son of Man and humanity in
the Human order, 87-Creation not sporadic but organic, 87Union of the universal and particular in every individual of a
species, 87-Realism  of Plato, 89-Christ the principle of our
Humanity, 94-Analysis of the title: The Son of Man, IooOrigin of the phrase, 102-The goal of thought, Io7-Ground of
the universal and instinctive faith of the Church in the Divinity of
her Head, o09-Mutual knowledge and affection between individuals implying consubstantiality of nature, r I — The Good Shepherd
-a special designation designed to instruct us in regard to his
work, including the Son of man within its signification, II2-Consubstantiality of nature between Christ and his people, illustrated
by that between the Father and the Son, II 5-The nature of the
trust, which Christ as the Good Shepherd has to administer towards
his sheep, II8-An element of wrath and of judgment entering
into the function of the Good Shepherd, I2I-Logical and grammatical analysis of the phrase, I27-Guarantees inherent in his
nature for absolute purity and disinterestedness in the administration of his trust, I34-Organic unity of the Good Shepherd
and his flock, I39-The universality of his nature as the Son
of man fitting him for the discharge of the office of Universal
Shepherd  of Humanity, I40-The  individualizing  tendency
in human nature carried to excess and bringing the Soul into
bondage to self —The principle of Original Sin, I42-Christ's love
for little children, 143-Wordsworth's immortal Ode, I45-The true
sense of the Apostle Paul, Rom. v. 12, I4-Coleridge's interpretation
of Genesis first and second, 148-Christ in the execution of his office
of the Good Shepherd must address himself to that which is simplest
and most universal in the constitution of our souls, I5o-The office




xii                     CONTEN'S.
of the Good Shepherd an office of good to those only who are potentially good, or have a principle of good within them, I5I-The
nature and necessity of the New Birth, 153-The heart the organ
of vision in spiritual things, I54-The infidel theory of the religious
element, I55-The Christian theory, I56-The true point of view in
regard to Spiritual things, I57-Strong confirmation I John iv. 7, 8,
I58-All the Divine attributes comprehended in love, I6o-The
office of the Good Shepherd unique in its character, I69-Christ as
the Universal Shepherd of Humanity becomes also our Great High
Priest by making himself the one all-sufficient and life-giving Sacrifice for our souls, I7o-The office of Christ as the Good Shepherd
becomes effectual —The power of God unto Salvation unto every one
that believeth when it merges and culminates in that of our Great
High Priest, I72 —Guarantees or " better promises " upon which the
hopes of the believer rest, I73.
V. THE GIST OF THE CONTROVERSY: OR, A PLAIN WORD WITH PROF.
TYNDALL ON THE QUESTION OF THE ORIGIN OF LIFE.
The question stated on the part of Science, 175-On the part of Religion, I77-The case as put by the Apostle John, I8o —Analysis of
the principle of Love, I8I-Summing up, I83.




PHILOSOPHY
OF
TRINITARIAN  DOCTRINE.
I.
The philosophical and religious necessity of the organic conception of the world and of the Deity.
THE failure to recognize the organic unity of the
Godhead, and the regarding it instead as an abstract
unity, has been the fruitful source of error and mischief in theology, and many a fatal stumbling-block
has been thrown in the way of a rational faith in
Christianity by means of it. The truth is, that God
cannot be known at all, or be a real object of knowledge or of thought to any mind, except by means
of his organic nature and connections with the universe. If he has no organic connections; if he is to
be regarded as absolutely one and simple-without
any organic relation of parts or elements within
2




2               PIHI7OSOPHY OF
himself, or any organic relations with anything outside of himself-then there are no means by which
he can be known at all. By the very supposition
he has no attributes, he is a subject without properties-a thing, therefore, that cannot be known,
simply because it has no real objective existence,
but is a mere form of thought, a mere abstract conception without any corresponding reality in nature.
Aristotle says, there can be no suc/ thing as a science
of the unique. By the unique, he means that which
is absolutely one and simple in itself, and destitute
of all organic connection with anything outside of
itself. It is obvious that that which is within itself
thus inorganic-not a unity but a mere unit of abstraction-can have no external connections or
means of connecting itself with external things
either as cause or effect, either as antecedent or consequent.
Of course, there can be no science of any such
thing, for it has no contents and no attributes, and
is therefore, objectively speaking, a nonentity. It
is merely a conception of the mind, not corresponding to anything objectively real, but standing only
as the subjective opposite to reality. If God is
unique, that is, absolutely one and simple in his
nature, then he has no attributes; and if he has no
attributes he is objectively nothing. He has no




TRIN TA RJA N DOCTRINE.          3
connections with things outside of himself by means
of which he can be known, no means by which he
can reveal himself to us. Even if he were supposed
to have a reality, an actual nature of his own, he
must have known attributes, or else he cannot reveal
himself. The revelation cannot be direct and immediate. The subject can be known only by means
of its known properties. The cause only by means
of the effects which it produces. If known at all,
it must be through the medium of some result
flowing from it, or effect which it produces. We
can know nothing of causes but from their effects.
The reality of the cause is inferred from the reality
of its effects and the nature of the cause from the
nature of the effects. But if a cause has no organic
connections with things outside of itself, it can produce no effects upon those things-there is no
way by which it can act upon things with which
it has no connection. We can be directly conscious
only of ourselves-of the operations of our own
minds, or of effects and impressions made upon
our minds.  If we are to have consciousness of
God therefore, it must be through the medium
of our self-consciousness, or through the medium
of impressions of which we are conscious, and
which we find ourselves obliged to refer to him as
their source. But God cannot in this way enter




4              PHILOSOPHY OF
into our consciousness unless there exist organic
connections between his mind and ours. How can
the mind of God enter into our minds, and we,
through the consciousness of our minds, know his
mind, unless there is an organic connection between
his mind and ours? If we are to know his mind
at all, it must be as it makes itself known to us
in our minds. God reveals himself to us, that is,
makes known to us his being and his attributes only
as he reveals himself in us and through us. But in
order that he may reveal himself through us, he
must himself be in us. But this he can be only
vitally and organically. There is no way by which
he can be said to be in us, except by means of his
life. Only that which is itself life can enter into life.
Only lives and living forces can inter-penetrate each
other and dwell within each other, thus forming an
organic unity of life within life, mind within mind.
If mind were not living it could not enter into mind,
and form by their mutual indwelling and inter-penetration an organic unity of mind. His mind cannot
be organically one with our minds, except by being
the mind of our minds-or the universal principle
of mind within our particular minds, by means of
which the real nature and life of mind is imparted
to our minds, and we become rational and living
souls. We can have one life with God only as his




TRINITAR IAN DOCTRINE.            5
life becomes the life of our lives. If he is not far
from every one of us, it is because he is actually
within us. By the not far is not meant a short distance from us in space-a slight remove externally
from us-but that he is within and not without us
at all, whether far or near. The far relates to that
which is without-the near to that which is within.
If in him we live, and move, and have our being, it
is not mechanically nor figuratively, but vitally and
organically. I have said that if God has no organic
connections-is not organically connected with any
being that is not his own-then he has, properly
speaking, no attributes. If his mind is a distinct
and separate individuality, complete in itself, and
acting separately and independently of anything in'
vital relations with it, then he has no attributesnone, at all events, which we have any means of
knowing anything about, or of forming any conception of; but it is only by means of his attributes
that we can have any knowledge of him. The attributes of a cause are the same thing to us as its
nature. They are to us the expression of its nature,
or the particular aspects and qualities by which it
makes itself known to us. As, for example, good,
wise, just, great, and their contraries. A moral and
intellectual cause of which none of these can be
predicated, has for us no nature or character, and if




6               PHILOSOPHY OF
without nature, or intellectual or moral qualities, it
is nothing to us. The attributes or qualities of a
cause, whether physical or moral, are known only
by the nature of the effects which it produces. Its
nature as a cause-that is, the kind of cause or being i; is-can be known only by the kind of effects
which it produces.
A good tree bringeth forth good fruit, and an evil
tree evil fruit, the tree is known by its fruit.
If the effects of which we are conscious within
ourselves, or which come within our observation
or experience, whether within us or without us,
whether intellectual and moral or external and
physical, and which by the necessary laws of thought
we ascribe to God as their cause, are what we recognize as good, then on the ground of these effects, we
ascribe goodness to God. We say that none but a
good being could have produced them. If another
class of effects which likewise we ascribe to God
exhibit wisdom, a clear comprehension of ends to be
gained and the best means of gaining them; if we
see means adapted to ends in such a way as to indicate the profoundest and most consummate and farseeing wisdom, we cannot avoid having the conviction fastened upon us by these manifestations, that
the being who could devise and carry out such a
system of things, and accomplish such ends by such




TRINITA RIAN DOCTRINE.             7
means, must be endowed with infinite wisdom. This
we do on the principle that the tree is known by its
fruit. Again, if we find ourselves so constitutedour inner being so made up-that we instinctively
take the highest delight in justice, and cannot but
rejoice and be glad when we see justice done, and
its ends gained, and its enemies overwhelmed, and if
we find the universe, so far as we are acquainted
with it, constructed upon the plan and with the
evident design of establishing justice, and of having
its kingdom come, and its will done throughout the
rational and responsible creation, the. conclusion to
which we are inevitably brought, and which becomes
as certain to us as the fact of the creation itself, is
that the author of the universe, and the Father of
our spirits in whom we and all things live, and
move, and have our being, is an infinitely just being.
It is thus through his organic connections, that
God reveals his nature and his attributes to us.
A cause that produces no effects-a cause that cannot be studied in its effects-a cause whose attributes are not in reality seen in its effects,-is not a
cause-and a cause that is not a cause is nothing.
But every cause that is a cause, lives and moves and
has its being in its effects, and its effects live and
move and have their being in it. Thus there is no
such thing as life or being that is unique, there is




a8             PHILOSOPHY OF
none that is not organic; there is none that has not
in it at the same time the nature, and that does not
discharge the double function of cause and effect.
Thus all life and being are dualistic —there is nothing
that is unique. There are unities indeed, and in
fact nothing but unities, but these unities are at the
same time Dyads. There is not in nature such a
thing as a monad.  We can think monads; not as
objective realities, however, but only as their subjective contraries. Unity in the abstract is a thing
of the mind-it has nominal and notional reality
merely. But every real object which we can call a
unity is concrete, and consists of correlate forces or
elements in organic relation to each other.
The unity of the Godhead implies its dualityspecial revelation adds another element and makes
known to us the Trinity. But in principle, the Dyad
is a philosophical necessity; and the unity of the
being of God is not a thing conceivable or possible
except as involving organic relations within itself
and organic connections with the universe which
forms his counterpart. Cause and effect are counterparts and correlates. The one cannot exist or be
conceived as an objective reality except as existing
with the other, and with it forming an organic unity.
Causes as such never stand in immediate relation
to us. We know them only through their effects,




TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE.             9
or through the manner in which we are affected by
them. Effects as such, are known to us immediately.
They are the direct and immediate matter of our
consciousness. We know them in themselves, but
their causes only in and by means of them.
Thus we do not a priori assume the goodness of
God, and from that reason to the effects which he
produces, and say, these must be so or so because
he is such or such. We do not judge of the character of the effects which he produces by what we
know apriori of his character. We do not point to
the acknowledged effects, and say these must be
good because.he is good. We do not judge of the
fruit from the tree, but a posteriori of the tree by
its fruit.
We do not upon a priori grounds (if there are any
such grounds) assume the justice of God, and then
say that what he does is just because he is just and
cannot act any other way than justly, and therefore
whatsoever he does is just because he does it. That
would be simply to judge of the just and the unjust
in character and conduct, without any idea of the
nature of justice in our minds as our standard or criterion of judgment. To judge of the nature of
effects from the assumed nature of their cause,
would be to say that effects have no nature or
character of their own; that justice is arbitrary,
2*




10             PHILOSOPH Y OF
depending upon will and prescription, and that our
opinion of the justice of an act depends upon
nothing inherent in the act itself, but upon the opinion we entertain of the character of him that performs it.
We have only (for example) to make the will of a
despot the standard of right and wrong, and such a
thing as unjust government, or as oppression and
cruelty in a ruler, becomes impossible.
But taking the nature of our own consciences and
the instinctive verdict of our moral sense as the
standard, judging, that is, by the standard of nature
and conscience within our own souls, and perceiving
the goodness and righteousness of the effects which
we refer to him as their cause, we are obliged by the
necessary laws of thought to infer the goodness
and justice of the being who produced them. From
the effects as revealed to us in our own consciousness, we necessarily infer a cause adequate to their
production; from the nature of the effects, as judged
of by our own moral sense, we infer the nature of
the cause. We do not assume the goodness of the
tree and thence pronounce upon the nature of the
fruit which it must bear. We do not say of a given
species of fruit, this fruit must be good because the
tree which produced it is a good tree, or of another
sort, this fruit must be evil-there is no need of




TRINI TAR IAAN DOCTRINE.           II
tasting or trying it in order to determine whether it
is good or not. That point is already determined a.priori for us by the nature of the tree, from sources
independent entirely of any fruit it bears; it has
been proved to be a good tree; of course being such,
the fruit which it produces, whatever it may be, as
judged of by our tastes, or its effects on us, must be
good. In order to determine the nature of a fruit,
and determine whether it is good or not, we have
but one question to ask, and that is, what sort of a
tree is it which has produced it? Now if we had
the means (as absolutely we have not) of judging of
the nature of the tree on grounds wholly independent of the fruit it produces, this would be good reasoning. It is true that a tree which is good can
produce none but good fruit.  But what means
have we of determining the nature of a fruit-tree
but the nature of the fruit it bears?  None, whatever; the tree, then, is to be known by its fruit, and
not vice versa, and the nature of the fruit is to be
determined by actual trial and experience of the
effects resulting, and the pleasure or disgust experienced in eating it.
The character of the fruit-bearing and tree-producing principle in the tree, can be known only by
the tree into which it develops itself, and the fruit
which that tree produces.  The character of the




12              PHILOSOPHY OF
moving cause can be determined only from the character of the final cause.
If a cause by its working produces only that which
is evil, we have a right to infer, if it is intelligent,
that it wrought only for the sake of producing evil.
If it works intelligently and produces only evil by
its working, we have a right to impute to it evil
m1otives, and that which in working is actuated by
evil motives, or the end of whose working is evil, is
an evil cause. If a tree bore no fruit, it would have
no character as a fruit-tree.  Indeed, it would not
be a fruit-tree at all. So, of a cause which produced
no effects we should have no means of judging at
all. In fact, it would not be a cause at all, and not
being a cause, it would be nothing.
But suppose your so-called cause, or fruit-bearing
principle, were strictly and solely a simple and separate thing, and had no organic nature or connections-in other words, were an abstract and absolute unit-that is to say, a monad and not a
dyad-what then?  Why, then there could be no
such thing as its development into a tree or organic
body, and of course no such thing as its bearing
fruit, or producing effects. A monad cannot be a
fruit-bearing nor even a life principle. It cannot be
developed into anything; as it came from nothing,
so nothing can ever come from it. It can have no




TRINITARI.4N DOCTRINE.             13
means of making itself known as anything whatever,
from the simple fact that, as a monad, it is, objectively speaking, nothzzzg whatever. So if the lifeprinciple of a tree were a monad, with no organic
nature or connections whatsoever, if it could not
develop itself into a tree, having root, trunk,
branches, and leaves, it would certainly be incapable of bearing fruit. If, then, the tree is known by
its fruit, and if without organic nature and connections-if, except as it develops itself into a tree, it is
impossible that it should bear any fruit, or produce
any effects at all, then there is no way in which the
principle of a fruit-bearing tree, or the nature or fact of
a cause, can be known but by means of its organic nature and connections. As the fruit-bearing principle
of a tree therefore is known only through its organic
connections, that is, through its connection with the
parts, members, and organs of the tree into which
it develops itself, or which it builds up to serve as
its body, and as a habitation and means of manifestation for itself —as without reference to its organic
connections the principle of life in a tree is a thing
unkno.wable and inconceivable by us-so, also, is it
impossible for us to have any conception whatever
of God, if we insist on conceiving of him as a simple
individual inorganic existence, without reference to
the organic relations which he sustains to the uni



14              PHILOSOPIY OF
verse.  For it is only by means of his relations to
the universe, as its organic principle and fountainhead, that it is possible for us to have any knowledge
or idea of him af all. And it is only in virtue of his
relations to the universe as its living ca'use that he
has, as a cause, any character, any attributes, any
nature at all. As it is only by means of its relation
to its branches, that is, to its organic connections,
that it is possible for us to have any knowledge of
the vine, and as it is only in relation to the nature
of the branches which it produces that the vine has
any attributes or character at all, so it is as to God
and his attributes, and our knowledge of him. There
is the same necessity of conceiving of him in his
organic relations, in order that we may know anything of him or he be anything to us, as there is in
the case of the vine.
The being, the life, and the attributes of God the
Father, the fountain-head and life-principle of the
Godhead, make themselves known in the person and
attributes of the Son. Just as the life, nature, and
attributes of the vine make themselves known in the
nature and the life of the branches. The life.of the
vine has two correlative and counterpart elements —
the vine or root-element, and the branch-element.
Together these two elements constitute the organic
unity of the life of the vine as an organic whole.




TRINI TARIAN DOCTRINE.             I 5
As such a whole it must be known, and must exist,
or it cannot be known or exist at all. In the branch,
the life of the vine is developed-goes forth into act
and visibility. The attributes and the character of
the Father are seen in the life of the Son.  Thze life
of the Father manifests itself in the life of the Son.
The life of the Son is the living product of the indwvelling life of the Father.
Just as Christ lives and reveals his character and
attributes in the life of the church, which is his body,
the manifestation and the measure of that life of his
which filleth all in all, and the life of the church, is
the product of the indwelling life of Christ, who is its
fountain-head. "As the living Father hath/ sent me
and I live by the Father, even so he that eatetth me
even he shall live by me."  The Son lives by the
Father just as the church lives by the Son. Whilst
at the same time the lives of the Father and of the
Son are not one and the same, but each has a distinct and peculiar life of his own; and the church
and its Head have not a single life in common, but
each has a life of its own, distinct but not separate,
from that of the other. The attributes of the Father
and the Son are not identical any more than their
lives, whilst at the same time it is only in and by
means of the Son that the attributes of the Father
can be revealed.  The attributes of the Father -may




i6              PHILOSOPHY OF
be in those of the Son without thereby becoming
his. They remain the same, and his own, the same
as though they were not embodied and expressed
in another life organically (but not hypostatically)
one with his.
The attributes of Christ reveal themselves in his
body the church; but they do not thereby become
its attributes, so that he and it having the same
attributes are one and the same thing. Absolute,
independent, self-existence is an essential attribute
of the life of the Father, distinguishing it from the
life of the Son, which is not absolutely self-existent,
but as Christ himself expressly says, I live by the
Father! But the Father is " living" in the absolute
sense, that is, in the sense of living by himself and
not by any other. His life flows from nothing, has
no original, no source, no fountain.  Being itself
ultimate, and the absolute and unoriginated life, it
becomes the life-principle and fountain-head of the
life of the Godhead and of the whole creation. The
Son is indeed the immediate fountain-head of the
life of the creation-all things were made by him
and without him was not anything made that was
made-but the life of the Father is fountain-head to
that of the Son, and so ultimately and absolutely
to that of the whole creation. The life of the Son
is the immediate source of the life of the creation.




TRINITARIAN DOCTRIVE.           I 7
The life of the Father is in the life of the creation,
but not immediately, but only in and through the
life of the Son.  The life of the Son mediates
between that of the Father and that of the creation.
The life of the Father is not separated from that
of the universe, but is in it, yet only mediately,
through the life of the Son, so that the life of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the creation, taken
together, constitute that grand organic unity of
life which comprehends all the life there is, and all
that ever was or ever can be life or being at all.
Suppose now that instead of this organic unity of
life constituted by the life of the Godhead, and of
the creation, the being of God were conceived of as
a something standing outside and independent of all
organic connection with our being.  Suppose his
being and nature to be a thing apart from ours, and
sustaining only an external and mechanical relation
to that of the universe, and a thing of which we can
have no knowledge by means of our own inward life
and experience.  Suppose him  to stand entirely
outside of all possible creaturely experience and
consciousness, what knowledge is it possible for us
to have of him? What possible or conceivable
means have we of knowing anything about him? Is
it answered that we may know him by means of his
works?




I8-            PHILOSOPHY OF
But what means have we of recognizing anything
as a work of his, or of connecting him with any
work as its author? Effects do indeed presuppose
causes, but there is nothing in any natural effect to
throw any light upon the nature of its cause, except
as that effect involves in'its own nature something
of the nature of that cause. Spinoza most truthfully and profoundly says, that if two -things have
nothing in common, the one cannot be the cause of
the other. If then the cause be not within the effect,
there can be nothing in the effect from which we can
obtain any knowledge of its cause. For example, if
there is nothing of God of which we can be conscious in our actual experience, then there is nothing
in our experience to throw  any light upon the
nature or character of the source from which our
natures sprang.
The fact is, that we do instinctively and necessarily
in obedience to the logic of thought refer all that we
see in nature, and all that is actual and living in our
own experience or in the universe to a cause
within, and not external and mechanically or arbitrarily related to, itself. We do not when following the natural laws of thought go outside of the
universe to find somewhere within the domain of
infinite space something to which we may ascribe it
as its cause. It does not seem to us possible, that




TRIN7IARI4N DOCTRINE.             19
there can be any such separation between the cause
and the effect-between the fountain and the stream
that flows from it. Nay, we know that no such separation exists. We know that it belongs to the nature
of things that stream and fountain should stand in
immediate relation to each other. That two things
cannot sustain to each other the relation of stream
and fountain, if the one is externally separate and
foreign from the other. And cause in the organic
creation means, not force acting externally to produce its effects, but life and living energy working
inwardly and organically. If God were not internally and vitally connected with the universe as its
cause, there would be nothing in it from which we
could infer anything in regard to his nature or attributes.
In the grand and comprehensive similitude of the
vine and its branches, by which Christ sets forth the
relation between himself and his people (or his normal relations to humanity), he also indicates the relation which exists between himself and the universe.
It is not necessary to confine the illustration to the
narrower relation which exists between him and the
souls of regenerate men. We may extend it to the
whole universe of being, and say, precisely as the
vine is related to its branches, so is God related to
the universe. As Christ, in the special relation to




20              PHILOSOPHY OF
the souls of his people, is vine; so God in the universal relation and as universal creator is vine to the
universe. All that we mean to include under the
term universe, comes, according to the illustration,
under the general head of branches. And all which
there is within the universe, which we yet distinguish from the universe, is represented by the term
vine. Thus the organic unity of God and the universe is exactly represented by the similitude of the
unity of the vine and its branches. If we do not
(e. g.) look outside of a tree for the source of the
branches, if the invariable and universal instinct of
thought teaches us to look inside of a tree for the
source of its branches, so the natural logic of our
minds teaches us that the principle of the life and
the unity of the universe must be within the universe
and not somewhere or somehow outside of it. We
do not, under the leading of the instinctive tendencies-of our minds, go about seeking outside of the
creation for the creator, outside of "the things that
are made" for the power that made them.
Nothing but the creation indeed, can lead us to
the knowledge of its author. It does lead us to such
knowledge; and the whole end for which it exists is
to lead to it, but it points us to what is within, and
not to something, we know not what, lying somewhere, we know not where, outside of itself, for




TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE.             21
the knowledge which we seek, for the source from
which it springs. Through all its living species, and
all its cosmic harmonies, through all its ranks and
orders, it says to us, if you would know the life of
the Creator —if you would know what manner of
life it is which he lives, seek the knowledge of it in
our lives, for hle lives in us.
Such, therefore, as our lives are in their principle,
such also is his life —for in him we live and move
and have our being-his life is the principle of our
lives-it is our lives in their principle.  The life of
God and the life of nature are not one and the same
life, but the life of nature is the living product of
the life of God, and his life produces and sustains
the life of nature, and establishes and maintains the
order and the unity and the harmony of the universe-not as something existing extraneously to it,
and operating upon it from without as external and
mechanical will and force, but by living and exerting his own vital energies within it. Out of this
circle thus pervaded by the life of God, it is impossible for us even in thought to pass; for there is
outside of it nothing for thought to fasten itself
upon, and therefore nothing that it can pass to; and
there would be no means of making the passage or
of bridging the chasm between that and us, and thus
reaching the other side, if there were another side




22               PHILOSOPHY OF
to it.  For life can be joined to life only by living
links, and there is no chain by which the living cause
can bind its effects to itself;, but one whose links are
living, and forged out of the material of its own life.
In the realm of mechanism, the cause does not live
and move and have its being in ifs effects, nor (vice
versa) do effects live in the life of their causes, and
therefore there is nothing in the effect to reveal anything in relation to its cause, except force and skill
sufficient to contrive and produce it. All that a
watch, for example, reveals in reference to its maker
is, that he, for some reason or'other, wanted an instrument by which to measure time, and that he had
power and skill enough to contrive and manufacture
this.  Nothing more than this can be known about
his purposes or his ends, his faculties or his character, if we are limited to the watch as our source of
information. Let us not then allow ourselves to be
referred any more to a cause outside of the universe,
and sustaining only mechanical relations to it, to explain the mystery of its nature or the fact of its
existence.  It exists from  a cause and for a cause
within itself. And it is, and is what it is, because
that cause is, and is where and what it is. It could
not have existed at all except from a cause-and it
could not have been what it is, except for a cause
influencing the mind of him who produced it. And




T7RIVITARIAt  DOC1TRINE.          23
the cause that has produced such a universe as this
must have possessed the height of wisdom and intelligence, and been actuated by motives of infinite
goodness and love.
How beautifully and conclusively the apostle
treats this argument in his address to the Athenians
on Mars' Hill: Forasmuclh then, he says, as we are
rational and intellzigznt beings, capable of proposing to ourselves the wisest, the noblest, and best
ends in all that we do, and never consciously acting
without motives or without reference to an end, we
ought not to think that our Creator is like unto silver
or gold or stone, graven by art and man's device. He
teaches them that it is a logical absurdity, as well
as inconsistent with anything like a rational religion, to think that our Creator is so utterly unlike
us and so immeasurably inferior to us as that makes
him. He teaches that to ascribe life, reason, intelligence, moral and intellectual faculties, religion and
love, as we find them in ourselves, to dead, senseless inorganic matter-mere metal and stone-as
their cause-is as contrary to reason and common
sense as anything can be, and the grossest imposition
and wrong that we can practice upon ourselves, unutterably degrading to our humanity, and demoralizing to our natures.
Thus it is wholly owing to the organic relation




24             PHILOSOPHY OF
existing between God and the universe, that it is
possible to obtain any knowledge of him by means
of it, or that it throws any light upon the question
of his nature or his attributes. When I-t
nature points within herself for the explanation of
the fact of her existence, and says, if you would
know the secret of my origin seek it within me, she
does not mean to refer her origin to herself, and to
say that she is her own creator; but that the principle out of which her life and being have flowed, is,
(not herself, but) within herself,-and works and
manifests itself in and through her. She means to
bear witness to the organic connection existing between herself and her divine original. Not that the
two existences and natures are one and the same
thing, identically, but that they are organically one,
the one existing within, and as the producing cause
and fountain-head of the other.
God lives in nature and nature in God, that they
may be made perfect in and by virtue of their
organic unity.  Does not Christ recognize this
great principle of the organic relation between nature and God, when he prays in words not otherwise
intelligible, that they all may be one, as thou Father
art in me and I in thee, that they also may be one in
us.  And the glory which thou gavest me I have
given them, that they may be one even as we are one,




TRZVI TARIAN.DOCTRINE.         25
I in them and thou in me, that they may be made
perfect in one.
Thus much for the relation between God and the
universe, and for the manner in which God is made
known to us, and we arrive at the knowledge of him
through the medium of his works. If they were not
organically connected with him,-he in them and
they in him, —.there would be nothing in them to
throw light upon the question of his nature, or to
impart any knowledge or idea of him. If God were
not within his work and within us, the idea of God
as it is reflected upon us from the things which he
has made, and especially in the light of our own
inward being and consciousness, could never have
had being in our minds. Just as external objects
are to us what they reveal themselves to be
through our bodily sensations and experience; as
external experience is our only source of knowledge
regarding them, so is our inward experience the
only source of any true knowledge concerning God.
He only that knows something experimentally of
the soul's life and of the life of God in the soul,
knows anything of God at all. He alone has proper
and trustworthy conceptions of the nature and attributes of hini that made him. All that comes to
us from other and outside sources, and is not the
reflection of the light and of the witness of the spirit
3




26.             PHILOSOPHY OF
within, can be little else than vazin zuisdom all, and
false p/zilosophy. It can be little else than superstition and folly, and an imposition upon our ignorance, our weakness, our fears, and our credulity.
If we receive what we call the knowledge of God
from any source but the Spirit itself, witnessing in
and with our spirit, what we receive must be falsehood, whose only tendency is to quench the inward light, to put out the eye and destroy the life
of our souls. Except as with the eye of our own
spiritual being we " read the eternal deep "-and in
our inward experience are conscious of the presence
of something within us that is infinite, all holy and
Eternal-and thus, to use the language of Wordsworth, of being "haunted forever by the Eternal
mzind," it is impossible that that mind should be revealed to us. The greatest foe to human progress
and elevation, the greatest obstacle in the way of
the true knowledge of God, is a material and mechanical philosophy which has usurped the place of
reason and experience, and the laws of spiritual life,
in the interpretation of nature and of the Scriptures,
and in the construction of our theological systems.
There can be no such thing as genuine and radical.
reform in our theology, and we can never arrive at
a true interpretation of nature and Scripture without a reformed philosophy, in the place of the arbi



TRINAITARIAN DOCTRINE.         27
trary and lifeless systems that have so long held
almost undisputed and unquestioned sway; which
know nothing of any force but that which is materialistic, and recognize no laws of nature but those
of mechanical action and reaction, and no life of
nature but what is the result of them.
What is needed is a philosophy that recognizes
nothing as real, or entitled to any place in the nature of things, but what is living and organic, that
acknowledges no universe but the living universe,
no God but the living God; no relation between
the universe and God, but that between the living
body and its living Head, between the living and
the life-giving vine and its living branches.
But our argument is incomplete until it has done
more than to prove the necessity of the organic
connection between God and his creatures, in order
that they may have the means of any right knowledge of him.  It must prove, also, the organic
unity of the Creator within himself. It must demonstrate the philosophical and religious necessity
of conceiving of the Godhead as an organic unity,
and not as unique, or absolutely one and simple in
the nature of its being, and without organic connection to anything that has living being outside
of itself.
Between God and a monad there is nothing in




28             PHILOSOPHY OF
common, and no resemblance-none whatever.
God has living and organic relations, as has been
proved; but a monad, according to its definition,
has no such relations, and it belongs to the necessary conception of it that it should have none.
Therefore, God is not a monad. If not a monad, or
abstract unity, then, if he is a unity at all (and he
is a unity), he must be an organic unity.
Whatever, then, may be the nature or the intimacy of the relations between God and us, the
divine nature and ours are not the same. The Godhead has a nature of its own, distinct and different
from that of the manhood (or the Humanity considered as an order of being); the two orders differ
not in degree or rank merely, but also in kind.
The one nature does not differ from the other
merely as a different form or modification of a nature which at bottom and essentially is one and the
same. The Creator cannot change his own essential form and nature and become a creature. God
cannot become a man, any more than a man can become
God. When we speak of God and a man we are
uniformly understood to be speaking, not of two
different modifications of one and the same nature,
but of two different natures-the one that of the
creature, the other that of the creator. Now, how
is the one, the creature-nature, to come into vital




TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE.           29
union and experimental and conscious communion
with the other, the creator-nature, differing as
the two natures do, not in degree merely, but
also in kind?  It is only in virtue of those
elements which the two natures have in common;
it is only, that is, in virtue of the communion of
nature between two persons, that the one can, with
his consciousness, enter into the consciousness of
the other, so as thus to become conscious of the
consciousness or of the feelings of the other. Such
interpenetration of experiences requires a common
nature, so far, at least, as these correlated and counterpart experiences are concerned.
How, then, can the mind of man come to the experimental knowledge of the mind of the Godhead?
(For we know the Godhead only in so far as we
know its mind, or know it in its mind.)
The doctrine of the organic unity of the Godhead
gives the only possible answer to that question. The
conception of the Godhead, as an organic unity, furnishes the only answer, and reveals the only means
by which the two natures can be brought into fellowship and communion of feeling. and of knowledge
with each other. There is one God and one Mediator between God and man (that is, between the Godhead and the mnanhood), the God-man Christ _yesus.
The mind of the Godhead reveals and communi



30             PHILOSOPHY OF
cates itself to the mind of man through the me-.
diation of the nature and person of Christ, who
is at once and in his one nature, both God and
man. The two natures meet and combine in the
one undivided and indivisible nature of the man
Christ Jesus-who is man in the sense of being
not a man, but the principle of our humanity-or
our humanity in its principle. Now, between Christ
and us there is communion of nature, because he is
our nature in its principle, and surely there can be
no obstacle to the most vital and intimate communion. of knowledge and feeling between each individual man, and him who is not a man, but the very
life and life-principle of all that is human in his
nature.  But if he combines. in his one nature
the two natures-the nature of the Godhead and
that of the manhood, As in communing with him
(as we are enabled immediately to do through his
real humanity), we commune with the nature and
heart and mind of the Godhead through him. Not
directly with the Father, because between his particular nature and ours there is nothing in common,
but our communion is with the Father indirectly
through our communion with the Son.
Christ, through his divine nature, and as himself
within the Godhead, is in immediate communion
with the Father. Tihere is no necessity of a media



TRINITA4RL4 A DOCTRINE.          31
tor between him and his Father, any more than
there is of a mediator between us and  Christ.
There is an organic unity of life and of nature
between the Father and the Son, so that in conmmuning with him  we are brought, through  the
medium  of his life and nature, into communion
with the life of the Father, which is in him as the
life-principle of his life. (John vi. 57.) This mystery
is plainly asserted by Christ himself. He admits the
impossibility of any immediate knowledge of the
Father by us; but at the same time says, that having
seen him, we are without excuse if we say that we
have not seen the Father. He that hath seen me hath
seen the Father. How, then, after having seen me,
sayest thou, "Show us the Father?"   Believest
thou not that I am.in the Father, and the Fat/her in
me?  The words that I speak to you I speak not of
myself, but the Father that dwelleth in me —lhe doeth
the works. Believe me that I am in the Father, and
the Father in me. Hence, Christ being organically
one with us, and at the same time organically one
with the Father, brings our nature into organic relations with the Supreme Deity of the Father. It
is thus by means of the organic relations of. the
Godhead within itself that it becomes capable of
entering into organic relations with us, and thus of
communicating himself vitally and intelligibly to us.




32              PHILOSOPHTY 01P
In order that the nature of Christ may mediate
between the nature of the Father and our nature,
his nature must ill some respect be different from
ours at the same time that it is one with it. If it were
in no respect different from ours, it could not stand
as a third term between ours and another nature. His
occupying a position between the two parties makes
it necessary to regard him as being in some sense one
with both, at the same time that there are respects
in which he differs from both. If in his own proper
and peculiar nature he did not combine properties
of the nature of both, the two could not meet in
him, and he could not be the medium, and mediate
between them.  If, besides, there were not respects
in which he differs from both, he could not be reckoned as a third term  or party between them.  In
what respect, then, is Christ one with us? I answer,
he is one with us as being not one of us, but all of us,
and all there is of us, except our imperfections and
our sins. In other words, he is one with us as being
our humanity in its principle and fountain-head. He
and we are one, to use his own illustration, in
the sense that the vine and its branches are one,
and he differs from us as the vine differs from the
branches. I am tihe vile, ye are thze branches. The
vine and its branches are not so one but that the
vine has a life of its own, distinct and different




TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE.              33
from that of its branches, whilst the branches have
a life of their own distinct and different from that
of the vine. To make the matter plain, and show
clearly and beyond the need of any possible mistake, how it is that the Son mediates between
the Father and us, we have only to represent Christ
by the vine and ourselves by the branches, thus
showing at once the oneness and the difference
between him and us. Then, suppose that the vine
is itself branch to something else which is to it
what it is to us.  Let Christ thus be represented
as standing between his Father, who is his vine
on the one hand, and us, who are his branches,
on the other, and the illustration is complete. He
mediates between the Father and us by being at
once branch to him and vine to us. He is in his
Father and his Father in him, just as we are in
him  and he in us.  If it were not, then, for the
organic relations existing within the Godhead-if
it were not at once within the unity of its own being
both Father and Son, it could sustain no organic
relations to us, and without these there would be
no means by which we could come to the knowledge
of it. *
* To show that in what I have written entirely "without book,"
and on the sole authority of Scripture and my own mind, on this fundamental point of the mediatorial nature of Christ as God-man, medi3*




34                  PHILOSOPHY OF
ator; that only as being both God and man could he mediate between
God and man, but that whilst uniting the elements of both parties in
his one undivided and indivisible nature he must be different
from both in order not to be identical with either party, but to
constitute a third party standing between the two; I say, in order
to show that on this great point, though trusting to myself under
no leading but that of the plain and necessary sense of Scripture,
I have not shot very wide of the mark of the free and unsophisticated judgment and opinion of the best minds of the best
age of the Christian Church, I desire to add here the admirable
statement by Neander of the position of the great Athanasius, firmly
and consistently maintained by him in the Nicene Council, and,
amidst all the changes, strifes and persecutions that resulted immediately from it, never departed from by him. The statement of Neander reads like a grand summing-up and condensation of all the vital
points concerned in the great controversy so fraught with results and
consequences of weal and of woe, but especially of the latter, to the
Church in all the succeeding ages.
"After having been enlisted but for a short period in favor of the
Homo-onsion he (Constantine) had been drawn back again to those
earlier views, which would so much more readily present themselves
to a layman contemplating the matter simply in its outward aspects,
that personal passions and a self-willed, disputatious spirit had given
to these questions, which did not pertain in the least to the essentials
of Christianity, an undue importance. The Emperor entertaining
this view of the matter, all who agreed in representing the doctrinal
differences as unimportant, would especially commend themselves to
his favor; while all who were unwilling, for the sake of gratifying the
Emperor, to moderate their zeal in behalf of a truth which they
found to be intimately connected with the essence of Christianity,
would easily become suspected and hated by him, as uneasy, contentious and disorderly men.
"Hence may be explained the contests which first and preeminently
the remarkable person had to pass through who' had now become the
head of the Homo-onsion party in the Eastern Church. For soon
after the conclusion of the Council of Nice, the bishop Alexander
had died, And was succeeded by the archdeacon Athanasius, a man
far his superior in intellect and resolute energy. Athanasius had
probably been already, up to this time, the soul of the party in favor




TRINI NTA RI.4    O CTD RINE.               3 5
of the Homo-onsion, and it was by his influence that the bishop
Alexander had been led to decide that nothing should be yielded in
order to the restoration of Arius.  Moreover, he had already distinguished himself at the Nicene Council, by the zeal and acuteness
with which he defended the doctrine of the unity of essence, and
combated  Arianism.  By pursuing  with  strict consistency  and
unwavering firmness, during an active life of nearly half a century,
and amid every variety of fortune and many persecutions and sufferings, the samne object, in opposition to tllhose parties whose doctrinal
views were either unsettled in themselves, or liable to veer about
with every change of the air at Court, he contributed in a great
measure to promote the victory of the Homo-onsion in the Eastern
Church.  If we co1nsider the connection of thought and ideas in the
doctrinal system of this father, we shall doubtless be led to see, that,
in contending for the HIomo-onsion, he by no means contended for a
mere speculative formula, standing in no manner of connection with
what constitutes the essence of Christianity: that, in this controversy,
it was by no means a barely dialectic or speculative interest that
actuated him, but in reality an essentially Christian interest. On
the holding fast to the Itomo-onsion depended, in his view, the
whole unity of the Christian consciousness of God, the completeness
of the revelation of God in Christ, the reality of the redemption
which Christ wrought, and of the communion with God restored by
him  to man.'If Christ,' so argued Athanasius against the Arian
doctrine,'differed from other creatures simply as being the only
creature immediately produced by God, then he could not bring the
creature into fellowship with God, since we must be constrained to
conceive of something still intermediate between him, as a creature,
and the divine essence which differed from him, something whereby
he might stand in communion with God; and this intermediate being
would be precisely the Son of God in the proper sense. In analyzing the conception of God communicated to the creature it would be
necessary to arrive at the conception of that whic/z requires not/idzg
internediate in order to conZtmunionz wit/a God; wv/ich does not jparticiAsAte izz God's essence as somet/ing foireign firoiz itself, but wz/ich is itself
the self-comnmunicalinzn essence of God. This is the only Son of God,
the only being who can be so called in the proper sense. The
expressions Son of God and divine generation are of a symbolical
nature, and denote simply the communication of the divine essence.




36                  PIILOSOPH Y OF
It is only on the supposition that Christ is, in this sense alone, the
proper Son of God, that he can make rational creatures Children of
God. It is the Logos who imparts himself to them, dwells within
them, and through whom they live in God-the Son of God within
them, through the fellowship of whom they become themselves
Children of God.' It is here seen how in Athanasius the idea of the
Homo-onsion presented itself in connection with what constitutes
the root and groundwork of the entire Christian life. While the
Arians mantained that it was impossible to distinguish the conceptions Son of God and generation from God from the conceptions
created being, and a creature, without falling into sensuous, anthropomorphic representations, Athanasius on the contrary, taught that
all human expressions of God were of a symbolic nature, taken from
temporal things, and therefore liable to be misconceived unless the
idea lying at the bottom were freed from the elements of time and
sense, and the same attribute, predicated of God, understood in a different manner from what it would be when predicated of creatures.
Even God's act of creation, in order not to be misconceived, must be
distinguished from the human mode of producing and forming. As
the Arians admitted that, according to John v. 23, divine worship
belonged to Christ, Athanasius accused them of showing that honor
to a creature, according to their notions of Christ, which belonged to
God alone; consequently of falling into idolatry. From this coherence of the doctrines which Athanasius defended with his whole
Christian consciousness, it may be well conceived that he must have
considered himself bound by his duty as a pastor, not to admit into
his Church a teacher who held forth a system which appeared to him
to be so thoroughly unchristian." —Neander's History of the Christian
Religion and church. Vol. II., pp. 380, 38I.




TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE.              37
II.
Christ, the Principle of our Immortality.
THE prevailing doctrine respecting our immortality is, and has for the most part been, that the
soul is naturally and essentially immortal; that the
life imparted to it at its creation is a thing that
having once been must forever be; that it is
dependent on nothing outside of itself for sustenance
or support, but is in such a sense self-supporting
that no withdrawal of the favor or the support of
its Creator on the one hand, nor any inflictions of
his anger on the other, can in the least affect the
strength of its hold on life, or the conditions upon
which the perpetuity of its existence depends. This
doctrine, of course, denies the existence of any
organic connections between the life of the soul and
the lives of other living beings in the universe. It
makes it a poor, finite, solitary, inorganic object in
the abyss of infinite being, living necessarily, twinkling endlessly, in spite of itself, and in spite of all
assaults of finite evil, and all withdrawal of divine
support, living by the inherent necessity of its own
nature. This is not only the pagan doctrine, but,




38               PHILOSOPHY OF
strange to say, the prevalent Christian doctrine,
notwithstanding that it finds no support in Scripture, and is contrary to reason and to the analogy
of nature and of Christianity.
But the Christian history shows that the first
shining of the light of the Gospel had a strong
tendency to cast doubt on this view of the subject.
As matter of fact, Justin Martyr,* who was bred a
Platonist, and the first of the Christian fathers whose
writings are extant, was led, as soon as he became
a convert to the Christian faith, to deny the Platonic
doctrine of the natural and inherent immortality
of the soul, as directly and radically inconsistent
not only with the analogy of Christianity, but with
the plain and express teachings of Christ and His
apostles.  Many of the  early Greek  fathers of
the ante-Nicene period agreed with him in this
opinion, and it was the prevailing sentiment of
the educated Christian mind of the first three
centuries. Justin understood Christ tacitly to deny
the inherent and natural immortality of the soul,
and to ascribe it to Himself as its eternal principle,
and to teach that it could belong to man only as
derived from the absolute source, the Eternal
Father, through him. Christ represents himself as
* He sealed his testimony with his blood in the persecution under
the Emperor Marcus Aurelius.




TRINITAR1AN DOCTRINE.            39
the bread of immortality which came down from
heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not die,
which is as much as directly to say that there is no
principle of immortality in man by nature, and that
if he does not derive the principle (the bread) of it
from Christ, there is nothing to prevent his dying as
the brute dies. He further says: Except ye eat the
flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man ye have
zo life in you-that is, nothing that survives the
body, nothing that exempts you from the same
death that overtakes and destroys forever all the
successive ranks and generations of animal as
well as vegetable life that swarm on all the face
of the earth. The Apostle John puts this point in
a very strong light in several unequivocal passages,
which I cannot forbear quoting in this connection.
A nd the world passeth away and the lust thereof, but
he that doeth the will of God abideth forever. What
fair and unforced interpretation can be put upon
these words by those who hold that immortality is
irrespective of character, that the wicked are
immortal, and as certain of abiding forever as the
righteous!  Again, this same apostle says: And
this is the record: that God hath given to us
eternal life (that is, immortality), and this life is
in hi's Son-he that hath the Son hath immortal
life, but he that hath not the Son hath not life. It




40              PHILOSOPHY OF
is only, that is to say, by having the Son that we
can have the life of which he is the principle.
The commonly-received doctrine, however, denies
this dependence of the soul for its immortality upon
a vital and spiritual union with Christ, and makes it
a matter of nature and necessity, and insists upon
the immortality of the soul as a thing entirely
independent of character, or any relations which
the soul may sustain to the spirit and life of Christ.
It  makes it a separate, inalienable, necessary
possession, depending wholly upon nature and not
at all upon grace, and belonging to the worst as
well as to the best of men; to those that are out of
Christ, and cut off from the life of God by the
wickedness which is in them, as well as to those that
are in Christ and drink most deeply into the spirit
of his life, and draw  most abundantly from  him
the life of their lives. But no man can, in view of
the cardinal facts in the case, be rationally persuaded of the truth of any such doctrine of immortality as this. What support can it find, either in
Scripture or reason, experience or analogy?  We
say none: there is no evidence of its truth; on the
contrary, all nature, reason, Scripture. and analogy,
are against it.  Men have held to it for lack of
Scripture light, and because they have not understood the philosophy of life and of living nature.




TRINI TA RIA A DOCTRINE.           41
It is, in short, because they have not learnt
that great and fundamental principle of nature
which all fact supports, without a solitary known or
conceivable exception —that all life is organic, that
there is not anywhere in the world, either of nature
or spirit, any such thing as a life that is unique —or
absolutely one and simple, individual and solitarywith no organic connections within itself or with any
other life. The truth is (and the proposition needs
only to be made in order to secure universal assent),
that life exists in species, races, and orders, and in
no other way: beneath the throne of God there is
not such a thing as life that does not belong to a
living species.  And, moreover, there is no such
thing as a species that does not constitute an
organic unity, consisting of its fountain-head and its
members-of the universal generic principle of unity
and of life, and of the particular members with
their individualizing and differentiating characteristics which receive their unity and their generic
character from  it.  It is impossible  that there
should be any such thing as life in an individual
which he does not derive from  the life-principle
or fountain-head of the species to which he belongs.  For he cannot exist without being either
himself the generic principle of a species, or belonging to a species as a particular member of it



42              PHILOSOP'HY OF
just as it is impossible that there should- be life in
a branch which is not derived from the vine with
which it is in living and organic connection. Accordingly, Christ represents it to be wholly owing
to our organic connection with him that we have
any power to bear fruit, or even to live at all —as
the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it
abide in the vine. And as to the possibility of our
living without vital connection with him, he says,
Without me ye canZ do notzhinz-you cannot even so
much as live, or be at all, to say nothing of the
ability to bear fruit. If a man abide not in me, he
is cast forth as a branch that has separated itself
from the vine (supposing such a thing to be possible), and men gather them and cast them into the
fire, and they are burned. We do therefore greatly
err and involve ourselves in great and needless darkness and distress of mind, in reference to this great
question of our immortality, when in thought we
isolate ourselves from all organic connection with
the eternal fountain of life, and strive to believe in
our immortality-in a life that survives the wreck
of the grave and the doom of all merely natural
things and perpetuates itself to all eternity. For it
is not upon an individual status, nor in our individual capacity without reference to our organic connection with the great whole of the body, and the




T'RINITARIAV DOCTRINE.           43
great principle of the body's life, that we are to
regard the question of our immortality. It is not
an individual so much as an organic question. The
question is in reality in reference to the immortality of the organization to which we belong, and
of which we are living and essential members and
organs. If that is immortal, we are immortal. Our
destiny is bound up with that of the system of
which we are members, and of which we constitute
essential and organic parts. If that lives, we shall
live. Accordingly, Christ speaking of himself as
the fountain of the body which is his church, says,
Because I live ye shall live also. The body cannot
die so long as its head lives, and no member of that
body, whose life is thus assured, can die so long as
it remains a member, and retains its vital connection with the organic source and principle of life.
To individualize ourselves, and look upon ourselves in our merely individual capacity without
reference to the body or organization to which our
souls belong, and strive to believe in our immortality
on such a false assumption as that, is like striving to
believe in the continued and perpetual burning of
the flame of a lamp without reference to the oil in
the'lamp, from which it is fed. It is as though we
should expect the flame to burn on forever without
any lamp, or any oil in the lamp to feed and sustain




44              PHILOSOPHY OF
it. The flame must have something to draw upon
besides itself before it can have any chance to burn
for any great length of time. It requires more than
an individual supply. It must have the lamp beneath it, and the supply in the lamp must be inexhaustible enough to support the innumerable
flames on the particular burners that branch out
from it. If we are to have the true faith of our immortality, the faith that is full of immortality and
full of glory —that undoubting and blessed assurance which is the privilege of the Christian, we must
look upon ourselves not in our individual capacity,
but as one with all the redeemed in Christ Jesus.
We never have any difficulty in embracing with perfect assurance the immortality of our Lord Jesus
Christ. Indeed we cannot help believing in it, for
he is not immortal, so much as immortality-the
principle itself. We cannot, therefore, believe in him
without believing in immortality so far as concerns
him. But to believe in it as it is in him is to believe
in it also in regard to those that are in him, for they
cannot die whilst he lives unless they shall separate
themselves from him or be separated from him
against their wills. But neither of these is possible.
There is no power that can separate us from the
love and the life of Christ-so long as we love him,
and having loved him once it is impossible to con



TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE.            45
ceive of the possibility of the voluntary withdrawal
of our love.
What Christ is he must forever be, and what he
has he must forever keep. My sheep hear my voice,
and I know them, and they follow me: and I give
unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish,
neither shall any pluck them out of my hand. My
Father which gave them me is greater than all, and
no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's
hands. Moreover, with the same assurance with
which we believe in the immortality of Christ, we
believe in the immortality of the church, not merely
as an organization that is to be perpetuated, but in
the immortality of each of its members. For in
that organization it is not necessary that one generation of its members should die and pass away in
order to give place for another. Its generations do
not die. Nay, it has no succession of generations as
the species in nature have, but all its members from
the first to the last constitute but a single generation.
There is increase but no succession. The one generation of believers in Christ is not born till we all
come, from the first to the last believer, in the unity
of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of
God unto a perfect manhood-unto the measure of
the stature of the fullness of Christ.
But what is the ground of this implicit faith which




46              PHILOSOPHY OF
we have in the immortality of the church? It is
that it is the church of the living God. It is that
we know that its head is a living head, and the unconscious and necessary ratiocination of our minds
in the premises is, that because he lives, she shall
live also. The church lives because it is inseparable
from its living head. It lives and it must live because he, who cannot die, whose grand distinction
is that he ever liveth, lives in it, to maintain its life,
and to cause it to flourish in undecaying youth and
vigor forever. If the source of the life of his body
were mortal, as the principle of our bodily life is,
then his body would die just as ours does. If the
life-principle of our bodies were immortal as that of
the body of Christ is, then our bodies would be
immortal as his body, which is the church, is.
What, then, have we to do in order to be fully
and finally established in the doctrine of our individual and personal immortality? I answer, we
must habitually and in obedience to the spontaneous
and natural logic of our feelings and our instincts
regard ourselves, not in our individual, but in our
organic capacity, not as standing each alone, as a
single stalk on its own separate root, but as members of his body, and rooted and grounded in him
who is the one root and life principle of our
humanity. Nothing else can do so much for us




TR IN TARIAN DOCTRINE.            47
because nothing else is so true to nature, or puts us
at the true point of view in reference to this great
subject, as this view of our organic relations to
Christ, our common membership and fellowship with
each other in his body does. The radical principle
upon which this argument rests, and which is to
be steadily kept in view, is that the life of the body
implies the life of its members.  The member that
is separated from the body instantly dies.  The member that abides and keeps its place and performs its
functions in the body lives as surely and as long as
that lives.
This holds universally; as regards the members
of the natural body-the hand, the foot, the eye,
the ear-its truth is self-evident; and as soon as
it is stated and the attention called to it, it is vividly impressed upon the mind, as representing the
universal and most fundamental principle within
the realm of the natural life. There is life for the
member only in the place where it grew, only in
the place where and for which it was produced.
When it is no longer what and where nature made
it to be, and when it no longer answers the end or
performs the function for which nature made it,
it is nothinfg. It annihilates itself by removing
itself out of its organic connections. Out of and
independent of these connections it can do nothing




48              PHILOSOPHY OF
and it can be nothing. It is in reality nothing,
when it is not what it was made to be, nor doing
what it was made to do. In these its natural relations, it has not only its usefulness, its honor,
and its prosperity but its very being also. Only
ask again what becomes of the branch when once
it is severed from the vine, and the connection
which made it organically one with the vine cut
off. What is there for it but to perish; and what
is there that can save it from  death?  Nothing!
There is no power in heaven or earth, in God or
man, whereby the life of a branch thus severed
from all vital connection can be preserved in life.
God and nature can act only in conformity with
their own laws of action and of being. It is not
in the power of miracle to make such a thing as that
severed branch live.  No such miracle ever was
wrought or ever can be. There is no help for such
a branch, no, not in nature nor in miracle.
Now the only question is whether this principle
does not hold and apply equally and in all its force
within this spiritual realm! Is not all life organic,
the life of the soul as universally and necessarily as
that of the body? Whatever may be the differences
between the life of the soul and the body they are
exactly alike in this, that they are both and equally
organic. And it is just as impossible for a soul to




TRINI 7' RIAN v DOCTRINE.        49
exist, or be anything out of its organic relations
as it is for a member of the natural body, or a
branch of the literal vine. Christ establishes this
beyond a peradventure by illustrating the conditions upon which the life of the soul depends, by
the comparison which  he draws'from  physical
nature. If the analogy and the law of nature in
this respect did not extend to, and were not uniform
and identical through, the two realms there would
be no force in the comparison. Nothing could be
learned by it. What he intended to teach would
not be taught, viz.: that all life is organic, life in
the realm of spirit, equally with that in the realm
of physical nature.
He intends to say: the relations which your
lives sustain to mine are organic, your lives sprang
out of mine and are dependent on mine, just as
much as that of the branches springs out of the
vine and is dependent on it. Out of me and of
organic relation with me, life is no more possible
for you than for the branch that is cut or broken
off from the vine. Other Scriptural symbols teach
the same thing, as, notably, that in Eph. iv. I5, I6,
where the relation between the church and its head
is illustrated by the relation which the animal
body sustains to the life-principle out of which it
grows. See also Eph. ii. 21, 22.
4




50               PHII OSOPH Y OF
Now if this be so, if the soul has no more a life
of its own indepenrdent of its life-principle and organic head than the branch a life of its own independent of the vine in which it lives and out of which
it grows; then how can the result of organic separation be different in the one case from  what it is
in the other? The Saviour himself expressly says
there is no difference, that the result in both cases
is the same. And that for the simple reason that
the soul has no more a life that is unique and independent of organic connections than a branch of
a vine or a member of an animal body. To the
soul, therefore, that separates itself from Christ,
its spiritual head, there is no more possibility of
life' than there is for a branch that is separated
from the stock on which it grew.
In the one case, it is true, the separation is voluntary, in the other not. But that makes no difference as to the result, which must in both cases
be the same, and that is death!
It is within the option of the spiritual branch to
say whether it will separate itself or not; but it is
not within its option to determine whether, after
the separation it will remain a living thing, a
living soul, or not!  That is a question that is
determined for it by the law of its nature and of its
creation and which is not left for- it to settle for




TRINITAR.4N DOCTTRINE.             51
itself. Separated from the source of life, cut off
from the eternal fountain-head from which all life
springs, how, thus unfueled and unfed, is it going to
perpetuate its life?  Can it become a life-source
for itself? Is there any such potency in its freedom
of will as to enable it to accomplish this more than
miracle-this greater wonder than any that God
himself can perform for it? Can it in the might of
its own. innate and inherent freedom, in its being's
separation and exile, accomplish it for itself? Can
it in its own strength perform for itself what God
cannot by any strength which he possesses perform
for it?
Can it change its nature, and its rank, and its
office, in the scale of being at its own pleasure, and
from being a branch become at once a vine, an
organic principle and life-source, the source of life
not only to itself, but to others also? If it cannot
do this, then, if it is to exist at all, it must remain
just what, and just where, God made it to be. If
he made it for a member or an organ of some other
life which is fountain-head to it, then such it must
remain, or be nothing.  But separated from  the
Living Spirit from which it grew, and of whose
life it is the product, it cannot perform the functions
of an organ. The Spirit can no longer dwell in it,
and use it. as its organ when it is no longer a part




52              PHILOSOPH Y OF
of its body, and stands no longer in any vital relations with itself. When it is no longer one of the
constituent elements, or parts that from the indwelling of the the living corner-stone are organized together into an holy temple in the Lordinto an habitation of God through the Spirit,
it will be nothing at all-it will have no being when
it has no place in, and constitutes no part of, the
living temple. Not being in the Lord, nor the Lord,
it is impossible to conceive what it can be, or how
it can be at all.  It becomes a thing without a
life, without a nature, without a relation, without
a function. It is neither cause nor effect-it is
neither antecedent nor consequent-it is neither
subject nor object —it is -neither root or branch,
body or spirit, property or subject. It is a thing
unknown, indefinable, unknowable, inconceivable, and
impossible!  Existence is inconceivable upon such
terms and under such conditions. The attempt to
state what it is, is simply the statement of the
impossibility of there being any such thing at all.
Why, then, ascribe not only existence, but immortality, to a thing of which none but a negative
description is possible.
The problem it presents is, Given negative properties without number, out of theirjoint action toproduce
a positive subject.




TRINITA4R1AN DOCTRINE.           53
There is no such thing as creaturely life that has
not its root in the eternal and absolute life of God.
And the Divine life itself exists not alone. There
is, indeed, no other life on which it depends, and
out of which it springs, but it has branches growing
out of it, inseparable from it, and dependent on it.
But the problem which the existence of the soul
that has alienated itself from the life of God through
the wickedness which is in it, and loved darkness
rather than light because its deeds are evil, is
how to maintain an inorganic and absolutely
separate life, dependent on no other and with no
other dependent on that. The consequence to the
soul by placing itself in such a position as that, if
position it can be called, is not life, but death-not
the exchange of one character for another merely, nor
of one condition or situation of life for another, but
of life for death. This result follows not merely from
the character of God, nor from the principles of the
Divine administration, except as those principles
are identical with the organic structure and constitution of the universe. The universe is so made,
its fundamental principles and laws are such, that
a question of administration resolves itself into a
question of essential constitution and the eternal
and unalterable nature of things. The universe is
so made, then, that the natural and inevitable




54             PHILOSOPHY OF
consequence of sin unrepented of-of sin carried to
a point beyond the possibility of forgiveness —is to
sever the vital connection between the source of the
life, which in its nature is immortal, and the soul;
and such a severance, according to the universal
and unalterable laws of organic life, can result in
nothing but what the Scriptures call "death."  The
soul has no alternative.  It must maintain its normal relations with the life of God, or it must
perish. For God so loved the world that he gave
his only begotten Son, that he that believeth in him
might not perish, but have a life which is everlasting. Nothing can be everlasting, nothing in the
universe of God lasts forever but holiness. There is
no everlasting life of evil, of misery and sin. It
is unalterably ordained among the fundamental and
primal decrees of the Divine Government that
nothing which in its nature is evil, and which is
productive of nothing but misery, shall be perpetual. Only that whose nature is good, and whose
only result is happiness and unalloyed well-being,
shall last forever. If its nature be evil, its hold on
life is temporary and transient-only the life which
is love is happiness and true well-being; and therefore, the life of love is the only one that has any
promise or possibility of an endless continuance.
Accordingly, we have the law and the constitution




TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE.              55
laid down in words that admit of no doubtful construction. The wages —the natural and inevitable
and guilty consequence of sin unrepented of and unforgiven is death.' but immnortal life and everlasting
blessedness are the gift of God throug-h i _csus Christ
our Lord.  And St. James gives the genesis, the
growth, and final result of sin. He recognizes the
fact, and describes the nature and the origin of
sin; but he denies the perpetuity of a thing having
such a nature and parentage as that. He says:
Every man, when he is tempted, is drawn away by
his own lust anzd enticed.  Th/en, when lust hath conceived it bringeth forth sin, and sin, when it is finished,
bringeth forth death. Sin is a thing that is some time
or other to have an end, and it is a thing that in
finishing itself, completing its work, and arriving at
its maturity, finishes its subject. It lives upon him,
and lives in him, as long as there is anything in
him for it to live upon, and then it dies, and he upon
whom, and in whom it has fed and lived, of necessity dies with it. He dies because the vital forces
within him  are all destroyed, and his vitality all
consumed;  and the consumption of vitality in this
case must mean not the consumption of the vital
principle, but the sundering of his connection with
it through the gradually corrupting and destroying
power of sin in his soul. Gal. vi. S. And this is




56                   PHILOSOPHY OF
no novelty either in doctrine or interpretation. It
has always been the implicit and the practical faith
of the sincere believer, whether he has thought the
matter out and  intelligently accepted  it in theory
or not. Let Coleridge, under the inspiration of the
truth as well as of his own genius, express the true
faith of our immortality for us:
God's child in Christ adopted, Christ my all;
What that earth boasts were not lost cheaply, rather
Them forfeit that blest name, by which I call
The holy one, the Almighty God, my Father!
Father, in Christ we live, and Christ in thee,
Eternal thou, and everlasting we.
The heir of Heaven, henceforth I fear not death,
In Christ I live; in Christ I draw the breath
Of the true life. Let then earth, sea and sky
Make war upon me, on. my heart I show
Their mighty master's seal. In vain they try
To end my life, that can but end its woe.
Is that a death-bed, where a Christian lies?
Yes; but not his.'Tis death itself there dies.
And, furthermore, in the plainest prose he declares the same doctrine, which is the implicit and
real, though for the most part suppressed doctrine
of the church universal, that immortality is not an
inherent attribute of the human soul, so that whatever may be its character or condition it must still
live; but that it is the gift of God, through Jesus




7TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE.           57
Christ, our Lord. In the Aids to Reflection (Introductory Aphorism XIII.), he says: " Never did
there exist a full faith in the Divine Word (by which
light, as well as Immortality, was brought into the
world), which did not expand the intellect while it
purified the heart, which did not multiply the aims
and objects of the understanding, while it fixed and
simplified those of the desires and passions."




58              PHI~OSOPHY OF
III.
Actual personal relations between the Father and the
Son, and subordination in rank of the Son to the
Father-(the Son equally with the Father within
the Unity of the Godhead, but not equal with him
in it), as set forth in express terms by Christ himself.
An Exposition of Yohn v. 8-20.
THIS exposition is given for the purpose of showing how perfectly real and practical the personal relations between him and his Father were to Christ, and
how he claimed to exercise divine power and prerogatives equally with his Father, at the same time
that he is equally careful to represent himself as
acting and standing in a subordinate relation to him
within the Godhead.
It has been customary with Trinitarians to deny
that the relations between the Father and the Son
in the Godhead are strictly personal or even intelligible in their nature. They say that there is
a distinction, but insist that it is sui generis, that it
is like no other relation that comes within our
knowledge, and that consequently there are no




TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE.             59
analogies or means by which we can form any
conception of what it is. All we can know of it is
t/cat it is. The term " personal ",-they say is used
to describe it for want of a better, not because it is
really such. But that of which we can have no
conception is, and must forever be, nothing as a
matter of knowledge to us. In asking us to believe
in the doctrine, therefore, they say that they do not
themselves know what it is in which they ask us to
believe. They ask us to believe in the Trinity as a
fact of which no explanation can be given. But it
is not an explanation that we ask' for, but only the
privilege of being informed what the fact is in which
we are required to believe. A rational explanation
is not necessary in all cases in order to a rational faith,
but that we should have some intelligible idea of what
that is in which we profess to believe is necessary.
We cannot rationally say that we believe in what is
expressed in a formula of words unless we know
what it is that the formula expresses, or, at least,
that it expresses somethzinzg besides obvious absurdity
and self-contradiction.
Christ, however, treats the distinction as a thing
not only real, but intelligible. He compares himself with his Father in office, in power, in working
-mind with mind-heart with heart-exactly as
though it were a matter between parent and child,




60             PHIL OSOPHI  Y OF
or one man and another, and there is no good reason
why he should not be understood accordingly. It
is certainly most unreasonable to undertake to shape
his utterances to correspond with such utter darkness and confusion as reigns in the orthodox statements of the doctrine of the Trinity and of the
person of Christ.
The matter with which the passage before us
opens, though upon another subject, is not irrelevant
to the general subject of this work. For including
it, therefore, I make no apology, especially as it
stands in such close internal connection with the
main topic.
John v. 8, 9-" yesus saith unto him, rise and take
up thy bed and walk. And iminediately the man was
made whole, and took up his bed and walked, and the
same day was the Sabbath."
This scene of healing seems to have been ino
more than an ordinary instance of the exercise of
that miraculous powerwhich was his by nature, and
his to exercise at his own will and pleasure. Our
English word "walk" seems not to be the exact
equivalent of the corresponding word in the originals, which means literally," to walk about at
pleasure." Our phrase, " go about your business,"
would come nearer to it. The meaning then is:
You need no longer lie here; go where your busi



7'RINI7'IRIA N DOCTRINE.        6I
ness or your inclination calls you.- He spoke, and
though it was the Sabbath, and the man knew that
it was not lawful for him to carry his bed on that
day, yet he obeys without question or hesitation,
see ming to recognize the presence and authority of
a h igher law, in the command of him who had made
him whole.
The same day was the Sabbath. It was obviously
on account of this circumstance chiefly that this
miracle is here recorded. For of the innumerable
miracles which he wrought John records but very
few, and those having a marked character and
specially pertinent to the purpose of his gospel. It
was not that his conduct in this instance was at all
singular, or out of the ordinary course as regarded
his treatment of the Sabbath. For it was not. But
in this instance special notice was taken of his conduct, and it gave rise to that remarkable discourse
respecting his divinity and his relations to the
Father, which John was specially desirous to reproduce and introduce into his record.
Jesus was quite as likely to work miracles on the
Sabbath as on other days. Indeed, so far as his life
and work were concerned, he made no difference
among the days. But the days were not all alike to
the Jews. They put a marked and radical difference between them. Hence the unavoidable col



62             PHILOSOPHY OF
lision, and the bitter war they waged against him.
Not on this ground only. The ground was general; but this uncanonical treatment of the Sabbath
was used as the most prominent specification under
the general accusation of disregard to the law of
Moses.
io. Thle ews, therefore, said to him that was cured,
It is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed.
He was observed carrying his bed-" a mere pallet,
which, when rolled up, made a bundle no bigger or
heavier than a soldier's overcoat." Yet that made
no difference. Big or little, light or heavy, it was a
burden, and must not be borne. "A Jew might
play on the Sabbath, join a social festivity, grow
hilarious, but he must not work."
i i. He answered them.~ He that made me whole,
the same said unto me, take up thy bed and walk.
He could not think obedience to the command of
him who had shown such power and goodness
could be a sin. It could appear no otherwise to him
than as a duty, notwithstanding it was a breach -of
a Mosaic statute. He thought that one who had
thus proved himself the Lord of nature must be
Lord also of the Sabbath day.
The Jews seem tacitly to have admitted the force
of the argument so far as the man was concerned,
that in a measure, at least, it furnished an excuse




TRINITAR1AN DOCTRIrNE.                63
for his conduct, even if it did not fully justify it.
But they saw in it no excuse for Jesus.  For what
had he been guilty of doing?  He had been guilty
of a twofold and most aggravated breach of the
law. He had not only broken the Sabbath himself
by needlessly performing a cure on that day, but he
had caused it to be broken by another person when
there was no need of it. He might have waited
until after the Sabbath before performing the cure,
and the man, though cured, might have waited until
the next day before carrying his bed. But Jesus, it
seems, saw no reason why the man should not be
cured on that day, although it was the Sabbath, nor
why, being cured, he should not use the health
and the strength that had been conferred upon
him  as soon as it was conferred.  The power was
given to be used and enjoyed on all days alike. In
fact, there was no violation of any divine law in the
case either by Jesus or the man. In the presence of
Jesus, and in the face of his work and his word,
there was no Sabbath. The institution was virtually
abolished.* Then and there and thenceforth it ex* The Lord's day and the Jewish Sabbath are not to be confounded. The one is observed in commemoration of the resurrection
of Christ on the.first day of the week, and is necessary for the purposes
of rest from worldly toil, and Christian worship, edification, and comfort. The other is an element of the system of Jewish types and
shadows, which, having been fulfilled in Christ, has passed away.
Matt. v. I7, I8.




64              PHILOSOPHY OF
isted only in the minds of the Jews.  In the mind
of Jesus it had ceased to exist as authoritative over
the consciences or the conduct of men, after he, the
Lord of the Sabbath, had come to displace the
shadow and replace it with the substance, which substanco He, himself, was. Compare Col. ii. 14-17;
also Rom. xiv. 5, 6.
I 5, 16. The man departed and told the yews that it
was _7esus that had made him whole. And therefore
did the icws persecute Yesus, and sought to slay him,
because he had done these things on the Sabbath day.
17. but yesus answered them:~ My Father worketh
hitherto and I (also) work (in imitation  of his
example).
He is not an observer of days nor of seasons,
so neither am I; as he knows no Sabbath in
the prosecution of his work, so neither do I in
the prosecution of mine. The Sabbath was not
made for him, neither was it made for me. I am
as independent of it in my work as he is in his.
I8. T/herefore the 7ews sought the more to kill
him, because he not only had broken the Sabbath, but
said also that,God was his Father, (thus) making
himself equal with God.
The defense which Jesus had made, so far from
justifying him in their view, seemed only an
aggravation of the original offense, or seeking to




TRINITARIA N DOCTRINE.           65
justify one sin by the commission of another and a
greater one.  To justify his breach of the Sabbath,.
he commits (say they) the crime of blasphemy
against God. He does, indeed, whether it be blasphemy or not, claim equality with God, so far at
least, as this; that he equally with him is free from
the obligations of the Jewish Sabbath, and that it
is just as absurd for them to think of imposing
it upon him, expecting him to regulate his conduct
by it as it would be to think of imposing it-upon
God with the expectation that his work in nature
and in providence would be regulated by it. He
thus gives them distinctly to understand that he
is as much above the jurisdiction and authority
of their Sabbath as God himself is. That it is
just as absurd and will prove to be quite as much
in vain for them to throw the barrier of their Sabbath
across the path of his working and his will, as it
would be for them to forbid the sun to shine, and
require nature to pause in her operations and do
no work on that day.
19. Then answered yesus, and said unto them,
Verily, verily, I say unto you, the Son can do nothing
of himself but what he seeth theFather do, for what
things soever he doeth these also doeth the Son likewise.
The undercurrent of thought must be clearly




66             PHILOSOPHY OF
apprehended, the interior link of connection must
be perceived, or these words will be dark and
enigmatical to us, and criticism and explanation
will be expended on them in vain. What, then,
is the clue to the meaning of this verse? I answer, the Jews had charged him with making
assumptions with regard to himself that were in
the highest degree presumptuous and dishonorable
to the Divine Majesty, with arrogating to himself
divine honors and prerogatives. For to say that
God was his Father, what was it but making
himself equal with God? And what was that to
them but blasphemy, repudiating as they did his
claim  of a Divine nature and origin?  "That
thou being a man makest thyself equal with God,"
was the charge which they brought against him,
(chap. x. 33). Now the elucidations which he gives
on the great and awful theme of the personal relations between the Father and the Son in the Godhead, have reference in the particular form in which
he puts them in this place to the false conceptions of those to whom they were addressed. He
means that they shall know, if by words he can
make them understand it, just how far they are
right and how far wrong in saying that he had,
by what He had said, made himself equal with
God.  He wished them  to understand that if




TRINITA RIAN DOCTRINE.           67
he had claimed equality with God, the nature of
the equality intended was such as involved
no dishonor to God, no blasphemy, nor any unwarrantable pretensions on his part. He wished
to make it plain to them that the equality which
he claimed was not inconsistent with a real subordination on his part to the person and dignity
of his Father, and, therefore, in his answer he
proceeds at once to make known the fact of his
subordination and dependence, notwithstanding
that he did the very same things and in substantially the same way in which his Father did them.
His statement in the I7th verse, was that in working he imitated his Father.  He now proceeds
to explain this-to show how he can work just
as he does and do the very same things, and at
the same time be subordinate to him in respect
to inherent original power, dignity, and will.
Verily I say unto you, the Son can do nothing of
khimself. He means that though he is really and
truly God, that though he is of the substance of
the Godhead, he is not the fountain-head of that
organic unity of life and being which is called by
that name-that whatever exists in him existed
first in the order of nature in his Father, as the
fountain-head of life, power, wisdom, will *and
authority in the Godhead-that whatever he is




68             PHILOSOPHY OPF
or knows or does is by derivation from him who is
the life-principle and fountain-head even of the
Godhead itself.  What he means, then, by saying that the Son can do nothing of himself, is,
that though his works are his own, and in that
sense truly original, yet they do not proceed from him
as the original and ultimate source of life, power
and wisdom. That in the absolute sense-in the
sense of original underived wisdom and power-it
is the  Father that dwelleth in him  that doeth
the works. He says expressly that he works by
imitation and example-that neither his ideas nor
his power are original with him.  He gives us
plainly to understand that in the absolute sense he
originates nothing, and is not himself original, but
that his Father is the original of both himself
and his works. He represents his works as a copy
or image of the Father's only inasmuch as they
were the works of him who is himself the image
of the invisible God. His works are, therefore, in
this sense imitations; they are images of those of
the Father.
What then is this? To be able himself to do whatsoever he has seen the Father do, and to work perfectly in the idea and spirit of that paternal mind?
This power of perfect universal comprehension, insight and imitation of the" infinite and Eternal




TRxNZTARIAX DOCTRIzNE.           69
Original-does any creature or any finite being
possess it? No, the original itself is not further beyond finite knowledge and power than such imitation. The Father himself is not more completely
beyond finite power and imitation than'is the Son
in what he understands and does. And what, on
the other hand, is this? Not to be able to do anything until he has first seen it in his Father?  To
be able of himself to originate nothing-to do
nothing of which he has not first seen the original
and the example in his Father? I say, what is this
but subordination and dependence? And then to
complete the representation, he adds most impressively, as it seems to us (2oth),-For the Father
loveth the Son and showeth him all things He himself doeth.
His view of the example and working of his
Father is not a narrow, partial, or imperfect one. It
extends over the entire field, and there is nothing
so minute as to be beneath his notice or to escape his
observation; nothing so vast or so profound as to be
beyond his easy comprehension and his perfect
knowledge. He knows it as well as if he had himself been its immediate author, and the idea and the
plan of it had been the product of his own mind. He
enters with infinite ease into the uttermost depths
of the divine mind and the divine agency as re



70              PHILOSOPHY OF
vealed in the particular works, and understands each
work not merely as it is in itself, as an effect, but
as it is in the cause out of which it springs.
Whatever in the mind of the Father exists in idea
merely, comes forth out of the mind of the Son as a
realized ideal. The Father loveth the Son for this
reason, because of this perfect insight which he has
into the designs and workings of his own mind, and
the perfect ability he has of carrying them out into
overt acts, and realizing them  in actual works,
which, when he looks upon them, fill his heart with
satisfaction and delight, and he pronounces them
to be all very good. They are good to him, because they perfectly correspond to his own ideal,
fully answer his design and accomplish his purpose;
and, besides, they seem all the more beautiful and
good to him because they are the handiwork of his
only-begotten and well-beloved Son.
The Father loveth the Son because he is the perfect medium through which his own ideas find their
expression, and he loveth his own works all the
more for the sake of the beloved medium through
which they are all wrought. This delight which he
feels in having his own ideas thus perfectly realized,
his own wishes thus perfectly fulfilled, causes him
to love the Son all the more, and to show him all
things whzich himself doeth.




TRIzNITARA.D 0 C TRINE.      71
This apprehensive and imitative faculty of the
Son, this power which he possesses of converting
the eternal ideas into actual, concrete, living realities, is exactly commensurate with the divine
ideals, and with the originative wisdom, power, and
goodness of the Father.
In the form of expression which he uses to set
forth his own divine nature, and to assert the right
which he has to  claim  divine honors without
derogation of the rights of his Father, there is
what, for the want of a better name, we may call a
divine modesty.
His Father, he says, loves him so entirely that
he confides everything to him, conceals not/ling
from him, opens his inmost heart fully out to him,
and showeth him all things which himself doeth.
See how, with a certain innate modesty and
shrinking from self-praise, he speaks when asserting
his own divine claims in comparison with those of
his Father.  He prefers magnifying the Father's
love rather than his own divine greatness. But it
is on account of this inherent greatness of the Son, in
which he has no fellow, as well as on account of
the Father's love to him, that all things are thus
shown to him. They could not, indeed, be shown
to any one else, because no one else would be
capable of appreciating, or in the least of compre



72             PHILOSOPH Y  OF
hending them, so as to imitate and realize them by
the exercise of a creative wisdom and energy of his
own.
But he continues (2oth verse): And will show him
greater things than these, that ye may marvel.
It would seem, then, that the entire field of the
divine ideas and works are not presented to the Son
even, in a single view, that there is even to him a
gradual unfolding of the divine designs and worksthat there are things which have not yet been fully
disclosed even to him, but have, notwithstanding,
been indicated and foreshadowed in such a way
that he speaks of them as of things already within
his knowledge.  In the exercise of his earthly
ministry he has healed the sick and performed a
variety of other miracles; but there are further developments in store for them, in which he intimates
they may see something at which to marvel-as
though they had not yet marveled at anything which
he had done-had thus far in his works seen nothing
worthy of their special wonder. They had, indeed,
expressed astonishment at the cure of the man
whose case is the occasion of the present discourse.
But what was most the matter of their amazement
was not the divine goodness and power shown in the
cure, but the disregard of the authority and sanctions of the Sabbath. The act of healing, itself,




I'A'INZ~IT4A~AN DOCTRINE.        73
seemed to be looked upon by them as an altogether
commonplace affair, hardly worth notice at all, and
which would not have been noticed if it had not occurred on the Sabbath. He forewarns them that in the
developments of the not distant future, events are
in store for them in which they may find something
to engage their attention besides the day on which
they take place or their bearing on the question of
the supremacy and perpetuity of the Jewish polity.
He goes on to indicate something in regard to what
the nature of those events will be.
The.aim and the import of the statements and
explanations which he here makes to the Jews in a
practical and concrete form, when formally and concisely expressed, is this: that in the scale of universal being, he is equal with the Father as being
equally with him within the order of the Godhead,
from which as from its infinite and eternal fountainhead all created life and being proceeds, and thus,
equally with the Father, holding the supreme rank in
the general scale of being; but while, equally with
the Father, he has, by right of nature, his place
within the Godhead, he is not yet equal with him
in it.
This plainly presents a view of the nature of the
Trinity not at all in accordance with the orthodox
standards; which require that the Son should not
5




74              PHIIOSOPHY OF
only be equally with the Father within the Godhead-but absolutely equal with him in it. It is not
sufficient that we assert that there are three persons in the Godhead; orthodoxy requires more. It
requires that we hold not only to the three persons,
but to their absolute coequality, both of nature and
of rank; for it maintains that they cannot each of
them be God without being equal in all respects to
each other. But neither is this all that orthodoxy
requires. For, if this were all, then it would seem
to follow that the Godhead is a thing consisting of three exactly equal parts, and each of the
three parts constituting it —each of the three persons
must therefore be the third part of God. This, of
course, is inadmissible; for the doctrine is that each
of the three persons is the whole of God. It is
required, therefore, that we hold, as orthodoxy does
hold, that each of the three persons comprehends
within himself the entire contents of the Godhead,
the inevitable result of which is that in the three
persons we have the Godhead three times over. In
other words, not a trinity of persons in the one Godhead, but a Trinity of Godheads!
The Godhead, therefore, cannot be conceived of as
a monad-or as an abstract unity-or as absolutely
one and simple in its essence, for that would be
not to have any essence at -all. Neither can it be




TRINI TA RIA,.DOC TRINVE.      75
conceived of as a single person, for that would be the
direct denial of any such thing as a Trinity in any
sense. Neither can it be conceived of as consisting
of three co-equal and coordinate persons, dividing
the substance of the Godhead equally among them;
nor as three persons, each comprehending in himself
the entire substance of the Godhead, for that would
be to make three Godheads, which is absurd, and
contrary to the supposition, which is that there is
but one. It remains as the only possible mode of
conception that the Godhead be regarded as constituting an organic  Unity of being, distinct and
supreme over all other being, having at the same
time, within it, as the nature of an organic Unity requires, the distinction of greater and less, of organic
life and organic principle of life. For there can be
no such thing as a unity of life that has not the
principle of its life as well as of its unity within itself.
It cannot be united in anything whzose existence is
outside of itself.
Thus, all obscurity and all difficulty is removed
from the declaration of' our Lord, a declaration
on which the doctrine of the Trinity is mainly
grounded, and out of which it has grown, and
without which, and the connected declarations,
no such doctrine as that of the Trinity would
have been incorporated in the standards of the




76             PHILOSOPHY OF
church. There is, according to the view above
given, no difficulty in understanding him when
(John x. 30) he says: "I and my Father are One,"
and (John xiv. 28) " My Father is greater than I;"
we see how both these declarations can be true, and
how all seeming inconsistency between them is
removed. If we regard the Godhead as an organic
unity, not as a single person or individual, but as a
system of being having personal distinctions within
itself, it is plain that when he says that he and his
Father are one, he means to assert that his person and
that of his Father constitute the unity of the divine
nature, that the Godhead is a unity, and that he and
his Father are equally elements in it, whilst at the
same time he is distinct from him and subordinate
to him.
Generally, or generically speaking, the Father and
the Son are one, there is no difference of nature between them; but individually and particularly speaking, there is a difference between them; and that
not a difference as between individuals of the same
rank and of the same species, but a difference of
rank, though of the same species,-the Father and
the Son not standing in relation to each other as
ohe man to another, nor as coordinate branches
from a common root or vine; but they are related
to each other as the branch is related to the vine, or




7'RINITARIAN  DOCTRINE.                    77
the individual and particular members of a species
to their common principle or fountain-head.*
* For the judgment and opinions of the early Greek fathers on
this subject of the Trinity, and as showing the ideas that were entertained upon the subject in those early times ( of comparative purity
and piety of life and of doctrine) when men had ideas upon it, and
when it was a living and a leading topic, and stood in the fore-front
of Christian thought andlife and doctrine, see Cudworth's Platonic
Christian's Apology,-Intellectual System,-Vol. I., Book IV. —pp.
777-804.
I take this opportunity to add that it would be natural that the
ordinary mind should look upon the generation of the Son in the
same light as upon the generation of creatures, that is, not as having
its ground in the Divine Essence just as the production of branches
and fruit has its ground in the nature of the vine; not conditioned
upon any single act of the divine will, but rather preceding all such
individual and particular acts. The Arian error lay just here: they
could not distinguish between the act of the divine will by which
the creature nature is brought forth, and that necessity of the divine
Essence, independent of all particular volition, by which the Son is
begotten out of the divine Essence, and out of a necessity of the
divine nature as subsisting in the Father; the fountain-head of the
Godhead, and so one with it, and the very same nature in its developed form. Whence, then, comes the Post-Nicene conception of the
co-equality of the persons as necessary to the real and true divinity
and Godhead of each? There is certainly no hint of it in
any  of the discussions, or in  the creed finally adopted by
the Nicene council, unless it is contained in the term HIomoonsion (consubstantial). And that no'such idea is contained
in  that according to the Athanasian sense, or any sense that
was put upon the term by the Council, or before it, is certain. What
the Athanasian sense was is clearly given, and by that sense and the
similitude by which Athanasius illustrated it, that interpretation is
excluded and rendered impossible. He compares the unity of Essence
in the Father and the Son to the organic unity of life in the vine and
its branches: and the difference of rank and power between the Father
and the Son in the Godhead, to that between the vine and the




78                    PHILOSOPHY OF
branches in one and the same living tree, or vine. According to this,
while the Son is one and the same in Essence with the Father,
he is no more equal with him than the branch is equal with the vine.
Whence, then, came the doctrine of the co-equality of the persons, and
the idea that Christ could not be truly God unless he were in all respects the equal of the Father, and standing on an absolutely equal
footing with him in the unity of the Godhead? It is evidently a gross
corruption of the true doctrine. It must have been " unawares and
privily brought in " to supplement the true doctrine as it stands in the
creed, and as it was understood and adopted by the Council. The
result, if not the covert design, was to put an effectual stop to all discussion of the main topic, and especially to guard more effectually
against the possibility of any foothold being ever gained for Arianism
within the orthodox definition-to guard against the possibility of
any Arian interpretation being put.upon it in the future, and thus
against the possibility of any future questions or disputes upon the
thing intended by the definition. If such was the design, it must be
confessed that it has proved a most signal and entire success, so far
as the history of the doctrine from that time to this is concerned.
(See Neander, Vol. II., p. 39I, Note.)




TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE.             79
IV.
Titles, personal and substantive, in wz/ich Name and
Nature are identical:
The Son of Man and the Good Shepherd.
THE titles by which Christ is known in Scripture
are numerous, and all of them more or less significant; but the two which he applied to himself,
which yet can hardly be said to be applied to him
at all by any one else, are of special significance
with reference to his nature and the relations which
he sustains to humanity. In fact, it is of little use
for us to inquire as to what he may be in himself,
or in his other relations, if we leave out of the account or do not make prominent the relation which
he sustains to us. It is in this relation only that we
can understand or have any intelligible idea of him.
The same is true respecting God in the general sense
of the Godhead. If we know him at all, it must be
practically. As a pure abstraction, or an object of
purely intellectual apprehension, without reference
to our practical and experimental relations to him,
he is in reality nothing to us, for the simple




80             -IIILOSOPI IY OF
reason that he is unknown to us. All ideas of God
that are ideas or intellectual conceptions merely,
and that do not include knowledge acquired by
experience, are powerless in their influence upon us,
and have, in fact, no sure foundation of even rational
evidence to stand upon.  The idea of a merely
speculative knowledge of God that does not rest
upon and is not derived from experience, is a mere
dream.  Without experience we are without the
data from which alone anything like solid or tenable
conclusions can be drawn.
Wherefore, I say, that these titles which Jesus
most delighted in, and which he was certain to give
to himself when he specially wished to put us in a
situation to understand what he was in reference to
us, and the nature of the office which he came to
discharge in our behalf, are of special importance,
and deserve much more of attention and thought
than they have ever received. Indeed, they belong
to the data which he has himself given, and without
which we shall be likely to fail in our attempts to
attain to the true knowledge of Christ. In regard
to these titles, important as they are and manifest
as it is upon the very face of them that they contain fundamental truth, it is very surprising that
they should have received so little attention, and
been almost entirely overlooked by theologians in




TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE.            8I
the construction of their theories of the nature, the
person, and the offices of Christ. They seem to
have contented themselves with general and loose
views, and even vague conjectures concerning their
import. No one seems to have supposed that any
important light respecting the greatest of all questions-the relation which Christ sustains to humanity-could be gained from the study of that one
striking and altogether unique title which, above all
others, he delighted to apply to himself when speaking of himself in his general relations, and especially
when hie had in view the relation which his nature
sustains to ours. The consequence is that these
titles have been passed by, or left among matters of
minor or merely incidental interest, as having either
no distinct and definite meaning at all, or at least
none of any consequence with reference to fundamental points of doctrine or to philosophic insight
into the nature and relations of the-God-man.
The titles to which I refer, are the Son of Man and
the Good Shepherd.
The first is of very frequent use in the Gospels,
and is used by Jesus himself in speaking of himself,
much more frequently than any other.  Judging
not only from the frequency with which it occurs,
but from its being scattered indiscriminately throughout the four Gospels, and as common in one as
5+




82              PHILOSOPHY OF
another of them, being therefore not at all a matter
pertaining to the.style of the particular writer, or
depending on his particular taste or point of view;
and being used by Jesus on all occasions and without rAgard to the particular subject of discourse, it
is fair to conclude that it was often, nay, almost
always, on his lips, and the designation which under
all circumstances he was most apt to use in speaking
of himself. Whatever the subject of discourse, and
whether addressing himself to Jew or to Gentile,
learned or unlearned, friend or foe, this was the
name by which he almost invariably called himself;
for the simple reason, doubtless, that it seemed most
natural to him, and was at all times uppermost in
his thoughts. Besides, it was no more than natural
that, being so in his, he should wish to make it so
in ours.
It is worthy of remark, at the same time, that it
was not used in speaking to or of him either by his
disciples or the Jews, and that it scarcely occurs, if
indeed at all, in the Apostolical Epistles. The
truth probably is, that for the most part the term
conveyed no definite meaning even to his disciples;
and seemed to them to be arbitrarily used, or in a
sense too recondite or too vague for them to inquire
into, or expect to understand at all. Besides, the
term, from being not a proper name, but rather a




7'RNI TAR1A i  D OC TRINE.      83
general term, implying in its form something abstract and general, rather than anything personal or
individual in its meaning, was obviously unsuitable
as an appellative, or term of personal address, and
could not be used as such without violence;to the
laws of thought and of speech.
In the most general sense the use of the term is
based upon the organic conception of the world, and
its relations to God; but this conception long ago
dropped out of the human mind, or at least out of its
conventional methods and its philosophical theories;
and our systems of philosophy, of interpretation
and theology, have been based upon theories of an
altogether different sort, which have only served to
cast darkness rather than light upon our pathway,
and to lead us astray from the natural interpretation of Scripture as well as of the works of God.
This organic conception of the world, however,
was not unknown to the fathers of philosophy —
Plato and Aristotle; and if one with the character
and claims of Jesus had presented himself to them
as not any particular mian, but the Son of Man, they
would have been at no loss to divine his meaning,
and would inevitably have understood him as claiming to be divine and not merely human; as having
original and creative elements in him, and not
merely those which are creaturely.




84              PHILOSOPHY OFI
The perennial freshness which still belongs to the
works of these philosophers, is owing almost en.
tirely to this organic mode of conceiving of the
universe, which permeates their thinking from beginning to end. Modern thought, tired by its long
and fruitless wanderings in the wilderness of shadows and of lawless and lifeless speculation, is turning back more and more to the old masters, and
asking for the old paths. It has but to find, and
walk and continue in them, in order to find rest to
its soul, and fruit and satisfaction as the result of its
toils. When that day comes theology will become
a new science, and the arbitrary and tyrannical
dicta and decrees of councils will no longer be the
source of our inspiration; but we shall resort to the
same fountains of living water to which such fathers
as Origen, Clement, and Athanasius himself resorted. Then, intellect will awake from the death
of its centuries of bondage and servility, and theology as well as all other science will make progress;
and the Church will be coming rapidly, in the unity
of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God,
unto a perfect regenerate and elect humanity, unto
the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.
The Son of Man will then, for the first time, be enthroned in our philosophies and our theologies, and
reign supreme in them as well as in our hearts.




TRINITARIAN DOCYRIANE.          85
The most that has hitherto been made out by
the commentators with reference to the signification of the title is, that it is meant to affirm or
imply something in relation to his humanity; exactly what, or whether anything of any particular
consequence, they are by no means prepared to say.
They think that it was undoubtedly intended to
indicate, in a general and loose way, something concerning his relations to the human race. That it is
a term by which he sought not so much to instruct
us in regard to his nature, as to draw us near to
him in love and confidence, and to assure us of the
intimacy of the relation which he sustained to us,
and the tender regard he felt for us as men.
If it is asked what definite meaning he had, the
answer is, of course, he could have meant no more and
no less than to say that he was human; or, in other
words, that he was, as each of us is, a mazn. Speaking as he does, as to his humanity, he could not
mean to say that he was any more or any less than
a man, for, according to the assumed theories, he
must be a man in order to be human at all. He
means, then, by the title to tell us that he is human,
but that he could be in no other way than by being
a man. A man, therefore, he was, and that is the
end and whole of the matter. This is the sum total
of the light which theology has thus far cast upon




86              PHILOSOFH Y OF
the question, the upshot of all which is, that the use
of the term was a singular, obscure, and enigmatical
way of saying that though related to the Father as
his only-begotten Son, he was at the same time to
be looked upon and treated by us as a fellow-man, in
all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.
Now, this would be conclusive, and here we should
be obliged to rest the whole matter, if it were
indeed so (as it is not) that there is no way in which
he could have humanity and be really and truly
human, except by being actually, so far as his
humanity is concerned, nothing but a man.
The entire mistake, the manifold darkness and
confusion, the utter failure on the part of theology
thus far to entertain a rational and scriptural idea of
the humanity of Christ, has-this origin. This false
philosophy respecting race and species; this failure to reach and accept the ancient organic conception of the world; this arbitrary and baseless
nominalism, taking the place of a rational and scriptural realism, is the fons et orzo malorum, " the direful spring " of the evils of our theology, and has made
any rational conception either of the Godhead or
of the manhood-any just conception of the relation
of the one order to the other, an impossibility. It is
owing to this that since the Council of Nice, darkness has settled down on the doctrines of the Trin



TRIVNI TARIAN DOCTRINE'.                      8
ity, and of the nature and person of Christ, and
theology (in the strict and proper sense) has groped
at noonday, as in the night.*
The truth of philosophy and of Scripture is,
that without something more than individual
and particular men there could be no such
thing as what we mean by the human species.
Without something  more  than  the  particular and
separate members of an order, whether of plants or
of animals, there could be no such thing as race or
species.  Without a common  fountain-head  out of
which they spring, and in which they find the principle of their life and their unity, how do they ever
come to exist at all?   Creation is not sporadic, it is
organic. It is not the repetition of so many separate
* It is very surprising and deeply to be lamented, that while
Athanasius held to the consuzbstatliality of the Father and the Son in
the Godhead, and illustrated it by the similitude of the vine and its
branches, he should yet have denied and denounced as savoring
of Arian heresy the consubstantiality of Christ and humanity in the
order of the Human which the similitude was used by Christ expressly
to illustrate. Whilst thus ill regard to the first he was a great light,
leader and benefactor, in regard to the second he was a great
misleader and propagator and perpetuator of error, darkness and
confusion in theology. It is to us that Christ says, I am  the vine,
ye are the branches, and not of the Father, he is the vine and I am.
the branch,-though  the illustration applies, and was doubtless
intended to apply to both the orders: yet to the first, the Divine
order, it is applied indirectly and by implication and analogy; whilst
to the latter, the Human order, and the relation of Christ to men,
in that order, it applies directly and expressly.




88              PHILOSOPHY OF'
acts, without any organic relation between them
— without any such relation as that of original
and copy, vine and branches, head and members
among them. All life is systematic, not only in its
form, but in its origin. It is so in form, because it
is so in origin, and according to the law of its creation. The individual in all cases, and in all the
orders of which living nature is composed, belongs
to a species, and there is no such thing, and there
never was any such thing, as an individual existing
alone before the existence of its species.  Individuals are not first formed, and then species afterwards out of them by comparison and combination,
or the "' selection of the fittest."  But in the order
of nature the species is formed first, and the individuals afterwards. There is in all cases a common
source and origin in nature to which they are to be
referred, and by reference to which their common
characteristics or specific likeness is to be explained.
The specific principle, idea, or archetype does not
exist separately from and subsequently to them
(according to the doctrine of nominalism), but in
organic union with them,'and together with them
forming the organic unity of the species, or race of
being. Every individual has in him something more
than his mere individuality or individual and particular characteristics.  A universal element enters




7-IJII TARIAN DOCTRINE.          89
into each particular member of a species in virtue of
which they constitute a species, and become recogn izable and known as members of such or such a race,
and receive the common name by which it is distinguished from all other races.  There is, therefore,
in every,individual of a species or member of a
race, a race element, by which it is distinguished
from the members of all other races, and individual
and particular elements by which it is distinguished
from all the other individuals of its own race,-thus,
in every particular Tnan, there is that which belongs
to him as a man, and which determines his race,
and that also which distinguishes him from all other
men, and by which he is recognized and known as
that particular man.
This is the realism of nature, of Scripture, and of
the ancient philosophers, as might be abundantly
illustrated by reference to their works. And there
occurs in Plato a passage wherein he designs distinctly to set forth this doctrine, which, notwithstanding its length, I venture to introduce. It is
from the tenth Book of the Republic:
" Well, then, shall we begin as usual by bringing
a number of individuals which have a common name
under one form or idea?"
"That has been our usual plan. Do you understand me?"




go90           PHILOSOPHY OF
"I do."
"Let us take any instance; there are beds and
tables in the world, and many of them. Are there
not?'
" Yes."
" But there are only two ideas, or forms, of them;
one the idea of a bed, the other the idea of a table."' True."'And the maker of either of them makes a table
for our use in accordance with the idea-that is our
way of speaking of this and similar instances —but
he does not make the ideas themselves?"
" Certainly not."
"And there is another artist-I should like to
know what you would say of him."
"Who is he?"
" One who is the maker of all the works of all
other workmen!"
"What an extraordinary man!"
"Wait a little, and there will be more reason for
your saying that. For this is he who makes not
only vessels of every kind; but plants and animals,
himself and all other things-the earth and heaven,
and the things which are in heaven or under the
earth; he makes the gods also."'He must be a rare master of his art."'Oh! you are unbelieving, are you? Do you




TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE.            91
mean that there is no such maker or creator, or that
in one sense there might be a maker of all these
things but not in another? Do you not see that
there is a way in which you could make them yourself?"
"What is this way? "
"An easy way enough; or rather there are many
ways in which the feat might be accomplished;
none quicker than that of turning a mirror round
and round, and catching the sufi and the heavens
and the earth and yourself, and other animals and
plants, and all the other creatures of art as well as
nature, in the mirror."
" Yes," he said, "but that is an appearance only."
" Very good," I said; " you are coming to the
point now; and the painter, as I conceive, is just a
creator of this sort-is lie not?"' That is true."' But then, I suppose, you will say that what he
creates is untrue. And yet there is a sense in which
the painter also creates a bed."
" Yes," he said, " but not a real bed. And what of
the maker of the bed? Were you not saying that
he does not make the idea, which, according to our
view, is the essence of the bed, but only a particular
bed?"
"Yes, I did say that."




92             PHILOSOPHY OF
"Then, if he does not make that which exists he
cannot make true existence, but only some semblance of existence; and if any one were to say
that the work of the maker of the bed, or of any
other workman has real existence, he could hardly
be supposed to be speaking the truth. At any rate,"
he replied, " philosophers would say that he was not
speaking the truth. Can we wonder, then, that
there is an indistinctness about his work, too, when
compared with truth?"
"No, indeed."
"Suppose that we inquire into the nature of this
imitator, as seen in the examples given?"
"If you please."
"Well, then, here are three beds; one is natural
[the species] which, as I think that we may say, is
made by God. No one else can be the maker."
" No."
"There is another, which is the work of the carpenter? "
" Yes."
"And the work of the painter is a third?"
" Yes."
"Beds, then, are of three kinds, and there are
three artists who superintend them; God, the maker
of the bed, and the painter."
"Yes; there are three of them."




TRINI TARIAN  DOC TRINE.          93
" God-whether from choice or from necessitymade one bed, and only one; two or more such ideal
beds, neither ever have been or ever will be made
by God."
" Why is that?"
" Because, even if he had made but two, still a
third would appear behind them in which the idea
of both of them would be contained, and that would
be the ideal bed and not the two others."
" Very true," he said.
" God knew this, and he desired to be t/he real
maker of a real bed, and not a particular maker of a
particular bed, and therefore in nature he created
one bed only." [In other words, God does not directly create the individuals of a species; but he is
the author of the ideal from out of which they all
spring.]
This is the true theory of race and species, and
furnishes the means for the settlement of the question respecting, the relation which Christ sustains
to humanity. It shows the possibility of his belonging to humanity, and being in the most vital and
eminent sense human, without being any particular
man. He is, according to the illustration of Plato,
that species or fountain-head, out of which all particular men spring.
If, in order that there may be such a thing as the




94              PHILOSOPHY OF
human race it is necessary that there should be
something besides the aggregate of individual and
particular men, may not Christ be that sometzhing besides?  If, in every man, along with his individual
element, there must be also an universal race-element by the possession of which he is constituted
human, may not Christ be that universal elementthat in every man iln virtuze of whzich he is a maz?
This, beyond doubt, furnishes the key to the interpretation of the title the Son of Man. It means
humanity, not in its individual members, but in its
root. He means by it to say to us, I anm the principle of your humanity, or your humanity in its princzile —I am the vinze, ye are the branches. What is
meant, then, when it is maintained that he is human
and yet not a man, is that he is the root, and not
one of the branches of our humanity.
Of that race of which we ourselves are particular
members merely, he is the universal and root element. Of that of which we are only the particular
and successive manifestations in time, he is the
original and eternal principle and fountain-head,
jesusG Christ, the sanme yesterday, to-day, and forever.
No mere nominalism in philosophy can enter into
the conception of the unity of the race in Christ.
The principle of species is no generalized abstraction, the production of our own minds, and found




TRINI   P'ARI IA  DOCTC TINE.       95
necessary for the purposes of order and distinctness
in our conceptions. It is not an arrangement which
we make for our own convenience, for the purposes
of classification and system; nor is it a mere subjective necessity imposed upon us by the inherent
laws of thought in our own minds. It is no universalia post rein (to use the formula of the schools), as
the nominalists claim; but universalia ante rem, et
inz re, according to the realism of nature and of true
philosophy.* We must regard Christ in his relation
to humanity as that universal-that principle of
unity which is at the same time the source and principle of life and being.  Without Christ, as the universal element in humanity, existing first and before
the foundation of the world as its eternal, original,
and first principle, the existence of any such thing
as the human race is inconceivable and manifestly
impossible.  It is not merely a creator that is
needed, but a creator who enters as the principle
of life and of unity into the race which he creates
and makes it a species and a living and organic
unity. It is not, then, in the sense of any abstraction or mere subjective construction, the necessary
fruit and condition of our own thinking, that Christ
calls himself the Son of Man, but in a sense the
* See Uberweg's History of Philosophy, Vol. I., p. 366, ~~ 9I, 92.




96              PHILOSOPHY OF
most original, the most real —independent of tim e
and of all fruits, or modes, or laws, or necessities of
our thinking. It is not a form or a condition of our
thoug/-ht merely, but of our very existence. It is not
that we cannot think except in that way. and upon
that hypothesis, but that it is owing to that that
we exist, and that there is any such thing as the
human mind or the human race at all.
The article " the " which is inseparable from the
title, and an integral part of it, grammatically speaking, makes it impossible to use it as an appellative. We cannot address an individual as the Son
of man-.or as the man. If, therefore, the disciples
had used the title in addressing him. they would
have been obliged to drop the article, and to say:
" Son of man " or " man "-a change entirely inadmissible, as being nothing short of a radical perversion, and the use of a liberty for which there was
no warrant or excuse in the term as Christ used it.
" Son of rman" is an address used in the Old Testament, and as there used is personal and appropriate,
and means no more than we mean by the term
" man" in addressing an individual. But the disciples never addressed their Lord in this way. It
would have been a freedom which they had neither
any right or disposition to use. It would have
been positively disrespectful as used towards one so




7W'INIZTARIA N   DOCTRINE.       97
much their superior, and would have done violence
to the feelings of instinctive reverence and awe with
which they regarded him. Furthermore, in writing
of him, the apostles do not use the title. The only
exception is in the Apocalypse, where John sees
"One that was like the Son of man."  The majesty
and glory of his appearance correspond to and recall
that indefinable and awful sense of something really
human yet above humanity, that was conveyed to
the mind of the apostle when in the days of his
flesh he was accustomed to hear him speak of himself as the Son of mall. Of course this which the
apostle adopted in the apocalyptic vision would be a
usage unsuitable entirely to sober prose, or ordinary
didactic discourse, where we deal with the literal
conceptions of the understanding and not with the
ecstasies of feeling, or high - wrought creations of
the prophetic or poetic imagination. The term the
Son of man is didactic, and gives not so much the
literal name, as the theory and philosophical significance of the object to which it is applied. This
is sufficient to account for the absence of the term
from the ordinary apostolic writings. It was not
that even after the gift of the Spirit, they did not
understand it, but that they chose to convey their
ideas of the nature and person of Christ in other
language. The use of the phrase in doctrinal dis6




98              PHIZ OSOPHI Y OF
course, as Christ used it, would have led them into
a field of explanation and philosophical analysis
and disquisition which it was foreign from their
purpose to enter.
But this is no excuse for theologians whose professed object is to do just what it would have been
inconsistent with the nature of the apostolic office
to have done, viz., to unfold philosophical relations
and distinctions, and build up systems of doctrine
upon grounds of philosophical reason and necessity.
I am not aware, however, that any theologian has
attempted to unfold or even ventured so far as to
indicate the philosophical principle which may be
supposed to underlie this title, the Son of man,
frequently as Christ used it, and fond as he evidently was of applying it to himself. It is evident
that he, at least, saw something specially and deeply
significant in it, and something which strongly endeared and recommended it to him. It is evident
that better than any other within the compass of
Jewish speech, it answered his own unclouded,
uppermost, and most impressive idea of himself, as
he stood related to that human nature in the-midst
of which he tabernacled, and whose flesh he had
taken upon him.  To our minds there may be
something vague in it, and it may fail, unaccustomed as we are to the idioms of the language in




TRIANITARIAN DOCTRINE.         99
which he spake, to convey any clear or distinct
meaning, or to make any deep impression upon our
hearts. But it was not so with him. He did not
use terms which he did not understand; nor of
whose fitness he stood in any doubt. Whatever
language had to meet his wants, to express his
ideas, was at his ready command, and offered itself spontaneously to him as his willing and obedient servitor. He used the term, therefore, because
of all the terms which the language of his time and
nation afforded, it was the one best fitted to his
purpose, and most accurately expressive of the relation in which by nature he stood to mankind, and
the one which, when they should come to understand it, would convey to them more light in regard
to his essential nature and the mutual relations between him and them  than any other.  He who
knew so well what was in man, knew also quite as
well that there was nothing in the term to render
it unintelligible to the human mind, when once that
mind should have gained the true point of view
with reference to it. It is nothing but a false philosophy-the inveterately strong hold which false
and mechanical ideas of the relations between God
and the universe have taken and do naturally tal<ethat has kept the Christian world so long in darkness on this cardinal point, and made that most




100             PHILOSOPHY OF
profound and significant title the " Son of man," as
applied by Christ-to himself, so long a root out of a
dry ground-an enigma and a stumbling-block to
the modern theological mind.
Such, then, is the philosophy of scripture and
of nature upon this vital point of Christian doctrine.
Such an element as the Son of man must there be
in human nature in order that there may be any
such thing as human nature in the creation at all.
This human that is not particular nor individual,
nor created, must there be in humanity in order that
there may be any such thing as a race bearing that
name and possessing those attributes. And since
the race unquestionably exists, and such a thing as
that uncreated universal must have existed and
must exist as the conditio sine qua non of its existence, it follows that such a thing is, and that Christ,
who calls himself the Son of Man, is that thing,that original, eternal source and model of our personal and individual humanity.  But whence this
term? Do the words on their very face, and in their
most obvious sense, convey that idea? They do
not. The term " Son " does not by itself and on the
face of it, carry the idea of source or origin, or of the
universal, the genetic, or the generic. But notice
that it is not to be taken by itself, but in its connection in the phrase, as an integral and modifying ele



TRINI TARIAN DOCTRINE.         10 I
ment of it as a whole. Notice, also, that the term
" Man," which follows it, is not preceded by the indefinite article. It is not the Son of a Man that he
calls himself, as though he were the only son of
some particular man, nor a son of a man, which is no
more than every other man might say of himself,
and yet convey no meaning at all, except an empty
truism. But if, in the ordinary sense, he were a son
at all, he must be the son of some particular mannot of mankind in general. But it is of man in general, and not of any particular man, that he is said
to be the Son. But it is impossible that in the
sense of a descendant of humanity he should be descended from mankind in general, and not from any
particular man. He could not get into the race in
any such general way as that. There is but one
way.of getting in, and that is by descent from some
particular man who is his natural and actual father.
The door into the race is a particular and concrete,
and not an abstract and general one. To say that
he is a child of the race, yet not of any particular
member of it, is simply to talk nonsense. But if he
were a descendant in the natural and only possible
sense, the article "the" would not be applied to
him. He would, like any other man, be a son. It
is not possible, the laws of language do not permit,
it is not within the possibilities of rational speech,




102            PHILOSOPHY OF
to call any man the son of man. It is obvious, therefore, that in calling himself such he meant to deny
that he was a man.  He could not more emphatically have denied his human origin than he did by
calling himself by this title, unless he meant to set
all usage at defiance and use words in utter disregard of any known sense or acceptation. How perfectly preposterous, then, it is, to say that what he
meant by the phrase in question to affirm is just that
which according to its necessary construction and only
possible acceptation, he must have meant to deny.
The sense of a human origin or descent from the
race by any sort of generation, natural or supernatural, cannot by any possibility be extracted or
extorted from the words.
Whence, then, the origin of the phrase, and why
is it used to express the sense which we have given
it, and which, in the nature of things, it is necessary
to give it? I answer, that it is a Hebrew idiom. It
is a form of expression used in the Old Testament
to express humanity in the generic sense, and means
the same as and is equivalent to the term " man "
in the general sense. It is, then, a generic term
borrowed from the Hebrew, to express "man " or
" humanity." But the idea of humanity has two aspects, according to the point of view from which it
is regarded. It can be viewed in the light of its




TRINI TARIAN DOCTRiNE.           I03
generic principle, or in that of its particular manifestations or products,-in the light of its organic
spirit and life principle, or of its body, consisting' of
the organized aggregate of its members,-in the light
of its root or of its branches,-in the light of the
particular individuals which, taken together, make
up its outward species, or of the universal element
underlying, entering into, and uniting them all into
the unity of a distinct race.
It is in this latter sense-that of the universal and
creative principle-that Christ calls himself " humanity." Instead of using the word man in the generic
sense, and saying I am wmaz —humanity itself, whvlilst
you are only men partaking of humanity, he uses the
equivalent, more expanded and softer term, and distinguishes himself from us, and indicates his generic
relations by calling himself the Sont of Maln. A
marked instance of this use of the phrase in the Old
Testament, and one, too, of which particular notice
has been taken by St. Paul, and to which a marked
theological significance has been assigned by him, is
found in the eighth Psalm:  " What is maln," the
Psalmist exclaims, " that thoz art miz/ndfzl of him, or
the Son of mazn, that thou visitest him?"  The
Apostle argues (Heb. 2) that these words contain a
reference to Christ, and maintains that by the term
the Son of man here Christ is meant, and he goes on




1 04           PIILOSOPIt Y OF
to prove the point by comparing the different parts
of the Psalm with each other, and showing that as a
whole the Psalm has its fulfillment in him, and cannot be interpreted without reference to him, nor
without understanding the term the Son of man as
mzeaning /zim.
The Psalmist says of the Son of man (5th verse),
Thou hast crowned him with glory and honor,
(6th), Thou madest him to have dominion over the
works of thy hand, thou hast put all t/hings under
his feet. But (the apostle rejoins) we do not see yet
all things put under him. We do not, that is, see the
human race occupying a position of supreme dominion
over the whole creation; on the contrary, the position of man with reference to the lower creation is
to a great extent one of subjection and bondagehe is the slave rather than the master of his circumstances. How, then, he asks, is an explanation of
these words in accordance with the facts in the case
possible? His answer is, we have the explanation
of the words, the removal of the seeming contradiction, if we consider Jesus to have been actually
intended, or humanity in the person of Jesus-by
the term, man, or the Son of man. For, he says,
we do see Jesus, who was made a little lower than
the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with
glory and honor, that he by the grace of God should




TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. -       I
taste death for every man. Man considered in his
individual capacity, and meaning the aggregate of
the individuals of the species, seems to be in a low
and servile condition, and wholly unworthy of ranking as the undisputed and glorious sovereign of the
universe.
In comparison with the Heavens, the work of the
divine fingers, the moon and the stars which God
has ordained, he seems the most transitory, trivial,
and insignificant of creatures, and wholly unworthy
of notice in comparison with the grand displays of
the glory of the creation in the heavens above;
but not so when he is considered as in the person
of the Son of man, whom the Father has appointed
heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds,
who being the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person, and upholding all things
by the word of his power; when he had by himself
purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the
majesty on high, and to whom it is said: And thou,
Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundations of
the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine
hands. They shall perish, but thou remainest, and
they all shall wax old as doth a garment, and as a
vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be
changed; but thou art -the same, and thy years
shall not fail.
6*




io6            PHILOSOPHY OF
We have reached the point proposed. The question what is the significance of the title, the Son of
man, so absolutely unique, as a personal designation
without precedent, without resemblance, almost
without analogy in the nomenclature of thought or
of things-but yet so manifestly the favorite of our
Lord himself, and applied by himself to himself by
evident and strong partiality-the question has received its answer. Within the scope of human
thought or inquiry, there is no greater one, and the
attainment of the point of view from which we are
able to give it a clear and satisfactory answer is one
of the greatest, certainly one of the most fruitful
within the reach of our faculties. For it presents
the substance underlying the greatest of all the
names by which the Incarnate Deity can be known,
the light in which he is brought most nearly home
to our practical thoughts and apprehensions, the reality in the light of which he most loved to contemplate himself, and most desired to have us contemplate him.
This, the reaching of'the requisite intellectual
and moral points of views from which to understand
him, he knew could be accomplished only by education-which he also knew would require much
thought, time, and experience; the experience which
comes only from thought and time, and the thought




TRINITARIAN DOCTAZNE.          107
which can come only as the fruit of time and experience. We must, he knew, have time to escape
the fallacies and the frauds of the outward sensesof the sensuous imagination-of the carnal understanding (the faculty judging according to sense),
and above all the snares of education and tradition,
and of philosophy falsely so called-the snares of an
empty, lifeless, plausible nominalism. We must by
the power of thought, and as the result of training
in the school of experience and of Christ, come at
length to the reality which the mind instinctively
craves, and short of which it cannot rest-no mere
subjective reality, its own creation to supply its own
want, and which it imposes upon itself as objectively
real, when in fact there is no such' reality-no being
answering to the title, the Son of man, except in
our own thought, no universal element in humanity
answering to the universal in our thought. We
must, I say, come not to the subjective universal
merely, but to that which is the objectively realwhich answers to the necessary form of thought,
and this is found only in him who calls himself the
Son of man.
May we not say that here the goal of thought is
reached, the point beyond which it cannot go-and
arrived at which it has no need to go any further?
What is the uttermost limit to which thought can




I08             PHILOSOPH Y OF
attain? the most advanced, the most fundamental
and universal position possible for the thought to
occupy;  I answer, when it becomes not indeed
identical with its object, but its actual well-defined
counterpart.  Say not that where such mental
shadow exists there is no corresponding outward
reality! but that the shadow is all, and the correspondincg outward merely a projection of the inward,
the result of the imaginative faculty. Account if
you can for the shadow without an object to cast it.
Just so certain as the reality of the shadow, so certain is the existence somewhere objectively of the
substance that casts it. Though it be but a shadow,
it just as much needs to be accounted for as though
it were a substance, and can no more exist without a
corresponding substance than substance that casts
no shadow. It is enough that the thought reflects
the object, and that it is the exact image of its
original.
In this conception of Christ, as the principle of
our humanity, the universal in that organic unity of
which we are the particular members (the particular
involving the universal as that without which it has
itself no significance, no function, no place, and no
existezce), in this conception of Christ as the Son of
man, we have the organic conception of humanity,
we have the key to the solution of all the problems,




TRINI TA ERIANV DOCTRINE.      I09
not of redemption merely, but of history and philosophy also. In the attributes of that fundamental
organic idea, we have reflected all the attributes
and all the functions of the God-man, mediator, and
medium between the Godhead and man.
Does the church of the living God, out of the profoundest and most universal instincts of her faith
and her love, out of the inmost necessity of her own
thought, feeling, and experience, hold him to be
divine! Does she find her God, her head and her
life in him, and worship him as her only Lord, and
does she find it impossible to be'true to herself and
not do it?
Is it impossible for her not to make him head over
all things and fountain-head of life and peace to her,
and do we not, in this view of the relation in which
Christ stands to humanity, find the ground upon
which that inherent faith and necessity of hers rest?
Is he not, as the principle of our humanity, necessarily divine? Can he be that and not be God? Can
humanity have its eternal source and fountain-head
-its substance and its principle-in that which is itself merely human or creaturely, and in no respect
transcending the creature nature? If we understand
ourselves, we mean and can mean by the term " our
God " not anything outside of or other than our humanity, nothing that does not in some way come




IIO            PHILOSOPHY OF
within the sphere of our nature, our actual and immediate knowledge and experience. Nothing that
does not come within the sphere of our naturenothing between us and which there is no communion
of nature, and which has nothing in common with us in
respect to nature, can be the possible object or matter of our experience. If " our God " comes within
the limits of our experience and can be known to us
only by experience (and there is no other way in
which we can know him), then of necessity his nature
in some way comes within the sphere of ours, and
there is a community of nature between him and
us. At least there is necessarily something in common between his nature and ours implied in the
fact that we know and love him, and that he is to
us naturally and truly our God.
To this conclusion let us hold fast, as to the sheetanchor of our hope and the lode-star of our faith in
theology as well as in philosophy. It is a conclusion from which there is no escape, except into
doubt, prescription, nominalism, mechanism, materialism and intellectual death. It is so that we stand
related to God and him to us, or else God is really
and virtually no God to us (or which is the same
thing in effect), a God of whom we know and can
know nothing. The one point necessary to guard,
and where the only danger lies, is that the proper




TRNI TA RIAN DOCTRINE.          III
distinction be observed and the identity not carried
too far. As earnestly as we affirm that he has a nature in common with ours, so earnestly do we deny
that lie is a man. He is not one of us, and yet he is
ail of us and all there is of us, except our imperfections and our; sins.  He is the principle of the humanity of every one of us, that in every one in virtue
of the possession of which we are men; without him,
as the universal in our nature, not one of as, though
in the human form, would be a man. Nothing is
more certain than this: that if we as men, as a race,
had not by nature something in common with
each other, we could not love, enter into sympathy
with, or even know each other internally at all. If we
had not all of us one human heart, we should all be
strangers to each other, and as destitute of interest
in or sympathy with each other, as we are with the
beasts that perish, or they with us.
Imagine the chasm, as to all that endears us to
each other and ennobles us in our own sight and
that of our fellows, that exists between our minds,
our experience, our consciousness as men, and that
of the brutes: try to conceive the chasm which difference of nature makes in these respects, and you
have the chasm which would yawn between God
and us, the impossibility there would be of our
knowing and loving him and making him our God




112           PHILOSOPHY OF
as we do, if there were nothing in common between
his nature and ours.
Here is the point where the second title, I am the
Good Shepherd, comes first into view. The first of
these titles furnishes the key to the explanation of
the other. The second limits the application of the
first, and reduces it to a concrete and practical form.
The second, as the minor term carries the first as its
major in its bosom, comprehends it under its more
limited and special significance.
I am the Good Shepherd and know my sheep, and
am known of mine; even as thze Father knoweth me, and
I know thle Father, even so do I know my sheep, and
they me, John x. 14, 15.
The same relations of knowledge and affection, —
of knowledge implying affection and affection implying knowledge, as those which exist between the
Father and the Son in the Godhead, exist between
Christ and his people in the manhood. And the
great question is, as to what is implied in this common and mutual understanding and affection which
subsists alike between the Father and the Son on
the one hand, and between Christ and his peoplethe good shepherd and his sheep —on the other.
We cannot too strongly emphasize the second
clause in the verse containing the title, or the title
which he gives to us as counterpart to that which




TRIXNITARIAN DOCTRIN.E.        113
he gives to himself —I am the good shepherd, and
know my sheep, and am known Of mine. With reference to them he calls himself shepherd, with reference to himself, he calls them sheep. The titles are
not absolute, they are correlative, and indicate office
function and mutual relationship and interdependence, with reference to each other. In defining himself he defines us in our relation to him. He defines
himself with reference to what as the Son of man he
is to us, and with reference to what none but the Son
of man could by any possibility be to us, and he defines
us with reference to what as men we must be and
could be to no other than the Son of man. Notice
the vast elevation at which he places himself above
us and the immeasurable difference which he makes
between himself and us. Notice the relation which
as men, he makes us sustain to him. It is as to two
points forcibly illustrated by the relation which the
literal shepherd sustains to his sheep.  These two
points are, Ist, elevation in power, office and function above us, implying, of course, a corresponding
inferiority and dependence on our part with reference
to him. The 2d is correspondence and sympathy,
mutual knowledge, attachment and affection between.the parties, making him absolutely necessary to us,
and us absolutely necessary to him. In the literal
and earthly relation the shepherd is as really de



114             PHILOSOPHY  OF
pendent on his sheep as they on him, though not in
all re3pects. He gets his livelihood from them, but
he is not dependent on them for his life. They did
not make him, neither, indeed, did he make them
any more than they him. He is no more their creator than they his. In that respect they are quite
independent of each other. Their natures are not
the same, neither have they, so far as the higher nature of the shepherd is concerned, anything in common. And this is the grand respect in which the
comparison does not hold and the illustration is not
to the point. The correspondence of the two natures is, however, so great, as to serve as an apt and
vivid illustration of the relation between Christ and
us; if not as to nature, yet as to function at least.
In the literal case, the correspondence between the
parties concerned is that of correlates, and is as perfect as though the natures were not in reality two
different ones, but only counterparts of one and the
same. But Christ and his people are real counterparts, the nature in both is one and the same, as he
takes pains to prove to us by the comparison and
analogy which at once, and without proceeding a
step further, or allowing any other matter to intervene, he adduces. To prevent all possible misunderstanding, to show that, by the comparison of the
relation between him and us to that between the




TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE.          I 15
shepherd and his sheep, he means not merely resemblance and correspondence between different natures, but counterparts of one and the same nature,
he immediately adds, by way of explanation, Even
as the Father knoweth me and I know the Father. In
the light of this explanation, so plain that it cannot
be mistaken, we must either admit the community
of nature between him and us, or deny that between
him and his Father. But the latter we cannot do.
We know that he means to affirm as beyond the
possibility of doubt or question, as a first truth, that
lhe and his Fat her are one-not two natures, but
counterpart elements of the one undivided and indivisible nature of the Godhead. There is no difference of natures in the Godhead, though there is
difference of rank between the elements that constitute it. The same exactly holds true in reference to the manhood which Christ and his people
together constitute; in that Christ is to us, so far
as nature and rank are concerned, exactly what his
Father is to him in the Godhead. Thus the Son
of man, who is our humanity in its principle and
fountain-head-the very essence and substance of
our nature, declares himself to be also the Good Shepherd to us. In that title, the Son of man, lies the fundamental and universal element and ground of another title —that of the good shepherd.




I6            PHILOSOPHY OF
The latter title containing the former, what of
good or of sweetness or joy for men is there that
it does not contain? Well may the adjective which
we translate good, mean also the fair and the lovely;
for, if there is anything sweet for the eye of humanity to look upon, it is its own nature in the person of its divine Shepherd. What does he mean, by
saying that he is our humanity in its first principle
and eternal substance, but that he is the principle,
the source and substance of all that is truly good
and justly dear and sweet to our humanity? Can
there be any good to us that is not comprehended
within that? Can he be that to us, and not be to us
the synonym of all that is beautiful and good to our
nature? Reflect upon it: that which comes home
to us and enters into us and feeds and nourishes
our faculties and satisfies and gladdens our hearts
and truly blesses our souls, can come from no foreign
source: it must come from within. Not from our own
souls-(it is a great mistake to think that our own
souls can themselves be any fountain of good to us,)
but from that which is more interior to us than our
own souls —from that Eternal substance and fountainhead of our humanity, out of which the soul and all
that is truly human, beautiful and good, in it, springs.
Must not the particular nature and office of the
Good Shepherd, inasmuch as it includes within it and




TRIZI TA RIAN  DOC TRINE.        I 17
contains wrapped up in its meaning, the whole substance of the universal designation, be the Epitome
of all conceivable enduring and sincere good to the
nature-to the mind and the heart of man-to human nature in all respects and all possible conditions.
Christ, as the Good Shepherd, is in precisely the condition to be all this to man, whilst nothing.else can
be any part of it to us.  The vine sustains to the
branch precisely the relation, and is to the branch exactly that which enables it to impart to it everything
that, as a branch, it can need, or receive, or that can
be good for it, whilst nothing else is in any condition
to do it any essential good. Whatever pertains to
its life, growth, and fruitfulness comes not from within
itself, but from the vine which is its own substance
and the fountain-head of its life and well-being and
beauty and goodliness. For all that is needful and
good for it, it is shut up to its vine, but in being thus
shut up to that, it has opened out to it in that all
that its nature can possibly need or crave or receive
of genuine good. Is there not in a practical and
intelligible form, nay, in the form  of actual everyday experience, comprehended in this latter title the
discharge of every function, the opening out of every
fountain, the running out of every stream of supply,
of benefit and of blessing, that men can need or desire or conceive? In the nature of thle case, no one




I 8            PHIL OSOPHY OF
but he who is himself the life-principle of man's humanity, can discharge the functions of the Good
Shepherd to him.
How plain it is, that in the Son of man administering the office and discharging the function of
Shepherd everything is comprehended, and that
nothing of all that man needs for time or eternity,
for life or immortality, for wisdom, righteousness,
sanctification or redemption, can come from any
other quarter.
THE GOOD SHEPHERD.
Immortality.
To specify in a single point (but a most comprehensive one, surely;) I mean that of our immortality,
— rightly considered, all our good is comprehended
in that. For without that we are nothing, and
nothing is not anything, or of any consequence to us.
If we are not naturally immortal-and we shall assume that we are not-whence but from him is our
immortality to come? To whom but him are we to
look for the gift of it? If the principle of our humanity, that in which it lives and moves and has its
being, is not immortal, then' surely, we are not,
and there is no possibility of our ever becoming so.
But if he in his own nature is immortal, and the very




TRIN ITARIAN DOCTRINE.          I  9
principle of immortality —if he who is the very life-principle of our humanity is immortal, then, surely, we-if
we are in him-are such. If the fountain-head is
immortal, the members must be; if the vine
is immortal, then such must its branches be. If the
Good Shepherd is not merely immortal, but immortality itself in its principle, and if the office which
he has undertaken to administer towards us is that
of giving us eternal life; that is, of administering
himself to us, then surely we cannot fail of receiving the boon unless there shall be some failure in
the administration; and on that point he has taken
particular pains to assure us. To set the matter of
possible failure on his part to do all that he has undertaken forever at rest, and to remove all anxiety
and every shadow of a doubt or a fear on that point.
he uses very strong language, and in using it he
doubtless has this fear that may arise in our minds
distinctly in view. "My sheep hear my voice, and I
know them, and they follow me, and Igive unto them
eternal 1Zfe, and they shall never perish; neither
shall any man pluck them  out of my hand. My
Father who gave them me, is greater than all, and
no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's
hand."  As though there might arise a doubt of his
power to make good the gift which he has bestowed,
and perfectly administer the trust which he had re



120             PHILOSOPHY OF
ceived, he pledges the power of his Father. He lets
us here, not only into his own deep and awful earnestness in reference to the execution of the trust
which has been committed to him, and his own deep
feeling on the subject of the duty he has undertaken
to discharge, but also into the manner in which, allpowerful as he is, he falls back upon the power of
his Father as being in reality the support, the
basis, the source of his own. His own heart does
not feel the fullness of triumphant assurance in respect to the eternal issue of his administration until
he has fortified himself by referring the whole question back to his Father, and by reminding himself
that he and his Father are identified in interest in
regard to the grand undertaking, and that his power
is engaged to carry it out. This most emphatic allusion to the power of him who is the fountain-head of
all power, even in the godhead itself, implies not only
the existence of doubts and fears on our part, but the
consciousness also, on his, of the existence of evil
forces, and those nor far off, nor without consequence, which would, if they could, prevent the carrying out of the great undertaking and thwart the
purposes of infinite love, and deprive the sheep of
their Shepherd, and the Shepherd of his sheep.
It is plain that to his view there exists a hostile
element that has already arrayed itself against his




TRINITA RIAN DOCTRINE.          12 I
administration, and that will prevent its success if it
can. And that hostile element stood there confronting him at that very moment. He saw and felt it, in
those proud, scornful, and malignant Pharisees who
surrounded him, and were impudently and hypocritically clamoring for clearer and more satisfactory
light, as if they wanted to believe but could not, for
want of the light which they pretended that he
might afford them if he would, but which he unfairly
and unjustly withholds from them. He has already
given them to understand that he knows them, and
penetrates their evil designs —by saying to them:
" Ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep. My
sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me-you follow me not; not for the want of clear
and convincing evidence, but because ye are not of
the right temper and spirit-but of the evil and
wrong-not of the sincere, earnest, and confiding, but
of the suspicious, the jealous, the hostile, and malignant."  I call particular attention to this feature in
our Lord's address, for the sake of suggesting that
there reveals itself here an element of wrath and of
judgmnet in the function of the Good Shepherd-of
wrath that can smite, and burn, and consume, as
well as' of love that can only warm, and cherish, and
bless. He suggests that his office will not be found
one of gentleness, meekness, and tenderness towards
7




122             PHILOSOPHY OF
his enemies; that it will not be found to be to them
what it is to his sheep-but that, as it is full of
love and tenderness to protect, to defend, and shelter them, so will it be an office of terror and destruction to his enemies, and to whatsoever opposeth and
exalteth itself against God in this great work of the
Good Shepherd which he is carrying on in the world
for the eternal salvation of his elect, and for the sake
of which the foundations of the world were laid.
And here let me say that the punishments of the
divine government are remedial, and that God does
not punishz for the sake of pulishing. In other words,
that his punishments are not punishments so much
as chastisements. When, in the case of a sinner,
there is no longer any hope of his repentance or his
reformation; when he has become reprobate, he is
no longer a proper subject of punishment or of discipline. For the object of the Divine government in its
treatment of offenders is their profit —that they may
become partakers of its holiness. When it is no longer
possible that any good to them can come out of the
chastisement, it ceases to be administered. The
ministration is thenceforth one of wrath, which will
be inflicted on the sinner, not for the purposes of
vengeance, but of destruction; to put him forever out
of the way, so that he can no longer be the source of
evil and mischief to the universe. The result and




TRINI TARIAN DOCTRLVE.           123
the end of the Divine treatment of the enemies of
redemption is either to destroy them or convert them
into friends. If the latter cannot be accomplished,
they will not be suffered to live to be the sources of
misery and mischief; neither will they be preserved
in being, in order that they may be punished for
their crimes and divine justice have satisfaction in the
torments which they suffer. Divine justice reaps no
satisfaction from the sufferings of the wicked except
in the good that results to them from them. It takes
no satisfaction in the infliction of. suffering, as such,
without reference to any good resulting to the suf.
ferer from it. When his sufferings work out for him
the  peaceable fruits of righteousness, then it is
pleased and satisfied, for then its end is gained.
But it takes no pleasure in inflicting sufferings
that can result in no good, and that have not
for their object the good of the offender and the
good of the universe through his good. Nay,
so far from its finding any satisfaction or pleasure in such sufferings, it is contrary to its nature
to inflict them. It is a false idea of the nature
of the attribute to suppose it capable of any such
thing, or of taking any delight in suffering that
has not for its object, and is not calculated to result
in, the good of the sinner. Hence, when all possible remedial treatment has failed of its object, and all




I24                  PHILOSOPHY OF
hope of the reformation of the evil-doer is gone, it
does not suffer him to live that he may go on doing
evil, nor does it preserve him  in being, in order that
it may balance the account by the infliction upon
him of everlasting suffering; but the operation of its
inherent nature, as expressed and incorporated in the
eternal and unchangeable order and nature of things,
is such as to destroy him forever from the face of
the world on which he is nothing but a foul blot,
and in which there is no possibility of his reaching
any good to himself, or being anything but a source
of grief, and pain, and injury to others.*
This view will serve to give a more rounded and
adequate expression to the function of the Good
Shepherd. It will show that he has of necessity a
twofold function. The full discharge of i:is function
* The next movement in moral materialism is to establish a scale
of equivalents between perverse moral choice and physical suffering.
Pain often cures ignorance, as we know, as when a child learns not
to handle fire by burning its fingers, but it does not change the moral
nature. Children may be whipped into obedience, but not into virtue, and it is not pretended that the penal colony of heaven has sent
back a single reformed criminal. We hang men for our convenience
or safety; sometimes shoot them for revenge. Thus, we come to
associate the infliction of suffering with offenses as their satisfactory
settlement-a kind of neutralization of them, as of an acid with an
alkali, so that we feel as if a jarring moral universe would be all sight,
if only sufferinzg enough were added to it. This scheme of chemical
equivalents seems to me, I confess, a worse materialism than making
protoplasm Master of Arts and Doctor of Divinity. —Dr. O. W.
Holmes, " Mechanism in Thought and in Morals," p. 88.




TRI NI TARIA N DOCTRINE..125
of love to his sheep, and to all who by any possible
means may become his sheep, implies a function of
consuming and annihilating wrath to all that are not
his sheep and can never by any means be made such
or anything but malignant and incorrigible enemies
to him and to them.
Such, comprehensively and concisely stated, is
Christ to us in his office and function as the Good
Shepherd. And certainly if the office involves all
this, and all that is implied in this towards us, it
must possess the most exalted interest for us, and
be regarded by us with emotions of love and gratitude, wonder and praise, such as can be awakened
by no other object that can possibly come within
the sphere of our rational thought or apprehension.
Consider how impressive the view of our dependence upon him when looked at in the light of this
shepherd function, which in reference to our immortality he discharges towards us. The sheep gets its
support and all that belongs to. the preservation,
security, and welfare of its life from the shepherd.
Though he is not the author of its life, yet such are
its wants, such its situation, such its exposures and
dangers, that without him it could scarcely survive
a single. day, so great is the dependence of the sheep
upon the shepherd. But ours upon Christ is all
this, and a great deal more. To him we owe the




I26,           PHILOSOPHY  OF
life itself, in its principle, as well as all that belongs
to its preservation, safety, and well being. That
which it is his office to preserve, it belongs also to
his office to give. That of which he is, as the Good
Shepherd, the preserver and benefactor, he is also,
in virtue of the same office, the giver. Suppose
now that we have a realizing sense of all -this which
he is to us, and of all the good to our humanity
which is involved in the discharge of these shepherd
functions towards us, is it any wonder that in the
vision of his face and in the sound of his voice,
there should be an ineffable and infinite charm?
Would it be any wonder if he should be to us the
chief among ten thousand, the one altogether
lovely?
In order that among the many-the membersthere may be any of the true beauty of humanity,
there must be in them " the one " who is in himself
altogether lovely-imparting of his loveliness to them.
The complete beauty of our humanity to our eyes,
is in "'the one; " its partial derivative beauty may
be seen in individual men among its nmembers-who
belong to the number and rank of the many that
constitute its body. It is the beauty of " the one"
absolutely beautiful reflected in the minds, persons,
characters and tempers of individual men, that
makes them dear and beautiful to us as men.




TXRINITARIAN DOCTRINE.         127
But as yet this second title, the Good Shepherd,
has received only a general consideration at our
hands.  It has had no logical or grammatical
definition. The form of words by which it is expressed has not been considered. But it is worthy
of regard in this respect, and  requires  it in
order that the meaning which it contains may be
fairly unfolded to us. Like every other formula of
human speech, it is made up of words and their collocations and relations.,It is a phrase grammatically
constructed, and as such requires and admits of
grammatical analysis and explanation. The title as
constructed, consists of two elements-the o-ood, and
shepherd. Plainly the first as taken by itself is absolute in its signification. It excludes the idea of
any particular good thing of its kind, and carries
the idea that kind does not really belong to it-or
if so, that it is alone in its kind. Thus we may read,
and in fact we find, as the matter is analyzed, that
we must read the words as conveying the sense of
the Good as shepherd. By "the Good," let us suppose that the absolute is meant-in other words,
that God as the absolute and eternal good, is meant
by the expression. Thus let us suppose that he,
the Good, should actually become and take upon
him the office and functions of a shepherd. And
then let the question be put, what sort of a shep



128            PHILOSOPHY OF
herd would he be? Could we answer that lie would
be a good shepherd? Certainly not, for that would
be to give to him, the absolute and universal, a
limited and relative character, and rank him ohly as
co-ordinate, one among many others holding the same
rank, and of the same kind, which would be to
deprive him altogether of the character which we
have supposed to belong to him, and thus make the
answer false to the supposition upon which the
question is founded.
What, then, if we remain true to this supposition,
is the only answer which could be given to the
question, what sort of a shepherd would " the Good,"
if he should become shepherd, be? It must preclude all comparison between him and any otherfor the absolute cannot be compared. The only
possible answer, then, would be: He would be the
good shepherd, or the Good [as] shepherd. There is
no escape from this sense of the phrase, without a
degradation - not only of " the Good," but also of
Christ, and understanding him by the phrase as
intending merely to distinguish himself in character
from bad shepherds, or hirelings, whose own the
sheep are not; or to rank himself among the good
shepherds as one of them, making him thus merely
a good shepherd instead of a bad, or merely an individual of the class of good ones. But this utterly




TRZINITARIA4NV DOCTRINE.       129
fails to represent the idea that Christ had in his
mind; not only so, it grossly misrepresents it, and
conveys a sense entirely different from any that the
language will bear or that Christ intended in giving
himself the designation.
This, then, we have in Christ: "the Good"-the
one who is God to us, and who alone can be known
and loved by us as our God-he, the eternal life-principle, source and substance of our humanity: the
Son of man coming down from the unknown height
of his elevation above us, and drawing near to us from
that unknown and dim distance to which our minds
remove him from us when he is merely the object of
speculative thought, and when experience and consciousness are not the sources whence we derive our
knowledge of him-coming thus down and near to
us by revealing himself in our hearts-taking to this
end the very form of that humanity of which he is
the eternal principle-speaking to us with man's
voice, in the very tones, and accents, and sentiments, and feeling of that humanity of which we
are conscious within us. In this form, he comes and
assumes towards us the office of shepherd to guide
us in our darkness, to be our strength in weakness,
our consolation in distress, our protection and defense in the midst of danger, and over all the power
of evil. More than all, nay, all in one, to be life and
7*




130            PHILOSOPHY OF
immortality, with its blessings and benefits, and with
all the guards and guarantees which the eternal love
and power of the Godhead can throw around them.
Beyond and above all other conceptions, then,
of kindness, of condescension, and of benefaction,
this must rise in our minds. Must he not in this
office be dear to us, the one altogether lovely,
and comprehend in that single office all that our
minds can conceive of as beautiful and good to our
nature? For what is the good-the good in itself
and absolutely-that which in itself is the sum and
substance of all good to us, but the Son of man?
And what to us is the Son of man but the synonym
of all that is good-of all the good there is for us as
men, whether in time or eternity, in the body or out.of the body?
Our humanity, be it observed, taken in the sense
of the Son of man, does not exclude God. Nay, it
not only includes him, but is He. We have him in
it, and nowhere else than in it have we him whom
with heart and understanding and appreciation we
can call our God-in our humanity, I say, as represented in the nature and person of our Lord Jesus
Christ. Surely, then, when as such he assumes the
office and function of shepherd to us he must be the
good shepherd, such a shepherd as none but the Good
himself taking that place and performing that func



TRII TA,4IAN  DOC TRINE.      131
tion can be. We can never in its fullness of meaning have the good shepherd until we have the Good
himself [as] Shepherd and Bishop of our souls.
It is a great thing, and always matter of the sincerest joy and congratulation among men when a
good man, as king, sovereign, or chief magistrate is
clothed with the office of shepherd of the people.
The gladness with which they hear his voice and
follow in his footsteps belongs to the region of the
profoundest, and most beautiful, and powerful of our
sentiments. There is a something of the unspeakable, the involuntary, the perennial about it. It is a
sentiment that never dies out; and though, perhaps, inexplicable and even contrary to our theories,
conventions, prejudices, and traditions, and even.
worldly interests, it is nevertheless irresistible, and
we follow it almost whether we will or no, as the
sheep follow their shepherd when they hear his voice,
and he knows them and calls them all by their names.
But what shall we say when it is no longer a good
man, one of themselves, tempted in all points like as
they are, with their imperfections and t/zeir sinls of
selfishness and narrowness, and passion and prejudice to warp and bias him-when, I say, it is no longer
a good man, but the Good itself-the principle of
all goodness and all manhood in humanity, taking
upon himself the shepherd's charge, and ruling over




132            PHILOSOPH Y OF'
men in the interests of humanity and of goodness,
and of these alone?
When this guide and guardian appears and
places himself at our head, and undertakes to
lead us on our dark and perilous way through
the undiscovered deeps of the eternities and the
possibilities that lie before us; when this vision
dawns on our souls and this light appears, our joy
and satisfaction are deep, sincere, unutterable. We
seem to hear a voice saying unto us, I amn the light
of the world. He that followeth me shall not walk
in darkness, but shall have him who is himself the
life-shall have him who is the very fountain-head
of the life of his humanity, for his light and his
example! (John viii. I2.) He shall have not merely
a maxim, or a code, or a dogmatic system to walk
by, but a life, and that the life, not of an imperfect,
fallible man, himself unable to walk except as some
one guides him, but of him who is himself the life of
all the true life, goodness, or humanity there is in
men. The significance of this fact is greater than
our thoughts can fully compass.
But this we may know of it, that then we have
realized what the apostle meant by his prayer, when
he prayed that Christ might dwell in our hearts by
faith-that we being rooted and grounded in love
might be able to comprehend with all saints what is




TRINI TA RIAN DOCTRINE.        133
the breadth and length and depth and height, and to
know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge,
that we might be filled with all the fullness of God.
When the Good-which to us can be no other than
the Godman-comes to execute the office of Chief
Shepherd towards us, we are assured on the highest
grounds of an absolutely perfect guardianship for
man. Consider some of the elements that are involved in it: in the first place, it is God himself in a
light and in a nature in which we can know and love
-enter into sympathy with him and know that in
the innermost depths and tenderest fibres of his
own being, he is in perfect sympathy with all that
is really human (however imperfect, or however
darkened and defiled it may be) in us. It is not one
nature striving to know and take an interest in and
love another, but the same nature, with a sympathy
for all that is even hopeful and not reprobate in
us, that is quick, generous, tender, appreciative and
forgiving, and which will surely forgive to the uttermost, because he so loves our humanity and is so
eager and determined to save it, and so longs that
it may not perish, but have eternal life. It is not
another nature which, strive as we may, must as to
its innermost heart and feeling, be foreign and unknown to us, and a thing with which we can enter
into no congenial sympathy and fellowship. There




134             PHILOSOPHY OF
must be a community of nature in the case, or that
cannot be which the apostle says is matter of fact between God and us. That which we have seen and
heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the
Father and with his Son 7esus Christ. (i John i. 3.)
Thus we have for the first time the idea yf our God,
and of our being the objects of his almighty and sympathetic love and care realized to us, when we are assured by the unfailing instinct of our humanity that
he is present with us in our nature and in our hearts
and in that nature and in those hearts by a mysterious yet real indwelling, exercising towards us the
office of supreme guardian, guide and comforter
of our souls. But consider another point, which with
equal certainty and clearness is involved. What
absolute security for perfect purity and disinterestednzess in the administration of his office-see the
impossibility of any personal or selfish interest or
consideration entering in and interfering to prevent
perfect disinterestedness in the administration of
the trust which has been committed to him. Talk
you of self, or the bias or makeweight of self-interest or ambition interfering in the case to prevent the
concentration of the whole power of the office, and
all the ardor of the love to men which it involves
within its idea and design, from being directed to




TRNI TA R AN. DOCTRINE.         135
the one end and consideration of the welfare of
the sheep?  Is there any danger or even possibility that in the administration there will be a
thought directed to something else besides their
good? For who are these that he calls his sheep, and
over whom he has assumed this guardianship, possession and care? Are they not men, and can he who is
humanity have any interest that is adverse to or not
accordant, and even identical with, that of men?
What is humanity but the love of men? and in loving
and in serving them, whom but itself does it love
and serve? In serving them does it not in the most
effectual, nay, in the only possible way, serve itself?
What self has humanity, or what self-interest, what
object to fasten its affections, its ambitions, or even
its covetousness, or its pride upon, except what it
finds in man? It has no self anywhere but what it
finds and feels in them. It has no self in its own
breast which can come in competition for its love,
its thought or its care, with that which it finds in the
nature and the persons of men. They are its other
and counterpart self-the self without-which is the
reflex and the projection of the self within. And in
this I am not straining a word, or playing with an
ingenious abstraction, for the sake of making a
point. I am only striving to say what the apostle
has already and much better said for me.  He




136             PHILOSOPHY 0'
throws the whole matter into the most living and
concrete form. He illustrates the relation between
the Good Shepherd and his sheep, by the symbol of
the marriage relation. For Christ is the head of the
church, even as the husband is the head of the wife,
and the interest he takes in the church is the perfection and the divine original of that which the husband
takes in his wife. So ought men to love their wives as
their own bodies. (Eph. v. 23-32.)  For this they
must do in order to love them as well as Christ loves
his church. They ought to copy the divine original
of marriage and abolish entirely any such thing as a
love or an interest that can stand between them
and the love and the devotion which they feel to
their wives. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but
nourisheth and cherisheth it even as the Lord the
church, for we are members of his body, of his flesh
and his bones. Thus in the love of the husband to
his wife we have an example of that which is the
only true and unselfish self-love which it is possible
for a man to exercise. But Christ is the true husband of the church, and the love he feels towards
her is the divine ideal of the love of the true husband to his wife; only imperfectly realized, only
faintly reflected in the case of a merely human married love, when that is at its height and exists in its




TRINI TARIAN DOCTRINE.            137
greatest perfection.  According to this standard,
the ideal as we have it in the love of Christ for his
church, the only self-love which the husband as
such knows anything about, is the love which he
bears to his wife. If he regards himself, is solicitous for what concerns his own interest, honor and
happiness, that solicitude will be shown by the ardor and personal self-forgetfulness with which he
lays himself out to promote her happiness, and devotes himself to her protection and to the promotion of her' welfare and interest, so that she may
feel that she has the best possible guaranties and securities for all that is dear to her as a wife and a
woman in his love.
I think the case is made out. If the Good Shepherd is no other than our humanity itself, then the
only self-love possible for him is the love which he
feels towards men, the only self-interest he can have
to influence him is the interest which he feels in
them.
Moreover, the apostle, in this illustration, distinctly and fully indorses our interpretation of the
title-the Good Shepherd-which is that " the good "
which appears in Christ exercising the office of shepherd towards men is no other than our humanity
itself in its principle; that is, in its God. For he
says that in loving the church, he loves only what is




138            PHILOSOPHY OF
in reality himself; that his love to her is true, and
yet entirely unselfish self-love; that in loving her as
he does he exercises the only self-love of which he is
capable. For he has no self of his own which is a
different thing in nature from the self which he recognizes in them, and to whose interest he devotes himself, and which he embraces, and loves, and cherishes
in his church. Here is plainly recognized again the
great, universal, underlying principle of the organic
unity of Christ and his church-of the Good Shepherd and his flock. For, in loving his sheep he could
not love himself and find the best and dearest realization of himself and of his true self-interest in them
unless between him and them there was a community
of nature, and he and they together constituted but one
and the same humanity. There could be no community
of self-hood and self-interest between them if they
were not organically one, and did not together constitute, not two natures, but only a single nature;
that is, a dyad, consisting of two elements -the shepherd and the sheep-the head and the members of
that unity, the flock. And thus also, he declares-not
impliedly, as in the saying, I know my sheep and am
known of mine, even as the Father knoweth me
and I know the Father-but he goes on in the next
verse to say, furthermore, And other sheep I have
which are not of this fold; them also I must bring,




TRINTITARIAN DOCTRINE.           I39
and they shall hear my voice, and there shall be one
fold, one shepherd. (John x. i6.)
Not one fold and one shepherd. The supplying
the conjunction destroys instead of filling out and
more fully expressing the sense. The omission of
the connective is intentional and significant. The
two elements, in the absence of the connecting particle, constitute and express an organic unity, whereas
with the particle they represent the fold and the
shepherd as two not only distinct, but separate
things, with no organic unity between them. As the
clause stands, and as it was intended to stand, it
represents the shepherd and his flock as constituting
not two single and separate things, but a Dyad, or
an organic unity consisting of two correlative elements or forces.  One fold-one shepherd-fold  and
shepherd, not two, but one. He carries the idea
here that whilst he is really distinct from the fold he
is not organically separated from it, but as in nature,
one with it, and it one with him.
In saying one fold, and emphasizing the one, he
points to the unity of the flock. In adding one shepherd, he points to that which is the unitizing principle, or to himself as the principle in and through
which the unity of the flock is accomplished. For
there can be no such thing as a concrete and living
unity where there is no principle of unity. And fur



T40            PHILOSOPHY OF
thermore the principle of such a unity cannot be a
thing outside of and separate from it. It must be
in the members united by it, or they cannot become
a unity in and by means of it. There can be no
doubt that Christ means to represent himself as the
principle of the unity of his flock. He would and
could not speak of them as being one and constituting a unity in any way but in him. Such being the
relation which he sustains to them, the foundation
is laid in nature for the administration of the shepherd-office toward them in a manner involving the
perfection of all that can enter into the idea of the
discharge of sacred official duty.
Of necessity, the office of shepherd of humanity
must be exercised by humanity in its principle
toward humanity in its members, in an absolutely
perfect manner. We have in the nature and character of the shepherd the pledge, and the sure
guaranty, of an absolutely perfect discharge of all
the functions involved, and of all the duty enjoined.
Moreover, Christ as the Son of man-the Good
[as the] shepherd and bishop of our souls, addresses
himself to that which is universal in our humanity.
In virtue of the universality of his nature' and
sympathies, he is capable of doing this; but no
other-none who does not comprehend within himself
that which is universal in the nature of man is capable




TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE.           141
of it. But in order that we may be numbered
among his sheep that hear his voice and follow him,
and to whom he gives eternal life, and who are
secured by all the love and all the power of the
eternal Godhead from ever perishing, or being
by any power in earth or hell plucked out of
his hand-this universal element lying at the basis
of our humanity, and constituting its very life
and spirit, must be developed at least in a degree
within us, and become potential in determining our
conduct and our feelings towards the Good Shepherd when we shall hear his voice calling after us.
It would almost seem as though it were the one
thing needful for a man, in order that he may be
truly a man, that he should escape from the narrowness of his education and his prejudices-throw off
the trammels of creed and nation, and get breadth
of ideas, views, feelings, and sympathies. He must
be in a situation to sympathize with whatever is truly
human in his fellow-men, and so be brought into a
genial and generous friendship with them on the broad
ground of their common humanity, before he can
be said to be himself truly a man, or the possible
subject of the benefits of the office of the universal
shepherd of humanity. It would seem that the
selfish narrownesses, preferences, and prejudices
which belong so naturally, and cling so tenaciously




142             PHILOSOPHY OF
and obstinately to him, without which and without
being more or less perverted, blended and corrupted,
by which no man in any nation grows up to manhood
(but with which cleaving to him'and bringing him
into bondage no man ever becomes a true man)-it
would seem, I say, as though this natural and acquired
selfishness and narrowness were, after all, more than
anything else, the orzgzinal sin of human nature.
It is, at all events, that without which our humanity
in its original simplicity and universality is not
developed and differentiated into the particular
and individual form. The individualizing element
must come forth and assert itself and its claims, but
this it is sure to do with an undue emphasis and
intensity. The individualizing tendency which is
natural and necessary, carries itself to excess, and
in that lies the evil, and the wrong, and the sin. It
is at this point, and under the temptation that besets
us at this initial and feeblest stage of our development, that the sin comes in. It lies not in the individualizing and self-asserting tendency itself, but
in the excess to which this is permitted to go-it is
here that the false and the wrong, the unlovely
and the sinful, first make their appearance-at
this door they make their entrance. It is for this
reason that the unalloyed sweetness, the unsullied
brightness of our humanity is seen only in its in



YRIANITARIAN DOCTRINE.          i43
fancy-before the developing process has begun,
and incorporated into it any of the harsh and bitter
fruits, any of the baser elements, any of the hard
angularities, any of selfish and harsh antagonisms
that make the full-grown individuality a thing so
false and so full of ugliness that we could almost
wish that our nature might forever remain in its infancy, in its undeveloped and characterless simplicity
and unsullied purity, so as to reflect upon us nothing
but tfliat which it brings with it from heaven, nothing
but the pure humanity, radiant with the smiles of
the infinite Father, which it still reflects back upon
us from its own sweet, unconscious face when it first
opens its eyes in wonder upon our faces. There can
be no doubt that it was this that so touched the
chord of Divine tenderness, and awakened the peculiar thrill of love and delight in the heart of Jesus at
the sight of little children, and that caused him to
take them in his arms and bless them, and to say:
Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid
them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven. And
no doubt herein lies the explanation of the requisition which, with so much emphasis, he lays down
upon us: That except we be converted and become as
little children, we can in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven. What does he mean, but simply and
plainly this: that that simple and universal element




144             PHILZOSOPHY OF
in our humanity-the root and principle of all the
beautiful and good —which, in the progress of our
false development and false lives, becomes overloaded, suppressed and smothered, so that it can
scarcely breathe, and so that it can scarcely be said
that it lives, must be restored to its original and
natural place and power?  What he means to say
is, that this hard crust of selfishness and custom
must be broken up, and the corruptions bred of the
strife for self, and self-will, and self-interest, "illgoverned passions, ranklings of despite," be purged
out, and that we begin to look upon our fellow-men
as our brothers and friends, and not as aliens and
enemies-upon ours and theirs, not as mutually
antagonistic and exclusive natures and interests, but
as really all one in Christ Jesus, all one in virtue of
our common humanity and common relationship to
the Son of man, the prince and principle and the
Saviour of our humanity, where there is neither
Greek nor Jew, barbarian Scythian, bond or free,
but Christ is all and in all.
I cannot in this connection and as apropos to the
momentous topic not handled, but merely alluded
to, in passing, above-I mean the strange beauty
which attaches itself to the period of infancy" when God does by himself," without the intervention of the understanding or the reasoning




7'RINITARIAAN   DOCTRINE.          145
faculties, "seem  to converse with our simplicity,"
and our intellectual power, though undeveloped,
seems yet to be haunted forever by the Eternal
mind-I cannot, I say, forbear quoting a verse from
the immortal Ode of Wordsworth, in which the
subject is set forth with a depth of imaginative and
philosophic insight which finds its equal nowhere'in
our own language, if, indeed, in any other.  Of this
poem Coleridge says: To the Ode on the Intimations of Immortality, from recollections of Early
Childhood, the poet might have prefixed the lines
which Dante addresses to one of his own Canzoni:' O lyric song, there will be few, think I,
Who may thy import understand aright;
Thou art for them, so arduous, and so high!"
But the Ode was intended for such readers only
as had been accustomed to watch the flux and reflux of their inmost nature, to venture at times into
the twilight realms of consciousness and to feel a
deep interest in modes of inmost being to which
they know the attributes of time and space are inapplicable and alien, but which yet cannot be conveyed save in symbols of time and space. For such
readers the sense is sufficiently plain, and they will
be as little disposed to charge Mr. Wordsworth with
believing the Platonic pre-existence in the ordinary
8




146                PHILOSOPHY OF
interpretation of the words, as I am to believe that
Plato himself ever meant or taught it.
To find no contradiction in the union of old and
new, to contemplate the Ancient of Days with feelings as fresh as if they then sprang forth at his own
fiat, this characterizes the minds that feel the riddle
of the world and may help to unravel it! To carry
on the feelings of childhood into the powers of manhood, to combine the child's sense of wonder and
novelty, the appearances which every day for perhaps forty years had rendered familiar
TWith sun and-moon and stars throughout the year,
And man and woman.
This is the character and privilege of genius, and
one of the marks which distinguish genius from
talent. (The Friend, Vol I., p. I83.) (See Reed's
Edition of Wordsworth.)
"Thou whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy soul's immensity:
Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,
That deaf and silent read'st the eternal deep,
Haunted forever by the Eternal Mind,Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!
On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,




TRINITA RIAN DOCTRINE.                    147
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou over whom thy Immortality
Broods like the day, a master o'er a slave,
A presence which is not to be put by;
Then little child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy Being's height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife,
Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight
Heavy as frost and deep almost as life! "
In  the  fourth  book  of the Excursion  is another
passage to substantially the same purpose, which
from identity of thought, and even of language, in
one or two striking instances, seems as though it
must have been the germ of the Ode, or at least of
much that is found in it:
Alas! the endowment of immortal Power,
Is matched unequally with customz, time
And domineering faculties of sense
In all; in most with superadded foesIdle temptations-open vanities,
Ephemeral offspring of the unblushing world;
And in the private regions of the mind
Ill-governed passions, ranklings of despite,
Immoderate wishes, pining discontent,
Distress anad care. What then remains? To seek
Those helps, for his occasions ever near




148                  PITILOSOPIIY  OF
Who lacks not will to use them; vows renewed
On the first motion of a holy thought,
Vigils of contemplation; praise and prayer;
A stream, which, from the fountain of the heart
Issuing however feebly, nowhere flows
Without access of unexpected strength.*
* By an obvious mistranslation the Apostle Paul is'imade to represent the sin of the first man, Adam, as the cause of the sin of his
posterity, and his death the cause of their death, whereas he teaches
no such doctrine. His language (Rom. v. I2) rightly translated, is:
Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world and death by
sin (that is, his death by his sin), even so death passes upon all men
because all sin.
Thus the sin of Adam  is represented as the pattern according to
which all men sin. We sin and we die for our sin, not because he
did but as he did. As Paul in this very connection says that we
all sin after the similitude of Adam's transgression-the exception
mentioned being only an apparent one, and as such, proving the rule
(v. I4).
In regard to the interpretation to be given to the description of
Adam's sin in the second and third chapters of Genesis, Coleridge
(Aids to Reflection, pp. 241-243) writes as follows-I quote, however, but a few of his expressions, and these only because of the very
great merit which they seem to me to possess, for the wealth of their
learning, the clearness and comprehensiveness of their thought, and
the fire of genius by which the whole mass is fused and in which it
all glows.
We have the assurance of Bishop Horsley that the Church of England does not demand the literal understanding of the document in
the second (from verse 8) and third chapters of Genesis, as a point
of faith, or regard a different interpretation as affecting the orthodoxy
of the interpreter; divines of the most unexceptionable orthodoxy, and the most averse to the allegorizing of Scripture history in
general, having adopted or permitted it in this instance.
And, indeed, no unprejudiced man can pretend to doubt that if in




TRINI TARIAN DOCTRTINE.                  I49
And it was that this smothered and dying principle of our humanity might be delivered from its
bondage and its death, that the Good, in the person
of the Incarnate Son of man, came down from heaven in outward form and fashion as a man, assumed
any work of Eastern origin, he met with trees of life and of knowledge, or talking and conversable snakes:
Inque rei signum seipentem ser5erejussum,
he would want no other proof that it was an allegory he was reading,
and intended to be understood as such    *    *   *    *    It
cannot be denied that the Mosaic narrative thus interpreted gives a
just and faithful exposition of the birth and parentage and successive
moments of phenomenal sin, that is, of sin as it reveals itself in time
and as an immediate object of consciousness. And in this sense
most truly does the Apostle assert that in Adam we all fall. T7,e
first human sinner is the adequate representative of all his successors.
And, with no less truth may it be said that it is the same Adam that
falls in every man, and from the same reluctance to abandon the too
dear and undivorceable Eve, and the same Eve tempted by the same
serpentine and perverted understanding which, formed originally to be
the interpreter of the reason and the ministering angel of the spirit,
is henceforth sentenced and bound over to the service of the animal
nature, its needs and its cravings, dependent on the senses for all its
materials, with the world of sense for its appointed sphere: <-Upon
thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.
I have elsewhere shown that as the instinct of the mere intelligence differs in degrees, not in kind and circumstantially, not essentially, from the vis vitae, or vital power in the assimilative and digestive functions of the stomach, and other organs of nutrition, even so
the understanding in itself, and distinct from the reason and conscience, differs in degree only from the instinct of the animal. It is
still but a beast of thefield, though more subtle than any beast of the
field, and therefore, in its corruption and perversion, cursed above
any, a pregnant word, etc., etc.




150            PHILOSOPHY OF
the office of shepherd, guide, guardian and Saviour
of our souls. He must, in the discharge of the
functions of this office, address himself to that
which is simplest and most universal in our soulsthat is, to this principle of humanity. It is the
only element to which he could address himself, the
only one which would be capable of any response
to him if he should address himself to it.
It was the almost total death and extinction of
this element in the Pharisaic and dominant element
among the Jews that led them almost with one
consent to reject him, and that made it impossible
that they should recognize in him the Good Shepherd, and consequently for him to see in them anything on account of which he could recognize them
as his sheep. This is the only and the sovereign
test; and he is not timid, nor sparing in his application of it to them. There is nothing in the diabolic rage which the fearless, unequivocal application of it to them excites in them against him that
operates in the least to deter him or make him less
severe and pointed in his language, But ye believe
not because ye are not of my sheep. My sheep
hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow
me, and I give unto them  eternal life, and they
shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them
out of my hand. As much as to say, Your hostility




TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE.            I  
against me is in fact hostility against them. To the
end that they may be without a shepherd and without a Saviour of their souls from the death that
awaits you, you seek to kill me. You may be able
to accomplish that, but that will not endanger their
welfare, or deprive them of their shepherd. He
lives still, all-powerful for their protection, after you
have killed him, no less than though you had no
power over the life of his body at all. In fact, it is
only after he is slain that he enters fully upon his
shepherd function and fully develops the power of
his office, and becomes to them not prospectively
nor by promise merely, but actually and efficaciously
the power of an endless life. It is by his laying
down his life for his sheep, by means of that voluntary death which he suffers for them, that he fulfills his great promise and accomplishes the great
purpose of his ministry.
This function of the Good Shepherd is, therefore,
not applicable to nor available for all men alike. It
is an office of good only to t/zose whzo (potentially at
least) are good; to those only, that is, who in their
own moral condition and character are susceptible
of the good which it is the province and the design
of the office to administer. It comes as the minister to our humanity.  Where that has perished
already, and has no longer any ear to hear or any




1 52            PHILOSOPHY OF
heart to respond to its offer and purpose of mercy,
it has no ministry except one of condemnation and
wrath to perform. This is the condemnation, that
light has come into the world, and men have loved
-darkness rather than light, because their deeds are
evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light,
neither cometh to the light lest his deeds should be
reproved. But he that doeth truth [that has an element of the love of the true and the good still surviving in his heart, notwithstanding his manifold
sins and corruptions] cometh to the light, and thereby makes it manifest that his deeds are wrought in
God, [that there is a principle of righteousness at
the bottom of them, at least of some of them-the
desire and the purpose to come to the light is surely
not born of evil, nor is it evil in its nature, but is
born of good, and is in its nature good, and leads to,
good. In that sense it is wrought in God, or in other
words, it is the fruit of God working in the heart
and manifesting himself in the acts of the still unredeemed and struggling man]. (John iii. I9-2I.)
To the help, to the inarticulate call of this oppressed
and struggling principle Christ comes as the good
shepherd, to it he becomes the power of an almighty
and gracious deliverance, and the principle of an
endless life.
In the light of this fact, in the light of the con



TRINI TARI4AN DOCTRINE.         15 3
dition of our humanity as thus revealed, we have
the explanation of the doctrine of the new birth,
and the answer to the question, Why is it that we
must be, and what is it for us to be, born again?  It
is simply the reviving to a new life of our humanity
which has lain as though it were dead, and which
must have died and gone beyond the reach of
any reviving influence if it had not been for the
voice, and the light, and the power of the truth
which comes to its help and restoration in Christ.
In order that the soul may truly live, in order that
it may hear, and see, and feel-have right understanding, heart and will, and be alive once more unto
God, through Jesus Christ our Lord-the humanity
within it must experience a radical and effectual
quickening. That which is born of the flesh is flesh,
and only flesh, that only which is born of the spirit
is spirit, that only which is rooted and grounded in
a principle of divine love, can have any true human
virtue or worth in it. It is only through this spirit
of love quickened into life in the heart through the
ministration of the Good Shepherd, that we have
any true spiritual life, anything of this life of love,
or, which is the same thing, anything of the true
life of our humanity, for we do not as men truly begin to live until the life of love is begun in us, and
this beginning is the result of the new birth.




I54             PHILOSOPHY OF
The truth is, that in regard to the things of the
spirit of God, we see with our hearts-in other
words, we see nothing rightly until we see it in the
light of a loving and a willing heart. The view we
take of spiritual things, the light in which they appear to us, will depend entirely upon the sort of
affections, in other words, the sort of eyes which we
carry in our hearts. We must, therefore, in order
that we may catch the true tone and meaning of that
which speaks to us in Christ, see with the eyes, feel
with the heart of a newly and divinely-quickened
humanity.  We must have heart, eye, ear, and
organs that have been given to us by the spirit
living and energizing within. Only those senses and
organs that are born of the spirit, that belong to
the spirit, only those that are the product of the
newly-awakened humanity within us, are truly
spiritual, and of course it is by these only that we
can discern spiritual things.
The reason why the natural man does not discern
spiritual things, and see them in their true light, is
that he lacks the proper organ of perception with
reference to them. And what is that proper organ?
It is the right feeling towards the object. We see
in regard to such things by means of our feelings.
Our eyes are in our hearts. In other words, the eyes
by which we see spiritual tMings are the feelings with




TRINI TAR IAN DOCTRINE.         1 55
which we regard them.  The expression may be
regarded as a strong one, but it is not too much to
say that our sight in respect to things of the spirit
is in our feelings-that they are our only organs of
vision-nay, our only sources of light. As they are
so are our views-so is our understanding and our
faith. If our views are wrong, it is because we are
blinded to, and prejudiced against, the truth; either
do not see at all or look at things in a wronglight,
and from a wrong point of view.
And this furnishes us with a clear interpretation
of that pregnant and yet obscure aphorism of our
Saviour in respect to the single and the evil eyeThe light of the body is the eye. If, therefore, thine
eye be single thy whole body shall be full of light,
but if thine eye be evil thy whole body shall be full
of darkness. If, therefore, the light that is within
thee (if the heart that is within be an evil heart that
hates the truth) how great is that darkness!
The infidel theory of the religious element and
the faith that depends upon it, is that the believer
is deluded by his superstitious fancies-that he is
the prey of a blind and servile credulity-that he
sinks his understanding in his perverted, overwrought and morbid feelings, that by the false
colorings and obscuring and distorting mists that
come from them, his understanding is blinded and his




156            PHILOSOPHY OF
mind deceived. The Christian theory, on the other
hand, is that the eyes of the understanding are enlightened by the power of sanctified feeling, so that
not merely with the logical faculties-the dry light
of the understanding, but with the very life and
vital organs of the soul, the act of correctly seeing
and perceiving is performed.
Everything in our moral perceptions, as well as
in regard to our views of outward things, depends
upon the point of view.  Love only-as it is the
universal and fundamental element in the life of our
humanity-gives us that right point with reference
to Christ. " You must love him, ere to you he will
seem worthy of your love." Love alone gives you
the eye by which to see him. As love is the only
right moral feeling towards him, so in love alone
we have the right point of view from which to regard him. The right point of view in reference to
a moral subject is not local or speculative or merely
intellectual, it is moral. It consists in the moral
character and condition of the man.  Every one
admits that in order to right views of things,
whether internal or external to the mind of the observer, everything depends upon the point from
which they are viewed, and that to see anything
whatever-whether it relates to the inward or outward senses-we must be rightly situated in regard




T7'INITARIAN DOCTRINE.           157
to it. Now, in respect to spiritual things, character, or the voluntary state of the feelings and affections, constitutes the point of view-it is as the
character is-right character constitutes the right,
and wrong character the wrong point.  Unless,
therefore, it is unreasonable to require a right point
of view in reference to an object in order to a right
view of it, it is perfectly reasonable and logical to
require in a man a morally good character, and an
unsophisticated and unprejudiced state of the feelings in order to the just apprehension of Christ, and
that right character which the right view of him requires consists in love.  Love is the fundamental
and universal element of the soul's life. The soul
has not its true life-it is not too much to say, in
the strong language of the apostle, that it is dead
in trespasses and in sins-if it have not love as the
principle of its life. Does not the apostle say the
very same thing, and prescribe a life and a heart of
love in order to anything like true spiritual knowledge? Does he not say that we must be rooted
andgrounded iz love before we can expect to comprehend-or be in a condition in which it is possible
for us to comprehend with all saints, what is the
breadth, and length, and depth, and height, and to
know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge,
that we may be filled with all the fullness of God?




5 8           PHILOSOPH Y OF
The intelligence which is necessary in order to
know, the sensibility which is necessary in order to
feel rightly concerning Christ, are all comprehended
in love. Without it the soul is, with reference to
him, unintelligent, blind, and dead. Love is the
understanding, the imagination, and the heart of
the soul all combined and acting as one faculty, and
all exercised in a single act. With the faculty of
love fully developed, and acting in its perfection
and power, we need no faculties but what are comprehended in this, and are exercised in it. When it
is perfect and has its perfect work —with love existing and operating in its full power within us, we
are perfect and entire, wanting nothing. Of the
truth of this view of the constitution of the human
mind with reference to its higher relations and
functions, we have a mighty and almost startling
confirmation in the inspired representations of the
Apostle John (i John iv. I6), where he virtually declares that God himself is then most justly conceived of when he is regarded as consisting of but
a single complex faculty-all his attributes being
reducible to the unity of the single faculty of love.
Beloved (I John iv. 7, 8), let uzs love one another, for
love is of God-what is that but saying, not merely
that love comes from God, but that it is of the
nature of God, and that just so much of love as a




TINVI TA RIAN DOC TRINE.      159
man has in him, therefore, just so much of the
nature of God. Every one that loveth is born of
God and knoweth God, for God is love. If we have
love we know it, in the only way in which we can
truly know anything, and that is by experience, and
if we know love, we do in that knowledge know
God. If we know love we know God, for God is
love. He that loveth not consequently knoweth
not God-for he hath no means of knowing him.
He has not, and cannot have, the experience which
involves it, and in and by which alone we have the
knowledge of God.
Inspiration in the mind of the Apostle here rises
to a height, and assumes an uncompromising boldness
and disregard of the conventionalities of human
conception and expression that is not with reference
to this subject found elsewhere, even in Scripture.
It boldly ventures to define to human apprehension
the divine being, and to reduce him within the
limits of the actual experience and experimental
knowledge of man. It says unequivocally, without
circumlocution and without a figure, that God is love,
and conversely with equal directness that love is
God. If you would know what love is-love in its
supreme height and perfection and power, know
that it is no other than God himself, and that so
much as you have of it, s6 much of the nature




i6o            PHILOSOPHY OF
of God has been born and is living in you,
and so far your soul has gone in the true
knowledge of the nature, and of the mind, and
feeling of God. In the feeling and state of mind of
which you are conscious when you do truly dwell
in the love of your kind, and when that love is the
fundamental principle of your own life, and the
ruling passion of your heart-in the feeling and
state of mind of which you are then conscious, you
enter into the consciousness of God himself; in the
feeling which you have towards men you enter into
the feeling of God, and know him in his feeling,
know how he feels towards us, and towards all the
objects and interests upon which our love fastens.
The Apostle could not say that he that dwelleth
in love dwelleth in God and God in him, if love were
not virtually God-and love and God convertible
terms-or terms which may be used the one for
the other without altering the sense. Accordingly,
the two propositions God is love and love is God
are logical and substantial equivalents. God may be
used as the predicate of love with as much propriety
as love may be made the comprehensive predicate
of God.
All the divine attributes, then, may be ascribed to
love as the ultimate substance of being, and when
we say that love is the original creative principle




TRINI T,4RIA   DOCTRINE.        I 6 I
out of which the universe sprang, and is ever springing-that it is infinite, eternal, self-existent, almighty, all-wise, all-beneficent and just and good, we
declare the same truth and speak with the same
propriety as when we say the same things of Godand ascribe the same attributes and agencies to
him.
If this be so, if God is love and nothing but what
is comprehended in the idea and nature of love,
then God does nothing but love-or rather does
nothing, and has no attribute that does not involve
the nature of love in it. All that he does and all
that he is, may be regarded as love acting now in
one way and now in another, according to the subjects with reference to which he acts-manifesting itself now in one attribute, and now in another according to the nature of the subject or the occasion.
The entire agency and manifestation of the divine
being may consequently be said to consist in the
varied activities that love puts forth, the varied
manifestations which it makes of itself, and the manifold forms and directions in which it exerts itself
according to the exigencies of the divine agency and
administration. There can, therefore, be'no such
thing as an attribute of justice in God, that is inconsistent with his love. Nay; that does not include love, and is not love acting and manifesting




I62             PHILOSOPHY OF
itself with reference to the particular matters and
occasions with which justice is Concerned. Love
will carry out its plans and execute the all-wise and
benevolent design in pursuance of which, and for
the accomplishment of which, the universe was made.
It will feel no pity, and show no mercy towards that
which shall put itself in the way of the accomplishment of its purposes. In regard to this the supreme
point, love is as inflexible and inexorable as fatewhatever shall resist the purposes of its administration, must either change its position or expect to
be consumed by the breath of its mouth, and destroyed by the brightness of its coming. The sinner
that sins and that perseveres in his sin against all
methods and means used for his repentance and reformation, must expect to take the full measure of
his sins, he must expect to receive his wages, and
there is nothing in the nature of love that can interfere or wish to interfere to prevent his receiving them. Love requires that the purposes of love
should be carried out-that which is indifferent to
this, or that can prefer any object or interest before
this, and not be absolutely inflexible in regard to
this, is not love-it is some base counterfeit that has
usurped its name.
To say that God is love, is to say that whatever
vital act he performs is the act of that love which




TRINITAR1AN DOCTRINE.          I63
is the fundamental element and principle of his nature.
To say that God is love is to say that every act
he performs may be traced to love as its motive and
principle-its moving and its final cause. Who can
doubt that it is out of love that the creation sprang
and is evermore springing? Love, ever-living, everacting,-of course never acting without a designnever for the mere sake of acting, but always for the
sake of love and for the sake of the good, which it
is the very nature of love to seek, and which it cannot act but for the sake of producing and making
actual in the condition and experience of the creatures who are the work of its hands. The object of
the creation of wvhich love is the cause, is to reveal
its own nature and manifest itself to the intelligent
universe, the heart and the mind and nature of that
divine eternal and creative principle in which is the
life of our life —in whom we live and move, and
have our being.
In like manner, to say that humanity is lovethat man in the uttermost root and principle of his
being is love-that every vital and truly human act
which a man performs, every act which in virtue and
as the expression of his humanity he performs, is the
act of love, grows out of it and may be reduced to
it, and be regarded as being itself no other than love




164             PHILOSOPHY OF
itself in some or other of its various modes and forms
of action and manifestation, according to circumstances, and the manifold demands and occasions of
human life.
Here, then, with reference to the natures of God
and of man respectively, and their relations to each
other, we find ourselves standing on the most fundamental and radical ground. Thought, with reference to God, can go no further than to reduce the
idea of him to the unity of the principle and the life
of love, and there is no other way by which he can be
made intelligible to our minds, or brought home so
realizingly to our hearts. In fact, this is the only
way in which he can become intelligible to us at all.
God can become known and intelligible to us only
in the form of life. To reduce him to the unity of
an abstract principle is, in fact, to take him entirely
out of the sphere of experience, and consequently
of rational conception; as Aristotle says, there is no
such thinog as a science of the unique-of the absolutely abszract and simple. To represent God, therefore, under this form of conception, is to remove
him entirely out of the sphere of objective reality,
and of all true and living and realizing thought and
knowledge. Hence, in reducing the idea of God
to the single conception of loove, we reduce him not
to the unity of a general and abstract principle, but




TRINITARIAN DOCTRIZVE.           165
to the unity of a life. This unity involves distinction and rank of elements and of principles, but it is
not an abstraction.
Now love, as life, is,matter not of speculation and
abstract conception merely, but of experience,-a
thing of which we can know nothing except as we
feel it, even as life becomes intelligible to us only as
it is matter of personal consciousness.
If, then, God is love and love is life, and to be
known only so far and in the degree in which it is
felt by us, it follows, of necessity, that God becomes
known to us only in our feelings, and that the heart
is the only organ of the true knowledge of God. He
is no object of the merely speculative understanding any more than of the outward and bodily senses.
He is the object of the inward, moral sense, and of
spiritual perception only.
In the inner, spiritual sense, therefore, or, in other
words, in the moral condition or state of the heart
we have our only just point of view with reference
to the knowledge of God. If our feelings towards
him are right, that is, if we love him, then according
to the strength and purity of our love we see him as
he is, and, as our love increases in purity and
strength, our ideas become more and more clear,
our faith more and more realizing, until in virtue of
its love the soul comes to stand face to face with its




i 66            PHILOSOPHY OF
blessed and glorious Author. This makes clear the
meaning of the Apostle, and reveals to us the philosophy of the soul's knowledge of God, as he sets it
forth in the memorable words (I John iii. I2): Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet
appear what we shall be, but we know that when he
shall appear, we shall be like hiin, for we shall see hit
as he -is. Our seeing him as he is, he makes to depend upon our being like him, and our being like
him consists in our love, for love is of the very nature of God. When, therefore, we become filled
with his love, we are filled with his nature-we are
full of that which is of his very nature, and so are
changed into his very image and likeness through
the transforming power of love. As Paul says, by
beholding, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, we
are changed into the same image from one degree
of conformity to another. When this love becomes
the life and the vital organ of the soul, when it becomes, at once, the eye with which it sees, the mind
and the heart with which it feels and perceives and
knows, then the true union between God and man
is accomplished, and the most blessed and glorious
of all consummations is reached. Then the humanity, as it is in man, beholds its own divine
counterpart and original, as it is in the Son of Man.
Then the humanity, as it is in the finite image,




7'RINI TARIAN DOCTRINE.          I67
stands face to face with itself as it is in its own divine original.  Humanity, as it is in the members,
then finds itself standing face to face with itself as it
is in its own fountain-head.  It has the most blissful and the most enrapturing and the most soultransforming of all sights; not another humanity
outside of, and yet co-ordinate with and like itself,
as we stand in relation to each other, but that humanity which is itself, its own counterpart, the
eternal source out of which it has sprung, and in
which it lives, and moves, and has its being, and
which, conversely, lives, and moves, and has its
being in it.
Let it be inquired whether there is any delight
which the soul can experience, any perfection of
which it can be the subject which can come into any
comparison with, or at all resemble, or take the
place of this, which the soul has, in thus living the
life of love? What joy can be compared to that
which the soul feels when thus by loving and dwelling in love it dwelleth in God and God in it? If,
then, the life of love is a life in God, must it not, so
far as it is such, and so far as love is its vital principle,
be an absolutely pure, and blessed, and Godlike
life? Is not our ideal of a perfect and blessed humanity fully realized in the experiences and attributes of such a life as this? Not until we come to




I68             PIPILOSOPH Y OF
look upon the matter in this light, and see in Christ
the living and eternal spring of our humanity and of
our joy, can we have any proper conception of the
joy with which the soul beholds its Redeemer.
Until then we can have no idea of the depth and
the satisfying sweetness of meaning expressed in the
title which, with reference to his relations to the
soul's satisfaction and salvation, he gives to himselfthat of the Good Shepherd. It is not as a kind benefactor, outside of us, exercising care and protection
over us, as a parent over a child, as a paternal and
just and wise ruler over his subjects, or a magistrate
over the people whom he rules only to serve, not
for the sake of being ministered unto by them, but
for the sake of ministering to them-making himself
their servant rather than them his. It is not as such
merely that we are to conceive of Christ in his administration of the office of the Good Shepherd
towards us. It is not as an outward thing that we
are to conceive of his administration as the shepherd and bishop of our souls. The ministration of
love and care which he performs towards us is
primarily an inward one,-like that of the fountain
to the stream, or that of the vine to the branch,
which groweth out of it and has its life and fruitfulness in it.
His office is indeed to be the minister of eternal




T'RIINTARIAN DOCTRINE.          I69
life and peace to our souls, but this office he can administer to us in no other way than by himself
becoming the founttain-head and perpetual and exhaustless spring of that life and peace by his own
actual indwelling within us, and thus becoming, not
indeed our life, not making our life identical with
his-for that would be no personal privilege to usit would only destroy our personality and capacity
of personal enjoyment by absorbing our persons
in his own.
There could be no blessedness to us in a life or in
a blessedness which is not our own; but he be.
comes life to us by giving and preserving to each
of us out of his own life, as the fountain-head,
a life of our own, and thus himself becoming the
life of that life which is truly our own, and is, therefore, sweet to us. It is thus, in administering his
own life to us, as the source and principle of our
lives, and making it the everlasting and holy spring
of our lives, and of all the holiness, and all the joy
we have in our lives, that he discharges towards us
the office of the Good Shepherd.
It is in this that the unique and peculiar character of his shepherdship consists. It is in this respect that his office differs not in degree only, but in
kind also, from any office or ministry which men
can discharge towards each other; I mean in the re9




170              PHILOSOPHY OF'
lation vwhich the administrator sustains to that
which he administers —the offerer to that wh/ich he
has to offer. Among men, and within the earthly
sanctuary or sphere of service and offering, the
things which they who enter into that sanctuary
bring as offerings are one thing; but the offerers or
high-priests themselves are another, the priest and
his offering, the magistrate and the justice that he
administers, are not identical.  But in the case of
this high-priesthood  of the Good Shepherd, the
offerer and that which he offers, the shepherd and
that which he administers to his sheep, are one and
the same thing. Having nothing else to offer, there
being in the universe nothing else which, in the nature of the case, could constitute an acceptable,
that is, an effectual, life-giving and soul-saving offering, he offers himself. By so much, and for this
reason, was Jesus made the surety of a better cove nant, established upon better promises. And they
truly were many priests, because they were not suffered to continue by reason of death-but this
great high-priest, who is not made after the law of a
carnal commandment, but after the power of an
endless life,-this high-priest, because he continueth
ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood, for every
high-priest is ordained to offer gifts and sacrifices;
wherefore it is of necessity that this man have some



TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE.            17I
what also to offer. But, seeing that the gift which
he has to bring into the sanctuary as his offering
for us is no other than eternal life to our souls,
and seeing that he himself, the offerer, is that
eternal life which he comes to give, it is plain that
if he is to give us eternal life, he must give it in
himself, that is, by giving himself for us. He must
himself be not only the sacrificer, but the sacrifice.
But Christ, being come a high-priest of good things to
come by a greater and more perfect tabernacle not
made with hands, neither by the blood of goats and
calves, but by his own blood, he entered in once into
the holy place, having thereby to obtain, and obtaining, eternal redemption for us.
This is the record that God hath given us eternal
life, and that this Life is in his Son. He, therefore, that hath the Son hath Life, and he that
hath not the Son of God hath not Life. All of
which makes it very plain and certain that the goodshepherd and great high-priest of our souls can in
no other way administer the good things wlhich have
been committed to him for his people, than by
making himself the matter of the gift which he has
to bestow-of the offering which he has to bring —
as this life, this good thing, which God has to administer to us through him, is in himself, he can in
no other way administer it than by making himself




I 72            PHILOSOPHY OF
at once the minister and the thing administered, at
once the great high-priest, and the supreme and allperfect, and all-sufficient sacrifice which he brings.
The only effectual sacrifice which he can offer for
us is himself; and the only way in which he can
offer it is by the sacrifice of himself.
He enters into the sanctuary, therefore, not with
the blood of beasts, but with his own blood, which,
being interpreted, means that through the suffering
and self-sacrificing ministry which, in the flesh, he
performs for us, he makes his life ours, or the means
of life to us, or rather makes the eternal life which
is in him the principle of an immortal and blessed
life to us. He imparts his own life to us in such a
way that he does not thereby himself cease to live,
but makes his own life, while he keeps and preserves
it to himself, the everlasting principle and spring of
life to us.
The spectacle of his life and of his death, when
properly jiviewed and appreciated by us, produces,
through the superadded ministration of the Holy
Spirit, a moral effect upon our consciences and our
hearts, imparts a light, and fastens convictions and
impressions upon us that cannot be resisted or
shaken off, and that in the end become absolutely
subduing and transforming in their effect upon our
souls.  It is thus that he lays down his life for




7'RINITAR1AN DOCTRINE.          173
his sheep, and thus that he gives unto them eternal
life. Through the moral effect of his passion the
humanity within them is born again, and thus is
begotten again in them that new life of humanity
of which he is the principle, the high-priest, and
administrator. And, having imparted the principle,
he secures us in the possession of it and makes it
sure that we shall never perish, nor' any power of
hostility or hatred to him or to us, whether in this
world or that which is to come, pluck us out of his
hand.
How does he accomplish this? I answer, by putting the treasure within us-into our very mind and
heart, and thus placing it forever beyond the reach
of any will or any power but his and our own. He
puts it into our own hands in such a way as to make
us, in regard to the secure possession of it, independent of any power or will but our own.  And,
besides, the gift is of such a nature that it must,
under all circumstances, be esteemed and valued by
us as absolutely above all price. And it is made to
depend entirely upon the soul's voluntary choice
and consent whether it will part with it or not.
The life which it enjoys in it is one of perfect
blessedness; and can anything be conceived of that
could prevail upon the soul once in the possession
and enjoyment of it to. make it willing to part with




174             PHILOSOPHY OF
it? God, on his part, cannot fail. There is no
power in the universe that can compel or induce
him to withdraw his everlasting and almighty love
and protection from the soul that loves him. What
shall we, then, say to these things? If God be for
us, who can be against us? He that spared not his
own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall
he not with him also freely give us all things?
Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's
elect?
It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea, rather, that
is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God,
who also maketh intercession for us.
It is Christ that lives; and because he lives, and
lives in us as the sustaining principle of our life, we
shall live also. Our immortality rests upon the
same securities as those which make his life an
eternal certainty.




TRIN[I TA RIAN DOCTRNATE.       17 5
V.
THE GIST OF THE CONTROVERSY:
OR,
A plain word with Prof. Tyndall on the question of
the Origin of Life.
IT seems to me that the Professor, in his late
remarkable deliverance upon this subject, deserves
the credit of having spoken plainly, and presented
the issue between science and religion.with great
clearness and force-if they are, indeed, at issue at
all, and that is indeed science, rightly so called,
which, under that name, he arrays against the universal religious instinct of mankind. We, however,
deny that that which he thus, on this great and
fundamental question, arrays against the instincts
of religion is science at all, and maintain that his
position is in fact. and can easily be shown to be, as
unscientific as it is atheistic.
But if they were at issue, as he boldly claims, and
there were no alternative but to side with the one
against the other-the fundamental position of the
one being irreconcilable with that of the other



176             PHILOSOPHY OF
then the issue between them appears to be fairly
presented. And it is doubtless well that it is so, if
the question is to come up and be seriously debated
at all. In the end, no harm, but rather advantage,
must come to the truth from the presentation, rash
and dangerous as it may at first seem. If the result
shall be to make more clear to the Christian mind
the strength of the argument upon which its cause
and its faith rest, we shall have occasion to rejoice
that the issue has been presented and the discussion
provoked.
As he presents the case, the difference between
science and religion, with reference to the question
of the origin of the organic universe, or as to the
first principle out of which it springs, is that science
finds all that is necessary to account for the actual
world in the primordial atoms or molecules of
Democrit.us and Epicurus.
Upon the hypothesis of these original and ultimate atoms science bases the fact of the existing
universe of life and being. The words in which the
Professor lays down his great thesis are memorable:
" Prolozinzg the vision backward across the line of
experimental evidence, Ze find in matter the promise
and the potency of every forim and quality of life."
The doctrine, then, is that out of this hypothetical principle or ground, which he calls matter,




TRINITARIAN  DOCTRINE.           177
and out of these ultimate molecules or atoms, and
the inorganic forces inherent in them, all the species
and forms, all the grades and orders, all the dependencies and interdependencies of the actual living
universe spring. Science excludes and repudiates
every other postulate or principle, and says: If
these are not God, then there is no God, for there is
no God but these; final causes, consequently, there
are none in the universe, nor are any needed. The
universe is what it is without design, and as the result
of the unconscious blind force of inorganic, lifeless
matter.
Matter acting from its own inherent necessity of
acting, and without any end in view, has produced
this which we see, and are, and which we call the
universe. The plain declaration of this so-called
science is that in this-in this blind, unconscious
force of hypothetical atoms-we have all that we
want-all that reason can ask for in order to account for the universe as it is. All that there is in
the creation we have without any God, and without
the necessity of presupposing the existence of any,
except what is furnished us in this hypothesis of
matter., This appears to be a fair statement of the
position of science on this question, as represented
by Prof. Tyndall and his school.
The position of religion, on the contrary, is that




I78             PHILOSOPHY OF
the atoms, even admitting their existence (tho ugh of
this Prof. Tyndall admits there is no evidence), are
not sufficient to account for the facts in the case as
both parties admit them to be. She insists that in
order to account for the living creation a creative,
intelligent, and benevolent principle is required;
that nothing short of such a principle can account
for the facts as we find them, for the creation as
it is.
The first principle must, as is agreed on all hands,
be a creative and producing power; whether voluntarily or consciously or not, it must be producing;
and must produce from itself, and be self-moved in
production. Science, according to Prof. T., claims
that the atoms are such a principle; that out of the
inherent forces and tendencies wrapped up in them,
and constituting their nature and substance, all the
forms and species of living beings spring forth as
spontaneous and necessary productions. Spontaneity, necessary self-activity, and self-existence it
must ascribe to these atoms if they are ultimate, as
they are claimed to be, in the creation, and all
things were made by them, and without them was not
anything made that was made, and they are to have
the place in the atheistic cosmogony which the
Eternal Word has in the Christian.
But intelligent and self-conscious design in acting




TRINITARIAN DOCTARINE.          179
it denies to them. In other words, it assigns to the
creation these atoms as its moving or producing
cause, but denies to it any such thing as a final
cause altogether.
But the facts of the creation imply, not a producing cause merely, but a final cause also. To account for the universe as it is, not a cause only but
an intelligent and designing cause, is required; that
is, a cause not only acting and producing, but acting and producing with intelligent and wise design.
Moreover, to account for the universe as it is, not
intelligence only, but benevolence also is required
in the cause that produced it, and the effect of
whose productive energy it is.
For it is just as evident that the design of the
universe is a good design, that is, a design prompted
by infinite wisdom and goodness, as that there is
any design in it at all, and design, that is, adaptation of means to ends in it, is just as evident as that
it exists at all. So that the wisdom and benevolence are just as manifest as the power and the
intelligence. The atoms, therefore, being merely
blind force, do not account for the facts.  He does
not deny, he doubtless admits, the evidence of intelligence, or of something looking like, and suggesting intelligence, and of something looking like an
all-wise and benevolent end in the creation, and yet




I 80            PHIZOSOPHY OF
he insists that there is in reality no such thing, but
that the whole is sprung out of a force to which no
such attributes as wisdom or benevolence can be
ascribed.
It is a gross absurdity. If science, as antagonistic
to religion, has nothing better than this to offer, it
had better give up the contest, or else be, for the
present, a little more modest in its pretensions.
I do not think that intelligent Christians themselves are generally aware of the strength of the
argument on which their cause rests. I do not think
they are aware how plainly and forcibly the Scripture puts it. It is sometimes said, and too generally
admitted, that the Scriptures have no philosophy of
their own; that they deal mainly in general and
arbitrary assertions and implications in the truth of
which they require us to believe, asking no questions as to the rational or philosophic grounds upon
which they are based. But let us see what the
Apostle John has to say upon this very subject.
Let us see what his idea of God is. For plainly he
has an idea of him, and does not hesitate in very
plain and positive terms to declare what it is. And
let us see whether there be philosophy, or mere
vague implication and assertion in his position, or
not. It seems to me that there is not only philosophy but argument in it; argument addressed to the




TRINI T'ARZAIV DOCTRINE.        181
reason as well as the religion of man. He says that
God is love, and that he thtat dzwellet/h in love dwelletht
ill God, and God in Him! What is that but plainly
and unequivocally declaring that love is God? We
put it, then, to the Professor and his school: Do
you deny the reality in human experience of any
such thing as the love of which the Apostle here
speaks, and which he says is God? Do you deny
that love in the broad and fundamental sense in
which John uses the word is an essential element in
the life of the soul? If you believe in any such
thing as the life of the soul in distinction from that
of the body you must believe that that life has elements, and that love is one of them, and the most
fundamental one.
Now, then, it remains only to ask for a definition
of love. We have seen that it exists as an element
of human consciousness and experience. That it is
no hypothesis, but a fact, lying, not on the " other,"
but on this, side "the line of experimental evidence," and strictly within the legitimate domain of
experience and science. We ask, then, in regard to
it, Is it not a cause, a principle, a force in life, and
in character, and wherever it appears? And is it
not more than this? Is it not also an intelligent
and benevolent cause or force? You will admit that
love exists, and that where it exists it involves these




I82            PHI)LOSOPHY OF
elements: productive force, intelligence, and a design of good, in all/that it does; that there cannot be.
such a thing as a love that is without productive, selfactive force, u nintelligent or malevolent. An inert,
unintelligent, or malevolent love is simply a contradiction in terms. That w-hich knows nothing and
does nothing and designs nothing can have no will
of its own, and can therefore be neither benevolent or
malevolent-can wish or design neither: that which
is good nor that which: is evil. Love, if it means
anything, means good-will, acting freely with a wise
and intelligent design.: Now the apostle says, that
he that dwells in that. principle, that is, the man
who, in all that he does, is actuated by it, dwells in
God and God in him, and thus he makes and intends to make love to be but another term for God.
We have only to endow love thus understood with
infinite attributes and place it at the head of the
creation as its producing and final cause, to have the
Christian idea of God. According to the philosophy
of Christianity, therefore, as expounded by the
Apostle John, not only is God infinite and eternal
love, but infinite and eternal love is God. He that
denies the existence of the God of Christianity, denies that there is any such thing as this love, and
claims that he can account for all the life and all
the good there is in the universe, all the harmony,




TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE.            i83
and all the beauty, all the happiness that sentient
and intelligent creatures enjoy, without supposing
love to have anything at all to do with the work of
creation.
He claims that a producing cause, without any
love, or intelligence, or life in it is sufficient to account for all the life, all the love, all the well-being,
and all the happiness there is in the universe. This
is the sublime conclusion to which science, divorced
from religion, has at last come. This we are told is
the last and greatest of its achievements thus far.
What may we not expect that it will do in the
future! To sum up in one word, the Christian philosophy makes love to be the origin of the creation,
and says that all things were made by it, and that without it was not anything made that was made. The
infidel philosophy enthrones matter, and makes all
the life, and all the love, and all the mind there is
in the universe the product of that. The one says
love, the other says matter, is God.