Trinity in unity; and there is a likeness in this mystery of Three in One, or that other mystery of three-past, present, future, which are but one "Now," to the Supreme. In those shapings of our thoughts, formulated in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, which are for ever striving after higher and purer ideality, we are guarded against imputing the feebleness of man to God.

Revelation of the Godhead.

I. If we say that the universe is the autobiography of an infinite Spirit, then nature is a revelation of the Supernatural, whom we adore as the eternal, life-giving Principle (Ps. xix. I, Rom. i. 20): "a power to which no limit in time or space is conceivable, of which all phenomena, as presented in consciousness, are manifestations, but which we can only know through these manifestations." Here is a formula legitimately obtained by the employment of scientific methods, as the last result of a subjective analysis on the one hand, and of an objective analysis on the other hand.1

Unity of science being the reflection of the unity of the Reason and Intelligence pervading nature, our own reason and intelligence being part of nature, are also a miniature autobiography of the Infinite Spirit within our finite spirit. Mind, the thinker and investigator, is a seer concerning the presence of the living God in the world. Thus, the revelation of the Almighty to man is twofold: external, in the phenomena of nature; internal, by the consciousness which takes knowledge of those phenomena or manifestations.

2. These phenomena divide themselves into good and evil. There is a soul of goodness in things evil, and a heart of truth in things false; a taint of evil within the good, and a grain of falsity in our apprehension of every apparent truth. Our consciousness and actual experience show that this good and this evil germinate out of something apart from ourselves. No man's luck, so to speak, is pulled by only one string, nor do events happen simply because they are bad or good, "else all eggs would be addled or none at all." 1"Cosmic Philosophy," vol. ii., p. 415. James Fiske.

Consciousness of Good and Evil.

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Life, and all things with which we are acquainted, have their congruities and incongruities. The definite view thus arrived at, is a result not based on one, but on all concrete experience, is an induction from universal consciousness, and ranks in certainty with the postulates of exact science.

3. This verity, growing out of contrariety, is the common foundation of those religious ideas concerning God, Good, Evil, Creation, which are almost, if not quite, universal. Ideas different, yet allied; neither accidental nor factitious; not superficial but deep-seated; not evolved, nor slowly accumulated and organised; but, however degraded or distorted or magnified, striking deep roots into our nature. They affect men's interpretations of the simplest mechanical accidents, the most complicated events in the histories of nations, the diverse habits of thought, the different orders of minds, the good or ill tone of feeling, and the daily conduct of life. To suppose that they are groundless, so shakes the foundations of human intelligence, that nothing can be relied on. That doctrines of good and evil are priestly inventions; that in every society, past and present, savage and refined, certain members of the community combined to delude the rest in one and the same way, is not tenable, nor does an artificial origin account for the natural facts. These natural facts are indeed the ground of intelligent consciousness as to good and evil; the foundation of the moral sentiment which responds to them, not the creations of that sentiment, and that sentiment is as normal as is any other faculty. Hence, religion resting upon our consciousness of good and evil, that consciousness being based on experience, has the authority of Divine revelation.

4. View this with more accuracy :—

Religion, everywhere present, and, with science, organising facts into the mass of human experience, are the weft and the warp of history. Both have their near and visible side, the Natural; the remote and eternal, the Supernatural. Each holds a truth, the needful complement of the other; and when our mind is capable of realising the utmost conceptions of both, discoveries will be on a grander scale. We find, C

"as the history of every age witnesses, there is an undeniable religious need that clings to human nature, a need of recognising a something above nature, and of fellowship with the same, which only asserts itself the more forcibly the longer it is repressed. The predominance of that worldly bent of mind which will acknowledge nothing above nature, does but call forth in the end a stronger reaction of the longing after the supernatural; the prevalence of an all-denying unbelief invariably excites a more intense desire to be able to believe." If this were discoverable only in an individual, or belonged only to one age or one race of men, it might be ascribed to imagination, or be the result of a peculiar mental tendency, but it is found in all alike. There is something in mankind that is not wholly satisfied with the objects of the senses, but recognises, or believes that it recognises, another world of spiritual beings with whom, for good or evil, he is related. This consciousness has been a source of wealth to all language and literature. "It would seem that the progress, indisputably invariable, cannot be explained by the hypothesis of a received tradition handed down from earlier races or imaginary superior beings, but is to be attributed to God's spirit working in man."2 We mean that when the vividness and intensity of the intellectual emotions surpassed the ordinary and extraordinary limits, they partook, or were enabled to partake, more and more of that supernatural on which the original consciousness is itself based. Hence, our consciousness of the supernatural, or revelation of it in the soul, seems a fundamental verity, and the origin must be sought higher in the stream of time than the goings forth of the rivulets of mythology, sought in man's essential nature, even in the original impulse to godlike productions.

5. Now enter that branch of operation called miraculous. It is not essentially more marvellous than the growth of tree from seed, but we do well to consider an objection. "Miracles, or the intervention of the Deity in human affairs, are, to the scientific thinker, à priori so improbable, that no amount of testimony suffices to make him entertain the 1 "Neander's Church History," vol. i. p. 15. "God in History," vol. iii., p. 306. Bunsen.

Higher Modes of Divine Action.

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hypothesis for an instant." The assertion must be met with thorough denial: most scientific thinkers, and of the highest mental power, accept both the possibility and the actuality of miracles. Consider the meaning of such over-confident assertion. It is that a miracle seems an event without a natural cause; we say "the cause is Divine, or may even be a hidden natural cause." A miracle is essentially incomprehensible, and so far as we can understand, an impossibility. We reply: It is the height of presumption to restrict Divine action to our own understood line of things, and then call our restriction "natural law." The multiform revelations of an Omnipresent Power are not identifiable with nature, nor limited to it; for scientific enquiry, working independently of theology, has led to the conclusion that the dynamic phenomena of nature are a manifestation of an Omnipresent Power transcending nature; therefore, every real advance in knowledge is certain to make us acquainted with other and higher modes of Divine action. Can a man think out the creation of matter, or the eternity of matter, or the annihilation of matter, or explain the modus operandi of spirit on matter, or of matter on spirit, or of the persistence of energythat is, of energy without beginning or end? Even if he can, he is unable to subject the action of Absolute Being to his own analysis.

If we know anything at all, it is that the vast synthesis of energies without us and within us are only known as they affect our consciousness. Who dreams that these are the only powers? The series of our conceptions are but the register of our experience, and generate beliefs, from which the component conceptions cannot be torn apart, consequently the universal belief in miracles is fundamental. Not only

so, it is proof of an internal process or correspondence of our circumscribed being with the infinite reality; and this finite thinking, or conception, is specially that faculty which takes the impress of Divinity, and is the ground of all deep faith and solemn adoration.

Our process of study,-1, The Divine autobiography, or image of Intelligence; 2, The existence of good and evil a real existence; 3, The world-wide consciousness of these as

the ground of our moral sense; 4, Religion as the universal conviction and witness; 5, Miracles as possible and actual; leads through various passages to inner chambers of investigationi. Is the universe self-existent, without beginning, eternal? ii. Is it self-made? iii. Was it created?

The first is atheistic, and offers no solution of the mystery. It is wholly incapable of conception. To assert self-existence is the denial of causation, and when we deny causation we also deny commencement. We must add to the absolute impossibility of conceiving this the fact that we have to endow matter with all the powers of mind, and give to that which is dead all the properties of life; making matter, to all intents and purposes, God. Doing this we fall into the old heathen homage of nature, and worship Power-the phenomenal God. "To worship Power only," Dr Arnold said, "is devil worship." Another has said, "What can be more arrogant and unbecoming than for a man to think that he has a mind and understanding in him, but yet in the universe besides is no such thing; or that those things which, with the utmost stretch of his reason he can scarce comprehend, should be moved and managed without any reason at all."1

The second is pantheistic, and cannot by any symbolism pass into real conception. The nearest approach is to conceive potential existence passing into actual existence, or existence long remaining in one form, then suddenly, and of its own accord, passing into another form; but that involves the idea of a change without a cause, which is impossible. Moreover, whence the potential existence? This requires accounting for, just as the actual existence, so the same difficulties meet us; and there is no escape except this,-Nothing developed into something, or that the world of phenomena is practically the Deity, and is finite, which is absurd.

The third hypothesis, theism, which involves creation by Divine agency, is adopted by the most, the best, and the greatest of mankind. "There is, I believe, no system of philosophy whatever in which that notion of a higher power than our own, which we mean by God, is wholly absent. The name may not be there, and even the formal idea of a God

1 "Cicero De Leg.," Lib. ii.