weakness, in misery; when you are profoundly conscious of your infirmities how shall you get refreshment from the presence of God? By an effluence, like that of radiance from flame, by the Spirit that comes forth from the Father and the Son-an effluence going into the soul, just as my thought pierces your brain, just as the feeling of human tenderness pierces your heart, subdues you, encircles you, melts you. So His radiant Spirit-effluence subdues, and pierces and melts. And that is the Holy Ghost.

75. Now, what have we arrived at? Let me beg you to observe the stages through which we have passed. I have first read to you a description of the doctrine of the Trinity, which was true to past generations, but which was unpractical to you, because our forms of thought and our ways of thinking about God have somewhat changed; but I have expressed to you substantially the same truth in the language of the nineteenth century, I have put it before you in the sort of shape in which your minds receive subjects every day through magazines, papers, leading articles, or books. I have, in other words, re-stated the doctrine of the Trinity, and brought it home to you in a form which can be tested and tried by the principle of the love of truth. If you use the doctrine as I have re-stated it, you will find it highly consolatory and helpful

to you.

Are there not times when you cannot bear to think of God except as the Great formless Unseen? are there not other times when you long to draw near to Him, feeling that He is a man with a human heart, and that He is drawing you with cords of love? are there not other times when your mind

revolts even at such a representation of God as that, and you say, I will not have a man for my God, but I will be alone with the Spirit?" So there comes to you through this doctrine "grace for grace," and God is all in all." In the last spiritual analysis even the Son retires, and is subject to the Father, and God becomes all in all. Sometimes a creative manifestation, THE FATHER; Sometimes an incarnate manifestation, THE SON; sometimes an inspirational manifestation, THE HOLY GHOST.

But if this exposition lays me open to the charge of Sabellianism; that is, the heresy of maintaining but one Person under three separate Manifestations, I have no objection to avoid that charge by identifying Manifestation with Personality, and admitting with Mr. Beecher, "that although the class of beings with which we are familiar exist in unity; unity and diversity, so far as faculty is concerned, but unity without diverse personality; yet we are not to suppose that this exhausts all possible modes of being in the infinite complexity of the Divine Being, may easily be imagined to be not merely an agglomeration of faculties in one being, but a range higher than this. So that beings shall be agglomerated in a Being, and that there shall be Personality grouped into Unity, just as in our own life complexity of faculties are grouped into unity."*

.

76. But the Church of the Future is not likely to quibble over phrases, or even such subtle distinctions as Mr. Beecher here draws, with a view of evading the heresy of Sabellianism. By-and-by we shall not be in such a mortal fright of heresy,

*The Trinity, First Series.

because we shall gain a clearer insight into the limits of the human mind, and the imperfection of all human language. We shall perceive that the most correct theology can be no more than an approximation to truth, and consequently the most definite language about God only an imperfect and partial attempt to express that which cannot be intellectually apprehended in its height and depth, and length and breadth; and must therefore for ever remain unuttered and unutterable, a consciousness, a life, a spirit. And this will come to us as time rolls on with a growing sense of peace and trust. It is just the attempt to define "Person" and "Substance" in relation to the Infinite God which has brought such confusion upon the Church; such terms supply a very poor and meagre expression for the great thought which is in our souls; indeed, they are hardly worth fighting about; we can conjure with them to any extent to evade this heresy and that, but it is poor work after all, merely a concession to dogmatic imbecility.

77. My dear friends, I have only time now to allude to one other article-he Article on Original Sin. I shall recapitulate the substance of what I have said to-day, and dwell further on the doctrinal basis of the Church of the Future in my next discourse.

As with the Trinity so with Original Sin, the words of the Article have an anti-pathetic ring about them. It will be hardly necessary to read more than the opening sentence of the Article to show this:

'Original sin standeth not in the following of Adam (as the Pelagians do vainly talk);" I dare say, a good many

persons here never heard of the Pelagians before; but of course, if they had to go through a preparatory theological training they would naturally become acquainted with the Pelaagians, the Nestorians, the Gnostic sects, and others who held opinions contrary to those professed by the Church of the period. Then the Article proceeds :-"but it is the fault and corruption of the nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam ;"-there is the doctrine of Original Sin.

In these days, if we were to draw up Articles in accordance with present thoughts and feelings, we should have avoided all dogmatic assertions about Adam, because we should feel we were on dangerous ground; because even many sound theologians do not hold now to the letter of that story of the Apple in the garden of Eden; in short, a variety of different opinions are now held within the orthodox Church about the early chapters of Genesis. Then, we should not have alluded to the Pelagians at all, because few people nowadays know or care anything about them. In short, they are left to the tender mercies of theologians, which are oftentimes cruel. And then the Article goes on to explain how utterly corrupt and degraded we all are; not so much because we have done anything wrong, but because Adam did what was wrong.

78. Now I want to show you that there is a great deal of truth in all this, and yet, somehow, when it is so stated, it does not appear true to us-it does not bring home to us the consciousness of sin at all. And the matter being put so before men, they go about with a light heart, merely believing that the Article is overstated; they say, we are not so bad as that;

there may be a little taint of nature somewhere, so that a man may be said to be born with bad dispositions, but there is a good deal of natural righteousness about us after all, and Job knew this perfectly well, for when they told him he was a bad man and being punished for his sins, he said practically, "I am not a bad man, I am a very good man, and I do not deserve this; although I may have my weaknesses I do not deserve all this trouble; it is useless for you to tell me that God is afflicting me because I am a wicked man; it is not so." If you do not like my paraphrase, hear Job on his own righteousness (Job xxiii. 11): “My foot hath held His steps, His way have I kept, and not declined, neither have I gone back from the commandment of His lips ;" and to his accusers he replies: "God forbid that I should justify you; till I die I will not remove my integrity from me; my righteousness I hold fast, I will not let it go" (Job xxii. 5). There is something of that kind in the feelings of people whenever the charge of unlimited original corruption is brought against them; they have a consciousness, for instance, that God has blessed them with an equable temper, and inclined their hearts to good, and these things are in them natural qualities-birth qualities—an original righteousness-and much of their actual virtue has been only a spontaneous and natural pleasurable development of something which God has made in them originally good; and in many respects they are about as originally righteous as they are originally sinful. Now, I think it is simply because the Article takes no account of man's original righteousness that we are unfortunately impressed with its teaching on Original Sin. Yet, if we state the same doctrine in a slightly altered form, our reasonable objections will vanish.