which, as the spectator stands at one side, he sees only the figure of Our Saviour on the Cross, as he stands on the other side he sees only the Heavenly Dove, as he stands in the front he sees only the Ancient of Days, the Eternal Father. So it is with the representations of this truth in the Bible, and, we may add, in the experiences of religious life.

Sometimes, as in the Old Testament, especially in the Psalms, we are alone with God, we trust in Him, we are His and He is ours. The feeling that He is our Father, and that we are His children, is all-sufficing. We need not be afraid so to think of Him. Whatever other disclosures He has made of Himself are but the filling up of this vast outline. Whatever other belief we have or have not, we cling to this. By this faith lived many in Jewish times, who obtained a good report, even when they had not received the promise. By this faith have lived many a devout sage and hero of the ancient world, whom He assuredly will not reject. So long as we have a hope that this Supreme Existence watches over the human race-so long as this great Ideal remains before us, the material world has not absorbed our whole being, has not obscured the whole horizon.

Sometimes, again, as in the Gospels or in particular moments of life, we see no revelation of God except in the world of history. There are those to whom science is dumb, to whom nature is dark, but who find in the life of Jesus Christ all that they need. He is to them the all in all, the True, the Holy, the express image of the Highest. We need not fear to trust Him. The danger hitherto has been not that we can venerate Him too much, or that we can think of Him too much. The error of Christendom has far more usually been that it has not thought of him half enoughthat it has put aside the mind of Christ, and taken in place thereof the mind of Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, great in their way, but not the mind of Him of whom we read in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Or if we should combine with the thought of Him the thought of others foremost in

the religious history of mankind, we have His own command to do so, so far as they are the likenesses of Himself, or so far as they convey to us any sense of the unseen world, or any lofty conception of human character. With the early Christian writers, we may believe that the Word, the Wisdom of God which appeared in its perfection in Jesus of Nazareth, had appeared in a measure in the examples of virtue and wisdom which had been seen before His coming. On the same principle we may apply this to those who have appeared since. He has Himself told us that in His true followers He is with mankind to the end of the world. the holy life, in the courageous act, in the just law, is the Real Presence of Christ. Where these are, in proportion as they recall to us His divine excellence, there, far more than in any consecrated form or symbol, is the true worship due from a Christian to his Master.

In

Sometimes, again, as in the Epistles, or in our own solitary communing with ourselves, all outward manifestations of the Father and of the Son, of outward nature and of Christian communion, seem to be withdrawn, and the eye of our mind is fixed on the Spirit alone. Our light then seems to come not from without but from within, not from external evidence but from inward conviction. That itself is a divine revelation. For the Spirit is as truly a manifestation of God as is the Son or the Father. The teaching of our own heart and conscience is enough. If we follow the promptings of truth and purity, of justice and humility, sooner or later we shall come back to the same Original Source. The witness of the Spirit of all goodness is the same as the witness of the life of Jesus, the same as the witness of the works of God our Creator.

3. This distinction, which applies to particular wants of the life of each man, may be especially traced in the successive stages of the spiritual growth of individuals and of the human race itself. There is a beautiful poem of a gifted German poet of this century, in which he describes his wanderings in the Hartz Mountains, and as he rests in

the house of a mountain peasant, a little child, the daughter of the house, sits at his feet, and looks up in his troubled countenance, and asks, Dost thou believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost?' He makes answer in words which must be read in the, original to see their full force. He says: When I sate as a boy on my mother's knees, and learned from her to pray, I believed on God the Father, who reigns aloft so great and good, who created the beautiful earth and the beautiful men and women that are upon it, who to sun and moon and stars foretold their appointed course. And when I grew a little older and bigger, then I understood more and more, then I took in new truth with my reason and my understanding, and I believed on the Son-the well-beloved Son, who in his love revealed to us what love is, and who for his reward, as always happens, was crucified by the senseless world. And now that I am grown up, and that I have read many books and travelled in many lands, my heart swells, and with all my heart I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of God. It is this Spirit which works the greatest of miracles, and shall work greater miracles than we have yet seen. is this Spirit which breaks down all the strongholds of oppression and sets the bondsmen free. It is this Spirit which heals old death-wounds and throws into the old law new life. Through this Spirit it is that all men become a race of nobles, equal in the sight of God. Through this Spirit are dispersed the black clouds and dark cobwebs that bewilder our hearts and brains.'

A thousand knights in armour clad

Hath the Holy Ghost ordained,
All His work and will to do,

By His living force sustained.

Bright their swords, their banners bright;
Who would not be ranked a knight,

Foremost in that sacred host?

O, whate'er our race or creed,
May we be such knights indeed,
Soldiers of the Holy Ghost,

It

III. The name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost will never cease to be the chief expression of Christian belief, and it has been endeavoured to show what is the true meaning of them. The words probably from the earliest time fell short of this high signification. Even in the Bible they needed all the light which experience could throw upon them to suggest the full extent of the meaning of which they are capable. But it is believed that on the whole they contain or suggest thoughts of this kind, and that in this development of their meaning, more than in the scholastic systems built upon them or beside them, lies their true vitality.

Apparet domus intus, et atria longa patescunt.

The true interest of the collocation of these three words in the Baptismal formula instead of any others that might have found a place there, is not that the Christians of the second or third century attached to them their full depth of meaning, but that they are too deeply embedded in the Biblical records to have been effaced in those ages by any heterogeneous speculation, and that, when we come to ask their meaning, they yield a response which the course of time has. rather strengthened than enfeebled. However trite and commonplace appear to us the truths involved in them, they were far from obvious to those early centuries, which worked upon them for the most part in senses quite unlike the profound religious revelations which are becoming to us so familiar. And then there still remains the universal and the deeper truth within. In Christianity nothing is of real concern except that which makes us wiser and better; everything which does make us wiser and better is the very thing which Christianity intends. Therefore even in these three most sacred words there is yet, besides all the other meanings which we have found in them, the deepest and most sacred meaning of all-that which corresponds to them in the life of man. Many a one has repeated this Sacred Name, and yet never fulfilled in himself the truths which it conveys. Some have been unable to repeat it, and yet have grasped

the substance which alone gives to it spiritual value. What John Bunyan said on his death-bed concerning prayer is equally true of all religious forms: Let thy heart be without words rather than thy words without heart.' Wherever we are taught to know and understand the real nature of the world in which our lot is cast, there is a testimony, however humble, to the name of the Father; wherever we are taught to know and admire the highest and best of human excellence, there is a testimony to the name of the Son; wherever we learn the universal appreciation of such excellence, there is a testimony to the name of the Holy Ghost.