articles of the Christian faith, as appears sufficiently evident from the fact that it is expressly held forth in no one particular passage of the New Testament," is the language of Neander. "The unfolding of the mystery is committed to the scientific activity of the Church," is the language of Olshausen. But that the doctrine of Christ's essential divinity is set forth in the New Testament, yea, that it breaks from its pages in a blaze of glory, is the almost unanimous agreement of Christian believers. In the Incarnation, the Life, and the Mediation of Christ there is the full expression of the Godhead, the essential Divinity coming down into visible personality for the salvation of man. Never are we invited to come to the Father by climbing round the personality of the Son. That there are eternal deeps of the Divine Nature that we may never fathom, is only saying that we are weak and finite. That all which we can know or understand of God we have in Christ, the incarnate and revealing Word, is his own declaration again and again. "No man hath seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son that dwelleth in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." "All that the Father hath is mine." "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." That the essential Divinity in Christ is not a person separated from the Father, another person, but consubstantial with the Father, and revealing the whole Godhead in one glorious person, "all the fulness of the Godhead bodily," is plain even in the letter; but in the only system of interpretation self-consistent throughout, we mean the New Church law of analogies, - this central truth of the New Testament appears like the sun shining in his strength.

And mark with what plainness the Holy Spirit is described as the gift of Christ, the procession of life and power coming from him alone: "He shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire." "I will send you another Comforter, even the Spirit of truth." "He breathed on them, saying, "Receive ye the Holy Spirit." The exigencies of theology

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must be hard-pressing indeed, that can turn this sweet and blessed doctrine aside, of a cleansing and comforting power pulsing into the soul from a Divine Saviour, brought near to the disciple by personal communion and lowly faith, for that strange riddle of the understanding, a third person in the Trinity coming and going between God and man!

III. The first historical development of Christianity was in strict accordance with this conception of one God in one person, and that person brought near to man in the Divine Saviour. The Pentecostal scene fulfilled the promise of the Comforter. It was not produced by preaching Tripersonality and a vicarious atonement. It was produced by preaching Christ and the resurrection with repentance and remission of sins; and as for the Holy Spirit which came as a baptism of fire, it was said of the glorified Saviour, "He hath shed forth this which ye now see and hear." So the first conversions were made and the first churches were built up. When Paul looked up through the opened heavens, and sought the source of that power which smote him to the earth and overwhelmed him with self-convictions, the answer was, "I am Jesus of Nazareth whom thou persecutest." They called on the name of the Lord Jesus, and the Holy Spirit came. It was the Divine Sphere of Light and Love and Power brought down to the earth in the Lord Jesus Christ, and turned full upon man. The "scientific activity" of the Church had not yet begun. They simply looked up to the Saviour, the God become man, and "the Holy Ghost fell on them," (a person indeed?) and its power rolled in upon them in surges of energy, peace, and love. And when John was "in the Spirit," and saw the glorious Theophany, did he see three persons each claiming divine honors, or did he see 66 one like unto the Son of Man," saying, "I am the First and the Last, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty"?

No student of history, we think, will affirm that there is the least hint of tripersonality in the Godhead in the writings

extant of the Apostolic Fathers. Later down, from A. D. 175 to 200, we have explicit statements from Justin Martyr, Irenæus, and Tertullian of the essentials of the Christian faith, and what had "always been believed" in the Church. In these the essential Divinity of Christ is fully and affectionately acknowledged, the New Testament form, both of language and doctrine, is preserved; but there is no lisp of tripersonality or a substitutive atonement. These old creeds are refreshing, for they have the breath of the morning hour. Irenæus gives the following as the creed of those "who diligently keep the ancient tradition": "Believ ing in one God, maker of Heaven and earth, and of all things in them by Christ Jesus the Son of God, who through his most eminent love towards his creature underwent that generation which was of a virgin, He by himself uniting man to God, and having suffered under Pontius Pilate and being rose again and taken up in splendor will come again in glory, a Saviour of them that are saved and a judge of them that are judged, sending into eternal fire the perverters of truth, and the despisers of his Father, and of his own coming again." Tertullian gives the following as "the rule that had been observed and adhered to from the very beginning of the Gospel," that it was "prior to all heretics that had been in the Christian Church." He believed "in one God, and that his Word was the Son of the one God; who proceeded from him; by whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made; that he was sent by or from the Father into the virgin, and from her was born Man and God, the Son of Man and the Son of God, and named Jesus Christ; that he suffered, that he died, that he was buried according to the Scriptures, and raised up by the Father, and, taken up into heaven, sits at the right hand of the Father, and will come to judge the quick and the dead; who from thence sent, according to his promise from the Father, the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete, the Sanctifier of their faith who believe in the Father and Son and Holy Ghost."

That in this conception of Father and Son they did not separate the Divine Nature into persons, appears from the following explanation of Tertullian: "Before all things, God was alone; but not absolutely alone, for he had with him his own reason, since God is a rational being. This reason the Greeks call Logos, which word we now render Sermo. AND THAT YOU MAY MORE EASILY UNDERSTAND THIS FROM YOURSELF, CONSIDER THAT YOU WHO ARE MADE IN THE IMAGE OF GOD HAVE REASON WITHIN YOURSELF.'

IV. But "the scientific activity of the Church" was at hand. Precisely in the degree that it declined in godliness, and the primal graces disappeared, was the Divine Personality cloven and separated in its authorized formulas. The Arian controversy raged for more than half a century, in which the worst passions were unloosed on both sides. What a surface do these times present, from which to reflect the divine doctrines, this surging sea of human hatred and strife! The Athanasians ejected from the primitive creed the doctrine of the Divine Unity, and two persons be

* But Tertullian "developed" the doctrine of the Logos in opposition to the Monarchians, and grazed the borders of Tritheism, taking ground from which his successors developed it still farther. He is the transition point between Christian Monotheism and Tripersonalism, and might be claimed either way. Among other analogies, he compares the Logos proceeding out of the Divine Essence, and becoming incarnate in Christ, to a stalk from its root, both one in substance but numerically distinct, and the Holy Spirit to the fruit upon the stalk, continuously produced through the Son. Yet again he says, that each of the three may be called God, though he does not seem to conceive of each as having "an independent self-consciousness." Neander represents, with admirable truthfulness, that the unlearned among the laity, — or, as Tertullian says, "all simple persons, not to say ignorant and illiterate, who form always the majority of believers," — in whose Christian consciousness the doctrine of Christ's divinity was the most intensely wrought, revolted against the logomachists, and would only see the whole Godhead in Christ. They would not receive at first the "developed" theology of the metaphysicians, "pervaded by reflection and dialectic distinctions." Whether these "simple persons," with an intense Christian consciousness of a present Saviour, or the learned logomachists and wranglers, were the more likely to be right, is a question which admits of a difference of opinion. See Neander's Antignostikus, Part III. Sec. 2.

gan to appear. The Arians ejected the doctrine of the Saviour's essential Divinity, and God receded into the dim and inaccessible heavens. Which party was to prevail was long doubtful. The Church split into two nearly equal factions, and it seemed a drawn battle, except as one or the other allied itself with the civil power. At length the Tripersonalists prevailed. How they prevailed, and by what process the ancient Anti-Trinitarianism "died out," involve a very interesting passage of history, and one which is calculated to make a man exceedingly modest in urging an argument from the "quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus."

In the year 379, Theodosius ascended the throne of the eastern division of the Roman empire. He was surnamed "the Great," and he well deserves the further addition of the Bloody and Cruel. Not that he was any worse than Roman emperors in general. He was not so bad, for he never murdered his own wife, brothers, or children, as other good Christian emperors were in the habit of doing. He had great energy of character, was thoroughly orthodox, and was amply accomplished in all the bull-dog virtues. An insurrection from a trivial cause broke out, and was soon quelled, at Thessalonica. The Emperor ordered from his officers seven thousand human heads to expiate the crime. The populace were invited into the circus; men, women, and children assembled expecting to witness the games. They were then shut in, and the butchery went on for three hours, till the seven thousand heads had been obtained. This was the man who undertook to settle disputes in theology.

The Arians were in possession of the Eastern churches. The Patriarch at Constantinople, the monks, the clergy, and the people, were generally of that faith. Theodosius did not trouble himself to examine it. He selected two prelates, Damasus, Bishop of Rome, and Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, and declared them the "treasures of true doctrine." Those whose faith conformed to theirs were orthodox, all