And all this has its counterpart in the Christian experience of our own time, for Christianity is, for the Church and for the individual, the reve- lation of the Fatherhood of God through and in that Christ who presents Himself afresh to every age as the manifestation of the love of CJod, and whose personal influence, in some mysterious manner, survives every shock of revolution as well as the slow movement of the ages.
(iii.) The philosophical aspect. —Thh is not the place to consider the great question as to how far the doctrine of the Trinity can commend itself to. or be justified by. the philosophical reason of mankind. The problem is as old as Christian theology, and is latent in all discussions which touch the life of the ChrLstian creed. If it has not been greatly canvassed, at least directly, in recent times, it is because all the resources of Christian thought have been devoted to a work which has Ijeen in truth more pressing, the en- deavour to grasp more firmly and to realize more perfectly the facts to which the Scriptures testifj-. the elements of the great revelation upon whii-h the doctrine depends. When the time for full dis- cussion comes, there is at least a probability that
the general mind will be prepared. The old ob- jection that the doctrine L> api>arently contra- dictorj-, that it cannot be made logically con- sistent, is certainly losing its plausibility. All the lines of thought wLich have guided so many in the direction of Agnosticism have c-onverged upon this : that there must be an element of mystery in the nature of God. The old Deistic conception of a solitary Sovereign in the skies, standing above and apart trom creation, is now impossible for the in- structed. The doctrine of the Trinity stands in truth midway between Agnosticism and DeL>m. With the former it recognizes the impossibility of presenting to our minds the inmost nature of the Supreme One, with the latter it ULsists upon the absolute necessity of tliinking of the Deity in terms of piersonality. But it keeps closer than either to the facts of the religious consciousness and the needs of humanity, be«iuse it builds upon actual experience, the experience which stands central in the history of the race, and it interprets this experience by means of the only perfect Per- sonality kno\vn to man.
In addition to this general consideration, there are tendencies in recent thought which seem to promise new light on the old doctrine. Philosophy and psychology have both been dealing with the question of personality, and have been revealing the existence of problems of extraordinary com- plexity and suggestiveness in connexion with it. For both, human personality appears, from one point of view, as a self-sufficing unity, and, from another, as an Uluminated portion of a vast world of spiritual existence. It is both inclusive and ex- clusive, both universal and limited, according to the way in which it is regarded, and no principle has yet come to light by means of which these oppositions can be shown to be overcome.
The more usual way of approaching the applica- tion of the principle of personality to the doctrine of the Trinity is to follow the line indicated by Lotze tMkrorosmM, bk. ix. ch. iv.) and regarti personality as it exists in man as incomplete, f>er- fect personality belonging to God only. If this conception be justifiable, we may well exp>ect to be able to apply an ancient method and find that distinctions which we know to exist in man's per- sonality may be correctly regarded as correspond- ing to distinctions of a much pirofounder degree in the Divine Being. The best modern exposition of this view is Illingworth's Personality, Human and Divine, a work which may justly be regarded as representing for our time the classic point of view, that of St. Augustine in his de Trinitate.
The difficulty which is inherent in this method was, however, clearly seen by Augustine himseli, and it cannot be said that modem philosc^ers have been aide to surmount it success- folly. Begarding the distinctions in the Godhead as corre- sponding to the three, ' n:emor\-, understanding, love.' which we tcDOw of in ourselves, he yet perceives that • Tria ista . . . mea sunt, dod box ; nee sibi sed ouhi agunt quod agnnt, imo ego per ilia,' and again, * Ego per omnia ilia tria memini, ego intell^, ego diligo, qui nee memoria stun, nee intelligentia, nee dilecdo, sed hcc babeo. Ista erp> dici poesunt ah ana persona quae habet hsec tria, non ipsa est hsc tria ' {de TWni- taU. bk. IT. di. xiii. § -l^X Nor can it be said that Augustine or any of his soccessors in this great adventure, not even Hegel in his Philoiophy of Religion, has been able to show how what in us is only the attribute. facult>', or thought of a pertona, can become a Persona in the Deity.
There is, however, another line of thought in recent philosophy, which seems to the writer to promise much better results for the Christian thinker. Out of the Hegelian school have arisen some who, feeling the force of certain considera- tions relied on by Agnostic reasoners, hold that the nature of the fltimate Reality is beyond us, our highest categories and our most concrete ex- periences being inadequate alike to express or to present it. In addition to this, there has been slowly gaining recognition the importance of the