this teaching into a higher one, viz. that the longing of tlie soul for God, the search for God in Christ, is al- ways rewarded, and that the " pure in heart" see God ■with the spiritual eyes of faith. Luther's doctrine that God may be taught, named, and apprehended in Christ, and in Christ alone, is quite in harmony with the early theology of the Church (e. g. Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, ii). Not that a mere intellectual faith in Christ brings this knowledge of God. With the con- version of the soul begins its new, spiritual capacitv to receive and apprehend God ; and as the soul is emptied of self and purged from sin by the Holy Spirit, it grows in knowledge of God, in light and love, until the "life of God" becomes the ''life of the soul." Dr. Nevin (^Replij to Lorner, 1SG9) has the following strik- ing passage as to the specifically Christian conception of God: "There is a sense in which the absolute being of God, as related immediately and directlj' to our cre- ated, being, must be considered the necessary' groimd of our knowinrj him and coming into union with liim in the way of religion. The whole possibility of religion for us starts in the God-consciousness, or direct sense of Deity, which is as much a part of our original na- ture as the sense we have of the world around us or of our own existence. It is not put into us by any out- ward evidence or argument. It authenticates and ne- cessitates itself as a fundamental fact in our life ; and in doing this it certifies, to the same extent, the truth of the object on which it is exercised. Or, rather, we must say, the truth of the ol)ject on which it is exer- cised, wliich is the Divine Being, or the existence of the Absolute, certifies itself, makes itself sure in and through the consciousness into which it enters. In this sense, the idea of God comes before Christianitj', as it comes before religion in every other form. But who will say that this general idea of God can be for us, therefore, the actual root of Christianity, so that any among us, starting with that alone, could ever by means of it come to a full construction of what God is for true Christian faith ? It lies at the ground of pan- theism, dualism, polytheism, deism, and all fiilse re- ligions, no less than at the ground of Christianity. For the distinctive knowledge of Christianity, then, we need some other specific principle or root, which, however it may be comprehended in the general prin- ciple of all religion, must be regarded at the same time nevertlieless as the ground and beginning, exclu- sively and entirely, of religion under this its highest and only absolutely complete form. Where, now, is that principle to be found ? Where does the whole world of Christianity, the new creation of the Gospel (life, power, doctrine, and all), take its rise and stnrt ? Where do we come to the source of its perennial reve- lation, the ground of its indestructible life ? Where, save in the presence of the Word Incarnate, the glori- ous Person of him who is the Root and the Offspring of David, the bright and morning Star — the faithful and true Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God!"
But Religion has had her errors and excesses as well as Science. As the latter seeks in its pride, by purely intellectual effort, to apprehend the absolute, so the former has at certain periods allowed mysticism to take the place of the simple revealed truth as to the life of God in the soul, and, in the spirit of tiie Oriental theos- ophy, has called the " redeemed soul but a drop in the ocean of God" (see jNIysticism). The orthodox Chris- tian doctrine keeps the golden mean between tliese ex- tremes. It asserts, and has asserted from the begin- ning, that a real and objective knowledge of God comes only from God's revelation, and that only kutci to i<piKTCi>, pro virili (Arist. De Mutid.'), acconling to the best capacity of man. It teaches not only that God is "incomprehensible," but also that every step taken in the true knowledge of God bj' the soul makes his '" in- comprehensibility" more obvious. It does not pretend that the scriptural doctrine of one God in three persons
is perfectly within the scope of the human intellect to compreliend as well as to apprehend ; but all Church historj' shows that a genuine and even scientific knowl- edge of God has been better maintained uith the doc- trine of the Trinity than without it. When the Arians attacked the Niccne doctrine of the Trinity on the ground that it transcended human reason, the orthodox replied that it was easier to know God bj^ receiving the doctrine of the Trinity than by rejecting it. Naked monotheism, whether in Judaism, Islamism, or else- where, has alwaj's ended in bald pantheism (q. v.), while on the other hand the Christian doctrine of the Trinitj^, though stigmatized bj' infidel and rationalistic opponents as Tritheism, has, from the beginning, pre- served in the Church the idea of God as the eternal, spiritual, and personal Being, and has kept up, also, a pure and spiritual worship of the Great Supreme. See Ritter, Ueber die Erkenntniss Goites in der Welt, 1836 ; Nitzsch, St/St. d. Chnstlichen Lthre, § 7, GO-80 ; Nitzsch, in Herzog's Real-Encyklop. s. v. Gott.