churches, because it has been the occasion of so much unnecessary dispute and difficulty. But since it has been in common use so long, it is difficult now, perhaps impossible, altogether to reject it. If it must be retained, I readily concede that the use of it ought to be so guarded, as not to lead Christians generally into erroneous views of God."* But the truth undoubtedly is, that it is impossible so to guard it. Its use is inevitable abuse. No matter with what abatements and qualifications it may be employed by discriminating divines, with the mass of men it will not stand as the mere representative of a mysterious threefold distinction in the Divine Being, but it will practically amount to the setting forth of three Gods, and those who oppose the tripersonal scheme will be accused of rejecting a Trinity in any sense whatever. The matter is merely salved over by saying that these three are one God. The saying amounts to nothing when we come to the essential and practical conception of the inner man. In the recesses of the mind three persons are three divine beings, that is to say, three Gods; and so we are persuaded it will be found by every one who deals honestly with his own convictions. We do not say that the truth of one's belief on this head is of ready or easy detection; but hundreds who have been led to embrace the doctrines of Swedenborg, and have attained to a clear perception of his teaching on this subject, have confessed that such was previously their own internal belief, though they would at the time have rejected the charge with indignation of holding to a Tritheistic creed. They now, however, distinctly perceive that such was the fact. Swedenborg remarks upon this point, "The reason why the tenets of the present church, which are founded upon the idea of three Gods, derived from the doctrine of a trinity of persons literally understood, appear erroneous, after the idea of one God, in whom is a Divine Trinity, has been received in its stead, is, because, till this truth is received, we cannot see what is erroneous. The case herein is like a person, who in the night time, by the light of some stars only, sees various objects, especially images, and believes them to be living men; or like one, who in the twilight before sunrise, as he lies in his bed, fancies he sees goblins in the air, and believes them to be angels; or like a person, who sees many things in the delusive light of phantasy, and believes them to be real; such things, it is well known, do not appear according to their true qualities, until the person comes to enjoy the light

*Professor Stuart, in his controversy with Dr. Channing, insists that it is doing injustice to Trinitarians to represent them as using the word person in its ordinary acceptation as applied to men. They employ it, he says, merely as an approximation towards expressing the fact of a threefold distinction in the Divine essence which they receive because they believe it to be revealed, but of the nature of which they profess to know nothing. We think the complaint is not without a ground in truth, particularly when the Unitarian construction is brought to bear upon the opinions of such men as Professor Stuart and other enlightened defenders of the orthodox doctrine. The maintenance of a real distinction of some kind cannot, we think, be justly charged as inconsistent with a real belief in the essential unity of the Godhead. Trinitarians can afford to give up the use of the word person when the simple point maintained is that of an unknown distinction. But will Professor Stuart and his compeers so readily surrender the use of this term when the controversy is with those who agree with them in the fact of a threefold distinction, but at the same time utterly repudiate the use of the term in question by which to express it? We confess to at least a slight curiosity to know upon what ground, precisely, a verdict would be pronounced against the soundness of Swedenborg's doctrine of the Trinity, by such lukewarm Tripersonalists as Professor Stuart.

of the day, or in other words, until his understanding is broad awake. The case is the same with the spiritual things of the church, which have been erroneously and falsely perceived, and even confirmed, when genuine truths present themselves in their own light, which is the light of heaven. Who is there that cannot understand, that all tenets founded on the idea of three Gods must be interiorly erroneous and false? I say interiorly, because the idea of God enters into everything belonging to the church, religion, and worship; and theological matters have their residence above all others in the human mind, and among these the idea of God is the principal or supreme; wherefore if this be false, all beneath it, in consequence of the principle from whence they flow, must likewise be false or falsified: for that which is supreme, being also the inmost, constitutes the very essence of all that is derived from it; and the essence, like a soul, forms them into a body, after its own image; and when in its descent it lights upon truths, it even infects them with its own blemish and error. The idea of three Gods in theology may be compared to a disorder seated in the heart or lungs, in which the patient fancies himself to be in health, because his physician, not knowing his disease, persuades him that he is so; but if the physician knows it, and still persuades the patient that he is in health, he deserves the charge of deep malignity.”—(Brief Expos. 42.)

But however variously conceived-with whatever crudities or confusion mixed up in the popular belief—there is still a threefold distinction—a Trinity— in the Godhead. What is its nature? How is God three while at the same time he is one? An attempt to give an intelligible answer to this question does not involve the assumption of being able to fathom the infinite depths of the divine existence. There will always be a mystery in the theme which will baffle the powers of every created intelligence. "Who by searching can find out God? Who can find out the Almighty to perfection?" Still an approximation may be made towards the truth on this head. Somewhat of a consistent and fair view of this grand tenet of the Christian's faith may be gained; and I would first state it under the illustrative form which Swedenborg so frequently employs-that of the obvious trinity in man, to be recognized in the distinction of soul, body, and operation or proceeding energy.* Here is clearly one being-one person-and yet a threefold distinction perfectly consistent with that oneness. Transfer this conception to the Deity, allowing at the same time for the difference between the finite and the infinite. Understand by the Father the primary ground of the divine being, or what Swedenborg terms the divine Esse, which is the divine Love-by the Son the divine Truth or Wisdom, which he terms the divine Existere—and by the Holy Spirit the proceeding act or energy flowing forth from the

*In the following passage Swedenborg draws the comparison from an angel. "That in the Lord there is a trine, the Divine itself which is called the Father, the Divine Human which is called the Son, and the Divine Proceeding which is called the Holy Spirit, may be manifest from the Divine Essence-that one Divine by itself is not given, but there is a trine; this trine consists of Esse, Existere, and Proceeding; for Esse must needs Exist, and when it Exists it must Proceed that it may produce, and this trine is one essence, and one in person, and is God. This may be illustrated by comparison; an angel of heaven is trine and thereby one; the esse of an angel is that which is called his soul, and his existere is that which is called his body, and the proceeding from both is that which is called the sphere of his life, without which an angel neither exists nor is. By this trine an angel is an image of God, and is called a son of God, and also an heir, yea, also a god; nevertheless, an angel is not life from himself, but is a recipient of life; God alone is life from himself.”—Athen. Creed, 17.

united Esse and Existere, or Love and Wisdom, just as the energy or activity of a man is an emanation from his conjoint soul and body.

I am well aware that this will have, at first blush, the air of something transcendental and mystical, yet I think that upon a little reflection it will redeem itself from the charge. Swedenborg informs us, from the illumination vouchsafed him in the spiritual world, that Love, Affection, Feeling, is the underlying ground of all existence-that Love and Life are almost convertible termsthat whether in regard to creatures or the Creator, Thought or Intellect, or, if you please, Wisdom or Truth, is a mere form of Affection, and though they coexist together, and cannot be viewed apart from each other, yet in the order of our ideas we may conceive of one as being fundamental to the other, just as we may conceive of the heat of the sun as being primary in respect to its light, though we cannot think of the sun without embracing both its heat and light in our conception. In fixing our meditations upon God we are evermore to conceive that the divine Love is the Esse of his being and the divine Truth or Wisdom the Existere thence derived--the one indicated by the Father, the other by the Son, while the Holy Spirit is the Proceeding Sphere from both combined-the whole however still constituting but one person; for it would be just as reasonable, that is to say, unreasonable, to predicate three persons of a man because of the threefold distinction of his attributes, as to predicate Tripersonality of Jehovah on the same grounds.*

I know of no more important principle ever advanced to the world than the one above-mentioned, to wit, that Thought in all beings is a resultant of Love or Feeling that a man could not possibly have a thought if there were not some latent love to prompt it. If this be true, all systems of mental philosophy or theology which make Intellect the primary principle of man's being, and Feeling, Emotion, or Passion, a certain form or quality of Intellect, must be radically erroneous. The direct reverse is the fact. And that such is in truth the general intuition of the human mind, when not obscured by theories of psychology, may readily be inferred from the universal acknowledgment, that a man is as his HEART is, and his heart is his love. All are ready to grant that a man's head may abound in errors, yet if his heart is right his state is, on the whole, good. His character is determined by the state of his heart, implying that his love is the very groundwork of his being, and the ultimate truth will undoubtedly prove to be, what Swedenborg affirms, that this holds of his physical as well as of his spiritual life.† The bearing of this principle on the point before us will appear in what follows.

*"The reason why the idea of three Gods has principally arisen from the Athanasian Creed, where a trinity of persons is taught, is, because the word person begets such an idea, which is further implanted in the mind by the following words in the same Creed: 'There is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost;' and afterwards: The Father is God and Lord, the Son is God and Lord, and the Holy Ghost is God and Lord;' but more especially by these: For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity to acknowledge every person by Himself to be God and Lord, so are we forbidden by the Catholic religion to say there be three Gods or three Lords;' the result of which words is this, that by the Christian verity we are bound to confess and acknowledge three Gods and three Lords, but by the Catholic religion we are not allowed to say, or to make mention of three Gods and Lords; consequently we may have an idea of three Gods and Lords, but are not to make confession thereof with our mouth. Nevertheless, that the doctrine of the trinity in the Athenasian Creed is agreeable to truth, if only instead of a trinity of persons be there substituted a trinity of person, which trinity is in God the Savior Jesus Christ, may be seen in the DOCTRINE OF THE NEW Jerusalem concerning the LoRD."-Brief Expos. 33.

"Every man's quality is known from his love; for love is the esse of the life of

In the economy of redemption Jehovah becomes incarnate- not the so-called second person of the Sacred Trinity, in contradistinction from the other two. Yet, in the nature of the case, when it comes to the matter of manifestation, it is the Divine Truth rather than the Divine Love, which assumes form and makes itself visible on the plane of humanity; because it is a general principle flowing from the constitution of being, that Love is manifested or becomes objective in the form of Truth; in other words, that Affection puts itself forth in the form of Intellect. Whatever be the form of Thought, Love is always latent in it, and constitutes its essential life, for Love is the esse of which Thought is the existere. Take a familiar illustration. A friend at a distance feels an affection for another friend, and wishes to manifest it. As however he cannot reach him, as to his interior consciousness, by the simple exercise of the feeling, he sits down and writes him a letter.* The letter is a manifestation of the heart's affection of the writer. He embodies his love in written language, and gives it expression, visibility, access. It thus becomes the word (logos) to his affection. The internal emotion is latently present as the life of the written thought, and only by means of the thought does it come into manifested form. In like manner Jehovah, in coming down to our level, and entering into the ultimates of humanity, comes in the form of the divine Truth, or the divine Logos, or Word, made flesh. In that form the divine Love or the Father is inwardly but not visibly present, just as the heat of the natural sun, which corresponds to Love, is present in its light, which corresponds to truth. Is it not clear that the sun is objectively manifested to us by its every one, the veriest life itself deriving thence its existence; such therefore as the love is which prevails with the man, such is the man; if it be self-love and love of the world, and consequently of revenge, hatred, cruelty, adultery, and the like, the man is & devil as to his spirit, or as to the interior man which lives after death, howsoever he appears in the external form. But if the prevailing love with man be the love of God and the love of his neighbor, and consequently the love of good and of truth, also of justice and honesty, he, howsoever he appears in the external form, is an angel as to his spirit, which lives after death. That man is altogether as his love, is a constant truth, evidenced by the angels in another life, who, when seen, appear as forms of love: the love itself not only shining forth, but also exhaling from them, so that you would say that they are throughout nothing but loves: the reason is, because all the interiors of an angel, as also of a man, are nothing but forms recipient of life, and because they are forms recipient of life, they are forms recipient of loves, for loves make the life of man. Since therefore the influent love and the recipient form are in agreement together, it follows that an angel or a man is of such a quality as his love is; and this not only in his organical principles, which are in the brain, but also in the whole body, for the body is nothing but an organ derived from its principles."-A. C. 6872.

Every thought, speech, and writing derives its essence and life from him who thinks, speaks, and writes, the whole man being with his quality in those things."Apoc. Rev. 200.

It is indeed to be admitted that a farther effort of mind is requisite to conceive the divine Truth as coming forth from its purely abstract form, and embodying itself in human nature. This is what Swedenborg denominates the Lord's passing "from first principles to last," and though we must confess to the extreme difficulty of grasping the process, yet the fundamental idea may perhaps be illustrated by what we have already said of the rationale of creation, and by other parallel facts. There is doubtless in man's creations a certain image of those of God. In every construction of human art, for instance, a mental conception really ultimates or embodies itself in a material form. A man invents and fabricates a machine. That machine was in his mind as an archetypal truth before it was formed by his hand, and it was there as a substance, though a spiritual substance, like every thought. As foreign as it may be from our ordinary conceptions, we know not how to resist the conviction, that the ideal prototype of a steamengine, for instance, is as real a substance as the engine itself, or the boat or car to which, when materialized, it is attached. When the machine is actually constructed, the original idea, or truth, is merely clothed with a material body. With man the process of thus clothing it is by the agency of his hands. But suppose him to be a spirit, 7

light-and yet the esse of the sun, which is its heat, is continually more or less present with its existere, which is the light. So our Lord says that "he is in the Father and the Father in him"-that "he that seeth the Son seeth the Father also"--and the apostle, that "the fullness of the godhead dwells in him bodily.” This then may afford us some measure of illustrative light in reference to the great mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh, and especially as to the mutual relation, in the Divine Being, of Love and Wisdom, on which the distinction of Father and Son is founded. We recognize this distinction as real, but not personal. The Father and the Son constitute no more two persons, than do the soul and body in man. As to the Holy Spirit, this being but the emanating or proceeding sphere of the divine Love and Wisdom, can no more be deemed a person, than the effluent sphere of a man can be deemed a person separate from the man himself. A man's sphere is as little distinct from his real personality as the fragrant sphere of a spice-tree is, in its origin, a distinct entity from the tree itself.

Have we not then in all this a view of the sacred Trinity at once intelligible, and at the same time free from the objections rightly urged against the commonly received doctrine? It is a Trinity of person, and not of persons. As the human mind is constituted, a Trinity of persons is to all practical apprehension a Trinity of beings, or in other words a Trinity of Gods; and such a conception of the divine nature must inevitably mould into conformity with itself the whole scheme of redemption. Consequently we see not how it is possible to gainsay the truth of what Swedenborg affirms in regard to the prevalent theology of the Christian church. "It is to be observed, that in the Apostles' Creed it is said, I believe in God the Father, in Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost; in the Nicene Creed, I believe in one God, the Father, in one Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost, thus only in one God; but in the Athanasian Creed it is, In God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, thus in three Gods. But whereas the authors and favorers of this creed clearly saw that an idea of three Gods would unavoidably result from the expressions therein used, therefore, in order to remedy this, they asserted that one substance or essence belongs to the three; but still there arises from thence no other idea, than that there are three Gods unanimous and and to have control over the material elements by means of the will, and we can see how the primary mental truth, which is the real soul of the construction, ultimates or embodies itself in the engine, that is, " "passes from first principles to last." It is doubtless in a mode somewhat analogous to this that the material world is elaborated from the spiritual, and this may give us a feeble conception of the mode by which "the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us," though the comparison, in reference to its subject, is necessarily low and grovelling. But on such a sublime theme we can only aspire to an approximation towards the truth. If the progress of science should yet discover that everything material is finally resolvable into the light and heat of the sun, which is not unlikely, the main idea will be yet farther confirmed, for Swedenborg has shown us that the transition from the light and heat of the natural sun to that of the spiritual sun is by no means violent, as the one corresponds to the other by the law of cause and effect. But spiritual heat is the divine Love, and spiritual light is the divine Wisdom, or Truth; and we may suitably conclude the present note by the following extract, touching the relation of Truth to creation. "Scarce any one knows at this day that there is any power in Truth, for it is supposed that it is only a word spoken by some one who is in power, which on that account must be done; consequently the Truth is only as breathing from the mouth, and as sound in the ear; when yet Truth and Good are the principles of all things in both worlds, the spiritual and the natural, by which principles the universe was created, and by which the universe is preserved; and likewise by which man was made; wherefore these two principles are all in all."---True Christ. Rel. 224.