told the birds not to go near the trap; but that same day one was caught. The next day I asked the Lord to keep the trap from catching them; but it caught two before noon. Then I prayed the Lord to help me to keep the birds from getting caught, and I went out and kicked the trap all to pieces." So the Naturalist apostrophizes Nature, and awaits results; the Supernaturalist prays to the Lord, and awaits results; the Natural-Supernaturalist or Eclectic prays the Lord to help, and then goes to work vigorously and kicks the trap to pieces. Neither Nature nor Providence ever does for man anything that he is competent to do himself, by using the faculties and powers with which he is endowed. Every man is thus endowed for the attainment of all that it is wisest for him to have in the present life; to recognize, reverence, and use to their utmost those endowments is, of itself, Prayer. True Prayer asks for nothing (of a worldly or temporal nature) but that Indolence and Cowardice may be overcome, and that Industry and Courage may be aroused sufficient to do with one's might whatever one's hands find to do. To drive out Sloth and Fear and to cultivate Energy and Bravery (toward all that is true, and beautiful, and good) is to invoke both Nature and the Supernatural.

Petition for the stimulus and the will to do what one ought and can is the wise man's only (personal) prayer. This prayer he will pray with every effort and with every breath. In the same way for everything received or accomplished, enjoyed or secured he will devoutly give thanks.

Such are the Faith and Works, the Prayer and Thanksgiving of Eclecticism, which is true Christianity. "Pray without ceasing: in everything give thanks."

LXVIII. THE SPIRIT AND NOT THE LETTER OF THE

CREEDS.

IN attempting to give a modern meaning to the ancient formularies of Historical Christianity, in the preceding pages, the position was taken that, in every department of

Religious Interpretation (the same as in the Bible), it is equally and ceaselessly true that "the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.”

The scholarly and beautifully conservative book (of one of our most Christ-like modern Divines), well known as Orthodoxy, Its Truths and Errors, elaborates this position in the spirit of the New Testament. We may take a fundamental illustration-that of the dogma of the "Trinity." After showing its popular errors and urging their rejection, the author says of its truth: "The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are not merely different names for the same thing, but they indicate three different Revelations, three different views which God has given of His character, and which taken together constitute the total Divine Representation. This Trinity of Manifestations is founded in the truth of things, and is also according to the teachings of the greatest Fathers of the Church. There is no antecedent objection to the form of the Trinity as a threefold manifestation of the Divine Being; and we have only to ask, Is it true as a matter of fact? Has such a threefold manifestation of God actually taken place? We reply that it is so. According to observation and experience, as well as to Scripture, we find such to be the fact. . . . According to the New Testament the Father would seem to be the source of all things: the Creator, the Fountain of being and life. The Son is spoken of as the manifestation of that Being in Jesus the Christ. The Holy Ghost is spoken of as a spiritual influence proceeding from the Father and the Son, dwelling in the hearts of believers as a source of their life-the idea of God seen in Causation, in Reason, and in Conscience-as making the very life of the soul itself. There are these three classified Manifestations of God, and we know of no others. They are distinct from each other in form, but the same in essence. They are not merely three names for the same thing, but they are real personal Manifestations of God, real Subsistencies, since God is personally present in all of them, There is, therefore, an essential truth hidden in the idea of the Trinity. While the

church doctrine in every form which it has hitherto taken has failed to satisfy the human intellect, the Christian heart has clung to the substance contained in them all. . . . A simple unity, as held by the Jews and Mohammedans, and by some Christian imitators, may be a bald unity and an empty unity. This it certainly is when it shows us God withdrawn from Nature, from Christ, from the Soul; not immanent, but outside of them. This is to make Nature godless; Christ merely human; the Soul a machine, moved by an external impulse, not by an inward inspiration. Such is the practical view of the Trinity, when rightly understood."

The substance of this citation seems to be as follows: The letter of the doctrine of the Trinity is that there are three persons in one God; its spirit is that there is one God in three personal Manifestations. Of all Unitarians and Trinitarians alike the common ground is that there is One God, and that He is a person in some unspeakably glorious and expanded sense of that word. This personality of God, being an infinite mystery, should only be affirmed and trusted in; it should not be defined except in its Manifestations. These Manifestations, as classified, are three-in the language of Science they are Causation, Reason, and Conscience; in the language of Theology they are Father, Son, and Holy Ghost: these Three are One, or, One is in the Three. Simply this is the spirit of the doctrine of the Trinity, all else belongs to the letter: and "the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.”

LXIX.-MODERN USE OF ANCIENT IDEAS AND TERMS.

The Philosophy of which Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Philo were successively chief expositors (which was an Eclecticism of all widest learning and deepest thought of the entire world down to the first century), furnished Apostolic Christianity with many of its most effective ideas and terms. Among these were especially the following:

(a) “Logos," or Word of God: teaching (what before had been, and even now is, but very narrowly and imper

fectly apprehended) the Divine immanence in Nature and incarnation in Man; or God in Nature and in Man. ever-present God, not an absentee; a speaking God, not a silent one, who spake "in the beginning" and has been speaking ever since.

How forcible is all this in the sense of the common German Proverb, "Speak that I may know you." No other self-revelation is so real and satisfactory as Speech. Speech is not only the vehicle of Thought but is also its incarnation. Speech is Thought embodied and "dwelling among us." Men live in their words; and if men, how much more He who is the One and the All ! "The Speech (Word) was God by Him were all things made.

He was made flesh and dwelt among us; and we beheld His glory."

This means a God who is here as well as everywhere and within as well as without:

"Whose body Nature is and God the Soul."

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Shines in the stars and whispers in the breeze."

"He is not far from every one of us; for in Him we live and move, and have our being." "In the beginning was the Divine Self-Revealer (Word), and the Divine Self-Revealer (Word) was God. All things were made by Him In Him was life and the life was the light of Men and the Divine Self Revealer (Word) was made flesh aud dwelt among us." "I and my Father are One

as thou Father art in me, and I in Thee, that they also may be One in us. I in them, and Thou in me, that they may be made perfect in One."

"In him (Jesus the Christ) dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. Know ye not that ye (also) are the temples of God and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? as God hath said, I will dwell in them and walk in

them."

All these teachings grew out of the term Logos and the ideas unfolded from it. The term itself was in common use in all the great schools of Philosophy, especially in that of Philo. The ideas had been gradually unfolding in all the great Religions of the world, especially in the Jewish, long before the time of Socrates. The philosophers of Greece, and later of Rome, by no means originated, but only received and transmitted them. As Confucius said, "I only hand on," so they only handed them on to the Founder and Fathers of Christianity. What is true of the term Logos and its outgrowing ideas, is likewise true of what follows.

(b) "Threefold Revelation," or Trinity: teaching that God is immanent in Nature, incarnate in Man, and enthroned in Conscience. This had been taught vaguely by all the great Religions, had been made clear and emphatic by the great Philosophers, and finally became a common teaching of the Founder and Fathers of Christianity. But the term Trinity, and its dogmatic formula, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, did not come into popular use till a later century.

(c) "Twice-Born" or Born Again; teaching that degree or stage of spiritual evolution at which a man first awakens (clearly and fully) to the threefold consciousness of God, the Soul, and Eternal Life. God-Consciousness, Soul-Consciousness, and Eternal-Life-Consciousness; these, one or all, could only be experienced by the "Twice-Born." A spiritual New Birth, absolutely essential to all true knowledge of God, of Self, or of Immortality, was a fundamental teaching of all the great Philosophers from Socrates to Philo. This teaching, too, they did not originate, but only handed on with new clearness and emphasis. Christianity received it as still more a fundamental teaching and as nothing new. Hence the surprise of Jesus when he exclaimed to Nicodemus, "Art thou a teacher in Israel and knowest not these things! Ye must be born again. Truly, truly, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God." Apostolic Christianity made this the first and chief of all its doctrines-the New Birth, or Regeneration, or receiving the Holy Ghost, or being made Sons of