Testament, especially in the later and what are called the sapiential books, the Divine Wisdom attains a prominence, and vividness, and distinction among the other attributes of God that prepare the way for the advent of that Divine Person who is afterwards announced as the Wisdom and the Word of God. But here again the gracious, the religious, and the practical aspects of the truth govern and subordinate the philosophical and speculative ideas. See Cowper's paraphrase of Prov. viii. 22-36:

"Ere God had built the mountains."

power-Infinite in power. Hence God is often in Scripture spoken of as the Almighty, or the Omnipotent. "The word Almighty conveys three ideas -that God is omnipotent, His dominion universal, and His essence infinite." "God's power is limited only by the workings of His will. He doth not work all things that He might work. 'Unto Thee,' saith Christ, 'all things are possible.' God doth not show Himself omnipotent by doing all He can do, but everything that He doth do He showeth an almighty power in it" (Goodwin).

holiness "This word is nothing but Middle English hool (now spelt whole). The original sense is perfect or excellent" (Skeat). Holiness, therefore, etymologically, as well as theologically and religiously, is inward health or spiritual wholesomeness. "It is instructive to note how the Psalmist dwells upon the holy name of God, as if His holiness were dearest to him, or perhaps because the holiness or wholeness of God was to his mind the grandest motive for rendering to Him the homage of his nature in its wholeness. Babes may praise the divine goodness, but fathers in grace magnify His holiness" (Spurgeon). "Holiness is intellectual beauty. Divine holiness is the most perfect and the measure of all other. . . . The divine holiness is the most perfect pulchritude, 'the ineffable and immortal pulchritude, that cannot be declared by words or seen with eyes,'-they are a heathen's expression concerning it. This may therefore be styled a_transcendental attribute, that, as it were, runs through the rest, and casts a glory upon every It is an attribute of attributes. Those are fit predications, holy power, holy truth, holy love. And so it is the very lustre and glory of His other perfections, He is 'glorious in holiness'" (Howe).

one.

justice-Integrity and uprightness as of a true judge with whom is no respect of persons. The Scriptures reveal the divine law as the foundation of all God's dealings with men. Whatever else in God is manifested to man, His justice is never set aside or forgotten. Even in justifying the ungodly, the justice of God is magnified. "Nothing is more precisely according to the truth of things than divine justice; it weighs things in an even balance; it views and estimates things no otherwise than they are truly in their own natures (Jonathan Edwards). And the greatest teacher of morals outside the Hebrew dispensation, taught that "in justice every virtue is summarily comprehended."

"Not even-star nor morning-star so fair."

See Hooker, Serm. iii.; Howe's Living Temple, ii. 7; Owen's Dissertation on Divine Justice; Jonathan Edwards' Diary.

goodness" Goodness is the genus that comprehends mercy, grace, longsuffering, kindness, truth, etc. in it; these are branches from that as the root (Goodwin on Ex. xxxiii. 19). "From the beginning of the world till now,

all effluxes which have come from God have been nothing but emanations of His goodness, clothed in variety of circumstances. He made man with no other design than that man should be happy, and by receiving derivations from His fountain of mercy, might reflect glory to Him. . . . And grace is the treasure of the divine goodness, the great and admirable efflux of the eternal beneficence, the riches of His goodness,' which whosoever despises, despises himself and the great interests of his own felicity; he shall die in his impenitence, and perish in his folly" (Jeremy Taylor).

"But Thou hast promised from us two a race

To fill the earth, who shall with us extol

Thy goodness infinite, both when we wake

And when we seek, as now, thy gift of sleep."-MILTON.

666 For He is good.' Is not this the Old Testament version of 'God is love'?" (A. A. Bonar).

and truth. It is clear that truth as an attribute of God must mean something far nobler than fact or information, a common use of the word in the ordinary speech of mankind. Neither is truth to be taken here merely as opposed to error, falsehood, and deceit. When our Lord, addressing His Father, said, "Thy word is truth," He had something far greater in His mind than merely that God's word is true and trustworthy. Truth in the text and in our Lord's Prayer embraces the whole revelation of God that has been at any time, or in any manner, made to man; all that it is God's glory to reveal, and man's blessedness to believe and enjoy. Truth, the highest and surest truth, is that God is true, and that Jesus Christ is His Truth. "I am the Way, the TRUTH, and the Life." "Truth is grace clad with a promise and put forth in exercise" (Bengel).

"Now there are other spirits besides God: and these are angels and the souls of men. But the difference betwixt God and them lies here, that God is an infinite, eternal, and unchangeable Spirit, and they are not so. The attributes of God, as perfections of His divine nature, are of two sorts, incommunicable and communicable. His incommunicable attributes, whereof there is no vestige in the creation, are His infinity, eternity, and unchangeableness. His communicable_attributes again, whereof there are some scantlings in the creatures, are His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. The difference between these perfections as they are in God and as they are in His creatures, lies here, that they are all infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in God, but in His creatures not so" (Boston).

USE. With this Question we are entering on the doctrinal division of the Catechism. Now it was the teaching of our Lord in His conversation with the woman of Samaria, that all acceptable and profitable worship must rest on the fundamental doctrine so fully set forth in this Answer. Our Lord puts the profoundest of all doctrines just where the Catechism, following His example, puts it, as one of the first principles of faith and worship. And there is not one word in the statement before us that will not sensibly assist an intelligent and devout mind in the worship of God. Rightly used, the Creeds and Catechisms of the Church are really devotional guides. The doctrines of Revelation are coals of heavenly fire on the altar of the religious heart. "The formula, which embodies a dogma for the theologian, readily suggests an object for the worshipper. Theology may stand as a substantive science without the life of religion; but religion cannot maintain its ground without theology" (Newman).

QUESTIONS.

1. Explain the metaphor with which this Answer opens, and trace its growth in Cruden. Webster supplies examples of fifteen senses the word bears in English.

2. It is a commentator's note on Jer. xxiii. 24, The immense God: derive and explain.

3. God is a most pure Spirit, without body, parts, or passions (Confession, ii. 1). Reconcile this with those passages of Scripture that speak of God's hands and feet; His eyes, ears, countenance, and heart; His love, jealousy, sorrow, pity, and repentance. Give the proper theological name for this scriptural manner of speech; and connect the whole subject with the Incarnation.

4. Give the leading Scripture passages that illustrate the etymological identity of health and holiness; also the passages that illustrate the identity of disease and sin.

Q. 5. Are there more Gods than one?

A. There is but One only, the living and true God.°

Deut. vi. 4: Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord. Jer. x. 10: But the Lord is the true God, he is the living God, and an everlasting King.

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Having given us our Lord's definition or description of what God is, and having supplemented that definition by gathering round it a cluster of His scriptural attributes, the Catechism proceeds to ask, God being such, "Are there more Gods than one?" And the answer is made, "There is but One only, the living and true God." "Thus," says an eminent teacher of Christian truth, we must ever commence in all our teaching concerning the Holy Trinity we must not begin by saying that there are Three, and then go on to say afterwards that there is One, lest we give false notions of the nature of that One; but we must begin by laying down the great truth that there is One God, in a simple and strict sense, and then go on to speak of Three, which is the way in which the mystery was progressively revealed in Scripture. In the Old Testament we read of the Unity; in the New, we are enlightened in the knowledge of the Trinity." The Old Testament taught that "God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth." The unity and spirituality of God formed the article of a standing or falling Church in that early dispensation of grace and truth.

One only "The words 'one' and 'only,' ascribed to God in Scripture, are not used in contrast to the Son or the Holy Spirit, but rather with reference to those who are not God, and are falsely called so" (Basil). "One," in this connection, is not used in the sense of numeration; it points to an absolute aloneness rather than to plurality and accumulation. This has been called a transcendental unity, or the oneness of what is indivisible. Thus it has been said: "To apply arithmetical notions to God is as unphilosophical as profane.

He is not One in the way in which created things are severally units; for one, as applied to ourselves, is used in contrast to two or three and a whole series of numbers. But God has not even such relation to His creatures as to allow, philosophically speaking, of our contrasting Him with them" (Newman's Grammar of Assent)."Our divines, therefore, reckon not God, in

point of arithmetic, together with us. They cast not God and us into the same numbering. They suffer not creatures to bear or sustain the repute or account of numbers after Him, or when He is spoken of. They say of Him that He is unicus [unique], the only One, who stands apart by Himself, out of all arithmetic, as His transcendent being comes not under our logic (Goodwin).

the living and true God. Living in the supreme sense of having life in Himself, and thus being the Fountain of life to all His creatures. "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being." "No name is so free from the taint of anthropomorphism, or of anything incongruous and degrading, as the living God" (Goldwin Smith, Bystander, ii. 141). And true as distinguished from all false gods. This doctrine of God was the ground of all the prophetical preaching and controversy in the Old Testament. "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord" (see Q. 44). And Paul, treating of things offered to idols, made a restatement of this fundamental position of the Hebrew and Christian faith: "We know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but one. To us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in Him."

QUESTIONS.

1. Explain the phrase, A true Jew was a Crypto-Christian.

2. What is meant by the saying of a Father, Not number but glory is expressed in the utterance, The Lord God is one Lord ?

Q. 6. How many persons are there in the Godhead?

A. There are three persons in the Godhead; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory.o

P Matt. xxviii. 19: Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

Familiar to us as the doctrine of the Trinity is, yet it must never be forgotten what it cost the early Church to bring this fundamental truth out of the Scriptures and get it inserted in the Creed. There was an immense expenditure of learned theological labour before this doctrine was finally formulated and universally accepted in the Church of Christ. In his chapter on the Trinity, Dr. Hodge maintains that this doctrine is peculiar to the religion of the Bible, and that, like all Bible truths, it is not an abstract, speculative, and notional truth, but is most fundamental and vital to the whole Christian faith. And he endorses Meyer's words, to the effect that "the Trinity is the point in which all Christian ideas and interests unite; at once the beginning and the end of all insight into Christianity."

There are three persons-"Lat. per-sona, a mask personage, character, part played by an actor, a person.

used by an actor, a The large-mouthed

HOW MANY PERSONS ARE THERE IN THE GODHEAD?

15

masks worn by the actors were so called from the resonance of the voice sounding through them" (Skeat). It is a long step from the original sense of the word person to that usage we are most familiar with when it is applied to an individual of the human race. But it is a still longer step from our ordinary usage of the word up to the scriptural and theological acceptation when applied to the Three in the Divine Nature. It is utterly inadequate to set forth the manner of Their subsistence, but the Latin theologians could find no better, no less inadequate word in their tongue, and the modern languages of Christendom have not as yet developed any more adequate term. We must be content to call Father, Son, and Holy Ghost PERSONS; but while we do so, we must always remember that They are utterly unlike any personalities we have ever known. "In modern philosophical usage, the term person means a separate and distinct rational individual. But the Tri-personality of God is not a numerical or essential trinity of three beings, like Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob, for this would be Tritheism; nor is it only, on the other hand, merely a threefold aspect and mode of manifestation in the Sabellian or Swedenborgian sense; but it is a real, objective, and eternal, though ineffable distinction in one divine being" (Schaff, Creeds, ii. 70). "The scriptural facts are (a) The Father says I; the Son says I; the Spirit says I. (b) The Father says Thou to the Son, and the Son says Thou to the Father; and in like manner the Father and the Son use the pronouns He and Him in reference to the Spirit. (c) The Father loves the Son; the Son loves the Father; the Spirit testifies of the Son. . . . The summation of these and kindred facts is expressed in the proposition: The one Divine Being subsists in Three Persons-Father, Son, and Spirit" (Hodge). See the Athanasian Creed and Calvin's Institutes, I. xiii. 3-6.

the Godhead-"Divinity, divine nature. The suffix is wholly dif ferent from Eng. -head, being the same suffix as that which is commonly written -hood. The etymology is from A.S. hád, office, state, dignity" (Skeat). By the Godhead is meant the Divine Nature. And a Person in the Godhead is the whole Godhead distinguished by "personal properties.' The Godhead neither is nor can be divided into parts; each of the Three Persons hath in Himself the one whole indivisible Godhead. But, as has been said, they are distinguished by their personal properties-that is to say, it is the personal property of the Father to beget the Son (Heb. i. 5); and of the Son to be begotten of the Father (John i. 14); and of the Holy Ghost to proceed from the Father and the Son (John xv. 26; Gal. iv. 6). "So the personal properties make no inequality among them; forasmuch as these properties are not temporary or accidental, but eternal and necessary, and could not but be; and every one of the three persons is the eternal, the supreme, and the most high God" (Boston). And, accordingly, just as manhood signifies that human nature, possessing which we are men, so, in some such way, the Godhead is that divine nature which the three divine persons equally possess, and are therefore equally and eternally God. In manhood there are a multitude of persons that no man can number, but in the Godhead there are three persons only-Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

the Father-The name of father is a relative name, father and son. Paternity is a relation of origin and production, but it is not every kind of production that properly constitutes paternity: paternity is production by generation. Now the Scriptures call the relation that eternally obtains between the First Person and the Second, Fatherhood and Sonship; and they