of man is but a single drop. Man's highest spiritual understanding, too, is but as it were a mote in the bright sunbeam of His ineffable glory.

Difficult as is the task of dealing at all more fully with the doctrine of the Trinity, yet, trusting to the guidance of God's Holy Spirit, we shall endeavour in the next section to set forth, for the benefit of those who are earnestly seeking for the truth, a few considerations which may enable them to understand that, in this doctrine, which God has revealed in the holy Scriptures, there is nothing contrary to reason, though there is much which our feeble human intellect cannot grasp, and which, apart from divine revelation, man could never have known.

SECTION II

CONSIDERATIONS WHICH TEND IN SOME MEASURE TO EXPLAIN THE DOCTRINE OF THE MOST HOLY TRINITY

According to the teaching regarding the doctrine of the Trinity which in the preceding section we have adduced from the holy Scriptures, every one who believes the word of God must admit that, in the unity of the divine nature, there are three Hypostases. But there are some people who say that, for the very reason that this doctrine is taught in the holy Scriptures, they cannot accept them as the

word of God. This they say through prejudice against this doctrine, and this prejudice arises in part at least from their not understanding what the doctrine really is. Hence they regard it as untrue and contrary to reason. In the present section we hope to show, by God's grace, that it is by no means contrary to reason, when rightly understood, nay rather that reason demands some such doctrine to remove the difficulties which the dogma of the oneness of God otherwise causes to the thoughtful mind, and to enable man to attain to any true and personal knowledge of God, without which knowledge there can be no true religion, no vital piety.

The objection to the doctrine of the Trinity is often stated in such words as these: 'How is it possible that in the One divine nature there should exist a Trinity of Hypostases, and that in unity there should be plurality? Since these are absolutely contrary the one to the other.'

Besides what has been already said in answer to this objection, we now proceed to adduce certain other considerations, in order to show that the doctrine of the Trinity in Unity involves no self-contradiction. Our request is that the honoured readers of these pages would carefully and attentively peruse what we have to say before forming a final judgement on the subject. We hope that, having done this, humbly asking the guidance of the Most Merciful God, they will be led to see that what the holy Scriptures teach regarding the nature