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To the Editor of Light.
sir, – Your contributor, “1st M.B. Lond.,” who
writes under the above heading in your issue of the 25th ult., must penetrate very much deeper into the Christian
mysteries before he can be accepted as a competent interpreter thereof. His
remarks at the outset on the Athanasian Creed and its
framers shew that the subject is wholly new to him; and his explanations of the
Trinity, the Christ, and the method of inspiration, while excellent as regards
tone and intention, shew that as a student of Divine things he has as yet not
mastered their alphabet. Had he studied the mere history of the Athanasian Creed, he would have found that so far from the
framers of that famous symbol being persons devoid of culture and logic, easily
satisfied, and intellectually the inferiors of the present generation, it was
the very profundity of their metaphysical science which has caused them and
their ideas to be misunderstood and unappreciated by the present materialistic
and superficial age.
I do not propose to inflict upon you a lengthy disquisition on the Trinity or
any of the other subjects which, equally with it, your contributor treats at
once so inadequately and so confidently. I wish but to shew that the dogmas
concerned, when subjected to examination by minds trained to the exercise of
abstract thought and acquainted with the terminology and method of ancient
mysticism, are neither incomprehensible nor illogical, but constitute symbolical
expressions for truths which are necessary, self-evident, and incapable of being
conceived of as otherwise, concerning the nature, and mode of operation under
manifestation of Original Being, and this, whether as subsisting in the
“Heavens” or world of pure unmanifested
Spirit, or in the macrocosm of the universe and the microcosm man.
A single and familiar instance will suffice to justify this allegation so far as
concerns the doctrine ordinarily regarded as the climax of absurdity – the
doctrine of the Trinity. For the
(p. 244)
instance will shew that it is impossible to
conceive of anything whatever as having being which does not constitute in some
mode a trinity consisting of elements which correspond respectively to the Three
Persons of theological dogma.
These elements, in the world merely physical, are Force, Substance, and
Phenomenon, the sensible resultant of these. Thus, for example, a stone
consists, first, of force; next, of substance – wherein its force resides and
operates; and, thirdly, of their joint -product, the material object palpable to
the senses. Each of these is stone, and yet they are not three stones but one
stone. And as the last is that by which the two first are manifested, it
constitutes their expression or “word.” And as force is the masculine and
substance the feminine principle of things, the former, or first person, may be
fitly called the father; and the latter, or second person, the mother; and their
joint issue, or third person, the son.
This is not, however, the Trinity of the Churches, though it involves that
conception. For in the ecclesiastical Trinity the substance, or “mother,” in the
Godhead, is combined with and merged in the “father,” the two making one person;
the offspring – expression or “word” – of this dual unity, the “son being the
second person; while the potency which proceeds from the former through the
latter (the son being the manifestor of the father-mother, and more properly called
the son-daughter), and denotes deity in its dynamic or active, as distinguished
from its static or passive mode, is termed the Holy Ghost or Spirit, and made
the third person.
Such is the key to the mystery of the Trinity.
E. M.
FOOTNOTES
(242:1) Light, 16th July 1887, pp. 324-325.
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