Probabilities | Page 8

same
entities perverted. Love would be love still, though there were no

existent object for its exercise: Beauty would be beauty still, though
there were no created thing to illustrate its fairness: Power would be
power still, though there be no foe to combat, no difficulty to be
overcome. Hatred, ill-favour, weakness, are only perversions or
diminutions of these. Power exists independently of muscles or swords
or screws or levers; love, independently of kind thoughts, words, and
actions; beauty, independently of colours, shapes, and adaptations. Just
so is Wisdom philosophically spoken of by a truly royal and noble
author:
"I, wisdom, dwell with prudence, and find out the knowledge of clever
inventions. Counsel is mine, and sound wisdom; I am understanding; I
have strength. The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way,
before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the
beginning, or ever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was
brought forth; before the mountains were fixed, or the hills were made.
When He prepared the heavens, I was there; when he set a compass
upon the face of the depth; when he established the clouds above; when
he strengthened the foundations of the deep: Then was I by him, as one
brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always
before him; rejoicing in the habitable parts of his earth; and my delights
were with the sons of men."
King Solomon well knew of Whom he wrote thus nobly. Eternal
wisdom, power, and goodness, all prospectively thus yearning upon
man, and incorporate in One, whose name, among his many names, is
Wisdom. Wisdom, as a quality, existed with God; and, constituting full
pervasion of his essence, was God.
But to return, and bind to a conclusion our ravelled thoughts. As,
originally, the self-existent being, unbounded, all-knowing, might take
up, so to speak, if He willed, these eternal affirmative excellences of
wisdom, power, and goodness; and as these, to every rational
apprehension, are highly worthy of his choice, whereas their derivative
and inferior corruptions would have been most derogatory to any
reasonable estimate of His character; how much more likely was it that
He should prefer the higher rather than the lower, should take the

affirmative before the negative, should "choose the good, and refuse the
evil,"--than endure to be endowed with such garbled, demoralizing,
finite attributes as those wherewith the heathen painted the Pantheon.
What high antecedent probability was there, that if a God should be
(and this we have proved highly probable too)--He should be One,
ubiquitous, self-existent, spiritual: that He should be all-mighty,
all-wise, and all-good?

THE TRIUNITY.
Another deep and inscrutable topic is now to engage our thoughts--the
mystery of a probable Triunity. While we touch on such high themes,
the Christian's presumption ever is, that he himself approaches them
with reverence and prayer; and that, in the case of an unbeliever, any
such mind will be courteous enough to his friendly opponent, and wise
enough respecting his own interest and safety lest these things be true,
to enter upon all such subjects with the seriousness befitting their
importance, and with the restraining thought that in fact they may be
sacred.
Let us then consider, antecedently to all experience, with what sort of
deity pure reason would have been satisfied. It has already arrived at
Unity, and the foregoing attributes. But what kind of Unity is probable?
Unity of Person, or unity of Essence? A sterile solitariness, easily
understandable, and presumably incommunicative? or an absolute
oneness, which yet relatively involves several mysterious phases of its
own expansive love? Will you think it a foregone conclusion, if I assert
the superior likelihoods of the latter, and not of the former? Let us
come then to a few of many reasons. First: it was by no means probable
to be supposed anteriorly, that the God should be clearly
comprehensible: yet he must be one: and oneness is the idea most
easily apprehended of all possible ideas. The meanest of intellectual
creatures could comprehend his Maker, and in so far top his heights, if
God, being truly one in one view, were yet only one in every view: if,
that is to say, there existed no mystery incidental to his nature: nay, if
that mystery did not amount to the difficulty of a seeming contradiction.

I judge it likely, and with confidence, that Reason would prërequire for
his God, a Being, at once infinitely easy to be apprehended by the
lowest of His spiritual children, and infinitely difficult to be
comprehended by the highest of His seraphim. Now, there can be
guessed only two ways of compassing such a prërequirement: one, a
moral way; such as inventing a deity who could be at once just and
unjust, every