of Heaven is to them a sweet Mother beheld in beatific vision. Of the kingdom of heaven they always say, lo here! Even mysteries shine clearly before their eye of reason. They talk enthusiastically of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost as a blessed Unity. The Trinity is not among these men a mere logical idea or a transcendental mystery, but a reality in consciousness. Why and whence all this extraordinary upheaval of spiritual life? Why this outburst of Heaven's light in India? Verily India is at present privileged to speak with authority concerning the things of the spirit-world, which none can gainsay. She has peculiar prerogatives conceded by Providence for the interpretation of the triune nature of the Deity. Her nearness to the heavenly sphere gives her facilities for intuitive apperception and revivalistic communion, which are vouchsafed to nations only in favored epochs and after long intervals. While surrounding nations think and surmise, India, blessed India, sees and hears. Let India then speak, and let the world for a moment listen. Europe be silent, while an humble Asiatic discourses upon the doctrine of the Trinity. Christian Europe thou hast spoken long, from the pulpit and from the press, regarding this great doctrine, its philosophy and its theology. Listen to the humble utterances of an uncultured Hindu, who makes no pretensions to Western scholarship or academic lore, but who, as a poor and humble way-farer, has with Heaven's light picked up a few precious thoughts in life's hard paths. You may question my scholarship and deny my literary merit; but that I have seen and felt my God in His triune nature, in my own consciousness, with the light of the New Dispensation, ye cannot deny. Holy Spirit, I kiss Thy feet. Bless me that my soul may speak the truth as it is in Thee. My friends, give your imagination wings, and let it soar higher and higher through by-gone epochs. Let it start on a long voyage, athwart the noisy ages of history and the crowded scenes of human activity. Let its pinions press on, swift as lightning, stopping nowhere, leaving behind nation after nation, epoch after epoch of the remotest antiquity, till it is ushered into the regions of eternal silence. Here the Supreme Brahma of the Veda and the Vedanta dwells hid in Himself. Here sleeps mighty Jehovah, with might yet unmanifested, Eternal and awful silence reigns on all sides. Not an event stirs the ocean of time; not an object is to be seen in the vast ocean of space. Not a breath ruffles the serene bosom of sleeping Infinity. Impenetrable darkness above and below, before and behind! In shoreless immensity is the mind lost. Here is naught that the eye can see or the ear hear. Yet here, they say, the Eternal Spirit dwelleth. Who can realize that Infinite Being? Who can comprehend that Mysterious One? Thought cannot approach Him. The mind understands not who or what He is. How sublime is that passage in the Rig Veda, in which the ancient Hindu Rishi speaks of this Unknowable One !— Then there was neither Aught nor Naught, nor air nor sky beyond. What covered all? Where rested all? In watery gulf profound? Nor death was then, nor deathlessness, nor change of night and day. That One breathed calmly, self-sustained; nought else beyond It lay. Gloom hid in gloom existed first-one sea, eluding_view. sang the ancient bard rapt in wonder. So What more can the poet or the philosopher declare of the Strange Being that existed before creation began? It was neither aught nor naught, neither night nor day. What was it? Who can say ? It seemed to be the dark reign of death. Power there was, but fettered in sleep. The tremendous activity of heaven-where was it? Hushed and enveloped in profound silence. If Divinity there was, it was the Divinity of darkness and silence. But anon the scene changes. Lo! a voice is heard,—it is terrible. Like the deafening peals of heavy artillery it shook the ancient city of silence to its very foundations. Creation sprang. The sun, the moon, and myriad stars in clusters were strewn round high heaven in profusion. And lo! beauty and symmetry, harmony and order, science and law, life and light and love, all came streaming from that one creative fiat-that Almighty Word. Yes it was the Word that created the universe. They call it Logos. Rightly they call it by that significant name, What was it but a sound, a word, a voice, a breath put forth by Infinite Power that created the mighty universe? What was creation but the wisdom of God going out of its secret chambers and taking a visible shape, His potential energy asserting itself in unending activities? The dormant Will stirred itself, and as it stirred itself there came forth world after world, leaping out of the bosom of God. Force there was, but it spake not, and was speechless. As it spake, and the solemn fiat wene forth, "Let there be light," instantly there was light. That voice, once uttered, has ever since rolled backward and forward through the amplitudes of space, creating fresh forms of life and light, east, west, north and south. Creation means not a single act, but a continued process. It began, but has gone on unceasingly through all ages ever since it began. It is nothing but a continued evolution of creative force, a ceaseless emanation of power and wisdom from the Divine Mind. The silent Divinity began to speak, and His speech, His word, a continued breathing of force is creation. What a grand metaphor is the Logos! The Hindu, too, like the Christian, believes in the continued evolution of the Logos, and its graduated development through everadvancing stages of life. The Puranas speak of the different manifestations or incarnations of the Deity in different epochs of the world's history. Lo! the Hindu Avatar rises from the lowest scale of life through the fish, the tortoise, and the hog up to the perfection of humanity. Indian Avatarism is, indeed, a crude representation of the ascending scale of Divine creation. Such precisely is the modern theory of evolution. How from the lowest forms of gross matter is evolved the vitality of the vegetable world in all its fulness and luxuriance ! And then from the most perfect and vital types of vegetable life springs the least in the animal kingdom, which again rises, through endless and growing varieties, to the very highest in intelligence and sagacity. But creation stops not here. From animal life it ascends to humanity, and finds its full development in man. In the evolution of man, however, creation is not exhausted. It goes farther and farther still, along the course of progressive humanity. In the earliest phase of his life, whether in the little infant or in the primitive barbarian, man, with all his highly finished organism, is but a creature of God. Through culture and education he rises in the scale of humanity till he becomes the son of God. You see how the Lord asserted His power and established His dominion in the material and the animal kingdom, and then in the lower world of humanity. When that was done the volume of the Old Testament was closed. The New Testament commenced with the birth of the Son of God. The Logos was the beginning of creation, and its perfection, too, was the Logos,-the culmination of humanity in the Divine Son. We have arrived at the last link in the series of created organisms. The last expression of creation, so far as we have been able to trace it, is Sonship. The last manifestation of Divinity is Divine humanity. Having exhibited itself in endless varieties of progressive existence, the primary creative Force at last took the form of the Son in Christ Jesus. But is the process of evolution really over? Have we reached the very last word in the volume of creation? Does the curtain drop so soon as the Son is born? Then is creation an inexplicable enigma, without meaning, without a purpose. Creation with all its beauty and harmony, its laws and systems, is only wild force run mad, if it has no ultimate object to achieve. It is nature's delirium. Can God create without a purpose? And if He had a purpose, it was not fully achieved in the creation of the Son. Merely supplying a pattern could not be the be-all and the end-all of creation. Where millions perished in disobedience and sin, of what avail was the appearance of a single instance of obedient sonship? All, all required to be saved. If sonship there was, it was bound to develop itself not in one solitary individual but in all humanity. Surely universal redemption is the purpose of creation. God sent His only begotten Son in order to make all His children, one and all, sons and heirs of God. Impoverished and degraded humanity needed not a solitary Prince, loaded with the riches and honors of heaven, |