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Trinity Myths
157

when we are preparing ourselves for rest. In this Trinity none is afore or after other, none is greater or less than another; but the whole three are co-eternal and co-equal; and he that will be safe must think after this model. So says that marvellous old Credo, in which, in a degene- rate age, well-meaning idolaters enshrined the remnants of an older Philosophy which seemed about to die out.

The Law of Moses is holy as of old, and whoever speaks of it should do so with reverence. Those who disregard it, do just as truly lapse into idolatry as men did three thousand years ago. The mere mathematician conceives of a Space or a Number ; his absorption in the contemplation of which deadens his interest in other forms of truth. The man who deifies natural science often sinks into a mere vivisectionist, who inflicts torture at random, for the gratification of an idle freak of curiosity.

Adonai has his dangers too. Spiritualism and aestheticism each has its own vicious modes of heightening the sense of inspiration. The Catholic worship of Jesus and Mary, by nuns and monks respectively, often degenerates into the worship of Adonis and Aphrodite, under other names; and has sometimes all the more distracting effect on the imagination, for being, nowadays, prevented by conventual regulations from exhaling itself in physical scandals; and the Moloch-form of fire-worship still exists in the belief in an everlasting and non-purifying hell.

As for the second facet or division of the God-idea, Vishnu, how much better would have been the influence of Christian Missionaries had they not sanctioned the heathenish notion that God has given no truth except