to understand what we may call the reticence of Divine Revelation on this subject. It is not merely that all the nations of antiquity were afflicted with polytheism, and that the chosen people themselves were frequently falling into the superstitions and idolatries of the nations round about them. For these reasons alone it might have been judged expedient to keep back, for a season, a doctrine which might have fostered such errors among a people whose spiritual education was necessarily imperfect. But there were other reasons. If the truth concerning the Divine Nature had been made known in earlier times, it must have been revealed nakedly, and apart from those facts which alone could give it significance and power, and apart from that prolonged religious discipline and education by which it was actually introduced to the knowledge of men. Almighty God makes truth known to his creatures as they are able to receive it, to turn it to practical account, to profit by it, and so it was in the revelation of the Holy Trinity.
On these principles we can understand what is the kind of evidence which may reasonably be expected in support of this mysterious doctrine. It would obviously be quite unreasonable to expect, in the earlier periods of Divine Revelation, such clear intimations of the doctrine as
