3. Of the Holy Spirit.

That the Holy Spirit, in and with the Father and the Son, is God and a personal subsistence, is shown in the same way. The appellation, "the Spirit," is, of course, not used to designate His essence, but His distinctive personality. As to substance, He is no more spirit than the Father or the Son. But theology, in this connection, employs it as designative of His distinctive personality, because of the mode of His peculiar relation, i. e., by "spiration," Spiritus quia spiratus, just as the Son is called Son because "begotten."

The first part of the twofold affirmation, the Deity of the Spirit, either essentially or modally, is usually conceded. Some denials, however, appeared in the early Church. Both Arius and Eunomius represented Him as a creature, created by the Son, who Himself had been created by the Father. This teaching placed the Spirit as a "creature of a creature," тloμа ктíσμатоя. But the proofs of His divinity run parallel with those of the Son.

(a) The name and titles of God are given Him. In Ex. xvii. 7, the Jews are said to have "tempted Jehovah," and in Heb. iii. 7-11, this tempting is identified as a tempting of the Holy Spirit. In Acts v. 3, 4, the lying of Ananias to the Holy Spirit was lying "to God."

(b) Divine attributes are ascribed to Him, e. g., Omnipresence (Ps. cxxxix. 7, 8); Omniscience (1 Cor. ii. 10); Eternity (Heb. ix. 14).

(c) Divine works are ascribed to Him: Creation (Gen. i. 2; Ps. civ. 30); Miracles (1 Cor. xii. 9-11); Resurrection of the dead (Rom. viii. 11).

(d) Baptism is in His name, equally with the name of the Father and the Son (Matt. xxviii. 19).

The second part of the affirmation, His personality, as over against all notions of conceiving the term as the designation of a simple "energy," "an influence,” or a mere mode of divine operation, is equally certain from the whole tenor of the Scripture representation.

(a) The attributes and activities of personality are ascribed to Him. He knows (1 Cor. ii. 11); He wills (1 Cor. xii. 11); He speaks (Rev. ii. 7; Acts viii. 29; Matt. x. 20); He teaches (John xiv. 26); He testifies (John xv. 26).

(b) The personal forms of pronoun are applied to Him -as is specially apparent in the Greek Testament, John xiv. 16, ἄλλον παράκλητον ; xiv. 26, ὁ δὲ παράκλητος ; χν. 26, ὁ παράκλητος ὅν; xvi. 13, ὅταν δὲ ἔλθη ἐκεῖνος, τὸ πνεῦμα τῆς ἀληθείας. This use of ἐκεῖνος, referring to the neuter veûμa, is strongly significant; John xvi. 14, ἑκεῖνος ἑμὲ δοξάσει.

(c) Personality, as well as divinity, is implied in the equal relation given Him with the Father and the Son in both the baptismal formula (Matt. xxviii. 19), and in the Pauline benediction (2 Cor. xiii. 14). Neither a creature nor a mere mode of agency could be thus spoken of. There could be no consistency in uniting in such co-ordinate plane with the Father and the Son a mere mode of energy or influence from them.

(d) The sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit also involves His personality (Mark iii. 28, 29; Matt. xii. 31, 32). For this sin, said to be unpardonable, is put in contradistinction to sin against the other persons of the Godhead. If the Spirit were only a power or influence, blasphemy against God Himself would be made a less sin than against a mere mode of influence from Him.

To the objection made to this teaching, that the Holy

Spirit is nevertheless spoken of as "given," "poured out," "sent," and that "He shall not speak of Himself," the proper and sufficient answer is that such expressions, like the similar ones in reference to the Son, refer to economic or official work, express relations in the economy of salvation. "Poured out" is, of course, a figurative expression, referring to the influence and gifts in which He comes to men-as truly so as when believers are said to "put on Christ." That He does not "speak of Himself," means that economically He does not act in private or separate aim, but in the unity and harmony of the plan of salvation, and with respect to the mediatorial activity of the Son, carrying forward and applying the provided redemption.

Thus the second proposition, that the one God exists eternally in the three personal subsistences, each in and with the others truly God, is proved and required by the teachings of the Holy Scriptures. The Church's conception of the relations between the persons of the Godhead, as thus explained, has been determined, not speculatively or by arbitrary dogmatism, but simply in accordance with the fundamental affirmations of the Scriptures, fixing two things, viz.: the truth of the Oneness and the truth of the Trinality of God. The office of reason and logic in the matter has been simply to shape the aggregate conception of God so as to exhibit and maintain these two fundamental postulates.

CHAPTER IV.

THE WORKS OF GOD.

These are properly discriminated into three formsCreation, Preservation, and Providence. Together they form Christian Cosmology. In entering it our order of advance is from the immanent Trinity to what belongs to the economic Trinity, or the Triune God in opera ad extra. The immanent glory of God becomes a declarative or manifested glory, showing His intelligence, wisdom, will, and power in an established cosmos or world order, reflecting the divine character and purpose. His "eternal power and Godhead" are here understood by "the things that are made" (Rom. i. 20).

CREATION.

Creation is that action of the Triune God by which He has called the universe of the heavens and the earth into existence. By necessary conception, this is His first work ad extra. The only action that precedes it is the immanent eternal activity of the divine essence or trinitarian life. God is the absolute originating Cause, the Creator of all being, other than Himself. All that is, other than God, is created by God. So the Scriptures clearly teach (Gen. i. 1; Neh. ix. 6; Ps. xix. 1; Acts vii. 50; xiv. 15; xvii. 24-28; Rom. i. 19, 20; xi. 36; I Cor. viii. 6; Eph. iii. 15; Heb. i. 10; ii. 10; xi. 3; John i. 3); and the best insight of science and philosophy sustains the truth.

But in accepting this truth, theology seeks, if possible, to vindicate it by reaching some conception as to how God could and did, from the perfection and completeness of His own being in itself, move outward in the origi nation of other being. The aim is, primarily, not to determine the objective end divinely contemplated and sought in the action originating other existence, but rather to form a conception of the subjective impulse, so to speak, toward ad extra creative production: what in God was the ground of such proceeding outward in originative power. And the inquiry adjusts itself, not to any of the old pagan views of deity, marked by their obsolete emanational cosmogonies, nor to our modern pantheistic views with their blind evolutionisms, but alone to the idea of God as reached in Christian theism. Theology rightly finds the explanation in the truth that while God is absolutely complete and self-sufficient in His intelligence, power, happiness, and holy freedom, He is also the fullness of love. In the very act of knowing Himself in the perfection of His own being, there must be embraced an absolute self-discrimination from every other conceivable or possible object. The idea of otherness is part of the discrimination of self. While intelligence is thus the primary seat of all possibilities, the divine love is essentially communicative, and uses its conscious plenitude of power to actualize its ideals of creature existence and blessedness. It is the nature of holy Love, or loving Will, to look beyond Self, and use its power to create objects upon which it may bestow its kindness and the happiness of which they may be made capable. Love is the reason of creation.

This explanation of the reason applies directly to the creation of the universe of intelligent, holy, personal