equally incomplete unless we add to Natureworship and theism the Service of the Divine Son or the "Enthusiasm of Humanity." Some socialists to whom their system is something more than a mere political and social reconstruction would elevate Fraternity into a religion, forgetting that the service of the Divine Son pre-supposes obedience to God the Father and love of God the Mother. All those systems are faulty and incomplete which do not lay equal emphasis on each one of the three elements. Kant builds on Conscience, the first person of the Trinity: Comte on the Divine Son. Both attain logical precision at the cost of truth.

CHAPTER XXXII

GOD THE FATHER: SPIRIT

D. O. M.

Credo in Spiritum Patrem Divinum.

"Not him that with fantastic boasts

A sombre people dreamed they knew ;
The mere barbaric God of Hosts,

That edged their sword and braced their thew;
A god they pitted 'gainst a swarm

Of neighbour gods less vast of arm.

O streaming worlds, O crowded sky,
O Life and mine own soul's abyss,
Myself am scarce so small that I
Should bow to Deity like this!"

-WM. WATSON, The Unknown God.

BELIEF in the Holy Spirit, God the Father, is a corollary of belief in the soul of man: both stand or fall together, for the Spirit of Nature answers to the soul of man. This belief is intuitive, a part of the constitution of the mind. It can neither be proved, nor yet disproved by logic or by syllogism. There have always been, and there always will be, men in whom the higher faculties are dormant, or even altogether wanting, materialists who see no soul in man, no Spirit in Nature. But we believe with Ruskin that "a Spirit does actually exist who teaches the ant her path, the bird her building, and men in an instinctive and marvellous way

whatever lovely acts and noble deeds are possible to them."

So also Emerson: "Man is conscious of a Universal Spirit within or behind his individual life, wherein as in a firmament the natures of justice, truth, and love arise and shine."

"A gracious Spirit o'er this world presides,
And o'er the heart of man."

-WORDSWORTH, Prelude.

The philosopher, Victor Cousin, thus emphatically repudiates the conception of a soulless universe: "To suppose that the world is empty of God, and that God is separated from the world, is an unbearable and almost impossible abstraction."

"God the Father," as the term Father plainly indicates, is the Creative Spirit of the universe, alluded to in Genesis as the "Spirit of God" which presided over the birth of the Cosmos. He is again spoken of in the Gospels as the 'Holy Spirit," Spiritus Sanctus, who is the father of Christ and of all men in whose nature there is anything divine.

་་

The Holy Ghost of the Christian triad has obviously been thrust into a subordinate position owing to the intrusion into the primordial trinity of the Hebrew tribal god Javeh who has usurped the position of God the Father. Ghost, German Geist, means spirit: and the Latin word spiritus means breath, as does also the Greek pneuma. The Latin word is masculine, the Hebrew feminine,

the Greek neuter. This is merely an accident of language, and has no significance.

Conscience, Reason, Intuition (of abstract Beauty and Harmony), and Love have been universally regarded as divine attributes of the human soul. And when we assert that these faculties are divine, what do we mean but this, that through them we are connected in a mysterious way with the great Spirit of the Universe. In other words, these faculties constitute the inner, as Nature is the outer revelation of Deity. It may be that reason and conscience lead more directly to the apprehension of the Deity revealed in the Spirit as God the Father, whereas intuition and love are more closely connected with the manifestation of Deity in Nature as God the Mother. Reverence for conscience is not a special feature of Christianity. A Greek verse runs :

"To every mortal, conscience is divine."

Bacon poetically calls it "a sparkle of the purity of our first estate. Shakespeare says that "conscience makes cowards of us all." But conscience should rather give courage and comfort to the good; for it is indeed the witness of God within us, the "Holy Spirit" "Paraclete or "Comforter" (John xiv. 26) sustaining us when other comfort fails, the divine monitor or inward voice, to stifle which is the "sin unto spiritual death" (1 John iv. 16), the blasphemy

for which there is no forgiveness (Matt. xii. 31) for "God's Spirit will not always strive with man." Tatian has said, "Conscience and God are one."1

The "answer of a good conscience towards God" (1 Peter iii. 21) is not a mere empty phrase (whether the Greek will bear this translation or not). When the human will is in perfect accord with the divine, a harmony is heard within the soul. This answering note is a reality, though, like the tartini tones. on the violin, it will not be audible to all ears and at all times. The true saint hears this answering voice by day and night. "Never say that you are alone," says Epictetus, "for God and your guardian angel (that is your conscience) are ever with you." No philosopher has ventured to assert that the "dæmon" of Socrates was either an imposture or a hallucination.2

"Never

The Holy Ghost and conscience are none other than the voice of God, which echoes in the ears of him who has given up all for an ideal: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Matt. iii. 17). Young says:

"Who conscience sent, her verdict will support,
And God above assert that God in man."

For, as the same poet reminds us, "conscience is a part of human nature.

'See F. P., "Intuitive Morals," chap. ii.

2 Zeller's "Socrates," chap. iv.