The New Church Idea of the Trinity

The quality that was common to all the gates of the New Jerusalem was that they were each made of a single pearl, the pearl of great price. This pearl of great price is the belief that there is one God in one Person, who is the Lord Jesus Christ. When we say that we believe in one God, we separate ourselves from all atheists who do not believe in any God; and from all heathen nations who believe in a plurality of gods. When we declare that we believe in one God in one Person, we separate ourselves from the whole "orthodox" Christian world that is, from those who say that they believe in one God, who exists in three Divine Persons, as the famous hymn puts it, "God in Three Persons, blessed Trinity! "

But a Jew or Mohammedan could still go along with us this far, for they also claim to believe in one God in one Person. The Jew calls that person Jehovah, the Mohammedan, Allah; therefore, to distinguish our belief from theirs we add that the one Person whom we believe to be the one God is the Lord Jesus Christ.

This, then, makes crystal clear the exact faith of the New Church in regard to its central doctrine concerning the God that we worship. He is one; He manifests Himself in one Person; and that one Person is the Lord Jesus Christ.

My endeavor in this chapter will be to explain this doctrine of one God in one Person, who is the Lord Jesus Christ. I shall strive to show that this idea of God agrees with what the Scripture teaches, and that it is in accord with common sense, and hat it expresses a theology which is completely rational.

Suppose you go back with me a little more than nineteen hundred years. Let us imagine that we are numbered among the Lord's disciples on the night before His passion. The time is Thursday night. We are sitting with Him in a large upper room in Jerusalem, furnished and prepared for the celebration of the Passover.

From various hints that He has dropped, we have a vague foreboding of evil. We fear an impending tragedy. We recall that the Master has often told us that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be scoffed at, and mocked, and spit upon, and crucified, and the third day rise again. Always He had ended with the words, "The third day He shall rise again." (Matt. 16:21; 20:19; 26:32; Mark 9:9 and 14:28.)

Undoubtedly at this stirring Paschal Supper, these utterances by the Lord concerning what the future held in store for Him lay heavily upon the mind of each of his disciples. We know that this must have been the case, because after they had eaten the meal, after He had washed their feet and sat down again with them, He looked upon their anxious faces and said, "Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in Me." (John 14:1)

By these opening words He sought to calm the troubled spirits of His disciples. He harked back to the central doctrine of the Jewish Church one God. The doctrine, which in Providence, that Church had been raised up to keep alive. He knew that He could depend on His disciples' implicit belief in God. "Ye believe in God." Every Jew who was religious believed in God, and he believed in one God, as he had been taught from childhood in the words of Deuteronomy, "Hear, Oh Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord." (6:4) Surely there was not in the mind of a single one of His disciples the thought of worshiping more than one God.

He knew Himself to be that one God. His problem was to teach His disciples that He was that one God. He had to show them the connection between Divinity and humanity, to arouse in them thoughts which should bridge the gap between the infinite and the finite. They had thought of Him as a finite man, the Son of Mary, their Master, their Leader, who perhaps was going to become the ruler of a kingdom in this world. Not even the beloved disciple, John, in the nearness which He felt to the Lord, had perceived that he was in the presence of the Infinite, so to these men who loved Him the Lord said simply, "Let not your heart be troubled. Ye believe in God, believe also in Me." (John 14:1)

He went on to open up vistas of the future. "In My Father's house are many mansions." The whole purpose of His ministry would be foolish if this weren't the case. "If it were not so, I would have told you." If heavenly mansions did not exist; if this life were all that there was; if that were the case, then there would be no need for prophets or seers, or religious leaders. It was because there are mansions in the Father's kingdom that the Messiahship became pregnant with meaning. "Whither I go ye know, and the way ye know." (John 14:4) These words were a challenge and Thomas instantly spoke up and said, "Lord, we know not whither Thou goest; and how can we know the way?" To which the Lord replied, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me." He had opened His discourse with an appeal to their belief in God, and now He said that He Himself was the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and that no one can progress to the knowledge of the Father unless he does so by understanding the Lord. He went on to say, "If ye had known Me, ye should have known My Father also; and from henceforth ye know Him and have seen Him." (Ibid. 14:7) He told His disciples that if they had known Him, the great gap between infinity and finition, between God and man, would have been bridged and they would have known a Divine Human Savior; they would have known the Father as He appeared in this world.

Howbeit, that was beyond their comprehension. Mystified, puzzled, Philip now spoke up. He implored the Lord to show them the Father. Philip had been with the Lord from the beginning of His public ministry. He was the fifth of the disciples to be called. His name means a lover of horses," and this spiritually signifies one who is eager to learn from the Word. Philip asked for a clear distinction between the Lord and the Father. His thought was: "Let me see both You and the Father together, and then I will be satisfied."

The Lord's answer to Philip was quite unexpected, and very remarkable. It contains within it much food for thought. Turning to Philip He said, "Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me, Philip? He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Show us the Father?" (John 14:9) Probably Philip thought that he really knew the Lord. He knew exactly what He looked like. He recognized the clothes He wore. He was familiar with where He went, what His habits were, and the sound of His voice. He must then have been bewildered when the Lord said to him, "Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me, Philip? He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." (Ibid. 14:9)

The Writings tell us that, "Thought from the eyes closes the understanding but thought from the understanding opens the eyes." (DLW 46) By this the Writings mean that our natural eyesight is colored by what we know and understand. A dog has the same kind of physical eyes as we have, and if I open the Word and place it before him he sees exactly the same thing on a page that I see, yet because there is no understanding in his sight he sees nothing of the Word of God, which I see.

Sight from the understanding opens the eye. Let me illustrate this by an anecdote connected with the late Professor Fred Finkeldey. He was an ardent biologist and spent long hours in his laboratory searching for the truth. Many times he would make microscope slides of singular beauty that were exceptionally perfect, and I can recall his coming up to my office and saying, "Come down quick, Mr. Alden, and see this wonderful slide." I would follow him to his biological laboratory and I would look through his microscope, and I would see something that looked to me like a splash of jelly. The slide would mean nothing to me because there was no understanding in my eyes. Then he would say enthusiastically, "Don't you see the amoeba?" "No," I would say, "I don't see the amoeba. What's an amoeba?" "well," he would answer, "an amoeba is a microscopic, one-celled animal consisting of a naked mass of protoplasm, constantly changing in shape as it moves and engulfs its food."

That was some help! I looked into the microscope hoping to recognize a naked mass of protoplasm. Still, I could see nothing to be enthusiastic over. After he had drawn diagrams on the blackboard and shown me exactly what I should see, at last I was able to recognize the amoeba, and it was only because thought from the understanding had opened my eyes.

The same truth may be seen in every profession. I merely need to suggest it to you. The doctor deduces many things from the symptoms of his patient that the layman does not see. The astronomer goes out and looks up into the sky, and because he understands the movements of the heavenly bodies, lie actually sees phenomena which will be hidden from the ignorant. The glance of the artist beholds nature, and because he has a trained eye and an informed understanding, he sees all sorts of harmonies of color and beauties of form that escape an untrained eve, for surely thought from the understanding does open the eye. It was similar with Philip. He fancied he had scan the lord. He had looked at Him for three and a half years. He was convinced he had seen Him perfectly, and yet the Lord filled him with tremendous surprise that night before the crucifixion, when He said to him, "Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me, Philip? He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." Strange as it may seem, Philip had never really seen the Master. The Lord knew that he had never really seen Him, for he was asking to see the Father apart from Him. Philip's sight had never seen the Father in the Lord. He had never seen the Soul of Christ! Philip lacked the thought from the understanding that would have opened his eyes.

Let us try to see what Philip should have seen in the Lord which would have made him see the Father. On one occasion the Master had just come out of the house of Jairus, and He was followed by two blind men, and when He went into another house they followed Him and begged Him to heal their blindness. Philip saw the Lord put His fingers upon the blind men's eyes, and he witnessed the restoring of their sight. In this miracle Philip should have seen the Father. He was witnessing Divine Power in action; this was the manifestation of the Father that dwelt within the Lord. This was a miracle that only the Divine power of God Himself could produce, namely the restoring of sight to the blind. (Matt. 9:27-31)

When the Lord was come down from the Mount where He had spoken His renowned sermon, "Behold there came a leper and worshipped Him saying, Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean." And Jesus put forth His hand and touched him, saying, I will; be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed." (Matt. 8:2,3) The leper asked the Lord to cleanse him, and he knew that no human power could effect that cure. Physicians had been impotent to help those held in its awful grip; only the Divine influx could restore health. If Philip had seen what really transpired there, he would have seen the power of the Father, he would have seen Divine power surging forth from the Lord and passing to the leper and cleansing him. If he had really seen the Lord on that occasion, then he would have seen the Father also.

Again, Philip was with Him in a ship on the Sea of Galilee when a great storm arose and threatened to engulf their craft and drown them all. The Lord was asleep in the stern. In terror they awakened Him saying, "Lord save us: we perish. . . . Then He arose, and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm." (Matt. 8:25-27) We all know that if there is any one thing that human beings can't do, it's to change the weather, and yet the Lord, standing in the ship, rebuked the wind and the waves and they obeyed Him. Undoubtedly Philip should have seen in that miracle, not the power of the Son of Mary, but the presence of the Father. "Thought from the understanding opens the eye." Philip must have understood that none but the Divine could order a storm to cease! When he saw the Lord give such an order and when he observed that the tempest immediately obeyed the order, at once his mind should have been filled with thoughts of the Divine power that resided within the Lord. He would not have had to be told by the Lord that "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father."

As Philip accompanied the Master, he witnessed many more miracles.

All four Gospels tell us of feeding the five thousand a stupendous miracle! And then, just about four weeks before His crucifixion and resurrection, the Lord visited Mary and Martha and found their brother Lazarus already dead and laid in the grave four days. Philip must have seen the Lord command that the stone be rolled away from the sepulchre, and he must have heard the Lord say to Lazarus, whose body already stank because it had been buried four days, "Lazarus, Come forth!" (John 11:43) If he had thought, if he had realized from whence came the power to raise the dead, he would have known that it did not come from the Son of Mary, but that it came from the Divine soul within the Lord which was the Father.

Sharing the Lord's life, as Philip must have shared it, seeing a score of miracles in addition to those that we have touched upon; hearing His gracious words, like the Sermon on the Mount, with all this wealth of association, Philip should have seen Him and really known Him. Instead he had merely looked at Him. Because Philip had never intelligently seen the Lord, he said, "Lord, show us the Father and it sufficeth us." Had Philip actually seen Him, as the trained eye looks through the microscope, as the doctor diagnoses his patient, as the astronomer contemplates the sky, as the artist views the landscape, he would have seen not Jesus of Nazareth, not the Son of Mary, but Jesus the Savior, the complete manifestation of God here on earth. It seems perfectly clear that the Lord meant to convey to Philip the impression that there was absolutely no Father apart or separate from Him. "He that hath seen Me, bath seen the Father." Or, as He said to the Jews, I and My Father are one." (John 10:30) And "Before Abraham was, I am." (John 8:58) That burden of the New Testament now seems perfectly clear.

Let us contemplate the idea of the Trinity from what is revealed in the Old Testament, from the idea that the Messiah, God Himself, was to come into the world.

Once I had an argument with an Episcopalian minister. It took place during the summer when the Rev. Theodore Pitcairn and I, as theological students, were preaching the New Church doctrines in various towns of Pennsylvania and New York. While thus engaged, we saw an advertisement of a sermon by an Episcopal rector on the text: "Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me, Philip? He that bath seen Me hath seen the Father." (John 14:8,9) When we saw that text advertised we immediately went to the church, but we were sadly disappointed in the sermon. The minister never once mentioned the idea that in seeing the Lord, Philip had seen the Father; instead he spent his whole discourse in showing that the Lord had been with the Christian Church for nearly two thousand years, and they did not know Him yet. Of course, we agreed with him! That night, after we had put the car in the garage we had to pass his church, and to our great pleasure, we found him outside his vestry door smoking a cigar. We immediately engaged him in conversation and soon turned the subject to his morning sermon and the Trinity. We asked him why he did not mention the latter part of his text: "He that hath seen Me bath seen the Father." His reply commenced an argument which lasted past midnight when he said, "This is getting pretty deep. Let's go up to my study."

When we were comfortably seated, he handed me a ponderous volume on the Trinity, and I will never forget the first sentence. It read: "There is very little evidence in the Old Testament for a trinity of Persons." That theologian was correct, for there is no real evidence at all in the Old Testament for a trinity of persons. Search it as you will, the only things you may seize upon to confirm a trinity are the words, "Let us make man in our image" and the three angels that appeared to Abraham to tell him of Isaac's birth. The first one is clearly a plural of majesty, for it goes on to say, "So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him," (Genesis 1:27) It does not say, "created They him!"

In regard to the occasion when three angels appeared to Abraham, if we argued from this that there were three persons in God, we might just as well argue that God is a multitude, for a multitude of angels appeared to the shepherds in Bethlehem on Christmas night. Furthermore, in the next chapter of Genesis only two angels appeared to Lot. If they represented the trinity, who was left out? These were the only shreds of evidence of a trinity of persons that this learned author could find in the Old Testament, and they are weak indeed.

But let us look at the other side of the picture from the Old Testament. What evidence of God in one person does it give? We find it full of statements which declare this truth. "Hear, Oh Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord." (Deut. 6:4) This is so definite, so positive, so clear. Or consider Isaiah 43:11, "I, even I, am the Lord; and beside Me there is no Savior." Imagine, if there had been a trinity of persons from eternity the Father looking and seeing no Savior, passing by the Son as if He did not exist. Yet according to the Athanasian Creed, which all Christian orthodoxy swears by, "The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God; the Father is Lord, the Son is Lord, the Holy Spirit is Lord, yet there be not three Gods and three Lords, but one God and one Lord." (AE 1091)

Let us turn to a positive statement in Isaiah's prophecy concerning the Trinity. "Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon His shoulder, and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace," (9:6) There has been no doubt in the Christian mind that the Child concerning whom Isaiah prophesied was the Lord Jesus Christ. Certainly Handel, in his beautiful oratorio "The Messiah" so interpreted it. He uses that passage to great advantage and he leaves no shadow of doubt but that the Son who was to be born into the world was the babe that was born in Bethlehem on the first Christmas night. "Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government shall be upon His shoulder." What government? The government of the universe, all government, the laws and order of all creation. "The government shall be upon His shoulder, and His name shall be called - . ." Whose name? The Lord Jesus Christ's name. He actually was called "Jesus", but the prophet said that in addition He should be called "Wonderful." He was the Wonder-Child, the child born without human father the mystery of the ages. His name shall be called "Counsellor." He was to give man the truth that should guide him and make him free. But He should also be called "The Mighty God", and furthermore He was to be called "The Everlasting Father." I do not know whether you ever thought about it before, or noticed it, but here in the Old Testament, when it is being foretold that the God of heaven would come upon the earth, in the same sentence He is called Son and Father, "a Son shall be given us" who "shall be called the Everlasting Father." That Sari was the Lord Jesus Christ, and He was called by Isaiah "the Everlasting Father." What could more clearly indicate that there is one Person in God, and that the Everlasting Father is the soul of the Lord Jesus Christ? Therefore, we find this great harmony between the Old and the New Testaments, for in each the one Person who is God is called both Son and Father.

There is not the least shadow of a doubt that there is a trinity in God. That is not the point. The point is: Is God a trinity of Persons, or is God one Person in whom dwelleth a trinity of attributes? The New Church believes that He is not a trinity of persons. A belief in a trinity of persons must lead inevitably, although perhaps not explicitly, to a belief in three separate Divine Beings, which amounts to a belief in three Gods, because to each Person in the Trinity is assigned a different office or function to perform, as that the Father is the Creator, the Son is the Redeemer, and the Holy Spirit is the Sanctifier. The New Church believes in a trinity, but it believes that it is a trinity of functions that cluster about one Personality who is the Lord Jesus Christ.

It is impossible to maintain the trinity of persons from Scripture. In the first place, there is no mention of a trinity of three persons. The Father is mentioned, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but they are never called separate persons. They represent real relationships. If we were inclined to specious reasonings, we might even note that every man has many aspects. For example: to my father I was a son, to my son I am father. Thus I am both father and son according to the relationship in which I find myself, but I am never two persons. In respect to the Divine from eternity, the Divine born in time as Jesus was certainly its Son, but not a separate person, because the Divine dwelt in Him and was His soul; thus it is easy to see the Oneness of God when we think of Christ's soul as the Father, His body as the Son, and His influence among men as the Holy Spirit, but how can one who believes in three Divine persons explain such passages as "I and My Father are one", (John 10:30) "He that bath seen Me hath seen the Father", (John 14:9) "Before Abraham was, I am", (John 8:58) "Believe Me that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me." (John 14:11) A true religion will be able to understand and explain all of these passages.

In the first part of this chapter, I have endeavored to show that if Philip had really seen the Lord, he would have seen the Father in the Divine and mighty acts which the Lord did. I then endeavored to show that in the Old Testament there is a solidarity of teaching to the effect that there is one God in one Person, and that when His advent into the world was foretold by Isaiah he leaves no shadow of a doubt but that the Son and the Father were one in the Lord Jesus Christ.

There is still another approach to the understanding of the Trinity. God created man in His own image and likeness. (Genesis 1:26,27) If, then, there is a trinity in God there is a trinity in man. This we find to be the fact. For in man we discover the trinity of soul, body, and use; the finite image and likeness of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Let us look at this trinity in man. What is it that is the architect of the child that is growing in the womb of the mother? Our Writings say that it is the invisible soul given by the father, which, after it has produced conception, orders the destiny of the multiplying cells, giving to some the office of neural canal, to some the formation of a primitive heart, causing some to form bones, and others skin. The soul of man directs all this. Thus the soul builds for itself a body, a palace to dwell in, a temple into every minutest part of which it is able to enter.

The soul is always on a higher plane than the body. It can never be seen by the natural eye any more than the Lord could show Philip's natural eye the Father. "No man bath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him." (John 1:18) Dissect the body as cleverly as you can, you will never find the soul; weigh the body immediately before and after death, you cannot find the weight of the soul; yet the soul is there and we may know of it by the work that it does in the body. The soul in each one of us, invisible though it be, governs all of our organs, all of those things that go on unconsciously the beating of the heart, the respiration, the digestion of our food, the circulation of our blood, the thousands of muscular contractions that are necessary to perform any movement all of these are ruled by the soul, the invisible soul of man.

The Writings tell us that this invisible soul is to the trinity in man, what the Father is to the trinity in the Lord. The infinite Divine Father is invisible in His universe. Only by taking on a body from Mary did He become visible on earth. So we say the Lord Jesus Christ reveals the Divine, just as we say our body reveals our soul.

When Gabriel appeared to Mary and said, "Blessed art thou among women" (Luke 1:28) and told her that she was to become the mother of the Messiah, Mary was the first to doubt the virgin birth. She said, "How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?" (Luke 1:34) Gabriel answered, "The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing that shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God." (Luke 1:35)

The Divine flowed into Mary without any finite, limiting, separating vessel so that the soul of the Lord Jesus Christ, which caused the growth of His body, just as our soul has caused the growth of our body, that soul of His was Father to His body in that relationship, just as truly as our soul has been father to our body. But our soul has been cut off from the human father from whom we sprung, whereas the Divine Substance is continuous and cannot be separated. The Lord's soul, therefore, flowed in and was never cut off from the Divine Soul which still governed the universe. That Divine Jehovah from eternity was always present as the soul of the Lord Jesus Christ. So the Father always dwelt in Him, and the Son more and more manifested the Father, so that at the end of His life in this world He could say to Philip, He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father."

The Lord said, "No man bath seen God at any time." The Father, the Infinite Divine within all nature, is above man's poor power to comprehend. "No man hath seen God at any time." The God that Abraham spoke with was an angel filled with the spirit of Jehovah. The God that Gideon saw, and the God that called to and spoke with Moses was also an angel filled with God's spirit. "No man," the Lord said, "bath seen God at any time." The "Only Begotten", because when the Lord came down into the world through the instrumentality of the Virgin Mary, that was the only vessel that had been prepared to receive the Divine, and to manifest the Divine on earth. "The Only Begotten Son hath declared Him." That is, the Babe, the Lord Jesus Christ alone has declared the Father and through His many deeds and words manifested Him in this world.

When we first meet somebody, and see only his body, we see little of the real person. But as we get to know him and live with him and see how he reacts to sorrow and in the presence of joy; and how he meets adversity and how the various vicissitudes of life affect him, more and more we forget the body, and more and more we see the soul through the body, so at length we can say to our friends and quite truly: "You have never seen my soul, but all of my soul that you ever will see you will observe in the actions of my body." We can never see the soul of anyone apart from the character manifested by the deeds of his body. Think of a man like Lincoln, for example. If we knew nothing of his character and his life, and we saw a picture of him we might say, "What an ugly man!" But when you and I look at a picture of Lincoln we do not say that because we know the soul of the man through his deeds and these we see shining through the features of his face. His mighty spirit irradiates his body.

What about the Holy Spirit, which has also been called a separate person? It is truly difficult to understand how men could have thought of that as a separate person! After the Lord had risen from the dead, He appeared unto ten of His disciples and said, "Peace be unto you: as My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you." And when He had said this, He breathed on them and said unto them, "Receive ye the Holy Spirit." (John 20:21,22) His breath, His Divine majestic magnetism which has swept down through the ages, and has made men change their lives because of His teachings. He breathed on them and so He gave them His spirit, which, because He was holy, was the Holy Spirit.

What about the trinity in man? What is there in him that corresponds to this breath of the Lord? It is what we do; it is the use we perform; it is our influence among the people with whom we live, our effect on other men; it is the spirit that goes forth from each one of us. We can often see the effect of man's spirit when we contemplate the lives of the great men of the earth.

The story of Napoleon comes to mind. He had been exiled to the Island of Elba in the Mediterranean Sea. After a hundred days he conspired to come back to France and land in the southern portion with a handful of men. Louis XVIII sent an army to capture him. When this army met Napoleon he stepped out before it and said, "Capture me, or fall in behind me." So great was his magnetic personality that they fell in behind him. This happened four times on his way north to Paris and by the time that he got there all of Louis' soldiers were Napoleon's. Such was the spirit that went forth from that man!

We are in the image and likeness of God. As He has the Father within Him, so we have our soul. As He had the body from Mary to manifest that Father, so we have our bodies by which we show to the world the quality of our character. And as the Lord's presence with us is called the Holy Spirit, because it is His spirit, so we, by our spirit, exert an influence among the men with whom we live.

But we can see the Trinity in an even simpler way than this. Because the Lord is the Creator of all, He has left an image of Himself in all things of creation. There is nothing that exists that does not have an invisible soul, a visible body, and a use. Take for example a watch: the invisible soul is the idea of it in the mind of its inventor. Its body is the materials that have embodied the inventor's idea. Its use is indicating time. As long as someone's idea is not embodied it remains invisible. We cannot see it. But when it is worked out and given a body, we can say of it, Now I see what its inventor had in mind."

The Father, like the idea, is invisible, but if you have really seen the Son you have seen the Father, just as when you have seen the finished object you have seen the idea which was in the mind of its inventor. The Lord came on earth that men might see Him, and through Him see the Divine Spirit that moves the universe, and having seen Him, that they might be inspired to receive the Holy Spirit, the Spirit or inspiration of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Thus, if Philip had really seen the Lord, he would have seen the Father also. Had the Jews understood the Old Testament, they would have seen the Father, their God, in the Lord Jesus Christ. If we understand the trinity of soul, body, and use in ourselves we will understand the Trinity in God, and we will come to see that there is not a created thing in the universe which does not declare the trinity of an invisible idea, a material body, and a continuing use. The all pervading likeness of the Creator can be seen everywhere, by those who have eyes to see.