Now the passage which I have undertaken to expound to-day, is one in which the doctrine of the Trinity is brought into connection practically with the doctrine of our Humanity.  Before entering into it brethren, let us lay down these two observations and duties for ourselves.  In the first place, let us examine the doctrine of the Trinity ever in the spirit of charity.

A clear statement of the deepest doctrine that man can know, and the intellectual conception of that doctrine, are by no means easy.  We are puzzled and perplexed by words; we fight respecting words.  Quarrels are nearly always verbal quarrels.  Words lose their meaning in the course of time; nay, the very words of the Athanasian creed which we read to-day mean not in this age, the same thing which they meant in ages past.  Therefore it is possible that men, externally Trinitarians, may differ from each other though using the same words, as greatly as a Unitarian differs from a Trinitarian.  There may be found in the same Church and in the same congregation, men holding all possible shades of opinion, though agreeing externally, and in words.

I speak within the limit of my own experience when I say that persons have been known and heard to express the language of bitter condemnation respecting Unitarianism, who when examined and calmly required to draw out verbally the meaning of their own conceptions, have been proved to be holding all the time—­unconsciously—­the very doctrine of Sabellianism.  And this doctrine is condemned by the Church as distinctly as that of Unitarianism.  Therefore let us learn from all this a large and catholic charity.  There are in almost every congregation, themselves not knowing it, Trinitarians who are practically Tri-theists, worshipping three Gods; and Sabellians, or worshippers of one person under three different manifestations.  To know God so that we may be said intellectually, to appreciate Him, is blessed:  to be unable to do so is a misfortune.  Be content with your own blessedness, in comparison with others’ misfortunes.  Do not give to that misfortune the additional sting of illiberal and unchristian vituperation.

The next observation we have to lay down for ourselves is, that we should examine this doctrine in the spirit of modesty.  There are those who are inclined to sneer at the Trinitarian; those to whom the doctrine appears merely a contradiction—­a puzzle—­an entangled, labyrinthine enigma, in which there is no meaning whatever.  But let all such remember, that though the doctrine may appear to them absurd, because they have not the proper conception of it, some of the profoundest thinkers, and some of the holiest spirits among mankind, have believed in this doctrine—­have clung to it as a matter of life or death.  Let them be assured of this, that whether the doctrine be true