150 THE REV. PROFESSOR H. M. GWATKIN, M.A., ON 
which forms so large a part of human nature cannot be entirely 
wanting in the divine. Again, we believe that God is good, 
for otherwise we could give no account of goodness in our- 
selves. But goodness is a relation, and therefore implies a 
second. Were there but one being in the universe, there 
would be no room for goodness. If such goodness could be 
supposed incidental, it might possibly be satisfied by a 
transitory world; but if it is essential as it must be, the 
second it implies must be eternal. Yet, again, goodness means 
submission to a rule of goodness which is not conventional. 
If I am good to some unconscious infant, I confess our common 
duty to an ideal of goodness which is no creation of my will, 
however willing I may be to follow it. So if God, who is 
essentially good, is good to us, He is following a law of goodness 
which is no mere creation of His will, but the expression of His 
nature. 
As for Arianism and the rest of the half-and-half systems 
which make the Lord more than man, yet not truly divine, 
they preach a solitary God surrounded indeed with creatures, 
but having no true second in the universe. His goodness is, 
therefore, will, not nature—-at least we can never know for 
certain that it is anything more than the expression of a will 
subject to change. So of other qualities. Everything becomes 
arbitrary, and the Son of God Himself can give us no certainty 
if he is but a creature, and the true nature of the Father is 
unknown to him as well as to us. 
This is all very well for an Eastern sultan with infirmities of 
temper; but is it a worthy conception of God? And if we can 
find a worthier, are we not bound to accept it? Now the 
opoovarov of the Nicene Council, which a logical necessity soon 
shaped into the full doctrines of the Trinity, simply means that 
the Son is as divine as the Father. It means nothing more, 
except that Christian men are not free to explain it away. 
But it makes a world of difference. If God spared not His own 
Son, we have a mighty argument; but it does not come to 
inuch if He only gave up Joseph’s son. Here then and only 
here we reach firm ground at last. The prophet may tell his 
vision, but neither man nor angel—no being short of the 
eternal Son can tell us with full and final certainty the very 
heart of God our Father. 
Again, whatever be the mysteries of the Trinity, there is a 
simple aspect of it which anyone can understand. It gives us 
the social element we were looking for; and by making it a 
relation of eternal Persons, it firmly plants it inside the divine 
