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with the heroism of a demigod, and the premises fail. Earthly 
powers may accomplish earthly results ; but no earthly in- 
tellect can foreknow and foretell. On such an hypothesis an 
illiterate peasant penetrates the veil of two thousand years, 
and, with oracular power, proclaims its highest marvel. Grant 
the revealed element, and philosophy is satisfied ; an obvious 
phenomenon is traced up to an adequate cause. But this 
done, and all is conceded which we ask. Theology then rests 
on a divinely inspired record, established on evidence external 
and internal, and is built up on not only the sure logic of 
truth, but on the inexorable logic of facts. 
Before proceeding to my last division, I would devote one 
paragraph to confessedly a very important item in scientific 
investigations — analogy. Analogous reasoning is by no means 
foreign to Theology. The sacred writers adopt it ; the school- 
men employ it ; one, at least, of the ancient creeds embodies 
it ; whilst its importance in inductive philosophy is un- 
questioned. I hesitate not, therefore, to employ it here, and 
to a subject seemingly the most abstruse in the whole range 
of theological truth — the tri-unity of the Godhead. Since this 
is neither the place nor time for proving the doctrine of the 
Trinity to be a truth of revelation, I here at once assume it 
so to be, merely noting that it clearly enters into the earlier 
dispensation and more ancient writings in a germinal form, 
an adumbration ; and in the later dispensation and more 
recent writings in its development, a clear dogma. With the 
view of exhibiting the absolute agreement subsisting among 
all the evidential portions of theology and their harmony as 
a whole, I would suggest some few, I venture to think not 
unimportant, analogies between the truth thus enunciated and 
what may be gleaned from our cosmical system. 
Take, first, the law of attraction, — one principle, but of 
threefold action, — the attraction of gravitation, the action of 
the larger body upon the lesser, — the attraction of cohesion, 
the mutual action of the component particles of each given 
body, — and chemical attraction, the combination of particles 
having mutual affinities ; yet are these not three, but one great 
principle. Take the motions of the heavenly bodies, — the 
motion of each planet on its axis, the further motion of the 
planetary system round the sun, and the yet more general 
movement of the solar system, with all other systems, through 
space : three distinct motions combined into one harmonious 
progression. Again, consider light, a triple compound, the 
solar spectrum in reality consisting of three spectra — the 
luminous, the calorific, and the actinic. The luminous spectrum 
again sub-compounded into the yellow, the red, and the blue 
