REVELATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE
trinity. First, as the Centre of all, there is the BLESSED TRINITY: AllMight, All-Wisdom, All-Love: one Goodness: FATHER and SON and HOLY GHOST: one Truth. To the First, Second, and Third Persons correspond the verbs MAY, for all-powerful freedom to do; CAN, for all-skilful ability to do; WILL, for all-loving will to do. So also "the Father willeth, the Son worketh, the Holy Ghost confirmeth." Another nomenclature of the Holy Trinity is, Might, Wisdom, Goodness: one Love; but that of Might, Wisdom, Love (employed by Abelard, Aquinas, and the Schoolmen generally) is the usual one, while Truth, Wisdom, Love, is employed in reference to that Image of God wherein Man is made: for man has not created might: his might is all in the uncreated might of God. Man in his essential Nature is "made-trinity," "like to the unmade Blessed Trinity"—a human trinity of truth, wisdom, love; and these respectively see, behold, and delight in the Divine Trinity of Truth, Wisdom, Love. Man possesses Reason, which knows, Mind, or a feeling wisdom, which wits, and Love, which loves. The making of Man by the Son of God as Eternal Christ, is the work of Nature; the falling of Man is "suffered" (allowed), and afterwards healed, by Mercy; the raising of Man to a higher than his first state is the work of Grace. "In Nature we have our Being; in Mercy we have our Increasing; in Grace we have our Fulfilling." The work of grace by means of our natural Reason enlightened by the Holy Ghost to see our sins, is Contrition; by means of our naturally-feeling Mind, touched by the Holy Ghost to behold the pain of the world, is Compassion; by means of our nature-and grace-inspired Love, which loves our Maker and Saviour (still by the separation of sin partially, painfully, hid from our sight) is greater Longing toward God. This longing must become an active "desire": for the chief work that we can do as fellow-workers with God in achieving full oneness with Him is Prayer; of which there are three things to understand: its Ground is God by whose Goodness it springeth in us; its use is "to turn our will to the will of our Lord"; its end is "that we should be made one with and like to our Lord in all things." And lastly we have for this life, both by nature and grace, the comprehensive virtue of Faith, "in which all our virtues come to us" and which has in its own nature three elements: understanding, belief, and trust. With Faith, which belongs perhaps chiefly to Reason,— Faith is "nought else but a right understanding, with true belief and sure trust, of our Being: that we are in God, and God in us, Whom we see not," "A light by nature coming from our endless Day, that is our Father, xxvii