Page:The Moslem World - Volume 02.djvu/166

 although it is beyond our comprehension, is more easily understood than the abstract Monotheism of the anti-Trinitarians. When we say that we believe in the triune God, we indicate thereby that we believe in a God who is separated from His creatures, having placed His majesty above the heavens, and who is near them in His Son, who was willing to be His servant, and assumed our nature in order to be obedient unto death. Our God is the living and true God, because there is a divine movement in the eternal inter-relation between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The true nature of this inner divine life we cannot comprehend, but it is a reality, which we apprehend by faith. In the works of God, ad extra, this life of God is clearly manifested. The Father is the source of everything, the Son reveals the Father's footsteps in creation, and the Holy Spirit changes the chaos into a wonderful cosmos. This life of God, which truly is immutable but by no means immovable, guarantees us our communion with Him, who is the life of His creatures. And applied to the sinful condition of mankind, we have approach to God the Creator through the Son, who not only reveals Him as our Father but who also dies to save us, in the Holy Spirit, who by indwelling in us completes and perfects our communion with the triune God.

We repeat that the Holy Trinity is a mystery, but it is a mystery which secures to us not only a pure theology, but also a joyful and active religion, and this is not a speculation or poetical conception, but a positive reality. Rationalism has no place in it, but it is thoroughly rational. Truly, there is communion with God, because He is triune in His unity. To know this God, who is the only true and living God, is eternal life, because He unites us to Himself in Jesus Christ, whom He has sent, and who as the Logos became the Son of man and the Lamb of God. Away with that abstract unity which is the unity of a stone. I have often thought that the stone in the Kaaba at Mecca, which the pilgrims kiss, is a fit symbol of the Moslem Allah How oppressive this abstract unity of God must feel when the soul longs for real communion with its Maker. Some one has said, if