a heaven and the form of God, let the testimony of
all nations now be admitted to corroborate. Every shape from a cloud to
a crocodile, and every place from AEther to Tartarus, have been peopled
by man's not quite irrational device with their so-called gods. But we
must not lapse into the after-argument: previous likelihood is our
harder theme. Neither, in this section, will we attempt the
probabilities of the place of heaven: that will be found at a more
distant page. We have here to speak of the antecedent credibility that
there should be some visible phase of God; and of the shape wherein he
would be most likely, as soon as a creation was, to appear to such his
creatures. With respect, then, to the former. Creatures, being finite,
can only comprehend the infinite in his attribute of unity: the other
attributes being apprehended (or comprehended partially) in finite
phases. But, unity being a purely intellectual thought, one high and dry
beyond the moral feelings, involves none of the requisites of a
spiritual, that is an affectionate, worship; such worship as it was
likely that a beneficent Being would, for his creatures' own elevation
in happiness, command and inspire towards Himself. In order, therefore,
to such worship and such inspiration acting through reason, it would
appear fitting that the Deity should manifest Himself especially with
reference to that heavenly Exemplar, the Three Divine Persons of the
One Supreme Essence already shown to have been probable. And it seems
likeliest and discreetest to my thinking, that, with this view, the
secondary phase, loving Obedience, under the dictate of the primary
phase, a loving Will, and energized by the tertiary or conjoining phase
a loving Quickening Entity, should assume the visible type of Godhead,
and thus concentrate unto Himself the worship of all worlds. I can
conceive no scheme more simply profound, more admirably suited to its
complex purposes, than that He, in whom dwelt the fullness of the
Godhead, bodily, should take the form of God, in order that unto Him
every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and
things in regions under the earth. Was not all this reasonably to have
been looked for? and tested afterwards by Scripture, in its frequent
allusions to some visible phase of Deity, when the Lord God walked with
Adam, and Enoch, and Abraham, and Peter, and James, and John--I ask, is
it not the case?

The latter point remaining to be t