it and hindrance of its development."
"Perfect personality," he said, "is in God alone."[1]

To most of us it may sound paradoxical to urge that the full Christian
doctrine of the Three Persons in the Godhead is really less difficult
intellectually than the doctrine that the Divine Being consists of an
isolated unit.

This was the contention of the Greek Fathers of the Church, whose acute
and subtle minds anticipated not a few of the objections which we have
had to encounter in our days. We cannot elaborate the statement
here,[2] but it is to the point to observe that the doctrine of the
Trinity in Unity removes from the Christian believer that which to
Spencer was one of the greatest obstacles in the way of the acceptance
of the idea of a Divine Personality; for it relieves him from the
necessity of imagining a subject without an object, since in the
Christian view the highest life in the universe is a social life, {49}
in which thought is for ever communicated with unbroken harmony of
feeling and will.

But the inadequacy of Agnosticism was to be seen not only on the
intellectual side. Its practical effects were necessarily determined
by its negations. Since we could know nothing of the ultimate power,
it was plainly our wisdom to turn our attention elsewhere. It followed
that, if morality was to be upheld, it must be based upon other than
the familiar sanctions. For awhile it was enthusiastically promised
that this could and should be done. But the event proved otherwise.
Towards the end of his life, Herbert Spencer was constrained to admit
this. "Now that ... I have succeeded in completing the second volume
of _The Principles of Ethics_ ... my satisfaction is somewhat dashed by
the thought that these new parts fall short of expectation. The
doctrine of Evolution has not furnished guidance to the extent that I
had hoped."[3]

And this moral failure of the system pointed yet deeper to its
essential weakness. It deliberately ignored the profoundest needs and
capacities of our nature. The need is the need for God, and for One
who, though greatly above us, is yet within our reach, and ready to
give us His friendship. "Thou {50} hast made us for Thyself, and our
heart is restless until it rests in Thee." That cry of St. Augustine
has found its echo in unnumbered souls, and our humanity will never be
satisfied while it is offered no more than an impalpable abstraction
for the contentment of its craving.