"In ancient China the emperors used to sacrifice
every third year to 'Him who is one and three.' There was a Chinese
saying, 'Fo is one person but has three forms.' ... In the lofty
philosophical system known in China as Taoism, a trinity also figures:
'Eternal Reason produced One, One produced Two, Two produced Three, and
Three produced all things,' which, as Le Compte goes on to say, 'seems
to show as if they had some knowledge of the Trinity.'"[264]

In the Christian doctrine of the Trinity we find a complete agreement
with other faiths as to the functions of the three Divine Persons, the
word Person coming from _persona_, a mask, that which covers something,
the mask of the One Existence, Its Self-revelation under a form. The
Father is the Origin and End of all; the Son is dual in His nature, and
is the Word, or the Wisdom; the Holy Spirit is the creative
Intelligence, that brooding over the chaos of primeval matter organises
it into the materials out of which forms can be constructed.

It is this identity of functions under so many varying names which shows
that we have here not a mere outer likeness, but an expression of an
inner truth. There is something of which this triplicity is a
manifestation, something that can be traced in nature and in evolution,
and which, being recognised, will render intelligible the growth of man,
the stages of his evolving life. Further, we find that in the universal
language of symbolism the Persons are distinguished by certain emblems,
and may be recognised by these under diversity of forms and names.

But there is one other point that must be remembered ere we leave the
exoteric statement of the Trinity--that in connection with all these
Trinities there is a fourth fundamental manifestation, the Power of the
God, and this has always a feminine form. In Hinduism each Person in the
Trinity has His manifested Power, the One and these six aspects making
up the sacred Seven. With many of the Trinities one feminine form
appears, then ever specially connected with the Second Person, and then
there is the sacred Quaternary.

Let us now see the inner truth.

The One becomes manifest as the First Being, the Self-Existent Lord, the
Root of all, the Supreme Father; the word Will, or Power, seems best to
express this primary Self-revealing, since until there is Will to
manifest there can be no manifestation, and until there is Will
manifested, impulse is lacking for further unfoldment. Th