d which was
deemed of far greater importance than any war or any affair of State.
The interest in this subject seems strange to many, in an age when
positive science and material interests have so largely crowded out
theological discussions. But the doctrine of the Trinity was as vital
and important in the eyes of the divines of the fourth century as that
of Justification by Faith was to the Germans when they assembled in the
great hall of the Electoral palace of Leipsic to hear Luther and Dr. Eck
advocate their separate sides.

In the time of Constantine everything pertaining to Christianity and the
affairs of the Church became invested with supreme importance. All other
subjects and interests were secondary, certainly among the Christians
themselves. As redemption is the central point of Christianity, public
preaching and teaching had been directed chiefly, at first, to the
passion, death, and resurrection of the Saviour of the world. Then came
discussions and controversies, naturally, about the person of Christ and
his relation to the Godhead. Among the early followers of our Lord there
had been no pride of reason and a very simple creed. Least of all did
they seek to explain the mysteries of their faith by metaphysical
reasoning. Their doctrines were not brought to the test of philosophy.
It was enough for these simple and usually unimportant and unlettered
people to accept generally accredited facts. It was enough that Christ
had suffered and died for them, in his boundless love, and that their
souls would be saved in consequence. And as to doctrines, all they
sought to know was what our Lord and his apostles said. Hence there was
among them no system of theology, as we understand it, beyond the
Apostles' Creed. But in the early part of the second century Justin
Martyr, a converted philosopher, devoted much labor to a metaphysical
development of the doctrine drawn from the expressions of the Apostle
John in reference to the Logos, or Word, as identical with the Son.

In the third century the whole Church was agitated by the questions
which grew out of the relations between the Father and the Son. From the
person of Christ--so dear to the Church--the discussion naturally passed
to the Trinity. Then arose the great Alexandrian school of theology,
which attempted to explain and harmonize the revealed truths of the
Bible by Grecian dialectics. Hence interminable disputes among divines
and scholars, as to whether the F