The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1910-07-27
THE PULPIT.
4 BRILLIANT SUNDAY SERMON BY
THE REV. j. H. MELISH.
Theme: The Trinity.

Brooklyn. N. Y.-The Rev. John
Howard Melish, rector of the Church
of the Holy Trinity, preached a SER
mon on THE T%rinitarian Conception
of Cod" which has attracted much
Gttention and the publication of
which has been requested. The text
was from st. John 1926: '"When
the Comforter is come, whom I will
send unto you from the Father, even
the spirit of truth. which proceedeth'
from the Father, He shall bear wit
ness of Me-" Mr.. Melish said:
The vital religious thinking of our
day is concerned with experience. A
creed or theology is of little value
because it is old and has the author
ity of ONE council; it's worth, it's
truth, springs from its ability to
make articulate the facts of life.
Does this, theology" we ask, Gin
terpret experience or is it a mere
academic formula which a few intel
lectuals have spun for themselves?"
We OF to-day have distinguished be-
tween religion and theology. Re-
ligion is the life of God in the soul
of man. Theology is the interpreta-
ton Of this life. 1t is therefore re-
lated to religion as botany is related
to the flowers. A man may be re-
ligious and be entirely ignorant Of
theology. He may be religious and
reject the theology OF. the past. He
may be religious and hold the New
Theology. The theology which is of
real value, whether old or new, is
that which interprets the religious
life, which takes those experiences Of
the common folk, the average man,
and tells him what they mean.
In the light of this new approach
to theology does the Trinitarian con-
ception Of God mean anything? Or
is it a mere dogma Of the church
which some will accept out of loyalty
to the church, and others will reject
out of loyalty to the truth and their
own intelligence? Is there any real
experience which receives interpreta-
ton from the Trinitarian theology?
Does this Trinitariap conception Of
the life divine bring to our human
life enough to enable a man to accept
1t with loyalty and sincerity? It al
once my privilege, as university lee
tnrer, to come into somewhat init
mate relations with some young men
who were studying to become Jewish
rabbis. What interested them was
the Christian thought of the trinity.
They wondered how any intelligent
person could believe in the Trinity,
for to their monotheism it seemed
like deifying q man y whom they
were willing to regard as second only
to Isaiah-and so denying the funda-
mental truth Of their religion that
God is one. 1t is only by going
deeper into life itself, by getting a
broader view of the larger human
life we call history that we are able
to enter deeper into God. The Trim
itarian conception OF the divine life,
II it is to be accepted with loyalty
and sincerity, must give a more in
telligent and satisfactory interpre-
tation of life and history than the
Unitarian conception of God. AS
Gwatkin says in his book, "The
knowledge of God" "The surface
drift seems Unitarian in Jul time,
and advanced thinkers take it for
certain that the religion Of the fu-
ture will be some form Of Unitarian
ism. Were the political outlook diff
ferent I might have less difficulty in
agreeing with them; but a broader
view of history seems to point an
other way"
IN the New Testament there Is no
Trinitarian theology. In fact, there
is no theology of any kind if by the
ology we mean organized knowledge
Of religion. Even the Fourth Gospel
and St. Paul's letters, said to be the
illogical, are not theology in our mod
ern sense of a systematic divinity.
The New Testament is a book of re-
ligion; it is thu accord Of experience;
1t deals with he, not the theory of
life. There Is, how yer, in the gos-
pels and epistles what we may call a
Trinitarian experience. In this text,
for example, there is reference to the
Comforter, the Father and to Jesus
Himself. Father, Son and Spirit in
this and in manv other passages are
spoken of as concerned with life, the
life which men are living here on
earth. The spirit which is to be in
men, comforting, guiding, inspiring
them in all the vicissitudes and eff
forts of life, is said to bear witness
to Jesus. 1t will take Of Him His
truth and life, and show them unto
men. AS a scholar bears witness to
his teacher, even though he may go
far beyond him, so the Spirit wit
nesses to Jesus. On the other hand,
the spirit has it's origin in God; it
comes from the Father, from whom
Jesus Himself also came. Behind
both Jesus and the Spirit is the Fa-
Their, who loveth all His children.
This is not academic language, but
the words of life, descriptions of
actual experience of Christian men
and women all through the cen
turtles; all for whom the person Of
Jesus has deep spiritual value and
who have confidence in the spirit OF
truth and believe in the f%atherhood
of God have shared this three-fold
life and experience Of the men Of the
New Testament.
1t is this experience which forms
the foundation of the Christian re-
ligion. Every man who shares it be-
longs to the church by virtue OF this
life. It is the misfortune, nay, the
calamity, of the church that it has
not kept this fact clearly in mind.
Again and again it has substituted
for it some theory of organization
or doctrinal statement which imme-
diately destroyed the church's unity
and created rivalries and separatists.
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