Religion and Natural Law CHAPTER I THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY A threefold cord is not quickly broken.-Ecclesiastes iv: 12. Τ 10 the reflective person, all nature is full of mystery. The average man, who is not given to overmuch reflection, is only at rare intervals aware of the problems which lie implicit in all the details of his surroundings; he is content, as indeed we are all apt to be, to think that he understands a thing when he has described it in less familiar terms. The seed produces the plant because warmth and moisture cause it to germinate; the bird builds its nest because its instinct teaches it to do so; I hear the clock strike because the air transmits sound waves to my ears; the apple-tree bears apples because -well, because if it bore plums or walnuts it 1 wouldn't be an apple-tree; and so on: statements which may be true so far as they go, but which do no more than pick the problem up, disguise it, and set it down again. This may be unavoidable; but it has the unfortunate consequence that in so far as the problem is relegated to a less familiar subject-matter, its existence can more easily be ignored or forgotten, and the mystery that is in nature be more easily overlooked. Sometimes one finds a man cheerfully satisfied with an explanation which is not even a true statement of fact; as when an ex-Fellow of a college once told me in all seriousness-he was discussing the progress of aviation-that birds were able to fly because they were lighter than air, or again when a lecturer, who is now an Archbishop, announced in my hearing that the reason why hot air tended to rise was because the heat made it contract and so there was less of it. But whether or not we thus rest content as a rule with explanations which simply remove the mystery a little further off, there are for all of us times when the sense of wonder and bafflement comes upon us with irresistible force, and we stand awed and silenced in the presence of a power which we cannot understand. The experience of primitive and savage races of men is not, in this respect, different from our own. On the one hand, many things in their natural environment, sufficiently strange in themselves, are taken for granted and accepted easily because they are common and familiar; but at the same time others, as we know, on account of their striking character or their irregular occurrence, are felt to involve the element of mystery, and gradually come to exert a profound influence upon their religious and social beliefs. Such are the facts connected with birth and death, the eclipse and the thunderstorm, the sun-rise, and the return of spring. They come, some of them, to be associated in a special way with the idea of God, and to be regarded as peculiarly appropriate to the divine presence. Beliefs of this kind tend to persist when the early stages of culture out of which they sprang are left behind. It was long before the Hebrews ceased to think of thunder as the voice of God, or of the lightning as His arrow; and we know how the majesty and sacred obligation of the Ten Commandments were impressed upon them, and are still impressed upon their descendants, by a traditional account of awful happenings at Sinai on the occasion of their first promulgation. Even to-day, and in this country, there are many |