truth: (b) the mystery of the trinity Divine. Yet it is the best we have. No higher is within our power. And provided the inadequacy is remembered, there is no harm done. But, in addition to the sheer inadequacy of speech, for which there is no remedy, there is another way in which language can mislead : and this can be remedied by taking thought. Ideas which are in themselves quite simple get tied up in our minds with other ideas, because in human experience the two things are always found together. Thus the moment we think of the words “father” and “son” we think of the father as older than the son, as existing before the son. But in applying words to the understanding of God, we must get at the essence of the word and take away from it whatever ideas belong merely to the condition of human life. The relation of “ paternity ” in the Godhead is not modelled upon human paternity: on the contrary human paternity is a shadow of the absolute fatherhood of the First Person of the Trinity. Thus a very slight examination of the idea of generation as such shows that the time-element does not belong to it. Generation means simply the origin of a living thing from another living thing, by communication of substance, unto similitude of nature, Wherfever in the origin of a being these two conditions are fulfilled — communication of substance, similitude of nature — then there is sonship. The time element proceeds not from the nature of sonship, but from the finite nature of man: he must reach a certain point of 85