I will now proceed to explain the distinction between the mystery and the revelation of Christ, between the letter and the spirit of the books of the Old and New Testament, between false and true religion, between superstition and idolatry on one side, and reason with growing knowledge in the Church on the other. I begin with the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. The Church of the dark ages has taught the doctrine professedly founded upon the letter of the Sacred Scriptures: of God, as consisting of three persons in one person, coexistent, co-equal, and co-eternal, which, in expression, has been abridged, under the name of Trinity, and described as the Holy Trinity; and, in definition or distinction, as Father, Son and Holy Ghost. This doctrine has always been dissented from while dissent has been tolerated. It is no more a physical absurdity than the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, or the changing of water to wine, or the feeding of five thousand with five small loaves and two fishes, or any other narrated miracle: still it has been dissented from, and when dissented from, no defence could be made of it. In every other case of dissent, the Church could make no defence and no other apology than ancientness of the doctrine in the Church. Truly this has been a verification of the blind leading the blind, until both fell into the ditch together. With a doctrine of personality in Deity, including the ideas of physical and moral power, this of the Trinity has been declared a mystery incomprehensible to the human mind; and I declare that a mystery incomprehensible to the human mind, pressed upon human attention, as of importance, is an absurdity, and must be an imposture; for who has comprehended it so to state? This is the matter-of-fact view of the subject. But the subject being a declared mystery in the theological sense, there is a spiritual interpretation to be put upon the language of the letter; and that I take to be thus:-- That the Trinity is not to be considered as of persons, but of principles; and then we shall find it a philosophical doctrine, true to nature, and proved by science; true to physical and to moral science.