Sermons Preached at Brighton: Third SeriesRobertson, Frederick William
Religion
Sermons Preached at Brighton: Third Series
Robertson, Frederick William
Church of England -- Sermons; Sermons, English -- 19th century
Once more, let us remember that principle which we expounded last
Sunday, that it is the law of Being that in proportion as you rise
from lower to higher life, the parts are more distinctly developed,
while yet the unity becomes more entire. You find for example, in the
lowest forms of animal life one organ performs several functions, one
organ being at the same time heart and brain and blood-vessels. But
when you come to man, you find all these various functions existing in
different organs, and every organ more distinctly developed; and yet
the unity of a man is a higher unity than that of a limpet. When you
come from the material world to the world immaterial, you find that
the more society is cultivated--the more man is cultivated--the more
marvellous is the power of developing distinct powers. In the savage
life it is almost all one feeling; but in proportion as the higher
education advances and the higher life appears, every power and
faculty developes and distinguishes itself, and becomes distinct and
separate. And yet just in proportion as in a nation every part is
distinct, the unity is greater, and just in proportion as in an
individual every power is most complete, and stands out most distinct,
just in that proportion has the man reached the entireness of his
Humanity.
Now brethren, we apply all this to the mind of God. The Trinitarian
maintains against the Unitarian and the Sabellian, that the higher you
ascend in the scale of being, the more distinct are the
consciousnesses, and that the law of unity implies and demands a
manifold unity. The doctrine of Sabellianism, for example, is this,
that God is but one essence--but one person under different
manifestations; and that when He made the world He was called the
Father, when He redeemed the world He was called the Son, and when He
sanctified the world He was called the Holy Ghost. The Sabellian and
the Unitarian maintain that the unity of God consists simply in a
unity of person, and in opposition to this does the Trinitarian
maintain that grandness, either in man or in God, must be a unity of
manifoldness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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