Of A Trinity. From Proverbial Philosophy
By Martin Farquhar Tupper
Despise not, shrewd reckoner, the God of a good man's worship,
Neither let thy calculating folly gainsay the unity of three:
Nor scorn another's creed, although he cannot solve thy doubts;
Reason is the follower of faith, where he may not be precursor:
It is written, and so we believe, waiting not for outward proof,
Inasmuch as mysteries inscrutable are the clear preroga-tives of godhead.
Reason hath nothing positive, faith hath nothing doubtful;
And the height of unbelieving wisdom is to question all things.
When there is marvel in a doctrine, faith is joyful and adoreth;
But when all is clear, what place is left for faith?
Tell me the sum of thy knowledge, is it yet assured of anything?
Despise not what is wonderfill, when all things are wonderful around thee.
From the multitude of like effects, thou sayest, behold a law:
And the matter thou art baffled in unmaking is to thy mind an element.
Then look abroad, I pray thee, for analogy holdeth everywhere.
And the Maker hath stamped his name on every creature of his hand:
I know not of a matter or a spirit, that is not three in one.
And truly should account it for a marval, a coin without the image of its Caesar.
Man talketh of himself as ignorant, but judgeth by himself as wise:
His own guess counteth he truth, but the notions of another are his scorn.
But bear thou yet with a brother, whose thought may be less subtle than thine own.
And suffer the passing speculation suggested by analogies to faith.
Like begetteth like, and the great sea of Existence
In each of its uncounted waves holdeth up a mirror to its Maker:
Like begetteth hke, and the spreading tree of bemg
With each of its trefoil leaves pointeth at the trinity of God.
Let him whose eyes have been unfilmed, read this homily in all things,
And thou, of duller sight, despise not him that readeth:
There be three grand principles; life, generation, and obedience;
Shadowing in every creature, the Spirit, and the Father, and the Son:
There be three grand unities, variously mixed in trinities.
Three catholic divisors of the million sums of matter:
Yea, though science hath not seen it, climbing the ladder of experiment,
Yet faith, in the presence of her God, promulgate the mighty truth;
Of three sole elements all nature's works consist:
The pine, and the rock to which it clingeth, and the eagle sailing around it:
The lion, and the northorn whale, and the deeps wherein he sporteth;
The lizard sleeping in the sun; the lightning flashing from a cloud;
The rose, and the ruby, and the pearl; each one is made of three;
And the three be the like ingredients, mingled in diverse measures.
Thyself hast within thyself body, and life, and mind:
Matter, and breath, and instinct, unite in all beasts of the field;
Substance, coherence, and weight, fashion the fabrics of the earth;
The will, the doing, and the deed, combine to frame a fact:
The stem, the leaf, and the flower; beginning, middle, and end;
Cause, circumstance, consequent: and every three is one.
Yea, the very breath of man's life consisteth of a trinity of vapours,
And the noonday light is a compound, the triune shadow of Jehovah.
Shall all things else be in mystery, and God alone be understood?
Shall finite fathom infinity, though it sound not the shallows of creation?
Shall a man comprehend his Maker, being yet a riddle to himself?
Or time teach the lesson that eternity cannot master?
If God be nothing more than one, a child can compass the thought;
But seraphs fail to unravel the wondrous unity of three.
One verily He is, for there can be but one who is all mighty;
Yet the oracles of nature and religion proclaim Him three in one.
And where were the value to thy soul, O miserable denizen of earth,
Of the idle pageant of the cross, where hung no sacrifice for thee?
Where the worth to thine impotent heart, of that stirred Bethesda,
All numbed and palsied as it is by the scorpion stings of sin?
No, thy trinity of nature, enchained by treble death,
Helplessly craveth of its God, himself for three salvations:
The soul to be reconciled in love, the mind to be glorified in light,
While this poor dying body leapeth into life.
And if indeed for us all the costly ransom hath been paid,
Bethink thee, could less than Deity have owned so vast a treasure?
Could a man contend with God, and stand against the bosses of His buckler,
Rendering the balance for guilt, atonement to the uttermost?
Thou art subtle to thine own thinking, but wisdom judgeth thee a fool,
Resolving thou wilt not bow the knee to a Being thou canst not comprehend:
The mind that could compass perfection were itself perfection's equal;
And reason refuseth its homage to a God who can be fulty understood.
Thou that despisest mystery, yet canst expound nothing,
Wherefore rejectest thou the fact that solveth the enigma of all things?
Wherefore veilest thou thine eyes, lest the light of revelation sun them,
And puttest aside the key that would open the casket of truth?
The mind and the nature of God is shadowed in all his works,
And none could have guessed of his essence, had He not uttered it himself.
Therefore, thou child of folly, that scornest the record of his wisdom,
Learn from the consistencies of nature the needful miracle of Godhead:
Yea, let the heathen be thy teacher, who adoreth many gods,
For there is no wide-spread error that hath not truth for its beginning.
Be content; thine eye cannot see all the sides of a cube at one view,
Nor thy mind in the self-same moment follow two ideas:
There are now many marvels in thy creed, believing what thou seest,
Then let not the conceit of intellect hinder thee from worshipping mystery.
Transcribed from the 25th edition "Proverbial Philosophy by Martin Farquhar Tupper" by Mick Puttock, August 2011 (Spelling, punctuation and grammer left mostly unchanged from the 25th edition)