bolical or representative of spiritual things as all appearances in the spiritual world are. Why did Abraham see three men as one God? Because Abraham at that time represented the childhood of the church, or of the Lord in the church, when it is particularly under the care of the celestial angels, and before Isaac (representing the rational principle) was born. So long as men think sensuously, or in accordance with the reports of the senses, and do not correct their first impressions by rational analysis, the divine trinity of Love, Wisdom and Use, known also as Father, Son and Holy Ghost, is presented to their perceptive faculties as three distinct persons; while their higher intuitions speak loudly for the essential unity of the Godhead.
The mass of the Christian world has not yet developed beyond this stage of sensuous interpretation. The cultivation of the rational and scientific elements of thought will lead it to higher ground and enable it to substitute real for apparent truths.
Why did God appear under a dual and not a triune human form to Lot? In correspondence with the things represented, which were those relating to judgment, involving the salvation of the faithful and the damnation of the wicked. The
