no less than a Spirit recreating, at one and the same time, in God's image, myriads of immortal beings. It is the Spirit doing this, not only by infusing new thoughts and desires into men, but by making them partakers of a new nature, the nature of the adorable Second Adam now at the right hand of God,—and enlarging and enlightening their minds, so that they should know God to be their adopted Father, and have Him for their temple, their light, their fountain of joy, the conscious home and rest of their souls.

Surely these are divine works-we cannot help feeling them to be such. God, in the Old Testament, has challenged these to be His peculiar works; and so these works lose all their reality and virtue, if they are ascribed to inferior agents, as the Son and the Holy Ghost would be if they were not each of them respectively God. And so they who have rejected the doctrine of the Trinity have never stopped there; they have invariably proceeded to deny or explain away the atonement, the proper priesthood of Christ, and all that is heavenly and supernatural about the work and indwelling of the Spirit, all the grace of the Sacraments, and of the apostolic ministry-in short, everything that makes Christianity of value to sinners.

Their principles naturally lead them to do this; for if there are any works which our reason

tells us would require God for their doer, they are such works of redeeming and sanctifying as we read of in the New Testament.

Such is the Scripture proof of this doctrine, and the reason why we should hold it very fast: let us see to it that we do so. Let us pray God that we may "continue stedfast in this faith." Let us see to it, also, that we are able to give a reason for this our faith; and let us see to it that our daily lives show that we believe in the value of the blood that bought us-for it is the blood of the Eternal Son-and may we work out our salvation as those who know that it is no angel or spirit, or created power, but God, even God the Holy Ghost, who "worketh in us to will and to do of His good. pleasure."

364

SERMON XXV.

THE DEEP THINGS OF GOD.

JOB Xi. 7, 8.

"Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know?"

ON this day we are called upon to contemplate the great mystery of God in Three Persons-that God is One whilst He is Three, and Three whilst He is One. In the words of the creed that we have just confessed, "There is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one; the glory equal, the majesty co-eternal." On former Trinity Sundays I have expounded to you the proof of this doctrine as it exists in God's Word, and I shall consequently not linger upon this part of the subject this morning, but merely very cursorily remind you of the way in which God in His Holy Word commends this great truth to our faith, and then I shall go on to another point connected with this doctrine which seems to demand particular attention at this time.

The proof of the doctrine of the Trinity as it is contained in the Bible is the most satisfactory possible to a candid andhumble mind. It is a proof which grows upon us, the more we take God's word in simple faith, and the more we compare spiritual things with spiritual. It is simply this, that everything which can possibly be said of God, as regards His nature and attributes, as regards His working in the world and in the Church, as regards His love, and grace, and mercy, and justice, and power, and eternity, is said of Three Persons equally, not merely of One. In everything that the Bible reveals about God as of moment for us to believe, whether it be the creation of the world, or the setting up of the Jewish dispensation, or the carrying on of God's providential designs, or the coming of the long-promised Deliverer, or the redemption of the world by Him, or the setting up of the Church, or the application to individual souls of the general salvation wrought by Christ,-in all these we have Three Persons co-equally working, so that the salvation of God, no matter how we look at it-whether as the salvation of the world, or the Church, or the individual,-is altogether a salvation in which not One but Three Persons work together, and have glory given to them for doing so. Now all this shuts me up to the doctrine of the Trinity as stated in the creeds of the Church. The salvation of

my soul is to me, as a sinner, the greatest of all possible considerations-it is no less than my eternal well-being. Now, if it were not for the doctrine of the Trinity, I should have to believe, if I believed my Bible, that two other Beings besides my God had a share in every stage of the work of my salvation. I could not help thinking more of such beings than of God—I <could not help being closer drawn to them than I am to my very Creator-and led to rely more upon them than upon Him. The result would be, that the more I looked upon my Bible as a message from God my Creator, the more it would be a snare to me; for it would lead me naturally to think more of the work of the Son and of the Spirit than of God. But, blessed be God, I cannot do this; for now I find that the more I honour the Son of God, the more I honour the Father whose image He is, and who sent Him for this purpose, that, in seeing and accepting Him, man might see and accept the Eternal God: and the more I desire and pray for the in-dwelling of the Blessed Spirit, the more I desire the in-dwelling of God Himself in my soul.

So that, in point of fact, the doctrine of the Trinity, as it is put forth in the creeds, is not so much a mystery as the solution of a greater mystery. The mystery is, that throughout the whole Bible the Son and the Holy Ghost should be represented as bearing the names, and sharing the glory, and doing