his creatures. Enough has, however, been | advanced to demonstrate that the objection of the unintelligibility of the doctrine in question, comes with a peculiarly bad grace from the lips of a Deist,- since he not only believes in doctrines, the mystery of which cannot be increased by any addition which revelation can make to his creed, but (and this is a fact which might easily be proved, if the nature and length of this discourse would admit of it) those very truths to which he already assents, and upon the plainness and simplicity of which he sets so vast a value, become unspeakably more difficult from his refusal to add to them the illuminating doctrines, if we may be allowed the expression, with which the remaining truths of revelation can so unquestionably supply him.

There is but one class of sceptics in the universe, which can fairly apply the argument of the incomprehensibility of the Trinity as an objection to the reception of it, and that class is alluded to with sufficient plainness by David, when he says, "The fool has said in his heart, There is no God." We will readily confess, that he is not inconsistent when he withholds his belief from this great mystery; he credits nothing, hopes for nothing, lives for nothing; he professes to believe in the existence of no mysteries, and is himself at the very moment of making such a confession, the most appalling mystery upon the face of God's own earth; a creature defying his Creator, and permitted, for the present, to do so with impunity.

We now proceed addressing those who acknowledge the truth of revelation in general, but who do not admit the doctrine in question to select a few testimonies from sacred writ, in support of this great truth; and in this, we shall confine ourselves to the pages of the New Testament, that the too common evasion, of denominating every text in the Old Testament which speaks of the Almighty in the plural number a Hebraism, may have no weight. We shall also select only from among those passages, the authenticity of which has never been called in question; believing that the testimonies are so unequivocal, that if we were, without a struggle, to resign every text upon which even the shadow of a rational doubt has been cast, we should still possess more than sufficient evidence to establish this important point. The first passage to which we would call your attention, is the baptism of our blessed Lord, as you have heard it narrated in the second lesson for this morning's service, where God the Son is represented as visible in his human nature, ascending from the waters of Jordan; the presence of God the Holy Ghost manifested

by its dove-like descent upon our Lord; and God the Father, distinguished by the heavenly voice, hailing the first public appearance of the Mediator.

The next testimony of which we shall remind you is the language of Christ himself to his disciples after his resurrection, and immediately preceding his ascension: "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." It is surely impossible, that the meek and lowly Jesus could thus have associated himself and the Holy Ghost with the most high God, upon so important an occasion as the present, viz. the manner in which converts should be admitted to the blessings and privileges of the new religion, unless they were absolutely and unequivocally co-eternal, and coequal. Nothing short of this could, with humility be it spoken, justify the union implied by these words; and therefore we may be fully assured, that our Lord adopted it for no other purpose, than for ever to convince mankind, that the Son and the Holy Ghost are both of them, although different in person, "of one substance, power, and eternity" with each other, and the Father. We would just mention, that when we thus use the word " substance," we do not use it in the common acceptation of the word, implying "corporeal nature or body," but in its original meaning, viz. "every being subsisting in and by itself;" for this is evidently, from the derivation, the simple meaning of the word substance. So clear, indeed, is the testimony which these words of our Lord afford, that Bishop Burnet has left this decisive comment upon them, "The plainness of this charge, and the great occasion upon which it was given, makes it an argument of such force and evidence, that it may justly determine the whole matter."

Contenting ourselves, therefore, with these two most convincing testimonies from the Gospels, we shall endeavour to shew, that the disciples understood them in the same manner as ourselves, and that they, whose creed was formed under the immediate and personal instructions of our Lord, and who therefore could not possibly have remained in error upon so essential a point, held this doctrine precisely in the same manner that the Church delivers it to us. In the beginning of his first epistle, St. Peter addresses all the Christian converts thus: "Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience, and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ."

Again, in the epistle to Titus: "According to his mercy, he (God the Father) saved us by the washing of regeneration, and renewing

66

of the Holy Ghost, which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour." The last instance which we shall bring forward, in attestation of the fact, that the disciples themselves held the doctrine of which we are this day called upon to speak, is the language of the text, with which benediction most of the epistles written by St. Paul are concluded: The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all." Here are three distinct blessings derived from three distinct persons, in the second of whom we contemplate the Deity himself. Now, can we for a moment imagine that the holy apostle St. Paul could so far forget his allegiance to his God, as to place the name of any being before that of the mysterious Jehovah?-unless, indeed, that Being were an equal partaker of the glories of his eternal throne?

It is, then, sufficiently obvious from these examples, that in requiring your belief in the doctrine of the ever-blessed Trinity, our Church is simply demanding your acquiescence to an eternal truth, proposed to us with all the authority of God the Father, proclaimed to us by God the Son, while preaching the Gospel upon earth, and further enforced and insisted upon by God the Holy Ghost, under whose inspiration every doctrine in the New Testament must have been promulgated. Leaving, then, these brief observations, with the prayer, that by the power of the blessed Trinity they may be carried to the hearts of those who need them, we proceed to address ourselves to the second class among our hearers, who do not disbelieve the doctrine in question, but who possess very indistinct and clouded notions of it.

In addressing ourselves to you, we shall confine the remarks we are about to offer to the language of the text; not with any intention of pretending to reconcile, or to explain the nature of that Trinity in unity, which must ever far surpass the limits of our finite understandings; but acknowledging, and most firmly believing, the truth of the doctrine, we shall attempt to render it useful, by God's blessing, by pointing out the distinct portion which the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost respectively claim, in the work of man's redemption.

"God so

The first great cause of our redemption was the love of God the Father. loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son to the end that all that believe in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Well may we credit the assertion of St. John when he says, "God is love:" whether we view him as creating, or preserving us, as sending his Son from his own bosom to die

for us, or as accepting the vicarious sacrifice which that blessed Son has made for us; as receiving the perfect righteousness of that pure and holy substitute in the place of our imperfect obedience, or as rewarding us for merits not our own, but His who bought us with the price of his precious blood,- all is love-pure, perfect, heavenly, and undeserved love, in celebrating which the highest adoration even of the hosts of heaven must fall infinitely below its merits, and for rightly estimating which, eternity itself will be too short. This love of God, then, was the original cause of our redemption, without which we must have perished everlastingly. In the first Person, therefore, of the ever-blessed Trinity we behold the originating cause; in the second, we shall see the procuring cause of our redemption, even the Lord Jesus Christ.

66

No Christian can for a moment doubt that all who are partakers of the salvation of the Gospel should be "zealous of good works;" because, as the apostle to the Ephesians says, "We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them:" but, at the same time, no Christian will maintain, with the Bible in his hands, that these, or that any thing, or every thing, he can do, can be the procuring cause of his salvation. No, my brethren, I trust you have not so learned Christ." The only procuring cause of our salvation is Jesus Christ. Neither men nor angels may divide with him the glorious achievement; it is "the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ," and that alone, which "bringeth salvation." It is He," who, by his one oblation of himself, once offered, has made a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world;" a sacrifice which is intended, not to supply the deficiencies of our imperfect services, but to be the whole and entire " price," as the apostle calls it, of that kingdom which he hath opened to all believers; and by which sacrifice he has insured to every true believer, that he should be accounted righteous in the sight of God. Great as was the love of God, his justice forbade that sinning man should be received again into his favour, until a full satisfaction had been made for the guilt of the broken law: it was the eternal and co-equal Son alone who could, and who did, make this satisfaction; by his precious death upon the cross, the law was honoured, God's justice, infinite as his love, was satisfied, and our debt, a debt so unspeakably great, that all the virtues of which men so loudly boast— if collected from the holiest act of our great progenitor Adam himself, to the most selfdenying deed of benevolence of the last of his descendants-would weigh but as the

light dust in the balance against it, this overwhelming debt has Christ discharged by his own blood, to the uttermost farthing. Thus, Christian brethren, does God remain perfectly just, and yet the justifier of him who believeth in Jesus; thus " mercy and truth have met together, righteousness and peace have kissed each other."

But it still remains for the third Person in the ever-blessed Trinity to bear his heavenly aid in the glorious work of man's redemption. God the Father has originated it, God the Son has perfected it; it is God the Holy Ghost who can alone apply it, and thus form that wondrous link which connects the sacrifice of the Saviour with the necessities of the sinner. Born into this world children of wrath, and heirs of condemnation, it is only "by the washing of regeneration, and the renewing of the Holy Ghost," that we can ever become the children of grace, and heirs of everlasting life. The word of God expressly says, "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." In utter ignorance, therefore, as we all are, while in a state of nature, of the things pertaining to life eternal, it is the office of this Holy Spirit not only to change our corrupt hearts and wayward wills, by "taking away the heart of stone, and giving us a heart of flesh," but also to enlighten our darkened minds; for our Lord has promised that the Spirit of truth shall "guide us into all truth;" and, again, that "he shall take of the things of Christ, and shew them unto us;" and this office he is continually performing, through the instrumentality of the word, and of the external means of grace, upon which he bestows all the efficacy and the unction. Thus, as we have no moral perception of divine things until we are thus assisted to feel, as well as to understand them, so have we no feelings of the love of God, until it be shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given to us. "Blessed, then, be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus, who hath blessed us in Christ with all spiritual blessings," that this Holy Spirit is not the circumscribed privilege of a few, not the scanty boon dealt out with jealous hand, but the free, the inexhaustible gift, freely offered to every soul who seeks it, to every individual whom we now address, if faithfully and devoutly using these means of grace; for Christ has expressly declared that our "heavenly Father shall give his Holy Spirit to them that ask him." Ob

tain, then, brethren, clear and distinct views of these offices of the third Person of the holy Trinity; it is by communion with Him,

as our Guide, Sanctifier, and Comforter; by receiving him into our hearts; by obtaining from him that faith which is his gift; by having our will rendered, through his influences, conformable to the will of God, and our affections spiritualised, that we are made one with Christ, and Christ with us; that we become partakers of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and heirs with him of the love, the unspeakable, the unbounded love of God the Father.

In conclusion, we would address a few words to those who do not call in question the great doctrine presented to us by the services of this day, and yet whose lives and conversations afford the most undeniable proof, that they have not really received it, in the love of it, into their hearts. To all such I would say, with tenderness of feeling, but with great plainness of speech, the purity of the doctrines to which you yield this inoperative assent, so far from availing you any thing at the great day, when God shall judge the quick and dead, will plead trumpet-tongued against you. That you could believe in the existence of God the Father without deprecating his wrath, and earnestly desiring to be a partaker of his love; that you could confess the mediatorial office of God the Son, and have made no efforts to be the object of his grace; that you could freely acknowledge the existence and offices of God the Holy Ghost, and yet live for years in ignorance of his communion, without offering one fervent, heartfelt prayer for his indispensable influence upon your own mind, to bring you from darkness into light, and from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God; that you should fully acknowledge the reality and the truth of these things, and that your daily habits of life should tend, as far as in you lies, to disprove and invalidate them, are surely the most melancholy and fatal contradictions. Those who, not born in a Christian country, are excluded from the means of grace, and from the joyful sound of the Gospel, we leave with trembling uncertainty to the uncovenanted mercies of our God; but respecting those who hear the word of God and do not receive it, who have the offers of salvation proposed to them and do not accept them, that word itself precludes the possibility of cherishing this uncertain hope; for it has revealed a fact too plain to be misunderstood, and too awfully important to be suppressed, "that they who believe and are baptised, shall be saved, and that they who believe not, shall be damned:" where the belief intended by our Lord is not that unreflecting assent which men readily yield, because it is less exertion to the mind thus

to assent to a proposition, than to examine or to deny it; but that true faith wrought in the heart by the Holy Spirit, evidenced in the daily conduct of those who possess it, by its never-failing fruits of holiness. Earnestly, then, would we implore those among our hearers who are conscious that this important work is yet to be performed in their hearts, that they would seek the Lord while he may be found, that they would call upon him while he is near. There is nothing in the Bible view of salvation to discourage you; every thing to draw you forward, to promote your advancement, and to cheer, and comfort, and support you in this advancement; for "He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ." For the sake of your own immortal soul, for the sake of God the Father, of God the Son, of God the Holy Ghost, be in earnest in this great business; begin to avoid temptation, to separate from those persons and those scenes which are fatal to all true religion, to read the Bible, to pray in faith, to offer constantly and fervently the scriptural petition of our Church, "Turn thou us, good Lord, and so shall we be turned;" and then, in the words of the judicious Hooker, "Blessed for ever and ever be that mother's child whose faith hath made him the child of God. The earth may shake, the pillars of the world may tremble under us, the countenance of the heaven may be appalled, the sun may lose his light, the moon her beauty, the stars their glory; but, concerning the man who trusteth in God, if the fire have proclaimed itself unable so much as to singe a hair of his head-if lions, beasts ravenous by nature and keen with hunger, being set to devour, have, as it were, religiously adored the very flesh of the faithful man, what is there in the world that shall change his heart, overthrow his faith, alter his affection towards God, or the affection of God to him? If I be of this note, who shall make a separation between me and my God? Shall tribulation, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? No; I am persuaded that neither tribulation, nor anguish, nor persecution, nor the sword, nor any other creature, shall ever prevail so far over me. I know in whom I have believed: I am not ignorant whose precious blood hath been shed for me; I have a Shepherd full of kindness, full of care, and full of power; unto Him I commit myself; his own finger hath engraven this sentence in the tables of my heart, Satan hath desired to winnow thee as wheat, but I have prayed that thy faith fail not,'-therefore the assurance of my hope I will labour to keep as a jewel unto the end; and by labour, through the gracious mediation of

his prayer, I shall keep it." The means of grace, sufficient for all the purposes of salvation-God's word, his Sabbath, his ministers, his sacraments-are all open to you; the "communion of the Holy Ghost" is offered to every suppliant; "the grace of

our Lord Jesus Christ" is withheld from none who seek it; for whosoever will, may take of the water of life freely. Surely there is nothing wanting, but your own free and full acceptance of the Gospel covenant, to make you a partaker of the "love of God;" that love which, when spread abroad in your soul, will shed its hallowed influence upon every thought, motive, and desire of your heart, and every pursuit, action, and pleasure of your life, like the glorious effect of the last rays of the setting sun, which, colouring every object upon which they fall, bring the whole horizon into some degree of beautiful resemblance to the fount of light from which they flow.

Therefore, beloved brethren, "Building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life." And now to that Trinity in unity, whom we have thus feebly endeavoured to proclaim, to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, be ascribed all honour and glory, for ever and ever.

BIBLICAL ILLUSTRATIONS.*-No. VIII. It is common for those who lead a pastoral life in the East, to place themselves in the door of the tent, both to enjoy the fresh air and to enable them to keep an eye on the flocks and cattle which feed around them. Shaw says, in speaking of the Bedouin Arabs, "The Bedouins, as their great ancestors the Arabians did before them (Is. xiii. 20), live in tents, called hhymas, from the shelter which they afford the inhabitants, and beet al shaar, that is, houses of hair, from the materials, or webs of goats' hair, whereof they are made. They are the very same which the ancients called mapalia, and were then, as they are to this day, secured from the weather by a covering only of such hair-cloth as our coal-sacks are made of. Hence Virgil's describing them as having rara tecta,' thin roofs. Nothing certainly can afford a more delightful prospect than a large extensive plain covered with verdure, and having a number of those movable habitations pitched in circles upon them. When we find any number of these tents together (and I have seen them from two to three hundred), they constitute a douwar. The fashion of each tent is of an oblong figure, not unlike the bottom of a ship turned upside down. They differ in bigness, according to the number of people who live in them, and are accordingly supported, some with one

pillar, others with two or three, whilst a curtain or

Gen. xviii. First Lesson, Evening Service-Trinity Sunday.

carpet let down upon occasion from each of these divisions turns the whole into so many separate apartments. These tents are kept firm and steady by bracing down their eaves with cords, tied to hooked wooden pins, well pointed, which they drive into the ground with a mallet; one of these pins answering to the nail, as the mallet does to the hammer, which Jael used in fastening to the ground the temples of Sisera (Judges, iv. 21). The pillars are straight poles, eight or ten feet high, and three or four inches in thickness, serving not only to support the tent itself, but being full of hooks fixed there for the purpose, the Arabs hang upon them their clothes, baskets, saddles, and accoutrements of war. Holofernes, as we read in Judith, xiii. 16, made the like use of the pillar of his tent, by hanging his falchion upon it, where it is called the pillar of the bed, from the custom, perhaps, that has always prevailed in these countries, of having the upper end of the carpet, mattress, or whatever else they lie upon, turned from the skirts of the tent towards the centre of it. But the canopy, as we render it, verse 9, should, I presume, be rather called the guat or musquito net, which is a close curtain of gauze or fine linen, used all over the East by people of better fashion to keep out the flies. But the Arabs have nothing of this kind, who, in taking their rest, lie stretched out upon the ground without bed, mattress, or pillow, wrapping themselves up only in their hykes, and lying, as they find room, upon a mat or carpet in the middle or in the corner of the tent."

Réné Caillie thus describes the tent of King Lam Khaté, whom he visited on his way to Timbuctoo: "The king's tent differs in nothing from those of his subjects; it is twenty feet long and ten wide, and covered, like all the others, with a stuff made of sheep's hair; at each end are eight leather straps, and as many stakes, upon which it is stretched. Two upright poles, ten or twelve feet long, crossing at top, and fitting into a cross-piece a foot long and six inches wide, are placed in the centre to raise it. This cross-piece rises above the uprights, and prevents their ends from piercing the awning. A carpet of sheep's hair manufactured in the country surrounds the interior of the tent; four stakes are driven in at one end, supporting two cross-bars, over which a cord or string is passed in the form of a net, and upon this is placed their baggage. Their things are stowed in square leather sacks, shaped like portmanteaus, with an opening at the end; and these bags have a lid secured by a padlock. The harness of the horses and camels hangs up round the tent. The king's bed is after the same fashion as that of the negroes, consisting of a hurdle covered with mats, and raised by stakes and cross-bars about a foot from the ground. A mat spread on the ground covers the unoccupied part of the tent, and serves the king's attendants for a bed. The common people lie on the ground on mats, under which they sometimes spread a little straw. A matting is put round the goods at the end of the tent, to preserve them from thieves. The store of water is kept in skins upon stakes in the inside of the tents; it is reserved for the masters and the calves, and refused to the slaves; and even she who has the trouble to fetch it cannot obtain a little but by dint of entreaties, and after enduring all sorts of mortifications." 66 Caillie afterwards adds, The

king's table-service consists of six or eight deep round wooden dishes, each containing about three quarts, and used to hold milk and other articles; three metal pots and two of earthenware, which they obtain from the fouta, form the cooking-apparatus, and complete the list of the furniture. This description will serve for all other tents as well as the king's, except that the poorer class have mats instead of a carpet."

Buckingham, in speaking of his journey from Aleppo to the Euphrates, and of his visit to Sheikh Ramadan, says, "When we alighted at his tent-door, our horses were taken from us by his son, a young man well dressed in a scarlet cloth benish, and a shawl of silk for a turban. The Sheikh, his father, was sitting beneath the awning in front of the tent itself. The tent occupied a space of about thirty feet square, and was formed by one large awning supported by twentyfour small poles, in four rows of six each, the ends of the awning being drawn out by cords fastened to pegs in the ground. Each of these poles giving a pointed form to the part of the awning which it supported, the outside looked like a number of umbrella-tops, or small Chinese spires. The half of this square was open in front and at the sides, having two rows of poles clear, and the third was closed by a reeded partition, behind which was the apartment for the females. It thus gave a perfect outline of the most ancient temples; and as these tents were certainly still more ancient as dwellings of men, if not as places of worship to gods, than any buildings of stone, it struck me forcibly on the spot as a probable model from which the first architectural works of these countries were taken. We had here an open portico of an oblong form, with two rows of columns of six each in front, and the third engaged in the wall that enclosed the body of the tent all around; the first corresponding to the porticoes of temples; and the last, as well in its design as in the sacredness of its appropriation, to the sanctuaries of the most remote antiquity.

"While we were talking of the Turcomans, who had alarmed us on our way, a meal was prepared within; and soon afterwards warm cakes baked on the hearth, cream, honey, dried raisins, butter, lebben, and wheat boiled in milk, were served to the company. Neither the Sheikh himself nor any of his family partook with but stood around, to wait upon their guests.

us,

"If there could be traced a resemblance between the form of this tent and that of the most ancient buildings of which we have any knowledge, our reception there no less exactly corresponded to the picture of the most ancient manners of which we have any detail. When the three angels appeared to Abraham in the plains of Mamre, he was sitting in the tent-door in the heat of the day. And when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent-door, and bowed himself towards the ground; and Abraham hastened into the tent unto Sarah, and said, Make ready quickly three measures of fine meal, knead it, and make cakes upon the hearth. And he took butter and milk, and the calf which he had dressed, and set it before them, and he stood by them under the tree, and they did eat' (Gen. xviii. 2, 6, 8). The angels are represented as merely passengers on their journey like ourselves; for the rights of hospitality were shewn to them before they had made their mission known; so