"Thou shalt have none other gods but Me." The name of this one and only God they learnt in the days of the prophets to be "Father." So they could say with us"I believe in One God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.” But there they stopped, as they stop now. They had several intimations in their Scriptures of a plurality of Persons in the Godhead; but they passed them by. They heard of God's Son and of God's Spirit; but they could not enter into the fulness of the meaning of the words. Divine dignity was not obscurely intimated of the Messiah; † yet it was but a human deliverer they expected. After all their history Israel had not learnt, as they have not learnt now, to conceive of any other person than the Father being very God.

66

So the matter stood when the Son of God became incarnate, and appeared among the Jews as Jesus of Nazareth. He opened His lips to speak; and they heard Him not merely claiming to be the Christ, and so the Son of God, but using the term Son in a sense hitherto undreamt of. My Father worketh hitherto, and I work" "I and My Father are one -no wonder that on the occasions of His uttering these words the Jews would have stoned Him for blasphemy, because that He, being a man, made Himself equal with God, made Himself God. So also was it when He claimed for Himself, not pre-existence only, but eternal being, saying, "Before Abraham was" (not "I was," but) "I ain." § That in His words which His enemies were so

* Isaiah lxiii. 16; Mal. ii. 10.

† Isaiah ix. 6; Micah v. 2; Zech. xii. 10, xiii. 7.

quick to detect His disciples could not be slow to learn. The outburst of Thomas-" my Lord and my God"struck the first note of the acknowledgment of the Saviour's Godhead, which has since swelled to a mighty harmony in which the Church of all nations has praised His Name.

The Church had thus learnt that there is another Person besides the Father-even the Son-who is very and eternal God. And now she had to learn the same thing of that Spirit or Breath of God of which Moses and David and Isaiah had spoken. The Lord Jesus, before He went away, had told His disciples of another Comforter whom He would send to take His place. This Comforter, He said, is the Holy Ghost. He already dwells with you, but He shall be in you. He shall fulfil divers important functions for Me: He shall reprove the world: He shall guide you into all truth. Such language prepared them to perceive that the Spirit God breathes out is as truly a Person as the Son He begets. And the Day of Pentecost made it certain. On that day the Holy Ghost came down from heaven and took up His abode in them. They knew it by the rushing mighty wind and the cloven tongues of fire; they knew it by the new life which coursed through their spiritual veins, by the new discernment they felt to see the truth and new energy to declare it, by the ecstasy filled with which they spake in strange tongues the wonderful works of God. And now this Power which had come among them spoke as a Person,* and divided His gifts as He willed, with sovereign authority, and searched the deep things of God, and made them known to the Church. ‡

Without doubt the

* Acts xiii. 2. † 1 Cor. xii. II.

+ Ibid. ii. 10.

"other Comforter was a Person, even as Christ was a Person; and as manifestly He was no creature, but eternal and Divine. St. Peter convicts Ananias of the heinousness of lying to the Holy Ghost by saying, "thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God."* The Church has taken up his word, and acknowledged that the Spirit is with the Father and the Son together to be worshipped and glorified. The Gift of Pentecost completed the revelation which the Birth of Bethlehem had begun; and she bowed her head and said, "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost."

In like manner we, when Pentecost has crowned our commemorations of the Divine revealings, may well devote its octave to the contemplation of the complete truth, and worship One God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity.

The Three Bibine Persons and Their Oneness.

2 Cor. xiii. 14.

"THE grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all.

Amen.”

The earliest divine truth we learn at our mother's knee is the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. "Grace" is free favour, as opposed to wrath on the one hand, and

*Acts v. 4.

to the reward of merit on the other.

And the free

favour towards us of the Son of God is expressed by "Ye know the grace of

St. Paul in this same Epistle.*

"

our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich." His grace," therefore, is that mind which was in Him when, being in the form of God, He emptied Himself, and took upon Him the form of a servant and when further, being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient to death, even the death of the cross. And so it is the theme of that sweet story of old which we learned in our childhood, which made the Name of Jesus as ointment poured forth, and bent our heads in adoring love when we named it. "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ:" -it may well be the first element in the blessing pronounced by the Apostle upon the Church.

But as we grow older, and begin to enquire into the things wherein we have been instructed, the question arises who is this Lord Jesus Christ? Did He come of Himself to do this redeeming work, or did Another send Him? He is the Bringer to us of every blessing: is there One from Whom He brings it, Who is His Author as He is ours? In a word, we ask if He is the Son of God, who and what is His Father? we become inheritors of that highest thought, that greatest truth, which has visited or can visit mankindthe idea of God. The Eternal, the Omnipotent, the Omniscient, the Infinite, the Creator and Sustainer of all things, the Invisible Lord of the Universe, Whom men in all ages had been feeling after if haply they

* Ch. viii. 9.,

And so

might find Him,-He, as He has revealed Himself to His chosen, is declared to us. We learn concerning God as we are shown the Father. All things indeed that the Father hath are the Son's: yet since they are originally in the Father, to His Name they are specially attached. "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God"-so, by prerogative right, we characterize the Father. And it is because we have first learnt the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that our next lesson is—not so much the power or the wisdom, as -the love of God. He who beholds the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ sees a radiance the light whereof is love. Our gracious Lord who comes in perfect love, comes also from perfect love, when He is made very man for our salvation. Aye more, He is Love of Love, as He is Light of Light and both because He is God of God. It is God who so loved the world that He gave His Only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. It is God who commendeth His love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Thus to know the only true God, and Jesus Christ. whom He hath sent, is life eternal. In proportion as we grow up in this life shall we be prepared for the third step in our knowledge of things divine. For as we have learnt the common love to all of the One God, and the common grace of the One Lord, so we shall be entering into the resulting unity which finds place among mankind. As we emerge from the shelter of the family, and take our own position in the world, the all-important question is-how am I to regard those around me? Am I to love my neighbour, but to hate my enemy?

Am I to

regard as my enemy all outside a particular circle,—my