might." One Lord, essentially one, in substance, and in distinction from the gods of the heathen, which were many; one, as an object of simple and undivided worship; one, as the object of allegiance; one, as a unit necessary to be understood when the law was about to be solemnly announced, and repeated, and enforced on their observance. And so God is properly, essentially, and absolutely ONE only living and true God, infinite, eternal, and unchangable, having an existence in a Trinity of persons, mysterious, like all his attributes, co-equal, co-eternal, and essentially the same in all divine perfections.

When man was originally formed of the dust of the earth, it was the result of divine counsel in the Trinity" And God said, let Us make man." When man had violated the divine law, and was found wholly destitute of that love to God, which that law required, his redemption was the result of divine counsel in the Trinity. The Father asserts the claims of the law, the Son accepts the penalty, and the Holy Ghost, by a divine efficiency exerted on the hearts of sinners, "prepares many sons unto glory." Here, each performs a separate office. The law must be asserted-it cannot yield. The eternal Father asserts it. The Son takes the sinner's place under the law, and the substitution is accepted: he is "God our Savior." The Holy Ghost prepares the sinner's heart for the reception and love of the truth, and enlightens and sanctifies; he is God our Sanctifier. Thus we see, then, as set forth in the text, the sinner's salvation is the work of God in the Trinity. "Therefore," said the Apostle, "being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he (Jesus) hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear."

II. We are to consider more explicitly the part, which each person in the sacred Trinity performs in the work of man's redemption. The law had been made and prescribed to man by the ONE only living and true God-Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. This law, having been wilfully and wickedly violated, God, as the maker and executor of the law, must exact the penalty of temporal and eternal death. If mercy is extended, justice must not be disparaged, nor truth violated, nor the depraved and rebellious heart remain in its enmity and pollution.

Here, then, is a three-fold service required. The law must be asserted in its claims, and guarded from dishonor. The sinner needs a substitute and advocate. A work of regeneration must be performed to prepare the heart for a holy kingdom. The Father undertakes for the law, Christ the eternal Son undertakes for the sinner, and the Holy Spirit, proceeding from the Father and the Son, executes the dispensation of grace. Here, then, the Father represents the law, preserving the faithful administration of justice. The Son represents the sinner, meeting in himself the penalty of the law, and thereby providing for the dispensation of mercy. The Spirit executes a divine work on the heart of the sinner, which illustrates to his experience the divine attributes of justice and mercy, and prepares him to receive pardon under a full conviction of utter unworthiness and ruin.

Nor are here conflicting interests. The whole disposition of the Godhead is in favor of the administration of justice, of mercy, and of truth. The Father loves mercy as well as justice, and can never urge the latter to the prejudice of the former. Christ loves justice as well as mercy. The Holy Spirit aids the dispensation of neither at the expense or exclusive of the other. Yet the Father performs a work in this plan separate

from the Son, and which the Son does not perform. The Son performs a work, which the Father does not perform. The Holy Spirit performs a work separate and different from both. And yet whatever is performed by the Father, or the Son, or the Spirit, is properly and strictly the work of God, harmoniously approved and sanctioned in the divine mind. Is justice asserted? It is God. Is mercy dispensed? It is God. Is a sinner saved? It is God, who does it. Do the Scriptures speak of justice or the administration of law? It is God the Father, or God without distinction of persoa. Do they speak of mercy, or atonement for sin, by which, in the administration of the divine government, mercy may be dispensed to the guilty? It is Christ the Son of God, who has undertaken for the sinner, and become sin for him, and provided for him a justifying righteousness. Do they speak of regeneration, by which the enmity of the sinner's heart is removed, and love enkindled, and the law commended to his approbation and acceptance as holy, and just, and good? It is God the Holy Spirit, whose office it is to reprove of sin, showing to the sinner the enmity of his own heart, illuminating his mind, and quickening all his powers to see the truth in its application to himself, illustrating the divine character, and bringing him into present judgment. Is the proud, rebellious heart subdued? Does the sinner repent, abhor himself, believe in Christ as a Savior? It is the work of the Holy Spirit. Does he strive against sin, gain the victory over the flesh, walk in newness of life? It is the work of the Holy Spirit. Is he comforted and edified in the truth? Does he grow in grace? Does he hunger and thirst after righteousness? Is he a new man in his desires and enjoyments, in his hopes and aspirations, in the circle of his duties and employments? It is the work of the Holy Spirit. Is he sustained under trials? Does the fire of devotion glow in his soul, as the lamp of life expires? Is he strengthened in the inner man as the outward man decays? Does he triumph in death? It is the work of the Holy Spirit. Is the saint raised from the dead, incorruptible and pure, unsullied and immortal? It is the work of the same agency. For, "if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you."

III. We are now to consider the necessity of this Trinity to the work of man's redemption. We should speak with great caution and respect, when we undertake to say what God cannot do, or what it is necessary for him to do. Yet this is a language that may with propriety be sometimes used, and expresses ideas which exist in truth. God cannot deny himself. He cannot do wrong. He can in no wise clear the guilty. He cannot look on sin with allowance. It is necessary that the law of God should be executed. If the sinner is saved, it is necessary that the law of God should be satisfied by vicarious suffering. In order to the enjoyment of God, and a state of happiness in heaven, it is necessary that a work of regeneration should be performed in the sinner's heart.

Here, we see the necessity of the Trinity in the work of redemption. The only question now to be settled in the establishment of this position, is-could not this work all be done without a Trinity in the Godhead? We reason from what we know, or are able to infer from premises possessed, and we answer, No. We do not see how this work could be performed without this divine Trinity. If the claims of the law are to be asserted, who will assert them but God? God must execute his own law. It can be safely intrusted to no other hands. Like its Author, the divine

law is immutable. All else is liable to change, and therefore can furnish no parallel. If an atonement, or satisfaction to that law, is to be made, God only can make it. Who else can do it? Where is the power? Who can measure eternity in any one particular, so as to consent intelligently to assume an obligation or penalty involving eternity? Who but God? But suppose this difficulty were removed, and an angel or any other being were willing to offer himself a substitute for the sinner to endure the literal penalty of the law, where would be the dispensation of mercy? The illustration of this divine attribute would still be a desideratum in the moral universe. The identical sinner would escape, but not through grace. Mercy could not enter into the scheme of such a substitution. As it is, this perfection of the divine character is eminently displayed. If, as a lawgiver, I make a law, and prescribe that the first man who is guilty of the crime of forgery shall have his right hand cut off, and I should clear the guilty by the substitution of my own hand for his, whatever objection might be urged against the measure, it certainly would be an eminent dispensation of mercy. God, then, dispenses mercy to the sinner when he assumes himself the penalty, and makes a satisfaction to the law, which preserves its honor, establishes his truth, and saves the offendder from merited punishment. None but God can do this.

Again-if the sinner is to be saved in heaven, it is necessary he should be holy. A work of regeneration must be performed in his heart, by which its enmity must be slain, its choice directed, its dispositions changed and rectified, and the whole current of its affections controled. Who is able to look into the secret thoughts of the soul, to know its disposition, to understand its constitution and principle of action, so as even to anticipate its course of conduct, much more its emotions and necessary action under every possible circumstance, and every variety of motive? Who can do this but He, who made the soul, who intimately understands its nature, who can himself control it, and turn it as the rivers of water are turned? He only can enter into its secret chambers, analyze it, reveal its secret and hidden lineaments to its own view, control, new-create, and sanctify it. None but God can do this.

Here then, in the nature of the work to be performed in man's redemption, we see the necessity of a Trinity in the Godhead. Justice and mercy are to be united under the government of God in a consistent theory, and practically applied, in a harmony of the divine attributes, to the salvation of sinners. Surely to the accomplishment of this plan, the Trinity is necessary. All other theories are inadequate, imperfect, and unsafe. They take some part of the work from the hands of God, and commit it to a creature, subject to the direction of fatal imbecility, ignorance, or doubt.

IV. We have still to contemplate the beauty and harmony of the doctrine.

Its harmony is exhibited where mercy and truth have met together, righteousness and peace have embraced each other." Here are clashing interests, but no discord. When mercy cannot proceed against justice, God the Son satisfies that justice, and bids mercy proceed. When mercy cannot proceed against the hardness and corruption of the heart, for which the dispensation is prepared, God the Holy Ghost enlightens, convicts, softens, melts, and changes that heart, and brings it, by a voluntary action of its own powers, now enlightened, refined, and regulated, to embrace, and love, and serve God. When eternal ruin hung over the fate of man under the administration of the violated law, this plan of redemption was ma

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tured in the council of the divine Trinity. The Father consented to deliver up the only begotten Son to the operation of the law, a substitute for sinners; the Son consented to yield his life a ransom; and the Holy Spirit became the efficient agent in illustrating this plan to the minds of sinners, dark, ignorant, and lost; and in gaining the voluntary consent of these perverse minds to the truth. Here is harmony produced where every thing appeared discordant and hopeless. And this harmony is the result of the simple and natural action of God in the Trinity.

The beauty of the doctrine appears principally in its adaptation, and actual efficiency to produce its end, and that end one of the highest glory and benevolence. It saves sinners-saves them from the curse of the law-saves them under sentence of an immutable law, inflicting an eternal penaltysaves them in consistency with divine justice, in harmony with that law, and with the integrity of the divine character. Here is moral beauty which Almighty power alone could create, which uncreated, could have found an ideal archetype only in the conceptions of the infinite mind, and which could have found an application to the case of sinners only in the harmonious action of the divine Trinity.

And now, have we not here, in the harmony, beauty, and glory of this one doctrine, a sufficient subject for wonder, love, and praise, through all eternity? Who would mar the beauty, or interrupt the harmony of this doctrine? Let him first furnish, as a substitute, another doctrine, equally glorious, consistent, harmonious with itself and in all its relations, and withal equally supported by the unperverted, plain testimonies of the Bible. Before he proceeds to remove this corner-stone, on which I rest my eternal hope, let him show me one equally beautiful, more rational as a ground of This he can never do. trust, and better supported by the word of God.

seat.

Oh, no; that scheme which removes the mystery of the Trinity from the plan of salvation, disrobes that plan of its principal moral beauty, mars the brightest attribute of God, conflicts the principles and destroys the harmony of the divine government, for one mystery substitutes greater mysteries, and utterly obscures the sun, which enlightens my path to the mercy The doctrine of the Trinity is the central sun of the Christian system, the source of light and heat, motion and life, to the worlds of mind within its sphere, which it holds in their orbits and controls. Blot it out, and you throw us back on the night of paganism, to the mere religion of nature, the dim twilight of heathen philosophy. We will say then, with the chief Apostle-"Without controversy, great is the mystery of Godliliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory."

Thus you see the divine Trinity employed in the work of man's redemption. You see the part, which each person in the sacred Trinity performs in this work. You see the necessity of this Trinity to the work of man's redemption, and the beauty and harmony of the doctrine.. Instead then of a Being partial, bloody, or unjust on the one hand, or changeable, imbecile, or compromising on the other, you see all the glorious attributes of a Being infinitely perfect meet, and harmonize, and unite in a work of infinite benevolence. You are called away from theory and speculation, from philosophy and human science, to sit at the feet of Jesus You are called to leave all and learn of him lessons of infinite wisdom. masters on earth, and to pay your homage to that divine Master and Savior, whom "all the angels of God worship."

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