before us third in order. When Jesus had ascended out of the water, having been baptized by John, and the Spirit having descended and lighted upon Him, "Lo! a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." The First Person is represented by a voice from heaven. This was a supreme voice, a voice of authority, the voice of God. It was long since the voice of the First Person was heard directly by man, probably not since the sin of the first Adam closed the gates of paradise against himself and his posterity. God spoke to man, it is true, between those two epochs. He spoke to Cain by way of reproof; He spoke to Noah by way of warning and instruction; He spoke to Abraham, and to Moses, and to Samuel, and to Elijah, and to all the prophets; but it is thought that He communicated with these saints through the medium of the Second Person in anticipation of His coming to "open the kingdom of heaven to all believers;" but now, heaven being opened by the mission of Jesus to earth, and the Spirit of God having set His seal to His mission, God the Father seems to communicate with man directly from the throne of heaven, that every doubt might be infallibly removed respecting the identity and work of the Second Person.

The burden of the voice therefore was, first, to establish the identity of Jesus; and secondly, to show the Divine. pleasure in the mission which He was about to execute.

1. The identity of Jesus as the Second Person was thus established. "This is my beloved Son."

The title, Son of God, is applied to Adam, to the angels, to civil officers, to the Jewish nation, and to all that are partakers of Divine grace, being adopted into the family of God; but it is applied to Jesus in a special sense, He being the Son of God differently from all others; He is His natural and eternal Son, possessing an essence identical with His own, so that that nature is indivisible in the Father and the Son. Regarding the First and Second Persons in the relationship of Father and Son, the question may be asked, How, in such a case, can their co-eternal existence be established? We cannot

presume to explain how three distinct Persons, the Second being begotten of the First, and the Third proceeding from both, could have co-existed eternally without any priority of being; but we can form some idea how the essence of one co-existed with the essence of the other, if we regard it in a similar light to that of which St. Paul speaks, when he says that Levi was in the loins of his father, Abraham, three generations before he was born, or when we consider that all mankind, even to the end of the world, were in the loins of Adam as soon as he came from under the hands of his Maker, he being the representative of his race. These may

be considered figures too gross to illustrate the sublime ideas of the distinctive eternity of the Father and Son, but they may supply us with a faint conception of the fact. We must, indeed, acknowledge ourselves vanquished; the mystery is too deep for finite minds to fathom; it is one of the secret things which belong to the Lord our God. Scripture, however, represents Christ as being the Son of God prior to His appearance in the flesh. His miraculous conception, His

resurrection from the dead, and His ascension into heaven, were only evidences of His Divine Sonship. The mysterious relationship existed before, and by way of distinction from all others, God calls Him His beloved Son, and His only-begotten Son.

2. The Voice declares the Divine pleasure in the mission which Jesus came to execute: "In whom I am well pleased." The Father was always pleased with the Son. Through the prophet Isaiah He speaks of Him as His servant in whom His soul delighted, and He was not ashamed to declare His delight openly when He was in a state of humiliation. The same declaration was repeated in the presence of His disciples at the transfiguration on the mount. He was well pleased not only in all that He was, but also in all that He did. He was pleased with His devotedness in engaging to honour the Divine attributes in man's salvation. He was pleased with His condescension in assuming man's nature. He was pleased with His perfect obedience to the Divine law. He

was pleased with the purity of His innocence, with His zeal in the performance of the task which He undertook, with His submission to the Divine will, with the atonement which He effected for man's sin; and He is pleased with the penitent sinner for His sake. "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." The expression announces perfect satisfaction with all connected with the fact.

In conclusion. Let us admire the condescension of God in revealing Himself to us in His Word as the Triune Jehovah, and when we cannot comprehend the mysteries of His nature, let us learn to exercise faith in His declarations, being assured that He, being a God who cannot lie, whatever He states must be consistent with truth.

We may learn also the high value which God attaches to the soul of man, inasmuch as an eternal Trinity of Persons should be engaged in its rescue. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost could not have been employed in a mere trifle when undertaking to deliver man at so great a cost. Do you, sinner, ruin your own soul, and sell it to Satan for worse than nothing, not considering the consequences of your action? Do pause and think; depend upon it, the loss must be fearful in the estimation of God, and ought to be so in yours.

EVENING SERVICE.-First Lesson: Gen. xviii.

Verse 2.-" And he lift up his eyes and looked, and lo, three men stood by him and when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed himself toward the ground."

ABRAHAM was the friend of God. Few men whose histories are recorded in the sacred Scriptures were so distinguished as was Abraham. He appeared to be the peculiar object of the Almighty's attention and care, to whom He communicated more of His future designs than to any other individual saint in flesh. If you carefully read the history of this patriarch, you will find that, in addition to the necessary instructions given for the regulation of his personal conduct, in all the Divine communications to him a promise was involved containing some unprecedented advantages to himself and posterity, and it was the fact of Abraham's believing those promises without having a precedent to go upon which established his character as the "father of the faithful." There were delays made in the fulfilment of promises for the sole purpose, as we may presume, of testing his faith and proving his obedience. Notwithstanding all discouragements, Abraham continued to believe and to obey, and his "faith was counted to him for righteousness."

In this chapter we have a communication assuming a different aspect from any that preceded it; if it was not equal to some others in majesty and grandeur, it certainly exceeded all in familiarity and freedom. Here we have a Trinity coming down in form to hold an interview with the patriarch; not a Divine Trinity, it is true; but what Abraham thought to be three men, who turned out to be three angels, one of

whom being unquestionably Divine, the Angel of the Covenant, the Lord Jesus Christ, accompanied by two of the heavenly host, either to represent a Trinity of persons, or to perform a threefold act, which was to give information to Abraham, to destroy the cities of the plain, and to deliver Lot. That one of the three heavenly visitants was a Divine person seems evident from his being specially distinguished by Abraham from the other two. He addresses Him "My Lord," or "Jehovah," which is an incommunicable name of God. The onus of the whole conversation seemed to rest upon Him, as the most prominent person of the three, who, whilst the other two proceeded towards Sodom, remained to converse with Abraham, who still calls Him "Lord," and intercedes with Him for the preservation of the cities.

Whilst the text and its context teach us the condescension of God in sending His three angels, including His Son, to communicate with Abraham, they extend to furnish us with some useful instructions respecting the ministering spirits whom He has around His throne, together with His goodness in employing them for the benefit of man.

We shall therefore remark—

I. That angels are God's ministering spirits.

It is but little we know of those spiritual intelligences, and the little we do know is founded entirely upon the declarations of God's Word.

Here, however, we are taught—

1. That they are spiritual in their nature. Being spiritual they are not affected by time, and do not require space to exist. Their nature is similar to the soul of man when divested of the material body, with the exception that they are of a higher order in rank and intelligence. Their spiritual nature is asserted by the Psalmist when he says, "Who maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire," and by St. Paul when he asks, "Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?" Some have thought that angels are not mere spirits,