CONTENTS. Page 1 A SERIES OF SERMONS ON THE SUNDAY AND FESTIVAL LESSONS. Trinity Sunday. MORNING SERVICE.-Second Lesson: Matt. iii. re Verses 16, 17.-" And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him: And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." THE existence of Three in One, and One in Three is beyond the capacity of finite wisdom. The world by wisdom knows not God. His character as a Triune Jehovah is not within the sphere of its theoretical teaching. The existence of a God, or of a Supreme Being, is taught by both creation and Providence, and forces itself on the convictions of the philosopher, as well as on the faith of the Christian: with such lucid evidences no one in a right state of mind can deny the Being of a God. The unity of God is also proved from the proportionate consistency of the works of nature, and the uniform developement of the arrangements of Providence : but whilst a building denotes a builder, a structure of any kind denotes a constructor; or whilst the co-operative action of machinery proves the operations of one designing power in its construction, still neither will declare the moral character of the individuals who set the whole in motion. Creation and Providence unite to testify the existence of one eternal Being, who must of necessity be infinitely powerful, wise, and good, but the real nature of that Being can no more be explained by these agencies than the moral character of a builder can be explained by the building which he has produced. The deficiencies in the teaching of nature are supplied by the teaching of revelation. Scripture comes to our aid, and teaches us that which we could not possibly otherwise know, which is, that the Being who made, and who supports the world, exists in three distinct persons, possessing one and the same essence; that such distinctiveness of persons, and unity of essence, are not merely forms of speech, but a reality which, although we cannot comprehend, we are nevertheless called upon to believe. The Jews, to whom the oracles of God were committed, deduce the doctrine of a triune Jehovah from the Old Testament Scriptures. Their commentators say, "There are three degrees in the mystery of Aleim or Elohim," these degrees they call persons. They say further, "They are all one and cannot be separated." "In the head of the Book," or in the first chapter of Genesis, the three Persons are distinctly mentioned as taking part in the production of creation. In the concise history which we have of the creation, Moses employs the phrase "Aleim (that is, Gods) created," more than thirty times, the noun being in the plural and the verb being in the singular number, which the Jewish Paraphraists explain by the terms Jehovah; His word, or His Son; and His wisdom, or His Holy Spirit, which they call three degrees. These three they assert are one inseparable Jehovah. In commenting on Deut. vi. 4, " Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord," one of their writers says, "The Lord, and one God, and the Lord, are one. The Lord, or Jehovah, |