ing His departure, "I will not leave you comfortless?" "I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever." "And when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me. And ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning." How, also, could Christ have ever prescribed that solemn ordinance of baptism, by which all believers were to be inducted into His sacred body, epitomizing their whole faith by the formula, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature, baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost?" If there is no personality to the Holy Ghost, this formula is a falsehood and deception. If Paul, likewise, had not this same idea of the Spirit's personality distinct from the Father, he never could have pronounced the solemn benediction upon the Corinthians: "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you, Amen." Yes, Amen; so let it be to the end. And let us not be told that, while there is boundless truth in the first two thirds of this benediction, the last third is a piece of rhetoric, the omission of which would have detracted not one iota from the truth or force of Scripture, and would have prevented an endless amount of discussion and error. If the Holy Ghost is nothing separate from the Father, then His communion is nothing. Or, if it is the Father's personified power or agency, what respect can we entertain for a revelation which so utterly fails in the attempt at personification, that not one in a hundred ever suspects it? Such a blunder would be unpardonable in any uninspired author, and sufficient to discredit his whole work.

It had been easy for Christ and the apostles not to

have said any thing of the Holy Ghost in distinction from the Father, if so be there is no distinction. There was no necessity for it. It adds nothing to the force or truth of the Scriptures, but only confusion. If we are to accept a revelation from Heaven to man-an inspired volume of truth-it is reasonable to demand that God shall know how to use human language in communicating His will, and that we shall not be under the necessity of breaking down all the rules of rhetoric to obtain its meaning. We could have no respect for a revelation, the writers of which could not be inspired from Heaven, to the proper use of language. If the Holy Spirit, as alleged by some, is simply God himself, or His working, or spiritual influences, then no mention could ever have been made in the formula for baptism; and the benediction of any one but God and Jesus Christ, even if the latter could have been introduced, being no more than a The inconsistency, too, of using the name of a mere man in such a connection is so apparent that numbers of the ministers of this faith drop it out from the benediction, as well as from their prayers. They do not mention the name of Christ. None, too, would have been so quick to perceive this inconsistency as Jesus himself and His apostles, and to have carefully avoided it. The bendiction, therefore, should have been, "The love, grace and fellowship of God be with you all;" and the formula of baptism, "Baptizing them into the name of God." This expresses the whole, and here the matter should have ended, if there is no trinity of persons.

man.

We are compelled to believe that both honesty and common sense are to be found in the Bible, and that there is, therefore, some mysterious distinction in the Godhead, beyond the reach of our short fathoming line and the grasp of our thought, which is revealed to us in the character and person of the Holy Ghost. As a personal

Agent, He stands forth upon all the pages of the inspired Word. We may not understand it; but this constitutes no reason for denying or rejecting it. Every thing respecting the Godhead is equally incomprehensible. "Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou search out the Almighty unto perfection? It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? Deeper than hell; what canst thou know? The measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea." Wilt thou, the poor, blind creature of a day, attempt to sit in judgment upon the Infinite One, and demand that the height and depth, the length and breadth of His being, shail be brought down to the measure of thy little comprehension? Wilt thou require that He shall be made altogether such an one as thyself, and that His incomprehensible being shall contain no deeper mysteries than thine own? Vain man, forbear! Let God reveal himself as He will, without being made subject to the measurement of thy line and plummet.

CHAPTER XIV.

PERSONALITY OF THE WORD.

BEFORE dismissing the doctrine of the Trinity, we wish to consider Christ from the same point of view, and test His personality by the same argument as the one employed in the preceding chapter in reference to the Holy Ghost.

Every reader of the Bible must be impressed with the very different opening of John's Gospel from that of the other Evangelists; and the same will throw a flood of light upon the person of Christ and His mysterious being.

Matthew and Luke begin the history from His advent into our world, tracing out his genealogy as the son of

Mary, and through her as the son of David. They give His history as the seed of the woman, unfolding His human nature, showing that He was a true man, born of a woman, and connected with David's royal line. As such, He had been prophesied of, and it was essential, in order to His reception by the nation, that IIe should be proved to be their Messiah, by His fulfilling in all particulars the prophesies going before. These historians accordingly give His ancestry, showing Him to be a lineal descendant of David. They then proceed to develop the incidents connected with His birth-the mission of the angel to Mary, with the birth and mission of John, His forerunner, the appearance of the angels to the shepherds of Bethlehem, and the star which guided the wise men from the East to the infant Jesus. In this minute history we have the evidence that the Redeemer of the world was a true man, like ourselves. We are carried back to the days of His helpless infancy, when we see His mother wrapping the babe in swaddling clothes, and laying Him in a manger. We see those parents fleeing with the child to escape the wrath of Herod, and taking shelter in Egypt until the death of the king. He is then brought back to Nazareth. At twelve years of age He goes up to the temple, and thence, through His childhood, He continues subject to His parents, and diligently employed until the time of His public ministry, from which point the Evangelist Mark takes up his narrative. In all this we see the development of a complete human nature from humblest infancy through each successive stage to the close of life. This is the history which the three Evangelists give us. John, too, records the history of our Saviour, but in some remarkable features in striking contrast with the one now delineated. Of the birth and infancy of Jesus he says nothing-nothing of the miraculous events attendant upon His entrance into the world.

Over all these he passes in entire silence, and begins at another point. He goes back of the Saviour's birth, back of His human nature, back of His earthly advent and career, back of creation, and undertakes to tell us what, and who, and where He was "in the beginning," before He was made flesh and dwelt among us, permitting us to behold His glory. He opens the history with the sublime statement, full of unearthly grandeur, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, and without him. was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men." Observe here that John says, "In the beginning was the Word." It is the Greek word, yv, denoting the fact of existence simply— that He was then in being. Had he designed to express the idea of His coming into being, or beginning existence, he would have used the word, eyevéro. But John does not say that in the beginning began the Word; but, in the beginning He was. He was then found in existence. This, therefore, is the strongest form of asserting His eternity. He was in, or from, the beginning.

Why did John use this name of the Logos, the Word, to designate Christ? For, as a name, the name of a person, he evidently did use it, since he adds immediately, "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”

The Evangelist had occasion, by the necessity of his argument and subject, to speak of Christ before His assumption of our humanity, while in that glory which He had with the Father before the world was. What name should he apply to Him? Should he call Him Jesus? and say, In the beginning was Jesus, and Jesus was with God, and Jesus was God? But this was not true. Jesus