Practical Effects of Doctrine of Divinity of Christ's Suffer- ings-Deepens Views of Sin-Exalts Justice of God-His THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST. CHAPTER I. The Trinity-Fall of Man-Plan of Redemption-Christ suffered in Divine as well as in Human Nature. THAT there is a God above us," all Nature cries aloud through all her works." To this voice of Nature, Revelation adds her imperative voice from heaven, proclaiming the existence and government of a wise, gracious, and universal Sovereign. The Bible informs us, too, that the Deity whom we worship is a triune God. "There are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one."-1 John, v., 7. We quote this passage from the beloved disciple with the knowledge that its genuineness has been questioned. We believe the passage to be authentic; but, if expunged from the Bible, it would subtract only a single grain from the overflowing measure of scriptural proof that there are three persons in the Godhead. The Bible also B teaches us that the Trinity consists of three distinct persons; united, not commingled. A celebrated Unitarian preacher now deceased, whose simplicity, pathos, and eloquence have seldom been surpassed, has laid it down as a fundamental objection to the doctrine of the Trinity, that the plurality of its persons tends to divide and distract devotional love and worship.* But had this distinguished man, with feelings so true to nature, forgotten, when he uttered the sentiment just stated, the blissful days of youth, when his gladdened eyes beheld, and his bounding heart leaped forth to greet, at the domestic altar, two distinct, yet united personages, who both claimed and received his undivided and undiminished reverence, and gratitude, and love? Was his filial piety distracted by the plurality of its objects? Did his heart yield a less true and fervent homage to his father, because the angel form of his mother was hovering around him, arrayed in the lovely habiliments of her own meekness, and gentleness, and grace? Did he find it needful, for the full concentration and development of filial devotion, that one of his parents should be forever banished from the domestic hearth, leaving the other in cheerless solitude? Did his youthful heart yearn for an amend * Channing's Works, vol. iii., p. 73, 74. Sermon on Ordination of Rev. Jared Sparks. ment of the laws of Nature, so that each family of earth should have, instead of two, but one solitary, lonely progenitor? The objection, that the plurality of the persons of the Godhead tends to divide and distract devotional love and worship, has as little foundation in nature as it has in truth. If St. Paul, when caught up into the third heaven, was permitted to gaze, with adoring and melting eyes, on the glory and benignity of the Highest, his rapt vision was neither divided nor distracted by seeing, on the right-hand seat of the celestial throne, that Saviour who had died to redeem him, and, on the left-hand seat, that Holy Spirit who had regenerated, sanctified, and imbued with the balm of comfort his persecuted and earth-wounded soul. The three who "bear record in heaven" are a triple cord of divine texture, to bind the believing soul faster, and yet more fast, to the footstool of its triune God. The social principle is a controlling element of the visible universe. In the humblest gradations of nature we see its prevalence and power. The fishes in shoals swim the sea; the birds in flocks skim the air; the cattle in herds graze on the plains. The subjects of the vegetable kingdom are gregarious. The rose, "Born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air," is yet encompassed by sister flowers. Even the weed of the deserted field is not alone. When our attention is recalled to man, we shall find the social principle an elemental law of his being. Even of him in paradise it was said, by unerring lips, "It is not good that man should be alone." If we ascend to the next highest grade in the scale of being, we may confidently presume that the social principle pervades angelic natures. Heaven would cease to be heaven to the angels if each was secluded in his solitary cell. The strains of the lonely harp would become feeble and plaintive, though stricken by the hand of a seraph. May we not, then, without irreverence, venture to presume that the social principle reaches even to the Godhead; that he who made man in his own image, and after his own likeness, "and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life" from the redundant fountain of his own ethereal essence, retained in himself, in infinite fulness, that social element, with whose infusion he has so copiously imbued the rational tenants of this lower world, and whose sprinklings have pervaded every part of its animal and vegetable provinces? If we may, indeed, regard this as a great truth of heaven, |