contemplation of Him our souls grow in knowledge. And what are those ideas which we gather from the contemplation of Jesus, but such as lead us on to God, that through this Jesus, as his finite image and representative, we may come to the knowledge, so far as the finite can attain it, of the glory of God?

Good Friday, April 17, 1829.

SERMON XV.

JOHN xvii. 17.

SANCTIFY THEM THROUGH THY TRUTH: THY WORD IS TRUTH.

I OPENED this morning the subject with which I am to engage you; and opened it with the observation, that no day can be more profitable for an enlarged consideration of the truth of God than this, on which the central fact attested by that truth was accomplished,even the dying of the Lord Jesus Christ. I did accordingly set before you with some distinctness the great heads of the truth; such as the existence of God, not alone, but with two other Persons, in a graduated subordination, yet in perfect coequality with himself. I also stated the end which God has in creation; namely, the beatification of the creature, expressed in the collect which we have been using this week, by the words, "tender love towards mankind." I noticed also the great mean whereby this end is accomplished;

even the junction of the Godhead with the creature in its fallen state; it being necessary unto that achievement that the creature should be differenced from the Creator, there being no safety or consistency in the junction of the creature with the Godhead, in which alone its true beatification can consist, until it be distinctly shown that the creature is not God,-shown by its mutability, which again is shown by its having actually undergone change from better to worse. These first principles of the truth having been asserted, I proceeded to the fulfilment of my purpose, in examining what evidence this chapter, this most important of all chapters in all the Bible, may afford to the several particulars of the truth. I was not able to proceed further than the interpretation of the first three verses. I noticed that the Lord Jesus Christ, in this prayer to his Father, being really in the guest-chamber, and having yet to pass into the garden, to come before the tribunal of Pilate, and to endure his crucifixion,—yet, whilst even now in the guest-chamber, assumes that He has passed through the valley of the shadow of death, and is seated by the right hand of the Father. I should observe then, that two most essential ingredients of the truth of God are attested in these first three verses. For, first, it is very plain that God does not subsist alone, but that there are two other fellows with Him in his substance, who are nevertheless graduated in subordination beneath Him. Now you may be ready

to

say, I do not discern this; for at the most I discern

only two Persons named; if you can even make it appear that the second of those Persons is a Person having Godhead. Observe then, that the Lord Jesus Christ in this address calls God his Father, and implores of Him to glorify Him according to an arrangement made before all worlds. Now I ask, whether such an arrangement could have been made before all worlds, if the Person here denominated the Son was not a Person having Godhead? And in the next place I ask, whether this Person having Godhead could fitly take the rank of a Son in the counsels of creation, if there were not a subordination of this Person to the former? because we all know that, whilst a son of a father is strictly his coequal, he is not his coordinate,— his rank is beneath that of his father. And again, though no mention is here made of the Third Person, mention has been made in the three preceding chapters, -abundant mention,-mention which makes language absurd, if there be not a distinction of Three Persons in the Godhead. But here, whilst no express mention is made of the Third Person, what, I ask, is that gift of eternal life which, as to state and enjoyment, stands in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord? Is it not the essential indwelling of a Person of the Godhead in our spirit, which Person of the Godhead is neither the Father nor the Son, and must therefore be a third distinct Person? So that again, even in these first three verses, we have a notice which attests to us the coexistence of the Second and Third Persons with the

First in the unity of the Godhead, and a notice also of their graduated subordination. It is plain that the Son ranks below the Father, and that the Spirit ranks below the Son, because He is the gift of the Son immediately to others: He is sent by the Son to others, even as the Son is himself sent by the Father; and thus the gradation of rank, as well as the cosubsistence of the Persons, is here plainly set before us.

With these remarks, I pass on to the interpretation of the remainder of the chapter. And as my object is to give you the information of the Holy Ghost, and not the information of my own spirit, I must be allowed to be very short in my expositions, because it is material to the accomplishment of my purpose that I set the whole testimony which this chapter affords, in one view and, as it were, with one glance, before you. It will suffice therefore, if I just give you such hints from my own stores as are necessary to the due apprehension of the Holy Ghost's words.

I begin therefore with the fourth verse. You understand that it is Jesus Christ,-it is the Second Person of the Godhead, clothed at this moment with human flesh, but contemplating the changing of that fleshly into a spiritual form,-who now addresses the First Person of the Godhead, to whom He did at this time, actually and sacramentally, bear the relation of Son: actually, because, without regarding that eternal necessary origination, which in a figure may truly and fitly be said to constitute sonship, He was now the threefold