the Eternal, in comparison with whose brightness and clearness our present knowledge of the Trinity shall be as rudimentary and as childlike as the knowledge of the Jew was in comparison with the knowledge of the Christian.

Now, the passage which I have undertaken to expound to-day is one in which the doctrine of the Trinity is brought into connection practically with the doctrine of our humanity. Before entering into it, brethren, let us lay down these two observations and duties for ourselves. In the first place, let us examine the doctrine of the Trinity ever in the spirit of charity. A clear statement of the deepest doctrine that man can know, and the intellectual conception of that doctrine, are by no means easy. We are puzzled and perplexed by words; we fight respecting words. Quarrels are nearly always verbal quarrels. Words lose their meaning in the course of time; nay, the very words of the Athanasian creed which we read to-day mean not, in this age, the same thing which they meant in ages past. Therefore it is possible that men, externally Trinitarians, may differ from each other, though using the same words, as greatly as a Unitarian differs from a Trinitarian. There may be found, in the same Church and in the same congrega tion, men holding all possible shades of opinion, though agreeing externally, and in words. I speak within the limit of my own experience when I say that persons have been known and heard to express the language of bitter condemnation respecting Unitarianism, who, when examined and calmly required to draw out verbally the meaning of their own concep tions, have been proved to be holding all the time

unconsciously the very doctrine of And this doctrine is condemned by the tinctly as that of Unitarianism. The learn from all this a large and catholic cl are in almost every congregation, th knowing it, Trinitarians who are practica worshipping three Gods; and Sabellian pers of one person under three differe tions. To know God so that we may be ually, to appreciate Him, is blessed: to do so, is a misfortune. Be content wi blessedness, in comparison with others Do not give to that misfortune the additi illiberal and unchristian vituperation.

The next observation we have to lay selves is, that we should examine this do spirit of modesty. There are those who to sneer at the Trinitarian; those to wh trine appears merely a contradiction-a entangled, labyrinthine enigma, in which meaning whatever. But let all such re though the doctrine may appear to them cause they have not the proper conception of the profoundest thinkers and some of spirits among mankind have believed trine have clung to it as a matter of 1 Let them be assured of this, that whether be true or false, it is not necessarily a d contradictory. Let them be assured of modesty, that such men never could ha unless there was latent in the doctrine a perchance the truth of God.

We pass on now to the consideration of this verse, under the following divisions:

I. We shall view it as a triad in discord: "I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless."

II. As Trinity in Unity: "The God of peace sanc tify you wholly."

I. We take, then, first of all, for our consideration, the triad in discord: "I pray God your whole body and soul and spirit be preserved blameless."

The apostle here divides human nature into a threefold division; and here we have to observe again the difficulty often experienced in understanding words. Thus, words in the Athanasian creed have become ob solete, or lost their meaning; so that in the present day the words "person," "substance," "procession," "generation," to an ordinary person, mean almost nothing. So this language of the apostle, when rendered into English, shows no difference whatever be tween "soul" and "spirit." We say, for instance, that the soul of man has departed from him. We also say that the spirit of a man has departed from him. There is no distinct difference between the two; but in the original two very different kinds of thoughts, two very different modes of conception, are presented by the two English words "soul" and "spirit."

It is our business, therefore, in the first place, to understand what is meant by this three-fold division. When the apostle speaks of the body, what he means is the animal life that which we share in common with beasts, birds, and reptiles; for our life, my Chris tian brethren, our sensational existence, differs but

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little from that of the lower animals.

same external form, the same materia vessels, in the nerves, and in the mu Nay, more than that, our appetites and alike, our lower pleasures like their lo our lower pain like their lower pain; ported by the same means, and our an are almost indistinguishably the same.

But, once more, the apostle speaks of the "soul." What the apostle meant by lated "soul" is the immortal part of ma terial as distinguished from the materia ers, in fact, which man has by nature-p which are yet to survive the grave. T tinction made in Scripture by our Lord two things. "Fear not," says He, "t kill the body; but rather fear Him who both body and soul in hell."

We have, again, to observe, respecti what the apostle called the "soul" is no tinguishable from the body, but also from and on that distinction I have already t the soul the apostle means our powers powers which we have by nature. Here distinguishable from the spirit. In the E Corinthians we read, "But the natural m not the things of the Spirit of God; for t ishness unto him; neither can

he know th

But he tha

they are spiritually discerned. judgeth all things." Observe, there is a drawn between the natural man and t What is there translated "natural" is de precisely the same word as that which is

lated "soul." So that we may read, just as correctly, "The man under the dominion of the soul receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things." And again, the apostle, in the same Epistle to the Corinthians, writes: "That is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural;" that is, the endowments of the soul precede the endow ments of the spirit. You have the same truth in other places. The powers that belong to the spirit were not the first developed; but the powers which belonged to the soul, that is, the powers of nature. Again, in the same chapter, reference is made to the natural and spiritual body. "There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body." Literally, there is a body governed by the soul, that is, powers natural; and there is a body governed by the Spirit, that is, higher nature. Let, then, this be borne in mind, that what the apostle calls "soul" is the same as that which he calls, in another place, the "natural man.” These powers are divisible into two branches -- the intellectual powers and the moral sense. The intellectual powers man has by nature. Man need not be regen. erated in order to possess the power of reasoning, or in order to invent. The intellectual powers belong to what the apostle calls the "soul." The moral sense distinguishes between right and wrong. The apostle tells us, in the Epistle to the Romans, that the heathen -manifestly natural men had the "work of the law. written in their hearts; their conscience also bearing witness."

The third division of which the apostle speaks he