2. Finally, our subject is not without a lesson to ourselves. For though our earthly mission may not be towards the Jews, each of us has a duty to perform in the world, and the vision of Isaiah opens up to us the spirit in which alone we can seek to perfor.n it rightly.

There is no spot on earth where a larger number of men of noble hopes or of high principle are gathered than in this University. And they who make it their business to gain the confidence of those whom they are privileged to instruct, well know that in the hearts of many students there dwells a deep and earnest wish to make their life here the means of preparation for a life of usefulness hereafter. Before many years are past, each one of us must go forth into the world to influence it or to be influenced by it. It will then lie in the power of each one to do something, however little, for God and for goodness. Amid the squalid thousands of our crowded towns, or in the retirement of the rural chapelry; amid the infection of hospitals, or bending over the bed of poverty; amid the scenes of ordinary life, and in acts of common philanthropy, we may seek to work the work of Christ. But if we would be the means of doing so, we must not take our religious tone from the world, but must introduce into society some ingredient of goodness which it does not possess. That ingredient comes down from

heaven. It is the power of God's Spirit which alone can give it us. It is He alone who can kindle in our souls the flame of love which shall burn with inextinguishable glory for His honour and man's welfare. And the way to obtain that Divine help is the same as in the case of Isaiah of old. We must contrast our unworthiness with the Divine purity, and learn to drop the tear of penitence, and pour out day by day, from our inmost hearts, the "Woe is me, cry: for I am undone; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips." And as soon as we shall have done this, the seraphim will be commissioned to take the live coal from the altar of incense, and to touch our lips. altar that the seraph brings the coal. our sake merely that God is merciful, but because there is an altar of incense in His presence; and our prayers, mixed with that incense of our Saviour's intercession, rise up as a memorial before God. Unless we catch Isaiah's spirit we cannot be prepared for the prophetic work. It is only when the seraph has touched our lips, and our sins are cleansed, that we can hope to receive the preparation which shall fit us for our ministrations of love.

It is from the
It is not for

And in our life of labour let us ever keep before us the sense of our unworthiness and of God's mercy to us; and then, when life draws to a close, if we stand trembling at the thought of labours apparently

useless, and lament in the words, "Woe is me, for I am an unclean man," the angel shall be again commissioned with the symbol of mercy to cleanse our sins; and our purified souls shall be admitted to see the Lord high and lifted up, eye to eye, spirit to spirit, and to join in the seraph song of "Holy, Holy, Holy!"

SERMON V.

THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY TRINITY.

(PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY, JUNE 20TH, 1858.)

EPHESIANS ii. 18.

For through Him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.

THE doctrine of the Holy Trinity, which the Apostle implies in these words, is the centre of a group of Christian doctrines which may fairly be said not to have been explicitly known antecedently to the teaching of Our Saviour and his Apostles. More than even other doctrines, this had hardly been guessed at by heathen speculation, hardly understood by Jewish inspiration. It stands in majestic isolation from other truths, a vision of God incomprehensible, the mystery of mysteries. We can find analogies and explanations of other doctrines in the world of nature, physical or moral, but

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of this we can discover none.1 The existence of sin, the need of superhuman aid, the salvation by mediation, the dignity of sacrifice-all these truths, though heightened and explained by revelation, yet are written in the scheme of nature, and intertwined with the tissue of the visible creation. But when we transcend these, and pass from the work to the agent, from the government of God to the mysterious nature of God Himself, we are lost in mystery; speculation is well-nigh hushed before the overpowering glory of the Eternal. We pass from the earth to the heaven, we enter the shrine of the Divine presence. We contemplate in spirit the mystery hidden of old, the mystery of the trinal existence of Him who is the source of all power, the first cause of all creation; Him who, in the depths of a past eternity, existed in the mysterious solitude of his Divine essence, when there was still universal silence of created life around His throne, and who will exist ever in the future of eternity, from everlasting to everlasting, God.

Speculation is, on such a subject, vain; yet a reverent attention to that which has been made known to us is our fitting duty. And nothing will

It is needless perhaps to remark that attempts have been made to discover trinal analogies in nature, such as the threefold dimension of geometric figure, &c. Such attempts were made in the Neo-Platonic School of Alexandria, and in England in the last century. Most persons very properly reject them as mystical and unreal.