Faith and Duty: Sermons on Free Texts, with Reference to the Church-Year

by L. B. Buchheimer

We are entering to-day upon the second part of the Christian church-year. The seasons and festivals of the church-year may be compared to a river that takes its rise, like the stream which washes the banks of our city, in some small and distant lake, and then ever continues to grow, widen, and deepen, until it becomes a majestic flow, and finally empties into the vast gulf of the ocean.

We have seen in the past months the river of grace and salvation issuing as a tiny rivulet from under a humble manger on Bethlehem's plains, passing through the gorge of Nazareth, flowing along the banks of Jordan, sweeping past the cities of Galilee and Judea, lifting up its surging billows to the height of Calvary and Olivet, until it overflowed the world with its heavenly billows on the day of Pentecost.

By that river it has been our good fortune to linger each Sunday, to dip up of its waters many a draught for our thirsty souls, and bathe in its currents for the washing away of our sins. To-day, however, we are called to ascend to its source, to leave Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Judea behind, to climb above Golgotha's Mount and Olivet's top, yes, to soar beyond the cloud which once received our ascended Lord out of sight, and to gaze upon a gulf, an ocean, which has no boundary and no shore. To speak in simple and unadorned speech: It is the subject of God Himself which we are invited to contemplate, the most overwhelming, mysterious, deepest of them all. "Who by searching," asks Job, "can find out God? Who can find out the Almighty to perfection?" And yet there are some things which we can and which we must know, for the subject of God is at the base of all things, of all religion. Without the right knowledge of God no man is a right man, and no one can rightly adjust himself to his place in this world or in the next. Let us, then, approach the great mystery of godliness, letting heavenly wisdom be our teacher.—

To-day's festival is called the Festival of the Trinity. What is the doctrine of the Trinity? For it certainly behooves every one to understand what is meant thereby, and this doctrine is held by all the Christian churches. Whosoever believes it, becomes a member of the Church. Whoever rejects it, ceases to belong to the Christian Church, and becomes a heretic.

Scripture tells us on the one hand that God is one, that there are not three Gods, but one God; on the other hand, that the Father is God, that our blessed Lord Jesus, the Son, is God, that the Holy Ghost is God, each person being a perfect God, yet so joined, each to each, that they constitute one invisible God. We are taught that these three persons are uncreated, incomprehensible, eternal, almighty, equal in glory, majesty, and power. None is before, none after, none greater or less than another; they are coeternal and coequal.

That is the plain teaching of God's holy Word. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, each of them is God, and yet there are not three Gods, but one God. How these three persons are so united as to make up only one God, so that the persons are neither confounded, nor the substance divided, we are nowhere told in Scripture. On this, as with regard to many other matters, we must be content to be ignorant. That is a great hardship to the pride of the would-be wise. And so in the earliest ages men arose and strove against this doctrine of the Trinity. The first violent strife that agitated the early Christian Church was just on this point. Arius, a certain bishop, would not accept the simple statement of Scripture that Christ is God, in the same sense as the Father is God; he would make Him inferior in divine nature. A most fierce controversy was waged, which ended in Arius' being branded a heretic, as, indeed, he was, and the true faith being only the more clearly confessed in the creeds of the Church, called the Athanasian and the Nicene Creed.

Does this doctrine sound strange and hard to believe to the carnal understanding? Let those who would be wise come forward, and prove their right to be admitted into the mystery of heaven, by showing that they have fully mastered the lesser mysteries of earth. Let them tell us, for instance, why the needle of the compass always turns toward the north. Perhaps they will say, Because it is in its nature to do so. But that is no answer. Our question is, Why does the needle so turn? What secret and invisible hand twists it around and causes it to point always the same way? Or, if this be too puzzling a question, perhaps these wise people who think it so great a hardship that they are not permitted to understand God, may tell us a little about themselves. They can perhaps teach us how it comes to pass that the blood keeps flowing unceasingly through our veins, without our being aware of it, except when we are in a high fever. We grow tired with labor or with exercise, we tire even with doing nothing, but the blood never ceases in its flow; from the hour of our birth, day and night, summer and winter, year after year, it keeps on with its silent round, never stopping, till it stops once for all. How, I ask, can these things be? No answer. And this is not the only matter by any means. There is, for instance, sleep. Who does not sleep? One-third of our lifetime is spent in sleep. Who can say what this is? And if you cannot,—and no one can,—let those who know nothing about the how and the why in so many, yea, in most of earthly matters, not be so very much surprised that they cannot understand the existence of that invisible, that eternal, that infinite Spirit whom we call God.

But though Scripture has only told us that these things are, without teaching us how they are, yet for the sake of showing that the mystery of the Trinity is not so utterly at variance with what we find in earthly things, as unbelievers would fain persuade us, for the sake of proving how possible it is, even according to our limited notions, for that which is three in one sense to be one in another sense, learned and pious men have busied themselves in seeking out likenesses for the Trinity among the things of this world. These likenesses, it should be borne in mind, are very imperfect, and they do not give us a full and just idea of the glorious Trinity; yet such comparisons may help us in attaching some sort of notion to the words of the Creed, may keep those words from lying dead in our minds or, rather, on our tongues.

One such likeness or comparison is the glorious object which our eyes see in the sky—the sun. That grand orb yonder, from which all life doth come, may be compared to the Father, from whom all blessings flow. From it issues light. This we may compare to the second person of the Trinity, who came forth from the Father, and who John tells us is the true Light, which lights every man that cometh into this world. But besides this, there comes from the sun, heat, which is different from light, and may exist altogether without it. This heat of the sun may not imperfectly be compared to the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life, as the Creed calls Him, for heat is the great fosterer of life. Thus we have, first, the sun in the sky; secondly, the light which issues from the sun; thirdly, the heat which accompanies the light—three separate and distinguishable things; for the sun viewed as an orb is one thing, the light sent forth from it is another thing, the heat still another; and yet, what can be more undivided than the sun, its light and its warmth?

To mention another.—As with the most glorious of heavenly bodies, so with the purest of earthly bodies—water. Here, too, we have, first, the fountain, high up among the rocks, far out of man's reach, answering to the Father; secondly, the stream which issues from the fountain, and flows down into the valley for the use of man, which may be likened to Jesus Christ, the Son; thirdly, the mist which rises from the water, and falls in rain or dew upon the thirsty ground, which, I need hardly state, answers to the Holy Ghost, who, as we regarded last Sunday, came down visibly, like the rain, with a sound as of a rushing mighty wind on the apostles, but who now descends gently and silently, like the dew, in the silence of night, on the heart of the believer.