true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." It is very important, in the defence of what we believe, to say that no similar statement of the Trinitarian belief, concerning God, can be made in unaltered Scripture language. It seems to me almost fatal to that belief, because, being confessedly obscure and difficult, its plain statement is by so much the more desirable, and, if it were true, might be confidently expected from those who "declared the whole counsel of God." It is a very strong argument against such a doctrine, that it cannot be expressed or explained without a departure from Scripture language. Let us turn, however, more carefully to the law and the testimony.

We look first to the Old Testament, from which our argument is brief and conclusive. The great object of that dispensation, under Moses and the Prophets, was to establish the doctrine of God's Unity.

When Moses was appointed the leader of Israel, he found his people buried in gross superstition and idolatry. He led them forth from Egypt in the name of the great I AM the Jehovah, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He instructed them in the history of past times, and for this purpose the book of Genesis was written: to show that the God in whose name he spoke was the same God by whom the heavens and the earth were created, by whom the wickedness of men had in times past been punished, by whom a part of the human race had been saved from the general destruction, by whom their ancestors, Abraham and his children, had been greatly blessed, in that land of promise to which he was now about to lead them, and establish them there as a great people. When he brought them to the foot of Mount Sinai in the wilderness, after they had been rescued by the strong hand and outstretched arm of the Almighty, in the midst of the fire and the smoke this

eternal truth was spoken: "Hear, O Israel, Jehovah thy God is one Jehovah." I use the word Jehovah, instead of Lord, because, as you know, wherever the latter is printed in capitals in the Old Testament the original Hebrew is Jehovah. Now this word is derived from HAYAH, to be, and means self-existence; so that the meaning is, "Hear, O Israel, the self-existent one, thy God, is the only self-existent."

That was the great central doctrine of the Jewish religion. They received it slowly and unwillingly; it was too grand for their degraded minds, and they returned again and again to the idolatries of the heathen. For a thousand years, their history is a succession of defeats and victories. So long as they held fast to their national belief in Jehovah as the only God, they were superior to all their enemies; but whenever they were corrupted by idolatrous practices, they were shorn of their strength and brought low. Thus it continued through the time of the Judges and of the Kings, during which prophets were sent to them from time to time to reiterate the one great truth, on the preservation of which their existence as a nation depended. They declared it in the most emphatic language; they enforced it by threats of the most terrible punishment if it was forsaken, and by the most glorious promises if it was faithfully adhered to.

There would be no end to the task if I were to attempt to give quotations in proof of this. Let me offer, however, a few as a sample: Deut. xxxii. 39, "See now that I, even I, am He, and there is no God with me! I kill and I make alive." Isaiah xliv. 8, "Thus saith Jehovah: Beside me there is no God: is there a God beside me? yea, there is no God; I know not any." Isaiah xlv. 5, and elsewhere, "I am Jehovah, and there is none else. To whom then will ye liken God, or what likeness will ye compare unto

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true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." It is very important, in the defence of what we believe, to say that no similar statement of the Trinitarian belief, concerning God, can be made in unaltered Scripture language. seems to me almost fatal to that belief, because, being confessedly obscure and difficult, its plain statement is by so much the more desirable, and, if it were true, might be confidently expected from those who "declared the whole counsel of God." It is a very strong argument against such a doctrine, that it cannot be expressed or explained without a departure from Scripture language. Let us turn, however, more carefully to the law and the testimony.

We look first to the Old Testament, from which our argument is brief and conclusive. The great object of that dispensation, under Moses and the Prophets, was to establish the doctrine of God's Unity.

He

When Moses was appointed the leader of Israel, he found his people buried in gross superstition and idolatry. He led them forth from Egypt in the name of the great I AM the Jehovah, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. instructed them in the history of past times, and for this purpose the book of Genesis was written: to show that the God in whose name he spoke was the same God by whom the heavens and the earth were created, by whom the wickedness of men had in times past been punished, by whom a part of the human race had been saved from the general destruction, by whom their ancestors, Abraham and his children, had been greatly blessed, in that land of promise to which he was now about to lead them, and establish them there as a great people. When he brought them to the foot of Mount Sinai in the wilderness, after they had been rescued by the strong hand and outstretched arm of the Almighty, in the midst of the fire and the smoke this

eternal truth was spoken: "Hear, O Israel, Jehovah thy God is one Jehovah." I use the word Jehovah, instead of Lord, because, as you know, wherever the latter is printed in capitals in the Old Testament the original Hebrew is Jehovah. Now this word is derived from HAYAH, to be, and means self-existence; so that the meaning is, "Hear, O Israel, the self-existent one, thy God, is the only self-existent."

That was the great central doctrine of the Jewish religion. They received it slowly and unwillingly; it was too grand for their degraded minds, and they returned again and again to the idolatries of the heathen. For a thousand years, their history is a succession of defeats and victories. So long as they held fast to their national belief in Jehovah as the only God, they were superior to all their enemies; but whenever they were corrupted by idolatrous practices, they were shorn of their strength and brought low. Thus it continued through the time of the Judges and of the Kings, during which prophets were sent to them from time to time to reiterate the one great truth, on the preservation of which their existence as a nation depended. They declared it in the most emphatic language; they enforced it by threats of the most terrible punishment if it was forsaken, and by the most glorious promises if it was faithfully adhered to.

There would be no end to the task if I were to attempt to give quotations in proof of this. Let me offer, however, a few as a sample: Deut. xxxii. 39, "See now that I, even I, am He, and there is no God with me! I kill and I make alive." Isaiah xliv. 8, "Thus saith Jehovah: Beside me there is no God: is there a God beside me? yea, there is no God; I know not any." Isaiah xlv. 5, and elsewhere, "I am Jehovah, and there is none else. To whom then will ye liken God, or what likeness will ye compare unto

him; to whom then will ye liken me, or shall I be equa ? saith the Holy One; for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me.” If it were needful, we might bring several hundred instances as strong and conclusive as these; but those who are familiar with the Old Testament will not require it; they will admit that the great labor of all the prophets, from Moses till the time of captivity, was to teach the Unity of God and the purity of his worship. It is all a commentary upon the words spoken upon Mount Sinai, "Jehovah, thy God, is one Jehovah."

But their instructions were almost in vain. The people were still corrupted, again and again, by the nations around, until the judgments of God came upon them with more dreadful calamities. They were completely subdued and carried into captivity by the Assyrians and Chaldeans. There, in the land of strangers, when their harps were hung upon the willow, and they remembered with sadness the desolation of the temple of God, the eternal truth of God's. Unity was indelibly impressed upon the heart of the Jewish people; it was burnt in by sorrow, never again to be erased. When a small remnant returned to Palestine, it was as the worshippers of one God, and to them the prophet Zechariah spoke, when prophesying of the Messiah's time, in the words of our text, "Jehovah shall be king over all the earth ; in that day there shall be One Jehovah, and his name One." The nation had yet many calamities to endure, many vicissitudes of fortune; but among them all they never departed again from the lesson which had been so severely learned.

Such is a general view of the Old Testament, which is, I think, decisive of the question before us. If it had been intended by those who spoke under the inspiration of God, to convey some peculiar idea of unity, different from that