to him, that he did his wonderful works, because "God gave not the Spirit by measure to him."

I

What then becomes of the Second Person in the Trinity? It becomes a non-entity. We cannot trace him by any thing that he has done in the heaven above, nor the earth beneath. He is not wanted for the assistance of God the Father, nor can we trace him in Jesus Christ. He is discovered to be a mere fiction, or phantom of the human imagination. It was begotten then by carrying back "Son of God" into the ages of eternity where it did not belong, making that to belong to the Godhead which was only applicable to Jesus the Messiah. Do you ask me, what then was the "Son of God, or the Son?" I answer, Jesus the Messiah was the Son of God. Do you ask why? I answer, I have already given one reason. will now give you another. Son of God was a title which the Jews bestowed on their Messiah without any reference to his nature whatever. It was nearly synonymous with Messiah, or quite. Do you ask me how I prove this? Turn to the first chapter of John. There it is said, that Philip findeth Nathaniel, and saith unto him, "We have found him, of whom Moses in the law and the prophets did write, Jesus of Nazareth the son of Joseph." It seems no objection in the mind of Philip that the Messiah should have been indeed the son of Joseph, as he appears to have no knowledge of his miraculous conception." Nathaniel comes with this impression that he is the son

of Joseph, and after witnessing in him proofs of miraculous knowledge, he exclaims, "thou art the Son of God, thou art the King of Israel;" not a Person of the Trinity, for nothing could have been more shocking to a Jew then and now, but the Messiah.

When Peter, convinced by his miracles, expressed his faith in his Master, he said, "thou art the Christ the. Son of the living God." This is in Matthew. Mark, in relating the same transaction, affirms that Peter said simply, "thou art the Christ." This shows that 'Christ' and 'Son of God' were synonymous, for if Son of God added any meaning, especially such a tremendous meaning as a Person of the Trinity, Mark would certainly not have omitted it. Otherwise one Gospel, which went to one part of the world, would have taught that Peter said, he was the Messiah or Christ, and the other, that he was the Second Person of the Trinity. There is no reason to doubt then, that 'the Christ' and the 'Son of God' mean one and the same thing.

When Jesus was arraigned before the Jewish council, they asked him, "Art thou the Christ, tell us?" "Hereafter," says he, "ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of Power." They understanding him to say he was the Messiah, said all, "Art thou then the Son of God?" As much as to say, you admit then that you are the Messiah or Christ. Can any thing be plainer then than that they are synonymous?

Let us now examine his own account of this matter. He was accused of claiming for himself by the appropriation of this title, precisely what the advocates of the Trinity now claim for him, an equality with God. And let it be observed, that this interpretation, which his friends now put upon his language, originated with his enemies. Did he admit that it was the true interpretation, that he was equal with God in any sense, as in truth and candour he must have done were he really so? Would he who afterwards died to sustain the claim which he made before the assembled council of his nation, 'I am the Christ,' would he have shrunk from maintaining at any hazard that he was God or equal to God, had he been so in reality? Would he have evaded the true inference by giving a wrong reason? Would the great Martyr to the truth have evaded instead of avowing such an allimportant truth as his own divinity? Impossible! If the title Son of God had belonged to him as the Second Person of the Trinity, would he have put it off upon his divine commission, his having been sanctified and sent into the world? His words then, interpreted according to the common rules of candour and plain dealing, are a disclaimer either of this title being applicable to him, as being a Person of God, or derived immediately from him. Jesus answered them, "Is it not written in your law, I said ye are gods. If he called them gods unto whom the word of God came, and the Scripture cannot be broken, say ye of him whom the Father

hath sanctified and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest because I said I am the Son of God?" One of the Persons of the Trinity sanctified and sent into the world by another! Impossible Sending into the world cannot go farther back than his divine mission to mankind.

It is this expression, "Son of God," a title of the Messiah in the time of Christ and only equivalent to it, and so perfectly well understood at that time, which, handed down to after times, has led men's thoughts back into eternity and made the substratum of a Second Person in the Deity, against every principle of the religion of the Jews and every principle of reason and com

mon sense.

When this substratum is swept away, by applying "Son of God" as it was first applied, then the Second Person falls with it, and there remains to us "one God the Father," in one Person. In the emphatic words of Scripture, "There is one God, and one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus."

It may now perhaps be asked how we interpret the first chapter of John. We answer, that it harmonizes with this explanation precisely. And it is the only explanation with which it will har

monize.

Is there one word in that chapter about a Trinity of Persons? "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." It does not say was the Second Person in

God, but was the whole God, the whole Deity. As well might you say that Eternal Life was a fourth Person in God. For John says in one of his Epistles, "that Eternal Life which was with the Father and was manifested to us. "The Word was made flesh," not literally, because God, a pure spirit, either first Person or second, cannot become flesh or any thing else, but dwelt in, or was manifested through a man; as you will find that flesh, when not contrasted with spirit, generally in the Scriptures stands for man, without regard to the distinction of body and soul. To this corresponds that expression which we chose for our text, "The Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works." "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." "Believest thou not that I am in the Father and the Father in me?" He never said "the Son or the Second Person of the Trinity dwelleth in me," as he must have said, had the doctrine of the Trinity been true, He was the Son himself, in virtue, as we have seen, of being the Messiah.

We now leave it to all candid minds to say, if we have not made out the positions we laid down at the commencement of this discourse, that there is no evidence of the existence of such a Being as the Second Person of the Trinity in Christ. That we have indeed no evidence of the existence of such a Person at all. That the Father was the Agent, and the only Agent, in all that was miraculous in what he did and said. In so proving do