physics help me to find him out to perfection? If I have taken this method, I have been deceiving myself, for the world by its reason never found out God. Or was I brought to the knowledge of him in this way? Was I convinced of sin, and humbled under the sense of it, and did I then find myself fallen from God, and alienated from the life of God, so that I had no means of discovering his nature and perfections, but as revealed by his word and by his Spirit? Did I read the word, and pray for the Holy Spirit to open and to explain it, that I might come to the knowledge of the only true God and of Jesus Christ, whom he hath sent? And am I still in this humble, teachable frame of mind, reading the word, and praying for the teachings of the Spirit of God? If this be your case happy are ye. God has promised, and his word cannot be broken. Ask-and ye shall have. Ask and ye shall have this great promise of the new covenant fulfilled to you, Jer. xxxi. 34. "And they shall no more teach every man his neigh"bour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the "Lord: for they shall all know me from the least of "them to the greatest of them, saith the Lord." He will teach you the knowledge of himself, and will manifest to you his essence and his personality. You shall know him as he has been pleased to reveal himself in the text, in which we have the whole of what is contained in the sacred volume: for here he declares what his

essence is, he is one Jehovah, and what the persons in this one Jehovah are, they are Alehim, Jehovah our Alehim is one Jehovah. This proposition is one of the deep things of God which he hath revealed unto us by his Spirit, and which contains more than can be written in many volumes. Each word has a rich copiousness, and explains to us many treasures of divine truth. May that Lord and God, in whom are laid up all the riches of grace and knowledge, open them to you at this time, that you may understand the will and mind of the Lord in his great and glorious name Jehovah.

The word translated Lord, is in the original Jehovah, which signifies a manner of existence peculiar and proper to the most High God. He is the only selfexistent essence. All other beings owe their existence to his will and pleasure, and depend on him for life and breath, and all things; but he exists by a necessity of nature, and this necessary existence is the meaning of the word Jehovah. We cannot fully comprehend the idea conveyed by this word, because we are not acquainted with the manner of necessary existence.

The

wisest man upon earth cannot describe in what manner any material object exists: for the atoms of which bodies are composed, fall not under the observation of our senses. We know that gold differs from water, but we are ignorant of their constituent particles, which make them differ, so that we confessedly know not the manner of their existence; and the plain reason is, gold and water do exist in a different manner, but our senses cannot discover how their particles or atoms differ. And since we know not the manner of the existence of the material bodies with which ourselves are conversant, how absurd would it be for any man to pretend to know the manner of the existence of a spiritual being? How presumptuous then would it be for any man to undertake to describe how Jehovah exists, and rashly to affirm that he exists in a manner which excludes all personality, while this very man does not know the manner of the existence of any one thing in the world. And yet every little philosopher, who has but just learned to reason upon the objects which are within his reach, pretends to reason about the nature and attri'butes of God, and every minute infidel undertakes to prove by metaphysics, and one of them more proud and ignorant than the rest, thought he could prove a priori, that Jehovah exists in one person, although Jehovah himself declares he does not. If these men would attend to the meaning of the name Jehovah, it might correct some of their mistakes. It signifies necessary existence. Now from whence shall we form a perfect

idea of this word? We have no ideas but from our senses, and there is no object within the reach of our senses, which exists by a necessity of nature. All these Jehovah had formed and made; consequently they can only give us ideas of dependent existence. There is but one Jehovah, the text says, and he exists in a manner, of which no other thing can give us a perfect idea, and therefore we can have no reason to reject the account which God has given us of the manner of his existence, but if we act consistently, we must receive and abide by the revealed account, which teaches us that Jehovah is the self-existent essence, and that this essence is one, one Jehovah, but the Alehim, the persons in Jehovah, are three. There was no doubt in those ancient times about the personality, the scripture guards most the unity of the essence, and while it affirms the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to be of the self-existent essence, it, at the same time, teaches us that these three are one, one in essence, but three in persons.

The personality in Jehovah is described in the text by the word Alehim, which is in the plural number, and acknowledged to be so by the Jews as well as Christians, and if they had not owned it, yet the sense of the passage would lead us to seek for a plural interpretation, because there was no need for a revelation to teach us, that Jehovah our one Alehim is one Jehovah, which is no more than that one is one. But the word Alehim being plural, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, being Alehim, it was necessary to reveal to us the unity of the essence, and to teach us that these three persons were one Jehovah, and therefore being of the self-existent essence, none is before or after other, none is greater or less than another, but the whole three persons are co-eternal together and co-equal. Each of the persons is Jehovah. The Father is Jehovah, as we read Isa. lxiv. 8. "But now, O Jehovah, thou art our Father." The Son is Jehovah, Isa. xlv. 21. "Who hath declar"ed this from ancient time? Have not I Jehovah? "and there is no God else beside me, a just God and a

"Saviour;" here the Son our Saviour is called Jehovah. And the Holy Spirit is Jehovah, Isaiah xi. 2. "The "Spirit Jehovah shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wis"dom and understanding," &c.

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Each of the persons is called Alehim.

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The Father

is so called, 1 Chron. xxix. 10. "And David said, "Blessed be thou Jehovah, Alehim of Israel, our "Father, for ever and ever." The Son is Alehim, Isaiah xlv. 21. "There is no Alehim else beside me, a just God and a Saviour." The Holy Spirit is Alehim, Exodus xxxi. 3. “I have filled Bezaleel with the Spirit Alehim," not of the Alehim, the Hebrew is, with the Spirit Alehim, so that the Spirit is the Alehim. These scriptures confirm the doctrine of the text, namely, that Jehovah is one, and that in the unity of Jehovah there are three Alehim, which word does not signify their manner of existence. Jehovah denotes that, but it is a relative word, descriptive of the gracious offices of the eternal three in the œconomy of man's redemption. And neither the personality expressed by its being plural, nor its meaning, are retained by our translators in the singular word God. God is no more the sense of Alehim, than goodness is. And if the translators could not find a proper word in our language, they should have given a definition of it in the first place they met with it in the Bible, and then have retained the Hebrew name ever afterwards. By their neglect, our people are kept in ignorance of this gracious name, under which Jehovah would have himself to be known. It belongs to the covenant of grace, and is descriptive of the acts and offices of the eternal Three in the glorious plan of man's salvation, and it signifies the binding act of the covenant, the obligation entered into upon oath to fulfil it.

This is the sense of Aleh, the root from whence Alehim is derived, and there is no other root from whence it can be derived, without offering great violence to the established rules of the Hebrew tongue. The oath of God is often mentioned in scripture, and

the people's entering into it is beautifully described, Deut. xxix. 10, 11, 12. "Ye stand this day all of you "before the Lord your God, your captains of your "tribes, your elders, and your officers, with all the 66 men of Israel, your little ones, your wives, and thy "stranger that is in thy camp, from the hewer of "wood unto the drawer of water, that thou shouldest "enter into covenant with the Lord thy God, and "into his oath. God is here said to have made an "oath, emphatically stiled his oath, because it was the oath of the covenant from whence the name Alehim is taken.

If you ask, when was this covenant made by oath, and by whom, and for what end? The scripture answers those points very clearly.

The covenant was made before the world began, aš Titus i. 2. "In hope of eternal life which God that "cannot lie promised before the world began." Was not this promise the oath of the covenant? What else could it be? God, who cannot lie, promised before the world began, and fore-ordained (as 1 Peter i. 20.) that Christ should be the Lamb, who should take away sin by the sacrifice of himself. This was fore-ordained by an eternal purpose, which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord, Eph. iii. 11. What is called in the scripture the purpose, the promise, and fore-ordination of God, was the covenant of grace which was made before the world began, yea, by an eternal purpose, and from which the divine persons who confirmed this covenant by an oath, are called Alehim, and as the covenant was made before the world began, they therefore took their name from it, and are described by it before the creation in the first chapter of Genesis. They had done some act before, from which this name was taken. Now it signifies to confirm any thing by oath, therefore they had confirmed something by oath before the world began; and what it was these scriptures determine, which speak of the purpose, counsel, promise, and fore-ordination of God made before all