The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1882, Page 22

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22 The Lutheran Pioneer.

The Holy Trinity.

(Isaiah 6, 1—4.)

These things the Seer Isaiah did befall ;
In spirit he beheld the Lord of all
On a high throne, raised up in splendor bright,
His garment’s border filled the choir with light.
Beside Him stood two seraphim, which had
Six wings, wherewith they both alike were clad:
With twain they hid their shining face, with twain
They hid their feet as with a flowing train,
And with the other twain they both did fly.
One to the other thus aloud did cry:
‘*Holy is God, the Lord of Sabaoth!
Holy is God, the Lord of Sabaoth!
Holy is God, the Lord of Sabaoth!
His glory filleth all the trembling earth.”
With the loud cry the posts and thresholds shook,
And the whole house was filled with mist and smoke.
(Dr. M. Luther, 1526. Tr. by R. Massie, 1854.)

The Holy Trinity.

Trinity, or tri-unity, means three in one.
It signifies that there are three Persons in the
Unity of the Godhead. This doctrine of the
Holy Trinity we learn from the Bible only.
Nature and human reason cannot tell us who
God is. God has revealed Himself in the
Scriptures and from.the Scriptures only we can
learn to know Him.

Tue Scriptures tell us that there is one God.
‘‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one
Lord,’’ Deut. 6,4. ‘‘There is none other God
but one,”’ 1 Cor. 8,4. ‘‘One God and Father
of all, who is above all, and through all, and
in you all,’’ Eph. 4, 6. From these and other
passages of the Bible we learn that God is one
in His essence, that there is but one God.

Tse same Bible speaks of God the Father,
God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, from
which we learn that God is Triune in Persons,
that there are three distinct Persons in the
Unity of the Godhead. Christ commanded
His disciples to baptize ‘‘in the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,”’
Matth. 28, 19. In the history of man’s cre-
ation we read: ‘“‘And God said, Let us make
man in our image, after our likeness,’ Gen.
1, 26. This expression proves that there are
more than one Person in the one Godhead.
And the prophet Isaiah heard the angels cry
to another: ‘‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of
hosts.”” From their singing ‘“‘holy”’ three times
we again plainly see that there are three Per-

sons in the one Godhead.

Tue Unitarians and others, who deny the
doctrine of the Holy Trinity, say that there is
one Person only and that this one Person is
sometimes called Father, sometimes Son, and
sometimes Holy Ghost, just as one person may
be a doctor, a minister, and a squire. But this
is against the holy Scriptures, and those who
teach so have not the true God, they are not
Christians. For from the Bible we learn that
there are three distinct Persons in the one God-
head. This is plainly seen from the history of

Christ’s baptism. (Matthew 3,16.17.) There
each Person in the Holy Trinity revealed Him-

self. The Father’s voice was heard from heaven:
“‘This is my beloved Son;’’ the Son was bap-
tized in the Jordan; the Holy Ghost descended
and lighted upon Him. Here we have three

distinct Persons. Hence, the primitive Chris-
tians used to say to any who doubted the truth
of this doctrine, ‘‘Go to Jordan and you will
see the Trinity.’’

THe doctrine that there are three co-equal
and co-eternal Persons but only one God, is a
mysterious doctrine. It is above our reason.
But we need not wonder at this. There are
many, many things in this world which we can-
not comprehend with our reason. There is a
cherry tree, and my boy was looking at the tree,
anxiously waiting for the cherries to get ripe.
Suddenly he turned around and asked me:
‘How can such a tree grow out of a little
kernel?’’ I could not explain it to him. And
so there are many things in this world which
we cannot comprehend. How should we poor
human beings be able to comprehend the great
God with our weak human reason. But we ac-
cept the doctrine of the Holy Trinity with true
faith, because it is plainly revealed in the Word
of God. And so we rejoice in ‘‘the grace of
our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God;
and the communion of the Holy Ghost,’”’ 2 Cor.
13, 14.

— ~<a oe

What we did hear, and what we did not hear.

A friendly reader, referring to our article in
the last number of the Pioneer on “Plenty
of Baskets,” writes that by passing around all
those baskets in a congregation we would make
that congregation ‘‘die of liberality.”

Now, is this so? No. We, at least, never
heard of such a death. We did hear of the
man who, whilst singing the lines

“Were the whole realm of nature mine
That were an offering fur too sinall,”’
was diligently engaged, with one hand in his
pocket, in scraping the edge of a three-cent
piece to make sure it was nota dime. We did
hear of the man who never thought of study-
ing the frescoing on the ceiling of the church-
building until the collection plate was being
passed around. The same man was opposed to
getting a chandelier for the church, and the
church-members thought he was opposed to it
because he was afraid there would be a collec-
tion taken up for that purpose. He, however,
teld them he was opposed to it only because he
saw no use of getting a chandelier as long as
there. was no one in the congregation able to
play on it, and they would have to hire a man
extra for that purpose. Again, we did hear of
the rich English peer who, since the collection
began to be taken up in a bag instead of a
plate, contributed nothing but coppers. And
one Sunday morning a wag had cut a slit in
the bottom of the bag which was passed first to
his lordship, whose bronze penny fell with a
resounding clash on the floor, plain to be seen
by all men. And again, we did hear of the
man who, when an appeal was made to him by

his pastor for some mission work, said, ‘‘Sir,
do we not understand that the waters of salva-
tion are free?”’ ‘‘They are,’’ said the pastor,
‘“but you must pay for the pitchers in which to
carry the water.” And again, we did hear of
a congregation which allowed its old and infirm
minister to be put up to the lowest bidder; and
when the citizens of the village thought it too
heavy a burden upon them, they even went to
law with an adjoining township in order to
compel it to provide for the aged pastor. We
did hear of all this, but we never did hear of
a congregation that died of liberality; and we
think old Unclé Moses was right when he said
in a congregational meeting: ‘‘ Bredderin, you
need not be afraid ob givin’ too much. If any
ob you know ob any church w’at died ob lib-
erality, jes tell me whar it is, an’ I will take a
pilgrimage to it, an’ by de soft light ob de pale
moon I will crawl upon its moss-covered roof,
an’ write upon de top-most shingle, ‘ Blessed am
de dead who die in de Lord’.’’
——jqoo~- oa ee

Conscience.

The Oswego Times tells the story of a young
man who recently walked into the shoe store of
a Mr. Dessum, and, calling the proprietor aside,
informed him that fourteen years ago he stole
a pair of boots from him. He said that he had
tried to forget the theft but could not. It kept
constantly coming to his mind; and his remem-
brance of the act as constantly made him mis-
erable. He often thought of coming to Mr.
Dessum to confess the act and pay for the
boots; but, somehow, he could not pluck up
the courage to do it. He had, at length, re-
solved to obey the voice of his conscience.
The young man, who was twenty-eight years
of age, and who was a perfect stranger to Mr,
Dessum, paid for the boots the price that the
owner named and walked out. We have
known of a case of secret theft that at times
haunted the thief for forty years, who found no
relief until he made full reparation of the
wrong. Men may laugh and ‘sneer at the doc-
trine of conscience, and try to explain it away
or drown its voice; and yet the matter of fact
is that conscience is a powerful voice in every
human soul. How many a man suffers under
the lashes of his conscience! Others may not
know it; but this will not change that power-
ful voice that is speaking within him.

; Luther’s Catechism.

Justus Jonas has said of it: ‘It is a little
book that can be bought for six pennies, but
6,000 worlds cannot pay for it when estimated
at its true value.’’ Prince Joachim of Anhalt
was a learned man. With his own hand he
wrote in his Small Catechism: ‘‘ Next to the
Bible this is my best book.”

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Mosr pleasures, like flowers, when gathered

die.

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