right to me, if I in my heart believe it wrong.  You may coerce the conscience, you may control men’s belief, and you may produce a unity by so doing; but it is the unity of pebbles on the sea-shore—­a lifeless identity of outward form with no cohesion between the parts—­a dead sea-beach on which nothing grows, and where the very seaweed dies.

Lastly, it respected the sanctity of individual character.  Out of eight hundred millions of the human race, a few features diversify themselves into so many forms of countenance, that scarcely two could be mistaken for each other.  There are no two leaves on the same tree alike; nor two sides of the same leaf, unless you cut and kill it There is a sacredness in individuality of character; each one born into this world is a fresh new soul intended by his Maker to develope himself in a new fresh way; we are what we are; we cannot be truly other than ourselves.  We reach perfection not by copying, much less by aiming at originality; but by consistently and steadily working out the life which is common to us all, according to the character which God has given us.

And thus will the Church of God be one at last—­will present an unity like that of heaven.  There is one universe in which each separate star differs from another in glory; one Church in which a single Spirit, the Life of God, pervades each separate soul; and just in proportion as that Life becomes exalted does it enable every one to shine forth in the distinctness of his own separate individuality, like the stars of heaven.

 IV.

 Preached May 26, 1850.

 THE TRINITY.

   “And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God
    your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto
    the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”—­1 Thess. v. 23.

The knowledge of God is the blessedness of man.  To know God, and to be known by Him—­to love God, and to be loved by Him—­is the most precious treasure which this life has to give; properly speaking the only treasure; properly speaking the only knowledge; for all knowledge is valuable only so far as it converges towards and ends in the knowledge of God, and enables us to acquaint ourselves with God, and be at peace with Him.  The doctrine of the Trinity is the sum of all that knowledge which has as yet been gained by man.  I say gained as yet.  For we presume not to maintain that in the ages which are to come hereafter, our knowledge shall not be superseded by a higher knowledge; we presume not to say that in a state of existence future—­yea even here upon this earth, at that period which is mysteriously referred to in Scripture as “the coming of the Son of Man”—­there shall not be given to the soul an intellectual conception of the Almighty, a vision of the Eternal, in comparison with whose brightness and clearness our present knowledge of the Trinity shall be as rudimentary and as childlike