“The God of peace.”  God is a God of unity.  He makes one where before there were two.  He is the God of peace, and therefore can make peace.  Now this peace, according to the Trinitarian doctrine, consists in a threefold unity.  Brethren, as we remarked respecting this first of all, the distinction in this Trinity is not a physical distinction, but a metaphysical one.  The illustrations which are often given are illustrations drawn from material sources:  if we take only those, we get into contradiction:  for example, when we talk of personality, our idea is of a being bounded by space; and then to say in this sense that three persons are one, and one is three, is simply contradictory and absurd.  Remember that the doctrine of the Trinity is a metaphysical doctrine.  It is a trinity—­a division in the mind of God.  It is not three materials; it is three persons in a sense we shall explain by and by.

 In the next place I will endeavour to explain the doctrine—­not to
 prove it, but to show its rationality, and to explain what it is.

The first illustration we endeavour to give in this is taken from the world of matter.  We will take any material substance:  we find in that substance qualities; we will say three qualities—­colour, shape, and size.  Colour is not shape, shape is not size, size is not colour.  They are three distinct essences, three distinct qualities, and yet they all form one unity, one single conception, one idea—­the idea for example, of a tree.

Now we will ascend from that into the immaterial world; and here to be something more distinct still.  Hitherto we have had but three qualities; we now come to the mind of man, where we find something more than qualities.  We will take three—­the will, the affections, and the thoughts of man.  His will is not his affections, neither are his affections his thoughts; and it would be imperfect and incomplete to say that these are mere qualities in the man.  They are separate consciousnesses, living consciousnesses—­as distinct, and as really sundered as it is possible for three things to be, yet bound together by one unity of consciousness.  Now we have distincter proof than even this that these things are three.  The anatomist can tell you that the localities of these powers are different.  He can point out the seat of the nerve of sensation; he can localize the feeling of affection; he can point to a nerve and say, “There resides the locality of thought.”

 There are three distinct localities for three distinct qualities,
 personalities, consciousnesses; yet all these three are one.