Habakkuk 2:20

Zechariah 2:20

The mystery of the Holy Trinity.

I. The Holy Trinity is the foundation-stone of our faith. All religious truth is little more than the expansion of the Trinity. The Trinity, as a fact, is beyond all controversy. It is shadowed out in nature in leaves, flowers, and many creatures. It strangely pervades Providence. It has its counterpart in the triple composition and the wonderful structure of man. It has revealed itself in sacred histories, when the Three Persons have been pleased to show themselves distinct and yet simultaneous, as in the baptism of Jesus. But there are chains of thought as regards the Trinity which we cannot, must not, enter dark and awful! We can only wait outside the porch of the house and say adoringly: "The Lord is in His holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before Him."

II. The expression, "in His holy temple," seems to describe very exactly and beautifully how it is. Within the three courts of the Temple at Jerusalem stood the actual Temple, properly so called. It also had its three parts, and in its innermost part, the Holy of Holies, was the Shekinah a light always shining over the mercy seat and the ark. No one ever saw it except the High Priest once a year. Between the people and the Holy Place was a curtain, which no one might even dare to touch. Nevertheless, though they might not look on it, every Jew knew that that mysterious light day and night was there, the token and pledge of God's unchanging presence; and this knowing it was there was his confidence and his joy. It was to him matter of faith only, but as true to him as if he saw it. Just so it seems to be God's law that it should be with all grand truths. There are circles within circles, shrines within shrines. Into many we may safely go, we are bound to go; and in these is all we really need for each day's higher life. There we know God, we meet God, we converse with God, we enjoy God. But within it there is a secret place where no foot may tread. Reason cannot follow there. Woe to the man who curiously pries into its boundaries! The secret is The Lord, the Lord alone! It is the region of pure trust. But then, I know a light I cannot look on is always burning, and to be conscious that there is that hidden lustre of rays, too dazzling for human eyes, is always doing good. It is always something beyond and above me, to lift me up. It exercises me, it humiliates me, it carries on my thoughts into the eternal. I know it is there, and I know that it is mine.

J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,8th series, p. 223.

References: Zechariah 2:20. J. Davis, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xi., p. 81; Pulpit Analyst,vol. v., p. 412.