Page:Spiritual Reflections for Every Day in the Year - Vol 1.pdf/160

, the enlightener and preserver of all things, is called —the living breath of Jesus, which he breathed upon his disciples, saying, "Receive ye the Holy Spirit." (John xx. 22.) A knowledge of divine truth as revealed in the Word of God, is true wisdom. Love and wisdom in God are one: love is as the esse of wisdom, and wisdom, the form of love—"I and my Father are one." Wisdom reveals all the operations and workings of divine love; hence Christ is said to know and reveal the Father. (Matt. xi. 27.) A knowledge of truth reveals to man all the workings of love and mercy in human redemption and salvation: "If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also." (John xiv. 7.) To see the truth clearly, is at once to recognize the love that works within it: "He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father." (ver. 9.) The operation of love and wisdom upon the souls of men, is the Holy Spirit, which, proceeding from Father and Son, enlightens, regenerates, and preserves us for ever. These three, then, Love, Wisdom, and Operative Life, are what the Apostle calls the three that bear record in heaven (1 John v. 7), and these are one, because they are the fulness of the one eternal Godhead. The word trinity means properly tri-unity, and is expressive of a threefold order of life in a unit; Love being in Wisdom, and Operative Life the result; hence the Scriptures teach that the Father is in the Son, and that the breath of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, is the operative power of both. Man is a living witness of this triune form; for, as an image and likeness of God, he possesses, finitely, love, wisdom, and power—soul and body, with activity, as the result of both. All nature, to shadow