And these comparisons may be multiplied without number. Thus you are yourself a trinity, a three in one, consisting of body, soul, and spirit. A clover leaf is one, yet has three lobes. A tree is roots, trunk, and branches, yet one tree. Time is past, present, and future; constitutes one thing,--time. By these comparisons we do not make the difficulty in the mystery of the Trinity conceivable to man's reason. What God is in Himself,--how the Son is the Only-begotten of the Father; how the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father; how the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost abide forever in inseparable union and trinity,--these are questions of no importance for us to know, and therefore God has not thought fit to reveal them to us more clearly. And having considered the doctrine of the Trinity, as expressed in the words of the text and of Scripture at large, let us draw a few practical lessons from it. Many regard the doctrine of the Trinity to be what is called a speculative doctrine only, that is to say, a doctrine concerning which men may think and conjecture and dispute for their amusement, but of no effect or importance in real life. This is a mistake. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is eminently practical and eminently profitable. Our religion is founded upon it. Deny or think lightly of this article of our faith, and you remove the very corner-stone. If it be not true that Christ Jesus is God in the same degree and sense that the Father is, then He was not God at all, then He was a creature, then His redemption is none-availing,--"for no man can redeem his brother,"--then, in other words, we have no Savior, and our faith is vain, and our salvation a delusion, and all that brings us together in Christian worship is false; for in whose name, then, have we been baptized, for what purpose do we recite the Creed, and does the minister at the end of the service pronounce the blessing, and the congregation sing the doxology?