So God enjoys with an infinite beatitude His own life. It is the Person of the Holy Ghost. He says not--I give myself life. It is the Person of the Father which says that. He does not say--I am the life. It is the Person of the Son who says that. But he says--I am God, living My life; I am God, enjoying My life. {147} Yet it must be kept in mind that all this is one simultaneous act in God: the eternal giving of life to Himself; the life itself eternally springing into being, and the eternal enjoyment or fruition of life. These are not separate acts, but one, single, inseparable act of the Triune God. The Being which acts is God, and God is not one or two of the Trinity, but the Trinity itself. The principle of the act is attributed to the Person; the act itself to the God head. Hence, again, the Son does not live a different life from the Father, or the Holy Ghost a different life from the other two Persons, but the life they live is all one. To the Holy Ghost is attributed the living or enjoyment of life, as we attribute the living of our own life to our own person; and, therefore, our person is, in a remarkable manner, an image of the Holy Ghost. We speak of our __spirit__ as living, rejoicing, etc., and when we die or yield up the living of our life, we say--We give up the ghost. In Me, says the Holy Ghost, are all possible perfections; I rejoice in them. My life is all good, wherefore I love Myself with infinite love. My life is all beautiful, wherefore I admire it, and am well pleased, and take an infinite delight in it. My life is all holy. I am the supreme object of My own adoration. My life is all true, wherefore I contemplate all truth with unspeakable bliss. In My life is no conflict, no change, no anxiety, doubt, or sorrow, wherefore I am in eternal peace. {148} My life is all that is or can be, wherefore I seek not for My happiness outside of My own happy being. Such I am, and such I live, the Holy Ghost, who proceed from the Father and the Son, who, together with the Father and the Son, am adored and glorified, the great I AM, the Ancient of Days, Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, who was, and who is, and who is to come, the Almighty, Good, Wise, Just, and True, the eternal, living God. Dear brethren, such thoughts, I know, are bewildering, and leave our poor human intellects stupefied in presence of that Majesty, the simplest idea of whom is beyond all power of expression. But we know that God is, and that we know Him, great as He is, incomprehensible as He is, so far transcending all grasp of our feeble minds; yet even in His mysterious Being He is no stranger to us. The doctrine of the Trinity of Persons in God is wonderful, but it is not a strange doctrine. It is a truth full of light and consolation. It is a revelation of Him, who is all in all, that draws us, if I may say so, nearer to Him.