It is of this unity, brethren, that this day testifies; which is therefore a more wonderful and glorious day than that which testifies of the ascension of the Son to the right hand of the Father, or of the descent of the Spirit to fill the earth and the hearts of men with rivers of living water. But we can know little of the depth and sweetness of this day, if we forget how Christ revealed the mystery of it; how He both said and proved that to know Him is to know the Father! For that blessed doctrine, upon which Fathers and Reformers lived and died, we are fast substituting one which seems to put the Son at an infinite distance from the Father; which seems to make the will of the Son not the revelation of the Father's will, but the contrast to it. Nay, our orthodoxy--so strangely like what would have been called heresy in other days--is even daring to affirm that we may believe anything dark or malignant respecting the character of the Father, if only _we_ gather from the Bible that that is its testimony concerning Him. Frightful contradiction! to set up a book against Him whom we believe to be its author! to say that a book, which is from first to last a denunciation of false and cruel gods, may possibly proclaim to us a false and cruel God, and that we should be bound to accept its message if it did! Gracious Father, deliver thy Church from doctrines which teach us that we are not to hallow thy name above all books and letters which thou in thy mercy hast bestowed upon us! Deliver us from those who teach us that we can see Thee anywhere except in thy Only-begotten Son; or that, if Thou art revealed in Him, Thou canst be anything but Light without darkness, Truth without falsehood, Love without cruelty. Teach us to hate all counterfeits of Thee; all notions of Thee which are derived from our darkness, our falsehood, our cruelty. Teach us to worship the Eternal Trinity, the One God of perfect charity blessed for ever. AMEN. DISCOURSE XVII. THE TWO FATHERS. [Lincoln's Inn, First Sunday after Trinity, May 25, 1856.] ST. JOHN VIII. 43. _Why do ye not understand my speech? Even because ye cannot hear my word._