There is a holy deference, if we may so say, between the Persons of the Trinity in regard to their respective ministries. When Christ was in office on earth, the Father commends us to him, speaking from heaven and saying: "This is my beloved Son, hear ye him"; when the Holy Ghost had entered upon his earthly office, Christ commends us to him, speaking again from heaven with sevenfold reiteration, saying: "He that hath an ear, let him hear what _the Spirit_ saith unto the churches."[2] As each Person refers us to the teaching of the other, so in like manner does each in turn consummate the ministry of the other. Christ's words and works were not his own, but his Father's: "The words which I speak unto you I speak not of myself, but the Father that dwelleth in me he doeth the works."[3] The Spirit's teaching and communications are not his own, but Christ's: "Howbeit when he the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all truth; _for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear that shall he speak_; and he will show you things to come." "_He shall glorify me; for he shall receive of mine and show it unto you._" This order in the ministries of the Persons of {28} the Godhead is so fixed and eternal that we find it distinctly foreshadowed even in the typical teaching of the Old Testament. Many speak slightingly of the types, but they are as accurate as mathematics; they fix the sequence of events in redemption as rigidly as the order of sunrise and noontide is fixed in the heavens. Nowhere in tabernacle or in temple, shall we ever find the laver placed before the altar. The altar is Calvary and the laver is Pentecost; one stands for the sacrificial blood, the other for the sanctifying Spirit. If any high priest were ignorantly to approach the brazen laver without first having come to the brazen altar, we might expect a rebuking voice to be heard from heaven: "Not yet the washing of water"; and such a saying would signify exactly the same as: "Not yet the Holy Ghost." Again, when the leper was to be cleansed, observe that the blood was to be put upon the tip of his right ear, the thumb of his right hand, and the great toe of his right foot; and then the oil was to be put upon the right ear, the right thumb, and the right foot--_the oil upon the blood of the trespass-offering_ (Lev. 14). Never, we venture to say, in all the manifold repetitions of this divine ceremony, was this order once inverted, so that the oil was first applied, and then the blood; which means, interpreting type into antitype, that it was impossible that Pentecost could have preceded Calvary, or {29} that the outpouring of the Spirit should have anticipated the shedding of the blood.