that, at the first creation of man, it was said, " Let us make man in our image, after our likeness3." In that passage it seems as if the formation of man was a matter in which the Three Persons of the Godhead concurred : and the same idea is evidently suggested in the passage before us. The same peculiarity occurs also in the Book of Ecclesiastes ; where it is said, " Remember thy Creators in the days of thy youth V Now, though these expressions mai'k a plu- rality of Persons in the Godhead, I should not think them of themselves sufficient to establish the doctrine of a Trinity in Unity : but when I find that doctrine so fully declared in other portions of Holy Writ, I cannot but regard these as very strongly confirming it. I feel that I can then account for, and explain, these peculiarities ; which, without such a solution, must be utterly inexplicable.
But, not to dwell on the mere words, I will call your attention to the great subject contained in them : which indeed deserves the more attention, because there is not any one image in which our relation to God is more frequently or more strongly marked, than in that of marriage.
Look at it as stated in general terms —
[Both the Old Testament and the New alike abound with this figure. God declares, that he was the Husband of his Church in the wilderness0. And, after he had put her away for her adulteries, he recalls her to him, saying, " Return unto me; for I am married unto youd." When our God incarnate came, even our Lord Jesus Christ, his forerunner, John the Baptist, pointed him out as the Bridegroom of his Church e: and our Lord himself also assumed it as a title which he bore, and a character he sustained : " Can the children of the bridechamber fast whilst the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken from them: and then shall they fast in those daysf." St. Paul enters into the subject at large, drawing a parallel between the duties of the marriage relation, as subsisting amongst men, and those which we owe to Christ as the Husband of the Church : and lest we should confine our attention exclusively to the former,
a Gen. i. 26. b Eccl. xii. 1. c Jer. xxxi. 32.
d Jer. iii. 14. e John iii. 29. f Matt. ix. 15.