Every truth in the Divine nature has been expressed in a variety of ways in creation, in just so far as it is possible for created things to set forth the Infinite and uncreated One. Instead of Divine things being scantily hinted at, the created universe seems to run over with an excess of types and laws and analogies of the life, nature and government of God. It is true we cannot understand the illustrations of God in creation until we first get our illumination from Scripture and the Holy Spirit. After we come to the original fountains of light, and then go back to nature with an anointed vision, we are fairly dazzled with the marks we find that God has imprinted on His works.  

Abundance is one of the characteristics of God, and of all His works and dealings; and while there are instances of His rigid economy, yet those instances only heighten the splendor of His munificence. When He told His disciples to gather up the fragments that nothing be lost, the economy only intensified the super-abundance of the twelve baskets of fragments. As in all the works of nature, and the provisions of grace, there is an excess over and above bare necessity, so in the revelation of truth there is always a super fullness beyond the bare needs of making the truth known.  

This is because God is a Being of infinite beauty as well as infinite love, and the very nature of love is to be liberal, as the very nature of beauty is to be rich and profuse. Hence God does things according to His own attributes, and the magnificence of His nature, and not according to the scanty notions of His creatures. This is why He floods the world with unmeasured beauty, under the seas, and on the mountains, which no man can see. He pours His love out over all sentient creatures, even the little birds and insects, where there can be no intelligent response to His affection. The great truth of three Divine Persons in the one ever blessed substance of God’s nature is imprinted all through the works of creation, and in such a way as to show the order of office in the three Persons. Let us notice a few types in creation of the Divine Trinity.  

1. The ocean has always been recognized as a majestic emblem of the Deity. This type grows on us the more He is revealed to the heart by the Holy Spirit. But the ocean exists in three forms, as sea, cloud and rain; yet all of one substance and of one nature, yet existing in distinct forms and specific offices. Again, the ocean gives forth, or generates from its bosom, the vapor which constitutes the cloud, and out of the cloud there is poured forth the rain to nourish the earth and produce fruitfulness and verdure. Thus, from the bosom of the eternal Father, is generated the eternal Word, “Who was in the beginning with God,” and Who is the brightness of the Father’s glory. Then from the Persons of the Father and the Son there proceeds the Holy Ghost, Who is Divine rain, poured out over the moral universe to produce “the fruits of the Spirit,” and verdure of grace.  

Furthermore, all three of these forms of the ocean exist with equal age, for the cloud and rain are in reality as old as the sea, though manifesting themselves in successive order, for the cloud is in the sea, and the rain is in the cloud, though not manifest. In like manner the Son of God eternally exists in the bosom of the Father, and the Holy Spirit eternally abides in the Father and the Son. As the cloud comes from the sea to manifest the virtues of the sea and pours out those virtues in rain, so Jesus affirms “He came forth from the Father” to make known the character of the Father and to pour out the blessedness of that character in the showers of the Holy Spirit.  

2. The sun is another universally recognized emblem of God, both in Scripture and out of it. But the sun exists in a threefold form, as first the body of liquid fire, and then the light that is generated from that bosom of flame, and the heat penetrates and warms the solar system.  

We recognize both in science and in practical life the distinction between the sun and the light and the heat, yet we know they are all of the same substance or force or motion. Sometimes they are all treated of as one, and at other times as being three distinct things, which is exactly the way the Scriptures and spiritually-minded Christians speak of God. Just as we say, “God is love,” so we say, “The sun is fire.” Christ is the light that comes from the Father to reveal all things as sunlight reveals creation, and the Holy Spirit is the invisible Person of God that softens hard hearts, melts the conscience, and with a gentle, powerful heat moves the will to choice and perseverance. Thus Jesus is called the “light,” the “wisdom,” the “knowledge,” the “revealer of God,” because it is His office to operate more directly upon our understanding, while it is the office of the Holy Spirit, as the Divine heat, to act more directly upon our own willpower, moving us to action, as it is the heat of the sun that in the Spring stirs all vegetation into action.  

3. The human family has been recognized by the most saintly and scholarly minds from the days of the apostles as a created emblem of the Trinity. There are only three relations that originally constituted the family circle—the father, the mother, and the child. Scripture tells us that God created man in the likeness of the Trinity. “Let us make man in our image,” and then it says, “in the image of God created he them,” showing a plural God, and a plural man, and as the Godhead was of one substance with plural persons, so man was of one substance with plural human personalities.  

When Adam stood before his Creator he contained within himself both Eve and her offspring. Adam was both father and mother to Eve, and was the image of God in his threefold function of being man, and yet a paternal man, and a material man, for all the motherhood of the race was just as literally in Adam as all the fatherhood of the race was, and mark you, all three of these functions, as man, as father, as mother, existed from the moment that he was a man, so that one function was just as old as the other, which is a most startling emblem of the eternity and co-ordinate existence of the three functions of the three Persons of the Godhead. From Adam came Eve, and from the mutual love and union of those two proceeded their offspring, but all existed primarily in Adam. Thus the Father, out of the blissful knowledge of Himself, produces the only begotten Son, and from the eternal and mutual communion of the Father and the Son there proceeds in an eternal stream of joy the blessed Person of the Holy Ghost, for the Son of God reveals and exemplifies the infinite maternity of the Godhead just as really as He does that of paternity and of Sonship. The three Persons in the Godhead are a Divine community, holding ineffable fellowship together, of which the joys of the holiest and happiest earthly family is the faintest shadow.  

4. The immaterial nature of man comprises a threefold mode of nature, as heart, and mind, and will, which is another striking type of the Divine Trinity. The heart of the affectional nature of man is the fountain out of which proceeds the intellectual nature and the active or volitional nature.  

From the Scriptures it would seem that the Person of the eternal Father is the heart of the Godhead and Person of the Word; the Divine Son is the Head over all things, the understanding; and that the Holy Spirit is the will, the active, energetic power, the executive of the Godhead. Hence we read that “God is love,” and that “Christ is the wisdom of God,” and of “the power of the Holy Ghost,” or under another form, we read of “the love of the Father,” “the grace of the Lord Jesus,” and “the communion of the Holy Ghost.”  

It is the office of the mind either in literature, or art, or speech, to reveal what is in the heart, just as Christ reveals the Father. Then it is the office of the will to bring things to pass, and actually carry out the affections of the heart and the plans of the mind, as it is the office of the Holy Spirit to carry the Father’s love, and the Son’s grace and plans into real and powerful experience, life and history. Yet all three of these functions of the soul exist simultaneously, yet have a priority of office and action corresponding precisely with what Scripture reveals of the order and office of the three Persons in the one ever-blessed God.  

There are many other emblems of the Trinity in creation, such as body, soul, spirit; or earth, water and air; or suns, planets and moons; also many types in the laws of nature, in chemistry, botany, geology, and other departments of nature too numerous to mention here.  

As I said at the beginning, there is a superabundance of instances in which God has imprinted His adorable Trinity of Persons upon nearly every page of created things. There is no way of understanding Scripture, or a full religious experience, except through the knowledge of the Divine Trinity in one Godhead.