relations and qualities. But the Godhead is the most real of all units, and every other single thing derives its existence from this only underived unit. And we anticipate such a variety of properties and relations in the Supreme Being, as will comport with His infinite and eternal essence. He is a Spirit; and the relations which eternally subsist in Him must be sufficient to constitute the absolute perfection of His intellectual, moral and potential nature. He is the Creator; and the powers inherent in Him must be adequate to create and uphold the universe of things. And though the relation now in question surpasses anything that we could have anticipated, we are not at liberty to limit the Eternal by the range of our imaginative powers. It is sufficient that it be intelligible, and involve no self-contradiction. It is to be expected that the relations and the relatives within the essence of the Deity will transcend in some respects the perceptive and intuitive faculties of the most exalted creature, and can only be made known to some extent by Divine revelation.

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5. In the fifth place, the relative now before us in this sublime unity is named the Word. The use of the term in this sense is peculiar to John. In his first epistle he employs the phrase, "the Word of life," and in the book of Revelation, the Word of God." The latter of these reminds us of the remarkable passage in the epistle to the Hebrews: "The Word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart"; and carries us back to the saying of the Psalmist: "By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth." But John uses the phrase to denote, not an attribute, but strictly a substantive being. And here, accordingly, he drops the qualifying epithet, "of life," or "of God," and designates this Being simply and absolutely the Word.

11. The IMPort of the WORD is now to be considered. It is a term of many bearings. It belongs to the high region of the intellect. It implies the speaker, the thought, the thinker.

*An ens or entity is a seat of potence. The thing may affect and be affected by several other things, and therefore has usually a manifold potence. It proves its existence simply by acting and being acted upon. For being, lacking potence, or the merely impotent, would not be distinguishable from pure nothing. "Wissenschaft der Logik," p. 72). It is to be (Hegel, borne in mind, that diversity of quality is compatible with unity of substance. Each simple element hitherto discovered has a variety of qualities, in virtue of which it affects or is affected by many others. This is quite distinct from a component substance, which is capable of being resolved into several simple elements.

Here, however, it is used in a highly figurative sense. 1. It means not an evanescent product of the mind, but a substantive Being. This Being is pronounced to be God. Now God is a Spirit, all-wise, all-good, and almighty. Hence the Word is a person in the Godhead, distinguished in some respect by the present appellation. As the audible word is to the thing thought, so is the substantive Word to the Divine mind. But the word expresses the thing, and so the personal Word manifests the Heavenly Thinker in all the moods of mind. We can distinguish three chief moods of mind: thinking, willing and doing. The faculties of thought, choice, and action, are latent in the invisible mind. The Word is the manifester of the Eternal Spirit; the exponent of all that is within the Godhead. The Spirit thinks, wills, acts; the Word exhibits Him thinking, willing, acting. This is essential to the perfection of a spiritual being.

This is a clear and intelligible point of distinction between the Word and the God with whom

He was from the beginning. God is a Spirit imperceptible to the sense; the Word is the Spokesman of the Spirit, "the Image of the invisible God." The relation of the manifest to the invisible is no new thing in the world of experience. Power is invisible; its action being palpable to the sense discloses its existence. Cause, quality, substance are among the realities inaccessible to the sense, and known only to intuition from their sensible effects. Relations, however real, are cognisable only by intuitive reason. Existence itself is not the object of any sense, and is descried from the action of the thing existing.* Effects are manifest to the mind by sensation; and therefrom by intuition we discern the existence and presence of the power, quality, cause or thing from which they come. The universe is a grand effect palpable to these eyes of ours, and enables us to perceive the invisible Potentate, whose energy is the only adequate cause of its existence. If such a rela tion is so frequent in the creature, we may well expect a conspicuous and fundamental example of it in the Creator. Accordingly, in the sublime philosophy here before us, it presents itself in a form incomparably higher than all these, as it lies within the very essence of the Godhead. 2. The Word also implies converse, and this

The

If we are to limit ourselves to bare sensation. we shall have a very narrow range of materials for science; as force, relation and even existence reach us by another avenue. Effect on the organ of sense is the sum and substance of all that comes to us by mere sensation, as distinguished from perception. balance required to make up perception is due to intuition. This and its counterpart, abstraction, are potencies of the mind that have not received sufficient attention. Without the exercise of these faculties existence itself would be unknown; and even Humes impressions and ideas would vanish into thin air.

*

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accords with the statement that the Word was with God. "With" here means, to face to face with, pertaining to. Such is the proper place for the Manifester of Him who is hid from carnal eyes in the secret chambers of eternity. The manifested implies the manifester. The speaker indicates not only the thinker, but the intelligent hearer. This, however, points farther than we have yet advanced. The Word farther hints at the parity of speaker and hearer, as well as the unity of speaker and thinker. This leads the way to the climax of the apostle: And the Word was God." This brings us face to face with the real point of this transcendental relation that within the one Godhead two relatives co-exist from all eternity: the one is the Word, the Manifester, who is pronounced to be God, the other is "the God," the invisible Potentate with whom the Word has eternally been. As God is a Spirit, each is therefore a person. Hence appears the singularity of this relation, that two persons subsist together in the same essence. This, however, is not inconsistent with the nature of things, nor with the idea of person, in so far as it is a relative by its very import. A person is a rational self, acting a certain part and having a certain bearing to another. Some persons are distinct not only in their individuality, but also in their vital principle, as angel and man, and have their unity only in the Creator. But other persons, as brother and brother, are partakers of the same vital essence, though existing in different bodies. Hence, even in the creature, the same vital essence may branch out into different persons. This reaches a certain way towards the subsistence of the personal distinction within the very essence of the Godhead. That the human persons have different bodies makes a broad distinction; yet, the lower instance helps us to conceive how there may be in the higher instance a certain plurality of persons within one and the same spiritual substance, and constrains us to accept the fact when it is announced by the voice of inspiration.

A strange interest is awakened in our minds when we reflect that there are, at least, two persons eternally co-existing in the one Divine essence. The conception dawns upon us that the Divine Being was never solitary nor silent. nor without a response in the, as yet unpeopled and unchronicled eternity of the past. There

*The term person in this transcendental usage denotes a relative subsisting within the essence of the eternal Spirit. Men may talk of an ideal Absolute having no internal relation: but such belongs to the region of impossible or impotent abstraction. The real Absolute must have intrinsic relations corresponding to the grandeur of His nature. And He must be capable of extrinsic relations proportional to the extent and variety of His inherent powers.

was in Himself always One face to face with Another, eye to eye, heart to heart. There was a society, a communion of thought and feeling within the very bosom of the Deity. When He looked forth, He beheld His Fellow: when He spake, He heard an answer: when His heart glowed with the thrill of emotion, there was a returning warmth. The glance of reason, the flash of conscience, the ken of truth, the love of holiness, the counsel of the will, the plan of things, the purpose to create and uphold, the unalterable principles of truth, right, and love were worthy themes of meditation, as we know they are of revelation, for the Divine Mind. It befits us not indeed to speculate on the order or the manner of the Divine communion. We may observe, however, that it has its shadow in the soliloquy of reflective man, who, when he walks alone, is often his own companion, discussing with himself, not seldom in audible tones, the topics that are uppermost in his mind, making himself into a duality of persons, that he may have the vivacity and enjoyment of a dialogue with himself on the question of the moment. In this respect, as in so many others, man is made after the likeness of God. very notion that society seems to be essential to the perfection of a spiritual nature is a presumptive argument for more than one person within the Divine essence.

The

III. The sacred writer passes, in the third place, to the AGENCY OF THE WORD, in describing which he casts additional light on His essential character, "All things were made by Him." This positive statement, we observe, is universal. To make it emphatically so, it is repeated in the negative form; "And without Him was not anything made that was made.' To be made, here, is to be called into existence, to be created. The Word is thus presented as the Creator of all things. The true philosophy posits from all eternity, not things, but power to bring them into being. This power transcends all finite power implanted in the rational creature. Creative agency is here ascribed to the Word. This is in keeping with the statement that the Word was God. It is also suitable to the manifesto of the blessed and only Potentate, to the Godhead. The creation of a universe

*

*This is the highest instance of the philosophical law of the parsionomy, which is thus defined by Sir William Hamilton: "Neither more nor less onerous causes are to be assumed than are necessary to account for the phenomena "; and which is traced by him to Occani's razor, Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitateus," and beyond that to Aristotle's rule μηδὲν περίεργον. Either of these is more comprehensive in its range than his own definition, which coincides with that which he gives from Sir Isaac Newton; Effectuum naturalium causae non plures sunt admittendae quam quac et verae sunt et cffctibus explicandis sufficiunt.

palpable to the sense is itself a manifestation of the unseen power of the eternal Spirit. "For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead." Without Him, apart from the Word, is no creation. He is the Commander; His the universal behest in creating. By Him, as the omnipotent Agent, the worlds came into being. The phrase is properly applied to the Word, who is the mediating as well as manifesting Agent in creation.

"In Him was life, and the life was the light of men." When we descend to the creature, we find three marked stages of being-matter, life, and mind. Matter is the seat of force, if the term fore be taken to denote any quality under the conuitions of law and need. Thus the three properties of matter are law, need, and force. This is the lowest form of created things. It is mechanical and chemical in its nature, and affords scope for the science of mathematics in all its branches. It is, of course, included in "all things that were made"; but it is not specified as an order of things; simply because Scripture moves in the region of man, and only incidentally descends to the purely material world.

Life is in strictness the characteristic principle of living things; the main properties of which are assimilation, organisation, growth, and propagation, in both plants and animals, and sense, instinct, and motion in the animal world. This principle rises to its highest form in man, in whom it appears as reason, will, and power, along with the other properties of life. And here it is said of the Word-" In Him was life." Whatever is in the creature must have, not only its archetype, but also its causal potence in the Creator. Life in the transcendent sense of the life-giving principle is therefore assigned to the Word. In Him it is the aboriginal, intelligent, voluntary potence, that can cause life to exist and exhibit itself in the world of matter in its assimilating, organising, propagating, sentient, instinctive, motive, voluntary, rational qualities; each of which points to a corresponding potence in the creative Word. Moreover, in the pregnant sense of Scripture, life pre-supposes free access to all the means and appliances which render it agreeable and desirable. And the Word is the benign Author and Giver of these as well as of life itself.

"And the life was the light of men." The third and highest stage of earthly things is mind. It forms the proper contrast to matter, and has its corresponding three fundamental attributes, reason, will, and power. It is here called the light of men. This cannot be material light; for it is a phase of life. It

must therefore be mental light. The statement, indeed, is philosophical and instructive. Life ascends through innumerable steps from the moss up to the man. As it bursts the barrier between the vegetable and animal kingdoms, it begins to glimmer with the twilight of sensation and instinct. But when it rises above the horizon of the brute creation, it shines with the broad daylight of intellectual and moral reason. Thus the life in its highest earthly stage glides into the light of men. When it is said that the life which was in the Word was the light of men, it is to be understood that the rational nature of man has its causal counterpart in the Word. "God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." The likeness consists in the faculties of knowledge and righteousness accompanied with power. The Author of intellectual and moral light is aptly called the Word-the Manifester; for " "whatsoever doth make manifest is light."

These two verses, therefore, declare the Word to be the Author of matter, or force under the law of necessity; of life, under a law of comparative freedom, ranging from the lowest trace of tendency to the highest style of will; and of mind, or power under the law of pure intelligence and free will. This implies that the archetypes and potencies of reason, will, and power are the characteristic attributes of the Word.

"And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not." A new phase of this light is here presented by its contrast with the darkness. The darkness here is not in God, who is invisible indeed, but by no means in darkness. For "God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all." On the contrary, He "dwelleth in the light, which no man can approach unto." The darkness is in the world of man. Hence, it is a moral darkness; as a purely intellectual darkness is inconceivable.* A man may know in part, and be ignorant of the great remainder of things. This is not darkness. But he cannot be wrong in principle or practice without moral delinquency somewhere. This it is which is here called darkness: as it is also termed folly and falsehood, because it is in the first instance an abuse of the understanding by the will. It springs from lust, and

* When a bias of any kind or in any way affects the reason, it is a well-known fact that some degree of darkness will result. But if in any case the bias can be kept altogether in check or in the background out of sight, so that the reason stands as a dieinterested spectator face to face with the truth, it cannot but acknowledge it. This is the simple ground of man's responsibility for his opinions. We cannot but be aware of an obvious truth. if there be no bias. Error regarding accessible truth, whether observable, demonstrable or probable, shows the

existence of a bias.