you may ask, should this name be used by S. John? Why should he not do as the other Evangelists had done, use the personal name Jesus, or the official name Messiah, i.e. the Christ? Simply because he begins by speaking of a time when the Man who was to bear those names was not yet born, had not yet come into the world. He begins by speaking of a time when the world itself was not created--when nothing, no being was in existence save the Creator Himself. But the Creator Himself was in existence, and had been in existence from all eternity. And this Creator, by whom all things were made, was no other than the Being whom Moses in his description of the Creation had called God; but whom S. John now teaches us at once to identify, and yet to distinguish, by this new name, the Word: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.' And this extension of the truth, as originally revealed, is made plain to us, and at the same time a sufficient, if not a complete reason is given for the use of the name 'Logos,' in the opening verses of the Epistle to the Hebrews: 'God hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son; by whom also He made the worlds.' And whereas Moses in the Book of Genesis had ascribed to God nothing more

than the creation of corporeal substances-of the heaven and the earth and the sea, and all that in them is-S. Paul, in his Epistle to the Colossians, speaking of the Son of God who had become incarnate in Jesus Christ, declares that by Him immaterial beings also were created: by Him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible;' and lest in that invisible world, among the many degrees of the celestial hierarchy, any order might be thought to be exempted from dependence upon Him, the Apostle names those of the greatest eminence, thereby comprehending all the rest. Whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers, all things were created by Him and for Him.' Yes, not only by Him,' as a mere instrumental cause which works by another and for another-but 'for Him;' for His own proper glory, for the exercise of His own personal and self-inherent dominion; so that not only did His power create, but His continual providence sustains the whole; wherefore the Apostle still further adds: And by Him all things consist' (i. 16, 17).

But now-marvel above all marvels-this great, this eternal, this universal Creator has become a subject of His own Creation. He who as God, as

the Word, as the Son of God, existed before all time, has begun in time to exist as Man. He whom the Heaven of heavens could not contain has made for Himself a tabernacle of human flesh. "The Word became flesh, and dwelt'-okývwoɛv, had His okηvý, his tabernacle—' among us, full of grace and truth; and we' (says the beloved Disciple, who had the privilege to recline upon His bosom at supper time) we beheld His glory'-glory such as could belong to none but to Him who was the true and only begotten Son of God. He who, forty centuries before, had created man out of the dust of the earth, and previously to that (no one can tell how long) had created the dust out of nothing; He to whom the Almighty Father had said, 'Let Us make man in Our image after Our likeness;' now Himself took man's nature, through the operation of the Holy Ghost, and was born of a woman, of a Virgin, whose name was Mary. An exercise of creative power, infinitely transcending every other act of creation; because, although for a time He was to become lower than the Angels, lower even than the lowest of His fellow men, yet, after that short period had elapsed, He, the same Man, made of a woman, circumcised the eighth day, and named by the name of Jesus,

admitted, when He was thirty years old, to the office of the Messiah and thereupon both made and named the Christ, was eventually, as Man, to receive the homage not only of all mankind whom He had created and redeemed, but of all other created beings however great and glorious; so that every knee must bow to Him, of things in Heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and every tongue confess that Jesus, the Christ, is their common Lord (Phil. ii. 11). And this is what S. John in the Revelation (v. 13) assures us that he saw and heard: "Every creature which is in Heaven and on the earth and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing and honour and glory and power be unto Him that sitteth upon the Throne and unto the Lamb, for ever and ever.'

But to come more closely to the words of my text, in which the Evangelist, having declared the Eternal Godhead of the Word, proceeds to speak of that Godhead in its manifestation to mankind. He who was, and is, through communication from the Father, the Source of all life,' was, and is, also the Source of all light: In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.' How melancholy, then, is 1 John v. 26.

it, my brethren, that he who thus writes should have

occasion to add, And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness' which should have yielded to its influence, stood aloof, cared not to understand it-' comprehended it not.' Melancholy indeed; but so it was--and worse. Not only as when this Babe was born, did the tyrant-monster Herod (whose soul was darkened by every kind of guilt)— not only did he seek to extinguish, in its own blood, the life and light which that Holy Child had brought into the world; not only did Jew, as represented by the High Priest and Elders, and Gentile, as represented by the Roman governor and the power at his command, conspire at a later pericd to renew that bloody attempt, and for a moment (as it appeared) with success; not only were the first thirty years of that marvellous life passed in complete obscurity, as though the darkness had overwhelmed it; but even during the three years of the ministry, when the light was shining-shining clear and bright, as we might suppose-by the testimony of the Baptist, by the fulfilment of prophecy, by the power and purity of the Word spoken, by voices heard from Heaven, by the ministration of Angels, and above all by the performance of frequent, most gracious, and most stupendous