^ W. J. Dawson, The Reproach of Christy 25.
14 THE WORD
At length he came, of lowly birth, despised
And by the world rejected ; but a band
Of humble men observed and felt the power
Of kindling love and faith with which he taught.
For in him thou, the eternal Word of truth,
Who once didst grave thy precepts upon stone,
Hadst become flesh; and they beheld with awe
God's glory in a human face expressed.
There justice sat revealed, and holiness,
And rapt devotion, as of one who felt
God's presence everywhere, within, around.
But all in one expression were combined,
A yearning love, which came in ceaseless stream
From heaven's exhaustless fount, and poured itself
Forth on the world, to heal and bless mankind.
There grace and truth shone star-like from the eye.
And trembled on the lips; and longing hearts.
Oppressed with sin, or hardened by the world,
Beheld and wept, and rested in that love.
And so his face in every line expressed
The Son of God, the eternal Thought for man;
And whosoe'er beheld the Son beheld
The Father who had sent him, and whose love
Had come in him to seek and save, and dwell
In manifested form in this sad world.^
(1) The Word of God is God's power, intelligence, and will in expression ; not dormant and potential only, but in active exercise. God's Word is His will going forth with creative energy, and communicating life from God, the Source of life and being. "Without him was not any thing made that was made." He was prior to all created things and Himself "with God," and "God." He is God coming into relation with other things, revealing Himself, manifesting Himself, communicating Himself. The world is not itself God ; things created are not God, but the intelligence and will which brought them into being, and which now sustain and regulate them, these are God. And between the works we see and the God who is past finding out there is the Word, One who from eternity has been with God, the medium of the first utterance of God's mind and the first forthputting of His power ; as close to the inmost nature of God, and as truly
1 James Drummond, Johanninc Thoughts, 12.
ST. JOHN I. I 15
uttering that nature, as our word is close to and utters our thought, capable of being used by no one besides, but by ourselves only.
Where the bud has never blown
Who for scent is debtor ? Where the spirit rests unknown Fatal is the letter.
In Thee, Jesus, Godhead-stored,
All things we inherit, For Thou art the very Word
And the very Spirit!
(2) Nature is never silent, but is always uttering her secrets. On the stillest night the heart would break, the mind would reel, for brain would be injured, if no sound were. In that comparative stillness which we miscall silence, we catch the sounds unheeded amid the noises of the busy day. We detect how multitudinous are the instruments which make up the quiet concert of the world, the music of the universe so harmoniously set that we perceive not its parts. Silent Nature would be Nature dead — nay, non-existent, which is an absurdity. Nature is ever reveal- ing, giving expression to life; and is known only by that ex- pression. And if it be so with Nature, because in Nature, we believe, God dwells, how much more clearly must it be so with God Himself? A God silent to the sorrows, the needs, the yearnings, the mere curiosity of men, would not be God. Man thinks of God simply by the fact that God has thought of him. " In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
1[ For us to hold this Catholic doctrine of Christ's Divinity is not merely to tax or strain our credence for the acceptance of a mystery as such, or of a belief bound up with primitive Christian traditions, as well as with ecclesiastical authority in councils or the like. It is to get hold of a final decisive assurance that the Infinite God does infinitely care for man. It is after we have recited, in our Eucharistic confession of faith, the epithets belong- ing to Jesus as a Son of God in the fullest sense, God begotten of God, and of one substance with the Father, that we are so well able to say with thankfulness, " Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate." Look at Bethlehem in the light of this belief, and think what a God the
i6 THE WORD
Father of Christ must be. The Holiest, the Mightiest, the Highest is for those who thus believe no longer a God far off. He has really come near to us, and continues to be near to us in the person of One who, being uncreate, is what no angel, not Michael himself, could be, the " adequate image " and " interpreter of the Father." The names of Jesus and Emmanuel might in other cases only record the fact that the Lord was willing to save His people, that God was and would be with them : in this one case, as belonging to a Divine Christ, they expand from affirmations of such grounds of confidence into titles by personal right His own.^