^ Among geographers there have sometimes been disputes as to the identity of a river. They have debated, for instance, whether the Quorra were the same as the Niger ; but when a boat, launched on the Niger, after a few weeks made its appear- ance floating on the Quorra, there was an end of the argument :
» P. T. Forsyth, The Persm and Place of Jesus Christ, 269.
38 THE INCARNATION OF THE WORD
the names might be two, but the streams were demonstrably the one the continuation of the other. And sometimes a critic, indignant at an anonymous author, has shown how much better a well-known writer would have handled the self-same subject — when it turns out that the nameless and the well-known per- sonages are in this instance identical. In the 102nd Psalm, eternity and unchangeableness are ascribed to the Great Creator ; and there is no opponent of the Saviour's divinity who would not sing that psalm as a fitting ascription to the Most High God : when behold ! the Epistle to the Hebrews informs us that it is a hymn of praise to Jesus Christ ! ^
2. The doctrine of the Incarnation involves the pre-existence of Christ, not in an ideal, mystic sense, but as a personal Being. The preposition "with" in the second clause of verse 1 — "the Word was with God " — is one which implies mutual association in a striking way. It suggests the intercourse of those who are standing face to face — "The Word was directed to God, moving toward God." The same idea appears in a more tender form in verse 18 — "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." Christ asserts His personal pre-existence in the majestic words of John viii. 58 : " Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham ? Jesus said unto them, Yerily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I AM." It is implied in the saying so frequently upon His lips about His coming into the world, coming with a purpose which it was His constant effort to fulfil. It has its loftiest expression in His solemn words of prayer, "I have glorified thee on the earth ; I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And now, 0 Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was."
^ In ordinary biographies, a birth is the beginning. It was in the year 1483 that the mind to which we owe the Reformation commenced its existence; for it was then that Martin Luther was born. It was in London that the career began to which England is indebted for its great epic poem, and that other from which science received its mightiest modern impulse ; for it was there that Milton aud Bacon first saw the light of life. Having * James Hamilton, Works, iii. 257.
ST. JOHN I. 14 39
told us this, the biographer feels that he has begun at the begin- ning ; and with this statement coincides the consciousness of the individual himself. For, whatever the old philosophy may have dreamed about the pre-existence of spirit and the transmigration of souls, no man could ever seriously say that he had led another life before he was born ; no man could ever tell incidents and experiences which had occurred to him in a state of existence anterior to the present. With us, to all intents, our birth is our beginning. In the whole history of our species there has been only one exception.^
3. The Apostle Paul draws practical appeals from the same truth. When he would urge the Corinthians to " prove the sincerity of their love," he gives them this touching reminder — " For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might become rich." The sacrifice which ended in the Cross began when Jesus left " the bosom of the Father." *' Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus : who, being in the form of God, counted not the being equal with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men ; and being found in fashion as a man, then he humbled himself, becoming obedient as far as unto death, even the death of the cross."
^ The doctrine of the pre-existence of Jesus is not confined to St. John. Writing to the Corinthian Church St. Paul reminds them in one passage of the history of Israel of old, and then he adds the remarkable words, " They drank of a spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ" — that is, Christ was with God's ancient people in their wanderings in the wilderness some fourteen or fifteen hundred years before He w^as born (1 Cor. x. 4). So, too, in the great passage on the resurrection of the dead in the same Epistle, he says, " The first man is of the earth, earthy : the second man is of heaven " (1 Cor. xv. 47) ; and in the Second Epistle to the same Church at Corinth he reminds them of " the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might become rich " — words which have no possible meaning unless Jesus had lived a heavenly life before His incarna- tion. Perhaps the strongest assertion of the pre-incarnate Being of Christ in all the writings of St. Paul is the following passage