the inspired Evangelist. But if life here is not to be taken in contradistinction to mere death, what is the sense in which we should take it? It is not difficult to answer this question. There is a life, which is if we may so speak, the life of all life in rational creatures. It is not natural life merely, whether of body or of mind, but the higher life of holiness, or holy joy. Life, in Scripture, often means moral excellence, holiness, benevolence; and often, also, happiness, the fruit or effect of holiness. These, from their relation to each other, are considered as one, holiness implying happiness as its result, and happiness implying holiness as its cause. We need not therefore in the present instance discriminate: life is holiness; life is happiness: no account need be taken of the difference. Spiritual life, including both true holiness and true happiness, things dwelling in one another as heat in the sun-beams, is the life which is here said to have been in the Logos. This life, which filled the rational creation, while in its first estate, and we may hope, fills it still with slight exception, had its fountain in Christ, as the revealing God. All rational creatures awoke into existence in possession of it, which along with existence itself, they derived from Christ. He infused into them the holy vitality which dwelt in himself and filled them with his fulness. That fathomless love which appeared so wondrously in redemption, had been before manifested as perfectly as the nature of things would admit, in the work of creation, when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy.

This history of our Saviour in his preexistent state, informs us further that the life, that spiritual life of whose nature and fountain we have just spoken, was the light of men.-The sense of this statement cannot be misapprehended. We are in no danger of positive mistake, even if we do not fully and distinctly take the meaning, so as to be able to express it in a perfect definition. Man, when he first awoke from non-existence, found himself in a world furnished magnificently for his use, and gloriously illuminated by those larger and lesser lights, which still pour their splendors from the firmament. Those material beams, however, which gilded the face of nature, and transported the eye with the views of sublimity and beauty which it presented, are not the light of men. Nor is this the light of the understanding, consisting in ideas or the images of things in the mind and the results of combining and comparing them ;a light which may or may not be associated with moral depravity,

and, if associated with it, is called darkness in Scripture, nay the blackness of darkness. The true light of men is, as Tholuck has happily expressed it, an ethico-religious knowledge, based on an inward communion with God, and comprehending the theoretical and practical at the same time; a knowledge obtained not by mere intellection, but by the blended exercise of the understanding and the heart, when in agreement with the understanding and heart of God; the knowledge which fills the upright mind, by its inwardly apprehending and loving the divine excellence. This being the end of all material and intellectual light is properly the light of men; the glory and joy of our rational nature. The source of this light, which shone in man at his creation, purely and perfectly, was in that life in the Logos, of which we have been speaking. It was the communication of that divine life from the Logos to man, that made him the subject of this light. Even as in the new-creation by grace, it is by the soul's partaking again of this same life in Christ, that it acquires the light of the knowledge of the divine glory.* Human teaching may impart the light of external knowledge, the knowledge contained in definitions; but that sort of knowledge, in which the true light of men consists, is not obtained, until a union takes place between God and the soul; it is by virtue of that union, that the soul obtains those views of divine things with which it is transported on the day when it is born into the kingdom of God.

This recital concerning Christ in his preëxistent state, closes with these words: "And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not." No note need be taken of the variation of the tense, since, as it has been justly remarked, nothing is a more distinguishing particularity of the style of this Evangelist, than the confounding of the tenses. The strain of the context manifestly requires, that the past time be understood in both clauses of the sentence. The declaration relates to the Logos in his preëxistent state, and to man as apostate and depraved.

Darkness here means human nature amid the ruins of the fall. Darkness strictly, expresses a state, but the abstract is here taken for the concrete. Man in the darkness of his apostate condition is spoken of, as if he were darkness itself. This mode of speaking concerning depraved man is not peculiar to this wriPaul declares that Christians before their conversion were

ter.

* 1 John 4: 7, 8.

darkness: "Ye were sometime darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord." The present testimony then, referring to man as alienated from the divine life, and therefore involved in spiritual darkness, affirms the renewed love of the Logos to him, in these circumstances of guilt and misery.. When by transgression he made himself darkness, he who was the light of his soul in innocence, did not forsake him, but continued to shine within. him, to the end that he might recover himself by repentance. Through the period before the flood and through all subsequent time, man, a few individuals excepted, was darkness; but the Logos continued to shine in the world. He shed some rays, even as he now does,* among the most ignorant of mankind, enlightening in some degree every one who came into the world; but they were shed generally in vain; the darkness which they penetrated did not comprehend them. The Logos was in the world, but the world knew him not; he came to his own, but his own received him not. They preferred the creature to the Creator, the finite to the infinite, the visible to the invisible, through the madness of sin. The great mass of all nations made no improvement of the light which shone amongst them and within them, but as Paul teaches, suppressed or perverted it, through their unrighteousness. Even at this day the light is shining in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not. Is the reader acquainted with no individual in whom this Scripture is verified? Does not his own experience teach him, what the language before us means? It is true in respect to himself, that the light has been shining in darkness, showing him his immortality, his relations to God, his sin, his danger, his misery, the way of peace, and motives to effort, of infinite power. Is it not also true, that in his case, the darkness has not comprehended the light; that he has seen as if he had seen not, and perceived as if he had understood not; that his immortality he has practically disbelieved, his relations to God violated; his sin he has loved; his danger disregarded; his misery not lamented, the way of peace not pursued, motives vast as eternity resisted? Where is the man who can seriously reflect on his own moral history, and not know from an interpreter within his own.

Some have thought that the constant shining of the Divine light, was intended to be expressed by the use of the present tense, in the first clause; but we rest not our remark on this criticism, for a reason before given.

breast, what is meant, by the light shining in darkness, and the darkness not comprehending it?

Our reflections on these sublime testimonies concerning CHRIST PREEXISTENT, have deepened our impressions of the truth and importance of the three following statements.

First, That this world's opposition to the christian religion shows it to be a world in rebellion against its own Maker. The author of the christian faith was the author of the universe. The founder of the christian church was he who laid the foundations of the earth and meted out the heavens with a span. The institutions, laws, documents, doctrines of Christianity, rest on the authority of Him who upholds the pillars of creation. To oppose this religion is to lift the hand of treason against the throne of the Almighty. The world have opposed and still do oppose it. "Theophilus of Antioch compared the little christian church in the wide domains of heathenism, to verdant islands in a great raging ocean. Thus too within the pale of Christianity has the congregation of the regenerate always stood in relation to the children of the world."* The testimony of this fact concerning the moral state of mankind, renders a denial of their deep depravity, their "desperate wickedness," the highest possible proof of it.

Secondly, That it is not Christianity, that assigns simple godhead or deity as the cause of the creation. It is coming short of the teaching of Christianity on this subject, only to say, the universe is the workmanship of God. It is rejecting Christianity, in this great article, to exclude Christ's handiwork from the causal influence of the creation. Christianity tells us of a Logos as well as of a Deity, and makes the Deity in the Logos the author of the world's existence. They who assert that God apart from the Logos, or Deity out of Christ, was the maker of the universe, contradict the Scriptures in the most explicit manner. Intimations, that the creative power dwelt in a Divine essence which was pluri-personal, are contained in the narrative of the creation given by Moses,† and throughout the Old Testa

* Tholuck.

"After the closest attention that I can give," says Dr. Smith, Scrip. Test. Vol. I. p. 483, "the impression on my mind is favorable to the opinion, that this peculiarity of idiom,-(the use of -plural nouns, especially Elohim in application to the Divine Being) originated in a

ment; but in the New Testament, the subject is set forth in the clearest light, and the express assertion made that the Creator was Deity in the Logos, or God in Christ.

The doctrine that simple Deity was the Creator of the universe, ought never to be published, and if published never received, as a doctrine of Christianity; it may be naturalism, but it is not the gospel. Nay, if it pretend Nay, if it pretend to be Christianity, it is another and a rival gospel, which no true friend of Christ can do otherwise than disavow and condemn.

Thirdly, That the greatest of all wonders is the love of Christ for man. That our maker should for our sakes make himself a man that he who dwelt in eternity with God,-glorious in all the perfections of the Deity himself, and happy in the complacency of the other Divine persons, should, to recover us from sin and deserved death, take upon him the form of a servant, and be made in the likeness of sinful flesh; and being found in fashion as a man, should humble himself and become obedient unto death, even the death of the cross

design to intimate a plurality in the nature of the one God; and that thus in connection with other circumstances calculated to suggest the same conception, it was intended to excite and prepare the minds of men for the more full declaration of this unsearchable mystery, which should in proper time be granted."-Any exposition of Gen 1: 26, or of the narrative of the creative process given in that chapter, which does not admit this intimation, should, we think, be rejected as unsatisfactory.