n_
I ever _begin_ to tell them--about _Him_!" Then with a master's skill he
sets out to find the simplest words he can find, put together in the
simplest sentences he can make, so simple folk everywhere may read and get
something of a glimpse of this Jesus, whose glory is filling his eyes and
flooding his face and spilling out all over the pages as he writes.

He is seeing back so far that he is getting beyond human reach. So he
fastens his line into the farthest of the far-reaches of human knowledge,
the creation, and then flings the line a bit farther back yet. He must use
a human word, if human folk are to understand. So he says "_beginning_."
"In the beginning," the beginningless beginning, away back of the Genesis
beginning, the earliest known to man.

Then he recalls the tremendous fact that when, in the later beginning man
knew about, the worlds came into existence, it was by a _word_ being
spoken, a _creative, outspoken word_. The power that created things
revealed itself in a few simple words. Then he searches into the depths of
language for the richest word he knew to express thought outspoken. And
taking that word he uses it as a _name_ for this One of whom he is trying
to tell. The scholars seem unable to sound the depths of the word that
John in his own language uses. It means this, and beyond that, it means
_this_, deeper yet, and then _this_. And then all of these together, and
more. That is John's word. "In the beginning was _the Word_."

Then with a few swift touches of his pen he says, "This was Jesus before
He came among men, the man Jesus whom we know." In the earliest beginning
the whole heart and thought of God toward man was outspoken in a person.
This person, this outspeaking God, it was He who later became known to us
as Jesus. Jesus, away back before the farthest reach of our human
knowledge, was God speaking out of His inner heart to us. This Jesus _is_
God speaking out His innermost heart to man. Did you ever long to hear God
speak? Look at Jesus. He's God's speech. This One was _with_ God. He _was_
God. It was _He_ who spoke things into being, that creative span of time.
Only through Him _could_ anything come into being. All life was in Him,
and this life was man's light. It is He who came into our midst, shining
in the darkness that could neither take Him in nor hold Him down from
shining out.

Every now and then as he writes John's heart seems near the breaking
point, and a sob shakes h