names "The Word;" he explains the connection
of this Being with God and with created things; he tells how He came to
the world and dwelt among men, and he remarks upon the reception He met
with. What is summed up in these propositions is unfolded in the Gospel.
It narrates in detail the history of the manifestation of the Incarnate
Word, and of the faith and unbelief which this manifestation evoked.

John at once introduces us to a Being whom he speaks of as "The Word."
He uses the term without apology, as if already it were familiar to his
readers; and yet he adds a brief description of it, as if possibly they
might attach to it ideas incompatible with his own. He uses it without
apology, because in point of fact it already had circulation both among
Greek and Jewish thinkers. In the Old Testament we meet with a Being
called "The Angel of the Lord," who is at once closely related, if not
equivalent, to Jehovah, and at the same time manifested to men. Thus
when the Angel of the Lord had appeared to Jacob and wrestled with him,
Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, for, said he, "I have seen
God face to face."[1] In the apocryphal books of the Old Testament the
Wisdom and the Word of God are poetically personified, and occupy the
same relation to God on the one hand, and to man on the other, which was
filled by the Angel of the Lord. And in the time of Christ "the Word of
the Lord" had become the current designation by which Jewish teachers
denoted the manifested Jehovah. In explaining the Scriptures, to make
them more intelligible to the people, it was customary to substitute for
the name of the infinitely exalted Jehovah the name of Jehovah's
manifestation, "the Word of the Lord."

Beyond Jewish circles of thought the expression would also be readily
understood. For not among the Jews only, but everywhere, men have keenly
felt the difficulty of arriving at any certain and definite knowledge of
the Eternal One. The most rudimentary definition of God, by declaring
Him to be a Spirit, at once and for ever dissipates the hope that we can
ever see Him, as we see one another, with the bodily eye. This depresses
and disturbs the soul. Other objects which invite our thought and
feeling we easily apprehend, and our intercourse with them is level to
our faculties. It is, indeed, the unseen and intangible spirit of our
friends which we value, not the outward appearance. But we scarcely
separate the two; and as we reach and