know and enjoy our friends through
the bodily features with which we are familiar, and the words that
strike upon our ear, we instinctively long for intercourse with God and
knowledge of Him as familiar and convincing. We put out our hand, but we
cannot touch Him. Nowhere in this world can we see Him more than we see
Him here and now. If we pass to other worlds, there, too, He is
concealed from our sight, inhabiting no body, occupying no place. Job is
not alone in his painful and baffling search after God. Thousands
continually cry with him, "Behold, I go forward, but He is not there;
and backward, but I cannot perceive Him: on the left hand, where He doth
work, but I cannot behold Him: He hideth Himself on the right hand, that
I cannot see Him."

In various ways, accordingly, men have striven to alleviate the
difficulty of mentally apprehending an invisible, infinite,
incomprehensible God. One theory, struck out by the pressure of the
difficulty, and frequently advanced, was not altogether incompatible
with the ideas suggested by John in this prologue. This theory was
accustomed, although with no great definiteness or security, to bridge
the chasm between the Eternal God and His works in time by interposing
some middle being or beings which might mediate between the known and
the unknown. This link between God and His creatures, which deemed to
make God and His relation to material things more intelligible, was
sometimes spoken of as "The Word of God." This seemed an appropriate
name by which to designate that through which God made Himself known,
and by which He came into relations with things and persons not
Himself. Vague indeed was the conception formed even of this
intermediary Being. But of this term "the Word," and of the ideas that
centred in it, John took advantage to proclaim Him who is the
manifestation of the Eternal, the Image of the Invisible.[2]

The title itself is full of significance. The word of a man is that by
which he utters himself, by which he puts himself in communication with
other persons and deals with them. By his word he makes his thought and
feeling known, and by his word he issues commands and gives effect to
his will. His word is distinct from his thought, and yet cannot exist
separate from it. Proceeding from the thought and will, from that which
is inmost in us and most ourselves, it carries upon itself the imprint
of the character and purpose of him who utters it. It is the organ of