er's exposition of the
Johannean theology in his "Planting and Training of the Church."
Nearly every thing important, both external and internal, is
collected in these three sources taken together, and set forth
with great candor, power, and skill. Differing in their conclusions,
they supply pretty adequate means for the independent student to
conclude for himself.

In the first place, what view of the Father himself, the absolute
Deity, do these writings present? John conceives of God no one can
well collate the relevant texts in his works without perceiving
this as the one perfect and eternal Spirit, in himself invisible
to mortal eyes, the Personal Love, Life, Truth, Light, "in whom is
no darkness at all." This corresponds entirely with the purest and
highest idea the human mind can form of the one untreated infinite
God. The apostle, then, going back to the period anterior to the
material creation, and soaring to the contemplation of the sole
God, does not conceive of him as being utterly alone, but as
having a Son with him, an "only begotten Son," a beloved companion
"before the foundation of the world." "In the beginning was the
Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. He was
in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and
without him was nothing made that was made." The true explanation
of these words, according to their undeniable historical and their
unforced grammatical. There is an English translation of it, by
Professor G. R. Noyes, in the numbers of the Christian Examiner
for March and May, 1849, meaning, is as follows. Before the
material creation, when God was yet the sole being, his first
production, the Logos, was a Son, at once the image of himself and
the idea of the yet uncreated world. By him this personal Idea,
Son, or Logos all things were afterward created; or, more exactly,
through him, by means of him, all things became, that is, were
brought, from their being in a state of conception in the mind of
God, into actual existence in space and time. Thus Philo says,
"God is the most generic; second is the Logos of God."2 "The Logos
is the first begotten Son."3 "The Logos of God is above the whole
world, and is the most ancient and generic of all that had a
beginning."4 "Nothing intervenes between the Logos and God on whom
he rests."5 "This sensible world is the junior son of God; the
Senior is the Idea,"6 or Logos. "The shadow and seeming portrait
of God is his