vine
attributes which constituted the hypostatized Logos was incarnated
and displayed in a perfect, sinless sample of man, thus exhibiting
to the world a finite image of God. We will illustrate this
doctrine with reference to the inferences to be drawn from it in
regard to human nature. John repeatedly says, in effect, "God is
truth," "God is light," "God is love," "God is life." He likewise
says of the Savior, "In him was life, and the life was the light
of men," and reports him as saying of himself, "I am the truth,"
"I am the life," "I am the light of the world." The fundamental
meaning of these declarations so numerous, striking, and varied in
the writings of John is, that all those qualities which the
consciousness of humanity has recognised as Divine are
consubstantial with the being of God; that all the reflections of
them in nature and man belong to the Logos, the eldest Son, the
first production, of God; and that in Jesus their personality, the
very Logos himself, was consciously embodied, to be brought nearer
to men, to be exemplified and recommended to them. Reason, power,
truth, light, love, blessedness, are not individual aons, members
of a hierarchy of deities, but are the revealing elements of the
one true God. The personality of the abstract and absolute fulness
of all these substantial qualities is God. The personality of the
discerpted portion of them shown in the universe is the Logos.
Now, that latter personality Christ was. Consequently, while he
was a man, he was not merely a man, but was also a supernatural
messenger from heaven, sent into the world to impersonate the
image of God under the condition of humanity, free from every
sinful defect and spot. Thus, being the manifesting representative
of the Father, he could say, "He that hath seen me hath
[virtually] seen the Father." Not that they were identical in
person, but that they were similar in nature and character, spirit
and design: both were eternal holiness, love, truth, and life. "I
and my Father are one thing," (in essence, not in personality.)
Nothing can be more

32 Statement of Reasons, 1st ed. p. 239.

33 Christian Examiner, May, 1849, p. 431.

unequivocally pronounced than the subordination of the Son to the
Father that the Father sent him, that he could do nothing without
the Father, that his Father was greater than he, that his
testimony was confirmed by the Father's in a hundred places by
John, both as author writing his o