I..

THE PROLOGUE TO THE GOSPEL.

JOHN i, 1-18.

These first eighteen verses of St. John's Gospel are in depth and majesty peerless in all the world's literature, peerless even in the Book of God himself. They take us into the very holy of holies in the sanctuary of Truth, ay, into the very heights of Godhood, into the very depths of Godhood in Manhood. In this prologue profoundest philosophy and loftiest poetry are divinely wedded. No wonder the early Church loved to speak of St. John as the eagle, soaring with tranquil pinion and undimmed eye toward the very sun. Listen to a mediæval poet, who had been evidently trained in the noble school of Adam of St. Victor:

The Word of God, the Eternal Son,
With God, the Uncreated, One,

Came down to earth from heaven;
To see him, handle him, and show
His heavenly life to men below,

To holy John was given.

Among those four primeval streams
Whose living fount in Eden gleams,

John's record true is known;

Majesty of the
Prologue.

De S. Joanne
Evangelista.

Translated by
Dean Plump-

tre.

To all the world he poureth forth
The nectar pure of priceless worth
That flows from out the throne.

Beyond the heavens he soared, nor failed,
With all the spirit's gaze unveiled,
To see our true Sun's grace;
Not as through mists and visions dim,
Beneath the wings of Seraphim

He looked and saw God's face.

He heard where songs and harps resound,
And four and twenty elders round
Sing hymns of praise and joy;
The impress of the One in Three,
With print so clear that all may see,
He stamped on earth's alloy.

As eagle winging loftiest flight
Where never seer's or prophet's sight
Had pierced the ethereal vast,
Pure beyond human purity,

He scanned, with still undazzled eye,
The future and the past.*

* Compare Dr. Washburn's translation of this stanza:

Bird of God with boundless flight

Soaring far beyond the height

Of the bard or prophet old;

Truth fulfilled, and truth to be,-—
Never purer mystery

Did a purer tongue unfold.

Let me add the sonorous original :

Volat avis sine metâ

Quo nec vates nec propheta
Evolavit altius:

Tam implenda quam impleta,

Nunquam vidit tot secreta

Purus homo purius.

The Bridegroom, clad in garments red,
Seen, yet with might unfathomèd,
Home to his palace hies;
Ezekiel's eagle to his bride
He sends, and will no longer hide
Heaven's deepest mysteries.

O loved one, bear, if thou canst tell
Of him whom thou didst love so well,

Glad tidings to the Bride;

Tell of the angels' food they taste,

Who with the Bridegroom's presence graced
Are resting at his side,

Tell of the soul's true bread unpriced,
Christ's supper, on the breast of Christ

In wondrous rapture ta'en;

That we may sing before the throne
Ilis praises, whom as Lord we own,
The Lamb we worship slain.

In studying this profound prologue, every sentence of which is freighted with fathomless meaning, we can not do better than ponder it clause by clause.

Divinity.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the The Eternal Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God."

Verses 1, 2.

"In the beginning." Then Jesus Christ was cternally pre-existent. Matthew's genealogy takes us back to Abraham: "The pedigree of Jesus Matt. i, 1-16. Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham."

Luke's genealogy takes us back to Adam: "The Luke iii, 23-38. son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God." John has no genealogy, or rather his genealogy is the genealogy of what the fathers, in lack of a better name, called an "eternal gen

Heb. vii, 1-3.

Genesis i, 1.

"Fanst," Bayard Taylor's Translation.

eration." Like Melchizedek, king of Salem, the Word of God is without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life. St. John's chronology antedates creation itself. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth; in the beginning was (not became) the Word. St. John's Prologue is the real Book of Genesis. Before aught else existed, in the unbeginning solitude before creation, Jesus Christ was the Word of God, the eternal Father's majestic soliloquy.

Then

"In the beginning was the Word."
Jesus Christ was the Speech of God. It is most
difficult, and indeed impossible, to give a complete
translation of the term here rendered "Word," as
the beloved disciple uses it. How striking the
lines of Goethe:

'Tis written: "In the beginning was the Word":
Here am I balked: who now can help afford?

The Word?-impossible so high to rate it;
And otherwise must I translate it,

If by the Spirit I am truly taught.

Then thus: "In the beginning was the Thought":
This first line let me weigh completely,

Lest my impatient pen proceed too fleetly.

Is it the Thought which works, creates, indeed?
"In the beginning was the Power," I read.
Yet, as I write, a warning is suggested
That I the sense may not have fairly tested.
The Spirit aids me; now I see the light!
"In the beginning was the Act," I write.

But why does St. John call Jesus Christ the
Word? Without loitering among the subtilties of
Philo and the Alexandrian school concerning the