THE WORD

NOT YET MADE FLESH.

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In the beginning was the Word . all things were made by Him.-ST. JOHN I. 1, 3.

WE believe that the world was made by the Eternal Word for the hallowing of God's name. But if this be so, then the more we learn about the history of the world and all things therein, the more we are learning about the instruments framed by the Word of God to mould the minds of men for the righteous worship of Him. When, therefore, historians reveal to us new truths about the rise and fall of nations, or physiologists about the origin of the operations of the brain and nerves, or geologists about the formation of the strata of the earth, or astronomers about the motions and origins of the heavenly bodies, or dramatists about the potent effects of human passions shaping character for good or ill, or the poets of nature about the subtle influence of sunset and sunrise, clouds and mountains and lakes in developing unnamed and unnameable aspirations-in all these cases we are learning some

thing more about the operations of the Eternal Word guiding us towards worship. Consciously or unconsciously, all these, and many other workers, are leading us to a better apprehension of the Word of God, and therefore to a higher worship of Christ, who is the Eternal Word made flesh.

In different ages of the Church different bases for faith in Christ have commended themselves to men, some of which are now withdrawn from us. For example, the civilised world being now imbued with the Spirit of Christ, we have no longer the striking testimony to His power once supplied by the contrast between Christianity and. Paganism. Nor have we any longer the support of the apparent unanimity of the visible Church in all points of ritual and doctrine. But to compensate for these and other seeming losses we have two or three manifest gains: first, the testimony of I know not how many centuries bearing witness to the work of the Eternal Word before the Word was made flesh; secondly, the witness of eighteen centuries, after the Word was made flesh, attesting the power of His influence and the truth of His doctrine; thirdly, a recently increasing appreciation of the divineness of Christ's human nature, or the Word made flesh. The history of the world divided into these three sections may be compared to a trilogy of which till very lately only the two last dramas had been discovered, and the drift of the whole had

been consequently obscured. But now, page after page of the introductory drama being brought to light, the two latter dramas are made more intelligible, and the meaning of the Author more apparent.

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It is to the first drama in this sublime trilogy that I desire to call your attention to-day-to the connecting thread of purpose and method traceable in the creation and development of that which St. Paul calls "The first Adam." On another occasion, if opportunity should allow, it might be possible to trace the same purpose and the same method in the manifestation of the "Second Adam," that is, in the Incarnation ; and lastly, in the conformation of the first Adam to the Second, that is, in the history of the Church of Christ. The method, rather than the purpose, will engage our attention-a method in which progress and development will be found effected by natural laws and quiet, unobtrusive processes; and evil, continually obtruding and developing itself, is not eradicated, but subordinated to the purposes of good. Evil, as well as good, is developed in each stage of the progressive world-evil, which our precipitate fancies would lead us to destroy in the germ; but the divine method has ever been the same, Let both grow together till the harvest.

The best illustration of the subordination of evil to good may perhaps be found in the first scene of the drama of creation, as we contemplate

the rudiments of the coalescing earth and the great law which regulates its growth. The history of every single particle of matter is a kind of type and prophecy of the history of each human soul and of the whole human race. Consider such a particle. It had a motion of its own (we know not whence); its desire, let us call it, which impelled it into space. But it was arrested in its course by attraction to a powerful centre of force. If either of these two original forces had been absent the result would have been no world. Take away the motion of desire, and the particle would have been absorbed into the attracting centre; take away the central attraction, and desire would have hurried the particle into the barren void. But, as the result of these two simultaneous forces, the particle moves in the harmonious orbit of life. Moreover, by the same law by which each particle is attracted to the common and parental centre, by that same law each is attracted to each, brother to brother. Thus the attracting law of fatherhood, so to speak, is really but another form of the social law of brotherhood.

Let us not take this material law, ordained by the Word of God, for more than a mere illustration of His corresponding law in the immaterial world, whereby the love of the brother and love of the Father are closely connected. Yet even of such illustrations some may be inclined to say with a great man (substituting God for Nature),

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These are not only similitudes, as men of narrow observation may conceive them to be, but the same footsteps of God, treading or printing upon several subjects or matters.

Let us imagine ourselves fresh from the spectacle of a chaos converted to order by a simple law of motion, present as spectators of the cooling globe, while it rolls round the sun, tenantless as yet, half in light but half in darkness; and the question is put to us, What is the governing force of this world? Knowing nothing of what is to come, and looking only to the sublime victory of order over disorder, our reply at this stage might perhaps be no more than this, The governing power of the world is a law of motion.

But now life appears, life at first of a low order, the life of the vegetable; growth rather than life: nevertheless a vast stride upwards. But side by side with growth, or the germ of life, appears its shadow, decay, or the germ of death. Moreover, along with growth there appears a new kind of conflict or struggle, not like that struggle between two forces for the direction of the particle struggle which we saw resolving itself at once into a peaceable compromise), but a destructive and internecine struggle for existence in which some living things choke and exterminate others. A problem ancient as thought, and as insoluble as ancient-the problem of waste and death. Yet here, even from the beginning, we see the first dim suggestion of that incisive solution of the knot