Christ, the essential Word, is the Lord and Creator of all things, visible and invisible.

Thus his eternal power and Godhead being set forth, the apostle in verses 4 and 5, proceeds with his subject, saying, of the eternal and essential Word of the Father: "In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.”

In him, as Creator, is the fountain of life: in him, as God-man, is the fountain and spring of all communicated life, natural, spiritual, and eternal. All the life and light of nature is from him in him was the life of the promise, and the light which shone through it on the elect patriarchs and prophets, and all the church of God, from the first moment of its publication in the garden of Eden, till the fulfilment of it in his incarnation.

He shone forth in all the types, shadows, and figures of the ceremonial law, in all the ministry of the prophets, in the whole scriptures of truth; yet such was the darkness of the human mind, corrupted by the fall, that the bulk of the jewish people did not comprehend him, when manifested in the flesh, to be the very Messiah which all the prophets had spoken of, and borne witness to, in their writings.

In the sixth and following verses, the evangelist gives an account of the forerunner of

God, our Saviour, of his office, of his incarnation, and of his being rejected by some, and received and believed on by others.

The distinctive personality of the essential Word, his co-existence in the Godhead by essential union with it, his co-eternity and coequality in the unity of the infinite and incomprehensible essence, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, God over all blessed for ever, amen, are truths of the utmost importance, and most closely connected with our present subject. Our evangelist viewed it in this light, and therefore in the verses going before our text, he, under the influence of the Holy Ghost, positively asserts these truths as fundamental ones. Herein he shews his apostolic wisdom; for the person of Christ in his divine nature, should be treated of before his actions in his human nature. He says, ver. 1. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." The second person in the essential and eternal Trinity, is here called the Word. He is called so in the old testament, in divers places, too many to mention: to give some instances, he is called the Word of the Lord, and that in relation to the creation of all things; "By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all the hosts of them, by the breath of his mouth," Psalm xxxiii. 6. We read that the Word of the Lord came unto Abram in

was the Creator of it: his wisdom, power, and goodness, shone forth in every part of it: yet though his works proclaimed him, every element acknowledged him, by yielding obedience to him; yet fallen man by the light and works of creation knew him not.

Verse 11. "He came unto his own, and his own received him not." He came personally by his incarnation, into the world, and conversed with his own people, the jews, who were his by choice, Deut. vii. 5. by covenant, Deut. xxvi. 18. by purchase, Exod. xix. 4, 5. and by kindred, Heb. ii. 16. yet they received him not, they would not acknowledge him to be the Messiah, the Prince. The evangelist shews the blessedness of such as did, in the next verse.

Verse 12. "But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them which believe on his name." Such as received Christ, and believed on him, had his right honour, privilege, and dignity, conferred on them, to become the sons of God manifestatively, and were acknowledged by the Lord as such.

The high original of their new and supernatural birth, he expresses in the next words, ver. 13. "Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." He sets aside all birth privileges; he proves it to be altogether divine, it is of God,

this passage, when he wrote the remarkable text of the three witnesses in heaven, "the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost," 1 John v. 7. However in that text of Haggai, there are three persons, as well as in that of John, and in both the three are one.'

To introduce my text, I will comment briefly on the preliminary verses, viz. 1, 2, 3. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, and without him was not any thing made that was made."

John's beginning is the same with Moses' beginning: he says, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth," Gen. i. 1. And John seems to have his eye on what Moses records concerning the creation, and positively asserts that the Word was in the beginning, before the creation, present at it when it took place. He was the essential Word: be was with God, distinct from the Father and Spirit in personality, yet co-equal and co-eternal with them, possessed of all the glories, perfections, and essential incommunicable blessedness of the divine essence.

He co-existed and co-operated with the Father and the Spirit, in the whole work of creation and providence. He who made all things is God:

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Thirdly. The glory of his person, which John and others, were eye-witnesses of, which is de clared in these words: "And we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father;" which words are included in a parenthesis, the reason for which shall be given.

Fourthly. His fulness. He was in his incarnate state, in all his conversation with poor sinners, who came to him for salvation, help, and succour, full of grace and truth: a fountain ever flowing and overflowing.

These are our heads. May the Lord the Spirit, be present with my mind, and give me supernatural light into this portion of his holy word, that I may explain it to a hair's breadth, with the oracles of truth.

I begin with my first head.

First. I will set before you this great mystery of the incarnation of the essential Word, the only begotten Son of God, his becoming a partaker of our nature, by his personal assumption of it into union with his divine person, as expressed in these words of our text, " And the Word was made flesh."

In our introductory observations on the verses preceding the text, it fully appears that Christ, as a person in Jehovah, existed before the world was; he being with the Father and the Spirit, in the unity of the one incomprehensible Godhead, Jehovah, the Most High, over all the earth. It