You not only create plurality in the Divine Being, but you introduce a Person into the Divine Being not possessed of the essential attributes of Deity. The Son is not omniscient. He knows not when the day of judgment is to be. The Son is not self-existent, but a derived, dependent being. "As the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given the Son to have life in himself." He was dependent, not on the Father, which would be inadmissible, but on "the only true God," for the glory he had before the foundation of the world. After the termination of his mediatorial office, the Son is to be subjected, not to the Father, but to God, that God may be all in all. Such attributes must the Word possess, if you identify it with what is called the Son in the Trinity.

Quite as difficult do you find it, when you attempt to identify such a person as the Word in Christ. According to the strange phraseology of Trinitarianism, the Word, which was a Divine Person in God, becomes a Divine nature in Christ.

How he should be

represented as losing his personality in becoming incarnate, is not readily comprehended, unless from foresight of the difficulties which would be involved in supposing that Christ was made up of two persons, as well as two natures. But the instinctive good sense of mankind has avoided the inconceivable idea that Christ was composed of two persons, one finite and the other infinite, by substituting the more indefinite word nature. But nature, in this connection, if it mean any more than office, function, capacity, must mean persons, and if so, what were the elements of the complex person, Christ ?

An infinite Spirit, which filled immensity and eternity, and a finite spirit, which began to exist in Bethlehem, in the days of Augustus Cæsar, a consciousness which embraced all things that can be known in the Universe, and another consciousness which embraced that narrow circle of ideas only, which is taken in by the human faculties; a will which could sway the Universe, and one which could only act through a human body. Is it possible than any person can believe in the amalgamation of such contradictory elements into one Person? The human, of course, must be lost in the Divine, like a drop of water in the ocean. But what adds to the wonder, this amalgamation is not permanent. The real person of Christ, in which he speaks and teaches, has the power of sliding out of one into the other, whenever he chooses, and of sometimes speaking as God, and sometimes as man, without giving any notice that he makes the change; so that his hearers. and readers were, and are, according to this hypothesis, obliged to pick out of his discourses, at their own discretion, those things which he said as God, and those things which he said as man, and what he said as both God and man, of course, are always in the dark as to what they are taking on divine, and what on human authority.

I adopt the interpretation of the impersonality of the Word, because it corresponds best with the general representations of the Scriptures. Jesus was born, and increased in wisdom, which could hardly happen to a being of whose person an omniscient God made a part. He commenced teaching, not because any

Divine Power made a constitutional element of him, but because he was visited by the Spirit of God. "He was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness," which contradicts the idea of the Word's being a person. It is said of him, "that God giveth the spirit unto him not by measure." He says of himself, "I, by the spirit of God, cast out devils." If there were such a person in Christ as the Word, he was certainly quiescent during his whole ministry; and if the Holy Ghost is a person, he is the person who was in Christ and wrought his miracles. And if the Holy Ghost is not a person, and by the Spirit is meant the power of God, then God, without distinction of Persons, wrought his miracles, which is perfectly consistent with the Scriptures, but destroys the doctrine of the Trinity. This is precisely in accordance with the representation of Peter. "Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God, by miracles, and signs, and wonders, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves do know." On another occasion, "How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power, who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil, for God was with him." From all these passages, and many others that I might cite, it seems evident, that what is in the introduction of John called the Word, means nothing more than the Divine aid and power, that full measure of wisdom and control over nature, which is, in other places, called "the fulness of the Spirit," and which fitted Jesus for his great office of Mediator between God and men.

This personification of the attributes of God, and representation of them as God himself, was not introduced by John in his Gospel. It was familiar to the Jews before. It is found in the Old Testament, and in the Apocrypha. In the eighth chapter of Proverbs, Wisdom is personified, just as the Word is in the Gospel of John. But by the structure of the Hebrew language, Wisdom is feminine, just as Wisdom is masculine in Greek. She is represented as a female, going up and down the earth, endeavoring to persuade men to be wise. "Doth not Wisdom cry, and understanding put forth her voice? of high places, by the way, in She crieth at the gates, at the at the coming in of the doors. Unto you, O men, I call, and my voice is unto the sons of men. O ye simple, understand wisdom; and ye fools, be ye of an understanding heart."

She standeth in the top the places of the paths. entering in of the city,

That no real person is intended, appears from the whole structure of the chapter; from the word understanding, which is introduced as synonymous, and especially from these verses: "Receive my instruction, and not silver; and knowledge rather than choice gold. For wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it."

She then goes on to identify herself with wisdom as it exists in the minds of men, and there seems to be a strong parallelism between the mode of speech here used, and one clause of the introduction of John. "In him was life, and the life was the light of men." What is Wisdom in the one case, is Word in the other.

"By me kings reign, and princes decree justice. By me princes rule, and nobles, even all the judges of the earth."

Afterwards she identifies herself with wisdom in the mind of God. As she had represented herself as having a personal form, as the monitor of mankind and the counsellor of princes, so she gives herself a personal existence with God, from all eternity, because God is the primeval fountain of all wisdom. In the same manner, John represents the Word as being with God, and being God." Wisdom proceeds, "The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills, was I brought forth; while as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world. When he prepared the heavens, I was there." The reader here will observe, that Wisdom is not represented as being the agent in the creation of the world, but only as being present. In the introduction to the Gospel of John, the divine attributes, personified under the term Word, are represented as the actual Agent in bringing all things into existence, or are identified with God himself, because, in the Old Testament, God is represented as having spoken all things into being. By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth." Wisdom proceeds: "When he established