"And upon His head were many crowns." Rev. 19:12. (Continued from page 259.)

" CHAPTER I. The Deity of Christ.

Think of One who could say of Himself that He was the "Light of the world,"-excluding all other! Light-self-witnessing, as light is:so that rejection of it could only be on the part of men who "loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil." And this light was not merely that of His sayings, a message that He brought, a revelation which was committed to Him, though there was that also:but He was Himself the Light, as He says, in the exactest possible way defining this,- "As long as I am in the world, I am the Light of the world" (Jno. 9:5).

His sayings would, indeed, live after He was gone; the revelation He made remain for other days. None the less, it would be night for the world when He was gone out of it. Nothing could replace the Sun. Of course, there are little "lights" enough – torchlights, bon-fires, here and there a calcium light:but no one of these could be confounded with the sun. Even the moon shines by its light, and nature itself bears witness which we do well to listen to, that the light of the world must be a light outside the world; nothing bred of it is competent for its illumination.

"God is light:" and here is One who claims to be in the world so absolutely that, that if a disciple express still a desire to have the Father shown to him, He can rebuke him with " Have I been so long
in His prayer to the Father for those given to Him out of the world, though seeming to have a narrower scope, only show us the same purpose in progress, now defining itself in view of human sin and its fatal consequences. To those given to Him He manifests the Father's name, and communicates the Father's words. One who had his place with them had dropped out; but he was a "son of perdition."

There is no need to entangle ourselves with the questions that arose early in the Church with regard to the doctrine of the Word or Logos. Scripture is transparently clear with regard to it; and upon such subjects not a ray of light is to be got elsewhere.

Being, then, such as we see, we do not wonder that He claims to be the self-existent One, as in His words to the Jews:"Before Abraham was I am" (Jno. 8:58). This is the incommunicable name of Deity, by which He revealed Himself to Moses and to Israel:" I am hath sent me to you" (Exod. 3:14). Being always the Word, the Revealer, this older voice was, of course, His own. He is thus the Abiding, the Unchangeable, the Eternal. Jehovah is but the synonym of this; and so the glory of Jehovah, which Isaiah saw in his day, is declared to be His glory:"these things said Esaias when he saw His glory, and spake of Him" (Jno. 12:40, 41 with Isa. 6:9, 10). The Old Testament thus, as well as the New, is full of His Presence; only that now He has taken that tabernacle of flesh to display His glory in, in which all His purpose to be near us, all His delights with the sons of men, have fully come out. He is now truly Immanuel, "God with us;" and the blessedness of that for us will fill eternity.

That He should claim equal honor with the Father Himself is in this way clearly intelligible, as it of itself also declares fully who He is:"that all men should honor the Son even as they honor the Father" (Jno. 5:23) is the most emphatic assertion of equality; which Thomas's "my Lord and my God" (20:28) yields Him, with full recognition on his part of the truth of his too tardy faith.
F. W. G.

(To be Continued.)